Holy Impatience

Tonight I read theological work for the first time in a month: an essay by Rahner called "Notes to an Impatient Catholic", composed immediately after the council. After two pages I stopped to write here. My absence from this (primarily theological) blog has accurately reflected my unwillingness to arrange or discuss my thoughts on certain (primarily theological) topics. Laziness, listlessness, and busy-ness have been the context of my disengagement from the Church and theological study, whose root is resentment, anger, and disappointment - impatience. I would like to begin where I left off, considering ecclesiogenesis (J. Haers' intriguing coinage) and then taking a sharp left into a dark woods.

Haers reinforced the point made by Hans Kung regarding disappointment in the Church. Formally, 'Church' is defined as the place of God. 'Church Activities' are any activities that facilitate the movement of the Holy Spirit, for example. But in this relationship, the Church is tethered to God, not God to the Church. The Church is only the Church insofar as it fulfills its obligation to be the place of God.

The right-hand turn into the idyllic meadow is to mention that any activity that is God-filled, that is, any activity that promotes connection/love, is a Church activity. ecclesiogenesis - church building - is building love. Theology, the study of the Church, is then the study of love. The idea of ecclesiogenesis was remarkable to me at the time because of the attitude change required to call a sunny day 'the Church', or a good conversation 'the Mass'. I valued and enjoyed the process of both formalizing my everyday life, and de-formalizing a stuffy, jargon-filled institution with its own jargon and stuffing.

But we will take the left-hand turn. In this liberated mindset, I now observe the gaping ills of our institution. Roman Catholicism reflects and perpetuates evil. Does it do so in proportion to its promotion of good - of loving connection, of God? Who can judge? It institutionally neglects and criminalizes an entire gender (one of two genders, half of possible genders, half of possible humans). It ignores or promotes inequality and violence. Structurally, it is a portrait of corruption and ego. What can outweigh these allegations? Can even my favorite theologians argue the institutional church out from under these faults? Would even the lofty, progressive visions from the deep corners of Catholic intellegensia scratch the boulder of bureaucratic indifference?

I entered theology because I was introduced to Catholicism and knew there had to be more. Someone else must have seen how ridiculous common piety seemed. There must be some depth to all of this, somewhere. And I found a cavern of riches, powerful visions of God, positive and convincing interpretations of scripture, and goals for a changed institution. I am now impatient to see these changes in my church.

That is a holy impatience. I want the Church institution to more perfectly resemble, more closely seek out, the Church idea. I am happy to sit out, for now. I have already tapped-out of the fight for one year; I would not mind two, or even ten. I will not cast dispersions, I will not use hyperbole. I will spread the word that the church we have is not the Church we want, the Church of God. And when the disappointment of our worldwide millenial failure crushes me, I will stop, and enjoy a church-free world. I will make my church on the Fly, over a blanket in the grass, playing transistor radio jazz instead of pipe organs and drinking Abita instead of bad wine.

I have not left the Church. Sin is failure to love, and I have not sinned. I am simply impatient with some folks.

Abuse

The business that has kept me from regularly writing here has also kept me from reading the news. Now I can no longer ignore the stories of abuse at the hands of priests, the criminal misconduct of church leaders, and the stony response from the top. So today I will write on my own reactions to this ongoing tragedy, and some positive responses that it could eventuate.

Sometimes I feel like I play for a losing team. That is to say, when talking about my place in the Church (and church) I use a lot of underdog rhetoric. K. has taught me how to talk in reference to Christian environmentalism - namely, that Christians are blindly anthropocentric in ways that ignore major elements of Christ's message, the Old Testament histories, Christian metaphysics, and reality. K. has said that she no longer identifies with the institution that has failed so miserably, so consistently, so perennially. Now I know exactly how she feels. It is hard to make excuses for this institution that has regularly promoted injustice, inequality, ignorance, and evil since the time of ancient Rome. To zoom out, the ancient monotheist traditions all have more blood on their hands than purification clothes.

But our disaster is unique. Our religion's evil is intimate, personal, and sexual. This evil is in our bedroom, in the sheets next to us. This evil contradicts our last ounce of hope in personal, inexplicable trust. Oh, but this evil is not just localized or singular, it is also systemic and global. Today's religious evil is the worst of both worlds - personal and universal violation.

Overshadowing my sympathy for the abused, my reaction has been vocational, challenging my assumptions about what I want to do with my life, and what I think is important in this world. I have lived on certain premises since middle-school, when I wanted to be a priest, to graduate school in theology, to currently searching for work in churches. But now - what the hell am I doing with this organization!? I am pro-women to the point of philogyny, very pro-queer, sexually liberated, environmentally aware, postmodern, and democratic. Sure I fancy some aspects of traditionalism, but that's mostly in the menswear department, not in theological sensibilities.

Lets see. I appreciate the way tradition, connects us with ancestors (philanderous racists that they were) and with a global community (millions of whom are caught in mortal power struggles in which religious institutions are almost uniformly in the pocket of the persecuted). I deeply appreciate ritual, as this blog exhibits. The Eucharist is occasionally a powerful action. Um....

Whenever I 'do theology', whenever I talk or read about religion and spirituality, or whenever I take part in rituals, I do not focus on the positive. I see myself as an agent of change within a dilapidated ship. And I am not alone - a dozen or more weekly magazines, and countless academic journals, are following the Catholic response with rabid criticism. Respected theologians across the globe (but overwhelmingly in NATO member countries) are being equally aggressive. Leuven taught me that that the movers and shakers in theology are pushing the boulder with me.

