Aiming at the Target

Aiming at the Target by Soyama Sachihiko, 1890
via J.R.'s Art Place

Having just finished The Odyssey in preparation for an upcoming podcast, this couldn't help but speak to me.

A man might eat bread forever and ever

Jerry took a large slice of wheaten bread, spread with golden butter, and bit into it with her small white teeth. It was a natural gesture—she was very hungry indeed—but to Sam there was something symbolic about it. Jerry was like bread, he thought. She was like good wholesome wheaten bread spread thickly with honest farm butter; and the thought crossed his mind that a man might eat bread forever and ever and not tire of it, and that it would never clog his palate like sweet cakes of pastries or chocolate éclairs.

D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Marries

The stars at night are big and bright. Deep in the heart of Texas.

Via Traces of Texas

Identity — When you're mixed race but your name and looks mean you're "yet another white guy."

There is a frustrating aspect to the fact that in the US these days, discussions of background are so frequently tied up with discussions of discrimination and oppression. It means that someone like me, who doesn't look Hispanic enough to have someone making negative assumptions about me, and who doesn't have a Hispanic last name, ends up seeming like he'd be somehow faking to talk about coming from a Hispanic background.

As racial problems go, being dismissed as "yet another white guy" by politically active online warriors is the most first world of problems, so I'm not exactly here to complain. But it is a rather cut-off feeling at times. I'm proud of the stories of my ancestors who walked across the US/Mexican boarder around 1900. I'm proud of my grandfather who excelled at his studies despite having to go to the schools for Mexican kids rather than the ones for white kids in the little mining town in New Mexico where he grew up. And I'm proud of the American identity that he built for himself and his children, through a career in the Navy starting in 1945 when he has seventeen. I wish that the way that the US talked about race didn't mean that if you weren't oppressed because of your background, you can't claim it without seeming like a poser.

This is a good piece by Darwin over at Darwin Catholic.

I don't have this problem but was bemused once by a friend lamenting the fact that our parish was so white. I told her that over half the people I knew during the Mass time we both attended were Hispanic but didn't stand out particularly in any way. They looked like middle class Americans, that's all.

And then it occurred to me. "Hey, wait. You're part Hispanic. And so is your husband."

True enough. Their family name is Irish and if I hadn't heard many stories of their families I'd have thought they both came from Anglo-Irish backgrounds simply going on looks. She looked embarrassed and said, "Oh! I guess I was judging by class instead of ethnicity." It was an interesting moment for me. And, I think, possibly for my friend too.

Gospel of Matthew: Rowing into a Headwind in the Darkness

Matthew 14:22-23

I have heard many homilies about Matthew 14:22-33, when Jesus comes walking on the water in the night across the sea to the disciples in the boat where they have been battling the storm. Go read it for yourself. There are many details that I never considered about the timing which George Martin brings to our attention. Very, very interesting when we consider our own discipleship.

Also, when I look at this painting I realize that I'd forgotten just how dark it would have been. No wonder the disciples were creeped out!

Christ walking on the sea, Amédée Varint

... The wind-and-wave-battered boat bearing the disciples has long been taken as a symbol of the church (see also 8:213-27). Those in the boat have been sent forth by Jesus but face opposition and danger. Jesus is not bodily present; he is at prayer, at the right hand of his Father (26:64; Rom. 8:34). The church might seem to be making little headway despite hard rowing, but it has been so for disciples of Jesus from the very first. ...

We must presume that Jesus, atop the hill by the lake, is aware of the strong wind and of the struggle his disciples re enduring. Yet he does not cut short his prayer to come to his disciples; it is only during the fourth watch of the night that he came toward them, walking on the sea. The Roman way of reckoning divided the period from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. into four watches; the fourth watch of the night ran from 3:00 to 6:00 a.m. The disciples have been battling strong headwinds from evening until almost dawn. Jesus sent his disciples off to row into a headwind and let them contend with it through the night.

[...]

Jesus does not calm the wind and waves; he tells his disciples to have courage and not be afraid, despite the wind and waves, because it is I. In its simplest meaning, it is I identifies the one walking on the water as Jesus: it is I, Jesus, who have come to you and tell you to have courage and not be afraid. Even if you are battered by wind and waves far from shore in darkness, you have nothing to fear, because it is I. I will take care of you.

Quote is from Bringing the Gospel of Matthew to Life. This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.

The best thing that can happen to anyone who is doing wrong is to be found out.

"If one of them is guilty—are you a religious woman, Miss Treherne?"

Rachel said, "Yes."

Miss Silver nodded approvingly.

"Then you will agree with me that the best thing that can happen to anyone who is doing wrong is to be found out. If he is not found out he will do more wrong and earn a heavier punishment."

Patricia Wentworth, The Lonesome Road

Madrid - near the Palace Gardens

Madrid - Near the Palace Gardens, Elizabeth Scalia

A Movie You Might Have Missed #17 — Pan's Labyrinth

It's been 10 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.




