Blessed be My Lord, My God, My King: Source of My Very Being and Every Yearning..
Stutterer though I am.
---
Friday, January 21, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Imitatio Christi
The practice of Christianity is the radical affirmation and love of one's self through sacrifice of one's will and self for love of the other.
When I love you sacrificially, I affirm my own being.
---
When I love you sacrificially, I affirm my own being.
---
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
"The Disease They Call Post- Modernism.."
"They didn't know what they were caring for, they only knew what they were against.."
At this moment in history the weight of the past, the dialectic, has burgeoned to the point that there is hardly a clean haven or defensible bulwark left. Our culture is such a fusion of influences, our material reality such a concatenation of technologies and past events, all creating such a welter of wonder, dissipation and stress, that it is nearly impossible to maintain any strict dogmatic orthodoxy.
At least, if one is self-aware, studying, paying attention..
And honest.
Those of us who are, are all left grasping for some shred of a defense against anomie and nihilism..
This applies particularly to the Church, to the Christian Faith, today.
The moderns (Nietzsche** & Company) came and declared it all false and spent.
But they were themselves deriving their energy from it, even as it seemed to them to die.
All of human history can be characterized as one great search for meaning. Great material cultures have been repeatedly created, technological revolutions exploiting then exhausting the "material" environment, elaborate metaphysical semantic (spiritual) edifices constructed, only for them each (again, and again and again) to reach a certain point of decadence where they collapse.
We are no different.
The great genius of the human race is that we never stop constructing these great systems of meaning, expressed both in matter and thought..
It is our defining characteristic as a species. We are narrative, we are our knowledge, our stories, our understanding.
This is perhaps maladroitly put. I hope you understand what I am trying to say.
I just want to state immediately on this blog that I understand that we have problems. I think I have a bead on the nature of the crisis we face, especially in the shape it has taken in the Catholic Church.
The reason I am writing this is because I think that there are worthwhile things to be said, and that the tradition is still vibrant.
They have called it "the end of history." But they are wrong.
It is not spent, not yet.
There is still blood in these arteries, yet vitality in these veins.
If what I believe is true truly is, then in all humility we will find our way.
This is no salvage operation. This is a restoration.
---
[** I'll merely point out, in keeping with my ironic tangent at the end of the prior post, that both Nietzsche and Darwin - "apostles of atheism" as some would have them - were sons of preachermen. Nietzsche's father a Lutheran minister, Darwin of a long line of Anglican divines.. Which is just to say they knew intimately what they were revolting against, because she - "La Grande Pute" - had whelped and weaned them.]
---
At this moment in history the weight of the past, the dialectic, has burgeoned to the point that there is hardly a clean haven or defensible bulwark left. Our culture is such a fusion of influences, our material reality such a concatenation of technologies and past events, all creating such a welter of wonder, dissipation and stress, that it is nearly impossible to maintain any strict dogmatic orthodoxy.
At least, if one is self-aware, studying, paying attention..
And honest.
Those of us who are, are all left grasping for some shred of a defense against anomie and nihilism..
This applies particularly to the Church, to the Christian Faith, today.
The moderns (Nietzsche** & Company) came and declared it all false and spent.
But they were themselves deriving their energy from it, even as it seemed to them to die.
All of human history can be characterized as one great search for meaning. Great material cultures have been repeatedly created, technological revolutions exploiting then exhausting the "material" environment, elaborate metaphysical semantic (spiritual) edifices constructed, only for them each (again, and again and again) to reach a certain point of decadence where they collapse.
We are no different.
The great genius of the human race is that we never stop constructing these great systems of meaning, expressed both in matter and thought..
It is our defining characteristic as a species. We are narrative, we are our knowledge, our stories, our understanding.
This is perhaps maladroitly put. I hope you understand what I am trying to say.
I just want to state immediately on this blog that I understand that we have problems. I think I have a bead on the nature of the crisis we face, especially in the shape it has taken in the Catholic Church.
The reason I am writing this is because I think that there are worthwhile things to be said, and that the tradition is still vibrant.
They have called it "the end of history." But they are wrong.
It is not spent, not yet.
There is still blood in these arteries, yet vitality in these veins.
If what I believe is true truly is, then in all humility we will find our way.
This is no salvage operation. This is a restoration.
---
[** I'll merely point out, in keeping with my ironic tangent at the end of the prior post, that both Nietzsche and Darwin - "apostles of atheism" as some would have them - were sons of preachermen. Nietzsche's father a Lutheran minister, Darwin of a long line of Anglican divines.. Which is just to say they knew intimately what they were revolting against, because she - "La Grande Pute" - had whelped and weaned them.]