So what do we want? This dramatic evil could stoke two centuries-old fights. First, the sexual identity of priests as celibate men. It has been thoroughly shown that married priests are 1)more aligned with the tradition; 2) one of the endearing aspects of the Orthodox and Protestant churches; 3) practically unassailable. Female priests is a fight I see for another 150 years, but this fight might be won in a decade. Assuming, that is, the pope wants it.

Which brings us to the second front - hierarchy. Papal primacy (the Pope having unique and superlative powers compared to other bishops, contrasted with 'collegiality') is a tack on everyone's ass. It is THE impasse of EVERY ecumenical dialogue (that is, the big reason that Anglicans and Lutherans and Catholics and Orthodox aren't one big church with a lot of imaginative parts is almost entirely because of the Vatican's immovable and very Italian position on the role of the pope. yeah really). Papal primacy is also a major blindspot for Christian metaphysics, which had to invent and prop up a ridiculous notion of Truth that allowed Truth to be known specially and infallibly by one person. The pastoral management of parishes, dioceses, regions, countries, and continental churches is sometimes coordinated by, sometimes hindered by, Rome's interference. And, as the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands demonstrates, even when the ritual and theology are entirely intact, the centralization of authority on Rome is the sole reason we do not have married and female Bishops in every dioceses that wants them. Hans Kung Hans Kung Hans Kung.

B16 has taken some unique steps to deal with the situation - the unprecedented, intensive visit of the Irish bishops, the pastoral letter to Ireland - so there is some hope that he recognizes this as a watershed. And, encouragingly, even uber-Catholic Ireland is not taking shit from Rome anymore, and will civilly prosecute priests as sex offenders, extraditing them from wherever they are transferred to as if they were criminals on the lamb (which they are) (AWESOME PUN!) I hope this spark for Vatican III, the type of council that reinforces VII and dusts off the explicitly unfinished agenda of Church reform that has haunted us since 1965. Well, since 0035.

I meant to write on the idea of Church, and Hope, and ecclesiogenesis, but I guess that will wait. 940. Andy.

Watches

No excuse this time; sheer laziness has kept me from the blog for a few days. But anyone who knows me knows that, behold, the post entitled 'Watches' will make all things new.

I do not remember the first time I thought a watch or clock was remarkably beautiful. Perhaps all mechanisms, dials, numbers, and polished metal can be aesthetically positive. But clock faces are entirely different for me, and have always been. Then, one day, I saw how they worked. I witnessed a skeleton movement, in which the beating heart and secondary movements that normally lay underneath the functional hands and dials are exposed, rendering the watch both dysfunctional through the removal of numbers and static reference points, and beautiful in its wild complexity. My lover affair has sent me to the outer limits of horologie to admire million-dollar watches. But more than the visual appreciation, my love is philosophical, charged with history and irony, and no little bit of testosterone.

Clocks were not always built to measure the passage of mere time. Original clock faces indicated 24 hours in a circle, and the hands were thought to track the actual movement of the sun around the earth. Some clocks also tracked the movement of the other planets and the moon. Ideally, the hands of the clock pointed directly at the position of the moon, Saturn, or Jupiter. The hubris of this mechanical terracentricity is only matched by the physical beauty of these objects, constructed by princes out of the most malleable, and so the most expensive, metals, or else built into babel towers that redefined the city.

This is to say that mechanical time-keeping devices have always been objects of beauty, produced by exceptional craftsmen who wish to showcase their skill, and at great expense by those who wish to demonstrate their wealth. By contrast, the only widespread predecessor to the mechanical clock was the sun clocks, such as a sun dial, which were easily crafted from any available material and relied on raw nature - instead of ingeniously shaped natural phenomena, such as springs - to function. The sand-clocks, like an hour glass, were themselves prized possessions of those able to afford expert glass-workers, and even so were only available some fifty years before mechanical clocks, and then only in Italy. So be it resolved that mechanical clocks are unique objects of art and craft.

Let me describe the operation of a mechanical clock. First there is a drive train - some thing that creates kinetic energy. Not much energy is needed, only enough to suspend and move the weight of the hands around the face. The most simple is a falling weight on a rope, such as with early bell-tower clocks. A coiled spring set to bouncing and returning has also been popular. Both must be wound by people at intervals, or, as with modern watches, using the kinetic energy of normal wrist movement. Oh, or electricity via batteries.

Second, the energy must be carefully regulated using a 'regulator' (surprise!). That is a pendulum, or a sort of paddle-wheel thing, or this really cool thing called a grasshopper. Basically, the energy from the 'drive' is sent through a gear, which is stopped and started by the back and forth of, say, a pendulum. It goes unsaid that the rate of that moderation, and thus the length and weight of that pendulum, is under careful scrutiny. Watches use this cool weighted, spinning wheel around the circular, bouncing spring.

The drive and regulation is the really cool, important part. Once you have regulated kinetic energy, the world is your oyster. Using ingenious systems of gears, horologists can spin hands around several faces at once, seconds and hours, or once a day, or once a month, or something that chimes. Everything else is a game on the relationship between drive and regulation.

A particularly remarkable development is the Tourbillon, which was developed in 1795 in Switzerland, where a competition to make the most complicated and insane mechanical devices is part of the ambient culture. It was developed to counteract the millisecond of inaccuracy theoretically possible when super high-end watches experience extreme temperature changes. Yeah, its pretty ridiculous. Basically, the mainspring is not only encased in a regulating wheel, the whole darn thing spins so as to average out the impact of gravity and metal expansion. Today, they can spin on three axes. Let us agree that all clocks are monuments to engineers, and are mechanical showpieces. But some are made in factories, while others are handcrafted by millionaire masters at the rate of one per ten years.

