til human voices wake us

2012-02-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

"I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant.

Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits . . .

It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons.

Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of

scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user,

and takes for granted the idea that all can reach salvation."

umberto eco

i'd be curious to know his opinions on the aesthetic of computers now -- especially his thoughts on e-book readers and tablets.

2012-01-26T00:14:00.001-08:00

Such was, or must have been the origin of society and of law, which gave new fetters to the weak and new power to the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, fixed forever the laws of property and inequality; changed an artful usurpation into an irrevocable right; and for the benefit of a few ambitious individuals subjects the rest of mankind to perpetual labor, servitude, and misery.

jean jacques rousseau, second discourse, p.125

2012-01-26T00:02:00.001-08:00

He who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came to be the most respected: this was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From the first distinctions there arose on one side vanity and contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness and innocence.

jean jacques rousseau, second discourse, p.118

2011-12-12T11:53:00.000-08:00

some preliminary roughings out of my thesis

since the very dawn of philosophy, man has looked to mathematics to describe the world accurately. we rely on math for certainty.

in chimes the frenchman.
"we are not merely skeptics, nor only mathematicians. we are Christians. we can not only doubt, we may not only affirm. we must, somewhere, submit." - pascal, in a rough paraphrase of pensée 201.

in the Christian cosmos, then, what abides? where can we stand? what abides?

the jew.
"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - st. paul, 1 cor. 13:13

faith hope          love -- normative aspect: philosophy of math
| |          |
knowledge truth          wisdom -- situational aspect: physics (math applied)
| |          |
grammar logic          rhetoric -- existential aspect: teaching math
| |       |
| |       |
| | |
arithmetic algebra quantum theory       -- the kinds of mathematics we learn
calculus non-euclidean geometries

math, at its foundation, is faith
     we have faith in God as the Creator, as the Constant One, the Righteous one. math is trustworthy not because it is self-evident, it is trustworthy because God is; because He loves us and does not lie to us. 2+2=4 because He is forever 1 which is always 3.

math next is hope
     we hope to one day have dominion over creation. the Creator has hidden glories everywhere for us to search out. this means that when we do a calculus problem involving a decreasing mass, increasing acceleration, highly variable friction, and decreasing gravitational force, we simply hope that our rocket will actually escape the atmosphere. we have faith in the numbers working out, but there is only hope that it will actually describe the world. we hope in the righteousness, the trustworthiness of our God.

and the greatest of these is love.
     mathematics is the meter of creation, which was sung by God. and He is love. mathematics, then, is the meter chosen by love. and so, to choose the right meter, we must be loving. i declare to you a mystery. force is nothing more or less than the mass of a thing times its acceleration. always. most of the time. unless you're not on earth. then, at least you can be sure that the energy is equal to the mass of the thing counted as many times as light is fast squared. except, that's not really how it works all the time. because turns out there's something faster than light on the universe. truly, a great mystery, yet i give you a greater. my mother's forehead wrinkled between her eyebrows. it was a wednesday. my father says, "come on, let's grab lunch quick. you're getting a headache from not eating, aren't you?" my mother's forehead wrinkled between her eyebrows. this time it was a thursday. my father says, "hey let's get out of here. you're worried about eating too much. so let's go."
     here is the riddle's heart, here the knot of the mystery: for the creation is our bride, and we are her husband. we must know her parts well enough to know which language we use to speak to her. we should love creation enough to know that the language of newton's calculus is wonderful, but creation doesn't like that language when we're speaking about black holes and electrons. what will happen on the day that we actually love the handiwork of our Creator? i daresay we'll fly faster than light, fall upwards, and burn things without them being consumed. i dare, even, to say that we shall be creators ourselves. that we shall give life at last, and not death. then, death, thou too shall die.

2011-12-01T08:50:00.001-08:00

If we were first of all to take stock of ourselves, we would realize how incapable we were of progressing further. How could a part possibly know the whole? But we will perhaps aspire to knowing at least those parts on our own level. But the parts of the world are so connected and interlinked with each other that I think it would be impossible to know one without the rest.

pascal, pensée 230, pp.70-71

2011-12-01T08:48:00.001-08:00

That is our true state. That is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge or absolute ignorance.

pascal, pensée 230, p.70

man is incapable of certainty. there it is.

2011-12-01T08:12:00.001-08:00

We must know where to doubt, where to affirm and where to submit when necessary. Whoever does not do this does not understand the force of reason. There are some who fall short of these three principles, either by affirming that everything can be demonstrated, lacking all knowledge of the demonstration, or doubting everything, lacking the knowledge of where to submit, or by submitting to everything, lack the knowledge of where to discriminate.

pascal, pensée 201

and just like that, pascal wipes away the arguments of descartes and most of modern/postmodern mathematical theory. beautiful.

2011-11-30T00:21:00.001-08:00

Happiness is neither outside us nor within us. It is in God, and both outside and within us.

pensée 26, blaise pascal

2011-11-30T00:19:00.001-08:00

I blame equally those who decide to praise man, those who blame him, and those who want to be diverted. I can only approve those who search in anguish.

pensée 24, blaise pascal

2011-11-30T00:18:00.001-08:00

[Philosophers] inspired movements of pure greatness and that is not man's state.
They inspired movements of pure baseness and that is not man's state.
...
We need moments of greatness, arising not from merit but from grace, having passed through the state of abjectness.

pensée 17, blaise pascal

2011-11-30T00:15:00.001-08:00

True nature having been lost, everything becomes natural. In the same way, the true good having been lost, everything becomes their true good.

pensée 16, blaise pascal

when every man does what is right in his own eyes. God gives every man what his heart desires. even if that heart is unrepentant.

2011-11-30T00:12:00.001-08:00

When we want to think of God, is there nothing which turns us aside, tempts us to think of other things? All that is bad, and it is born with us.

pensée 14, blaise pascal

2011-11-30T00:08:00.001-08:00

The two Testaments look to Jesus Christ, the Old as its expectation and the New as its model, and both have him as their centre.

pensée 7, blaise pascal

2011-11-30T00:05:00.001-08:00

If man is not made for God, why is he only happy with God?
If man is made for God, why is he so hostile to God?

pensée 18, blaise pascal

2011-11-29T16:02:00.001-08:00

right before cain kills his brother, he is angry because his sacrifice was not accepted. and God says to him,

"Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it."

genesis 4:7

yet one chapter earlier, we find God telling eve:

"I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you."

genesis 3:16

sin is cain's wife. i think milton was quite on track to portray sin as a woman. the devil is definitely masculine, but sin seems to be attributed with feminine qualities. it hearkens back, of course, to lady folly in proverbs. this makes Christ's temptations all the more interesting, because you've got satan as the prospective father-in-law pimping out his daughter, sin, to the Son of Man, who instead chooses the other woman before Him: israel.