---
On Human Personhood
A further proof:
This is where I tell Friedrich to go screw himself. Nietzsche ist tot.
At least in time, that is.
One of the many seminal things that our culture has received from the Christian Faith is belief in human personhood.
Of the many the things that Western culture takes for granted in its Christian patrimony, this is one of the most important.
Know this: belief in your own existence, belief in the existence of other people, belief in each of our freedom and dignity as human beings, are all just as much articles of faith - that is, articles of the Faith - as is belief in God.
Belief in personhood is rooted in belief in the Incarnation, which is to say the Holy Trinity, which is merely another way of saying the Personhood and Humanity of God.
Our being and humanity is predicated upon His Being and Humanity.
For this much is irrefutable:
Without some manner of transcendence, human personhood is a fiction. If you do not transcend death, then you have no real being at all.
In ontological terms, "you" would be merely organized energy suffering from the illusion of self-hood.
Without some form of transcendence, "you" will cease to exist at death, which in essence means that "you" do not really exist at all.
If you do not transcend time, you are merely a field of organized energy evaporating before it.
Without transcendence "you" would have no more importance, reality, or dignity than a goldfish or a rock. You would have no moral agency, no true freedom. For none of your choices or decisions would be ultimately meaningful, in that without eternal consequence they would evaporate in time with "you."
Any idea you may have to the contrary would be mere convention; born of sentiment, a delusion.
This is why you must have faith.
First, faith in your own existence.
Then, faith in the existence of others - Which, again, you cannot prove - Every time you speak or communicate in any other way with another person, you are making an act of faith in that person's existence.
All of which leads to belief in the transcendent source of our personhood - for we did not create ourselves, nor do we sustain ourselves, nor can we transcend death and time by ourselves.
This leads us to belief and then faith in God, without whom we cannot be ourselves.
---
Post Script: Later on I may discuss Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence - which pertains to the argument I just laid out, because he recognized this very problem. I'll only say that he posited the idea of eternal recurrence without providing any reasonable agent to cause it. The idea is far more absurd than belief in God is.
On the same note, Descartes' lack of faith in his own being led him to radical doubt and hyper-rationalism, and the absurd formulation "I think therefore I am" (which is clearly not true) and set the context for modernity's rise and then inevitable collapse in upon itself. Faith is both a necessary prerequisite to thought as well as sanity.
(I will add a note in passing that René died a Catholic, and received the viaticum on his death bed. All of you who attack the Church for her supposed backwardness are provincial ignoramuses who have no sense of history nor any idea of what you are criticizing - for example: the Encyclopedists (Voltaire, Diderot, etc.) were almost without exception trained by the Jesuits, and almost every University in Europe - to include the Cathedral School of Paris (now better known as the Sorbonne), as well as the University of Bologna whose philosophy faculty was the main force that drove to have Galileo condemned for offending the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian scientific orthodoxy of that day, where nearly all established by Catholic priests (go Dominicans! hooray Franciscans!) and rulers (how about them Medicis!)..
More to come here on this all too disregarded history later, of course .. )
I'd carry on about people like Peter Singer, but I'm not in the mood. That will have to wait.
Cheers.
---
This is where I tell Friedrich to go screw himself. Nietzsche ist tot.
At least in time, that is.
One of the many seminal things that our culture has received from the Christian Faith is belief in human personhood.
Of the many the things that Western culture takes for granted in its Christian patrimony, this is one of the most important.
Know this: belief in your own existence, belief in the existence of other people, belief in each of our freedom and dignity as human beings, are all just as much articles of faith - that is, articles of the Faith - as is belief in God.
Belief in personhood is rooted in belief in the Incarnation, which is to say the Holy Trinity, which is merely another way of saying the Personhood and Humanity of God.
Our being and humanity is predicated upon His Being and Humanity.
For this much is irrefutable:
Without some manner of transcendence, human personhood is a fiction. If you do not transcend death, then you have no real being at all.
In ontological terms, "you" would be merely organized energy suffering from the illusion of self-hood.
Without some form of transcendence, "you" will cease to exist at death, which in essence means that "you" do not really exist at all.
If you do not transcend time, you are merely a field of organized energy evaporating before it.
Without transcendence "you" would have no more importance, reality, or dignity than a goldfish or a rock. You would have no moral agency, no true freedom. For none of your choices or decisions would be ultimately meaningful, in that without eternal consequence they would evaporate in time with "you."
