Monday, December 5, 2005
Blogrolling
As musical tastes change
Nibblonian: You are the last hope of the universe.I was thinking of this the other day because I realized that it's time to clear our some of our old CDs from our music collection. I listened to a lot of Dave Matthews in college -- in fact, every time I hear "Crash" I'm instantly transported to the semester I stayed up late every night trying to pull together my design work for Taming of the Shrew... yikes. But a few months ago Darwin and I had a long drive and so popped in a Dave Matthews CD. It just didn't hold up -- how many booze-fueled rambling jam sessions with adolescent moonings about sex and drugs are really that interesting, in the final analysis? I can't remember why I found it so fascinating -- perhaps it was Boyd Tinsley's rock violin riffs. Sic transit gloria.
Fry: So I really am important? How I feel when I'm drunk is correct?
Nibblonian: Yes - except the Dave Matthews Band doesn't rock.
It's also time to find a safer place for the music we want to keep. The girls are veritable raiders in their search for new items to destroy, and several of our old favorites have become scratched beyond playability. My worst shock, however, came just the other day as I was doing a job upstairs. Hearing an indecipherable high-pitched conversation coming from the stereo, I wondered what DVD the girls had just put on, or if they'd managed to work the cable box and turn on the TV. As I was turning to head downstairs and check it out, the speakers started blaring the soundtrack from Pulp Fiction!
I flew downstairs, shrieking myself, and snatched it out of the CD player, wondering a) how on earth the girls happened to root out that one CD from the furthest, highest pile, and b) if they would remember any of the words they heard from the little string of profanities that starts off the thing. So far neither girl has announced a robbery and told all the m*** f***s to put their hands up... (Mommy shudders).
Yep, time to prune the collection and focus on quality.
UPDATE: given that as I typed up this entry the VERY SAME THING happened again, you can be sure about the first CD to go.
I remember Mrs. Darwin!
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL MEMORY OF YOU AND ME.
It can be anything you want--good or bad--BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.
When you're finished, post this paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.
The stuff people "remember" about Julie is so outrageous that I'm curious to see what fond memories of Darwin or myself you all can dredge up from the depths of your lying little hearts.
Sunday, December 4, 2005
Forgiving Her Mother/Murderer
From the very beginning, Miss Jessen survived in spite of herself. Her mother, Tina, a 17-year-old single woman, decided to have an abortion by saline injection when she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant (there is no legal time limit for abortion in America).
But in the early morning of April 6, 1977, the abortion failed. Against the odds, the baby had lived. A nurse called the emergency services and the child was taken to hospital. She weighed only 2lb and the abortionist had to sign her birth certificate.
Then, at 17 months, Miss Jessen was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, caused by her brain being starved of oxygen during the termination. "The doctors said I was in a horrible state," she says. "They said I would never be able to lift up my head, but eventually I did.
"Then they said I would never be able to sit up straight, but I sat up straight. Then they said I would never be able to walk, but by the age of three I was walking with a frame and leg braces." She pauses before adding: "I have a little bit of feistiness in me."...
Does she ever blame her mother for leaving her with this condition? "I've never been angry with her because she's a stranger," Miss Jessen says. "She hasn't said she's sorry and I know that she had another abortion after me. But I don't feel sad or bitter because we can choose to overcome and be sweet or we can overcome and be angry. I want to be the former."
Her biological mother has remarried and now lives in Southern California, and although she has seen her daughter on television, Miss Jessen has never contacted her.
Perhaps, after enduring the trauma of four operations in her first 10 years - three to resolve problems with her Achilles tendon, the fourth to splice the spastic nerves in her spine together - the pain of sitting down face to face with the mother who tried to kill her would be too great.
"I feel that I have my mother already - my adoptive mother, Diana [who adopted her when she was four]," she says, with quiet firmness. "At this point, I don't want to be in touch with my biological mother. But it's not that I'm angry with her. I forgive her totally."
It becomes clear that forgiveness has not come easily. Miss Jessen's earliest memory is of having tantrums on the floor of her foster mother's house.
She also remembers a tremendous fear of fire. "I think that was the result of what had happened," she says. "A saline injection abortion effectively burns you in your mother's womb."
She was bullied at school and recalls crying at the taunts of other children. When she was 16, a stranger came up to her and told her that children with disabilities were a burden on society. "I just looked at her, smiled and knew she was wrong," Miss Jessen says.
It is not surprising, then, that however much Miss Jessen claims to have no bitterness, there is still a slight sadness in the downturned corners of her blue-green eyes.
"My mother made a decision that she thought affected only her, and yet every day I bear the result of that decision through my cerebral palsy," she says. "I'm not saying that in condemnation, but in truth.
"It's more comfortable for people to think of abortion as a political decision, or a right. But I am not a right. I am a human being. I am the reality. Gently I put the question, if abortion is about women's rights, then where were mine? There was no radical feminist screaming for my rights on that day.
