Jennifer F has written a remarkable post that may cause you to reconsider your world view
All of my scattered thoughts on the subject were brought into relief the other day when I had a conversation with an immediate family member (whom I don't want to identify directly). He seemed depressed and uneasy about something, and when I asked him why he said it was about his retirement account. He's deeply distressed that he won't have enough money to afford anything other than a government-run nursing home in his old age. I reminded him that my husband and I would love for him to move in with us when it gets to the point that he doesn't feel comfortable living on his own. We weren't even talking about a situation where he might need intensive medical care, yet he flatly refused to even consider the notion.
"I would never do that to you," he said. "I would never have you put your life on hold like that."
We've had this conversation many times before, yet this time, the first since my conversion to Christianity, I was hit by just what a profoundly sad worldview this reflects. I've always wanted this family member to live with us when he can no longer live on his own, and he's always refused on the same grounds. That part is nothing new. Yet this time I saw clearly that the situation goes beyond an unfortunate refusal of help: it reflects a worldview in which well-meaning people like my relative believe that the best thing they can do for their loved-ones is to not burden them with their presence, where the very meaning of life has been twisted to suck love out of the world.
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It leads us to believe that if we were ever to lose our self-sufficiency, our presence would not just be an annoyance but would in fact prevent our loved-ones from fulfilling their very purpose in life.
When I compare my life with the self-focused worldview to my life with the other-focused worldview, the difference is striking. Not that I am anywhere near some saint-like level of always seeking to serve others before myself, but simply understanding that that is the goal, that my own life isn't about me, has changed everything. It's counter-intuitive, it requires sacrifice, and it isn't always the most comfortable path. But it is clear that, truly, this is how we were designed to live. After all these years of trying it my way, it's like I'm finally operating my life according to the instruction manual. And it is ultimately a manual for how to live a life of love, written by he who is Love itself.
By preaching up, not down, by paying us the compliment of making serious, sustained arguments, the Pope brought America not just new perceptions but challenging ideas as well writes George Weigel
It seems as if I've not been blogging much about the Pope's visit to America, but that 's not really true. I've just been reading blog posts not writing them.
I was riveted to the television for the entire visit not wanting to miss a moment or a word of what he said. I downloaded all his speeches so I could read them and ponder them. Every excited expectation was met and then some as the Pope showed in every action, word and gesture, his purpose to spread Christ's hope and his personal humility. Maybe the most important event was one we never saw, The Healing in the Chapel when Pope Benedict became the healing pastor to five victims of the clerical abuse scandal. The sight of the Pope walking down the deep pit of Ground Zero to fall to his knees and pray for minutes in silence was the most moving.
I spent two days on and off writing a wrap-up post with lots of links and thanks to the people, reporters and bloggers who wrote so much better than I could and with great feeling about each of the Papal events.
Then I lost the entire post. So here's a much shorter recreated post to give special thanks to
The Anchoress
Whispers in the Loggia
Sissy Willis
Miss Kelly
The Deacon's Bench
Pope 2008
and all the members of Papal Discussion blog at the New York Times.
What struck me and what I haven't seen discussed anywhere is what a profoundly counter-cultural moment in time it was. We are so used to a steady media diet of war, murder, terrorist attacks, fears, hatred, sex, politics and celebrity stories, that the six days when the media allowed us to see the Pope at the White House and the UN along with the splendor and beauty of the Catholic Mass were astonishing.
The contrast between the bleakness of most of what we see and the power of peace and love the Pope brought to our shores could not be greater. The contrast between the happiness of the huge crowds waiting for hours to see the Pope and the crowds at anti-war rallies or San Francisco rallies could not be greater. The clarity, intelligence and moral seriousness of the Pope's addresses contrasted sharply with the political speeches we are used to. We are not used to dignity, reverence and joy as part of our media diet.
Some seeds sown by Pope Benedict will flourish immediately, others may not be evident for months, even years. But grow they will. In a future full of hope, many will point to this visit as changing their lives.
If this is true, it's astonishing.
Menstrual Blood: A Valuable Source of Multipotential Stem Cells
Researchers seeking new and more abundant sources of stem cells for use in regenerative medicine have identified a potentially unlimited, noncontroversial, easily collectable, and inexpensive source -- menstrual blood.
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Stromal stem cells derived from menstrual blood exhibit stem cell properties, such as the capacity for self-renewal and multipotency," said Amit N. Patel, MD, MS, Director of Cardiac Cell Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine. "Uterine stromal cells have similar multipotent markers found in bone marrow stem cells and originate in part from bone marrow."
A day later, a Japanese study shows that cells from menstrual blood may be useful in repairing heart damage.
The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2 to 0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, researcher Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University's school of medicine, told French news agency AFP.
There's even a company that's begun menstrual blood banking!
It wasn't so long ago that the public and scientific consensus was that stem cells could only be harvested from human embryos.
I'm not the only one who remembers the hysteria that surrounded President Bush's decision not to allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Charles Krauthammer does in Technology Vindicates Morality. So does the Anchoress who reminds us that embryonic stem cells have produced nightmarish results in the lab and never had a successful application.
So far there have been 73 successful treatments using adult stem cells and none for embryonic stem cells.
Doing good by doing no harm works.
If you suddenly hear church bells ringing out next Tuesday around 4 pm, they ring to mark the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States for a six day visit, the schedule for which tire out anyone much less an 81-year-old man.
Catholics around the country are eagerly awaiting the touchdown at Andrews Air Force Base where he will be welcomed by the President and First Lady, the welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn, his meeting with the bishops, vespers at the National Shrine, the Mass in Nationals Park, his meeting with leaders from other faiths, his visit to the Park East Synagogue, his speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations, his meeting with young people with special needs and seminarians at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, his trip to Ground Zero and his celebration of the Mass at Yankee Stadium.
