Now, That Is An Unusual Museum

Why not take a virtual vacation to the Museum of Pocket Calculating Devices? It's sure to add up to a good time.

Also Viewed ...

It was action movie weekend around here as Rose not only rented 300 but also ...

The Bourne Identity
She saw The Bourne Ultimatum with friends and thought it would be nice to see where it all started. We all liked it. Not only well plotted and played but the fact that Matt Damon is so ordinary was definitely in character as the assassin who no one would look at twice. We're looking forward to renting the next one in the trilogy. HC rating: **** 9 thumbs up!

The Departed
We have long been fans of the movie that inspired this one, Infernal Affairs. I have reprinted the original review below. See that for a general plot synopsis.

Not being a Martin Scorsese fan I was not interested in watching but Rose had never seen a Scorsese flick and was interested to see what had been done in the remake. What she found was that it was "much more American and not in a good way." In short, Scorsese added a lot of character development that was unnecessary. We think that he may have actually incorporated many elements from Infernal Affairs 2 which shows the two men's advancement through the ranks of their various assigned professions. She also found that he had eliminated one of the most suspenseful scenes (showing the two moles pitted against each other communicating with their bosses during a drug bust) and unnecessarily connected the psychiatrist with the mole in the police department. This means that the original girlfriend was cut which is too bad since she added a subtle cuing to look at the mole's character development when she would bounce different plot ideas off of him for her book, The Man of a 1000 Faces (or some such title -- you get the idea). Basically, Rose found that it was "all junked up" with additions that detracted from the story, including changing the ending in a significant manner that completely changed the strong redemptive nature of the original story.

Interesting feedback, since, as I mentioned, she has never seen a Scorsese film and was willing to accept a different take on the story. If you see the two movies in reverse order you may find that Infernal Affairs is too spare for your taste, however, take a look at the subtleties with which all the character development is accomplished using much less angst and drama.

She then went and rented Infernal Affairs again to see if her original take on the two was justified. She found that it was.

Infernal Affairs (Wu jian dao)
(Hong Kong)
This stylistic, smart movie takes the classic crime plot of police versus criminals and turns it into a tense, exciting battle of wits. Police Superintendent Wong takes his best police cadet, Yan, and has him go undercover to become a mole in the drug-running Triad gang. Unbeknownst to them, the Triad's leader, Sam, is doing the exact same thing with a young gang member, Lau, who has a clean record and will be accepted into police cadet school. After years pass both Lau and Yan have become accepted, valuable members of their respective groups. During a drug bust, both the police and the Triad gang become aware that each has been infiltrated by a mole. In an ironic move, the moles are both so trusted that each is tasked by his superior with discovering who the mole is within his own group. Simultaneously, each is contacted by his real boss and told to discover who the mole is in the other group. What follows is a fascinating plot twist in which each mole struggles to retain his anonymity. while discovering the other's identity. This movie is gripping until the very end and keeps you guessing the entire time. Everything is masterfully brought together in the last ten minutes with a denouement that gives the entire movie unexpected depths.

This movie was so popular in Hong Kong that it inspired two sequels, Infernal Affairs II which actually was a prequel, and Infernal Affairs III which continues the story begun in the original movie. We watched this movie in the original Cantonese with English subtitles. It was fascinating to hear the large quantity of English scattered through regular conversation. “Channel,” “sorry,” “entrance,” “ok,” “bye,” and “sir” are just a few of the words constantly breaking the pattern of Chinese dialogue. HC rating: **** 9 thumbs up! This review originally appeared in Spero News.

Masters of Science Fiction
Rose and I watched the first two episodes of this anthology being shown by ABC on Saturdays. These are some classic science fiction stories adapted for television and featuring excellent acting and directing. It occurred to us that Rose has really never seen true science fiction, thinking that science fiction equates to "Twilight Zone" style shows. These were the real thing and although the end of the second one was unutterably sappy that was the story's fault, not that of the performers. Both had a high level of interest and had us involved in talking about plot as it went along. There are two more scheduled to air and I highly recommend them.