2011-11-29T16:00:00.001-08:00

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

proverbs 4:18

now don't that make you extremely frightened and incredibly encouraged.

2011-11-29T15:57:00.001-08:00

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

st. paul, 1 corinthians 1:17-25

remember Solomon. truly, all is vanity, and much studying is wearisome to the soul.

2011-11-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

from paradise lost, john milton's epic catalog of the demons who became the gods of pagan peoples.

Moloch
Chemos
Baalim
Ashtaroth
Astoreth/Astarte
Thammuz
Dagon
Rimmon
Osiris
Isis
Orus
Belial

for milton, as for homer and virgil, numbers are significant. these are the tribes of the demons, a new nation of evil. virgil has 12 foes for aeneas to defeat before the great battle for latium, so it makes sense that Christ would have 12 foes to defeat in his great fight. if my memory is right, the 13th foe that is listed for aeneas is not a part of the epic catalog, but is the most worthy opponent: turnus. similarly, perhaps Christ's most worthy opponent is listed 13th and outside the catalog: beelzebub. this leaves satan out of the picture, though, so obviously i need to think about it more.

2011-11-01T09:57:00.001-07:00

but he, my inbred enemy,

Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart

Made to destroy. I fled and cried out 'Death!'

Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed

From all her caves, and back resounded 'Death!'

john milton, paradise lost, II.785-789

2011-11-01T09:56:00.001-07:00

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place and in itself

Can make a Heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven.

john milton, paradise lost, I.253-255

lewis says much the same thing of the postmodern relativists: they will be the ones in the corners of hell saying "i just have to wake up... it's all in my mind, i just have to wake up."

2011-11-01T09:55:00.001-07:00

Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable,

Doing or suffering, but of this be sure,

To do aught good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight,

As being the contrary to his high will

Whom we resist.

john milton, paradise lost, I.157-162

2011-10-31T23:16:00.000-07:00

To bow and sue for grace

With suppliant knee and deify his power,

Who from the terror of this arm so late

Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,

That were an ignominy and shame beneath

This downfall, since by fate the strength of gods

And this empyreal substance cannot fail...

john milton, paradise lost, I.111-117

2011-10-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

In a conversation with a professor of mine about a paper assigned by another professor, he and I drew parallels between Roman emperors and Tolkein's Denethor. Specifically, Denethor claims in his conversation with Gandalf that he is the only bastion against the darkness of Mordor. He, like Rome, builds his power on the claim that Gondor is the only hope for civilization in a terrible struggle against all the powers of ignorance, darkness, and barbarism. Denethor claims to be culture and light, he claims that Gondor is peace.

"If you understand it, then be content," returned Denethor. "Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need; but you deal out such gifts according to your own designs. Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men's purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again."

"Unless the king should come again?" said Gandalf. "Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor, nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything else passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I am a steward. Did you not know?"

return of the king, chapter 1

Notice that Gandalf doesn't tell Denethor he's wrong. Not in so many words. He grants that Gondor is a key player, and that the steward is important. Yet he offers a counter-story to Denethor's. The Steward claims exclusivity because without the exclusivity he has no reason to demand what he does of his people. Either he must appeal to a higher authority or he must be that authority. And as we see later, his pride cannot stand the return of the king. Gandalf tells him, quite plainly, that while Denethor must steward Gondor, Gandalf is too a steward, and over a greater charge. Gandalf is responsible for this world.

Like Gandalf, Christians offered to Rome a story that subsumed their own. Rome claimed exclusive rights to civilization: they were the only source of peace. Christians chuckled and said sure, but only because our Prince of Peace lets you stay there.

In an interesting twist, Rome when the Christians show up is very much like Gondor when Gandalf shows up. Threatened by a great power in the east (Parthia, one of the only nations to ever defeat a Roman Emperor in battle), they are faced with mounted men from the east (the famed Parthian archers), wild men from the north (the Germanic tribes), and corsairs from the south (there were already pirates basing themselves in the Tunisia). The salvation of Rome, eventually, would come in the form of royalty from the north: Charles Martel's Frankish armies. So all that to say, weird. Or, because it's Tolkein, wyrd.

2011-09-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

One day I nearly dropped a bowl of oyster stuffing when I read with disbelief and disappointment that the average American family spent only $2.59 a person on Thanksgiving dinner in 1991, down from $.289 the year before, an undeniable sign of the decay of family and national values under two successive Republican administrations.

jeffrey steingarten, the man who ate everything, p.34

2011-09-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Greeks are really good at both pre-Socratic philosophy and white statues. They have not been good cooks since the fifth century B.C., when Siracusa on Sicily was the gastronomic capital of the world.... The British go to Greece just for the food, which says volumes to me. You would probably think twice before buying an Algerian or Russian television set. I thought for ten years before buying my last Greek meal.

jeffrey steingarten, the man who ate everything, p.6

2011-09-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

the hebrew word for lion is ariy, and is used 80 times in the Old Testament.

Isaiah 29:1-2

Ah, Ariel, Ariel,
the city where David encamped!
Add year to year;
let the feasts run their round.
Yet I will distress Ariel,
and there shall be moaning and lamentation,
and she shall be to me like an Ariel.

here, Ariel is the proper hebrew noun 'Ari'el, literally translated "lion of God" or "lioness of God."
only other place 'Ari'el is used in the Scriptures is in ezra as the name of one of the leaders in the return from exile.

2 Samuel 23:20

And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds. He struck down two ariels ('ariy'el) of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen.

this is the common noun version. the king james version translates ariy-el as "lion-like men." would it make more sense to mean, "lions of the gods of moab?" i'm tempted to think that benaiah ben jehoiada slew two demon-possessed moabite warriors. Yahweh has sampson, who conquers lions. would not other gods try to copy this?