Any idea you may have to the contrary would be mere convention; born of sentiment, a delusion.
This is why you must have faith.
First, faith in your own existence.
Then, faith in the existence of others - Which, again, you cannot prove - Every time you speak or communicate in any other way with another person, you are making an act of faith in that person's existence.
All of which leads to belief in the transcendent source of our personhood - for we did not create ourselves, nor do we sustain ourselves, nor can we transcend death and time by ourselves.
This leads us to belief and then faith in God, without whom we cannot be ourselves.
---
Post Script: Later on I may discuss Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence - which pertains to the argument I just laid out, because he recognized this very problem. I'll only say that he posited the idea of eternal recurrence without providing any reasonable agent to cause it. The idea is far more absurd than belief in God is.
On the same note, Descartes' lack of faith in his own being led him to radical doubt and hyper-rationalism, and the absurd formulation "I think therefore I am" (which is clearly not true) and set the context for modernity's rise and then inevitable collapse in upon itself. Faith is both a necessary prerequisite to thought as well as sanity.
(I will add a note in passing that René died a Catholic, and received the viaticum on his death bed. All of you who attack the Church for her supposed backwardness are provincial ignoramuses who have no sense of history nor any idea of what you are criticizing - for example: the Encyclopedists (Voltaire, Diderot, etc.) were almost without exception trained by the Jesuits, and almost every University in Europe - to include the Cathedral School of Paris (now better known as the Sorbonne), as well as the University of Bologna whose philosophy faculty was the main force that drove to have Galileo condemned for offending the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian scientific orthodoxy of that day, where nearly all established by Catholic priests (go Dominicans! hooray Franciscans!) and rulers (how about them Medicis!)..
More to come here on this all too disregarded history later, of course .. )
I'd carry on about people like Peter Singer, but I'm not in the mood. That will have to wait.
Cheers.
---
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
First Bush, Now Obama..
There has ever only been one Hitler.
There has thankfully never yet been an American politician or statesman to equal him in murderousness. Not even abortion,* our many wars, the terror bombing of Germany and Japan, or the atomic bombings, are equal to Nazi Germany's extermination of millions in the name of "Nordic racial superiority" and "lebensraum" for the German people.
The idea that the war of opportunity in Iraq, the Patriot Act, or else (God help us) Obama's health care reforms, are in some way equal to inciting World War II (with over 30 million killed) or the Holocaust (with some 12 million victims by way of deliberate industrial extermination) is obscene and idiotically ridiculous.
All such hyperbolic discourse is fraudulent, incites greater insanity, and needs to end.
Time to be sane and reasonable again.
Peace.
[*I'm going to discuss this particular assertion concerning abortion at length later on this blog.]
---
Monday, January 10, 2011
Mark Ames Discusses the Massacre at Vanity Fair:
And he has some pretty interesting things to say. This is his conclusion:
Now comes the part where we try to make sense of it—and almost always, it’s here that the rest of us fail, over and over. The typical way of dealing with these massacres is to not deal with them at all but rather to resort to hack psychology.
Each rampage shooter “snapped” because “sometimes people snap”; each school shooter “snapped” because they were copycats or wannabe heroes or “sociopathic” or “paranoid-schizophrenic.” However, postal shootings appeared only in the mid-1980s, in what later Congressional investigations agreed was a culture of bullying, harassment, and intimidation by management, thanks to Nixon-era reforms that took away postal union workers’ right to strike and mandated that the service run on its own revenues by 1983—the year the first such shooting took place. The first private-workplace massacre took place in 1989, at the Standard Gravure plant in Louisville, Kentucky—at the end of a decade of Reaganomics that radically and violently changed the workplace culture, creating yawning new inequalities. These workplace shootings have been with us ever since.
A similar dynamic of denial came into play during the assassinations epidemic. At the time, we comforted ourselves by bracketing the James Earl Rays and Sirhan Sirhans as mere “crazies”—but somehow those assassinations came to a sudden halt in the early Reagan years. In retrospect, we understand them as the product of a chaotic, violent period of political upheaval.
Now, it seems, we have the worst of both worlds: the chaos that Reagan snuffed out, and the socioeconomic violence his policies produced. And that might explain why we just experienced the worst of all murder crimes: a political assassination-rampage massacre.
Read the rest of it here.