HC rating system: key

300 — "Unequivocally the only movie ever made worth seeing about screaming, half-naked, greased up men."

King Leonidas: The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many.

So said Nehring the Edge blog and so say we all. Read his post for a true review. Our impressions are below.

What I liked the most about this movie was the idea that this was how the Spartans would have thought about the legend themselves. Yes, it is inaccurate historically but it is the stuff of legends and, therefore, a certain amount of leniency can be shown (not to mention that it is based on a comic book). The emphasis was on honor, freedom, and love of family and country.

The absolutely beautifully photography only enhanced the feeling of watching a heroic legend being told.

We also liked the fact that the people weren't perfectly beautiful. Yes, all the guys had six-packs unless they were old councilmen but other than that they weren't fashion plates. Likewise the queen was what we called "normally" beautiful. Also she looked as if she worked out and could gut someone with a spear at 50 paces. A true Spartan queen.

The Lord's Prayer: "Hallowed Be Thy Name" (part 1)

Had someone told me this before? I don't think so and yet, again, this seems one of those very obvious, logical pieces of information that I should know somehow. Thank heavens that Joseph Ratzinger presents these ideas so logically and simply that I can remember and absorb.

But in the world of Moses' time there were many gods. Moses therefore asks the name of this God that will prove his special authority vis-a-vis the gods. In this respect, the idea of the divine name belongs first of all to the polytheistic world, in which this God, too, has to give himself a name. But the God who calls Moses is truly God. and God in the strict and true sense is not plural. God is by essence one. For this reason he cannot enter into the world of the gods as one among many; he cannot have one name among others.

God's answer to Moses is thus at once a refusal and a pledge. He says of himself simply, "I am who I am" -- he is without any qualification. This pledge is a name and a non-name at one and the same time. The Israelites were therefore perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of God, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities. By the same token, recent bible translations were wrong to write out this name -- which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable -- as if it were just any old name. By doing so, they have dragged the mystery of God, which cannot be captured in images or in names lips can utter, down to the level of some familiar item within a common history of religions.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

More of this will follow tomorrow.

"Does the word 'Christian' make your stomach turn?"

That is the question that was posed by Friendly Christian. Frankly I was surprised that he got only 63 comments. There is are many people who are cynical or hostile towards Christians and usually they are not shy about speaking up ... often with good reason. After all, I used to be one of "them" and the list of complaints my friend Hey Jules thoughtfully sorted is very similar to the one I had myself.

My admittedly unoriginal thought is that we are living in the equivalent of the first century and there are a lot of forces out there who do not paint Christians or Christianity in a very positive light. Movies, television, reporters, and more are intent on pushing an agenda that is decidedly at odds with Christianity.

Also, as we all know, many times we ourselves reinforce the negative images with both hands. Let's face it. We are sinners. Period. That means we fall and sometimes we fall quite ungracefully with plenty of witnesses around. Some of those witnesses take our every action to be representative of Christianity as a whole. That's a fair cop because, warts and all, we are ambassadors of Christ.

So how is one to respond to these complaints? My initial thought is that there is no group of people where one can't pick out at least one member who embarrasses the others by their lack of ability to live up to their common standards. Yet, again, we are supposed to be better than other groups. We are followers of the Son of God after all.

The first century Christians were pointed out by others because of "how they love each other."

How do we do this too? How do we show this love so it shines forth?

How does the kingdom of God grow? Through ambassadors of Christ, believers who have been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through people like St. Lawrence, who are made capable of loving and serving Jesus to limitless degrees!

The Word Among Us

The first century Christians picked up babies abandoned to die on street corners and adopted them, they took care of the sick in epidemics when everyone else fled, they fed the poor and asked for nothing in return. They showed their love in the way that speaks loudest when you don't have a common language ... actions. They didn't go around talking about it. That was the quick way to martyrdom. They lived it.