In addition to the mechanical awesomeness is the philosophical meaning, which I have premeditated. The original function of clocks, to track celestial bodies, is the definition of ego. The term 'regulate' is a big part of horological jargon, as if a terrestrial device could accurately reflect - let alone impact - time itself. Watches up the ante by placing this device on a person's wrist, next to the buttons of his cuff or the clasp of her bracelet. It is jewelry, in the accessories section of Target next to the sunglasses. They are simultaneously common and extraordinary.

And they are beautiful. The craftsmen who make these are like architects, or graphic designers, or industrial designers. They produce functional objects of beauty. Objects that are at once gaudy and subtle, playful and formal, ironic and literal.

Visit the blog I link to on the sidebar, watchismo.com, or the website of independent horologie to see some examples of what extraordinary watches look like. Search 'tourbillon' or 'regulator' or 'Vaceron Constantin' on youtube. Fall in love.

935. Andy.


A watch sculpture, by the Swiss group Trois C, highlighting the mainspring and weighted wheel regulator (aka 'escapement').


Vacheron Constantin's Tour de l'Ile showing off - 24 independent functions, 10,000 parts, $1.5 million (and totally unavailable), 250 years of watchmaking.


One of the most complicated watches ever made, Breguet's Marie Antoinette pocket watch, commissioned in 1783 and completed in 1827 (the original client noticeably absent).


Despite or because of their simplicity, RGM in Lancaster, PA, produces the watches that I most enjoy looking at.

Good Theology

True to my word, I will discuss four of my favorite theologians, and what makes them deserving of my fan-boy devotion.

I must begin with Karl Rahner (1904-1984), who, for me, is a template for good theology and outstanding theologians. I am not in this one alone, either - he is regularly considered to be one of the three most important theologians of the 20th century. He was the primary nuncio, or theological adviser, for Vatican II's influential German Bloc of bishops and theologians. He practically penned the modern understanding of Christianity (Nouvelle Theologie) that is the first major theological movement since medieval-19th century Scholasticism. He is at the heart of most cool things that the Church did (up until Liberation Theology). But it is not his reputation that makes me love him; his reputation is a reflection of his awesomeness.

Rahner never wrote systematic treatises (except, arguably, his Master's thesis and Doctoral projects, which are the first and last documents to be meta Rahner). Instead, each of his writings are specific, occasional. He writes to talk about education, about Mary, about reconciliation. Or he writes to define Grace, or define Freedom. I like that approach to writing theology because, before any words are read, it rejects the systematic ontology that plagued theology for centuries. That is to say, Rahner considers the work of theology to be limited, temporal, and context-specific, not general, universal, or infinite. And I don't even plan to discuss the really awesome parts of his theology, the things he writes about so occasionally. Also, his writing is terribly dense, and unapologetically complex. Indeed, to read Rahner you must totally blow your mind. Bam!

No list of Bad-ass theologians would be complete without Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955). Where to start? Paleontologist/geologist first, theologian second, and a full-on mystic. Teilhard was a big-picture person, for sure. His understanding of Christ was Cosmic, all of creation, including other galaxies, for all of time. And, as a paleontologist, Teilhard knew something about time. He is a tremendous writer, in English or French (he regularly self-translated), with beautiful, personal accounts, descriptions, and explanations. His collected letters from Egypt and China (where he helped discover Peking Man, one of the first hominid skeletons) are themselves worth owning. Besides his scope, he is directed very firmly to the future, the Omega point of history, the Kingdom of God.

I also love Hans Kung (1928-), an old friend of Rahner's. Kung basically predicted all of the major movements of Vatican II in a from-nowhere book just as John XXIII declared the conclave. Now, Kung does write big books, but they are always written as if to a friend, or a parishioner. He attempts, in each large work, to start from square one. So, for example, On Being A Christian simply describes every aspect of being a Christian. Likewise, the 2005 book on theology and science explains the debate as if I had never heard of anything, or looked up on a clear night (and also introduces me to Mozart).

As I particularly love Rahner for his approach to writing, I love Kung for his tone when dealing with the Church. He is not afraid to punch, to speak truth. I love when someone challenges authority and has the chops to do so. "The Church clings to the Spirit, chases the Holy Spirit, not the other way around. The extent to which the Church fails to recognize the Spirit is the extent to which is fails to be Church." Courageous up against the Church. Oh, by the way, he and Ratzinger used to work together, but are no longer on speaking terms. His license to teach as a Catholic has been repealed (its complicated - his university created a department just for him). And what topics does he most frequently pull into focus? Papacy and infallibility, eternal life, education, and ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.

Finally, lets get modern with Sallie McFague (1933-). She takes Ricoeur et al.'s intensive post-modern study of Metaphor and transforms it into Feminist eco liberation theology. Yeah, that's right: Eat it, hetero/anthro/andro/scholasto-orthodoxy. She is moving forward with the church-challenging work with massive theological, metaphysical chops(ala Kung). Also, and again, a pleasure to read - a narrative style that is defended to its essence in her call to post-modern narrative/hermeneutic philosophy.

All said, what do I like in a theologian? Chops, first and foremost. Nothing half-baked, everything well considered, well prayed, well researched. I like to draw from multiple fields and genres. I like it to be real and practical at the same time as it touches the ethereal. After all, that balance of transcendence and immanence is the essence of religion.

(I also like Jesuits, like Rahner and Teilhard).

790. Tomorrow, we'll either compare wine to beer or be ready to talk about affection.

Wild Strawberries

It's been too long; I enjoy writing, but now that I have a few big ideas out of my chest and onto the internets, I feel less obliged to write. But last night I watched Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman.

