Buddy, We Hardly Know Ye (yet)

Our new dog is nothing if not surprising. One minute he's calm as a floor rug and the next as hyper as a puppy. He moves to his own rhythm; quiet as a deer, he's got a quick first step - all of a sudden he's there, sitting and staring up at you compassionately through those warm, amber eyes.

He's indifferent to dogs and birds and cats but draws the line at squirrels, finding in them a provocation that cannot stand. He's also a car buff who tries to enter every car and truck be it moving or parked. A walk through a parking lot is a tiring exercise in constantly trying to keep his paws off the window panes.

He's especially fastidious when it comes to bowel movements. For him, it's gauche to poop in his own house or yard. Why soil your own stomping grounds? he asks, not without reason. He saves that for walks and neighbor's houses. Yesterday my wife took him to visit neighbor Ann and in one of her rooms he left a particularly unpleasant present. Ann took it well, being quite a dog person herself.

His get-away into the lanes of a nearby four-lane road was not as strange as it seemed. The wikipedia entry on Huskys warn owners to "exercise caution when letting their Siberian Husky off the leash as the dog is likely to be miles away before looking around and realizing their owner is nowhere in sight." Indeed.

Now that the shaved-off coat is growing back, he's beginning to look aesthetically beautiful, sporting a thin layer of soft fur that gleams a stunning constellation of browns and blacks and whites. His ears are an intricate interplay of light brown, tan and black.

Buttgate!

Plausible alternative scenerios:



Nice braids!




Nice pumps!




Toned calves!




Big step!




(something else?)

Found Mercy

"For Jesus is our Hope: Through His merciful Heart as through an open gate we pass through to heaven."

After the worldliness of the last post I ought look upward a moment. I feel gratitude for serendipitously finding in the "free stuff" rack in the nave of church a booklet called The Divine Mercy: Message and Devotion (with selected prayers from the Diary of St. Maria Faustina), published by Marian Press copyright 2000. In the back are a few of the most beautiful prayers in the English language, or at least that speak to me forcefully. They are like extravagantly fragrant roses of hope reminding us of unfathomable mercy available. They are prayers bereft of the false notes. I guess it was meant for me, because when I looked online in order to provide the same, the 2008 version came with different prayers not as good (at least to me).

The first reading at Mass yesterday ends with:

"Come closer to me," [Joseph] told his brothers. When they had done so, he said: "I am your brother Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. But now do not be distressed, and do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you." (Gen 45)

What a beautiful expression of mercy. Imagine Jesus saying the same to his persecutors, to those who instead of selling Him into slavery nailed him to the cross. It was really for the sake of saving lives.
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Another free pamphlet found was a small rosary meditation booklet put out by the Franciscan Friars of Mount Vernon, NY. I always check out the Fifth Joyful mystery first, just to see how they handle this puzzlement. The Franciscans have a powerfully apt meditation:

Mary's Message: In your life also there will be strange divine doings to puzzle you. You may wonder in dismay what God wants to accomplish. You may wish to probe in prayer to discover His hidden reasons. God does not ask you to understand His doings fully, but rather to align your will with His in complete, filial trust.

Prayer: Dear Blessed Mother, the thousand 'whys' on my lips are not always the best response to God May His Holy Spirit teach me, as He taught you, to accept His ways without always asking God to prove again His care of me. May I always reverence His presence within me as another living temple of His glory. Amen.

Today's Blog Post

Another stream o' consciousness post feels right as we linger on this cuspidor of the weekend. Without further ado...

Saw Pelham with my brother not long ago and it was, in the universal parlance, "okay". Modern movies are often sort of blah. Even with Up there seemed a lot of middle section that was flabby, i.e. pointless chase scenes. I suppose that was for the kids, who all love chase scenes. Fortunately my wife and I have been lately riveted by HBO's John Adams. We watch a half-hour or 45 minutes each night before bedtime and it really puts you into another world. I guess we're suckers for movies where actors don olde timey costumes.
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Peggy Noonan, who never had much love for Sarah Palin, hatcheted her in today's WSJ. It felt a bit mean-spirited, a bit of "kick 'er when she's down". Of course Peggy probably sees it as the best time for a teachable moment, the most opportune time to explain why conservative love of Palin is irrational. Noonan's column is persuasive. Palin is someone I really want to support, given how pro-life women politicians are irrationally hated by the elites, and yet it's clear that whatever trajectory Palin was on as Governor of Alaska and then possibly senator and beyond - seemed ruined by the desperate act of McCain reaching for an elixir of youth. I said at the time that I thought it would either ruin or make Palin and it seems more the former. McCain reminds me a bit of Billy Martin when the latter coached the As in the 1980s - ruined a lot of young arms by bringing them up too early and burning them out.

Noonan, in realpolitik fashion, seems to value thoughtfulness over courage and goodness, intelligence over ethics. For her not to mention Palin taking on the corrupt members of her own Republican party in Alaska seems a sin of omission. That is precisely what the Republican party has desperately needed since at least 1999. Of coruse Noonan's not alone - Americans ended up choosing the thoughtful if vague and ethically-suspect Obama over the courageous if self-righteously ethical McCain.

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The travel itch has really returned of late (i.e. the last 3-4 months). It's been nine years now since my last trip overseas. While beach vacations are wonderful they are as different from sight-seeing vacations as donuts from steak. This most recent itch was reading about Amy Welborn's trip and Steven Riddle's impending one; arm-chair travel only exacerbates the pang and in that sense is about as helpful in sublimating travel desire as Playboy does the sexual kind. I'm thinking NYC in the fall, which is about as close to international travel as I suppose it gets on short notice.
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Reading of the great William F. Buckley's hard end in his son's book was an eye-opener. The lingering, torture of emphysema. Perhaps it was even harder than it needed to be (we are often are own worst enemies) and if so it's not surprising given the way WFB lived couldn't really prepare him for the end. He wouldn't, on paper at least, be a good fit for old age and its limitations. He was an adventurer, a sailor, a man with a zest for life and not a great deal of patience. His last projects on Goldwater & Reagan were ones that really filled him up, that he needed. One can underestimate the need we all have for projects. Perhaps we should all assign ourselves a few. I wanted to emulate him given his appealing generosity, erudition and love of life but perhaps it was saints that should've received more of my attention and adulation. That's not to say WFB wasn't a great man; besides, I likely put too much value on the avoidance of mental anguish and that return to childhood dependence in very old age.
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James Schall likes the new encyclical:

After reading Caritas in Veritate, I said to myself that the general Catholic and world population has no idea of the brilliance of this pope. Of course, I said that when I finished Spe Salvi, Deus Caritas Est, Jesus of Nazareth, and about a zillion other writings by Pope Ratzinger. God must be amused that the brightest man of our time is the Pope of Rome... Aside from not touching on labor union corruption or the potential totalitarian nature of the ecology movement, this latest encyclical is simply great... Benedict is eloquent on the defects of modernity, but also on its potential. Like Spe Salvi, which I think is a greater document, it places man within this world in such a way that he is not imprisoned within it. I particularly loved Benedict’s initial reminder that everything about us is gift-oriented.