We must help provide alternatives and not simply parrot ideals. We have to be active in our love as well as simply want the best. Each person has a different spot where God has placed them to show his love and change the world a little for the better ... whether it is through their family, their friends, or their community at large. We must seek God's will for the place we should be ... and then get in there and do it.

The first century Christians were martyrs. They endured torture and horrible deaths because they loved God so that they couldn't imagine turning their backs on Him.

God must be the center of our lives. He is truth and love. If he is the center of our lives then we too will live from a center of truth and love.

Are we willing to be martyrs ... because we are so in love with God? We can say yes because there is very little likelihood that we will be asked for that ultimate sacrifice. In it's place can we than endure the pinpricks of daily life with love for our neighbor ... the person who cuts us off in traffic, who pushes past us and lets the door slam in our faces, who yells at our child, who reports the old lady down the street to the city for brown grass, who accuses a teenager of scraping their car and then wants the payment in cash?

Remember, loving someone doesn't mean that we have mushy, feel-good emotions but that we have their best interest, their greatest good at heart. It means we act on our will and harness our emotions which often aren't good ones at all. It means saying a prayer for them (and often for ourselves as we struggle), "Lord have mercy on me and bless them" and still being polite or friendly or helpful when they don't care a whit.

Above all we must pray ... for ourselves and for others, for God's grace to carry us through when we can't carry ourselves.

The ultimate answer comes from many places as God uses everything around us to pull us back up again and again. We are to keep trying, never be defeated, and always, always love our neighbor as ourself ... even, and especially, when that means humiliating ourselves by asking forgiveness when we have done the wrong thing.

Am I good at this? Heck no. I wish I was. But eventually I manage to pick myself back up and launch myself into the fray again. That is my job. Whether I do it well or badly depends on how close I am to God. To my shame I am rarely close enough to do it well. But, again, I keep trying to get closer and to do it well enough to make Him proud, to show my love. Thank God for His grace or I'd never get anywhere!

God uses us, imperfect instruments as we all are, to shake up a cynical and hostile world. All we need to do is cooperate by living lives of love as best we can. Often we are unwittingly used by God. We think we are just living our lives while behind the scenes God is busy pulling strings.

Sometimes He uses a yellow sticky note to jolt someone out of cynicism.

As we were wrapping up I grabbed my purse off of the desk, and lying next to it I saw a stack of some broadcast documents and personal papers that belonged to him. On top of the papers was a bright yellow sticky note with the words "PRAY FOR REBECCA" written in large letters. ...

Sometimes He uses a little girl's plea.

"Mommy, can I pleeeeeeeease borrow a dollar?"

This became her standard question. And the first time she asked it, I almost gave my standard answer: No, they'll just use it to buy drugs. It's the answer that was drilled into me during my time in L.A., the answer I hadn't spent much time second guessing until my daughter stood before me in Chicago with her plaintive plea. ...

And sometimes he uses two accountants ... a bad one and a good one.

... So, kneeling at Mass one day, I made God a deal. All He had to do was to get a me a new house as a sign. Then I’d know He was there … and I’d have a new house. ...

Looking Deep Within and Finding a Gem

THE INTERIOR CASTLE
by St. Teresa of Avila

• Allison Peers translation
• Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. translation

Let's face it. This is a scary book. First of all, St. Teresa is a Doctor of the Church. For most of us that means her writing is of lofty thoughts about hard-to-understand subjects. It doesn't help that she is consistently described as a "16th-century mystic ... considered one of the most profound spiritual teachers in the history of Christianity." For most people that equals a "too hard for me" message about her writing.

Happily, I am here to tell you that, although all those things are true, The Interior Castle by St. Teresa is also accessible to you and me with many valuable messages about everyday living as well as the loftier goal of knowing one's own soul and God. Consistently, all the members of our book club, who have various levels of previous "difficult" spiritual reading, would show up for monthly meetings with exclamations of surprise about how helpful and inspirational this book was for them.