Ezekiel 43:13-17
"These are the measurements of the altar (mizbeach) by cubits (the cubit being a cubit and a handbreadth): its base shall be one cubit high and one cubit broad, with a rim of one span around its edge. And this shall be the height of the altar (mizbeach): from the base on the ground to the lower ledge, two cubits, with a breadth of one cubit; and from the smaller ledge to the larger ledge, four cubits, with a breadth of one cubit; and the altar hearth (ari'eyl) , four cubits; and from the altar hearth (ari'eyl) projecting upward, four horns. The altar hearth (ari'eyl) shall be square, twelve cubits long by twelve broad. The ledge also shall be square, fourteen cubits long by fourteen broad, with a rim around it half a cubit broad, and its base one cubit all around. The steps of the altar (lit. "his steps") shall face east."

these are the only three uses of ari'eyl in Scripture. Yahweh our God is a lion, and in the mouth of the God-lion is a consuming fire.

Daniel 6:7
All the presidents of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions (aryeh).
(so throughout the passage, every time we see lions is aryeh)

Daniel 7:4
The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it.

these two chapters contain the only 10 uses of aryeh in Scripture. seems to be a babylonian lion, what with the nebuchadnezzar allusion of 7:4, and with the fact that daniel is in babylon when he's thrown into the pit.

Genesis 14:1-2

In the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, these kings made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar).

Daniel 2:12-16, 24-25

Because of this the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed; and they sought Daniel and his companions, to kill them. Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. He declared to Arioch, the king’s captain, "Why is the decree of the king so urgent?" Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel. And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king.... Therefore Daniel went in to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him: "Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will show the king the interpretation." Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him: "I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation."

arioch means "lion-like," and is the name of only these two men in the Bible. the babylonian arioch seems to be the answer to the old -- no longer is the sword lifted up against the Yahweh's people (genesis 14 is about abraham saving lot from chederlaomer's and arioch's armies). now arioch comes doing the bidding of a king but provides safety for Yah's people, safety which, like abraham's deliverance of lot, saves also the lives of the gentiles around the chosen. arioch's actions immediately save daniel, but also the other wise men of babylon. yet these same men will not learn their lesson and will later try to turn lions against daniel in ch. 6.

suffice it to say, lions are a big deal to the Lord. also to daniel, who spends much of his time being attacked/accused by lions. good thing that Elohim is his judge (daniel = God, El, is my judge).

2011-09-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

475. Act like you’ve been there before, especially in the endzone.

via 1001rules

it's not credited, but this is from the great Bear Bryant. his players acted like they'd been in the endzone before.

2011-09-14T00:14:00.001-07:00

Senores, if fortune turns her wheel so that my master decides not to be an emperor but an archbishop, I'd like to know now: what do archbishops errant usually give their squires?

sancho panza, in don quixote by miguel de cervantes, pt.1, ch.26, trans. edith grossman

2011-08-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

From this one can draw a general conclusion that will never (or hardly ever) be proved wrong: He who is the cause of someone else's becoming powerful is the agent of his own destruction; for he makes his protege powerful either through his own skill or through his own strength, and either of these must provoke his protege's mistrust once he has become powerful.

machiavelli, the prince, ch.3 p.14

2011-08-20T11:51:00.001-07:00

The Romans always looked ahead and took action to remedy problems before they developed. They never postponed action in order to avoid a war, for they understood you cannot escape wars, and when you put them off only your opponents benefit.

machiavelli, the prince, ch.3 p.11

2011-08-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

There is a general rule to be noted here: People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.

machiavelli, the prince, ch.3 p.10

compare to thucydides and his modern-day disciple donald kagan, who advise politicians to never take half measures. half measures led to the spartan defeat and the cuban missile crisis, and apparently, if machiavelli is to be believed, to every rebellion against a prince.

2011-08-20T11:41:00.000-07:00

Thus, you [as a new prince] make enemies of all those to whom you have given offense in acquiring power, and in addition you cannot keep the goodwill of those who have put you in power, for you cannot satisfy their aspirations as they thought you would.

machiavelli, the prince, ch.3 p.7

2011-08-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

...I had begun to think I had, if not lost, then mislaid your goodwill, for you had allowed so long to go by without writing to me, and I was in some uncertainty as to what the reason could be.

machiavelli, introductory letter to francesco vettori in the prince, p.1

2011-08-20T11:36:00.001-07:00

All states, all forms of government that have had and continue to have authority over men, have been and are either republics or principalities.

machiavelli, the prince, ch.1 p.6

2011-08-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

St. Augustine was troubled in conscience whenever he caught himself delighting in music, which he took to be sinful. He was a choice spirit, and were he living today would agree with us. I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God.

luther, from here i stand by roland bainton, ch.18 p.266

2011-08-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

There are vexations between the married couple. 'Good God,' ejaculated Luther, 'what a lot of trouble there is in marriage! Adam has made a mess of our nature. Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their nine hundred years. Eve would say, 'You ate the apple,' and Adam would retort, 'You gave it to me.'

here i stand by roland bainton, ch.17 p.235

2011-08-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

God uses lust to impel men to marriage, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith.

luther's table talk,

from here i stand by roland bainton, ch.17 p.230

2011-08-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

Part of [Luther's] indignation was aroused by the immorality of the priests, for he estimated that out of the twenty-five not over three were not fornicators. But this was not the primary ground for his attack. He always insisted that he differed from previous reformers in that they attacked the life and he the doctrine.

here i stand by roland bainton, ch.15 p.193

2011-08-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

Alexander attended a banquet and, if the traditional accounts are to be believed, literally drank himself to death. The climax came in an exchange of toasts in which he is said to have downed twelve pints of undiluted wine in one steady draft. He doubled up with a violent spasm and collapsed into a coma, from which his doctors were unable to revive him.

peoples and empires by anthony pagden, p.10

2011-08-19T13:45:00.001-07:00

When Luther looked at his family in 1538, he remarked, 'Christ said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Dear God, this is too much. Have we got to become such idiots?'

here i stand by roland bainton, ch.17 p.236

2011-08-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

On parting the next morning [the travelers] let the knight know that they took him for Hutton. 'No, he is Luther,' interposed the host. The knight laughed. 'You take me for Hutton. He takes me for Luther. Maybe I am the Devil.'