I'm not in a particular hurry to read this one. For what it's worth, Spe Salvi spoke to me far more than Deus Caritas Est, probably because I didn't understand the latter.
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A fellow Catholic blogger recently lost his dog and writes a vivid post, as did another Christian blogger, friend of Hokie Pundit as I recall.
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I was thinking of the word "skullduggery" and crossed it with "cloak and dagger", ending up with the malapropism "skull and dagger" in describing to my wife the scene at my desk yesterday. At our shop we are easily amused, or shall I say scandalized, such that if someone sets up a meeting with me directly without going through my ebullient and effusive boss than said boss becomes distraught, and sees, sometimes, ill motives.

I rather like his protectiveness, which is certainly a new thing. All the bosses I've had in the past were, to put it mildy, rather uninterested in my Lotus Notes calendar.

So yes a foreboding wind crossed the plains of Cubeland yesterday, with him whispering that only at the next beer-drinking session could he tell me the backstory to his flawed relationship with the person who had the audacity (of hope!) to set up a meeting with me sans him. I look forward to that beer-drinking session Thursday as the Yalies do upon the promise of induction in the Skull & Bones society. What deep, dark secret could be lingering between my boss and the young lady with the strong accent that I'd originally assumed to be Russian but turned out to be Hungarian or Czech or one of those Eastern European countries? Stay tuned, readers, and you too may be privvy to next week...
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My mother-in-law began reading a book that came out in the '90s and wanted my opinion. I went on and on, using the term "false prophet" and thanked her for asking my opinion. Few things gives me more pleasure or make me feel more useful than knocking down heretical reading material being perused by the innocent. It's like asking some barroom bore to pontificate about whatever barroom bores pontificate about.

Interesting Link on e-Books

... here, from an embittered entrepreneur who tried to sell them back in the '90s.

My 13-yr old niece is buying a Kindle. When I asked if any of her friends had one she said no.

This last part from the link has the ring of truth:

Let me leave you with a quote from another Peanut Press founder, one which reflects his not-entirely unfounded optimism about the subtle seduction of e-books: "You know what we call people who finally try e-books after they've sworn they could never read on a handheld device? 'Customers.'"

I recall asserting my horror at e-reading devices to Steven Riddle, thinking they had the odor of sulphur about them. But an old email from '03 to Steven reveals an openness:

"I read your post on Catholic Bookshelf about e-books and though I don't like reading on a screen I do prefer that to waiting in line and looking at my shoe! I am intrigued by the notion of being able to read the Catechism in bite-size pieces while waiting on interminable elevator rides."

Found Verse

Produced by linking together the "Recent Comments" on the side column of various blogs (as of 7/9/09 10:14am):

Darwin Comments

On the one hand, I've been appalled by many people
As a protestant who used to move in the Pentecosta
Brandon, we were actually working up side character
that is awesome; and it would actually make a plot
I have heard the same about Archbishop Aymond rega.

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Flos Carmelian
Dear TSO,
Good to se
An insight
Dear Ben,
This poem
I agree wi
Steven, I
PS. I was
I just fin
Dear Erik.

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Summa Yummas
you two be
excellent
A movie we
Yum, yum,
don't kid
Congratula
A roomful
hurrah! hu
well, it's
O Huzzah!

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Summa Minutiae

Now that's a fine gig. I had the same deal growin...
I wish I'd read that one attentively. I was young...
I want to have already read Kirk's "The Conservati...
He already got me - "The Hunter Gracchus" and Sant...
While I'm here, a few reads for you:http://smbus

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Some Have Hats
Joe on Going Up
Deirdre on Going Up
Karen on Going Up
Janny on Going Up
joe on Going Up
T. Shaw on Going Up
Annie on The Obamination That Spreads Desolation
joe on My Heart Goes Out But My Body Will Remain in NC till it's Over

1 Cor 13

Love is patient, love is kind...

Steven Riddle's recent post on 1 Cor 13 got me to thinking about my own providential evolution on the passage. It was "sickeningly sweet" back in the '80s, the sort of sentimental lines that every wedding had to include and perhaps reminded of me mainly of my lack of a steady girlfriend. Perhaps, too, the lines had become meaningless thru repetition, or perhaps the expressions contained within ("endureth all things"? Really?) seemed merely an impossible goal.

But many years later it occurred to me that God must be all those things in the passage because God = love. It occurred to me that God would not NOT practice what he preached in the Bible. If there's one guarantee in life, it's that God does live up to the standard he asks of us. Thus every passage in which he tells us to love, He is indirectly telling us he loves us!

For example, take the story of the Good Samaritan. I never, ever dreamed of reading that as the story of Christ. I thought of it only as a guilt-inducing parable. But then the homilist on Maundy Thursday in 2000 told us that Jesus is the good Samaritan who found us (prodigy of Adam) lying half-dead in the street and paid the price for us and saved our lives and took us to the hospital (Church). Every exegesis I'd ever heard previously made this an instruction to love our neighbors. But to love our neighbors because of (and out of) love of God seems quantitatively different, doesn't it? To love out of thankfulness instead of out of only duty?

Book Room Porn

Found here via Enbreth. of Sancta Sanctis. It's Venerable Cardinal Newman's library. The first picture is of Raymond DeSouza in said library:

Good Debate on the Blogosphere

Eve Tushnet's piece on Inside Catholic prompted a lengthy flurry of responses, many of which were enlightening and/or provocative. Hers is an example of a good column but an even better comment thread. I can't tell you the number of times I've read a newspaper article or heard a pundit on the radio and wanted to say, "but what about...?". A good thing about many blogs is that you can ask that question directly. And in this particular thread, rarely have I read responses to post in which both sides make such excellent arguments.

What follows is a smattering of the thread, which may come down to whether one has a more optimistic view of things or a more pessimistic, Augustinian view concerning Original Sin and concupiscence.

From Lucien of the "even sex is sublimination" camp:

In all of the examples just mentioned, including the Incarnation most particularly, eros and suffering enter into a dialectic of sorts. For these reasons it may be right to say that the only truly authentic fruitfulness in eros is non-physical, since there is a paradoxical way in which eros itself is non-phyiscal (a longing, rather than a consummation).

From "RQ":

This is a deeply difficult topic, but a very important one. I think that these are the kinds of questions real, faithful Catholics end up wrestling with the most- the "how much of this is sinful tendency, how much is God-given personality?", the "is it possible for my weakness to also be my strength?", the "i know this is a problem as it stands, but do i try to remove it or redeem it?".