She complained: “Lord, amid so many ills this comes on top of all the rest.”

A Voice answered her, “Teresa, that is how I treat my friends.”

She retorted, “Ah, my God! That is why you have so few of them!”

Perhaps our surprise was because we forgot the most basic element about this spiritual guide ... the book was written for Teresa's fellow nuns and surely, therefore, had to be able to communicate with people who were all at different spots on the spiritual path as well as many varying levels of intellect. Perhaps also it is because we forgot about Teresa's own basic nature which is not only spiritual but also down-to-earth, humorous and spunky. After all, this is the woman who taught her nuns to dance, ate a gift of game birds on a feast day and, most famously of all, had the above conversation with God after being dumped into flood-like conditions on a difficult journey to establish a convent.

This book's whole purpose is to show us how to get closer to God. Teresa uses the analogy of our soul being a castle with six mansions or dwelling places within, with God living in the very center. She was ordered by her superiors to write about it and her book begins thus:

Today while beseeching our Lord to speak for me because I wasn't able to think of anything to say nor did I know how to begin to carry out this obedience [of writing this book], there came to my mind what I shall now speak about, that which will provide us with a basis to begin with. It is that we consider our soul to be like a castle made entirely out of a diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, must as in heaven there are many dwelling places. for in reflecting upon it carefully, Sisters, we realize that the soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says He will find his delight. So then, what do you think that abode will be like where a King so powerful, so wise, so pure, so full of all good things takes His delight? I don't find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity. Indeed, our intellects, however keen, can hardly comprehend it, just as they cannot comprehend God; but He Himself says that He created us in His own image and likeness.

This is lofty sounding indeed but Teresa provides ample practical examples to help the reader grasp her meaning. For instance, she speaks of the beginner as being able to enter the gate of the castle with prayer and reflection, though hindered by many reptiles and vermin which they cannot even recognize. Those reptiles and vermin are our many sins which we can't recognize without help.

Her constant goal is to help us see the enormity and beauty of our souls and how little we recognize what is within our grasp should we even make a small effort. By recognizing things as they are, in other words by recognizing the truth, we than can begin to achieve true humility that leads us to love and serve God increasingly selflessly. Again, this may sound difficult and lofty, however, it is punctuated with Teresa's constant practical advice and reminders. These provide ample opportunities to see oneself a little more clearly all the time. Teresa also places a great importance on the necessity of recognizing that we are in spiritual warfare constantly. We can't blame everything on the devil, naturally, but she reminds us how often our own faulty inclinations leave the way open to be attacked.

I am amused sometimes to see certain souls who think when they are at prayer that they would like to be humiliated and publicly insulted for God, and afterward they would hide a tiny fault if they could; or, if they have not committed one and yet are charged with it -- God deliver us! Well, let anyone who can't bear such a thing be careful not to pay attention to what he has by himself determined -- in his opinion -- to do. As a matter of fact, the determination was not in the will -- for whom there is a true determination of the will it's another matter -- but a work of the imagination; it is in the imagination that the devil produces his wiles and deceits. ...

This is not a book which one can sit down and devour chapter after chapter at a sitting. I found it most fruitful to read a few paragraphs daily which then would sink in over the course of the day. It also is a book that lends itself to repeated readings. I can imagine it becoming a daily companion for spiritual reading and reflection as there is much that I need to hear many times before it really sinks in.

Do not let yourself be intimidated by the high reputation or spiritual goals of this book. If you are looking for spiritual reading you cannot do better than The Interior Castle.

