God gets up off the couch

I was sitting on the couch, idly listening to the big girls play outside while baby napped in her swing, and thinking about how lazy I felt. Babs came and pounded on the back door, but I didn't move because I knew that a) if it were something important she'd be yelling; and b) Noogs can open the door for Babs if necessary. There's a hierarchy of movement at work here: for a simple knock I stay put, for a certain tone of voice I get up after a minute, for a certain cry I'll get up right then, and then there are the screams that have me setting records sprinting to the door (and nursing pulled muscles a few hours later).

And I was idly contemplating how fortunate we are that God doesn't sit around on the beatific couch listening to our inner two-year-old knocking at the door and think, "This one isn't worth getting up for." No, God stands at the kitchen window of heaven, loading the celestial dish washer (because cleanliness is next to godliness), and watching his children play on the swingset of earthly life. Then, when a mishap befalls, he dashes out the back door of his compassion to comfort and kiss the scraped knees and ant bites as we turn to him and ask, "Can I be good?" And he doesn't get frustrated by that.

And as I was idly turning this over in my mind, Noogs walked in, stark naked, holding a bucket, and slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

I'll ice those aching muscles tonight.

Faith vs. Mystery

Every week on the way to our parish, we drive by a tiny Episcopalian church with a large sign out front that says: "Where false certainty ends... There true mystery begins!"

Now, I try not to go in for a lot of inter-denominational mocking, because it doesn't tend to go anywhere productive, but ever since this sign showed up a year or two ago, it's struck me that it summarizes a lot of what's wrong with a certain brand of Christianity.

Certainly, there are elements of the faith which are beyond human understanding. The trinity. Transubstantiation. The human and divine natures of Christ. These are Mysteries of the faith in the sense that we know of them only through revelation and they cannot be fully understood in human terms. (Which is why they provide fodder for all the juiciest heresies.)

However, some Christians are enthusiastic about are about mystery for its own sake. I've known several very earnest Christians who assert that 'faith' is that set of things which cannot be known by reason. Thus, one gets statements like "You can't 'know' God exists, because then you wouldn't have faith." or "My problem with transubstantiation is that it's so intellectual. We shouldn't have to know how Christ is present in the Eucharist so long as we have faith that he is."

Certainly, we 'know' things by revelation in a different sense than we 'know' mathematical axioms, historical analysis, or scientific theories, but this does not necessarily mean that we 'know' them less. A belief must be a belief in something. We believe certain things to be true -- such as that Christ suffered and died for our sins and was raised up on the third day. I would say that I am more certain of that truth than that Hamlet was written by William Shakespeare or that it really isn't possible for anything to travel faster than 299,792,458 mi /sec -- though certainly these represent different types of certainty.

Perhaps I'm reading far too many of my frustrations with liberal Christianity into a single slogan, but I can't help thinking that whoever came up with that sign would have described Christianity as "one part of the history of the continuing dialogue between God and humanity", as if one day this dialogue will take a sudden turn and God will say, "You know what, fellas? I woke up this morning and realized I've been awfully old fashioned about some things. Let's see if we can move into the modern world on some of these moral issues."

If seems to me like the very purpose of Christianity (and religion in general) is to come into contact with eternity, with those things that are and always will be true, good and beautiful. And, thus, things that are 'certain' in a way that far exceeds the petty certainties of the everyday world. Further up and farther in.

The Energetic Educator

Ah, here it is: one of my favorite stories by Giovanni Guareschi. This one makes me laugh every time I read it.

The Energetic Educator

I knew a savage of a man. He lived on the outskirts of Milan, in a small house, where he had furnished an enormous attic for himself, and there he worked, and sometimes he even slept there, because the children annoyed him, his wife annoyed him, the cat annoyed him.

Everything, in a word, annoyed him. Then too, he would never allow anyone to touch his things, to move a piece of paper, or a pen, or a book.

Like a hawk in its nest, this savage hovered as a constant threat over the whole house. He had a telephone that was connected with the kitchen, on the ground floor, and every once in a while he would lift the receiver and bawl out that he wanted a cup of coffee.

Now this savage had two tender young children: a boy of ten and a little girl under seven, and it was she, above all, who was the victim of his brutality.

This little girl, who was less than seven years old, was small, slight, almost sickly, yet she was forced to climb three steep flights of steps carrying in her right hand a heavy saucer with a cup full of coffee and in her left a huge album of illustrated stories. Ought she to have been bawled out if the coffee, overflowing from the saucer into which, by the force of circumstances, it had become transferred, dripped a little bit on the stairs?

Yet this savage did bawl her out.

The most horrifying scenes usually took place over the paste.

This brutish man was both intolerant and impetuous and, when he looked for his jar of paste and couldn't find it, turned into a madman.