These questions are not, by any means, the exclusive domain of people who tend to fall in love with the same sex. I've spent long nights (heck, it's 4:30am as I write this) grappling with similar questions in my relationships with men. The problem with these questions is they're so deeply personal and specific, especially when relating to one particular relationship in your own life. Trying to fit your emotions, desires, and multi-faceted love into catechism categories is not only hard, but feels distinctly wrong. And I think we've all faced the chilling question of whether our prayers for guidance are being answered by the Almighty and All-righteous God, or whether we're feeding "God" the lines from our own subconscious.

From Melinda:

It strikes me that Michealangelo is a good example of the sort of sublimation that you're talking about. His homoeroticism may or may not have led him into sin (it certainly led him into temptation, though that may be neither here nor there.) Regardless, it also led him to create some of the most beautiful and sublime presentations of the human body that have been left to the world. This is also similar to something that Fr. Groeschel talks about in his book "Stumbling Blocks, Stepping Stones" which is basically about the idea that our sins and temptations are ultimately an important part of our spirituality are part of the way that we know and approach God.

From RobertZ:

We have to remember that disorders, illnesses, death itself came into existence at the moment of Original Sin. Nature itself was affected by the Great Schism with our Creator...In the separation from God, we opened ourselves and nature up to degradation which is still present today due to concupiscence. Concupiscence remains after baptism so that we "may struggle for the victory, but does no harm to those who resist it by the grace of God."

From Steve:

If we're talking about concupiscence, fallenness and disordered desires, it's hard to see how it's helpful to identify myself as an adulterer, a gambler, an alcoholic, etc. And in the area of disabilities, I know there is a strong push to refer to "a person with epilepsy" rather than "an epileptic", or "a person who is paralyzed" rather than "a parapalegic". It can make for cumbersome language, but many people do not want to be defined by their condition. The emphasis is then on the PERSON instead. Is SSA any different? Perhaps not.

From Okie:

With relative assurance, I can tell you the vast majority of young men struggle (and fall prey) to the desire to masturbate. As a young adult male, it would horrify me to be labeled as a "masturbator," either as a teenager or now. It would have been wrongheaded to even ask the question "does the Church have something to say to me as a masturbator?" And even though its true that some "aspect" of that desire stems from a good and redeemable desire (every desire does...as Thomas says, even the devil is good insofar as he has being!), it would be ridiculous to act like addresssing me and the needs of my soul would be better served through imagining myself or others imagining me first as a "masturbator," simply because I had the desire to do so. I understand that adding another person to the equation adds the idea of comfort and help, but there is nothing there to solemnize. It is just what friends are supposed to do, and if a friend knows they will be a basis of temptation, they would willingly give up that relationship for the good of the other. I'm sorry, but I think August has this pegged...it is simply a very modern way of understanding self-identity that is at the root of this problem, and it is not healthy, nor is it Catholic.

From Bruno:

In my experience, sublimation is the process that occurs when I admit something is attractive but also that the attraction is not good for me (a second piece of chocolate cake, let's say!). The desire is there, but I recognize it is not in my best interests. I allow it to evaporate. This is hard to do, depending on the passion and level of attachment. It is a process and is never fully achieved. But the ability to have mastery over our passions, rather than their having mastery over us, makes us free to control our own lives. Repression is an unhealthy denial of a desire. Sublimation occurs when we directly face a desire, allow it to surface, but NOT take action on it. That leaves us psychologically healthy, and also in control of ourselves (= free).

Excerpt

From Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body (Jose Granados and Carl Anderson)

Together Toward God

To love another person is to affirm this person for his or her own sake. If we look at this affirmation more closely, though, it turns out to be something of a mystery. On the one hand, the beloved is a finite human being as we are. On the other hand, affirming the beloved for his or her own sake means ascribing an absolute value to a human person. How is it possible to pronounce an infinite yes to a finite being?

"How can it be done, Teresa, for you to stay in Andrew forever? How can it be done, Andrew, for you to stay in Teresa forever since man will not endure in man and man will not suffice?" (JS, 292) The Jeweler's question to Teresa and Andrew

It seems to leave us with a choice between one of two equally unacceptable options: Either we force the beloved into the role of an absolute, thereby cruelly subjecting him or her to an infinite demand no mere human being could ever live up to, or else we affirm the beloved only conditionally, thereby refusing him or her the absolute yes that true love requires. Vatican II suggests a way out of this dilemma in a passage from Gaudium et Spes that underscores man's special dignity as the only creature on earth that God has loved "for its own sake" (GS, 24). The dignity of the person is indeed absolute, Vatican II is telling us, but this dignity is itself based on the absolute Source of all dignity: God. Human dignity resolves the dilemma we've been struggling with here as follows: Since the beloved is God's image, we can affirm him or her with an absolute yes; on the other hand, since our yes derives its force from the beloved's relation to God, that affirmation does not turn the beloved into an idol but frees him or her from the crushing load of a false absolutization that injures the beloved's dignity instead of exalting it.

A corollary of what we've just said is that we have no business expecting another person to bear the whole burden of making us happy. Love's gravitational pull does not come to its final rest in our fellow creatures, but only in God. As Pope Benedict says, “[l]ove is indeed ecstasy, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God” (DCE, 6).

It would be totally mistaken to conclude from the pope's words, however, that we need to turn away from our fellow human beings in order to turn toward God. For it is precisely in other persons, and in our relationship to them, that we find the presence of God. We don't make our journey to God away from other persons, then, but together with them. We will develop this point further in our next chapter. A related implication of the foregoing is that all the aspects of personal existence we have considered thus far (sensuality, feelings, the affirmation of the person) direct us toward the ultimate goal of life, which is communion with God. We need not, in fact, we should not, ignore the lower dimensions of love, or despise our desires and feelings. Rather than rejecting them, we need to integrate them into love's basic movement toward God. When all of our affectivity, all of our bodily desires, are integrated into our affirmation of the value of the person, our sensuality and feelings aren't left behind but become part of our journey to the Absolute. It's precisely because it exists to be incorporated into such a journey that sexuality seems to promise an almost divine ecstasy of fulfillment. Saint Augustine, then, was right when he called the affections "the feet of our soul, by which we either walk toward God or away from him." Karol Wojtyla makes a similar point in Radiation of Fatherhood. Feelings, Wojtyla says, need to be bathed in the light of the person and transfigured by the radiance of God's love: But what emerges on the wave of the heart should not develop haphazardly, leading into blind alleys. "Every feeling, my child, must be permeated by light, so that one does not feel in darkness, but in the light, anew." (RF, 353)

...