A word about translations:
When I mentioned that we were going to begin reading this book it touched off a spirited series of translation recommendations. Laura H., whose recommendation this book was and who has read it five times, held out for Allison Peers. That is ultimately the translation our group read and no one had any trouble with it at all. So many had also recommended the Kavanaugh translation that I also got that and alternated reading the same sections from both books. I found this a most profitable way to let the message sink in. The Peers translation is a bit more old fashioned in wording and the Kavanaugh much more modern. All translations above are from Kavanaugh for the simple reason that I lent my Peers book to a friend who wanted to begin the book. I can't recommend one over the other. Both had distinct advantages and sometimes one translation would make a point clear that the other did not. However, I believe that is a distinctly personal reaction. It is more important to get this book and begin reading than to get hung up on translations. Either is wonderful and should you like the book enough to contemplate repeated readings you can then indulge in the other translation.

Poetry Thursday

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw -
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air -
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Mcavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square -
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -
But it’s useless to investigate - Mcavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
`It must have been Macavity!’ - but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

TS Eliot

Church Etiquette

Our church usually have problems with cell phones going off during Mass as I've heard can be a problem in other parishes. However, recently someone came in with a cup of Starbucks coffee. Ushers tell the story of the person who came in with a bag of potato chips and sat eating them during Mass.

Obviously our priest has a spot where he can see all the etiquette problems that come up. After putting a polite but small notice in our bulletin for several weeks and then watching someone sit chomping gum throughout Mass (two rows in front of us where we watched in fascination ...), he drafted a new etiquette reminder. Not only did it make me laugh but I really loved the last two paragraphs which remind us that these matters of etiquette aren't merely to make those around us happy (though they will!), but because we are there for a much higher purpose.

1. Please turn off or silence cell phone and pagers
2. Please keep a respectful quiet in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist before and after Mass
3. Please remember appropriate clothing—even/especially during the summer the church should be décolletage-free zone (if you don’t know this word I have one other word for you...Dictionary)
4. Please for us as adults, do not bring in cups of coffee from the various chains...or, of course, from home
5. Please remember, except in case of true need, bottles of water are not needed...we probably won’t dehydrate in an hour
6. Please remember chewing gum by anyone (any age, Catholic or not) is not acceptable ever, at any time, and especially during Mass. Reason? 1. respect 2. one-hour fast prior to Communion
7. Please refrain from reading the bulletin, e-mails or text messages during Mass
8. Please NO MP3 devices, iPods, Nano or otherwise…
9. Please do not come late, scoot out after Communion or rudely leave before the Liturgy is concluded, including the closing hymn
10. Please participate in the Mass, Body, Mind and Spirit singing, speaking, praying, attending within the heart and in the body.

The question may be asked, “Why?”. The answer, is reverence, respect, participation. Our obligation is NOT bodily presence in the church during the time the Mass is being celebrated; our obligation each Sunday and Holy Day of obligation is active participation in mind, heart and body in the Liturgy, in which the saving mysteries of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ are celebrated in a way that we may enter into them… If that sounds heady well it may be, but that’s how it is, that is our privilege as Catholics to take part in by prayerfully lifting up our minds and hearts and offering ourselves with Jesus Christ at the altar.

Our Lord unites us with Himself, with one another and with the angels and saints, by the Holy Spirit, in the one and only worship of God The Father when we come to Mass—nothing less. God the Father listens to our prayers with loving and unfailing attention; we should be together as a community, in His Presence in exactly the same way. Please don’t take offense but one of our goals together must be the restoration and maintenance of reverence and participation in the Liturgy—our whole and undivided hearts we must give to God. I would be remiss not to remind us all of our duty and our privilege.

The Lord's Prayer: What Prayer Is (part 2)

A continuation from yesterday of the excerpt where Pope Benedict speaks about what we learn about prayer in general through Jesus' teaching of the Our Father, a.k.a. The Lord's Prayer. I especially like the contemplations about "formulaic prayer" as a school.