He would not admit that either for pleasure or for profit a child might like to collect those agreeable colored pic­tures, of a historic, geographic, or philatelic nature, which these days constitute one of the chief prides and joys of children. The pictures are supposed to be pasted into albums made for this purpose, and of course, paste is essential. But this savage despised all such things. All he wanted was his jar of paste. And he wanted it at once; every moment of waiting brought forth a fresh howl.

One day a shriek was heard: "The paste!" And the brutish man descended like an avalanche into the kitchen. The little girl was sitting on the floor, working on her collection of pictures. The man hurled himself like a beast upon the paste jar, but when he had it in his hands, an inhuman cry was torn from his throat: "It's empty!"

The mother, who rose with the dawn, had done all her heavy housework and was now allowing herself a few moments of relaxation with an innocent little murder story. She raised her head.

"It's empty!" shrieked the man. "The jar of paste is empty! And I have two hundred clippings to paste up! And today is Sunday! It's empty!"

The mother attempted to calm the demented man with a word of wisdom. "It would be empty," she observed, "even if today were Monday."

"If today were Monday," shouted the man, "the stationery shops would be open and I could buy another jar!"

Still in the voice of a man possessed he turned on the little girl.

"This time," he howled, "you're going to get a lesson

you'll remember the rest of your life!"

Then a terrible thing happened.

The man unbuckled the heavy leather belt he wore and drew it slowly from his trousers: slowly, because he wanted to prolong the sadistic pleasure he derived from the infamous act he was about to perform.

He doubled the belt, so as to render it shorter and heavier, and dealt a blow of bestial force. The buckle struck the table, shattered a porcelain ashtray, and dented the wood.

The man dealt another blow at the table, breaking the other ashtray and a vase. It was at that moment that the truly irrevocable thing occurred: the man's trousers slipped down.

The mother raised her eyes from her book.

"You'll have to get some new underwear," she remarked. "Those shorts are worn out."

The man drew up his trousers and put his belt back on.

He looked fiercely around the room. In one corner stood the broom. He grabbed it with both hands and broke the handle across his knee. Brandishing the stick, he advanced slowly on the little girl. But suddenly he stopped and turned to the mother.

"Look at her!" he shouted. "That wretched creature is laughing!"

"Naturally," said the mother. "When you pulled your trousers up, you left your shirttail out."

At this the man was seized with a murderous fury. In one villainous stroke of the stick, he smashed the vase on the mantle. The stick flew out of his hands, so he advanced on the gas stove and kicked it.

The little girl, in her corner of the room, went on arranging her pictures.

"That's what I'm going to do to you!" the man shouted at the little girl. "I'll teach you to touch things that belong to me!"

At this he remembered the paste again and banged his fist savagely on the table.

"An empty paste jar! Two hundred clippings to paste up! And the stores closed because today is Sunday!"

The little girl looked up from her pictures for a moment.

"Actually, it's Saturday," she said, "and the stationery store is open."

The mother got up.

"You've done an unworthy thing, Giovannino!" she cried. "You've accused your daughter of its being Sunday."

The man stood confused for a moment, then lost his temper altogether.

"Never mind!" he shouted. "That's the way she learns, even if it is Saturday!"

"Children don't learn through brutality," Margherita said coldly.

The man headed sullenly toward the stairs.

"And tuck your shirttail in," said Margherita.

"I want my paste!" said the man.

"You'll get it," Margherita said. "We'll go out and buy it now. Then you can paste up your silly newspaper clippings."

Twenty minutes later the man telephoned down from his lair. The little girl answered.

"My paste!" cried the man. "Has it come yet?"

"Yes, but right now I'm using it for my pictures," she replied, putting down the receiver.

The Lady and the "E"

Here's another story by Giovanni Guareschi -- this one dedicated to our oldest daughter Eleanor, who too struggles with "E".

The Lady and the "E".

The Pasionaria is struggling with "e," and the struggle is titanic. For one thing, her notebook paper is poor stuff and keeps wrinkling up like the face of a laughing octogenarian. For another, her pen has a nasty point that keeps sticking through the paper. And her ink, in addition, has only to glimpse a patch of white to begin to spread like a black cloud.

Then too, besides the fact that "e" is a cowardly opponent and capricious as well, it must be borne in mind that the Pasionaria began school unencumbered by cultural paraphernalia. Last summer someone put a pencil in her hand and a notebook in front of her and tried to persuade her to copy some lines-but she did not lose her head. She laid the pencil down on the desk and closed the notebook.

"I can already read the lines," she said. "And when I go to school, I'll learn how to write them."

And now she's struggling with "e," and the struggle is titanic.

When she reached the fifth "e," she paused to recover her breath. Margherita was stretched out on the sofa, asleep. The Pasionaria gazed at her for a moment and sighed.

"While I work," she said, "she sleeps."

"But she," I said, "already knows how to write `e."'

"You do too," replied the Pasionaria, "but you're not sleeping."

"A question of temperament."

"And you help me sometimes," the Pasionaria went on. "You fix my toys when they break, and all that. But what does she do for me? . . . Sometimes," she sighed, "I could just die."