As we saw in the previous chapter, the gift of Eve takes this quest to a new level: “This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Adam's act of naming Eve leads him deeper into his own identity. In naming her, he discovers his own name, too, as the wordplay in the Hebrew text of Genesis makes clear: “She will be called woman, because from man she has been taken.” Although Adam's encounter with Eve is a decisive high point in his quest, it is not the end of his search. Instead of diminishing his wonder, the presence of Eve intensifies it: “This at last!” Of all the things that arouse wonder, love is the most wondrous. Eve's presence is not so much like a harbor for a storm-tossed ship as it is like the parting of the storm clouds to reveal a wider, more mysterious horizon toward which the ship continues its journey. As Teresa says just after Andrew has asked for her hand in the Jeweler's Shop: "I remember that Andrew did not turn his eyes to me at once, but looked ahead for quite a while, as if gazing intently at the road before us." (JS, 24)

A new experience of wonder always prepares a new stage of our journey toward the Horizon of our existence, which is also the Source from which all wonder ultimately comes. "If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current. Break through, search, don't yield, you know it must be here somewhere. Where are you? … Source, where are you?" (RT, 9) This general rule is never truer than in the case of Adam's encounter with Eve, which ushers the two into a new world of wonder in which both of them continue their journey toward the Source hand in hand. In exploring this new stage of Adam's quest, John Paul II develops what he calls a “hermeneutics of the gift,” an interpretation of our experience of reality in light of the gift that this reality is. But what do we mean by “gift”? What does the idea of gift tell us about our relationship to the Absolute? Source, what is your name?

...

Rainer Maria Rilke illustrates the creative possibilities of the gift. One day Rilke and a friend happened to pass a church where an old woman was begging at the gate. Rilke's companion offered her some change, and the poor woman, accustomed to the mechanical gestures of the passersby, took the money without even raising her eyes. Rilke, like a true poet, bought her a rose and presented it to her when the two friends passed by the church again later that day. The woman's response to Rilke's apparently useless offer was totally different from her reaction to the change proffered by his friend: She raised her eyes and smiled and was not seen at the gate of the church for a whole week afterward. When Rilke's friend asked him what she had lived on during that week, Rilke answered without missing a beat: She has lived on the rose.

Rilke's rose was a unique and personal gift that touched the very dignity of the person who received it, reawakening her to life, whereas the change handed her mechanically by the passersby did not evoke any real human response in her soul. It goes without saying, of course, that gift giving is a risky enterprise. Since a gift exists to be received, every act of giving necessarily entails the risk of being refused. Notice that the refusal of the intended gift is not the rejection of a mere object; it extends, in a certain sense, to the very person of the giver. Conversely, if the gift is accepted, a new relationship comes into being that enriches both giver and receiver. As Saint Irenaeus of Lyons said, “he who offers is himself glorified in what he does offer, if his gift be accepted.” A gift is not just an object, but comes with it the person of the giver him- or herself. When we give a present, we are giving more than a piece of merchandise whose value can be measured by its market price.

To give a gift is always, in one way or another, to give oneself. A gift establishes or strengthens a relationship that touches, in different degrees, the personal core of both giver and receiver. Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed it this way:

"The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift."

Emerson's words suggest that there is no gift giving without reciprocity. A gift does not need to be repaid, but it does need to be accepted. It's important to stress that the receiver is not degraded by accepting the gift with a thank-you. On the contrary, by gratefully acknowledging the gift, the receiver becomes a co-creative partner in the new relationship that the gift establishes. This reciprocity enriches both the one who gives and the one who receives. As John Paul II says: “giving and accepting the gift interpenetrate in such a way that the very act of giving becomes acceptance, and acceptance transforms itself into giving” (TOB, 196).

Let's sum up what we've seen so far about gift giving. A gift, we've said, can only be given for free. The reason the gift has to be gratis is not that it's “cheap.” The point is that the gift has a kind of value that strictly speaking cannot be repaid. Why not? Because a gift expresses the unique worth of the person who gives it. What the giver seeks from the receiver, in fact, is not repayment, but a personal response. That's why the acceptance of the gift creates a relationship between giver and receiver, a relationship that enriches both of them at once. “Love,” observes Saint Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, “consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example, the lover gives to the beloved, and shares with the beloved, what he possesses … and vice versa the beloved shares with the lover.” Saint John of the Cross sums up this creative power of the gift when he writes: “Where there is no love, put love and there you will draw out love.”

THE ORIGINAL GIVER

Let's return to the story of Adam and Eve, which confirms what we have been saying about the gift. For it is Eve herself who elicits Adam's wonder and delight—and not primarily any thing that she might give to, or do for, him. Her very person is a gift to him. The acknowledgment that the beloved him- or herself is a gift is the heart of every true love. The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us that what we love about the beloved isn't this or that quality he or she may have, but the very person he or she is:

"Do not say 'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so."

Real love doesn't stop with the “gentle voice” or the “sense of pleasant ease.” It goes further to acknowledge the deeper reality that such things betoken. That is, it receives the very existence of the beloved as a gift. Adam revels in the goodness of Eve's very existence, just as she revels in the goodness of his; it is as if they said to each other: “It is good that you exist and that we exist together.” It's only when lovers recognize this depth dimension in each other that their love becomes hardy enough to outlast changes in their feelings or alterations in their qualities and attributes. What genuine lovers care about most is not simply whether the beloved can give him- or herself freely to them in return. True lovers who have attained the maturity of love are able to recognize that the beloved him- or herself is a gift, prior to any of his or her actions. In short, true love is a response to the very fact that the beloved's existence is itself already a gift. Adam and Eve know deep in their bones that the call of love precedes anything that they could do to earn or produce it.

Divine Mercy Links

Cornucopia of mercy links I want to get into the archives...

Example:

That God's merciful love is indeed His "greatest" attribute is implied in the Scriptures and had been taught by great saints of the Church such as St. Augustine in his commentaries on the Psalms and St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae.

In the mid-20th century, however, Catholic intellectuals were in the process of recovering the philosophical aspects of St. Thomas Aquinas's thought. Saint Thomas had taught that, seen from the philosophical angle, in the simplicity of God's essence, all the attributes of God are really one; they all refer to the same infinite, eternal act of God's perfect being. God does not have "parts," or attributes that are separable from each other. They are always in act, all at once, and inseparably so, bound up with each other at every moment.

Thus, God's justice is always loving, and His mercy is always just, from all eternity. Therefore, from a philosophical perspective, one cannot say that one of God's attributes is "greater" than any other; they all just refer to the same thing: His perfect being! At Vatican II, however, the Church strongly encouraged the faithful, including Catholic theologians, to recover biblical perspectives on the faith, and not just philosophical perspectives. Thus, Fr. Ignacy Rozycki, who analyzed St. Faustina's Diary for the Vatican in the 1970s, pointed out that if we consider God's attributes not just in an abstract, philosophical way, in themselves, but in their relation to us, as the Bible does, then we can indeed say that mercy is God's greatest attribute for His creatures.

