Well Said: Bravery

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Worth a Thousand Words: Spring in a Hot Spring

Spring in a Hot Spring (Onsen no haru), Hiroshi Yoshida
via Lines and Colors

Well Said: Stop thinking about yourself

This is from a 1917 mystery featuring a female detective, Millie, who has an unusual way of dealing with cases. Here she has explained to a prospective client that she doesn't deal in divorce cases because they are too "high" (difficult). She goes on to give some advice instead.

"I will give you a piece of advice if you like."

"I am willing to pay well for it," he expanded.

"This is not for pay. No matter what your wife has done, go home and do everything you can that will be for her good."

The man stared.

"Stop thinking about yourself and your wrongs. I don't know what they are. I'd rather not know. Whatever they are, they are past. If it is best for your wife to leave you then help her do it. Stop thinking about yourself."

The man's narrow eyes widened a little as they studied the quiet face before him.

She nodded. "Help her to get away from you if you think she will be better off."

The man's eyes continued to regard her with a puzzled look.

"But I'd be pretty sure, if I were you, that it's best for her to leave you. It would be a silly sort of body if it's heart went wrong, that went to work planning to get rid of it, divorce it for good and all. That's a homely way of saying it. I'm a homely woman and when people are married they seem to me one just as truly as the body is all one. I don't divorce part of me unless it's too bad to be made right. If it is, I go to a good surgeon and tell him to make quick work of it."

She paused with a thoughtful look and smiled. "But the best surgeons now, they tell me, don't believe in amputating. They bring their cases to a serum specialist, don't they?" She nodded toward the card on the desk. "And you find out what's wrong and give them some more of the same kind, only different and they get well."

The look in the man's darted and broke in a little laugh. "You think I'd better give Rose serum treatment? Spiritual serum?" He chuckled. His face had cleared. "I wonder what kind," he said thoughtfully. His face had the keen look of a scientist attacking a difficult problem.

"Some brand of human kindness, I should say," responded Millie dryly.

The man laughed and got up. "I believe you've been giving me serum treatment." He held out his hand. ...

"I am going home," he said. "I came here with the idea that I was a desperate figure, a kind of modern Othello, blighted life and so on due to infidelity. You have made me see I'm sick, a kind of spiritual invalid that hasn't sense enough to take care of a common cold, just goes around suffering with it."
Jennette Lee, The Green Jacket

"Stop thinking about yourself."

If more of us put the good of the other person first, what a lovely world it would be wouldn't it? That's an interesting perspective for a detective who investigates murders and theft. Full of common sense and a knowledge of what makes people tick.

Note: I'm not sure what serum treatment meant in 1917. When I look on the usually reliable internet all I find is ads for skin and facial treatments so it clearly doesn't mean now what it did then.

Worth a Thousand Words: Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna

Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna,
sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, ca. 1880s
via The Corseted Beauty

Worth a Thousand Words: Point of Entry

Point of Entry
taken by Valerie, ucumari photography
Some rights reserved

Well Said: I have learned many things ...

I must confess that I have learned many things I never knew before ... just by writing.

St. Augustine

There's something about having to organize one's thoughts enough to write that sends them further than they'd have gone if everything just remained in one's mind. It is funny how that is. It is why keeping a journal, a blog, or writing letters (or emails) is so good for us. Like St. Augustine we learn things we never knew before.

Genesis Notes: Isaac's Resume

As I said last week, we tend to overlook Isaac because he's a fairly quiet, unassuming soul compared to the vivid personalities that come before and after him. And yet, God told his father, "I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him." That's huge. That's everything, in fact, for the Hebrew people. And for us. God saw his heart and worked with him just as with the more active members of the family.

