Aristotle's answer to [the question of what our lives are about] is happiness. Happiness is the end of life.
. . .
But the meaning of the word happiness has changed since Aristotle's time. We usually mean by it today something wholly subjective, a feeling. If you feel happy, you are happy. But Aristotle, and nearly all premodern writers, meant that happiness was an objective state first of all, not merely a subjective feeling. The Greek word for happiness, eudaimonia, literally means good spirit, or good soul. By this definition, Job on his dung heap is happy. Socrates unjustly condemned to die is happy. Hitler exulting over the conquest of France is not happy. Happiness is not a warm puppy. Happiness is goodness.
. . .
What gives our lives meaning? What is our end? Modernity answers, feeling good. the ancients answer, being good. Feeling good is not compatible with suffering; being good is. Therefore the fact of suffering threatens modernity much more than it threatens the ancients.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Peter Kreeft, Aristotle, Happiness and Pain
Here's more Kreeft, this time on Aristotle's answer to the problem of suffering:
Friday, May 29, 2009
In Which We Demonstrate the Scientific Method
So day before yesterday, we were talking about the Periodic Table of Elements. We like to talk about the Periodic Table; Helier, in fact, has taken the lead in memorizing all the elements. We've done Latitudes One and Two so far, and have just started the third, and on Wednesday we were discussing magnesium, which -- so much more helpfully than sodium -- has a symbol resembling the name by which we know it. The kids tend to want to call sodium something like "Naaaaa aaaaa aaa . . . "
Among magnesium's many felicities are 1) the fact that you can make racing bicycles out of it, and 2) that it occurs in chlorophyll. (next time somebody asks you what Lance Armstrong has in common with a philodendron, you'll know what to say). Of course, I had to explain what chlorophyll was, which led to a (very very very basic) discussion of photosynthesis, in which the Greek roots of the word played a predominant role. This is what you get when an English major teaches science: you might not know how it works, but you sure as heck know what the words mean, which tells you more about how things work than you might suppose, now that I think of it.
The upshot of all this was that we -- read I -- decided that we should try an experiment.
Our question: What happens when you withhold light from a plant?
The children's hypothesis: It turns brown.
To test this hypothesis, we went outside and yanked up two hanks of lemon balm, which we have growing everywhere. We planted them in jars, watered them equally, and put one in the back-porch window, and the other in the back-porch closet. We wrote up our question and hypothesis on the whiteboard in the kitchen, and I set up a calendar to remind us to check the closet plant each day and compare it to the windowsill plant.
Here are our results so far: both plants look pretty peaky from being yanked up and transplanted. The one in the closet seems crispier than the one on the windowsill, but really it's a neck-and-neck race.
More interestingly, Helier has become emotionally involved with the plant in the closet. Yesterday he confided to me that while I wasn't looking, he'd been sneaking it out to get some sunlight.
Me: Well, don't do that. It spoils the experiment.
Helier: I hate the experiment. It's mean.
Me: The plant will be fine.
Helier: How would you like it if I closed you up in a closet? (Ah. So people do hear what I say to them sometimes.)
Me: It's only for a week. I promise we'll plant it back outside when we're finished.
Helier (tearfully): It needs some sun now.
Me: Long disquisition on the subject of how much I like plants, how I would never be mean to a plant, how I am not a mean person generally --
Helier: Oh, yes you are, sometimes.
Me: Only when I have to be.
Helier: Well, I hate science. (marching to kitchen door, pausing with hand on knob, turning for the parting shot) I HATE science! Slam.
So, you know, this hands-on-learning thing. It can have unintended consequences. At this writing, I don't think he's actually liberated the plant yet, but I have my eye on him.
Among magnesium's many felicities are 1) the fact that you can make racing bicycles out of it, and 2) that it occurs in chlorophyll. (next time somebody asks you what Lance Armstrong has in common with a philodendron, you'll know what to say). Of course, I had to explain what chlorophyll was, which led to a (very very very basic) discussion of photosynthesis, in which the Greek roots of the word played a predominant role. This is what you get when an English major teaches science: you might not know how it works, but you sure as heck know what the words mean, which tells you more about how things work than you might suppose, now that I think of it.
The upshot of all this was that we -- read I -- decided that we should try an experiment.
Our question: What happens when you withhold light from a plant?
The children's hypothesis: It turns brown.
To test this hypothesis, we went outside and yanked up two hanks of lemon balm, which we have growing everywhere. We planted them in jars, watered them equally, and put one in the back-porch window, and the other in the back-porch closet. We wrote up our question and hypothesis on the whiteboard in the kitchen, and I set up a calendar to remind us to check the closet plant each day and compare it to the windowsill plant.
Here are our results so far: both plants look pretty peaky from being yanked up and transplanted. The one in the closet seems crispier than the one on the windowsill, but really it's a neck-and-neck race.