here i stand by roland bainton, ch.12 p.165

2011-08-19T13:42:00.001-07:00

Indeed, the style and the spittle all point to Eck. True, it is not impossible that where Eck is the apostle there one should find the kingdom of Antichrist.

luther, against the execrable bull of antichrist,

from here i stand by roland bainton, ch.9 p.125

2011-08-19T13:41:00.001-07:00

Luther was not concerned to philosophize about the structure of Church and state; his insistence was simply that every man must answer for himself to God.

here i stand by roland bainton, ch.8 p.109

2011-08-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

If sacramentalism is undercut, sacerdotalism is bound to fall. Luther with one stroke reduced the number of sacraments from seven to two. Confirmation, marriage, ordination, penance, and extreme unction were eliminated. The Lord's Supper and baptism alone remained. The principle which dictated this reduction was that a sacrament must have been directly instituted by Christ and must be distinctly Christian.

here i stand by roland bainton, ch.8 p.106

2011-08-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Pallida mors equo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,

Regumque turres.

horace, quoted by cervantes in prologue to don quixote

2011-08-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro.

aesop, quoted by cervantes in prologue to don quixote

2011-07-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.

the return of jeeves, p. g. wodehouse.

2011-06-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

51. You won’t always be the strongest or fastest. You can be the toughest.

via rules for my unborn son

a lesson my father taught me well.

2011-06-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

In line at Sam's, the lady in front of me is wearing sweatpants that say "SPORT'S" across the butt. (Mine say "ACADEMIC'S.")

aaron belz

2011-06-19T13:15:00.000-07:00

Can I get a binky for baby Bron-Bron?

aaron belz

2011-06-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

Time is what happens when the Holy Spirit comes from the Father to the Son.

robert jenson

via Dr.L's twitter.

2011-05-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

India has a perfect translation for Jesus's word in the term Dalit, literally "crushed" or "oppressed." This is how that country's so-called Untouchables now choose to describe themselves: as we might translate the biblical phrase, blessed are the untouchables.

jenkins, the next Christendom, p.256

2011-05-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

...his Canadian counterpart warned that "Bishops are not intercontinental ballistic missiles, manufactured on one continent and fired into another as an act of aggression."

jenkins, the next Christendom, p.241

to which i say, apparently you've never read Acts.

2011-05-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

In 2003 Southern opposition found a visible face in Peter Jasper Akinola, the primate of the powerful Church of Nigeria, who expressed implacable opposition to Anglo-American sexual liberalism. At every point, he stressed that he was objecting not to specific policies or actions, but to what he viewed as a Northern betrayal of the most basic tenets of Christianity, a literally diabolical lurch into non-Christian heresy. Responding to the proposed elevation of Jeffrey John, Akinola thundered, "This is an attack on the Church of God -- a Satanic attack on God's Church." To the prospect of gay unions, he warned that "If England adopts a new faith, alien to what has been handed to us together, they can walk apart.... No Church can ignore the teaching of the Bible with impunity, and no Church is beyond discipline."

philip jenkins, the next Christendom, p.236-237

2011-05-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

gray fields

the land around me is flat

though over the corner of the highway there

slinks a gully into a ravine, which quietly grows

into a valley,

an arena for dirt devils to dance.

i quietly skirt the side of the hill, on

my right the fields naked of crops, barns empty

of years and of hay.

that dirt is gray - not brown with dry anticipation

nor yet black with the life that shoots out of death -

gray - not the loud green of the valley or the brash

browns of the hillsides but gray.

Gray with a quiet tired nod, gray as a

concession to overuse and abuse,

gray that knows no other life as it looks

bemused and puzzled at the valley where it

struggles to hold its grain down to earth as sun

pulls the gold - gray, i say, with quiet

shattered dreams of a single good harvest traded

for a dozen half-reapings and now gray with

baffled loss and denial and false cheer and an awful

resignation.

once i met a farmer with eyes brown with a longing

quiet and suppressed, as if he were Noah waiting on a flood.

"don't farm nothin," he said with a dark, quiet smile that did not

need me to understand, but "it's gonna take a while

for this land to come back.... maybe by the time your son

wants to farm." and i wonder about that when i

look up ahead at the corn harvest over land that

once was gray and wonder if rachel's

eyes will ever be green again.

and, by way of disclaiming, rachel does not exist. or rather, she's not named rachel. the story about the farmer is true, and the quotes are unedited.

2011-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

st. thomas aquinas

Et ideo convenienter divina sapientia homini auxilia salutis confert sub quibusdam corporalibus et sensibilibus signis, quae sacramenta dicuntur.

my translation of aquinas

And therefore it is fitting that Divine wisdom gives the help of salvation to men through these various corporeal and sensual signs, which are called sacraments.

the newadvent.org translation, "literally translated by fathers of the english dominican province"

Divine wisdom, therefore, fittingly provides man with means of salvation, in the shape of corporeal and sensible signs that are called sacraments.

while i fully realize that it's my word here against the fathers of the dominican order, i've never seen auxilia used to denote anything other than an aid or help. while "means" could easily fall in this realm, "means" has an entirely different connotation with regards to salvation. i believe aquinas meant for the sacraments to be aids or helps of salvation, not vehicles, causes, or purveyors of it.

2011-05-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.

1 john 4:18-19

2011-04-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

“Schools today, we say we’re preparing our kids for the 21st century,” said Jacqueline DeChiaro, the principal of Van Schaick Elementary School in Cohoes, N.Y., who is debating whether to cut cursive. “Is cursive really a 21st-century skill?”

via the nytimes

disgust, i think, is the word i'm looking for.

2011-04-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."

chesterton

2011-04-24T01:02:00.000-07:00

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

st. john's Gospel, 1:1-18

the Light has shone in the darkness, and we have seen His glory where we are. we have seen Him coming afar off, and now through the mirror of faith dimly, yet soon face to face. for like He did this day, we too shall rise unto Life eternal. today is the day that puts all may days and earth days and arbor days to shame, for today is the day of Life. today is the day that death lost and earth, the earth, was given Life. Happy Easter.

