So I go skiing this afternoon. I've been skiing quite a lot this winter, and it's been really good for me - sliding down a hill is actually great exercise.
Anyway, It's snowing mixed snow and sleet, and I have no goggles, so I buy a cheap 40$ pair (40$ is cheap for goggles, most are twice or three times that) which worked out really well..
Around three, I decide to check the time so I can milk the last hour before the lifts close for all it's worth, and still end up by my car on the last run.
My pocket is unzipped, and my phone is gone.
Annoying, but not a huge deal.. After I got back from Europe, I decided to only buy cheap cellphones, and to never sign another wireless contract again, and only pay as I go.. It's super frugal, and I still have a phone that does everything I need it to do, which is just make and receive calls, you know..
So my damn 30$ phone with 700 ($70 worth of) minutes on it is apparently stuck in some snowdrift on the mountain somewhere.
Not that this is a huge problem, since there are only a half dozen people I ever talk to on the phone anyway, and I only do that once or twice a week..
But it does mean that until I either find it, or buy a new one, I have no phone.
Just so the 12 or so people who might care, know..
I'll get one before I leave for Florida next week, because I'll need it on the trip.
Last run of the afternoon, I get off the lift, ski about 100 yards and go to put my new goggles on.. And guess what?
Yep, they were gone, too. I'd dropped them on the lift or something. I usually clip my gloves and poles with a carabiner when I'm on the lift, it's a habit I've formed to prevent just such losses.. But since the goggles were new, I'd not habituated myself to doing that with them.
Nice. The girl at the client services lost and found is going to think I'm a retard.
At least I'm a happy retard.
---
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Thoughts on Freedom and Conscience
I style myself the "anarcho-traditionalist" - which probably seems absurd to most people (the three or four of you) who have thought about it..
Here's what I mean by it:
Anarchism is not, in my usage, about desiring anarchy as defined as utter freedom or chaos. It's about asserting and accepting the authority and weight of conscience.
In our culture too many people seem to think that conscience is somehow completely malleable, something that each of us creates for ourselves.
But that's not at all what conscience is. Conscience is moral knowledge. It is that knowledge by which we act, that informs our choices in the moral sense.
There is, in other words, nothing "relativistic" in the absolute and eternal sense about it.
In other words, conscience is what gives each of us individual moral authority.
And because conscience is shared, not merely arbitrary or individual, it is of profound political and social importance.
It is the hallmark and proof of our freedom. It is, in other words, a gift from God. It is that knowledge that we receive as a birthright, as descendants of Adam and Eve, who in their fall also received moral agency, "the knowledge of good and evil."
Their wills, and so our wills, have been separated from the divine will. "We are become like gods" in this very sense: free to choose between good and evil, heaven and hell, love and sin, the worship of God or self.
I was going to keep this pithy and short.. I could go on and on about this, making elaboration upon elaboration.
I'll merely leave it at this:
Being a Catholic and a traditionalist is all about living in accordance with authority, in obedience.
But it is never about authoritarianism, which is to say the worship of power for its own sake, or undue deference to those who possess it.
When I call myself an anarchist, I am asserting the primacy of conscience in the political realm. It's a two edged sword though: it is not an assertion of absolute freedom. It's closer to the opposite: it means that I believe (my conscience asserts) that we each have the responsibility, the cross, to act according to what we know is right.
We must act according to what we know is true.
No matter what. No matter what any intermediate authority says, each of us will be finally judged and so is ultimately answerable only to God.
Usually - almost always - this means obeying human authority. Occasionally, however, when human authority clearly errs on a matter of importance, we must dissent.
Even if the consequence is suffering or (in extremis) martyrdom.
I give you the witness of all the Jewish prophets up to and including John the Baptist, as well as all Christian martyrs, as well as modern examples such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements, and groups like the Mennonites..
To include Christ himself. When he said "render unto Cesar what is Cesar's and unto God what is God's" he wasn't letting us off any hooks. He proved it by himself accepting Herod and Pilate's judgments.