---
Now comes the part where we try to make sense of it—and almost always, it’s here that the rest of us fail, over and over. The typical way of dealing with these massacres is to not deal with them at all but rather to resort to hack psychology.
Each rampage shooter “snapped” because “sometimes people snap”; each school shooter “snapped” because they were copycats or wannabe heroes or “sociopathic” or “paranoid-schizophrenic.” However, postal shootings appeared only in the mid-1980s, in what later Congressional investigations agreed was a culture of bullying, harassment, and intimidation by management, thanks to Nixon-era reforms that took away postal union workers’ right to strike and mandated that the service run on its own revenues by 1983—the year the first such shooting took place. The first private-workplace massacre took place in 1989, at the Standard Gravure plant in Louisville, Kentucky—at the end of a decade of Reaganomics that radically and violently changed the workplace culture, creating yawning new inequalities. These workplace shootings have been with us ever since.
A similar dynamic of denial came into play during the assassinations epidemic. At the time, we comforted ourselves by bracketing the James Earl Rays and Sirhan Sirhans as mere “crazies”—but somehow those assassinations came to a sudden halt in the early Reagan years. In retrospect, we understand them as the product of a chaotic, violent period of political upheaval.
Now, it seems, we have the worst of both worlds: the chaos that Reagan snuffed out, and the socioeconomic violence his policies produced. And that might explain why we just experienced the worst of all murder crimes: a political assassination-rampage massacre.
Read the rest of it here.
---
On the Demonic
I was going to sub-entitle this my inaugural post here, because it is. But the topic I want eventually to discuss below is too dark for such a tag in the header.
First, let me explain the back story for this project.
I conceived the idea for this blog last year, after I returned from Switzerland. I'd been blogging my life and times there, where I had the great pleasure and blessing to live with and share in the monastic life of the Fraternité Eucharistein for a year. I blogged primarily for the edification and amusement of my friends and family around the world, to keep them abreast of things there.
I tired to keep it light and amusing, and avoided talking too much about any of the intimate details of the lives of the people I was living with, or the work that I was doing there, which had some confidential aspects. I also decided not to talk too much about religion in the abstract sense (though it was naturally a part of the blog in that Catholicism was a major part of the organic ebb and flow of my experience there) or politics. I broke that resolution a few times, but overall I think I kept it pretty focused on my experiences.
When I returned to the States, I ended up living in Florida for a year. I hadn't expected to have to remain there so long. I'd initially thought that I would be moving up to Washington D.C., but my work circumstances changed, and I ended up stuck in the South. Initially, I was bemused by it: my parents and two of my uncles (one from each side of my family) live there in the Villages.. If you click on that link, and then on the one to the Frat's website, I think you'll see how the two communities are rather different from each other.
Through May or June, I was considering buying property in Florida, maybe even in the Villages themselves.
Then came the summer.
The heat and humidity and the daily afternoon thunderstorms.
It's tropical. It's brutal. And this year it lasted from May through to the end of September.
Five months of misery. I'm from Maine, and I am not made for that sort of weather. I like the cold, I love the snow. In the winter in New England, all you need to escape the cold is proper clothing and a well heated home. It's not hard to feel snug, and feeling snug in the cold is one of the very greatest things in the entire world. You lay in bed in your freezing room, all tucked in under three or four blankets, two down pillows and a snug hat about your head.. And the great vast cold is impotent, it can do nothing.
You are a little pouch of warmth in the great frozen fastness. And it is a sublime feeling. There is nothing more pleasurable than that.
The Florida heat though, that's another thing. If it weren't air conditioning and swimming pools (and the ocean, if you are so blessed as to live on or near it, which I was not - no, instead I was smack dab in the middle of the peninsula) are the only reprieves from that heat. Without air conditioning, it would be simply impossible for me to live there, at all.
At the end of the summer, I was done. It had slowly frazzled me senseless, left my frayed and depleted, emotionally and physically spent.
The heat though was coupled by constant contact with people at social gatherings and in the media, who barraged me with talk of politics. 90% of the time it was Republican, libertarian, anti- Obama, even pro- Bush, anti- immigrant, anti- Muslim, pro- business, anti- "socialist" rhetoric. Usually it was all beery and blasé, but sometimes it veered into anger and vitriol.
In the beginning - the first six to eight months or so - I was magnanimous, unflappable. I would usually simply listen and keep my gob shut, smile, nod, and grab myself a quick hamburger before making a bee line to the exit, to return home to work and read or else watch Free Speech/Link T.V., PBS, BYU TV, the History Channel or something. I was on a Mormon kick for a a few months, and had loads of reading to do about the LDS, which was very interesting.