This is what prayer really is -- being in silent inward communion with God. It requires nourishment, and that is why we need articulated prayer in words, images, or thoughts. The more God is present in us, the more we will really be able to be present to him when we utter the words of our prayers. But the converse is also true: Praying actualizes and deepens our communion of being with God. Our praying can and should arise above all from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, form our shame over sin, and from our gratitude for the good. It can and should be a wholly personal prayer. But we also constantly need to make use of those prayers that express in words the encounter with God experienced both by the Church as a whole and by individual members of the Church. For without these aids to prayer, our own praying and our image of God become subjective and end up reflecting ourselves more than the living God. In the formulaic prayers that arose first from the faith of Israel and then from the faith of praying members of the Church, we get to know God and ourselves as well. They are a "school of prayer" that transforms and opens up our life.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

What is Synesthesia?

You know the word 'anesthesia' which means no sensation; well 'synesthesia' means joined sensation. And what is joined is two, three, or all five senses together. So that my voice, for example, to a synesthete is not just something that they hear, but also something that they see, or smell, or touch.

Music for example is not just a sound and a melody, but it's like a visual fireworks that they see in front of them on a little screen, rather than in the mind's eye.

As per a recent phone conversation where the subject came up, here's the answer about Hannah and her special ability: Also is Kinda Crunchy.

25 Reasons to Buy the New Serenity DVD

2. You love buying new Serenity things, admit it. It makes you tingly. ...

5. Somewhere there is a network executive(s) who is still baffled at the refusal of this property to die, despite his, her, or their best efforts. Buy the DVD with a song in your heart. ...

16. Finally you can see the Fruity Oaty feature without remembering which up-down-sideways buttons to hit to get to the easter egg. ...

And here I thought that I was the only one who insisted on watching the Fruity Oaty ad every time I watched the movie. Pure genius! The entire list is at SerenityStuff (where else?). Via No Blasters.

Turning Over a New Leaf

Amy Welborn's Open Book is being discontinued in favor of new blog, al fresco. Frankly, I can get all the Catholic news and opinions thereon elsewhere. It looks as if this blog will have the type of writing that I enjoyed most at Open Book ... but without having to sift through everything else.

UPDATE
Although it says "al fresco" in the masthead photo, Amy has named her blog "Charlotte was Both."

The Lord's Prayer: What Prayer Is (part 1)

I fell away from reading this book, for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with the book itself. Back into it, I am once again so thankful for the way it spurs me to think in ways that both new and yet seem like something that we already knew. Ratzinger here speaks about what we learn about prayer in general through Jesus' teaching of the Our Father, a.k.a. The Lord's Prayer.

The other false form of prayer the Lord warns us against is the chatter, the verbiage, that smothers the spirit. We re all familiar with the danger of reciting habitual formulas while our mind is somewhere else entirely. We are at our most attentive when we are driven by inmost need to ask God for something or are prompted by a joyful heart to thank him for good things that have happened to us. Most importantly, though, our relationship to God should not be confined to such momentary situations, but should be present as the bedrock of our soul. In order for that to happen, this relation has to be constantly revived and the affairs of our everyday lives have to be constantly related back to it. The more the depths of our souls are directed toward God, the better we will be able to pray. The more prayer is the foundation that upholds our entire existence, the more we will become men of peace. the more we can bear pain, the more we wil be able to understand others and open ourselves to them. this orientation pervasively shaping our whole consciousness, this silent presence of God at the heart of our thinking, our meditating, and our being, is what we mean by "prayer without ceasing." this is ultimately what we mean by love of God, which is at the same time the condition and the driving force between love of neighbor.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

I will continue this excerpt tomorrow but wanted to break this up so that we can more easily contemplate it.

The Role of Science Fiction in Questioning Faith

A man born and raised in one religious tradition, if he looks at the far horizons, might well be tempted to leave the faith-- because he sees that things really might not be the way he was taught that they were. How is the worship of Jehovah and different from the absurd worship of the Great God Finuka on planet Ambroy, where the celebrants hop and jump when they pray? Or if the God Apollo is a space-alien who uses his matter control technology to get a date with Leslie Parrish, what does that say about the God we were taught in Sunday School? If the heavens are filled with bug-eyed Martians, where does that leave room for angels? (Because we know there cannot be Eldil on Malacandra, since we know the Barsoomians worship Iss.)