Of course, the Catholic media is pulling out all the stops with EWTN carrying live full coverage of every moment. Peter Steinfels wrote in the New York Times to expect a cliched coverage by the mainstream media as they discover once again that the Pope is indeed Catholic.
Yes, he disagrees with Richard Dawkins that atheism is necessary for salvation. Yes, he believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the son of God and the center of human history. Yes, he thinks that Catholic Christianity is truer than Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or even Protestant Christianity. Astounding. What next?
To its credit the New York Times has set up a blog magisterially entitled A Papal Discussion with noteworthy and informed contributors to assess the Pope's visit. Still I expect a lot of silly discussion about how the Pope has 'changed', has 'grown', is 'cracking down' all while wearing red Prada shoes. But since nothing can approach the splendor of the 2000 year old Catholic Church, there will be much fascination with Catholic liturgy and vestments. What I'm most interested is how they experience and report on a man of such virtue, intellect and moral authority. How will they report on Pope who writes such extraordinary letters such as Deus caritas est God Is Love and Spe Salvi Saved by Hope.
In Something Beautiful Has Begun, Peggy Noonan remembers asking people who had met John Paul II what they thought or said,
they'd be startled and say, "I don't know, I was crying."
John Paul made you burst into tears. Benedict makes you think. It is more pleasurable to weep, but at the moment, perhaps it is more important to think.
I always liked Pope John Paul II, but it was Cardinal Ratizger who riveted me with his homily to the College of Cardinals as they gathered to elect a new Pope when he spoke of the
dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.
The antidote he said was the development of
a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth. We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.
His call to develop a mature adult faith and his powerful intellect and ability to make the vast deposit of the magisterium clear and fresh has made me a fan and deepened my faith.
A lot of other people are getting Pope Fever like Miss Kelly who has snagged a ticket to the Mass in Yankee Stadium. The Anchoress, who to no one's surprise, loves Benedict and other Catholic things finds Benedict
warm, pastoral, approachable, quite paternal, and as easy to glean as a dear old uncle sharing fellowship over a cup of tea.
Sissy, a self-confessed agnostic, is getting A glimpse of the clearing and will be ringing her bells that that for many long years, they have never been heard.
With the theme of the Pope's visit "Christ Our Hope", I expect he will bring us good news and remind us that Christian hope is transformative because it offers assurance that "life will not end in emptiness".
Raymond Ibrahim writes Islam's 'Public Enemy #1' is a Coptic priest Zakaria Botros who appears
frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.
Botros has famously made 10 demands of Islam that serve to highlight the radical demands Islam makes of non-Muslims. The result: mass conversions to Christianity, albeit many clandestine ones. One Islamic cleric on Al Jazeera estimated that 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity annually. This is an extraordinary number considering that each convert faces ostracism, persecution and even death for apostasy.
The ultimate reason for Botros’s success is that — unlike his Western counterparts who criticize Islam from a political standpoint — his primary interest is the salvation of souls. He often begins and concludes his programs by stating that he loves all Muslims as fellow humans and wants to steer them away from falsehood to Truth. To that end, he doesn’t just expose troubling aspects of Islam. Before concluding every program, he quotes pertinent biblical verses and invites all his viewers to come to Christ.
Botros’s motive is not to incite the West against Islam, promote “Israeli interests,” or “demonize” Muslims, but to draw Muslims away from the dead legalism of sharia to the spirituality of Christianity. Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying — not secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. — must be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has been fighting fire with fire.
Another writer on the big untold story in the Middle East, looks at country by country to say Muslims converting to Christianity in record numbers .
The Egyptian Bible Society told me they used to sell about 3,000 copies of the Jesus film a year in the early 1990s. But in 2005 they sold 600,000 copies, plus 750,000 copies of the Bible on tape (in Arabic) and about a half million copies of the Arabic New Testament.
Spengler, brilliant as always writes on The mustard seed in global strategy
A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam
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Magdi Allam tells us that he has found the true God and forsaken an Islam that he regards as inherently violent. Magdi Allam has a powerful voice as deputy editor of Italy's newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera, and a bestselling author. For years he was the exemplar of "moderate Islam" in Europe, and now he has decided that Islam cannot be "moderate".
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Magdi Allam presents an existential threat to Muslim life, whereas other prominent dissidents, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offer only an annoyance.
Allam hails Benedict XVI as the leader of the West.
The West is not fighting individual criminals, as the left insists; it is not fighting a Soviet-style state, as the Iraqi disaster makes clear; nor is it fighting a political movement. It is fighting a religion, specifically a religion that arose in enraged reaction to the West. None of the political leaders of the West, and few of the West's opinion leaders, comprehends this. We are left with the anomaly that the only effective leader of the West is a man wholly averse to war, a pope who took his name from the Benedict who interceded for peace during World War I. Benedict XVI, alone among the leaders of the Christian world, challenges Islam as a religion, as he did in his September 2006 Regensburg address.
The way out Spengler wrote after the Pope's Regensberg address, the way out is conversion.
"Now that everyone is talking about Europe's demographic death, it is time to point out that there exists a way out: convert European Muslims to Christianity." Today's Europeans stem from the melting-pot of the barbarian invasions that replaced the vanishing population of the Roman Empire. The genius of the Catholic Church was to absorb them. If Benedict XVI can convert this new wave of invaders from North Africa and the Middle East, history will place him on a par with his great namesake, the founder of the monastic order the bears his name
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The global agenda has changed, not through the machinations of statesmen or the word-mincing of public intellectuals, but through the soul of a single man. Benedict's Regensburg challenge to Islam now demarcates the encounter between the West and the Muslim world, and nothing will be the same.
UPDATE: Intentional Disciples questions the 6 million figure cited above and calls it an urban legend, but she does point to the work of Independent Christianity which I had never heard of, yet composes 20% of all Christians in the world. She calls it an explosive global movement that most Catholics don't know exists.