More interestingly, Helier has become emotionally involved with the plant in the closet. Yesterday he confided to me that while I wasn't looking, he'd been sneaking it out to get some sunlight.
Me: Well, don't do that. It spoils the experiment.
Helier: I hate the experiment. It's mean.
Me: The plant will be fine.
Helier: How would you like it if I closed you up in a closet? (Ah. So people do hear what I say to them sometimes.)
Me: It's only for a week. I promise we'll plant it back outside when we're finished.
Helier (tearfully): It needs some sun now.
Me: Long disquisition on the subject of how much I like plants, how I would never be mean to a plant, how I am not a mean person generally --
Helier: Oh, yes you are, sometimes.
Me: Only when I have to be.
Helier: Well, I hate science. (marching to kitchen door, pausing with hand on knob, turning for the parting shot) I HATE science! Slam.
So, you know, this hands-on-learning thing. It can have unintended consequences. At this writing, I don't think he's actually liberated the plant yet, but I have my eye on him.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Peter Kreeft on the Answer to the Question, "If Atheism, Psychologism, and Idealism Aren't the Answer, What Was the Question Again?"
The other day we were talking about answers. Now we want to know what it is that we really wanted to know.
More from Making Sense Out of Suffering
St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1986
The really ultimate question, much more important than the scientific question, is: Who's there? That's why myth is more important than science. Myth is an answer, though an unsatisfactory one, to the deeper question, Who's there? Science only answer the question, How does it work? Or at the most, What's there? Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's in charge here? who's the author? That's what we really long to know.
More from Making Sense Out of Suffering
St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1986
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
From the Department of Things I Never Imagined Hearing Myself Say
"I think you ought to stop shooting and say the rosary."
Monday, May 25, 2009
Really Up and Running
It's for real this time. Go check it out.
PS: There are comments enabled on all sections of the FT site. PLEASE come and talk to me about lanyards.
PS: There are comments enabled on all sections of the FT site. PLEASE come and talk to me about lanyards.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Sunday in the Rain
It's been one of those moist green late-May days, the air full of rain or, when it's not raining, clouds of gnats. The backyard pecan tree is almost phosphorescent in its greenness, as are the grass, the lily fronds, and the Southern choker vine creeping up the camellia trees with the aim of sucking the life out of them. The squash vines have unfolded and bloomed on a steady diet of rain. A damp smell from the basement is emanating up through the floor and permeating the entire house; this is not as unpleasant as you might think, only kind of earthy and -- if you're not from here, you'll just have to take my word for it -- Southern.
In a lull between rains, Aelred and I decided to walk the dog. Leaving the house, we were held up first by my asking MM to tell me about the chapter from Hans Urs von Balthasar's Prayer which I found him reading on the front porch, and then by Aelred's deciding to measure one end of the porch to determine just how big a picnic table would fit there, should we ever decide to acquire one. All this took some time, and by the time we set off, the lull between rains was almost over.
Of course, we didn't know that. We were a good half-mile from home when the spattering started. When I said, "We're going to get wet," Aelred responded with one of those guy-type noises which aren't quite grunts but aren't quite words, either, and which mean something like, "You got a problem with that?" So we kept walking, and presently the spattering became a -- is there a noun for "water poured steadily over your head from an infinite celestial bucket?" I'm sure the Germans must have one. Anyway, it was like that. I thought we might keep walking, but evidently, upon reflection, Aelred found that he had a problem with getting as wet as we were getting by then, so we turned around and started walking home. I am pleased to report that no cars honked at us, though one did slow down as it passed, and in another the people were visibly laughing. I was still wearing the skirt I wore to church this morning and looked not quite exactly precisely just like Marianne Dashwood after her jaunt in the elements, but enough to strike strangers as funny, I guess. Aelred was pretty wet, too.
The dog hates rain -- in wet weather he skulks miserably around the house, panting and drooling on everyone's legs and refusing to go outside, even in circumstances of the utmost extremity, which is a pain. Going home, he picked his way around the puddles with his ears flat on his neck and his hackles ruffled up against the miserable nasty wet. For a web-footed animal whose ancestors brought bears to bay, he is a bit of a pantywaist. When we got home, MM and Epiphany met us on the back porch with towels, and Amicus put on the tea kettle, and Helier and Crispina -- the latter clad in rain slicker and boots, but still wet somehow herself underneath it all -- did dances around us, but the dog had to stay on the porch until he dried.
Which he still hasn't, entirely, I notice, but he seems to have made it back inside anyway. Add the smell of wet hound to the smell of wet basement, and you have the smell of our Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, it's still raining hard, hammering on the metal roof upstairs and pinging off the awning over the front porch door. From where I'm sitting right now, at my desk beneath a little window looking onto the back porch, I can see the pecan leaves shuddering under the onslaught, and the bottles on their shelf in the porch window filled with the strange liquid twilight like the cure-all elixir I'm persuaded to think it is. The front and back doors are propped open to let in the breeze, and with that and the sound of the rain, there'll be good sleeping in this house tonight.