The series of readings read today at mass are very interesting in this regard (for February 27, 2011: Sunday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time, you can read them here)..
The second reading (the epistle) was one of Paul's very interesting statements on conscience. He writes this (cf. 1 Cor 4):
"It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord."
He expands on this in his letter to the Church in Rome, the very place Paul was later decapitated by order of the court of the Emperor Nero:
You are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment.
For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things.. There is no partiality with God. All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus.
Romans 2, redacted
Like Tupac said. That's not a cop out, and it's no joke.
In the end, the knowledge on our heart, our conscience, will be the only thing we have left to defend or condemn us.
---
Here's what I mean by it:
Anarchism is not, in my usage, about desiring anarchy as defined as utter freedom or chaos. It's about asserting and accepting the authority and weight of conscience.
In our culture too many people seem to think that conscience is somehow completely malleable, something that each of us creates for ourselves.
But that's not at all what conscience is. Conscience is moral knowledge. It is that knowledge by which we act, that informs our choices in the moral sense.
There is, in other words, nothing "relativistic" in the absolute and eternal sense about it.
In other words, conscience is what gives each of us individual moral authority.
And because conscience is shared, not merely arbitrary or individual, it is of profound political and social importance.
It is the hallmark and proof of our freedom. It is, in other words, a gift from God. It is that knowledge that we receive as a birthright, as descendants of Adam and Eve, who in their fall also received moral agency, "the knowledge of good and evil."
Their wills, and so our wills, have been separated from the divine will. "We are become like gods" in this very sense: free to choose between good and evil, heaven and hell, love and sin, the worship of God or self.
I was going to keep this pithy and short.. I could go on and on about this, making elaboration upon elaboration.
I'll merely leave it at this:
Being a Catholic and a traditionalist is all about living in accordance with authority, in obedience.
But it is never about authoritarianism, which is to say the worship of power for its own sake, or undue deference to those who possess it.
When I call myself an anarchist, I am asserting the primacy of conscience in the political realm. It's a two edged sword though: it is not an assertion of absolute freedom. It's closer to the opposite: it means that I believe (my conscience asserts) that we each have the responsibility, the cross, to act according to what we know is right.
We must act according to what we know is true.
No matter what. No matter what any intermediate authority says, each of us will be finally judged and so is ultimately answerable only to God.
Usually - almost always - this means obeying human authority. Occasionally, however, when human authority clearly errs on a matter of importance, we must dissent.
Even if the consequence is suffering or (in extremis) martyrdom.
I give you the witness of all the Jewish prophets up to and including John the Baptist, as well as all Christian martyrs, as well as modern examples such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements, and groups like the Mennonites..
To include Christ himself. When he said "render unto Cesar what is Cesar's and unto God what is God's" he wasn't letting us off any hooks. He proved it by himself accepting Herod and Pilate's judgments.
The series of readings read today at mass are very interesting in this regard (for February 27, 2011: Sunday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time, you can read them here)..
The second reading (the epistle) was one of Paul's very interesting statements on conscience. He writes this (cf. 1 Cor 4):
"It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord."
He expands on this in his letter to the Church in Rome, the very place Paul was later decapitated by order of the court of the Emperor Nero:
You are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment.
For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things.. There is no partiality with God. All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus.
Romans 2, redacted
Like Tupac said. That's not a cop out, and it's no joke.
In the end, the knowledge on our heart, our conscience, will be the only thing we have left to defend or condemn us.