This definitely is a fairytale for adults. Do not let the kids watch this one.

During the Spanish civil war in 1944, a young girl and her mother move to their new home with the mother's new husband, cruel Captain Vidal. In the midst of a risky pregnancy, the mother can't do much more than rest in bed while the girl, Ofelia, wanders the grounds and countryside. She soon discovers an entire underground world and is guided by the persuasive Faun in his labyrinth. He offers to help her if she'll complete three treacherous tasks. As Ofelia begins her tasks the viewer is left with the question of whether this alternate reality really exists or is imaginary. Del Toro leaves that up to the viewer. I know what I think ... but I've seen the movie!

(Warning: the Captain is a extremely violent and cruel character. If you think that he is going to do something terrible, just figure that he will. I didn't watch when violence threatened and didn't miss any important dialogue in the subtitles.)

Scott and I discussed this at A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast, episode 70.

Piano Poster

Piano poster for Club. Mads Berg.
via Books and Art

Chesterton and American Idealism

There is one thing, at any rate, that must strike all Englishmen who have the good fortune to have American friends; that is, that while there is no materialism so crude or material as American materialism, there is also no idealism so crude or so ideal as American idealism.

G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens

He hit that nail squarely on the head!

Tea in the Studio

Tea in the Studio by Bertha Wegmann, c. late 1800s
via J.R.'s Art Place

Lagniappe - Delicate Enjoyment

Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

If the fact of O’Connor’s racism, and Dickens’s, has any importance, it is because they were both capable of transcending it in astonishingly beautiful and lasting ways.

It is futile to deny that both O’Connor and Dickens “lacked comprehension” in many ways. You won’t find one person anywhere, at any time, about whom that’s not true. If the fact of O’Connor’s racism, and Dickens’s, has any importance, it is because they were both capable of transcending it in astonishingly beautiful and lasting ways. What’s remarkable about O’Connor’s racism, and Dickens’s, is how inconsistent it is with their fiction. By now, the sins of both of them have been burned away. Their art is a far more fitting monument to their largeness and ability to defend the inherent worth of human persons.

Scott Eric Alt,
Racism and transcendence in Charles Dickens & Flannery O’Connor

On the heels of yesterday's letter defending Flannery O'Connor, warts and all, comes this very good piece about Flannery O'Connor and Charles Dickens. I'd long known about charges of anti-Semitism against Dickens and how he corrected himself once he understood what he'd been doing. However, I guess the fault has been resurrected as something new. Anyway, I liked the examples and comparison in this piece — do go read it all.

Gospel of Matthew: The Cockle of False Doctrine

Matthew 13:9-11, 15-22

I love the fact that the cockle and the wheat looked so much alike and that this would have been a common form of revenge so everyone knew what Jesus was talking about. Context that is much needed for our lives which are far from that sort of agriculture or even from agriculture at all.

And, of course, it is applicable to our times no matter the context.

The enemy sowing weeds, Heinrich Füllmaurer

In the Gospel of today's Mass or Lord teaches us the parable of the wheat and the cockle. The world is like a field where God is continually sowing the seed of his grace; this divine seed takes root in the soul an produces fruits of holiness ... But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.

The weed in question -- cockle-seed -- is a plant that is often found growing in cereal crops in the Middle East. It resembles wheat so closely that even to the farmer's practised eye it is impossible to tell the two plants apart until the stalks begin to mature, at which stage the cockle can be recognized by its slender ear and emaciated grain; it is quite toxic to humans, and if mixed with flour will ruin bread. Sowing cockle among the wheat was a form of revenge not unheard of in those countries. Periodic plagues of cockle were very much feared by the peasants, because they could cause them to lose their entire harvest.

The Fathers of the Church have understood the cockle to be a metaphor for false doctrine, which is not easy to distinguish from the truth, above all at the beginning, because it is proper to the devil to mix falsehood with truth; (St. John Chrysostom) and if error is allowed to flourish it always has catastrophic effects on the people of God.

This parable has lost none of its relevance nowadays; we can see that many Christians have fallen asleep and have allowed the enemy to sow bad seed with total impunity. There is practically no truth of the Catholic Faith which hasn't been called into question. We have to be very careful indeed, both with ourselves and with anybody we are responsible for, in the whole area of magazines, television, books, and newspapers, all of which can be a real source of false doctrine and which required us to make a special effort to look after our on-going formation in the doctrinal area.

If we are to be faithful to all the requirements of the Christian vocation we have to be constantly watchful and not let ourselves be taken off guard, because once false doctrine manages to take root in the soul it quickly gives rise to sterility and to estrangement from God. We need to be watchful too in the area of our affections, and not fool ourselves with excuses about how at our time of life "things don't affect us"; and we should be careful also about the effect of such false ideas on those whom God has entrusted to our care.

Francis Fernandez
In Conversation with God: Daily Meditations, Vol. 4

From my friend Patsy come these wonderful insights into the painting.