PS: Certain people want to know why I neglected to mention the big plastic baby doll I found hanging by its neck in my closet, like a . . . valentine? I guess? . . . when I got back from the wet walk. Well, now I've mentioned it. I hope they feel all loved. I also hope they assume I'm not going to retaliate in any way, when they least expect it.
In a lull between rains, Aelred and I decided to walk the dog. Leaving the house, we were held up first by my asking MM to tell me about the chapter from Hans Urs von Balthasar's Prayer which I found him reading on the front porch, and then by Aelred's deciding to measure one end of the porch to determine just how big a picnic table would fit there, should we ever decide to acquire one. All this took some time, and by the time we set off, the lull between rains was almost over.
Of course, we didn't know that. We were a good half-mile from home when the spattering started. When I said, "We're going to get wet," Aelred responded with one of those guy-type noises which aren't quite grunts but aren't quite words, either, and which mean something like, "You got a problem with that?" So we kept walking, and presently the spattering became a -- is there a noun for "water poured steadily over your head from an infinite celestial bucket?" I'm sure the Germans must have one. Anyway, it was like that. I thought we might keep walking, but evidently, upon reflection, Aelred found that he had a problem with getting as wet as we were getting by then, so we turned around and started walking home. I am pleased to report that no cars honked at us, though one did slow down as it passed, and in another the people were visibly laughing. I was still wearing the skirt I wore to church this morning and looked not quite exactly precisely just like Marianne Dashwood after her jaunt in the elements, but enough to strike strangers as funny, I guess. Aelred was pretty wet, too.
The dog hates rain -- in wet weather he skulks miserably around the house, panting and drooling on everyone's legs and refusing to go outside, even in circumstances of the utmost extremity, which is a pain. Going home, he picked his way around the puddles with his ears flat on his neck and his hackles ruffled up against the miserable nasty wet. For a web-footed animal whose ancestors brought bears to bay, he is a bit of a pantywaist. When we got home, MM and Epiphany met us on the back porch with towels, and Amicus put on the tea kettle, and Helier and Crispina -- the latter clad in rain slicker and boots, but still wet somehow herself underneath it all -- did dances around us, but the dog had to stay on the porch until he dried.
Which he still hasn't, entirely, I notice, but he seems to have made it back inside anyway. Add the smell of wet hound to the smell of wet basement, and you have the smell of our Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, it's still raining hard, hammering on the metal roof upstairs and pinging off the awning over the front porch door. From where I'm sitting right now, at my desk beneath a little window looking onto the back porch, I can see the pecan leaves shuddering under the onslaught, and the bottles on their shelf in the porch window filled with the strange liquid twilight like the cure-all elixir I'm persuaded to think it is. The front and back doors are propped open to let in the breeze, and with that and the sound of the rain, there'll be good sleeping in this house tonight.
PS: Certain people want to know why I neglected to mention the big plastic baby doll I found hanging by its neck in my closet, like a . . . valentine? I guess? . . . when I got back from the wet walk. Well, now I've mentioned it. I hope they feel all loved. I also hope they assume I'm not going to retaliate in any way, when they least expect it.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Peter Kreeft on Easy Answers to the Problem of Evil
Let's face it: I live with a theologian, but I'm a "Theology for Dummies" kind of person. Fortunately the theologian in my house is longsuffering and also given to exhaustive answers to simple questions. Unfortunately, I am not always longsuffering and don't always practice perfect patience with regard to exhaustive answers. That, however, doesn't mean I don't need to hear them.
While hanging around the church last week after the Latin Mass, I picked up Peter Kreeft's Making Sense Out of Suffering. Not that I'm particularly in a place of suffering myself right now, you understand -- I'm feeling quite healthy and cheerful -- but on the whole I think it's probably better to make sense of suffering while you're not experiencing it, instead of waiting until you're in so much pain you can't see straight before trying to get some kind of handle on the big picture.
I'm only on page 45, so I can't offer any kind of book review. I've only just read the chapter on "Ten Easy Answers" to the problem of evil, which (the problem, that is) can be summarized thus:
The problem of evil, in other words, can be boiled down to a "one of these things is not like the others" formulation, which seems more simplistic than it is and can be answered in a variety of ways. In this chapter, Kreeft devotes himself to deconstructing ten of those answers: atheism, demythologism, psychologism, paganism, scientism, dualism, satanism, pantheism, deism, and idealism.
I wish I could reproduce the entire chapter, but copyright lawyers (and writers) frown on that kind of thing, so I'll have to content myself with some excerpts.