"That is why I want to live my life with integrity, having lived what I profess. My job is not to change your mind [if you are pro-abortion]. My job is to present the truth and leave you to decide."...
More than 180,000 women in England and Wales had terminations last year and British law allows for a termination up to 24 weeks. After that, an abortion can only be justified on the grounds of a "serious handicap".... Last week, a study found that 50 babies a year live through termination in Britain.
For Miss Jessen, however, any time limit is irrelevant. "I don't believe in abortion, simply put," she says. "I do believe in adoption. The arguments for abortion are falling one by one.
<>Now, in one wing of the hospital, doctors are killing children in the womb while in another wing, they are desperately trying to save a baby of exactly the same size in a different womb. It makes no sense. Is my value based on what I can and can't do? If so, we're living in a very scary time."...
Some twelve years ago, I remember seeing on the news a story about Gianna (unless it was someone else who suffered cerebral palsy from the same kind of botched abortion -- I don't recall the name, and since we have far more late term abortions here than in the UK, I'm sure there must be much more than 50 survivors a year) testifying at senate hearings about an abortion bill. Our brave and open-minded Senator Feinstein made a big deal of walking out and refusing to hear her testimony -- saying she was shocked that pro-lifers would try to grand stand in such a way to deprive women of their rights.
There are those who have the charity or optimism about human nature to hope that hell is empty. I confess that I do not.
Dante is best understood as placing historical personalities in hell, not from a conviction that he knew their eternal fates, but because they exemplified certain sins in the popular knowledge of the day. Thus, a modern version of Dante might find Nixon and Clinton together in the trench of Falsifiers in nether hell -- not because the author knew they were there, but because they exemplified lying in public life to most readers. Similarly, in my own mind, Feinstein's refusal to face the victims of her policies seems a worthy qualifier for the lead-lined golden cloaks of the circle of the hypocrites.
In like fashion, I feel certain there is now a swamp of saline in the River Styx, where the murderers of today's Holy Innocents are pushed down into the bubbling mire by demons wearing NARAL and Planned Parenthood buttons.
Hell is indeed a very real place. We create if piece by piece with each sin we commit. There is no torture in the pit of Dis that we are not the inventors of. Dante's brilliance is that the punishments of hell are not externally imposed punishments, but the physicalization of the sins themselves. Hell is nothing more or less than the full realization and experience of the sins that put one there.
Saturday, December 3, 2005
Christmas Bustle and Holiday Stress
Come to think of it, Mary and Joseph must have had a hard time reflecting and waiting for Christ to come also. I bet they would have enjoyed some peace and quiet preparing for the baby. Instead they had to pack up, travel under less than ideal conditions amidst the hustle and bustle of a huge crowd, found nowhere to stay (and likely nothing much really good to eat) ... and then had a newborn baby to care for ... while Joseph had no work coming in to support the family. (Sounds strikingly like a modern-day Christmas nightmare doesn't it?) I bet in spite of all their holiness they were worrying plenty about the realities of daily life ... and probably because of all their holiness they still were full of joy and able to contemplate the true miracle in which they were privileged to take part (at least that's how my mind's eye vision works on the scenario).
Now, I deplore the commercialism of Christmas as much as the next St. Blog's Parishioner, but as those who are called to live in the world but not of it, doesn't it do us good to have a little something to resist? What better way to learn to sacrifice with a joyful spirit than to observe Advent and Christmas faithfully while not cracking down on the grandparents for buying a pile of gifts for the kiddies because they love them so? (Unless of course they're giving Barbies, at which I draw the line on grounds of taste, not expense.) I'm not much of a gift-giver myself, but it would be a true act of penance and a test of my generosity to buy presents for everyone in my family and get them there on time. For some, this comes naturally because they actually have a joyful spirit of giving. (Though most people I know who fall into this category also have far more disposable income than we do, so perhaps it's also a matter of sharing blessings.)
I'm not talking about those who give gifts and practice Christmas cheer because that's just what you do in December. If it's not a religious holiday for you, then don't celebrate Christmas and save yourself the stress! But there are many for whom Christmas as a religious observance is entirely compatible with the celebratory aspect of the holiday: lavish giving of gifts and all-out home decoration and parties galore. That's not the way I prefer to do it, but I do need to step back from the idea that these aren't valid or authentic ways to express the joy of the season.
Friday, December 2, 2005
Why I Don't Believe in a Young Earth
Suppose--just for the sake of argument--you were convinced that an honest reading of the Tradition of the Church required you to believe that the initial chapters of Genesis were historical. Would you be able to do it, or do you think that Darwinism is so irrefutable that you would have to abandon or radically redetermine your faith?I think this is the question that worries a lot of Catholics without a strong scientific background as they watch the evolution/creationist/ID debate on Catholic blogs. Here are these otherwise solid Christians taking common cause with the likes of the Richard Dawkins against their brother Christians. What gives? Are these folks really Christian? Do they care more about science than about faith? Do they only accept Catholicism so long as it agrees with science?