It is these evangelizers - almost all of whom are lay - living in Muslim communities, loving their neighbors, teaching school, healing the sick, founding and running businesses, planting thousands of evangelizing small Christian communities in hundreds of different language groups and situations, writing books, making radio broadcasts, building relationships, trust, and credibility with Muslims they actually know personally - who have been used by God to turn the tide. Fr. Zacahrias is one rather loud horn in a vast symphony orchestra - and he isn't even first chair.
Remember that study that Dudley Woodbury did about why Muslims become Christian? Of the 5 primary reasons that 750 MBBs gave - the central theme was love. God's love reflected consistently in the lives of Christians they knew. Being exposed to the love of Christ through the gospels.
Not media, Not TV. Not apologetics. Love. From tens of thousands of expat missionaries and hundreds of thousands of national Christians who are "Great commission" Christians.
Since I'm still gobsmacked with the idea that 6 million Muslims in the Middle East convert to Christianity each year, I decided to do a little research to find out why.
Intentional Disciplines has done a splendid post on why Muslims convert based on a study that used an extensive questionnaire with respondents from 30 countries and 50 ethnic groups that gives us a more informed picture then mere anecdotes as to what's going on.
There's a lot more discussion for each of the following five most frequently mentioned reasons and, if you are as interested as I am, you'll want to read the whole thing.
1) The lifestyle of Christians. Former Muslims cited the love that Christians exhibited in their relationships with non-Christians and their treatment of women as equals.
2) The power of God in answered prayers and healing. Experiences of God's supernatural work—especially important to folk Muslims who have a characteristic concern for power and blessings—increased after their conversions, according to the survey. Often dreams about Jesus were reported.
3) Dissatisfaction with the type of Islam they had experienced. Many expressed dissatisfaction with the Qur'an, emphasizing God's punishment over his love. Others cited Islamic militancy and the failure of Islamic law to transform society.
4) The spiritual truth in the Bible. Muslims are generally taught that the Torah, Psalms, and the Gospels are from God, but that they became corrupted. These Christian converts said, however, that the truth of God found in Scripture became compelling for them and key to their understanding of God's character.
5) Biblical teachings about the love of God. In the Qur'an, God's love is conditional, but God's love for all people was especially eye-opening for Muslims. These converts were moved by the love expressed through the life and teachings of Jesus. The next step for many Muslims was to become part of a fellowship of loving Christians.
"Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life" wrote Magdi Allam, a Muslim and deputy director of Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, when he wrote about threats to his life after he condemned Palestinian suicide bombers in 2003.
On the vigil of Easter, Magdi Allam was baptised by Pope Benedict XVI himself and took a new baptismal name Christian on what he later called, "the most beautiful day of my life."
He wrote in an article appeared in the Corriere della Sera that
the witness of Catholics, who “gradually became a point of reference in regard to the certainty of truth and the solidity of values,” played an important role in his conversion.
His most decisive influence he said was Benedict XVI
“who I admired and, as a Muslim, defended for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me.”
I had always admired Pope John Paul II as a great and holy man, I marveled at his courage and later at his visit to prison to forgive his assassin, but from a certain distance. When Cardinal Ratzinger spoke to the Sacred College of Cardinals assembled in Rome for the funeral of John Paul II, I was electrified.
Let us dwell on only two points. The first is the journey towards “the maturity of Christ” as it is said in the Italian text, simplifying it a bit. More precisely, according to the Greek text, we should speak of the “measure of the fullness of Christ”, to which we are called to reach in order to be true adults in the faith. We should not remain infants in faith, in a state of minority. And what does it mean to be an infant in faith? Saint Paul answers: it means “tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery” (Eph 4, 14). This description is very relevant today!
How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. .... Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
I was that small boat of thought, tossed around 'by every wind of teaching' , motivated mainly by my ego and desires until inspired by Ratzinger who became Pope Benedict XVI , I began my journey towards an 'adult and mature faith'. The whole journey is too long to be recounted here and now, except its conclusion; I have come home to the Catholic faith and the Mother Church: I have I felt so whole.
No where near as brave as Christian Allam, I am humbled by his journey to conversion that he recounts here.
my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.
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My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy.
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It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values.
I too want to fight against the dictatorship of relativism and its softer cousin, the culture of whatever - wherever and whenever I can. I too want to stand behind the Pope who offers the only strong and muscular defense of faith and reason as the basis for authentic religion and the culture of life as the basis of civilization. I too want to uphold reason and the sacredness of life against the tide of nihilism and extremism that threatens to engulf us. So, in my small way, I will do so.
These past three days of the Triduum, I have been drenched in music and beauty with friends and fellow worshipers and filled with gratitude and immense joy. I feel reborn, even Exultent and can only point to the beautiful Easter chant I found via the Anchoress.
Doctor Bob elucidates
liberation theology, in which Christianity is defined (redefined, actually) primarily as a means of identifying with and liberating the oppressed. It has deep roots in atheistic Marxism, especially in the concept of class struggle and the centrality of violence in overcoming oppression. Liberation theology sprouted from Catholic and Marxist syncretism in Latin America, and has subsequently spread to many liberal Protestant denominations as well. Its core premise — the centrality of class warfare in human relationships — is inherently incompatible with the unity of Christians in Christ, and this distortion of Christian doctrine was gently but devastatingly rebutted by former Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in his doctrinal instruction on the topic.
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That social justice, concern for the poor and the underprivileged, and the mitigation of hatred and racism are — and have always been — emphatic teachings and priorities for Christianity is indisputable. But Christian opposition to injustice and oppression is not its sole and central doctrine, but rather a manifestation of the personal deliverance of the individual from the slavery and oppression of sin which Christianity offers.