And there's idealism, or the denial of the existence of evil, which seems to me to go hand-in-hand with psychologism; that is to say, it co-exists readily in the same mind which entertains the psychologized God:
This view co-exists handily with the psychologized God: a subjective God is an answer to a subjective notion of evil. The problem, as Kreeft points out, is that evil is all too obviously an objective reality.
Well, people around here are suffering from hunger and from a desire to go to the re-enactment day at Kings Mountain. Guess I'd better go make sense of that.
While hanging around the church last week after the Latin Mass, I picked up Peter Kreeft's Making Sense Out of Suffering. Not that I'm particularly in a place of suffering myself right now, you understand -- I'm feeling quite healthy and cheerful -- but on the whole I think it's probably better to make sense of suffering while you're not experiencing it, instead of waiting until you're in so much pain you can't see straight before trying to get some kind of handle on the big picture.
I'm only on page 45, so I can't offer any kind of book review. I've only just read the chapter on "Ten Easy Answers" to the problem of evil, which (the problem, that is) can be summarized thus:
I. God exists
II. God is all-powerful.
III. God is all-good.
IV. Evil exists.
The problem of evil, in other words, can be boiled down to a "one of these things is not like the others" formulation, which seems more simplistic than it is and can be answered in a variety of ways. In this chapter, Kreeft devotes himself to deconstructing ten of those answers: atheism, demythologism, psychologism, paganism, scientism, dualism, satanism, pantheism, deism, and idealism.
I wish I could reproduce the entire chapter, but copyright lawyers (and writers) frown on that kind of thing, so I'll have to content myself with some excerpts.
Another wishy-washy form of atheism, which often overlaps demythologism [a "fairy-tale" view of God], is psychologism. Psychologism psychologizes God, subjectivizes God. The God outside of us is rejected, but the terrible term "atheism" is avoided by substituting the God inside of us. "Truth for me" thus replaces Truth; "my God" . . . replaces God . . .
The psychologized God fails in two main areas: honesty and livability. First, the God we make up for ourselves leaves unanswered this most important question: Is this God the one who really exists? Second, the God we make up cannot create us, for we created him. Nor can he save us. He is not stronger than sin or death.
But he is, replies the subjectivist, for he represents the best part of ourselves, which is stronger than sin or death.
This is naive. It is to ignore the nearly unmitigated tragedy that is our history, to deny the reality of human unhappiness and human sin. It is to commit the monstrous non sequitur of reasoning from the fact that most of us in the twentieth century are not usually tempted to cruelty to the conclusion that mankind has no problems that mankind cannot solve.
. . .
The hidden and suppressed forces that erupted in the Nazi holocaust are endemic to the race, to the Hitler in ourselves. If there is a God within, there is also a devil within. The real devil is no match for the real God, but the devil within is often a match indeed for the God within.
And there's idealism, or the denial of the existence of evil, which seems to me to go hand-in-hand with psychologism; that is to say, it co-exists readily in the same mind which entertains the psychologized God:
Chesterton says somewhere that the great problem of philosophy is why little Tommy loves to torture the cat. Idealism's solution is to deny the cat.
But isn't this patently absurd? It's easy to deny God, or his power, or his goodness, because you can't see God. But you can see evil, can't you? Malcolm Muggeridge says that the dogma of original sin, the most unpopular of all Christian dogmas, is the only one you can prove by the daily newspaper.
. . .
Hume wrongly concluded from the fact that we don't see goodness or evil with our physical eyes that goodness and evil were mere subjective feelings in the observer, rather than real though invisible qualities of actions and of people's character . . .
This view co-exists handily with the psychologized God: a subjective God is an answer to a subjective notion of evil. The problem, as Kreeft points out, is that evil is all too obviously an objective reality.
The simplest response to idealism is to look at the most obvious and external evil: physical suffering and death. There was once a little boy who was a Christian Scientist . . . This little boy went up to his Christian Science preacher and asked him please to pray for his father, who was very sick. The preacher replied, "Boy, you don't understand. Your father only thinks he's sick. Go tell him that. Tell him to have faith." The boy obeyed and met the preacher the next day. The preacher asked, "How's your father, boy?" The boy replied, "Oh, he thinks he's dead."
Well, people around here are suffering from hunger and from a desire to go to the re-enactment day at Kings Mountain. Guess I'd better go make sense of that.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Up and Running
What is? Well, I am. I'm the only one up in a quiet house. Last night I flaked out early, in the middle of MM's reading to me. He was reading Pride and Prejudice, which we've both read a million times, so that whatever passages I missed I could easily fill in from memory, but after several rounds of nodding off, only to realize on some subconscious level that the reading had stopped and I was being stared at, at which point I would wake up to find MM laughing at me, I gave up and went to bed, leaving the gentlemen of the household to fend for themselves. So now I'm up and they're not. Amazingly, neither are the children.