But by the same token, a man born and raised in the modern secular scientific world view, if he looks at the far horizons, might well be tempted to leave that faith-- because he sees that things really might not be the way he was taught that they were. Because if the cosmos is so vast and wonderful and beautiful and intricate, how can it just be a dumb, deadly, machine, winding down to nothing? ...

Again, the same kind of questions can crop up when a young man travels abroad for the first time, or even travels abroad in his imagination by reading books. ...

John C. Wright has a post that is basically a short essay in how to think honestly. Of course, I like it.

We Have a Word For It ... And Here's Why

Matrix • Fingernails and toenails grow from a source called the "nail matrix" and grow out over the "nail bed." The nail itself is called the "nail plate." As well as providing the name for a cool, if violent movie series, matrix has a surprising history. The movie The Matrix series takes its name from computing, where a matrix is an interconnected complex of related elements. But matrix was originally a Latin word meaning "uterus" or "womb," and appeared in that sense in English in 1526. Think matrix, mater, mother. The nail matrix is in this sense the place of origin of the nail, the place where it is born. In The Matrix movies those evil computers have set up artificial wombs where they can breed more humans; lending the name a nice circularity.

Carnal Knowledge by Charles Hodgson

Praying for Those in Mortal Sin

What a vivid description and how this reminded me sharply to pray for those in mortal sin, who I admit I rarely think about at all.

This entire book has been a surprise as Teresa writes about things much more simply than I expected. Initially I was afraid to read this book, figuring it was so far over my head that I'd never understand. That was a conclusion I drew without even cracking it open. Wrong! I can recommend it to anyone, provided they read slowly, absorbing it a bit at a time, not because it is so difficult but because it is so very rich.

Let us take care, Sisters, to beg this mercy of Him and not be careless, for it is a most generous alms to pray for those who are in mortal sin. Suppose we were to see a Christian with his hands fastened behind his back by a strong chain, bound to a post, and dying of hunger, not because of lack of food, for there are very choice dishes beside him, but because he cannot take hold of the food and eat, and even has great loathing for it; and suppose he sees that he is about to breathe his last and die, not just an earthly death but an eternal one. Wouldn't it be a terrible cruelty to stand looking at him and not feed him? Well, then, what if through your prayer the chains could be loosed? The answer is obvious. For the love of God I ask you always to remember in your prayers souls in mortal sin.

Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila

Our Aging Pepper

Thanks to those of you who have emailed or commented asking about our appetite-less dog, Pepper. I finally took him to the vet to be sure that I wasn't just connecting two things that seemed related but really weren't.

The blood work came back showing some elevated levels related to renal distress. In other words, his kidneys aren't happy. He is a big dog (Black Lab/Great Dane mix is the best guess; 110 lbs. now that he has slimmed down some thanks to a diet) and about 8 years old ... anyone who has been around lots of dogs knows that the combination of a big, aging, male dog leads one to think of kidney failure as something to keep your eyes out for. Therefore, I wasn't completely surprised by these results.

This can give one a bit of gastric distress as well ... a.k.a. an upset tummy. Tom went to heroic lengths and gathered a urine sample yesterday on a neighborhood walk (don't ask for details!) and Hannah took it to work today for further analysis. Most probably we are looking at feeding him very high protein food which won't have many byproducts to filter through those distressed kidneys.

And so it goes ...

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head

Be sure to watch for the guitar solo about halfway through. Why haven't we heard of her before? From Tom, who has a bit more info if you're interested.

The first ever IT support call Out

It's never easy learning a new system ...

Reminder: Tomorrow is First Friday

For anyone who is joining us in our First Friday fast to end abortion.