After a while though, I started to unhinge. Between the heat and the politics, I just couldn't keep it together. By the time the fall rolled around, I'd flipped the light fandango, and started to go a little nuts.
And that bled out onto the blog. Which gave me a bad conscience, because I knew that there were some 20 people either RSS'ing or being emailed the the thing, and most of them weren't reading it for my rants about politics. Or religion, for that matter. And that's all I had, or wanted, to write about.
I felt like I was losing perspective, losing my sense of humor. I was becoming brittle and bitter. I ended up picking a few fights, and insulting a few people.. Snarling, and tossing around vulgarities.
It was time to escape. So, at Thanksgiving, I did. I came north, and rented an apartment in Northern Vermont, right up on the Quebec border. I used to live in Vermont, when I was in grad school, and my hometown in Maine is also on the border with Quebec. This is home. There's snow on the ground, French on the radio, a lumber mill down the road, and some of the best skiing in the North East 20 minutes away.
I'm so very blissed out. I've been here nearly 2 months, and everything has returned to normal. I've regained my equilibrium and sanity. It feels very good.
I blogged the move on my old spot, and idly thought about launching a new project. This last week, I finally resolved to do it, most especially because there were a few posts on the old blog that were about people back in Switzerland that were still getting an undue amount of attention. My blog analytics told me that there were a few posts with details concerning other people's lives there that were still getting dozens of hits a week. That was not good. It was time to shut it down.
On Saturday, I started to write a final post that I was intending to post on both blogs as a conceptual bridge. I began farting around with the template here (criticisms of the results, please! I'd be very appreciative) and vetting a few ideas.. I was planning on making the shift on Sunday or today.
When the assassin struck.
It was one of those crystalline moments you know you won't forget. Like when Reagan was shot, the Challenger blew up.. Or 9/11.
In my shock I compulsively typed out a blog that had a few snide remarks about Palin in it, and posted it. 6 people dead, 14 wounded.. Federal Judge, U.S. Congresswoman, a few elderly people, and a little girl.. I was in an emotional warp, and not thinking straight.
I sat there trying to absorb the news, reading whatever I could find online..
When I found her photo, name.. And learned that she'd been born on September 11th, 2001.
Christina. She's nine. She'd just received her first communion.
I can't handle that. Typing this, I ..
It just wrecks me.
There's really nothing that can be said. The attacks upon the Congresswoman, the federal judge, the citizens who had come to meet their representative..
All of it is a direct attack by a madman upon our democracy. Upon the institutions of the Republic. We all should stand as one against those who have created the climate for this act of anti- social extremism. Those who have fanned these flames - such as Sarah Palin and her cretinous friends - need to be condemned and scorned for their cynical stoking of such people's madness.
[I've been criticized for saying Sarah Palin is particularly responsible - I'll stand by that assertion, and defend it with an example of the type of speech I'm talking about; this capture of her fund-raising site's web page, which was taken down Sunday afternoon, directly after the attack:
This strikes me as a physical threat and an incitement to violence. Notice how one of the gun sites is directly over Tuscon, Arizona? That's a gun site trained on Gabrielle Gifford. On Sunday, Jared Loughner pulled the trigger. She needs to apologize publicly, at the very, very least.. It's shameful and uncalled for, extremist, and I say maybe even criminal..
I just read someone else make an excellent point about Sarah's gun sites: Imagine if a Muslim had done that. If say, it had been Keith Ellison, the first and only Muslim member of Congress - and incidentally a black man - who had put gun sites on the districts of Republican lawmakers? Stop, and imagine that. What do you think Fox New's reaction would be to that, even without any violence? And then what if there were violence in response to such an image? Seriously. There would be blood. The offending Muslim would be in deep, deep trouble. Probably under prosecution.
Sarah, though, she's white Pentecostal and a so called "conservative" Republican. So implicit threats of violence from her are cool. Par for the course, in America, these days.
But enough.. I'm done.)
I don't care if you agree. Just like I don't care what fascists think. If you flame violence, it is unacceptable and reprehensible. That's all. I'll say no more about it.
Christina, though.. Her killing has no possible political pretext or meaning.
It isn't political, it's apocalyptic. The "coincidence" of her birth date doesn't seem accidental at all, even though there's no possible way that the killer could have known.
Look at his eyes.
As I post this, the impropriety of putting his face on the same page as hers strikes me.