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Churches which abandon historical Christian orthodoxy in favor of Christianized political and socialistic substitutes may indeed accomplish some good (even Hamas feeds the poor) and often seem to operate from the very best of motives. But they exsanguinate the faith of its life-blood — its historical orthodoxy, hammered out through centuries in creeds and scripture, through persecution endured and heresy rebutted — leaving but a mummified corpse of ritual and religious talk and self-righteousness. Like some ancient Aztec sacrifice, they carve out the heart of a historic faith, and thrust it triumphantly upward to heaven. But the gods they propitiate are those of politics and power, division and deviancy — not the God of the cross and the empty tomb, nor the Lord of the martyrs and the life-blood of saints.
St. Patrick in his own words. From his confessions.
St. Patrick, born in Britain, captured and made a slave for 6 years until he had a vision and found the courage to escape and eventually return to his family. A few years later, another vision appeared to him
I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: "The Voice of the Irish". As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea—and they cried out, as with one voice: "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.[12]
"Science gives us Knowledge, and religion gives us Meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence"
wrote Professor Michael Heller in his statement when he won the 2008 Templeton Prize valued at more than $1.6 million. Heller is a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest who
developed sharply focused and strikingly original concepts on the origin and cause of the universe, often under intense governmental repression,...
Heller, 72, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, toiled for years beneath the stifling strictures of the Soviet era. He has become a compelling figure in the realms of physics and cosmology, theology, and philosophy with his cogent and provocative concepts on issues that all of these disciplines pursue, albeit from often vastly different perspectives. With an academic and religious background that enables him to comfortably and credibly move within each of these domains, Heller’s extensive writings have evoked new and important consideration of some of humankind's most profound concepts.
Here is more Heller from his statement
Einstein was not far from Leibniz's idea when he was saying that the only goal of science is to decode the Mind of God present in the structure of the universe.
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Within the all-comprising Mind of God what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.
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Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one. If we look deeper at such processes, we see that there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God’s thinking the universe. The question on ultimate causality is translated into another of Leibniz’s questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
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Science is but a collective effort of the Human Mind to read the Mind of God from question marks out of which we and the world around us seem to be made. To place ourselves in this double entanglement is to experience that we are a part of the Great Mystery. Another name for this Mystery is the Humble Approach to reality – the motto of all John Templeton Foundation activities. The true humility does not consist in pretending that we are feeble and insignificant, but in the audacious acknowledgement that we are an essential part of the Greatest Mystery of all – of the entanglement of the Human Mind with the Mind of God.
In the New Oxford Review, a board-certified psychiatrist and professor, Richard Gallagher documents a real Case of Demonic Possession.
Even those who doubt such a phenomenon exists may find the following example rather persuasive. For clergy, or indeed anyone involved in the spiritual or psychological care of others, it is equally critical, however, to recognize the many and infinitely more common "counterfeits" (i.e., false assignations) of demonic influence or attack as well.
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We made a number of phone calls to arrange gathering together to help Julia. Julia herself was not in on these phone discussions; she was far from the area at the time. Astonishingly, Julia's "other" voice -- again sometimes deep, sometimes high pitched -- would actually interrupt the telephone conversations and somehow come in over the phone line! The voice(s) would espouse the same messages: "Leave her alone," "Leave, you idiots," "Get away from her," "She's ours." Julia, again, said later that she was unaware of any such conversation. And yet this speech was heard distinctly by several of the team on a number of occasions.
After a set at a hotel in Washington State, I was dragged into a long, drawn-out discussion with a graying, balding New Ager who just couldn't get over my evangelical background. "You seem so smart," he kept saying. "How could you buy into that stuff?"
Here's a guy wearing a crystal around his neck to open up his chakra, who thinks that the spirit of a warrior from the lost city of Atlantis is channeled through the body of a hairdresser from Palm Springs, and who stuffs magnets in his pants to enhance his aura, and he finds evangelicalism an insult to his intelligence. I ask you: Who's the redneck?
From a review by Ed Driscoll quoting Redneck Nation by Michael Graham.
"Redneck Nation: How the South Really Won the War" (Michael Graham)
The wonderful phrase, "Teach us to care and not to care" comes from T.S. Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday that he wrote shortly after he converted to Anglicanism. It's the struggle of a man who had no faith acknowledging his need for faith and hope in a prayer for God.
Ash Wednesday
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.
At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.
Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.
IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs
Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos
Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile
V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.
O my people.
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
So you're the Anglican Archbishop of York and you're about to take your first trip to Rome where you will meet with the Pope, what do you bring as a gift?
Well, like any good Bavarian, he does like his beer
I told the brewery I was meeting the Pope and they made a special brew for him. I heard he'd been given some Black Sheep ale and liked it. So I brought that and the Holy Grail."
Sentamu stands the Pope a beer
Sissy who tipped me to this has written about the Pope and John Sentamu - the "Archbishop-of-Canterbury-in-waiting" before as he took on British Airways and the BBC.
With his trademark gap-toothed grin and staccato enunciation of quaint English, the Ugandan-born archbishop is credited with having an electrifying effect on faithless, post-Christian Britain.
While in Rome, Sentamu might have learned the Beer Blessing.
Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen
Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
It was just luck that six months ago I had scheduled a retreat at St.Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts.
After two weeks of the flu, I needed some time to re-energize and get back on track before I took up again all the things I had to do.
So I looked forward to some time with the Trappist monks, to put my ordinary concerns aside, to get away from it all including the Internet and reconnect with my inner self. I wasn't disappointed.
"What was it like?" a friend asked when I got back yesterday.
"Like honey," I said.
It was slow. Time expanded in a miraculous way. I had plenty of time to read "St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)" , a book I always meant to read but never got around to. Time too to take long walks and long naps.
It was sweet, the atmosphere one of concentrated holiness and peace. The meals delicious and taken in silence while we listened to tapes of John Shea, a gifted spiritual writer on the Gospel of St.Luke.
It was beautiful. The monks, no matter the age, all work to make the community self-supporting. At St. Joseph's they are most famous for their Trappist Preserves.