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

Slightly sheepish about going to reconciliation on Saturday afternoon, the 4th of July, I smile a bit, sit and say [to Confessor] "I'm really sorry. Sin doesn't take a holiday." Not skipping a beat: "Not to worry. Neither does Grace." - Ironic Catholic via Dylan

And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times. - Pope Benedict via Dylan of Dark October

I fell in love with beer brewing as a result of reading the charmingly entitled An Essay on Brewing, Vintage and Distillation, Together With Selected Remedies for Hangover Melancholia: Or, How to Make Booze by John Festus Adams. Adams opens with an extended discussion of what sort of hobby book this will not be, recounting his experience with a book on growing mushrooms. Written by the Brit who Took Food Seriously, it eventually became clear to Adams while reading this book that the author did not actually expect him to be able to master this most occult of gardening hobbies. It took skill... It is the inevitable danger of being deeply absorbed in some topic that one begins to draw lines in the sand and say, "If you don't do X, Y and Z in my favorite way, you are clearly not serious about this and should get out." And yet for those of us who make reading, talking and writing about the Catholic Church a hobby of sorts, this presents a serious danger. Those of us who are "Catholic geeks" need always to recall that however much the more abstruse corners of Catholic history or theology may fascinate us, that Catholicism is not a hobby or field of study -- the exclusive territory of those with sufficient levels of detailed knowledge and experience. Rather, the Church is the Body of Christ on earth, and the source of the sacraments which are channels of grace to those of us in the Church Militant. - Darwin Catholic

The most general and prevalent reason of study is the impossibility of finding another amusement equally cheap or constant, equally independent on the hour or the weather. He that wants money to follow the chase of pleasure through her yearly circuit, and is left at home when the gay world rolls to Bath or Tunbridge; he whose gout compels him to hear from his chamber the rattle of chariots transporting happier beings to plays and assemblies, will be forced to seek in books a refuge from himself. - Samuel Johnson

Lest any doubt remain about Michael’s status as a commercial property, let his father lay claim. When a CNN reporter asked his father, Joe, shortly after Michael’s death, “How are you doing sir, how’s the family holding up?” Joe Jackson replied, “I’m great. My family’s doing pretty good. It has been really tough. Remember we just lost the biggest star, the biggest superstar in the world.” Most fathers would have simply said they had lost a son. Undeterred, the CNN reporter asked if he’d like to share anything about his son and his legacy. Joe Jackson throttled the tender moment and immediately squeezed in a promotional spot for his new production company proving that even the sudden, shocking death of his son couldn’t soften the stage parent from hell. Michael Jackson had been parented to be sold. - Al Kresta

I have little patience for the sex-is-a-holy-thing-on-a-pedestal attitude... It's impossible to maintain an attitude of breathless respect in the face of the holy when one is attempting to have intercourse in, say, the eighth month of pregnancy. There's a tradition of bawdiness, I think, that is distinct from debauchery. Laugh in the face of the prince of this world, and give him a little less power over you. - commenter "Bearing" on Darwin Catholic

Michael must have said the word "dungeon" 6 dozen times in the hour we were there. He really covets the job of throwing people into the dungeon. And he doesn't mean lead or send, he means throwing. He'll fight you for that job. - Amy Welborn on her son

For nearly twenty years, Chris Mortimer had been predicting that civilization would collapse, and so it was a with a certain grim satisfaction that he watched as it did -- after a fashion. When the peak oil theory surprised even its own firmest proponents by being true beyond their wildest dreams, Chris watched the rioting crowds after the collapse of the Saudi monarchy, the Russian federation and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, and wondered how much longer television would be broadcasting...Somewhere along the way, however, the event he had long anticipated deviated from the mental script he had crafted for it. Where he had pictured a need for rugged individualists who knew how to hunt and gather and perhaps eventually farm and ranch, others with skills he had despised were, maddeningly, well equipped to thrive in the new world. Most maddening of all was that his boss, whom he had at first envisioned begging at his door for canned goods and solar battery chargers, had turned a penchant for "networking" into a trading empire that encompassed control of key aqueducts, solar trading schooners, and the southern overland trade route to California. That this short, nervous-looking man who doubtless did not know three different ways of starting a fire without matches could, in this new world, say grandly to people, "Would you step into my office? I have air conditioning," made Chris feel as if the collapse of civilization was simply not all it was cracked up to be. - Darwin Catholic

There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know. - Pres. Barack Obama on Feb. 5, 2009 (from Exultet blog)

Suppose we are strong enough in ourselves, at least for day to day living. (Though whether any of us are actually strong enough in ourselves, and not merely deceiving ourselves about what discipleship demands of us, is another question.) Then, even if we make it through this life without collapsing, we'll still have failed to be the channels of God's power in the world that He intends us to be. It seems that we can be strong in ourselves, or strong in Christ, and Christ leaves the choice to us. Pray for the grace to make the right choice! - Tom of Disputations

I think [GK Chesterton] mentioned this mystery [of holiness] when he pointed out that martyrs are usually depicted with the tools by which they were tortured and killed. It is hardly, as more antiseptic sensibilities might suggest, a disordered focus on the more brutal elements of the story. Someone who lingers on the more sordid aspects of Marilyn Monroe's life (or perhaps, Elvis Presley's life) can be said to have the wrong focus, but the difference in St. Maria Goretti's story is that the sordid created an opening for the sublime. Those who see only the morbid in the story of a martyr are missing something. Perhaps they are missing the Communion of Saints? Notice that no one is ever encouraged to have a relationship with Marilyn, creepy Candle in the Wind lyrics aside...We gaze at her glamour shots and think that we never really knew her; but we look at images of St. Maria Goretti and believe that we can get to know her very well--because the medium that brings her to us does not also separate her from us. We address her without resorting to apostrophe whenever we plead: Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis! - Sancta Sanctis

The Lazy Man's Way to Rebutting Carroll

So let's say, hypothetically, your Mom is enthralled by James Carroll, the dishonest historian and axe-grinding former priest who has a book out titled "Practicing Catholic". And let's say that you still want to offer a token rebuttal, despite the fact that most people typically believe what the want to believe and seek that out.

Well kids instead of reading the book of someone who has already proven himself unreliable, just go on over to Catholic blogsearch and see if anyone else has already done the heaving liftin'. And lo & behold you might well find a few posts here and there, maybe not as many as expected but then there's a reason it's called "heavy" lifting. (And of course it might be that the subject material has been hashed over for at least forty if not a couple thousand years.)

I say don't let their hard work go to waste!

A Charity Option

Dambisa Moyo is the author of "Dead Aid" which describes how aid to Africa has not worked and has even be ruinous. (She made the obvious point that certainly in times of crisis aid is not pernicious - i.e. flood, drought, tsunami, etc...)

When asked during an interview on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson what does help, she suggested donating to Kiva, which aids entrepreneurs with business loans.

The Romance of Print

I stole a little gem to start the weekend off: Thursday I spent ninety blissful minutes (which felt like ten) in a tight little bookshop in wonderous Clintonville. The shop smelled of old paper and I felt properly repentant for my purchase of the amazon Kindle.