I'll leave it there, because the evil shrivels before her goodness. Nothing he can do can hurt her now. She's beyond him.
When I cry for her, I initially began accusing myself of crocodile tears, of mere sentiment.
But that's not completely it.
Sure, I am crying because she - a little girl I've never met - is gone. I cry for her family, for her parents.
But I'm also crying for the rest of us, for myself.
Because I'm complicit in this mess, I've participated in the shouting, the anger. I've called names, and been offensive. So I'm not keeping the faith, and in far more ways than that. I'm not innocent, not even close.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not cry for me. Cry for yourselves and for your children.."
Because the assassin is also one of us.. A creature of our culture. What is good amongst us has been torn away, and the evil sneers.
Like on 9/11, there is a pure flash of malice there.
This was not a "normal" crime. It is something worse. It is something demonic.
There is something prophetic in this. We should all pay attention. We are being warned.
We need to repent of our anger, of our dissension. We need to calm down, to listen to each other, to reach out to one another, to forgive one another.
I've posted the Beatitudes in the sidebar, because that is one of the things that I want this blog to be about.
I am a Catholic Christian for many reasons. I want to talk about that, to explain myself to anyone who will listen. I have many things that I think I need to say, many thoughts I want to share, many problems I want to open for your collective critique and consideration. I am going to tell some stories, to explain why I am who I am, why I think what I do, and why I believe.
In this country. In the Church Universal. In the sanctity of every human being, in the dignity of each person's individual conscience.
Even Jared Loughner's. Especially Jared Lee Loughner.
Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hate and seek to destroy you. Love your enemies.
This is the emphatic charge that every single one of us who professes Jesus Christ as our master must embrace.
That is the meaning of the Crucifixion. It is the undoing of Jared Loughner's hatred and rampage.
There is no other answer, no other solution, I think. I believe the only response to such evil is love. Love that transcends all sin and death, and undoes it.
I was planning on starting this blog with a positive proof* for the Faith. Instead, I have a negative one.
[*by proof I don't mean verification, only strong substantiation.]
For know this: evil, death, sin and suffering demand a resolution. Some say that the existence of such suffering is proof that no merciful God can exist.
Rather, I say to you that to the contrary, if there is no merciful God, then annihilation is all that we can expect.
Not only is suffering and death expunging all of us, destroying even the smallest most innocent amongst us like Christina Taylor Greene, but there is no recourse..
Without the transcendent mercy that Christ promises us.
I know that's a hard saying, but I am utterly sure that it is so.
And that, paradoxically, is the greatest and most hopeful thing of all.
These are the victims:
Christina with her father.
Federal District Judge John Roll
Dorthy Morris
Dorwin Stoddard. He died lying over his wife, protecting her.
Phyllis Schneck
And a member of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's staff, Gabe Zimmerman, who was only 30.
There were 14 others wounded, including Gabrielle. Let's all pray for all of them. Pray for our country, for the world. That we may all seek reconciliation and peace.
And pray for the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, that he may repent and be forgiven.
May God forgive and keep us all.
---
First, let me explain the back story for this project.
I conceived the idea for this blog last year, after I returned from Switzerland. I'd been blogging my life and times there, where I had the great pleasure and blessing to live with and share in the monastic life of the Fraternité Eucharistein for a year. I blogged primarily for the edification and amusement of my friends and family around the world, to keep them abreast of things there.
I tired to keep it light and amusing, and avoided talking too much about any of the intimate details of the lives of the people I was living with, or the work that I was doing there, which had some confidential aspects. I also decided not to talk too much about religion in the abstract sense (though it was naturally a part of the blog in that Catholicism was a major part of the organic ebb and flow of my experience there) or politics. I broke that resolution a few times, but overall I think I kept it pretty focused on my experiences.
When I returned to the States, I ended up living in Florida for a year. I hadn't expected to have to remain there so long. I'd initially thought that I would be moving up to Washington D.C., but my work circumstances changed, and I ended up stuck in the South. Initially, I was bemused by it: my parents and two of my uncles (one from each side of my family) live there in the Villages.. If you click on that link, and then on the one to the Frat's website, I think you'll see how the two communities are rather different from each other.
Through May or June, I was considering buying property in Florida, maybe even in the Villages themselves.
Then came the summer.
The heat and humidity and the daily afternoon thunderstorms.
It's tropical. It's brutal. And this year it lasted from May through to the end of September.