Meeting of Isaac and Rebecca, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione

Strengths and accomplishments:

• He was the miracle child born to Sarah and Abraham when she was 90 years old and he was 100
• He was the first descendent in fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham
• He seems to have been a caring and consistent husband
• He demonstrated great patience

Weaknesses and mistakes:

• Under pressure, he tended to lie
• In conflict he sought to avoid confrontation

Lessons from his life:

• Patience often brings rewards
• Both God's plans and his promises are larger than people
  
• God keeps his promises. He remains faithful though we are often faithless
• Playing favorites is sure to bring family conflict
  

Vital statistics:

• Where: The area called the Negev, in the southern part of Palestine, between Kadesh and Shur (Genesis 20:1)
• Occupation: Wealthy livestock owner
• Relatives: Parents - Abraham and Sarah. Half brother - Ishmael. Wife: Rebekah. Sons - Jacob and Esau.

Key verse:
"Then God said, 'Yes, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.'" (Genesis 17:19)

Isaac's story is told in Genesis 17:15-35:29. He also is mentioned in Romans 9:7, 8; Hebrews 11:17-20; James 2:21-24.

All material quoted is from the Life Application Study Bible. This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.

Worth a Thousand Words: Baking Bread

Baking Bread, Helen Allingham

Our Nation, In Numbers: USA Facts

Where does the money come from?

Where does the money go?

What are the results?

Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO, has put $10 million of his own money into discovering the answer to these questions about government spending.

The result is USAFacts, a site which has wonderfully easy graphics to help us make sense of where our money goes.

The best part is that they aren't pushing an agenda, except aiding understanding.

We are a non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative and have no political agenda or commercial motive. We provide this information as a free public service and are committed to maintaining and expanding it in the future.

We rely exclusively on publicly available government data sources. We don’t make judgments or prescribe specific policies. Whether government money is spent wisely or not, whether our quality of life is improving or getting worse – that’s for you to decide. We hope to spur serious, reasoned, and informed debate on the purpose and functions of government. Such debate is vital to our democracy.

Spend some time browsing around. It's fascinating and surprising.

Lagniappe: Trying to negotiate with Beethoven...

Trying to negotiate with Beethoven was like trying to take a steak away from a hyena.

Robert Greenberg,
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music

Worth a Thousand Words: “Over a Balcony,” View of the Grand Canal, Venice

“Over a Balcony,” View of the Grand Canal, Venice;
Francis Hopkinson Smith
via Lines and Colors

Well Said: This Stalinist Path of History-Flattening and Monument-Erasure

On the dismantling of monuments, specifically four Confederate monuments in New Orleans:

Most people seem to need this debate to be more simple. Not only Ivy League professors and descendants of Confederate veterans, but also those who should know better. Maybe Americans’ deep-rooted Puritanism drives them to view every person as either glorified or damned.

And so we spiral down this Stalinist path of history-flattening and monument-erasure, one side waving a battle flag that Robert E. Lee himself renounced, the other insisting that every man who wore gray was little different than Leonardo DiCaprio’s caricature in “Django Unchained.” Americans long ago abandoned Lincoln’s admonition—malice toward none, charity for all—and in some important ways the U.S. is less united today than in 1866.

In a world of demons and angels, we can’t agree on who’s which. And we don’t have the charity in our hearts to admit most of us are somewhere in between.

Tony Woodlief, Charity for All? Not in Today’s Debates Over Civil War Memorials

You may read the entire editorial at the Wall Street Journal or at Lux Libertas.

As my husband said, "Tyrants are always the ones who erase history. Now we don't have an individual tyrant. It's been institutionalized."

In my own case, having just finished rereading A Tale of Two Cities, I was put in mind of the mob in the French revolution and Madame Defarge in particular. Not a drop of charity there for anyone.

Worth a Thousand Words: Prelude in C Sharp Minor

Prelude in C Sharp Minor by Edward B. Gordon

Well Said: Our inequalities become openings to love ...

People are equal in one sense only, but it's a decisive sense deeper than any simple equations of worth. ...