This is one of my favorite movies/films. I doubt any single work of literature or film has influenced me more, and I find it aesthetically haunting and beautiful. I have watched it more times than almost any other movie - possible exceptions include Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Grosse Pointe Blank, but neither of those come close on impact. Bergman's film illustrates a few simple lessons, almost cliches, of which I regularly need to be reminded.

The Plot: septuagenarian medical doctor/professor/self-described pedant must travel to Lund to receive a prestigious life-time achievement award. We meet the protagonist, Isak Borg, the morning of the trip, after a night full of strange dreams. He wakes early, and so decides to scrap his air-travel plans for a roadtrip. His daughter-in-law, who is auspiciously and surprisingly staying with him, asks to go with him and return to her husband/his son in Lund. Along the way they detour at his mother's house and the family's old summer cottage, they meet with three allegorical hitchhikers and an abusively antagonistic married couple, and Isak has a few more naps with strange dreams. Upon arriving in Lund, Isak's son and daughter-in-law are somewhat reconciled, as Isak attempts (and fails?) to share some glimpse of his new wisdom with his icy son.

Isak Borg enjoys being alone, at least apparently. He and his live-in housekeeper Agda share a surprisingly intimate fight when he wakes her with the changed plans. And again, although he is at first cold and formal with his daughter-in-law ("You only like me around the house like a cat" she says. "A cat, or a human being," he inadequately responds), by the end of the trip they, too, have an affable intimacy. The final scene of the movie includes a beautiful kiss, she sitting on the edge of his guest bed in Lund, asking him about her shoes, and kissing him very fondly on the cheek. His mother demonstrates part of this desire/rejection of company: when visiting, she is terribly formal and unfriendly, but when they make a show of leaving she, surprisingly and subtly, pressures them to stay for tea. "No one visits me here anymore, not that I mind," she says, but we are not convinced as she thumbs through her mostly deceased children's old toys.

The love and respect paradox is another big theme. Isak Borg is clearly respected, and takes great care in matters of honor. But apparently he does not expect any fondness from anyone. Pumping gas in a region where he began his medical career, he visits with a young couple who he must have known back then. They offer his gas for free, and discuss naming their expected child Isak. As he tries to pay, the mechanic says, "We can do the right thing, too. Everyone in this region has not forgotten. Some things cannot be repaid, even with gas." Isak replies, to himself, "Maybe I should have stayed here." In Isak's second dream, dosing in the strawberry patch at the old summer home, he dreams of his old flame Sara, who ended up marrying Isak's promiscuous cousin. Breaking down after being taunted for kissing the cousin instead of her beau Isak, Sara sobs, "Isak is so good, so high above me. He makes me feel so low. He wants to read poetry and only kiss in the dark." In a later dream, Isak remembers a scene where he witnessed his wife's rape (?). After the fact, sitting in the woods with her pseudo-assailant, she says, "I will go tell Isak. I know exactly what he will say. That he understands perfectly. That I am not to blame. That I am hysterical and should take a sleeping pill to calm my nerves." However, the main characters of our roadtrip seem fond of Isak: Agda, after 30 years of close service; the tag-alongs, perhaps only because of their youthful exuberance ("I am a virgin, that is why I am so cheeky. Also, I smoke a pipe."); and the daughter-in-law, but only after lunch.

So far, Isak does not try for friendship. He speaks of himself as cold-dead already. But he does look for it, and find it. The roadtrip transforms him in his late years. I think his relationship with his daughter-in-law most clearly shows this, as they converse during the whole trip, as she witnesses his past and his present state, and slowly warms to him as he himself lowers his walls of old-world gentility and 'honor'.

Oh, but no favorite movie of mine would be complete without a full-frontal assault on mortality. Ingmar Bergman is most famous for his treatment of death in Seventh Seal, which includes the prototypes for such famous scenes as playing chess with death, the dance of death, and comically long death throws. But I prefer the treatment Bergman gives to Isak Borg, our elderly hero. The first scene of the movie is the first dream, almost entirely silent, shot in high-contrast black and white, where each noise (squeaking cart, footsteps on pavement) are painfully sharp and loud. Isak is lost in a strange city of abandoned buildings. He looks at a clock above the street and then at his pocket-watch (not his but his father's, it turns out) - both are without hands. He tries to ask for directions from a suddenly appeared shape, but the head has no face, and the body collapses to the ground and melts. A funeral carriage approaches, breaks, and the coffin falls open onto the ground. Guess who is inside but Isak, pulling our protagonist down into the coffin!

Again, midway, while dozing after lunch, during the dream which includes his wife's rape, Isak is being tested in medicine by the abusive husband they had recently ejected from their car. He fails miserably, cannot remember anything. He cannot even tell if a woman is alive or dead. The audience/judging panel for his examination is not amused.

Finally, just before arriving in Lund, Isak and his daughter-in-law discuss the parameters and rationale of her having stayed with him. She was pregnant (and smoking, yes), and Isak's son did not want the child. She tells of when she broke the news to the son; he said, "I was an unwanted child in a loveless marriage.... My dream is to be dead. Stone dead. I will not have any responsibility that prevents me from leaving this world at the precise moment of my choosing." Isak is surprised to hear this - but he is so young! and so successful! and you (his wife) are with child! But Isak knows this feeling in himself, too.

I think it is our mortality that defines us. Life is for the living, sure, and only the most nihilistic focus on their death. But we do die. We are surrounded by death. The open secret of beautiful sunny days is that they end, and will never return. Our time does tick by, on clocks with hands (note - my philosophical obsession with watches developed with my love of this movie). Focusing on death is for the dying, but even the elderly Isak, by the end, is not obsessed. He hopes to cure his son's death wish. Perhaps it is the ability to feel the sun on beautiful days, to feel the love and affection of real friends, that separates life from cold, respectable, honorable, codified, legalistic death. Forgive the strict rules of debt repayment, Isak! Your son's love is more important.