No matter what they wear as they work and some wear blue jeans,
when they gather for song and prayers, seven times a day, they put on their monk's robes.
And when they sing ancient psalms and antiphons, they are as one, joining with monks around the world and in ages past in a timeless singing of praise and thanksgiving. To hear them them is to be lifted up in a sublime experience of beauty.
It's said that monasteries are powerhouses of prayer and spiritual energy. All I know is there is no better place to recharge.
Too busy with cooking, baking and family gatherings to post before Christmas, I hope you all had a wonderful and joyful Christmas.
I've also very much enjoyed the many best wishes and special Christmas links that so many bloggers have posted.
Since I believe in celebrating all twelve days of Christmas, at least through the New Year, I have for you a few little gifts that you may have overlooked in the rush to get ready for the first day of Christmas.
First, An Arabic Christmas Carol (Byzantine Hymn of the Nativity) with gorgeous images from Syria, Egypt and Bethlehem you've never seen before.
Today, is born of a virgin, He who holds the whole creation in his hand
He whose essence none can touch is bound in swaddling clothes as a Child
God, who in the beginning established the heavens, lies in a manger.
An Arabic Christmas Carol was written in response to the The Hymn by Chaldean Catholic Priest-Martyr which you'll find on YouTube.
I'm pleased that so many Iraqi Christians packed the churches for Christmas Mass, which would have been unthinkable just a year ago.
"Last year was the year of misery, desperation and sadness, But this year is better. So many people attend the Mass and you can see that their praying was joyful."
Many Muslims joined Christians in celebrating this most joyful day with the newly installed Roman Catholic Cardinal Delly, patriarch of Iraq's ancient Chaldean Church who said during the service
"Iraq is like a garden and its beauty is the variety of its flowers and scent,"
Among those attending were several Shiite Muslim sheiks, including Raad Tamimi, who said they had come "in solidarity with our Christian brothers . . . to plant the seed of love again in the new Iraq." Tamimi, a tribal leader, was excited to shake the cardinal's hand and asked that a photo be taken with his cellphone.
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Jameel Hamouda, 55, who attended the Christmas services, said four of his family members had left Iraq, but that he was hopeful they would return.
"This is the first time the Muslim figures like sheiks and Shiite clerics attended the Mass," Hamouda said. "I feel happy and my soul filled with peace. God willing, there will be a union."
In this video, the beautiful Majida Al Roumi sings Silent Night in English, Arabic & French, but you have to turn the volume way up.
Surprisingly, the day after Christmas is celebrated in the Catholic Church as the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the young Church.
Gil Bailie says that more Christians have been killed in the past 100 years than the sum total killed in all the years since Jesus Christ was born some 2000 years ago.
Sadly, many of the Catholics in the Mid East face persecution. The war in Iraq and follow-on extremist violence of some Muslim extremists made many more Christians martyrs and caused tens, if not hundreds of thousands to flee the country for Syria and Jordan and only now, after the surge, are some beginning to return;
And in the Holy Land, most of the Christians have fled Bethlehem and Gaza's Christians, Living in Fear
So this Christmas, it's good news that writing from prison, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif, one of Al Qaeda's senior theologians, is calling on his followers to end their military jihad.
Just where do the laws of gravity and physics come from?
Paul Davies on Taking Science on Faith
science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
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until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
The nature and power of music is grand, awesome and ultimately a mystery.
Dr. Oliver Sacks writes about people with "musical misalignments" that affect their professional and daily lives, like the composer of atonal music who has with "corny" and "tonal" musical hallucinations playing over and over in his brain, what the Germans call earworm.
"Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" (Oliver Sacks)
New York Times reviewer,Michiko Kakutani writes that Dr Sacks is able
to convey both the fathomless mysteries of the human brain and the equally profound mysteries of music: an art that is “completely abstract and profoundly emotional,” devoid of the power to “represent anything particular or external,” but endowed with the capacity to express powerful, inchoate moods and feelings.
Could it be that Life itself is a musical adventure as Gagdad Bob writes in Songs in the Key of Jesus
each of us represents an unrepeatable melodic line that wends itself through the four great chords constituting the song of existence.
Believing that everything that exists can be explained in material terms is materialism and
Materialism is a philosophy by the tone-deaf and for the tin-eared.
He quotes his own book, "One Cosmos Under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind & Spirit" to say
if you really want to know reality in its fullness, "it is no longer adequate to be just a materialistic banjo-picker sitting barefoot on a little bridge of dogma; rather, one must have at least a nodding acquaintance with a few other instruments in order to play the cosmic suite. The universe is like a holographic, multidimensional musical score that must be read, understood, and performed. Like the score of a symphony, it can support diverse interpretations, but surely one of them cannot be 'music does not exist.'"
No one understands the power of music better than Pope Benedict.
The Pope is considering a dramatic overhaul in order to force a return to sacred music.
The Second Vatican Council declared
The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even that that of any other art.The main reason for this pre-eminence is that, as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy ... the Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy; therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services."
Young people who have never heard Gregorian chant are amazed to learn that it is the official music of the Catholic Church. Australian Tony Vaughn says
The interest in Chant over the last four or five years has been amazing. Young people want to know more about this incredibly beautiful and spiritual music, and where they can experience and learn it.
At Mont Saint Michel, the beauty of the traditional liturgy is Making Pilgrims out of Tourists
for the tourists who visit, Father De Froberville explained that "the age of anti-clericalism seems to be over. .... those younger than 60 are open to Christianity in a way not seen for a long time. They think it's cool.
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It is the richness of our liturgy that keeps them interested.
Wasn't it Albert Einstein who said
Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
“At some point in the nineteen-sixties, Hell disappeared. No one could say for certain when this happened. First it was there, then it wasn’t.”
The Catholic Novel is Alive and Well in England by Marian Crowe explores Catholic novels in First Things.