To the extent that one is confident that one's scientific understanding of the physical world is accurate, a religion's agreement or rejection of science can certainly affect one's judgment of the religion. Augustine, in the Confessions, writes of how he was initially leary of Christianity because some of the apologists he heard endorsed cosmological models he knew to be false. Once again, one of the factors that caused him to reject Manichaeanism was that his questions about physics and cosmology were put off with cheap rhetorical tactics rather than knowledge and substantive explanation.
The reason I would be troubled if I "were convinced that an honest reading of the Tradition of the Church required you to believe that the initial chapters of Genesis were historical" is not because I think that "Darwinism is so irrefutable that you would have to abandon or radically redetermine your faith" but rather that a whole host of fields from evolutionary biology and paleontology to geology, astronomy, physics and more all point to a very old universe. It is certainly true that I find the scientific evidence for the descent with modification of biological organisms to be quite convincing, but a truly literal/historical reading of Genesis such as Anglican Bishop Usher proposed in the 19th century (and which, I would argue, represented very much a 19th century approach to the Bible, at odds with the tradition of the Early Fathers and Medieval scholars) requires much more than the rejection of the details of the current evolutionary synthesis.
For instance, we know that light travels at a set speed of approximately 186,282 miles per second. For various reasons subject to fairly rigorous mathematical proof, we believe that various astronomical objects that we can observer are hundreds of thousands or millions of light years (the distance that light can travel in one year) away from us. Were the universe only 6-10 thousand years old, we should not be able to see those objects. (This is but one example among literally thousands that point to an ancient universe.)
If someone asked me to believe that the universe was created ten thousand years ago, he would be asking me to believe that the physical world, as examined with our God-given senses and faculty of reason, is intensely misleading. Not just difficult to understand, but directly misleading.
Some suggested that these apparent inconsistencies are a mystery, to which faith must be applied. The Eucharist, after all, does not look like the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. You could perform no scientific test that would allow you to determine that a consecrated host is different from an unconsecrated one. Yet Christ, the Bible and the Church all tell us that while retaining the physical accidents of bread and wine, the consecrated bread and wine are in substance the body and blood of Our Lord. And this I believe, and believe without question. Should the necessity come, I pray that I would die in and for that believe in union with all the holy martyrs throughout history.
However, I would maintain that the Eucharist is fundamentally different from the question of the creation of the universe. Christ told his disciples that unless they ate his flesh and drank his blood there would be no life in him. His disciples said "this is a hard saying" and some left him over it. Christ specifically presented the mystery of the Eucharist as something which runs contrary to our perceptions yet is necessary for our salvation. If Christ has put forward the doctrine that the earth was created within the last 10,000 years (contrary to all appearances) as a mystery of our salvation, then as in the case of the Eucharist we would be called to set aside the evidence of reason and our sense and believe Him. However, he did not. Nor, honestly, can I imagine why a young earth would be a necessary mystery of salvation -- unless one adheres to what are traditionally Protestant standards of biblical interpretation in which the "plain meaning" of every passage of the Bible is necessarily true.
Circling back to Jeff's original question, I hope this at least provides some understanding of how I (as an orthodox Catholic who also is very attached to the findings of modern science) look at the issue. Honestly, the question of what I would think if the Tradition of the Church required a literal/historical interpretation of Genesis barely makes sense to me, since it seems to me that one of the great signs of wisdom in the Church (as opposed to the many sects that have broken off from her) is that she melds faith and reason so well in this regard -- and has throughout her history. It's not so much that I find the Fathers and Doctors of the Church silent in regard to whether it is possible that the history and cosmology of the universe are not literally as described in Genesis, but rather that it seems to me that they are nearly universally in agreement (when they address the matter) that Genesis is not primarily a historical or scientific narrative. Aquinas and Augustine both seem to agree that it is not only possible but indeed likely that the history and cosmology of Genesis are not literally true.
I am certainly willing to believe mysteries of the faith which are beyond any scientific proof -- and contrary to any scientific data -- (such as the Eucharist) but I simply cannot see how the creation of the universe is a mystery of this sort.
Goblet of Fire
Overall, quite good, I thought. Patrick Boyle (composer for all Kenneth Branagh films and also for Gosford Park, among others) was a nice replacement for the traditional John Williams score. Cutting down the second longest of the books, I thought the director/screenwriter made a good choice to drop a number of entire sub-plots rather than trying to cram everything in as the first couple movies did.
As the shadows lengthen around Harry and it becomes evident that another dark time or magical civil war is descending in this and the next two books, it strikes me how lucky and unusual we are in our current time, in that we live in comparatively peaceful times. The WSJ had a review of a new biography of Siegfried Sassoon, and it struck me how much rougher a time someone had living from the 1880s to the 1960s than people born in the 60s and 70s here in the US. There's no telling what lies ahead, but despite the cultural and moral decline (and the looming threat of Islamofascism) we really do have it terribly easy, and every sign of continuing to have it so.
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