1200 words. A triumphant return? And for tomorrow (just so I don't have an excuse) I want to write on either my favorite theologians, good literature, or affection.

Plans

Today I am searching for my own answers. Perhaps the name of this journal will be prophetic, and I can discover something new.

I have been attempting to get out of foodservice and into 'real work', labors in which I excel and to which I feel dedicated. Vocation. This has been ongoing since I first arrived in New Orleans. Indeed, back when I was hoping to travel to England this was the plan. In December I again took up my flag, my CV, and heard a few responses. The most promising was as a counselor for Loyola's Admissions department. It would have been a job I enjoyed thoroughly, and felt a strong vocational commitment to. It also fit with other life plans well, and I thought it was a sure thing. Two good interviews later, I have been passed over. Lame.

For those of us keeping score, I have not been able to land a big-boy job. Period. Several attempts, several rejections, but all of the others had apparent explanations besides my incapacity: I was out of the country and they were unwilling to sponsor me; I was grossly underqualified; I had bad timing; the position was filled from within more easily/cheaply. Today I have been rejected for none of these reasons, but because I am less good than two other people. Yay for third place.

Pity party aside, what can I do next? There is still an option for the DRE job in Mississippi, about an hour from New Orleans. They have not started interviewing yet, and will contact me. But their office seems super flaky, and it is rather rare that they would take that sort of risk on a newcomer to the community, and a young person. Not to mention the fact that it is far away, further away from New Orleans than either Quinn or I want to live. An hour commute is better than a 12 hour plane, but it would still suck to be living apart. I doubt we could really afford to, anyway. Besides, New Orleans seems to be a pretty dry well for Archaeology jobs, so she would really be here for me anyway. So lame times two.

I could stay here and wait for something else to open up in New Orleans. But why here? Quinn doesn't have much opportunity here, and unless I have a great 'in' (which I thought I did today), I don't see it happening. Besides, nothing is going to open up until much closer to the summer.

I could try to predict Quinn's job market and find work there. For example, San Francisco has a vibrant and progressive Catholic community where I may be able to find some work, and that region has brilliant museums and archeological societies both private and government. But can I get a job without first moving there? Can I afford the travel expenses to interview, etc? Could I afford to live there at all? I love the place, and we have some friends, but I am certainly not familiar with it; do I have the strength for another blind move?

We could wait for Quinn to find a place, and try there. But her professors do not want to talk about that until late summer at the earliest, which, as I learned this year, is way too late for great jobs for me. I could take my Brennan's experience over there and wait tables, playing this game for another year (but with her, this time). That sounds pretty OK.

I think I will start by diving in all ways at once. First, I will be patient and wait until my job market surfaces again. I will continue with the interview in Mississippi (if they haven't lost my number. again), with the hope that I have totally misjudged that community and its awesome and we totally have to live there, prejudice aside. I will keep my ear to the ground closer to home; maybe the Holy Cross situation will improve and I will rock as an adjunct faculty in the fall. I will start watching Bay Area options, and if something perfect shows up I will jump on it.

I am in the same zone as everyone else my age. Being engaged and graduated does not make me terribly special. Blah. Time for some brownies and ice cream.

-Andy

Foodservice

It is midnight after working a double shift at Brennan's, so I am in the mood to break the cycle of morbidity with some plain-old ranting. Last night I conversed with friends about the merits of various restaurants in town, and now I will try to distill that argument/conversation into some big truths of eating out.

The primary skill of a waiter is to be calm under pressure. I like to sing be-bop songs when I get anxious about the food taking too long, pressure from the boss, something on fire, etc. Customers generally only start hating the establishment and the dining occasion once the waiter flips. As a diner, I don't mind waiting or being otherwise patient if my waiter seems well-intentioned and calm. The waiter sets the tone for the diner, as well as fellow waiters and subordinates. So, calm, collected, and pleasant under pressure is the definition of a good waiter.

(Of course, not making mistakes prevents the pressure in the first place. That means the waiter should be surrounded by experienced staff and should proceed carefully.)

Quinn's rule for eating food at restaurants was that it was only worth it if she could not feasibly prepare the same food, better, at home. That is a very high bar! In that sense I am proud of many of the dishes at Brennan's - poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce are really mean, especially at 10am. No way I could prepare them myself, and even she would probably back off. Then we have a turtle soup which is, well, really good and unique and hard to imitate. Where will I get turtle meat?

Likewise, when we dine out we make a point of ordering interesting, special items. I cannot understand people who ask for eggs benedict when our super-special 'signature' dish is a benedict plus a super-cool sauce. Or people who ask for french toast and waffles. Seriously. Why are you here? Go make that in your hotel kitchenette in under fifteen minutes. I want to know what a restaurant is famous for, what the chef feels like making. And that brings the elephant in Brennan's kitchen - no one cares.

A good cook cares. We know this at home. Well, a good chef is interested in food, too. I promise that the chefs at Brennan's are not interested in food. They are not foodies. They do not eat at other interesting places. They are not excited to try something new. In their defense, they aren't paid well enough to care. Now take a really good restaurant, like my favorite Dante's or Jacque-imo's. The people in their kitchens experiment, eat, love food. The result is interesting and unusual works that are genuinely creative aesthetic works. Philosophically, when eating in or dining out, I don't only want to engage my digestion, but also my emotion. I want to connect with the chef (and the farmer, and the waiter). I try to provide that as much as I can at Brennan's, and people appreciate me for it ($). But eating at Dante's is a connection to the farmers who grow the veg, and the town that holds the chicken coops. The waiters are real people, not just monkeys throwing bananas. The chef is there emotionally and spiritually, and takes an active interest in my enjoyment of the food. The bartender enjoys his work, and likes making good drinks. The cat is fat and cuddly. I connect with the good restaurant in more ways than with my taste buds and duodenum. That is added value, worth paying money for.