---
Saturday, February 26, 2011
je resterai ici.. enfin.
je resterai ici je ne partirai pas
même si je sais par coeur
qu'il fait toujours meilleur ailleurs
mais je resterai là
pour la couleur du ciel
de ces jours de grand vent
qui n'en finissent pas
tu peux partir en guerre contre n'importe quoi
et suivre la musique qui marche au pas
dis-moi ce que tu veux moi je ne t'écoute pas
j'ai d'autres rêves à faire que celui-là
j'écoute en souriant toutes ces fausses nouvelles
qui vont et qui s'en viennent comme un océan
comme la fausse monnaie qui passe de poche en poche
me laissant ni plus riche ni plus malin qu'avant
à l'autre bout du monde tu vas brûler ta vie
tu défais tes amours et tes amis
et on connait ton nom jusqu'à jérusalem
on ne vieillit jamais près de ceux qu'on aime
---
contre les imbéciles
I was just re-reading the American Heritage article I linked to in the last post about Truman's dismissal of MacArthur. It's fascinating how the background changes, but the American people remain so much the same. There's a constant feral element to our politics, where fear and fury ripple off and across our discourse like foam runs off the slobbering maw of a rabid cur.
Sixty years ago they were attacking Truman, who ironically really was almost a pure avatar of middle white America.. But he was just a little bit too reasonable and equanimous for the warped jingoistic chauvinist xenophobes who fluoresce and fester like lepric imbecilic bacilli in blossoming teeming excretions in our political culture..
To quote one such sage back in 1951: “Impeach the B who calls himself President!”
See. Nothing's really changed, except that today that B might be replaced by an N.
This passage leapt at me:
Even before the news broke, the American people were upset. “A vast impatience, a turbulent bitterness, a rancor akin to revolt” coursed through the body politic, a contemporary historian observed. Dislike of communism, once a matter of course in America, had boiled into a national frenzy, devouring common prudence, common sense, and common decency. It was a time when school textbooks urged children to report suspicious neighbors to the FBI “in line with American tradition,” a time when an entire city flew into a rage on learning that the geography lesson printed on children’s candy wrappers dared to describe Russia as the “largest country in the world. ” Americans saw conspiracy in every untoward event: abroad, “Kremlin plots to conquer the world”; at home, communist plots to “take over the government. ” In April 1951 a substantial part of the citizenry believed that the secretary of state, Dean Acheson, was a “dupe” of the Kremlin, that the secretary of defense, George C. Marshall, a five-star general, was a “front man” for traitors in government. And now it seemed that a great general, World War II’s most glamorous hero, had been mercilessly broken for daring to call for victory in Korea.
All that we need to do is replace "communist" and "Kremlin" with "Muslim," tweak a few names and other details, and we could crib that entire passage to describe us today.
I mean, we all know how true Muslims want to impose "shariah" on Bubba down in his doublewide in the woods of Tennessee?
I mean, we all know how Obama's a Muslim, and is their tool!
Right.
I've been wondering lately if my family had never gone to Turkey back in 1990, if I had not spent the time I have studying the Middle East and Arabic since, if I had not lived there, if I would be just as imbecilic.
I could very well be. But I've seen too many things, met and loved too many people since, to ever be like that, now.
These coming months I am going to begin posting the work that I created this blog for. I have a series of themes I want to address, but by way of stories from my own life and experience. That's what I will begin putting down here as the winter flows into spring.
This summer I am leaving again. There are a series of things I have to do, shrines, people and places to visit. I am finally going to do what I should have been doing from the beginning, which is document my way as full well and poetic as I can. This will be the forum - initially, anyway - which I'll use to share it all.
One of the things I'll start doing now though, will be to post an apercu quotidien as a way of building momentum. This is my first.
Thoughts, observations, parables. I intend to sort my tales - myself - out for all to read..
With visuals and a few citations.
See where this goes..
On y va. ياللا إمشي
---
Sixty years ago they were attacking Truman, who ironically really was almost a pure avatar of middle white America.. But he was just a little bit too reasonable and equanimous for the warped jingoistic chauvinist xenophobes who fluoresce and fester like lepric imbecilic bacilli in blossoming teeming excretions in our political culture..
To quote one such sage back in 1951: “Impeach the B who calls himself President!”
See. Nothing's really changed, except that today that B might be replaced by an N.