I handled about sixty books before settling on four. It was the very bliss of youth and escape to be on the cusp of the small vacation and in the presence of such worthies. It felt like travel without the travel part.

I found a pristine copy of Michael Chabon's marvelous Mysteries of Pittsburgh and I thought perhaps I should re-read my copy, these twenty years later, and see what my current reaction to the book might say or not say about my progress in the interval.

Everything in the shop conferred a sense of wonder. The smell, the selection of books, even the old postcards from the ‘30s and ‘40s and ’50s depicting works of art. (You know I’m intoxicated by a bookshop if I’m buying art postcards.) “Temple of Peace” – the description of William Gladstone (devout Christian and Victorian prime minister of England) of his library – applied to this one too and I realized how little I’ve spent in my own temple of peace. (Of course the true Temple of Peace is Christ.)

Stream o' Consciousness Post

Don't have any prepared posts today so thought I'd think aloud. It's been far too long since last I just opened up the whole blogpage and started musing on the proverbial fly, although critics will say that all my posts are like this.

I'm hyp-mo-tized by the reaction concerning a Mrs. Darwin post about sex, that great unmentionable. (Sex, not Mrs. Darwin or her post.) As one perpetually interested in borders, and not just the borders of hems relative to knees, it's interesting to see the titanic struggle between the great intimacy/openness of the Internet and the understandable guardedness of the Catlick blogosphere. At the border of extremely conservative internet sex post and daring Catholic post is where Mrs. D unwittingly landed.
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So what else? Well our new dog came home last night. A joyful moment though it seems unseemly on the heels of Obi's death. Not that Obi will be forgotten or replaced.

The course of canine love rarely runs smooth and we found to our chagrin that our new dog is afraid of stairs. Deathly. He came upstairs with us last night but wanted no part of the return trip. At 80+ lbs, he's not easily carried, especially since he's not an inert mass but a wild, gesticulating puppy-like six-year old.

We tried lining the stairs with tempting treats but that only increased his suspicion. He smelled a rat. Given that his "pee-pee sack was full" (as my wife puts it), it seemed that was motivation enough. But it warn't. We waited about an hour, both of us downstairs, and other than a few squeaks he wasn't going anywhere.

We tried wrapping him in a sheet and carrying him down but that didn't work out too well since he was fighting us and my wife didn't want to use force.

Finally it was decided: let's bring the crate upstairs and carry him down that way. So we constructed the crate in the bedroom and then moved it to the hallway and then carried him down. Mission accomplished. Don't know what we'll do after this, but at least he won't be living upstairs forever.

I've been wanting to read One Nation Under Dog in which the author tries to explain how it is that our society has gone dog-crazy as far as the accoutrements needed (i.e. dog spas? come on...) but I suspect it is part of the cultification of any activity. For example, I love to ride my bike, but I don't have gear. Don't have a helmet (should!) or read magazines about biking or learn about gear shafts or tires or the best odometers, or wear a Spiderman outfit, or monitor wind resistance. But the hardcore bikers, whom I'm not criticizing here, have a lot of extras that make them fit in with other bikers in addition to helping them (surely the tight-fitting clothes are great for long rides and girls anyway do look good in spandex). People like to take their hobbies seriously and really get into them, getting all the gear, learning all the latest techniques. It's the adrenalin rush of the new thing and I suppose as well as surely the status of it. But people have a need for status and if that floats their boat, who am I to say that it's okay to get excessive with blogs but not bikes or dogs? So I'm not sure the whole dog phenomenon is different from the way we take all of our hobbies to the max. Americans tend to like to work hard and play hard and the latter apparently includes dressing up their pets and spoiling their hounds.
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Michael Jackson's sad saga reminds me of the fall of the Roman Empire. Even when you have all the resources in the world (Jackson had a personal doctor whom he paid $150,000 a month), you can't pull out of a slide very easily. Once Rome started to fall and once Jackson started going down the path he did, it's very hard to turn around and re-group. Unlike some pro athletes who are oblivious to the perils of fame and fortune, Jackson's awareness of the pitfalls was keen: in '88 he said he didn't want to become another Elvis Presley. He'd learned from Elvis's example. What went wrong? The drugs, the plastic surgeries, surely. If the plastic surgeries came first than that explains the drugs. The key moment, it seems to me, was when he wanted to whiten his face. [UPDATE: Cristina reminds me that the bleaching was in reaction to a skin condition, so it's now explicable.) Why did he want to make himself look white when he was one of the most celebrated entertainers of all time? Is it that affirmation sought and missed in childhood can't be filled up in adulthood? Is it that seeking from other humans are sense of worth is a recipe for disaster? Fortunately with God all things are possible, including the healness of our brokenness.
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The results of the Bulwer Lytton bad fiction contest are in.

Writing badly is fun and relatively easy. What follows is something I wrote years ago, imagining through fiction of what it would be like to be hauled off towards a hanging:

I tried not to feel overdramatic, as they half-carried us up the big hill... The symbolism of the day ending as my life was ending brought tears to my eyes and I realized anew how difficult it was to get tears off your cheeks when your hands are tied. I had to rub my face against Gina's hair, which was not an unpleasant endeavor.

But I don't want to cheat the reader by simply quoting my old bad stuff. You have the right to some fresh bad writing:

It was a dark and storm-filled day when I checked the Drudge Report but found I'd mistyped the URL as drudge.com and the site that came up was unfamiliar and sort of disagreeable as is limburger cheese although perhaps it's a similarly acquired taste.

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I went about that summer lustily singing that Neil Diamond that goes "Some people gotta sing!" only I changed it mentally to "Some people gotta write!". I met a girl; "C'mere big boy," she said. I dated her in part because she admitted never having heard the word "narcissist" and my last girlfriend had called me that. I'd always resented being called narcissistic not because it wasn't true but because it didn't come from me.
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Oh God but she was pretty as a tallow flower! Her hair (as well as that of her hares - she kept various mammals of the family Leporidae) was gold, each strand the color of a fine French cheese. Her lips were like the red sirens of police cars which give you the choice of pulling over or gunning it depending on whether you think you could outrun them and whether you figured they had one of those helicopters handy. Her body had curves made for sin which, by the way, is where the word sinuous comes from. And her nose! It was Aquilian, flanked by eyes that were like gazeable gazelles...

The 2009 winner:

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

Saint o' the Day

Blessed Junipero Sierra - 7/1



Link here:

Once an Indian was baptized, he was not only obligated to the Laws of the Church, but he became a full Spanish citizen with all the rights and obligations. If a Christian, Indian or Spaniard, were to reject his faith, it was viewed as rejecting God, thus resulting in loss of eternal salvation. The friars were taught in their theological training that since they, the friars, were the spiritual fathers to the neophyte, they could spiritually be held accountable.

What would therefore follow would be the loss of their own salvation if their converts committed moral faults that were intrinsically wrong, if one of their spiritual children were lost by reverting back to their pagan ways. In Spanish Law, the same principal applied: parents could be held responsible for the unacceptable behavior of their children, especially if the parents or legal guardians were to tolerate their child's unacceptable behavior.