Why Catholic Novels?
They provide an experience somewhat akin to reading those weighty Victorian novels, imbued with moral seriousness and ethical concern, in which human acts had momentous import in a meaningful universe. Christian readers have a special interest in these novels, however, for they bring to life doctrines rendered insipid and prosaic due to long familiarity and frequent repetition in creeds and liturgy.
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At this point I need to define what I mean by the term Catholic novel. I do not mean simply a novel by a Catholic or one with some Catholic material, but a work of substantial literary merit in which Catholic theology and thought have a significant presence within the narrative, with genuine attention to the inner spiritual life, often drawing on Catholicism’s rich liturgical and sacramental symbolism and enriched by the analogical Catholic imagination.
The Catholic imagination, says Andrew Greeley, is one that is sacramental, that “sees created reality as a ‘sacrament,’ that is, a revelation of the presence of God.” Some novels are deeply engaged with Catholic material, but almost exclusively in a negative or hostile sense. Such novels are sometimes considered Catholic novels, and some Catholics find it bracing and expansive to enter a fictional space that confronts them with the shadow side of the Church. Yet the Catholic novels that most engage my interest are those that include some kind of sense that Catholicism, no matter how flawed the institutional Church and no matter how weak and sinful individual Catholics, is a locus of truth.
If you know about the English Catholic novelists like Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh and probably about the American Catholic novelists like Flannery O’Connor, J.F. Powers, and Walker Percy, Crowe's piece will give you many new authors to explore.
Last week, I read and quite enjoyed the character of
"Cardinal Galsworthy" (Edward R. F. Sheehan), a book by a former reporter for The New York Times that's become a minor cult classic. That I had the chance to have dinner with the author last week has nothing to do with my hearty recommendation.
The most watched movie in history is the Jesus film, having been seen by more than 2 billion people and translated into more than 760 languages and dialects. By July 1, 2007, it's been seen by 5 billion people.
With that success, it's not a surprise that talking bibles and cellphone bibles are being used by Christian missionaries to expand the audience and influence of the world's largest religion. The Washington Post tells the story of Plugging the Planet into the Word.
In Cambodia, flooded with missionaries since the early 1990s after a decade of war and the Khmer Rouge left the country devastated with almost 2 million killed or dead of starvation, the director of the National Buddhist Institute said
We are getting used to globalization, but it is important to maintain our identity. For centuries and centuries we have been Buddhists.
But, he added, people have a right to choose their religion, and the government is grateful for the medicine, food and manpower that Christian groups are bringing. As for the Christian literacy program, he said, "If Buddhists worry about it, they should teach children to read, too."
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Im's father, Sum Tel Thoen, 37, a fisherman, said he didn't care that Christians were teaching his daughter. "It doesn't matter if my daughter is Christian. My focus is education," he said. "I can't read or write. I want my daughter to."
What is the appeal of Christianity to Muslims? It is impossible to understand global politics in the developing world these days without understanding the role and force of religion.
Why Muslims Follow Jesus. The results of a recent survey of converts from Islam.
In fact, and perhaps counterintuitively, the number of new Christians each year outstrips the number of new Muslims, even though the annual growth rate is higher for Muslims (1.81 percent) than for Christians (1.23 percent). Over the last century, Christians have grown at a slower rate than have Muslims, with Muslims increasing from 12 percent to 21 percent of the global population during that time. But this is hardly surprising. Christianity has more total followers than Islam.
The top reasons why.
1. Seeing a lived faith. The lifestyle of Christians was the most important factor.
2. The power of God in answered prayers and healing. Dissatisfaction at the type of Islam they had experienced.
3. The gospel message, especially its assurance of salvation and forgiveness. Particularly attractive was the love expressed through the life and teachings of Jesus.
4. Subconscious influences
it's hard not to notice that Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Bangladeshis, and Algerians became more responsive after enduring Muslim political turmoil or attempts to impose Islamic law.
Even now, Chinese Christians who now number 80 million are rapidly growing and expected to quintuple over the next three decades to embrace one-third of the population.
Islam in China remains the religion of the economic losers, whose geographic remoteness isolates them from the economic transformation on the coasts. Christianity, by contrast, has burgeoned among the new middle class in China's cities, where the greatest wealth and productivity are concentrated.
Chinese missionaries believe they are called are now being trained to evangelize the Muslims back to Jerusalem.
The most audacious even dream of carrying the gospel beyond the borders of China, along the old Silk Road into the Muslim world, in a campaign known as "Back to Jerusalem". As [Time correspondent David] Aikman explains in Jesus in Beijing, some Chinese evangelicals and Pentecostals believe that the basic movement of the gospel for the last 2,000 years has been westward: from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Europe, from Europe to America, and from America to China. Now, they believe, it's their turn to complete the loop by carrying the gospel to Muslim lands, eventually arriving in Jerusalem. Once that happens, they believe, the gospel will have been preached to the entire world.
Thousands are already in the Mideast as technicians and ordinary workers and many practice evangelism on the side.
A stirring depiction of Christianity by Charles Chaput, the archbishop of Denver who delivered a talk on Renewing the Church, Converting the World.
To be a Christian is to believe in history.
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Christianity, thus, means believing definite things about history and about our own respective places in history. We don’t just profess belief in the Incarnation. We say we believe that God took flesh at a precise moment in time and in a definite place. Pontius Pilate and Mary are mentioned by name in the creed—and the reference to Mary, his mother, guarantees Christ’s humanity, while the reference to Pilate, who condemned him to death, guarantees his historicity.
All this ensures that we can never reduce the Incarnation to an abstract concept, a metaphor, or a pretty idea. It ensures that we can never regard Jesus Christ as some kind of ideal archetype or mythical figure. He was truly a man and truly God. And once he had a place he called home on this earth. There’s something else, too. We believe that this historical event, which happened more than 2,000 years ago, represents a personal intervention by God “for us men and for our salvation.” God entered history for you and me, for all humanity.