This passage leapt at me:
Even before the news broke, the American people were upset. “A vast impatience, a turbulent bitterness, a rancor akin to revolt” coursed through the body politic, a contemporary historian observed. Dislike of communism, once a matter of course in America, had boiled into a national frenzy, devouring common prudence, common sense, and common decency. It was a time when school textbooks urged children to report suspicious neighbors to the FBI “in line with American tradition,” a time when an entire city flew into a rage on learning that the geography lesson printed on children’s candy wrappers dared to describe Russia as the “largest country in the world. ” Americans saw conspiracy in every untoward event: abroad, “Kremlin plots to conquer the world”; at home, communist plots to “take over the government. ” In April 1951 a substantial part of the citizenry believed that the secretary of state, Dean Acheson, was a “dupe” of the Kremlin, that the secretary of defense, George C. Marshall, a five-star general, was a “front man” for traitors in government. And now it seemed that a great general, World War II’s most glamorous hero, had been mercilessly broken for daring to call for victory in Korea.
All that we need to do is replace "communist" and "Kremlin" with "Muslim," tweak a few names and other details, and we could crib that entire passage to describe us today.
I mean, we all know how true Muslims want to impose "shariah" on Bubba down in his doublewide in the woods of Tennessee?
I mean, we all know how Obama's a Muslim, and is their tool!
Right.
I've been wondering lately if my family had never gone to Turkey back in 1990, if I had not spent the time I have studying the Middle East and Arabic since, if I had not lived there, if I would be just as imbecilic.
I could very well be. But I've seen too many things, met and loved too many people since, to ever be like that, now.
These coming months I am going to begin posting the work that I created this blog for. I have a series of themes I want to address, but by way of stories from my own life and experience. That's what I will begin putting down here as the winter flows into spring.
This summer I am leaving again. There are a series of things I have to do, shrines, people and places to visit. I am finally going to do what I should have been doing from the beginning, which is document my way as full well and poetic as I can. This will be the forum - initially, anyway - which I'll use to share it all.
One of the things I'll start doing now though, will be to post an apercu quotidien as a way of building momentum. This is my first.
Thoughts, observations, parables. I intend to sort my tales - myself - out for all to read..
With visuals and a few citations.
See where this goes..
On y va. ياللا إمشي
---
Have They Really Learnt Something??
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim.
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.
The United States is an air and naval power. We have the most sophisticated and potent air and submarine forces on the planet by far. We have two huge oceans to the east and west, two weak neighbors to the north and south, and the largest arsenal of nuclear arms in the world. There is absolutely no reason or excuse for us to be engaging in what amounts to unilateral land conflict.
I don't know why he's citing MacArthur, though.. Whose infamous finale was as an insubordinate maniac advocating a moronic march on Beijing ..
Not that I'm a huge fan of "atomize them Japs twice for effect" Harry or anything. But in that case Truman was advocating for good strategy (containment before war), as well as the Constitution and straight common sense. Anyone born after 1951 owes Harry a debt of thanks, because a full open land war against China could very well have ended your father or grandfather's life.
Enough patrolling and "controlling" Asian hell holes. Bring our troops home, now.
---
Thursday, February 24, 2011
On Desiring Christ's Possession
A few rudimentary thoughts:
First, to pray intentionally and intimately is the most beautiful thing you can do.
Second, praying like that is a grace. You must ask God for it.
Third, the goal of a Christian is to pray like that, and thereby seek to be possessed by God.
Just like the devil possesses, so too can Christ "possess." Christ's possession heals, beatifies, transfigures and frees, while the devil's counterfeit wounds, distorts, warps and enslaves.
A soul seeking to pray should beg Christ and the Holy Spirit to possess her.
This type of prayer is a hint of heaven, an intimation of paradise.
Paradise is entering into complete intimacy, becoming completely united with the Triune God, in a state of eternal rapture in which one is completely taken and possessed of the Trinity. In this the soul "is" worship, "is" prayer. The soul is mystically unified with and becomes like unto God himself.