Our dignity is rooted in the God who made us. His love, shared in every parent's experience, is infinite and unique for each of us as individual persons - because each son and daughter is unrepeatable. Only God's love guarantees our worth. And therein lies our equality. Nothing else has God's permanence. In him, our inequalities become not cruelties of fate, but openings to love, support, and "complete" each other in his name.

Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land

My Christopher Closeup Interview Airs Sunday on Sirius-XM and Relevant Radio

I was so honored when Tony Rossi from The Christophers asked to interview me about my new book, Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life.

First of all, because I respect The Christophers so much. Their motto, "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness," is how I try to live. They've been promoting this mindset for a very long time.

Secondly, because I have so much fun talking to Tony. He is a first-rate interviewer and asks such interesting questions, many of which never would have occurred to me in the first place. And he's read the book — I could tell precisely because of the questions he asked.

We got in some extra talking time so my interview will air in two parts.

Part 1 of the interview will air this Sunday:

• Sirius-XM’s The Catholic Channel (129) at 6:00 am and 10:30 am (Central time)
• Relevant Radio network at 3:30 pm (Central time)

Tune in and get the inside scoop on Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life ... and me!

Well Said: God's and Satan's Battlefield

Beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Worth a Thousand Words: Mandarin and a Jar of Honey

Mandarin and a Jar of Honey by Duane Keiser

Worth a Thousand Words: Chiffchaff

Chiffchaff by Remo Savisaar

Well Said: Our battle-flag

The battle-flag is always placed among warriors, as a sign to which they look during the hardest fighting of the battle. We are continuously at war with the princes of darkness ... If anyone is troubled, vanquished, and overcome, let him look to the Lord hanging on the gibbet of the cross.

St. Thomas of Villanova

Amen.

Genesis Notes: Isaac, the Bridge Between Generations

GENESIS 25 & 26
Other than nearly being sacrificed by his father, Isaac's life seems pretty boring. He can't keep his sons straight, has trouble controlling "bad boy" Jacob, and generally doesn't seem as if we can learn too much from him. Wrong, as Catholic Scripture Study showed me. I fell into that same old trap of thinking that there is only a lesson if something is interesting. But God doesn't work that way.

"And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel.(KJV);
  illustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible

The life of Isaac seems insignificant next to the careers of his father Abraham and his son Jacob. There are few chapters of Scripture devoted to Isaac, and most of his story is entwined with the story of the other Patriarchs. Even the Catechism moves from "God chooses Abraham" (59-61) to "God forms his people Israel" (62-64) without mentioning Isaac by name. Yet he is a Patriarch, his name forever included when Israelites call on the name of God, the father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Isaac's main role seems to be one of a bridge between Abraham, father of those who believe, and Jacob, father of Israel. Isaac safeguards and transmits the promise through his own faithful obedience. He embodies the continuity of God's promise, the link through whom it passes from generation to generation. But there is more significance to him than that:

1. Isaac waits for God's promise, as indeed do all of the Patriarchs. Those 20 years spent praying for a son not only helped form Isaac in faith, they became an example for Israel as it waited for God's promised Messiah. As it is pointed out in Dei Verbum, "through the patriarchs...[God] taught this nation to acknowledge Himself as the one living and true God,...and to wait for the Savior promised by Him. In this manner He prepared the way for the gospel down through the centuries (DV3)."
2. Isaac is also the fruit, the evidence of God's promise. He is the impossible child, born of two people well past the age of childbearing. His name means "laughter," and his name is a perpetual reminder that God promises the impossible and keeps His promises.
3. And as the obedient son of the promise, Isaac prefigures Jesus Christ, the promised Son of God. He walked willingly and obediently up the hill to be sacrificed, even as Christ would so many years later. His life is a living testimony to "the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17)." He is the loving son and father and husband, the obedient son through whom God pours His blessing on a nation and on the world.

All quotes from Genesis, Part II: God and His Family. This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.