MM, our Memphis friend, is spending the summer with us, which is lovely. He's studying Latin and Greek with a colleague of Aelred's and making himself useful around here, washing dishes and cooking and playing the guitar and not complaining when I pick up his books and start reading them. The other night I began idly paging through his copy of the Humphrey Carpenter biography of J.R.R. Tolkien and only stopped at page 111; he might have meant to spend the evening with that book himself, but his sole remark when I finally put down the book was that I really ought to mark my place.
So the household is lively. At the end of a long and eventful school year, we all needed a shot of something.
Meanwhile, in the "up and running" category, go and check out the new First Things website. Here at last, here at last, thank God Almighty, it's here at last. There are now buttons for all the FT blogs, so that Spengler, The Anchoress, the PomoCon folks and I are no longer quite the state secrets that we were. You'll also find a comprehensive archive of articles from recent issues, as well as poems -- I'm glad the poems are foregrounded, because they tend to get lost online, and there were some very good ones in the last issue. There are still a few bugs in the system, of course; I don't know whether it's just my computer, but all the images on the Icons site seem to have disappeared, which renders a good number of posts well-nigh incomprehensible. Hello, Joe-the-Web-Guy? I know what I'll be doing today . . . Also, I now no longer know how to log in over there, but I imagine they'll fill me in.
Now I'm going to make some tea and drink it in one swallow before I have to make my Communion fast.
UPDATE: Uh, well, not quite here at last, as it turns out. They're still working out those bugs and will be putting the old site back up for the day. But hopefully . . .
MM, our Memphis friend, is spending the summer with us, which is lovely. He's studying Latin and Greek with a colleague of Aelred's and making himself useful around here, washing dishes and cooking and playing the guitar and not complaining when I pick up his books and start reading them. The other night I began idly paging through his copy of the Humphrey Carpenter biography of J.R.R. Tolkien and only stopped at page 111; he might have meant to spend the evening with that book himself, but his sole remark when I finally put down the book was that I really ought to mark my place.
So the household is lively. At the end of a long and eventful school year, we all needed a shot of something.
Meanwhile, in the "up and running" category, go and check out the new First Things website. Here at last, here at last, thank God Almighty, it's here at last. There are now buttons for all the FT blogs, so that Spengler, The Anchoress, the PomoCon folks and I are no longer quite the state secrets that we were. You'll also find a comprehensive archive of articles from recent issues, as well as poems -- I'm glad the poems are foregrounded, because they tend to get lost online, and there were some very good ones in the last issue. There are still a few bugs in the system, of course; I don't know whether it's just my computer, but all the images on the Icons site seem to have disappeared, which renders a good number of posts well-nigh incomprehensible. Hello, Joe-the-Web-Guy? I know what I'll be doing today . . . Also, I now no longer know how to log in over there, but I imagine they'll fill me in.
Now I'm going to make some tea and drink it in one swallow before I have to make my Communion fast.
UPDATE: Uh, well, not quite here at last, as it turns out. They're still working out those bugs and will be putting the old site back up for the day. But hopefully . . .
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Meanwhile, In Another Part of the Field
If you've been missing me here, it's because I've been busy writing about the material culture of religion over at Icons and Curiosities. That's what I've decided I'm dealing with. "The material culture of religion" sounds better than "religious stuff and junk." Gradually I'm figuring out how to work things I really want to talk about into reviews of hymnals, statuary, biblically-named garden plants, Christian Barbies, rosaries, and statues of Jesus which recall nothing more than the Religious Ed curriculum in the English state schools.
When Epiphany was a little lass in her school in Cambridge, the Religious Ed lessons alternated between the themes of "Jesus, Friend and Teacher," and "The Five Pillars of Islam." This statue, which I reviewed the other day in a spirit not entirely charitable , calls to mind the former theme. It's not that I object so much to the idea of Jesus as Friend and Teacher, because as we all know, He made it clear to his disciples that they were His friends and not His slaves. Besides, everyone seems to have called him Teacher.
Who didn't call him Lord, that is. And therein really lies my problem with that statue, hanging on a wall in a Catholic church in a place called Uckfield. The whole reason why I'd be in church in the first place is that I believe Jesus to be something more than my friend and my teacher. If He's only a good man (and a good-looking one at that, in his nattily half-unbuttoned work shirt), then I really have other things to be doing on Sunday morning. Dynamic, welcoming people are a dime a dozen: my town, sleepy as it is, is full of them, and God bless them, too. I don't need to get up on Sunday to go and prostrate myself, at least mentally, before a nice guy. I could stay in bed with one.