You can taste an intimation of this by praying now, while God is still veiled in time.
There is no created thing that *we possess* that can do this, no other person. This means no created thing should be allowed to distract you from prayer. This is the point and meaning of ascesis and destroying the carnal passions which distract us from God, and too often become "idols," which to say ends sought in themselves for merely our own pleasure and exaltation.
If you think anything other than God will make you utterly happy in the way you want to be, you're confused and being tempted to idolatry.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God - union with him - with thy entire mind, soul and body.
All other merely physical needs and desires must be made subsequent, always subservient to your friendship and love of God.
Such necessary detachment is also a grace, also the fruit of prayer.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
Pray for love and in love, for humility and in humility, and you'll get it..
Try (taste) and see..
---
First, to pray intentionally and intimately is the most beautiful thing you can do.
Second, praying like that is a grace. You must ask God for it.
Third, the goal of a Christian is to pray like that, and thereby seek to be possessed by God.
Just like the devil possesses, so too can Christ "possess." Christ's possession heals, beatifies, transfigures and frees, while the devil's counterfeit wounds, distorts, warps and enslaves.
A soul seeking to pray should beg Christ and the Holy Spirit to possess her.
This type of prayer is a hint of heaven, an intimation of paradise.
Paradise is entering into complete intimacy, becoming completely united with the Triune God, in a state of eternal rapture in which one is completely taken and possessed of the Trinity. In this the soul "is" worship, "is" prayer. The soul is mystically unified with and becomes like unto God himself.
You can taste an intimation of this by praying now, while God is still veiled in time.
There is no created thing that *we possess* that can do this, no other person. This means no created thing should be allowed to distract you from prayer. This is the point and meaning of ascesis and destroying the carnal passions which distract us from God, and too often become "idols," which to say ends sought in themselves for merely our own pleasure and exaltation.
If you think anything other than God will make you utterly happy in the way you want to be, you're confused and being tempted to idolatry.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God - union with him - with thy entire mind, soul and body.
All other merely physical needs and desires must be made subsequent, always subservient to your friendship and love of God.
Such necessary detachment is also a grace, also the fruit of prayer.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
Pray for love and in love, for humility and in humility, and you'll get it..
Try (taste) and see..
---
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Can't Straddle that Fence..
I felt I ought disambiguate where I stand. Just for the record..
First, a song perhaps made most famous by Pete Seeger, here performed by the inimitable Nathalie Merchant at the 85th birthday party thrown for Fr. Daniel Berrigan SJ:
de la poésie :
Don't scab for the bosses,
Don't listen to their lies.
Poor folks ain't got a chance
Unless they organize.
Same theme, different backbeat:
à la fureur :
I'm anti-uppin'-your-dollars-with-telekinesis
(I done tried everyday, and that sh*t just decreases)..
They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there. You'll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Claire ..
---
First, a song perhaps made most famous by Pete Seeger, here performed by the inimitable Nathalie Merchant at the 85th birthday party thrown for Fr. Daniel Berrigan SJ:
de la poésie :
Don't scab for the bosses,
Don't listen to their lies.
Poor folks ain't got a chance
Unless they organize.
Same theme, different backbeat:
à la fureur :
I'm anti-uppin'-your-dollars-with-telekinesis
(I done tried everyday, and that sh*t just decreases)..
They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there. You'll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Claire ..
---
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Let us love one another and laugh..
Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer. And meanwhile, common living is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around..
Let us suffer absurdities with gladness, for that is only to suffer each other.
Hilaire Belloc.
---
Let us suffer absurdities with gladness, for that is only to suffer each other.
Hilaire Belloc.
---
Monday, February 14, 2011
"These aren't the droids you're looking for."
"An American jihadist who set up the terrorist training camp where the leader of the 2005 London suicide bombers learned how to manufacture explosives, has been quietly released after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence, a Guardian investigation has learned."
No. These are clearly not the droids we're looking for. Move along, move along.