So, in summary, a good restaurant offers food that is better than I (Quinn) could prepare, that is to say food that impresses us. A great restaurant adds to that with real personality, promoting a real relationship between me and the food, staff, and place. Real relationships, as we have discussed before in this blog, are the metaphysical stuff of God. So, I can confidently say that a great restaurant is holy. Blessings to Beaucherie, Dante's, Jacque's, Mimi's, Jamilla's, Daisy, Iroha, and all of our favorite places around the world.

Ritual

It has been a while, and I have a reasonable amount of guilt for ditching the habit for a week. Hey – Mardi Gras: when life calls, start living and stop writing. But that will only get me so far, namely about five days. So today I am back, and I want to finally tackle a term whose collected presumptions have been in the midst of this blog since the beginning. Today is the day for Ritual.

And what better day to talk about rituals. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and we saw a particularly ritualized Mass at the chapel, with very little singing, loads of irregular Catholics in attendance, and the whole extra ritual element of the ashes. And tonight I will be gathering with the Vespers community to ritualistically sing the ritual songs. I enjoy ritual more than most, and I purposely surround myself with ritual throughout most weeks, but this is super-ritual week makes me extra keen to tackle this huge topic. In so doing I will try to channel some of my favorite thinkers, especially Chauvet (Prof. Knieps would be proud).

Rituals are moments in time specifically designed, by ourselves or someone else, to be impersonal. That is to say, when performing a ritual (rituals are necessarily experienced in participation, not observation) we perform actions not of our immediate design. Religious rituals, for example, are inherited over generations, and we pass them on without major alterations.

Take the Mass for example. Nothing about the clothes, music, architecture, seats, smells, or even the words spoken is apparently practical. They come from another time and place, and are specifically designed to be different. Dancing between preserving their otherness (get used to that word) while adapting them to particular circumstances is what defines good ritual.

Experiencing otherness means being taken out of a personal comfort zone, being put off routine, and lowering defenses. Experiencing otherness, embracing otherness, helps us avoid objectifying the other. Rituals create that experience with the hope that the unusual elements help stimulate the brain to be open to new experiences. That part of the brain, the openness to new experiences, will hopefully translate into an openness to the other, empathy, and relationship. For religious ritual, that other to be experienced is God.

So rituals are codified weirdness because God is weird; they are programmed otherness because God is other. Rituals remind us that the world is full of not-us, that custom-made is not the greatest good. Ritual preserves Truth over opinion. At least that’s the thought.

Of course, ritual also collects barnacles. Just as we modify our traditions with, say, acoustic guitars and microphones, previous generations have modified traditions with the elements that suited their context. Many religions are trying to find the bright light at the end of the vale of misogyny. In Western Christianity, a history of violent persecution has led to rituals predisposed to morbidity and guilt. Protestant churches, founded and developed as a minority, are friendly with populism and/or judgment.

Take the Tridentine Mass, the pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy that is making a comeback in the US. The priest facing away, chanting quietly in Latin, the hyper-reverence for the eucharist, all of these preserve tradition at the expense of the comfort of the people in the congregation (and of the priest). That is to say, the Tridentine Mass focuses on – it considers its purpose to be – the other, God, not the congregation. Post-VII churches are all about the altar in the middle, the congregation interacting with each other; not so with Tridentine churches, where all of the action is directed towards the altar on the back wall. In a Tridentine church, everything is literally directed to outside of the church. Can’t get more other than that.

But it all feels obnoxious unless people know what’s going on. Ritual is much easier to appreciate if you are aware it is happening, and of its general purpose. Perhaps if we lived in a more ritually-minded society this could happen, but that’s a non-starter. Education goes a long way, but it usually starts and stops with the simplistic explanation of symbolism, which is misleading. I think that if we were aware of the purpose of ritual in general, not just the item-for-item metaphors that compose the periphery of ritual, we would allow ourselves onto the ride. That’s my personal experience.

But maybe not, too. My personal experience presupposes a broader comfort with symbolism, storytelling, and fable. I appreciate being circuitously lead to notional meaning. I fear that is an underappreciated virtue. Scientism (the derogatory cousin of science) does not get along with ritual symbolism.

The other caveat is that ritual must be balanced with relevance: the other must be approached with a hefty dose of the self; the unfamiliar will be exhausting without the comfortable. Very good liturgical directors, priests, and other moderators of ritual are sensitive to the requirements of the community. That’s why different masses are set up for the youth, or old people, with different attitudes towards the tradition. But even then, the larger the community the more impossible providing a rich ritual for everyone becomes. I like to improve my mass experience (pun) with more intimate rituals that can adroitly change to meet our needs that day. I like the Vespers, of course, where no more than ten of us can pretty much figure out how to communicate the other meaningfully using an ancient program.

So rituals: newer or more relevant is not always better; be explicit about its foundational meanings; and try to do it in small groups. Get to know your God by knowing your grandparents’ God, and Cyril’s God, and Moses’ God, and your great-grandchildren’s God. Practice feeling uncomfortable, lowering defenses, really knowing someone else, and you’ll be better at knowing God. And knowing God, transcendence, is the root of any spiritual/religious inclination.

And 1000 words makes up for a day?

Praise and Worship Music

I missed a day, and I feel terrible about it. And, honestly, today's post is not going to be very long. Mardi Gras is exhausting from rise to bed.