I felt anxious.

"How many times?" I asked.

She raised three ink-stained fingers.

"Oh." And I handed her a couple of caramels, which she began to chew.

She returned to her task with a will, took up her pen, dipped it in ink, and bent over her notebook. But the pen got stuck in the paper, then skimmed over to bury itself in the wood of the desk.

"Stay there," she cried, "lord and master!" And she turned to me.

"What good is it?" she demanded furiously.

"What good is what?" `E.

"It's essential. We'd be lost without `e.' Could you say `sheep,' for instance, without `e'?"

"I know how to say it. It's the writing that's hard. They could make it less complicated at least. I like `I'!"

I told her "e" was the basis of everything. And she took up her pen again, but before returning to the struggle, experienced one more bout of rebelliousness.

"And meanwhile she," the Pasionaria cried, "she goes right on sleeping!"

"We could exchange her," I said, "perhaps get one that's younger and nicer."

The Pasionaria had resumed her life-and-death struggle with the hostile "e." With a shrug of her shoulders, she murmured: "For the time being let's hold on to her. But one of these days, you'll see, something awful's going to happen!"

Fire From Heaven

Catholic SF/F author and would be evangelizer looses fire from heaven on Jehovahs Wittnesses.

Tim Powers is, for my money, one of the best fantasy and science fiction authors out there -- though perhaps that's not a fair comparison since he increasingly writes in his own very offbeat genre, not in the sometimes derivative world of modern F & SF. If you haven't read Declare, you should.

Engineering for Self Service

I spent a few hours this weekend turning the newly acquired Mauser into a pile of greasy parts sitting in a paint tray in the garage. There are about 25 separate parts in a Mauser, and you can take the whole thing apart using nothing but a Swiss Army Knife, a small hammer and a finishing nail (you could even skip the finishing nail if you were willing to use the firing pin to knock the pins that hold various parts together out -- you could also skip the hammer if you were more into personal brute force than I am).

Now, I've taken the rifle down a bit farther than your standard field strip, because I need to thoroughly clean and reblue it, but even so, German soldiers were expected to be able the take the rifle down pretty completely for thorough cleaning when in barracks. And although I've made my share of beginner mistakes (which might have been avoided with a better set of instructions than I'd been able to find online so far) it's really not that hard to do at all. Compared to the computer hardware industry where I work (though as a marketing analyst, not a tech) the Mauser is a miracle of user friendly engineering.

And now I think about it, it had to be. Germany turned out millions of these rifles during WW2, and the ammunition available at the time required fairly regular disassembly and cleaning to prevent rust. So one of the essential elements of a successful rifle design was that it be easy for a soldier to take apart, service, and put back together again fairly quickly and without too much training. (Rifles that weren't simple to use and service tended to be failures. The Russian SVT-40 was a semi-automatic rifle which was possibly a decade ahead of its time in design, but the Soviet army was never able to successfully train their troops to service and use it, so it never saw much action compared to the bolt action rifles that had been standard since before World War I.)

In modern civilian life, many of us own technology that we don't know how to service. I certainly can't take apart and clean my car. And although I can strip down and replace parts on my computer, most computer users can't. However, although it can be really annoying not to have a car or computer for a week, the results are unlikely to be fatal, or to cause our country to be overrun. So we accept the inconvenience of having to take our technology in to a central repair location in return for the convenience of being able to adopt technology at will without having to learn how to service it -- and without the manufacturers having to go to the expense of making a product which is simple enough to be serviced easily while still being functional.

All of which may seem like a pretty thin insight to spend four paragraphs on. But it seemed significant at the time...

Now I think about it, perhaps another factor is that in the computer hardware industry companies like the one I work for expect to make a lot of money selling service contracts (same with cars) and you can't do that if you make it easy for users to service their own technology...

The youth of today

Darwin and I are feeling rather worn out lately with the girls. They're both going through a stage of disobedience (why doesn't VeggieTales have an obedience-themed episode?) that involves tantrums. not listening, playing cute, and my favorite: dissolving into giggle fits as the parent becomes sterner (and more frustrated). Plus we've had a rash of "incidents" caused by forbidden behaviors, such as getting in the fridge, climbing up the shelves in the closet, jumping on a bed on which Baby is sleeping, playing in the sink, pulling down clothes that have been hung up, etc.

Every now and then we wonder, "Are we doing something wrong? Are everyone else's kids behaved like this?" So, here's your chance to let the world know about your children. If you have a story of misbehavior, disaster, testing -- anything that makes you want to tear out your hair -- feel free to share it here. If you have a good strategy for coping with the young miscreant, post that too. If your child has learned how to unlatch your fridge, I really want to hear from you. And if you can't leave your children alone to go to the bathroom without some sort of massive destruction taking place, let's just forget the blog and go to lunch together.

Help me out, parents! Let us know that we're not the only ones!