These are extraordinary claims. To be a Christian means believing that you are part of a vast historical project. And it’s not our project. It’s God’s. We believe that since the beginning of time God has been working out his own hidden purposes in the history of nations and in the biography of every person. He’s still unfolding his purposes today, and each of us here has a necessary part to play in his divine plan. Again, no other religion makes anywhere near these kinds of claims about the meaning of human life—and not just “human life” in general, but each and every individual human life.
I've read somewhere that spirituality is most like music.
Some are immediately swept away by the music of Bach and Beethoven. Many must cultivate an ear for classical music. Others, tone deaf will never get it.
Now via Maggie's Farm comes a sermon from a pastor who says that people believe more than they know they believe, that faith is a way of seeing.
If you say that seeing is believing, you will never be a great scientist; you will not be a creative artist; you will have nothing but superficial relationships, and here is the last thing: If you say that seeing is believing, you will never be a leader.
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Leadership doesn't say, "Prove it to me and then I'll give you my support." Leadership comes in and says, "With faith and trust and openness, we can really make this thing work."
Four things. What is it really that I have said to you? Let me in good homiletical style tell you what I have just told you. It is this: faith is a way of seeing. St. Augustine put it perfectly. He said, "To have faith is to believe what you can't see and the reward of faith is to see what you believe."
When anthropologists look at religion, in particular Rene Girard, they see the sacred as a human universal.
Girard has reminded us of truths that we would rather forget—in particular the truth that religion is not primarily about God but about the sacred, and that the experience of the sacred can be suppressed, ignored and even desecrated (the routine tribute paid to it in modern societies) but never destroyed. Always the need for it will arise, for it is in the nature of rational beings like us to live at the edge of things, experiencing our alienation and longing for the sudden reversal that will once again join us to the centre.
The Sacred and the Human by Roger Scruton
From Camille Paglia's lecture on Religion and the Arts in America
I would argue that the route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion. Let me make my premises clear: I am a professed atheist and a pro-choice libertarian Democrat.
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When a society becomes all-consumed in the provincial minutiae of partisan politics (as has happened in the US over the past twenty years), all perspective is lost. Great art can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. But a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy.
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For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people's faiths is boring and adolescent. The New Age movement, to which I belong, was a distillation of the 1960s' multicultural attraction to world religions, but it has failed thus far to produce important work in the visual arts.1 The search for spiritual meaning has been registering in popular culture instead through science fiction, as in George Lucas' six-film Star Wars saga, with its evocative master myth of the “Force.” But technology for its own sake is never enough. It will always require supplementation through cultivation in the arts.
Her advice for art lovers - Always speak with respect of religion;
conservatives - need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture;
progressives - must start recognizing the spiritual poverty of contemporary secular humanism and reexamine the way that liberalism too often now automatically defines human aspiration and human happiness in reductively economic terms
Tony Snow found unexpected blessings in cancer.
Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered
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The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense.
This tiny fragment is a receipt acknowledging the payment of .75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylonia.
So why is it being hailed as the most important find in Biblical archaeology in 100 years?
Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament
The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years.
But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.
Who watches over Western Civilization?
Back in the 20s, Charles Coulombe writes, the German General, the British House of Lords, the Academie Francaise and the Holy See were thought enough to prevent the takeover of Europe by Communism. Today, only the Holy See remains an influential institution at a time when threats to Western Civilization come from Islam and the forces of secularism that threaten the expression of national identities.
He asks Could the Latin Mass Save Western Civilization?, an outstanding essay.
The truth is that the Catholic Church is a bellwether for the health of Western Civilization in general—a sort of canary chanting in the coal mine of culture.
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When, in 1971, news came out that the traditional Latin Mass was to be scrapped, a primarily non-Catholic group of English artists and writers protested to Paul VI.
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Fifty-six of the most prominent and celebrated English writers, artists, and musicians of the time signed it --- among them Vladimir Ashkenazy and Yehudi Menuhin (pace Mr. Foxman), Graham Greene, Robert Graves and Cecil Day-Lewis (onetime poet laureate and father of Daniel), Iris Murdoch, and, in the end most importantly, Agatha Christie. The importance of the last signatory lay in the fact that the then-Pontiff was a devotee of her mysteries, and so granted her request. The resulting permission for the Old Mass to be continued in England to some degree has therefore been dubbed the “Agatha Christie Indult.”
What these illustrious folk understood, better than many theologians, was that the health of the Catholic Church was and is integral to the health of the West. If our civilization is to withstand its current slate of internal and external foes—throughout Europe and the Diaspora—it must regain its hold on the things that first enkindled its spirit. Restoration of liturgical sanity and unity within the Catholic Church will inevitably have a beneficial “trickle-down” effect far beyond the Church’s borders. Those who prize the health of the West must welcome Benedict XVI’s action, regardless of their own creed.
Keep your eyes on Rome.
On July 7, Pope Benedict XVI issued a Moto Propio saying in essence that both the Latin form of the Mass, the one blessed by Pope John XXIII using the 1962 Roman Missal and the New Mass of the Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI following the Second Vatican Council (novus ordo) are equally valid, the former "extraordinary" and the latter "ordinary" and can be used at just about any time. The Latin Mass was never forbidden or even changed, but following the Second Vatican Council, it could only be offered under special dispensation of the bishop, a requirement no longer.
Harvey Mansfield talks about the soul and the importance of naming people and things in their individuality in the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.
First he introduces us to the notion of thumos that Plato and Aristotle talked about - that part of the soul that makes us want to insist on our own importance.