Five months of misery. I'm from Maine, and I am not made for that sort of weather. I like the cold, I love the snow. In the winter in New England, all you need to escape the cold is proper clothing and a well heated home. It's not hard to feel snug, and feeling snug in the cold is one of the very greatest things in the entire world. You lay in bed in your freezing room, all tucked in under three or four blankets, two down pillows and a snug hat about your head.. And the great vast cold is impotent, it can do nothing.
You are a little pouch of warmth in the great frozen fastness. And it is a sublime feeling. There is nothing more pleasurable than that.
The Florida heat though, that's another thing. If it weren't air conditioning and swimming pools (and the ocean, if you are so blessed as to live on or near it, which I was not - no, instead I was smack dab in the middle of the peninsula) are the only reprieves from that heat. Without air conditioning, it would be simply impossible for me to live there, at all.
At the end of the summer, I was done. It had slowly frazzled me senseless, left my frayed and depleted, emotionally and physically spent.
The heat though was coupled by constant contact with people at social gatherings and in the media, who barraged me with talk of politics. 90% of the time it was Republican, libertarian, anti- Obama, even pro- Bush, anti- immigrant, anti- Muslim, pro- business, anti- "socialist" rhetoric. Usually it was all beery and blasé, but sometimes it veered into anger and vitriol.
In the beginning - the first six to eight months or so - I was magnanimous, unflappable. I would usually simply listen and keep my gob shut, smile, nod, and grab myself a quick hamburger before making a bee line to the exit, to return home to work and read or else watch Free Speech/Link T.V., PBS, BYU TV, the History Channel or something. I was on a Mormon kick for a a few months, and had loads of reading to do about the LDS, which was very interesting.
After a while though, I started to unhinge. Between the heat and the politics, I just couldn't keep it together. By the time the fall rolled around, I'd flipped the light fandango, and started to go a little nuts.
And that bled out onto the blog. Which gave me a bad conscience, because I knew that there were some 20 people either RSS'ing or being emailed the the thing, and most of them weren't reading it for my rants about politics. Or religion, for that matter. And that's all I had, or wanted, to write about.
I felt like I was losing perspective, losing my sense of humor. I was becoming brittle and bitter. I ended up picking a few fights, and insulting a few people.. Snarling, and tossing around vulgarities.
It was time to escape. So, at Thanksgiving, I did. I came north, and rented an apartment in Northern Vermont, right up on the Quebec border. I used to live in Vermont, when I was in grad school, and my hometown in Maine is also on the border with Quebec. This is home. There's snow on the ground, French on the radio, a lumber mill down the road, and some of the best skiing in the North East 20 minutes away.
I'm so very blissed out. I've been here nearly 2 months, and everything has returned to normal. I've regained my equilibrium and sanity. It feels very good.
I blogged the move on my old spot, and idly thought about launching a new project. This last week, I finally resolved to do it, most especially because there were a few posts on the old blog that were about people back in Switzerland that were still getting an undue amount of attention. My blog analytics told me that there were a few posts with details concerning other people's lives there that were still getting dozens of hits a week. That was not good. It was time to shut it down.
On Saturday, I started to write a final post that I was intending to post on both blogs as a conceptual bridge. I began farting around with the template here (criticisms of the results, please! I'd be very appreciative) and vetting a few ideas.. I was planning on making the shift on Sunday or today.
When the assassin struck.
It was one of those crystalline moments you know you won't forget. Like when Reagan was shot, the Challenger blew up.. Or 9/11.
In my shock I compulsively typed out a blog that had a few snide remarks about Palin in it, and posted it. 6 people dead, 14 wounded.. Federal Judge, U.S. Congresswoman, a few elderly people, and a little girl.. I was in an emotional warp, and not thinking straight.
I sat there trying to absorb the news, reading whatever I could find online..
When I found her photo, name.. And learned that she'd been born on September 11th, 2001.
Christina. She's nine. She'd just received her first communion.
I can't handle that. Typing this, I ..
It just wrecks me.
There's really nothing that can be said. The attacks upon the Congresswoman, the federal judge, the citizens who had come to meet their representative..
All of it is a direct attack by a madman upon our democracy. Upon the institutions of the Republic. We all should stand as one against those who have created the climate for this act of anti- social extremism. Those who have fanned these flames - such as Sarah Palin and her cretinous friends - need to be condemned and scorned for their cynical stoking of such people's madness.