2011-04-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

It can be said that God in the first creation of things decided to produce effects regularly in the presence of, and not in the absence of, certain things and each thing of the same species. And it belongs to these things to be a cause by their nature, i.e., by that nature in which they were constituted at their creation. And the term 'regularly' is used because God did not tie His power down to the creatures.

gabriel biel, whether the sacraments of the new covenant are effective causes of grace p. 4

2011-04-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

And so it is not the case that heat is a cause of heat because of some other power that exists in it; rather, it is a cause of heat solely because God has so determined Himself that in the presence of heat-- and not unless it is present--He regularly wills to produce heat. And if He had not so decided, then the very same heat, which would in that case exist without any change, would be heat and yet would not be a cause of heat. Hence, God does nothing through a secondary cause without its being the case that He does it through Himself just as principally and no less so than if He were doing it alone.

gabriel biel, whether the sacraments of the new covenant are effective causes of grace, p.3

2011-04-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

This argument seems strong to me and sufficiently plausible for us to conclude that if God were to decide that from this day forward He is going to will to send rain at the utterance of some word pronounced by someone, then that word, once uttered, would be just as properly a cause of the rain brought about by God at its utterance as heat is a cause of heat. And this seems altogether true. For a creature has nothing except from God's will alone, which grants it to the creature freely and contingently.

gabriel biel, whether the sacraments of the new covenant are effective causes of grace, p.3-4

2011-04-16T16:08:00.000-07:00

Indeed, Homer represents a perfection in structure and scope of the raw poetic art of the unknown author of Beowulf; Virgil, on the other hand, represents the self-conscious and literary decadence of that art. It is not until Dante that Western civilization achieves the kind of poetic perfection at which Virgil failed so magnificently. And between the pole of that failure and the pole of Dante's perfection, the primitive art of Beowulf reigns supreme.

john nist

beowulf and the classical epics, in college english journal, v.24,no.4, jan 1963, pg. 262.

among the things i called this man, "ignorant hateful business-schooled idiot" was undoubtedly the kindest. seriously. dante perfection? virgil failure!? does he read real books or just children's abridgments? time to grow up sir.

2011-04-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

With fainting soul athirst for Grace,

I wandered in a desert place,

And at the crossing of the ways

I saw a sixfold Seraph blaze;

He touched mine eyes with fingers light

As sleep that cometh in the night:

And like a frightened eagle's eyes,

They opened wide with prophecies.

He touched mine ears, and they were drowned

With tumult and a roaring sound:

I heard convulsion in the sky,

And flight of angel hosts on high,

And beasts that move beneath the sea,

And the sap creeping in the tree.

And bending to my mouth he wrung

From out of it my sinful tongue,

And all its lies and idle rust,

And 'twixt my lips a-perishing

A subtle serpent's forkd sting

With right hand wet with blood he thrust.

And with his sword my breast he cleft,

My quaking heart thereout he reft,

And in the yawning of my breast

A coal of living fire he pressed.

Then in the desert I lay dead,

And God called unto me and said:

"Arise, and let My voice be heard,

Charged with My will go forth and span

The land and sea, and let My word

Lay waste with fire the heart of man."

the prophet

by alexander pushkin

props to xian

2011-04-15T06:03:00.000-07:00

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given,"If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned." Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear." But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

hebrews 12:18-24

2011-04-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday night, our dear friend and brother, Jim Kirtley, went to be with the Lord and joined the saints who rest from their labors and await the resurrection. In 2 Corinthians 3-4, Paul describes the glory of the new covenant in the gospel of Jesus. Whereas the glory of the Old Covenant was veiled and fading, Paul says that the glory of the New Covenant does not fade and it is unveiled as we all behold the face of Jesus in the preaching of the gospel. But Paul says that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, in jars of clay. This means that we are hard pressed, persecuted, struck down, always carrying around in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus. But this also means that pain and dying and death are not reasons for despair but rather reasons for great hope. Paul says that he does not lose heart in beatings or imprisonment or sleeplessness or fastings, but in all of these things he expects the glory of God to shine forth. This is because the glory of the new covenant is that it is even brighter and it does not fade and it is unveiled. But since we have this treasure, this glory in earthen vessels in our bodies, that means that God’s glory shines forth not in spite of our suffering but actually because of our suffering. When our bodies are struck, when we suffer, when we die, those earthen vessels are struck and cracked and broken until the light of the glory of Christ bursts forth. And I cannot help but think of Gideon and his small band of 300 men attacking the vast armies of the Midianites by night. Gideon’s men carried torches in their earthen vessels and then shattered them as the trumpets were blown, lighting up the hills with the blaze, and when the Midianites saw the torches they fled in terror. Paul says that we should think of our lives, our bodies as earthen vessels with the torch of the Spirit inside, and when we are struck, when we are hard pressed, and when faithful saints suffer and die, we should see the glory of Easter bursting through. When Jim died this week, another torch burst out in the darkness, and we should expect to see Midianites on the run.

via toby sumpter

2011-03-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

boniface viii, unam sanctam, 1302 a.D.

unam sanctam was a papal bull which, by every standard in a brief search of the interwebs, is ex cathedra and infallible. The document itself is prefaced in part:

"The statements concerning the relations between the spiritual and the secular power are of a purely historical character, so far as they do not refer to the nature of the spiritual power, and are based on the actual conditions of medieval Europe. 'Unam' is frequently quoted, and misquoted, by anti-Catholics trying to prove that Boniface VIII, and Popes in general, are arrogant and evil men, intent on extending their own power."

seriously people. remember innocent iii? just misquoted. the borgias? well, it's hard to misquote a slit throat, but you've definitely misinterpreted them. i have no problem with the brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic church. what i have a problem with is a man telling me i am going to hell unless i believe him to be the sole arbiter of the Word of God. that's called a Mediator, and i already have One.

2011-03-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

Spike TV's 10 Baddest Soldiers Of All Time.

(a lert: bit of language here)

10. Brian Chontosh

Brian Chontosh, currently serving in the Marines, got the Navy Cross in 2003, which is hardcore, but not quite hardcore enough to make a top 10 list.  

Now, being ambushed and driving your Humvee directly at the enemy's entrenched position, after which you leap into the trench, shoot terrorists until you run out of bullets for your Marine-issue guns, then take two AK-47s and kill some more terrorists, and then you find a rocket-propelled grenade and blow the mess out of even more terrorists? That's hardcore enough to make this list and then some. Chontosh killed twenty terrorists and seriously wounded several others, and probably ate three steaks and drank a keg of beer after, because he's ridiculously manly enough for that to be his lunch.    