Nope, the reason I go to church has to do, specifically, with what's in the tabernacle, and what hangs above the altar. It has to do with One who did what no one else in human history has done. It has to do -- and I know there are people who think it's negative to dwell on this -- with the Cross and the sacrifice. It has to do with being God, who could lay down His life not only for the friends at His table on a spring night in Palestine, but for the friends who are able to be His friends now only because He is God, and gave Himself. There's your relevance for you, O people of Uckfield. Closer, less expensive, and infinitely more precious than you think. If He's not God, if He's really just a windblown dude, then you've wasted roughly $50,000. Go home.
Ahem. Anyway, so I've been busy doing stuff like that. All this time, the folks at First Things, by whom I mean the people actually in the office in New York, have been all swamped with preparations for the launch of a redesigned website. The project has not been without its hitches and setbacks, but I'm assured it will be wonderful. Navigating the site should be a lot easier, too: from Icons and Curiosities to the wonderful Anchoress blog, not to mention Spengler, about whom it's hard to know what to say except that you need to read him, and back to the home page with its daily article, plus links to a newly formatted "First Thoughts" blog, to which I'll also be contributing over the next few weeks.
I get tired just thinking about it, actually, even from this safe and peaceful remove. But it'll be great. In fact, don't wait around. Go there now and read Joseph Bottum on Notre Dame and Obama. Read Wesley J. Smith on health care reform. Because things are under construction, there may be a few items you can't access right now, such as associate editor David P. Goldman's incisive and insightful "Demographics and Depression" from last month's print magazine, but you'll want to check back soon, when everything's up and running, and read that, too. And while you're waiting to read that, you shouldn't miss this.
I guess I should include a warning that any of those links are apt not to be working at any time over the weekend. But keep trying. It'll all be there.
It's beyond an honor to be included in this gifted, challenging company of intellects, which is a clunky, earthbound piece of rhetoric incapable of doing justice to my real gratitude.
When Epiphany was a little lass in her school in Cambridge, the Religious Ed lessons alternated between the themes of "Jesus, Friend and Teacher," and "The Five Pillars of Islam." This statue, which I reviewed the other day in a spirit not entirely charitable , calls to mind the former theme. It's not that I object so much to the idea of Jesus as Friend and Teacher, because as we all know, He made it clear to his disciples that they were His friends and not His slaves. Besides, everyone seems to have called him Teacher.
Who didn't call him Lord, that is. And therein really lies my problem with that statue, hanging on a wall in a Catholic church in a place called Uckfield. The whole reason why I'd be in church in the first place is that I believe Jesus to be something more than my friend and my teacher. If He's only a good man (and a good-looking one at that, in his nattily half-unbuttoned work shirt), then I really have other things to be doing on Sunday morning. Dynamic, welcoming people are a dime a dozen: my town, sleepy as it is, is full of them, and God bless them, too. I don't need to get up on Sunday to go and prostrate myself, at least mentally, before a nice guy. I could stay in bed with one.
Nope, the reason I go to church has to do, specifically, with what's in the tabernacle, and what hangs above the altar. It has to do with One who did what no one else in human history has done. It has to do -- and I know there are people who think it's negative to dwell on this -- with the Cross and the sacrifice. It has to do with being God, who could lay down His life not only for the friends at His table on a spring night in Palestine, but for the friends who are able to be His friends now only because He is God, and gave Himself. There's your relevance for you, O people of Uckfield. Closer, less expensive, and infinitely more precious than you think. If He's not God, if He's really just a windblown dude, then you've wasted roughly $50,000. Go home.
Ahem. Anyway, so I've been busy doing stuff like that. All this time, the folks at First Things, by whom I mean the people actually in the office in New York, have been all swamped with preparations for the launch of a redesigned website. The project has not been without its hitches and setbacks, but I'm assured it will be wonderful. Navigating the site should be a lot easier, too: from Icons and Curiosities to the wonderful Anchoress blog, not to mention Spengler, about whom it's hard to know what to say except that you need to read him, and back to the home page with its daily article, plus links to a newly formatted "First Thoughts" blog, to which I'll also be contributing over the next few weeks.
I get tired just thinking about it, actually, even from this safe and peaceful remove. But it'll be great. In fact, don't wait around. Go there now and read Joseph Bottum on Notre Dame and Obama. Read Wesley J. Smith on health care reform. Because things are under construction, there may be a few items you can't access right now, such as associate editor David P. Goldman's incisive and insightful "Demographics and Depression" from last month's print magazine, but you'll want to check back soon, when everything's up and running, and read that, too. And while you're waiting to read that, you shouldn't miss this.
I guess I should include a warning that any of those links are apt not to be working at any time over the weekend. But keep trying. It'll all be there.
It's beyond an honor to be included in this gifted, challenging company of intellects, which is a clunky, earthbound piece of rhetoric incapable of doing justice to my real gratitude.