The biology of Plato and Aristotle, unlike modern biology, takes account of the soul, the sense of human importance. Modern biology saves lives, but the old biology understands them better. The notion of thumos reminds us of our animality because it is visible to the naked eye when we observe animals. Modern biology uses the microscope and uncovers chemical and neurological counterparts to thumos, which actually distract us from analysis of the behavior they are meant to explain. We rest satisfied when we have pronounced the word testosterone and fail to observe as carefully as old-fashioned naked-eye science. Sociobiology has come up with the concept of turf, an unnoticed reference to thumos that we all use today to designate the marking out of one’s own. But in human beings, one’s turf is one’s family, one’s party, one’s country, one’s principle.
..... Having eliminated the soul, modern science cannot understand the body in its most important aspect, which is its capacity for self-importance. Modern biology, particularly the theory of evolution, is based on the overriding concern for survival in all life. This is surely wrong in regard to human life. If you cannot look around you and must insist on indulging a taste for the primitive, you have only to visit the ruins of an ancient people and ponder how much of its GNP was devoted to religion, to its sense of the meaning of human life rather than mere survival.
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Coming to religion, we arrive in the realm of what is particular and individual. Science and religion are nowhere more opposed than in regard to human importance. Religion declares for the importance of humans and seeks to specify what it is.
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True religion shows its concern for the human species by addressing individual human beings. Science for its part speaks against the special importance of any object of science, including human beings, and in the theory of evolution it seeks to erode the difference between human beings and other animals.
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Literature takes on the big questions of human life that science ignores—what to do about a boring husband, for example.
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Altogether thumos is one basis for a human science aware of the body but not bound to it, a science with soul and taught by poetry well interpreted.
"What? You couldn't stretch to matching pants?"
That's what Phil McCord thought the Pope would say to him when he met the Pope with the wrong pair of pants the dry cleaner gave him.
McCord was in Rome for the canonisation ceremony for Mother Theodore Guerin, the former hospital administrator who was declared a saint by Pope Benedict XVI.
Just over six years ago his eye was healed from a serious illness after he prayed to Mother Theodore Guerin, the founder of the convent where he works.
At least 12 doctors were consulted about his remarkable recovery, and none could find a medical explanation for his cure.
The Catholic Church subsequently ruled it was a miracle.
As this was the second miracle attributed to Mother Theodore Guerin - and the Church says that it takes two miracles for a holy person to qualify for sainthood - the former hospital administrator's miracle meant Mother Guerin would be made into a saint.
As a good follow-up to my earlier post on Youths Fear Winding Up Alone, take a look at this New York Times piece of Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus.
Peter Gomes who's spent 37 years at Harvard where being seen as religious often meant being dismissed as not very bright
There is probably more active religious life now than there has been in 100 years.
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A survey on the spiritual lives of college students, the first of its kind, showed in 2004 that more than two-thirds of 112,000 freshmen surveyed said they prayed, and that almost 80 percent believed in God. Nearly half of the freshmen said they were seeking opportunities to grow spiritually, according to the survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Compared with 10 or 15 years ago, “there is a greater interest in religion on campus, both intellectually and spiritually,” said Charles L. Cohen, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
While students may be learning more, Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University says the deep ignorance of Americans about the world's religions is dangerous.
"If you think Sunni and Shia are the same because they're both Muslim, and you've been told Islam is about peace, you won't understand what's happening in Iraq. If you get into an argument about gay rights or capital punishment and someone claims to quote the Bible or the Quran, do you know it's so?
Americans get an 'F' in religion.
Sixty percent of Americans can't name five of the Ten Commandments, and 50% of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married.
Knowledge about the basics of the Bible and the core beliefs and stories of other religions are necessary, he says if you are to be an 'empowered citizen' and understand what's going on in the world.
Prothero's solution is to require middle-schoolers to take a course in world religions and high schoolers to take one on the Bible. Biblical knowledge also should be melded into history and literature courses where relevant. He wants all college undergrads to take at least one course in religious studies.
Or if you are pressed for time, you could read his book
"Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't" (Stephen Prothero)
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.
Albert Einstein
From Einstein & Faith by Walter isaacson, an excerpt from his newly published book Einstein: His Life and Universe.
Below is the Albert Einstein Memorial in front of the National Academy of Science in Washington, sculpted by my friend, Bob Berks. Einstein is contemplating the universe spread out before his feet.
Andrew Bolt's Easter Message A surprising message from an agnostic.
..when I see a Western artist mock Christ, I see an artist advertising not his courage but his cowardice – by not daring to mock what would threaten him more.
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It's no accident that we feel safer insulting Christians than trashing almost anyone else. This is a religion that's always preached tolerance, reason and non-violence.
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This is one reason why I, an agnostic, will today do what I do every Easter, and play Bach's divine St Matthew Passion while I sit for a while and give thanks.
I will be thanking again not only a preacher of astonishing moral clarity and courage, but one who inspired a faith that has brought us unparalleled gifts...
Sister Marie Simon Pierre is a simple nun with an incredible story she's prepared to tell the world, a story that well lead to the beatification of Pope John Paul II.
Under the Vatican's saint-making process, the first step towards beatification requires that a candidate must either be a martyr or perform one verfiable posthumous miracle.
Sister Marie Simon Pierre was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2001, a condition that worsened over the years and felt a strong affinity to Pope John Paul II who suffered from the same disease. Both she and her community of the Little Sisters of Catholic Maternities prayed for her healing and for the intercession of John Paul.
Weeks after his death, she awoke one night completely cured.
International Herald Tribune
Simple nun, 'no star', at center of Pope John Paul Beatification
London Times Online
The discreet little nun who could speed John Paul to Sainthood
by the time the Pope died in April 2005, she was unable to stand or walk. She had stopped working as a nurse in a Paris maternity hospital and was confined to office activities.
Two months later she tried to write down John Paul II’s name as she prayed to him for help “but all that came out was a scribble,” she said in an account sent to the Vatican.
However, that evening, the “miracle” occurred.
“I fell asleep and, waking up several hours later, f