9. Craig Harrison 

It's very rare to set a world record in your field. And it's even rarer to break that record immediately after you set it. Unfortunately for two members of the Taliban, they were volunteered to secure Craig Harrison a place in the history books.   

Harrison was a British sniper assigned to Afghanistan, and on this particular day, he had a Taliban fighter in his sights. One problem: they were almost two miles away. But it was perfect sniping weather, the air pressure was just right, and Craig was feeling lucky.

After nine shots to gauge the distance, he got his bearings, placed the target precisely on the Taliban fighter, and made him go away. Then Harrison noticed the friend of the guy he just wasted a little further back, and drilled him too. Two world record shots, and the record is currently set at 2707 yards. Modern Warfare players across the world are jealous.    

8. Dirk Vlug

It takes a lot of guts to go up against a tank, even if you happen to have a rocket launcher.

In 1944, Dirk Vlug and his guts were in the Philippines, helping General Douglas MacArthur settle a small disagreement over whether the Japanese were allowed to stay or be removed forcibly with dynamite. He had a fairly boring guard job, and just had a pistol and a rocket launcher with six rounds.  

Then he saw two Japanese tanks coming up the road. Vlug, being a sane, rational man, quickly figured out that he had enough rockets to really ruin the Japanese's day, which he proceeded to do by marching out under machine gun and artillery fire, and blowing up one of those tanks one-handed with his rocket launcher. The second tank crew decided they were going to beat the crap out of him, something he promptly explained was a bad idea by shooting one of them in the face with his other weapon, a pistol. So they get back in the tank, which he promptly blew up before they could even get started.  

Three more tanks show up, and make the serious mistake of irritating Dirk Vlug. By the time he's done, two are burning wrecks, one has been knocked off the road, and Vlug has earned the Medal of Honor...and the eternal fear of the Japanese.   

7. Alvin York

Alvin York was a man who'd put violence behind him. After years of drinking and fights, his best friend had been beaten to death, and Alvin had sobered up and was flying right as a pacifist. Unfortunately, they don't really let you be a pacifist when you're drafted into the Army, so Alvin was packed off to World War I, given a gun, and told to kick some ass. So he kicked the absolute minimum needed.  

Unfortunately for Germany, the minimum was pretty high.  York and his unit were trapped by German machine guns, and thanks to everybody else in charge being dead or wounded, York was running the unit. So York, not particularly enjoying the situation, began sniping the Germans out of their nest with his standard-issue rifle while politely asking them to surrender, kind of like a cross between Mr. Rogers and Dirty Harry. Instead they sent eight men with fixed bayonets to kill him, so he drew his pistol and drilled all eight.  

Keep in mind, he was being shot at the entire time. With machine guns. From some increasingly scared and angry Germans. Finally, after the commander had emptied his pistol trying to kill York and realizing he was rapidly running out of men, volunteered to surrender. So York and the seven guys he had left wound up escorting 132 Germans back behind American lines, much to the shock of the Germans.  

Then York went home and founded a high school. Seriously. Something to think about the next time you want to make fun of your principal.   

6. Charles Upham 

Charles Upham is one of the few men who won the Victoria Cross, and then promptly found it so nice he did it twice.  

The first time he was granted the highest award England can give a soldier because he took on a machine gun nest with a pistol and won, and then decided he really should rescue all those wounded. Keep in mind he did this while surrounded by Germans trying to kill him, and in the process put quite a few Germans into the ground.  

For the second time, obviously the bar was raised higher. They don't just hand these things out in Crackerjack boxes. So he'd have to go really over the top to land a second VC, which he did handily by wasting a truck full of Germans with some grenades, getting wounded twice in the process. Deciding that medical attention was for wusses, and that he really liked what these grenades could do, he decided to lead the charge into battle, and managed to destroy a tank with grenades. Did we mention one of his injuries was a broken arm?  

Later he was captured, and sent to Colditz, where he proceeded to bring new meaning to the term “pain in the ass” by repeatedly trying to escape. One of his escape attempts involved him jumping from a moving truck and getting 400 yards away on a freshly broken ankle.

5. Audie Murphy 

If you want proof that being a short guy isn't going to stop somebody from being a powerful soldier, look no further than the most decorated soldier in World War II, Audie Murphy, who got every medal the Army could give him (literally) and a few from foreign countries as well.  

Murphy, 5'5” and skinny to boot, first went into battle in 1943, where he gunned down two Italian officers. He then proceeded to pretty much tear the Axis powers [apart] wherever he went, consistently getting promoted after creatively handing some Germans or Italians what was left of their heads. But his greatest moment probably came at Holtzwihr. 

Murphy's unit was down to 19 men out of 128. They couldn't fight, they needed to rearm, and they needed somebody to hold the line. So Murphy stayed behind, shooting Germans until he ran out of ammo. Then, deciding he wasn't done killing Germans, he jumped onto a burning tank and starting using its .50 caliber machine gun. He even killed an entire squad of Germans trying to sneak up on him. Oh, and he did this for almost an hour, while wounded in the leg. And then his men showed up, and Murphy led them on a forward action. Translation: after spending an hour in the freezing cold on a burning tank spraying Germans with machine gun fire, he decided that wasn't enough and decided to get close and personal.  

That was enough to land him the Medal of Honor, and a movie career. By the way, the movie of his life, starring the man himself, might make him seem like a bit less of a badass than he was. This is because it was toned down at the request of one Audie Murphy: he thought nobody would believe he'd actually done all that.

4. Peter Francisco  

Peter Francisco grew up an orphan under the care of the uncle of Patrick Henry, so it was logical he'd join the American militia in the Revolutionary War. What made it especially logical was his being six-foot-six and 260 pounds of sheer muscle. He was so big, in fact, that he got the nickname “The Virginia Hercules” and needed a broadsword specially forged to suit his height. The guy was so strong he could, and often did, pull around half-ton cannons to get just the right aim. 