[I've been criticized for saying Sarah Palin is particularly responsible - I'll stand by that assertion, and defend it with an example of the type of speech I'm talking about; this capture of her fund-raising site's web page, which was taken down Sunday afternoon, directly after the attack:
This strikes me as a physical threat and an incitement to violence. Notice how one of the gun sites is directly over Tuscon, Arizona? That's a gun site trained on Gabrielle Gifford. On Sunday, Jared Loughner pulled the trigger. She needs to apologize publicly, at the very, very least.. It's shameful and uncalled for, extremist, and I say maybe even criminal..
I just read someone else make an excellent point about Sarah's gun sites: Imagine if a Muslim had done that. If say, it had been Keith Ellison, the first and only Muslim member of Congress - and incidentally a black man - who had put gun sites on the districts of Republican lawmakers? Stop, and imagine that. What do you think Fox New's reaction would be to that, even without any violence? And then what if there were violence in response to such an image? Seriously. There would be blood. The offending Muslim would be in deep, deep trouble. Probably under prosecution.
Sarah, though, she's white Pentecostal and a so called "conservative" Republican. So implicit threats of violence from her are cool. Par for the course, in America, these days.
But enough.. I'm done.)
I don't care if you agree. Just like I don't care what fascists think. If you flame violence, it is unacceptable and reprehensible. That's all. I'll say no more about it.
Christina, though.. Her killing has no possible political pretext or meaning.
It isn't political, it's apocalyptic. The "coincidence" of her birth date doesn't seem accidental at all, even though there's no possible way that the killer could have known.
Look at his eyes.
As I post this, the impropriety of putting his face on the same page as hers strikes me.
I'll leave it there, because the evil shrivels before her goodness. Nothing he can do can hurt her now. She's beyond him.
When I cry for her, I initially began accusing myself of crocodile tears, of mere sentiment.
But that's not completely it.
Sure, I am crying because she - a little girl I've never met - is gone. I cry for her family, for her parents.
But I'm also crying for the rest of us, for myself.
Because I'm complicit in this mess, I've participated in the shouting, the anger. I've called names, and been offensive. So I'm not keeping the faith, and in far more ways than that. I'm not innocent, not even close.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not cry for me. Cry for yourselves and for your children.."
Because the assassin is also one of us.. A creature of our culture. What is good amongst us has been torn away, and the evil sneers.
Like on 9/11, there is a pure flash of malice there.
This was not a "normal" crime. It is something worse. It is something demonic.
There is something prophetic in this. We should all pay attention. We are being warned.
We need to repent of our anger, of our dissension. We need to calm down, to listen to each other, to reach out to one another, to forgive one another.
I've posted the Beatitudes in the sidebar, because that is one of the things that I want this blog to be about.
I am a Catholic Christian for many reasons. I want to talk about that, to explain myself to anyone who will listen. I have many things that I think I need to say, many thoughts I want to share, many problems I want to open for your collective critique and consideration. I am going to tell some stories, to explain why I am who I am, why I think what I do, and why I believe.
In this country. In the Church Universal. In the sanctity of every human being, in the dignity of each person's individual conscience.
Even Jared Loughner's. Especially Jared Lee Loughner.
Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hate and seek to destroy you. Love your enemies.
This is the emphatic charge that every single one of us who professes Jesus Christ as our master must embrace.
That is the meaning of the Crucifixion. It is the undoing of Jared Loughner's hatred and rampage.
There is no other answer, no other solution, I think. I believe the only response to such evil is love. Love that transcends all sin and death, and undoes it.
I was planning on starting this blog with a positive proof* for the Faith. Instead, I have a negative one.
[*by proof I don't mean verification, only strong substantiation.]
For know this: evil, death, sin and suffering demand a resolution. Some say that the existence of such suffering is proof that no merciful God can exist.
Rather, I say to you that to the contrary, if there is no merciful God, then annihilation is all that we can expect.
Not only is suffering and death expunging all of us, destroying even the smallest most innocent amongst us like Christina Taylor Greene, but there is no recourse..
Without the transcendent mercy that Christ promises us.
I know that's a hard saying, but I am utterly sure that it is so.
And that, paradoxically, is the greatest and most hopeful thing of all.
These are the victims:
Christina with her father.
Federal District Judge John Roll
Dorthy Morris
Dorwin Stoddard. He died lying over his wife, protecting her.
Phyllis Schneck
And a member of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's staff, Gabe Zimmerman, who was only 30.
There were 14 others wounded, including Gabrielle. Let's all pray for all of them. Pray for our country, for the world. That we may all seek reconciliation and peace.
And pray for the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, that he may repent and be forgiven.
May God forgive and keep us all.
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