Saturday Morning with Scones
My favorite part of Froissart's Chronicles covers the battles between the English and the Scots which were interwoven into the larger story of the Hundred Years' War. The Scots ride to war with bags of porridge oats under their saddles and flat stones tied on behind, for cooking said oats into cakes whenever there's a lull in the fighting. Or perhaps I've got that backwards, and it's the stones under the saddles and the porridge oats tied on behind -- I'm banging this out from memory and would welcome correction, O historians of note. But the oats under the saddles would make more sense, don't you think? And would be kinder to the horses, too. Either way, my haggis-eating ancestors spend a lot of the story vanishing and reappearing to fight, fortified with oats, while the English blunder around and get caught on the wrong side of the river from all their supplies and have to requisition an entire town, which is all a lot more cumbersome than baking scones on the fly.
We've been taking after those ancestors around here, not so much in haggis-eating and warfare as in frugality and the baking of scones. I do not, as it happens, have a bag to carry oats in, or a stone to cook them on, or a horse to transport bag, oats, stone, and myself about the countryside; when I consider all this, baking scones in my comfortable kitchen of a morning seems the height of ease and convenience.
I imagine my ancestors didn't carry cookbooks with them into battle. Neither do I use a recipe. When I sent scones with Amicus to his Latin class at church last month, I worried a little, because his classmates include Miss Patsy, who is from Glasgow, and Miss Gilda, who I think comes from Shropshire, both of whom would know at once if I'd screwed up the scone thing. Either they needed to perform acts of charity that day, or the scones I sent really were okay.
Here's what I do:
I have a big bowl, right? I don't know what size. Mixing-bowl size. I dump in roughly one-half-part rolled oats (nothing fancy or steel-cut, just the quick kind, from Aldi) and one-half-part self-rising flour. If I have wheat flour, I put some of that in, too. I add brown sugar or honey to taste (about half a cup brown sugar, maybe), then I pour in canola oil -- you could use butter, but I'm not generally that decadent -- enough to dampen the dry ingredients. Then I add milk to make a medium-firm dough. Don't want it too gushy, or it'll just spread on the baking sheet and you end up with not-very-sweet cookies. That happens around here sometimes, and people eat them up with expressions of delight, but ideally you want something a little more rounded and risen and hockey-puck shaped.
I stir all these ingredients together, then with my hands I form little hockey pucks and place them on the baking sheet. Or if I'm lazy, I just drop them from a spoon, and they don't look as tidy, but they taste just the same. I bake them for 25 minutes or so, and wah la. Breakfast. Or lunch. Or a snack. I lean on these a lot to fill people up.
I don't know how much these cost out per scone or anything, but they're a pretty cheap, quick thing to make. King Arthur flour improves the taste and nutritional value, but also drives up the cost. The ones I made this morning used Aldi quick oats, at about $1.79 a box, if memory serves me, and Aldi self-rising flour, at about . . . I forget. $1.39 a five-pound bag, maybe? I try to go as heavy on the oats and as light on the white flour as I can and still have them hold together and rise decently.
I've made a lunch variation on this theme, when we needed something to eat on the go, and I wanted to roll a complete meal, more or less, into something that could be held in the hand. I made the above batter, with less oatmeal and more flour (I think I used wheat flour, too, for this one) and less sweet stuff, then stirred in some grated cheddar cheese and a generous shaking of frozen chopped spinach. These baked up into cheese-spinach biscuits, and the children ate them up and asked for more. I happen to have the kind of weird children who will eat spinach and ask for more. Though I didn't do it that time, it occurs to me now that you could mix in some ham or bacon as well.
So . . . when you find yourself having to ride to war, and you need food you can carry under your saddle and bake on a stone, now you know what to take.
We've been taking after those ancestors around here, not so much in haggis-eating and warfare as in frugality and the baking of scones. I do not, as it happens, have a bag to carry oats in, or a stone to cook them on, or a horse to transport bag, oats, stone, and myself about the countryside; when I consider all this, baking scones in my comfortable kitchen of a morning seems the height of ease and convenience.
I imagine my ancestors didn't carry cookbooks with them into battle. Neither do I use a recipe. When I sent scones with Amicus to his Latin class at church last month, I worried a little, because his classmates include Miss Patsy, who is from Glasgow, and Miss Gilda, who I think comes from Shropshire, both of whom would know at once if I'd screwed up the scone thing. Either they needed to perform acts of charity that day, or the scones I sent really were okay.
Here's what I do:
I have a big bowl, right? I don't know what size. Mixing-bowl size. I dump in roughly one-half-part rolled oats (nothing fancy or steel-cut, just the quick kind, from Aldi) and one-half-part self-rising flour. If I have wheat flour, I put some of that in, too. I add brown sugar or honey to taste (about half a cup brown sugar, maybe), then I pour in canola oil -- you could use butter, but I'm not generally that decadent -- enough to dampen the dry ingredients. Then I add milk to make a medium-firm dough. Don't want it too gushy, or it'll just spread on the baking sheet and you end up with not-very-sweet cookies. That happens around here sometimes, and people eat them up with expressions of delight, but ideally you want something a little more rounded and risen and hockey-puck shaped.