Francisco is widely considered one of the greatest American soldiers ever, seeing action all up and down the Colonies, including Monmouth, Stony Point, Brandywine, and Guildford Courthouse, where he pretty much killed eleven enemy soldiers with his bare hands and a broadsword. At Guildford, he was severely wounded and sent home...which didn't stop him from coming across a British raiding party of eleven men.  

Francisco was severely wounded by highly trained elite soldiers, but needless to say, they didn't stand a chance: Francisco killed one, wounded eight, and just to rub it in, stole all their horses and delivered them to the American army. Reports differ on whether he also gave them wedgies before he left, but we think it's pretty likely.    

3. Tlahuicole

Before Cortez showed up and started slapping them around, there was nobody scarier on the North or South American continents than the Aztecs. This was mostly because the Aztecs' idea of Super Bowl Sunday were mass sacrifices to the gods, and they weren't shy about going out, beating other tribes senseless, and then wiping them out.  

So to impress these guys, you have to kick an awful lot of ass. Which is what Tlahuicole proceeded to do, so much so that when he was captured, the Aztecs decided they couldn't sacrifice him. So instead they gave him honors and freed him.   

Tlahuicole had other ideas. He was going to be sacrificed, but it was going to be by a guy who could take him in single combat, no doubt a cunning plan to kill every single Aztec warrior with his bare hands. The Aztecs looked nervously at each other, shoved one guy in front of him, and it was on. It took twenty-eight fights, eight of which were fatal to the other guy, before he was killed, and we're pretty sure they had to cheat to make that happen. Otherwise, Cortez would have shown up and there'd just be Tlahuicole, hanging out, asking “'Sup?”    

2. Saito Musashibo Benkei 

In feudal Japan, if you were tall, ugly, and strong as an ox, there weren't a lot of decent jobs available. One of them, fortunately, was Buddhist monk, which Saito Musashibo Benkei took up with great skill. Another thing he took up with great skill was the naginata, a spear as tall as he was with what amounted to a katana on the end. You see, monks were expected to have military skill, which is pretty weird for men of peace until you realize that feudal Japan was basically a hellhole, so it was either know how to kick ass or get your ass kicked repeatedly. Still, give a guy like Benkei that and it's like arming the Hulk. It's just not going to end well for whoever makes him angry.  

Benkei posted himself at a bridge and started collecting swords, forcibly, possibly out of boredom. On the thousandth sword, he met the one guy who could beat him up, Minamoto Yoshitsune, who he followed for the rest of his life.  

Which ended with Benkei, on a bridge, holding off soldiers while his boss committed seppuku. Benkei killed so many people, and withstood so much damage, that after he died standing up, it still took the soldiers hours to get up the testicular fortitude to get close enough to realize he was dead. That's respect, right there.   

1. Baba Deep Singh  

"Baba," despite the Western connotations of baby talk, is actually an honorific among the Sikhs, roughly “Respected Elder,” and from this you might assume Baba Deep Singh was a religious man, which he was, and a man of peace, which he was. But you don't get to be a martyr by being a wuss, and Baba Deep Singh was going to earn the title.

He'd earned the right to retire, having served with distinction as a soldier. Unfortunately, he'd managed to offend Ahmad Shah Durrani, mostly by going in and inconsiderately freeing all those people he'd enslaved and raiding his treasury. In retaliation, Durrani, not really one for half measures, found the sacred shrine Harimandir Sahib, descrated it, and blew it up.  

Singh, no believer in half measures himself, swore to rebuild the shrine and prayed that his head would fall at the Sahib (this is important to remember). So he went with a few guys, and on his way managed to raise an army of five thousand, setting the stage for the Battle of Amritsar, a truly epic fight, in the course of which, Singh was nearly decapitated.  

Not that this actually killed him right there, mind you. No, Baba Deep Singh actually supported his head to keep the wound closed until he could kick enough ass to reach the shrine and die there. The dude actually put his head back on because he wasn't done beating up the guys who destroyed his shrine. And that's how you get number one, kids....deciding instant death can just wait a minute because you're not finished.

via spike, which has more language than this. just so you know.

2011-03-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

Rule #84

Opinions may differ, but if you're my son, you'll be giving the highlights tour.

Rule #85

Art speaks for itself. All it needs from you is an introduction.

2011-03-21T22:15:00.000-07:00

via dilbert

2011-03-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

A Meeting in A Part

In a dream I meet  

my dead friend. He has,  

I know, gone long and far,  

and yet he is the same  

for the dead are changeless.  

They grow no older.  

It is I who have changed,  

grown strange to what I was.  

Yet I, the changed one,  

ask: "How you been?"  

He grins and looks at me.  

"I been eating peaches  

off some mighty fine trees."

wendell berry

2011-03-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

First, there was no pristine Christian purity in patristic, or even the apostolic, Christianity. The New Testament is the infallible word of God, but many heard the gospel through the filter of Hellenistic conceptualities that distorted the sound waves. One cannot read Justin the martyr without realizing that he is in a very different thought world from the apostle Paul.

dr. peter leithart, medieval theology and the roots of modernity, in andrew hoffecker's revolutions in worldview, p.145

2011-03-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Nowhere in the New Testament, in fact, is Christianity presented as a cult or as a religion. Religion is needed where there is a wall of separation between God and man.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.5, p.19

2011-03-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

In our perspective, however, the 'original' sin is not primarily that man has 'disobeyed' God; the sin is that he ceased to be hungry for Him and for Him alone, ceased to see his whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God. The sin was not that man neglected his religious duties. The sin was that he thought of God in terms of religion, i.e., opposing Him to life. The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world. The fall is not that he preferred world to God, distorted the balance between the spiritual and materical, but that he made the world material, whereas he was to have transformed it into 'life in God,' filled with meaning and spirit.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.4, p.18

2011-03-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

When we see the world as an end in itself, everything becomes itself a value and consequently loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful only when it is the 'sacrament' of God's presence. Things treated merely as things in themselves destroy themselves because only in God have they an life. The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world. For one who thinks food in itself is the source of life, eating is communion with the dying world, it is communion with death. Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.3, p.17

2011-03-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man, distinguishing him from the other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes his life. 'Homo sapiens,' 'homo faber' ... yes, but, first of all, 'homo adorans.' The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God - and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. The world was created as the 'matter,' the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.2, p.15

2011-03-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

But the unique position of man in the universe is that he alone is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from Him. He alone is to respond to God's blessing with his blessing.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.2, p.15

2011-03-15T07:53:00.000-07:00

Whether we 'spiritualize' our life or 'secularize' our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only-begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.1, p.13

2011-03-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

Man must eat in order to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table for man. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life. It is the image of life at its creation and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: 'that you eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom.'