Let's Play....

...why's my bookbag so heavy? -- a monthly feature in which I cut and/or paste various quotes from current reading material:

Doubtless, it is unnatural to be drunk. But then in a real sense it is unnatural to be human. Doubtless, the intemperate workman wastes his tissues in drinking; but no one knows how much the sober workman wastes his tissues by working. No one knows how much the wealthy philanthropist wastes his tissues by talking; or, in much rarer conditions, by thinking. All the human things are more dangerous than anything that affects the beasts--sex, poetry, property, religion. The real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but that it calls up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it did it would not matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and rather amiable creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There is nothing bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts. Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness--or so good as drink. - GK Chesterton

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The reason the world doesn't fill us completely is not that it is flawed. The point is simply that the world's perfection is designed to manifest God, in whom alone man's heart finds rest. This suggests a crucial aspect of original solitude: the capacity to find God in the midst of the world. Let us put together the two conclusions we just reached. First, man is aware of himself only in his encounter with the world. Second, this encounter with the world is open toward an infinite horizon, toward the encounter with God. It follows from this that man is aware of himself when he is in dialogue with God, when God addresses him and talks with him, as he spoke with Adam in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden. This connection allows us to complete the image of the body as a home. Since man's openness to the world reaches into the infinite, we can think of the body, not just as a home, but also as a temple. - Called to Love, Jose Granados and Carl Anderson

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While in Germany, for example, he remarks that the Germans, like other purer races, seem “to pay for the distinctness of the type which they preserve by missing some of the ordinary attributes of humanity,” and he then goes on to say that “the Germans, as far as I know, have no capacity for being bored. Else I think the race would have become extinct long ago through self-torture.” The Germans’ ignorance of boredom, of course, explains their love of the Ring cycle, Goethe’s Faust, Hegel, lengthy pedantic scholarly works, interminable novels, and so many other homegrown, insuperable Teutonic cultural products. - Joseph Epstein in The New Criterion

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A similar grime builds up over our attitude toward life. As children, we live close to the original experiences of Adam and Eve, but as we grow up their freshness is progressively polluted by layers of routine and mechanization. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once said that we are the bureaucrats of our own existence, who have buried our original contact with life under mountains of paperwork and procedures that impair our capacity to discern the human drama lying beneath them.4 If Marcel is right, then the child is closer to man's original experiences, but the adult has almost forgotten them (but not quite). - Called to Love, Jose Granados and Carl Anderson

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

The bottom line is that in this [ethical] crisis, we're talking about financial and government pressures forcing compromise for large healthcare systems that include acute care hospitals. Is it time for the Church to look at getting out of the acute care hospital business? Nelson writes:

"The primary role of Catholic health care should be to provide support for the culture of life and to evangelize the secular culture....It is increasingly difficult to perform those roles in the acute care hospital setting. In order to survive financially, Catholic hospitals are entering into complex and nuanced arrangements with non-Catholic providers who are involved in providing reproductive services that are incompatible with Catholic teaching. The cumulative effect of all this activity is to undermine Catholic teaching on abortion, contraception and sterilization. In addition, health care is becoming less personal and more reliant on technology. Perhaps it would be better to divert the resources of Catholic healthcare to alternative ministries. This could be a series of hospices to support the dying or those in a persistent vegetative state. It could include a system of family health centers that would provide Natural Family Planning instructions and birthing facilities, as well as general health care of families, clinics in underserved areas that could focus on preventive care, rehabilitation facilities and centers for the care of the mentally ill and handicapped."

-Amy Welborn commeting on and quoting Dr. Leonard Nelson's book "Diagnosis Still Critical"

Noticed:"Brave New World" now refers to scientific techniques from the novel, rather than its hedonic people and amoral managerial class. - Kevin Jones of Philokalia

[Andrew] Sullivan, who has worn dozens of hats in his lifetime, is truly unique. He stands astride the worlds of politics, journalism, theology, foreign policy, and applied obstetrics like the Colossus of Rhodes. - Christopher Badeaux via Terrence Berres

Every animal offers you a different side of love. Especially dogs. Every class of dog is like a denomination of church. - Andy Griggs via "Sancta Sanctis"

The Gov thought the grass there was greener,
So he gadded to gay Argentina;
But returned from that place
With much egg on his face
And a chastened (if not chaste) demeanor. - Bob of Trousered Ape

Is Penthouse Forum on Twitter? They should post 140 character stories. "I never believed your tweets until last summer when I delivered -" - Phil Albinus

Confession: as I criticize media Jackson overload, I sing "human nature". - Kathryn Lopez of NRO

Grant kids internet access levels based on ability to construct & transliterate passwords from Greek participles - Kevin Jones of Philokalia

Fiction for a Tuesday

I was happy as a pig knee-deep in slop that cold day in April, surrounded as I was by the books of Jude Wanniski.

I held W's modestly-titled The Way the World Works in my hands and trembled with joy for I was a born systematizer and he offered simplicity via complexity (or was it a fix for complexity via simplicity?). I wouldn't feel the same until years later when I discovered Aquinas's Summa at, ironically, a bookstore in St. Augustine, FL.

I wondered if this thirst for order was perhaps excessive. Maybe I was just another closet conspiracist like those who find solace in the Tri-Lateral Commission. Undeniably I was perpetually at war within because my systematizer self constantly fought with personalist side. I was too soft to deal with the hardness of systems while too hard to deal with the softness of contradiction.

I reasoned that the characteristic of a good systematizer was detachment, which the philosopher George Santayana had. Distance, detachment was said to allow one to see clearly but how could one be detached from one's fellow creatures as was said of Santayana? Yet those with a personal stake ended up starting from the desired end and working back, a thing abhorrent to the scientist.

It would be unsystematic for me to leave this novella unfinished, unless I experience the Beatific Vision telling me that it is but straw. It must be wrapped up with a tidy ending, preferably something with the hue of humor. And so I shall try...I am tempted here to the reader as "gentle" but for the fact that I've read too many novels that say, "gentle reader" and it seems patronizing and non-scientific for not all readers are gentle. But let me get back to my story forthwith and not try the gentle reader's patience any longer.

There were clues to this "theory of everything" I was seeking and perhaps a significant one was as close as my refrigerator. I happened across a fellow systematizer from long ago who gave me keen advice. His name, familiar to all, was Benjamin Franklin and to him was attributed the line, "Beer is proof that God wants us to be happy." The theory of everything in a nutshell is that God loves us.

Firefly

It's hard to anticipate the flashes of a lightning bug using a cellphone camera, but here goes:

I believe that wee point of light you see in the lower left quandrant is, in fact, one of the June superstars.