(I'm really beginning to appreciate the Star Wars saga as political metaphor.. Especially the prequels. While I truly hate them as movies, the turgid politics in them are very interesting stuff, when reflected upon..)
---
No. These are clearly not the droids we're looking for. Move along, move along.
(I'm really beginning to appreciate the Star Wars saga as political metaphor.. Especially the prequels. While I truly hate them as movies, the turgid politics in them are very interesting stuff, when reflected upon..)
---
Friday, February 11, 2011
Out of Egypt
مصر: أم الدنيا العربية - شارع العرب - تاريخ العرب
These last few weeks have been interesting. I've finally been getting my act together, and have been going to daily mass. I've started to get all my ducks in a row.. I've resolved to finally and simply lay it all down, which means that .. well, I don't know what, yet. We will see. I can only say now that it means something.
Something, relatively soon. The things that I have been obsessing over these last eight to ten years, the things that drove me to join the army, that drove me crazy for a while, are now mostly at resolved, irrelevant, or tools I'm going to use to humble my mind and heart as I go forward.
I'm making my stand with the Church Ladies, is what I'm saying. We'll see where that takes me. It should be amusing, and engaging stuff..
Keep me in your prayers.
One of the things that has happened slowly, and the last week has become a new focus is the situation in Egypt. For those of you who do not know, I went to DLI when I was in the Army and graduated from the Arabic Basic Course. I was actually in Monterrey on 9/11, and spent the day in class watching everything happen on al-Jezeera. Later, I went and lived in Cairo for a year and studied Arab and Islamic history and culture at American University, there.
I've been mulling over those experiences this last week, and began writing an abortive blog post about how the winds of war which the neo-cons were saying back in 2003 would lead to a revolution in Democracy have finally started to shake the fruit free..
And just as I said then, the irony is that the consequences of democratic praxis in the Middle East will not be to the liking of the hypocrites in Washington who sent us to war.
I am enjoying this, seeing my predictions come to pass. The people I so very very hate - the Likudniks and the "neo-cons", the warmongers - are now eating their asinine lies. Burn. Burn. You liars. You fools.
The people in Cairo - one of the great Islamic capitals after Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Medina - are revolting against the Pharaoh. The tyrant, who suppressed his people and tortured for us, taking our lucre, is overthrown. Whatever happens now will be very interesting, but very likely will displease our thuggish rulers in Washington, and the cretins ordering the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank in Jerusalem. That, to me, is justice.
I only pray that the poor and oppressed in Egypt continue to react non-violently, that the long suffering Coptic Christians (the true ancient Egyptians) continue to be embraced as a vital part of this process, and that the old order fade gently, and that a new order in Egypt arise that will husband the country forward mercifully, in peace and toward prosperity for all.
We should all pray for this. Hope for the best for the Egyptian people, who welcomed me with such generosity when I lived amongst them.
It is time for our foreign policy to fall into line with our ideals, even if our economic interests suffer.
It is also time for us to stop supporting the Israeli Right. True friends of Israel need to speak up. Just as true American patriots opposed the war, true friends of the Israeli people will insist that we cease enabling the Likud to pursue policies that can only end in disaster for everyone, but most especially the Israelis themselves.
There. I've said my peace on this.
In other news, I've begun to read in Arabic again. I have huge latent knowledge that I've let atrophy, even when I was in Egypt. In Monterrey I was taught Modern Standard, and the Egyptian spoken dialect is not the same. Ever since I left, my Arabic has faded away. These last two weeks I've begun to get it back.
There are a multitude of small pleasures in Arabic. One of them is that the word sharia - شرعة - law, not merely Islamic law - and street, as in "the Arab Street" -
شارع العرب - are both from the same root, meaning in the first measure to go, begin, commence, to untie, unbind, to introduce, depending on what preposition you use with it. I think that's beautiful.
Just like Arabic and the Arabs.
I wish the Egyptian people well, as all true democrats - and need I say it? - Christians should.