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.1, p.11

2011-03-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

'Man is what he eats.' With this statement the German materialistic philosopher Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all 'idealistic' speculations about human nature. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of man. For long before Feuerbach the same definition of man was given by the Bible. In the biblical story of creation man is presented, first of all, as a hungry being, and the whole world as his food.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1, p.11

2011-03-08T06:34:00.000-08:00

Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak arabic, love music, and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers, and warriors.

hunter s. thompson

via rules for my unborn son

2011-03-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973).

He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is known also for his unrepentant lifelong use of alcohol, LSD, mescaline, and cocaine (among other substances); his love offirearms; his long-standing hatred of Richard Nixon; and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism. While suffering a bout of health problems, he committed suicide in 2005, at the age of 67.

On August 20, 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot (47 m) tower of his own design (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) to the tune of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."Red, white, blue, and green fireworks were launched along with his ashes. As the city of Aspen would not allow the cannon to remain for more than a month, the cannon has been dismantled and put into storage until a suitable permanent location can be found. According to his widow Anita, Thompson's funeral was financed by actor Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out."

Other famous attendees at the funeral included U.S. Senator John Kerry and former U.S. Senator George McGovern; 60 Minutes correspondents Ed Bradley and Charlie Rose; actors Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray, Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, and Josh Hartnett; singers Lyle Lovett, John Oates and numerous other friends. An estimated 280 people attended the funeral.

wow. just wow. all i can say about that. if you had read that in a book, you'd say there's no way, there's nobody quite that strange in the world. and you'd be wrong.

via wiki

2011-03-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

“This morning, with her, having coffee.”

johnny cash, when asked for his definition of paradise. what a dude.

via vanity fair, that generally vapid stream of hollywood excrescence.

2011-03-03T12:54:00.000-08:00

"And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;"

mark 7.18

Christ seems to have a whole new vision of the purity laws, yet it's the same vision Yahweh had. Christ isn't making new standards, He's interpreting the old standards for all of life. He's forcing israel into circumcising their hearts, and they are kicking against His goads.

2011-03-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."

-David Foster Wallace

via gibbs

2011-03-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

The result is that you cannot think of anyone as human whom you see transformed by wickedness.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, IV.iii, p.94

2011-03-03T08:28:00.001-08:00

Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man ... A thing exists when it keeps its proper place and preserves its own nature. Anything which departs from this ceases to exist, because its existence depends on the preservation of its nature.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, IV.ii, p.91

2011-03-03T08:26:00.001-08:00

What the end of all things was. For certainly it is the same as that which all things desire; we have deduced that that is goodness, and so we must agree that the end of all things is the good.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, III.xi, p.77

2011-03-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

For bad fortune, I think, is more use to a man than good fortune. Good fortune always seems to bring happiness, but deceives you with her smiles, whereas bad fortune is always truthful because by change she shows her true fickleness. Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, II.viii, p.44

2011-03-03T08:19:00.000-08:00

And lastly we may reach the same conclusion about Fortune as a whole. She has nothing worth pursuing, and no trace of intrinsic good; she never associates with good men and does not turn into good men those with whom she does associate.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, II.vi, p.40

2011-03-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

If happiness is the highest good of rational nature and anything that can be taken away is not the highest good - since it is surpassed by what can't be taken away - Fortune by her very mutability can't hope to lead to happiness.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, II.iv, p.31

2011-03-03T08:16:00.001-08:00

So nothing is miserable except when you think it so, and vice versa, all luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, II.iv, p.31

2011-03-03T08:14:00.001-08:00

You are a happy man, then, if you know where your true happiness lies, since when the chief concern of mortal men is to keep their hold on life, you even now possess blessings which no one can doubt are more precious than life itself. So dry your tears. Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present and hope in the future.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, II.iv, p.30

2011-03-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

via dilbert

2011-03-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

A. The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness;

according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me.

B. For I have kept the ways of the Lord,

and have not wickedly departed from my God.

C. For all his rules were before me,

and his statutes I did not put away from me.

B'. I was blameless before him,

and I kept myself from my guilt.

A'. So the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,

according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.

psalm 18:20-24 2

2011-03-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

Monastic theology is a theology of admiration and therefore greater than a theology of speculation: both words describe the act of looking. But the gaze of admiration adds something to the gaze of speculation. It does not necessarily see any farther, but the little it does perceive is enough to fill the whole soul of the contemplative with joy and thanksgiving.

leclercq, the love of learning, p.226

2011-03-03T07:21:00.000-08:00

Monastic theology is, in a way, a spiritual theology which completes speculative theology; it is the latter's completion, and fulfillment. It is the added something, the sursum in which speculative theology tends to transcend itself and become what St. Bernard calls an integral knowledge of God: integre cognoscere.

This is what endows monastic theology with both its limitations and its lasting value. The effort it represents is always necessary if theology, while remaining scientific, is to avoid becoming purely abstract (one might venture to say: devitalized); and, as Peter the Cantor expresses it, sacred doctrine is not to be manufactured like machinery.

leclercq, the love of learning, p.223-224

2011-03-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

Scholastic theology has recourse more frequently to the philosophers; monastic theology contents itself more generally with the authority of Scripture and the Fathers. But the fundamental sources in both cases are the same. Theology is a method for reflecting on the mysteries revealed in Christian origins.

leclercq, the love of learning, p.223

2011-03-02T07:04:00.000-08:00

The scholastics are concerned with achieving clarity; consequently they readily make us of abstract terms, and they never hesitate to forge now words, the profanae vocum novitates which St. Bernard, for his part, avoids. Not that he refuses to use the usual philosophical terminology which through Boethius had come down from Aristotle: on occasion he will use forma, materia, causa efficiens or esse matierale; he does not recoil from the concepts current in the schools, as for example that of satisfactio. But, for him, this terminology is never more than a vocabulary for emergency use and it does not supplant the biblical period.

leclercq, the love of learning, p.200