Today I am thinking about praise and worship music, thanks to Ken and my discussion regarding its place (or unwelcome) in the liturgy. There are a few steps - what is any music's place in the liturgy? How does praise and worship music not meet these criteria? What pitfalls do they suffer more than any liturgical music?

Music is integral to liturgy. I would not have always said that, and I myself still suffer from the music at most masses. But I am not the target audience of most masses, and liturgical music is generally successful at its main goals. Liturgical music is meant to solidify praying persons into a praying people through the sort of temporary/generalized relationships we have mentioned before. Through collective singing of well-known, common songs, we each feel part of the group. Think of going to your favorite band's concert - you aren't you anymore, you are a fan, with other fans; or Christmas carols - you aren't a cold joy-bringing person, you are a choir of carolers. Liturgical music can/should do that, too.

It also separates 'out there' from 'in here', creating a ritually sacred space by surrounding us with extra-ordinary items, architecture, scents, and sounds. The creation and importance of ritual and ritual space is a big topic, but the general idea is that, along a continuum or balance, the ritual space breaks our routine and allows us to get out of our heads, thus aiding our contact with others and 'the other'. That is what defines churchy music - it is music of any genre or age that is not found outside of churches. When you hear any churchy music you should think of church, and when you think of church you should think of churchy music. By being so limited, churchy music is only identified with the ritual space, and so helps us create the ritual space. Hearing the music reminds us of how to be in church, so to speak.

What helps churchy music, good liturgical music, do this? Well, things that make it different and also common. Being around for a generation is a good start. If you have heard a song in church from the time you were using crayons on the pews, you probably remember more or less how to sing it. Not to mention that songs have a long life if they survive a natural selection of sorts, so older songs may actually be better than much of what you hear. Its not like every song in the 60s was awesome, but the ones we remember were pretty awesome, then and now.

Next to that, a good song has to be accessible, singable, easy to play well on the piano, easy to hum on the way home. Liturgical songs are for the masses (pun).

Lastly, liturgical songs should not sound good on the radio. That's a hard thing to say, but the place of liturgical music is the ritual space, exclusively. If it sounds good outside of a church, it undermines its identity as liturgical music because it is no longer unique to the ritual space. Church and driver's seat and cereal box aisle are not the same, and liturgical music must help preserve that difference.

These are all very Catholic things to say, and could be taken to paint me as a traditionalist. Insofar as tradition is necessary for ritual, I am a traditionalist. So yes, I am a liturgical music traditionalist. I believe that ritual is key to Christianity, and I think that tradition is key to ritual - both very catholic things to say because they are founded on ideas like hierarchy salvific acts. So, without shame I say that praise and worship music is a non-catholic phenomenon. Please stop playing the latest Christ Tomlin hits in the Mass. They do not fit between the 2000-5000 year old rites of the Word and of the Eucharist, or being sung by an ordained man in ritual vestments, under a canopy of medieval architecture. Its just confusing.

Praise and Worship music confuses the Mass because it does not meet the above criteria. It is not a generation old yet. Some few songs are making the cut already, and have crossed over a little maybe. So my septuagenarian grandmother, who is relatively keen, who has a blog, may not be part of our congregation of singers when the song is played. The song may become a moment for a few individuals to have an emotional experience, and for the guitarist to really jam, but the liturgy is not a coffee house venue.

We do adjust over time, and we do grow into some songs, but most praise and worship music simply does not have the lyrically rich content to support thirty years of regular singing/praying. I hate to cast wide dispersions, but an hour listening to the praise and worship radio station will confirm my generalization. To really last, all good songs have more than generic personal emotion; very few praise and worship tunes make that bar. So, mark one against praise and worship music.

Part of what makes praise and worship music is its accessibility, but in a pop context. They have simple lyrics, sure, and easy to sing tunes. But can a congregation drudging through the motions, as most do, still give the song meaning? Can the song be sung without barefooted, over-delighted college musicians? That is the litmus test for en masse singability (punx2). That quality is present in some contemporary Christian music, so a tie.

But much of contemporary Christian praise and worship music has fallen into the trap that pulls other songs down with it - christian radio. If you see vestments on sale at the Gap, they cease to be ritually significant. If a church is an apartment building, it ceases to be a church. If ritual music is sung outside of the ritual, its ritual efficacy is eaten away. Oh, christian radio, let me count the fail.

Sing carefully. The songs you sing are effective, they have an effect. Mass is not open mic morning, it is ritually planned. And, praise and worship music lovers, give me a song.

1050 words - does that roll over?

Our Exploding Sun

Dang, I'm just going to roll with death here. Maybe I'll get it out of my system? The vision of Christianity, this end-times prophecy stuff, all assumes that the Kingdom of God that replaces the world happens, well, here, on Earth, with our familiar New England graveyard with Washington's bones and such. But the natural final destination of Earth is being consumed by the Sun as part of its death. So, how to be cosmic big-picture about the end of the world and the Christian vision of final salvation?

First the facts, as I understand them. All the matter we have experience with - the sun, planets, our planets, the calcium in our bones - is the result of a few generations of suns exploding and pulsing forth elements forged in their core. We are a second generation solar system, meaning there was the Big Bang (which may or may not have been 'the beginning') and then there was another star that exploded, and now there's us. And our sun will explode, too, eating up all our calcium and making new cool stuff out of it. The exploding sun planet thing is just how stars and planets and matter works. The only force strong enough to manufacture elements is an exploding star, and they just so happen to have lots of element-rich planets hanging out nearby when they explode.