The picture, labeled "Math. 13," shows the fence of the field broken, and the awful demon with chicken feet sowing cockles, very scary and terrible. The poor woman in the shabby house is faithfully kneading her bread, unaware of how threatened the bread could become as the wheat grows.

The worst part of the picture is the very rich house where the guardians of the field are asleep. The pope is lying down, fully asleep (his responsibility abdicated?), with a cleric in the background who should be watching over him (inadequate protection for his holiness?). The King is sleeping, more or less sitting up (thinking he is still in charge?). On the floor there seems to be a misused chalice almost covered with a black cloth (lack of providing the True Bread). Then there are the priest and the two bishops, who seem to have fallen asleep over what they should be preaching from that podium (from boredom, disinterest, giving up?).

Up in the sky we can barely make out the Lord God coming on the clouds of heaven, with all his angels, but a long way off. It is the time for getting ready for the final separation of the weeds from the wheat. The chimney of the woman's house is sending up smoke which seems to merge with the clouds around the Lord God. Maybe her life of faith and duty are calling for his mercy. There is a very large bee hive beside her house, whose honey is a symbol of wisdom and preaching the Word of God.

This series first ran in 2008. Quote source info is here. I'm refreshing it as I go.

We must honor Flannery for growing. Hide nothing of what she was, and use that to teach.—Alice Walker, statement issued to Loyola University Maryland, July 27, 2020

I'm sharing this since Loyola University's decision to take Flannery O'Connor's name off of a building with very little thought and very great haste dismayed me a lot. A lot of this is the result of at least one article about her being racist. First Things has been commenting on this really well.

However, I was delighted to see this letter sent in Flannery's defense to Loyola, signed by 200 noted writers, literary scholars, theologians, professors, religious leaders. Scroll down at the link for the letter itself. A little excerpt:

Walker praises O’Connor “for growing,” for having the courage and humility to confront, through her writings, her own shortcomings and prejudices and to critique them, via the characters she invented in her stories. Finally, Walker, consummate teacher that she is, urges us to use this as a teachable moment. We are all desperately in need of conversion and transformation. O’Connor died young, 39 years old, in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights movement. As she lay on her death bed, she was writing story after story about white racists who arrive at the difficult knowledge of their sin. Reading these stories, we watch her coming to a painful but necessary understanding of herself.

For anyone who is interested, Scott and I have several episodes of A Good Story is Hard to find where we discuss some of her short stories.

Victorious even when we are defeated

With him [Christ] we can do anything. We are victorious even whnen we are defeated. This is the optimism so characteristic of the saints. ... Cast away that despair produced by the realization of your weakness. It's true: financially you are a zero, and socially another zero, and another in virtues, and another in talents ... But to the left of these zeros is Christ. And what an immeasurable figure it turns out to be. (Josemaria Escriva)

Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God, vol. 4

A Movie You Might Have Missed #16: Regarding Henry

It's been 10 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

One of Harrison Ford's attempts to avoid typecasting shows just what a good actor he is, in this, our next stop. 

16. Regarding Henry

In one of his best performances, Harrison Ford plays Henry Turner, a top notch lawyer who is selfish and cold in his personal life with his wife and daughter. He goes out for some cigarettes and when displaying his trademark self-centeredness to a convenience store thief, Henry gets shot in the head. As Henry begins to struggle through recovery we see that his personality has undergone a distinct change. He is now human and humane although also slow mentally. Watching him unravel the mystery of why he always paints Ritz crackers as well as adjust to where he does and doesn't fit in at home and at the office are the heart of the story as we also reflect upon true humanity and how the truth often comes in ways we don't expect.

When I write of hunger ...

When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.

M. F. K. Fisher

It's Pouring

It's Pouring, Remo Savisaar

Who has taught you to live well?

The Lord sends us out to proclaim his message to the ends of the earth. We are to bring it to those who do not know him personally, on a one-to-one basis, just as the first Christians did with their families, their colleagues and their neighbors. To do this apostolate, we need not resort to strange behavior. And when they see that we live the same life as they do, they will ask us, "Why are you so happy? How do you manage to overcome selfishness and comfort-seeking? Who has taught you to understand others, to live well and to spend yourself in the service of others?" Then we must disclose to them the divine secret of Christian existence. We must speak to them about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, Mary The time has come for us to use our poor words to communicate the depth of God's love which grace has poured into our souls (Christ is passing by, J. Escriva). ...

We should also consider the fact that the leaven has an effect only when it is in contact with the dough. Without being indistinguishable from the dough, but working from within, the leaven does the work of transformation. The woman not only inserts the leaven, but she also kneads it into the mass and hides its presence. In like manner, you have to mix in with other people and become identified with them... Just as the leaven is hidden but does not disappear, so, little by little, all of the mass is transformed to the proper degree (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Matthew's Gospel). Only in the middle of the world can we bring all things to be renewed by God. it is for this task that we have been called by divine vocation.

Francis Fernandez,

In Conversation with God

Volume Four: Ordinary Time: Weeks 13-23