ارحل يا مبارك اليوم قبل الغد! سالام علع الشاب المصري
Har har. Just shooting my gob off in Arabic.. I think I jacked it up? Like any of you can tell..
---
These last few weeks have been interesting. I've finally been getting my act together, and have been going to daily mass. I've started to get all my ducks in a row.. I've resolved to finally and simply lay it all down, which means that .. well, I don't know what, yet. We will see. I can only say now that it means something.
Something, relatively soon. The things that I have been obsessing over these last eight to ten years, the things that drove me to join the army, that drove me crazy for a while, are now mostly at resolved, irrelevant, or tools I'm going to use to humble my mind and heart as I go forward.
I'm making my stand with the Church Ladies, is what I'm saying. We'll see where that takes me. It should be amusing, and engaging stuff..
Keep me in your prayers.
One of the things that has happened slowly, and the last week has become a new focus is the situation in Egypt. For those of you who do not know, I went to DLI when I was in the Army and graduated from the Arabic Basic Course. I was actually in Monterrey on 9/11, and spent the day in class watching everything happen on al-Jezeera. Later, I went and lived in Cairo for a year and studied Arab and Islamic history and culture at American University, there.
I've been mulling over those experiences this last week, and began writing an abortive blog post about how the winds of war which the neo-cons were saying back in 2003 would lead to a revolution in Democracy have finally started to shake the fruit free..
And just as I said then, the irony is that the consequences of democratic praxis in the Middle East will not be to the liking of the hypocrites in Washington who sent us to war.
I am enjoying this, seeing my predictions come to pass. The people I so very very hate - the Likudniks and the "neo-cons", the warmongers - are now eating their asinine lies. Burn. Burn. You liars. You fools.
The people in Cairo - one of the great Islamic capitals after Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Medina - are revolting against the Pharaoh. The tyrant, who suppressed his people and tortured for us, taking our lucre, is overthrown. Whatever happens now will be very interesting, but very likely will displease our thuggish rulers in Washington, and the cretins ordering the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank in Jerusalem. That, to me, is justice.
I only pray that the poor and oppressed in Egypt continue to react non-violently, that the long suffering Coptic Christians (the true ancient Egyptians) continue to be embraced as a vital part of this process, and that the old order fade gently, and that a new order in Egypt arise that will husband the country forward mercifully, in peace and toward prosperity for all.
We should all pray for this. Hope for the best for the Egyptian people, who welcomed me with such generosity when I lived amongst them.
It is time for our foreign policy to fall into line with our ideals, even if our economic interests suffer.
It is also time for us to stop supporting the Israeli Right. True friends of Israel need to speak up. Just as true American patriots opposed the war, true friends of the Israeli people will insist that we cease enabling the Likud to pursue policies that can only end in disaster for everyone, but most especially the Israelis themselves.
There. I've said my peace on this.
In other news, I've begun to read in Arabic again. I have huge latent knowledge that I've let atrophy, even when I was in Egypt. In Monterrey I was taught Modern Standard, and the Egyptian spoken dialect is not the same. Ever since I left, my Arabic has faded away. These last two weeks I've begun to get it back.
There are a multitude of small pleasures in Arabic. One of them is that the word sharia - شرعة - law, not merely Islamic law - and street, as in "the Arab Street" -
شارع العرب - are both from the same root, meaning in the first measure to go, begin, commence, to untie, unbind, to introduce, depending on what preposition you use with it. I think that's beautiful.
Just like Arabic and the Arabs.
I wish the Egyptian people well, as all true democrats - and need I say it? - Christians should.
ارحل يا مبارك اليوم قبل الغد! سالام علع الشاب المصري
Har har. Just shooting my gob off in Arabic.. I think I jacked it up? Like any of you can tell..
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Friday, January 21, 2011
Sh'ma Ya Israel:
Blessed be My Lord, My God, My King: Source of My Very Being and Every Yearning..
Stutterer though I am.
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Stutterer though I am.
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