Blog News

For Elena's mother: R.I.P..
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Former Anglican Fr. Jeffrey Steel seems to have swum the Tiber:

I am completely confident in my decision to become a Catholic and will happily write what I hope to be encouraging posts about the theology underlying my decision and the joy I experience at being a Catholic and many other topics including issues in apologia of my move.

Funny...

A National Review parody:

Sorry for the Absence of Late....

...I've been hiking the Appalachian Trail. Governor Sanford was supposed to join me...

Habemus Muttemus

Routine is valued in times of stress, as was experienced when, apropos of nothing we carried our dog on a bedsheet from an upstairs room this week. His time had come. The ticker tocked. The last sand granule in the hourglass had fallen. It was very sad.

Lots of reminders during the week; scriptural mentions of the “good Shepherd”, a locution that previously never recalled those of the German variety. All the sewn-in daily traditions were sundered, even those such as the touching way he barked outrageously when I ran by the front door in his agedness - why did I not take him on the run too? he barked. I thought, but did not tell him, that he was too old now and could not keep up. I preferred to leave him his illusions of youthful grandeur. So now to run by an empty front door was an almost physical pain even while knowing the Church teaches us to direct our greatest sympathy to humans, not animals. The experience seemed to conflict head and heart: heart telling me that this God-made creature had interwoven himself into our lives, head telling me to understand that the big danger these days is moving animals too far up the hierarchy, such as a substitute for children.

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My sense is that God likes artful coincidences since they bolster the faith of those already with faith without compelling or forcing it on those who don't. (Then it wouldn't be faith, after all, but knowledge.)

For example, witness the case today in which we go to the animal shelter and boldly choose a dog already 46 in human years and yet we do so because...well, I'll get into that, but the artful coincidence is that we got home and found in the paperwork the dog's birthday also happens to be my own, June 22.

Another example is how my wife saw a rainbow shortly after our dog's death, after being teased for years by her son concerning the "rainbow bridge".

And then the Mass readings Sunday caught my eye: "God did not make death...He fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome, and there is not a destructive drug among them."

Our sister-in-law's dog, who'd come to visit us, felt a wave of grief in my wife and cried in telepathic sympathy.

I take from all of this that God cares about what affects us.

So we headed to the Humane society on Sunday and I was trying to work up feeling for Great Dane mix who was a year and a half old but who seemed a bit fragile. They call the breed "heart-breakers" for their short lives and to start off 1.5 years in the hole seemed a lot.

There was another dog there, a shepherd mix named Buddy, purportedly 3 years old which to me was pretty much a deal-killer. My internal pain-minimizer strategizer said that we should buy a young dog, even a puppy, and thus put off the inevitable as long as possible. It's perhaps an accountant's sensibility, somewhat reminiscent of economist Paul Krugman's experation (of which I am sympathetic) at the overkill concerning the Michael Jackson coverage. "Doesn't this country know it has bigger problems?" he asks.

But one of the things I love about my wife is her capacity for optimism which I, as a pessimist, tend to regard as a capacity for self-delusion. Specifically in this case the belief that the next dog death will be easier. So here we are at the Humane society and we soon learn that Buddy, whom we have our heart set on, is six years old. My head immediately said "no". I haven't felt such cognitive dissonance since that Cops episode when the hot young girl turned out to be a guy in drag.

Like a game of chicken, neither Steph or I blinked. I figured if she can take the pain again so soon then so can I, especially since she suffered more pain. Thus pride goeth before the fall. Call it our own version of M.A.D. - mutually assured destruction.

It was irrational but then love is irrational to the self-protective. What is rational, after all, about creating creatures who you know ahead of time will literally crucify you? Ah but it is rational if rationality is defined as throwing away your life in order to save it. God defines rationality...and love.

Steph is the real deal when it comes to animal welfare that I think she was looking at it more dog-centrically. I was looking for the dog to minimize our pain, she was looking for a dog to minimize its. And she thought he wouldn't be adopted due to his age and shortly euthanized. (That he wasn't netured yet seemed to suggest a lack of confidence in his adoptability by the humane society.)

So, in the immortal words of Marty Brennaman, "it is what it is". Or, to paraphrase a famous phrase, Habemus Muttemus.

Pope John Paul II on Animals

Recap here:

John Paul II quoting from several verses of Genesis spoke of the Divine creative action of the Holy Spirit and said: "...in the account of the Creation, the way in which man was created suggests a relationship with the spirit or 'breath' of God. And one reads that after having created man from the dust of the earth, the Lord God "breathed life into his nostrils and man became a living soul".

The Holy Scriptures thereby make clear that God intervened by means of His breath of life or Spirit to make man a living soul. In man there is the "breath of life" which came from the "breath" of God Himself. In him lives breath which is similar to the very breath of God.

Then the Pontiff spoke of the creation of the animals and said: "In Genesis, Chapter 2, where there is reference to the creation of the animals, there is not given a similar account of their relationship with the divine spirit of God as is given of that relationship with man. From the previous chapter we learn that "Man was created in the image and likeness of God".

"However, other texts state that animals have the breath of life and were given it by God. In this respect man, created by the hand of God, is identical with all other living creatures. And so in Psalm 103* there is no distinction between man and beasts when it reads, addressing God: "...These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat** in due course. That thou givest them, they gather: thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good."

The psalmist continues: "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth." The existence therefore of all living creatures depends on the living spirit/breath of God that not only creates but also sustains and renews the face of the earth."

This affirmation of the Pontiff has aroused enormous interest the world over and has overjoyed many thousands of Catholics who for many years have been deeply concerned that the Church should reiterate and give back to animals the proper respect and moral dignity due to the animal world which is often discriminated against and long been considered inferior to that of men.

"This discourse by Pope Wojtyla is very important and significant" explains the distinguished theologian Carlo Molari who for many years has been Professor of Theology and Dogma at the University of Urbino. "It is a 'sign of the times' because it demonstrates the Church's desire and deep concern to clarify present confused thinking and attitudes towards the animal kingdom. There should be no need, but the Pontiff in reiterating that the animals came into being because of the direct action of the "breath" of God wanted to say that also these creatures as well as man are possessed of the divine spark of life and that living quality that is the soul. And are therefore not inferior beings or only of a purely material reality."

TRANSCENDENT BEINGS
"If one goes on to contemplate that the word "animal" is derived from that of 'anima' or soul, one understands, as the Pope explains, that animals are indeed "touched" by the first principle of life which is the Holy Spirit. But the intention of the Pope when he defines the animals as being composed of both body and soul is not only meant to convey their value in a metaphysical sense, but above all also in a moral sense specifically that we must respect all the creatures of God. Clearly therefore because the animal possesses the same "breath" of life as man, men must demonstrate proper and total solidarity with the creatures that surround him. He must keep in his mind that there is an animal life around him and at the same time must try to love and respect it. And perhaps the profound and true message of the Pontiff is that we must live in close harmony, and with love towards animals and all of nature surrounding us."