I stir all these ingredients together, then with my hands I form little hockey pucks and place them on the baking sheet. Or if I'm lazy, I just drop them from a spoon, and they don't look as tidy, but they taste just the same. I bake them for 25 minutes or so, and wah la. Breakfast. Or lunch. Or a snack. I lean on these a lot to fill people up.
I don't know how much these cost out per scone or anything, but they're a pretty cheap, quick thing to make. King Arthur flour improves the taste and nutritional value, but also drives up the cost. The ones I made this morning used Aldi quick oats, at about $1.79 a box, if memory serves me, and Aldi self-rising flour, at about . . . I forget. $1.39 a five-pound bag, maybe? I try to go as heavy on the oats and as light on the white flour as I can and still have them hold together and rise decently.
I've made a lunch variation on this theme, when we needed something to eat on the go, and I wanted to roll a complete meal, more or less, into something that could be held in the hand. I made the above batter, with less oatmeal and more flour (I think I used wheat flour, too, for this one) and less sweet stuff, then stirred in some grated cheddar cheese and a generous shaking of frozen chopped spinach. These baked up into cheese-spinach biscuits, and the children ate them up and asked for more. I happen to have the kind of weird children who will eat spinach and ask for more. Though I didn't do it that time, it occurs to me now that you could mix in some ham or bacon as well.
So . . . when you find yourself having to ride to war, and you need food you can carry under your saddle and bake on a stone, now you know what to take.
I'm Glad Somebody Goes to the Movies
It's not that our small town doesn't have a movie theater. It does, and the last time I checked, Logan's Run had finally finished its . . . well, its run, I guess, obviously . . . and The Breakfast Club had come and gone as well. In fact, as recently as New Year's, the men of the household went to see -- oh, rats, what's the name of it? Tom Cruise. Nazis. Plot to kill Hitler. Everyone dies but Hitler. That one.
As you can see, I don't get out much. But I am a great fan of movie reviews. Everything I know about movies I know from reading about them, not seeing them. I may be the greatest secondhand moviegoer in history, who knows. At least, I may be the first person to claim secondhand moviegoing as an avocation, and that is something.
Secondhand moviegoing is good fun, especially when your source is somebody like Anthony Sacramone. I mean, who could resist an opener like this:
Of course, I always like a good Dan-Brown demolishment; you're forced to:
You can read the rest here.I'm just going to stay home this weekend and watch the kudzu grow.
As you can see, I don't get out much. But I am a great fan of movie reviews. Everything I know about movies I know from reading about them, not seeing them. I may be the greatest secondhand moviegoer in history, who knows. At least, I may be the first person to claim secondhand moviegoing as an avocation, and that is something.
Secondhand moviegoing is good fun, especially when your source is somebody like Anthony Sacramone. I mean, who could resist an opener like this:
As movies about ancient cults devoted to science that employ dollops of antimatter to threaten organized religion go, Angels & Demons is one of the less successful efforts.
Of course, I always like a good Dan-Brown demolishment; you're forced to:
The movie does manage to avoid some of the historical whoppers the book told. (I swear on all that is fattening, if I hear one more person remark on how “well researched” Dan Brown’s books are, I will petition my Congresspersons to have him or her surgically removed from North America.) Yes, there is a CERN in Switzerland. Yes, there is an ongoing attempt to re-create the conditions of the big bang. Yes, there is a Switzerland. Yes, there is a Catholic Church. Other than that …
No, Copernicus was not murdered by the Catholic Church — he died in his bed from a stroke at the age of 70. No, Christianity did not take its doctrine of the real presence in Holy Communion from the Aztecs. (I swear this is what the idiot symbologist Langdon asserts in chapter 61 of the book.) No Winston Churchill was not a “staunch Catholic” — chapter 63. And if Bernini was on the Illuminati payroll — which didn’t appear on the scene until the 18th century, and then in Germany — the Catholic Church should have been given a cut of his fee. As even the History Channel asserted in a special on the film last weekend, the Baroque sculptor and architect was much indebted to Pope Urban VIII for his continued patronage and even from saving him from his own self-destructive tendencies.
You can read the rest here.I'm just going to stay home this weekend and watch the kudzu grow.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Felix Mendelssohn 'Op. 78 Nr. 2 : Richte mich Gott'
Some friends and I have been discussing the issue of "manly" church music, and devising lists of hymns which men like, and like to sing. This isn't a hymn, obviously, but it's a piece of music which has always struck me as noble -- maybe even virile -- as well as wonderful to sing, for the manly and the non-manly singer alike.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)