This should really change our perspective of our relationship with our planet. We are minuscule passengers on a cosmic rock whose destiny we apparently cannot change. Environmentalism, husbandry, and general ecological stewardship is all for our survival, not the survival of the planet. When a Hippie says, "Earth is dying," he may mean the ecosystem, which is dying, but the planet is always dying, and living, and not terribly affected by us. Humans have not changed the gravitational pull of the sun, nor its effectiveness at blowing up.

Thinking cosmically like this should also raise questions about the place of other planets, with or without life, in the Christian vision of final, universal salvation. But another day.

What it does provide is a context for the values of faith and hope and love that is sensible today. We have faith that the Christ-event is, if not an unique, an important event in space and time. Christ says that the Earth is important, people are important, and our actions and prayers affect the history of salvation. You are my people and I will be your God, says the Shoah, the Jewish confession. We are the people of God, created in (one of) God's image(s). So feel important in the face of boggling scale.

And we have hope for a future that is not nihilistic but important, unique, and positive: The Kingdom of God. Even if the Final Horizon, the Omega Point, is beyond our solar system's history, that is, even if Salvation comes after the explosion of our Sun, we have hope that our world is not vain and nil, but important to an ongoing history.

Here I can see myself telling tales to preserve my sanity. But if religion is nothing else, if all our faith is in vain, is it not still worth it? This is the definition of denying mortality - denying the finality of a supernova. Is that good enough? When taken at this scale, has Christianity ever been anything else? Are we ready to call this necessary to humanity?

Love has a place in the scheme, something like the Noosphere of Teilhard. Another time.

Gradual School

John Irving has it right: we all die, the trick is to live some beforehand. Watching "The World According to Garp" reminds me of the importance of adventure in life; the journey is the destination, and all that. It has been a tenant of comfort to me this last year, undertaking an unexpected adventure that might elsewhere be called a detour, or simply 'suck'. But it is more than consolation in tough, passing time - it is a philosophy worthy of consideration.

I do not mean to be macabre, but many of my posts are about death, and will continue to involve death and its avoidance our of necessity. One of my favorite philosophers, Kierkegaard, calls death the cause of all anxiety and angst, and thus all sin and evil acts, and ultimately he suggests that it is itself what Augustine called Original Sin. We humans are both blessed and cursed with an imagination of infinite potential, but a finite ability and time to act because of mortality. This conflict makes us wish to have done something else, to see the grass greener on the other side, to take both roads diverged in a yellow wood. And that anxiety after choices, an unavoidable angst, eats its way to become jealousy and lust and pride and fear and all causes of hurtful actions.

This does not explain why, when faced with two roads diverging, we should take the one less traveled by. I don't know if The Dane would enjoy adventure. I think he would - the implicit and explicit criticism of formalism at the heart of much of his work suggests a mind comfortable with long walks. He respects the process of coming to understanding. And, in a way, that process mirrors the process of coming to death. We cannot be mature or adult or accomplished or elderly or dead without living the hours between, experiencing unusual circumstances and making tough choices.

Exactly what does the passage of time give us? The ability to coordinate and interact with others whose schedule of decisions is their own. The experience of various conditions, in terms of environment and peers. Aging, physical change in the self. Changing seasons and tastebuds. So to say, many factors of life depend on the passage of time in ways that our infinite imagination may not appreciate. So we should engage the process.

We must engage the process. What are our other options? Time will pass, and must pass, regardless of our wishes otherwise. Same as with other persons, time asks for an intimate relationship as it goes to work graying our hair and updating our months. And, as with other persons, we are free to reject time at our loss. But the rejection is vain, impossible, and the mark of insanity.

Plastics are a symbol of the eternally new in our world, but they themselves are a metaphor for time. They are formed from petroleum, which has itself been grown from the remains of carbon-based life in the dinosaur age. Animals lived and died, mostly died, and have now become clam-shell packaging and car interiors. With time enough and heat, our plastics today will become fuel for a new star system, just as the plastics of our parent solar system were re-forged in a supernova to become us. That sun died when it radiated the elements from which we make lip injections and sweaters.

Our sun will die, too. But I like to think that, in the meanwhile, the Earth will have been pretty interesting, creating an inner universe and interconnected web (Teilhard's noosphere) of a complexity rivaling that of the stars themselves.

Sacrament

This post will be the first of many in which the word sacrament is used. I like this word, which is closely related to sacred, a word that I do use regularly in various contexts. I will try to illuminate the ideas behind sacraments in general, and thus the relationship between the sacred and the Church, the sacred and the world, and so the church and the world.

Sacraments connect people to each other in ways I have described before - a superficial, temporary connection between acquaintances that helps affirm everyone's humanity. Live music and sporting events do the same. But sacraments go further by using ritual. Ritual deserves its very own post, but basically is the use of aesthetic elements like architecture, clothing, choreography, and scents to separate a gathering and action from present reality to connect it (or suggest its connection with) another reality. For Christian rituals, and most religious rituals, that other reality includes the imagined divine world far away, or the narrative fiction that is the reduction of a paradoxical spirit.

That element may come and go depending on one's spiritual...resonance. But the indisputable, foundational element to sacraments is the connection they provide between generations. Sacraments help us cheat death by directly impacting future generations by ourselves experiencing the impact of our forefathers. No matter one's relation to or belief in God, that alone is sacred. That is the definition of transcendence.

I want to bring back the word sacrament. I think that its association with the rote memorization of the seven established sacraments of the Catholic Church has done the word great harm. Regardless of what Sr. Mary Angelica made you believe, there is no limit to what could be considered sacramental. Any action or occasion that promotes transcendence is sacramental. It just so happens that the Church, as the cornerstone of its existence and the reason for its founding, is a sacrament machine. Seven occasions have risen to the top after 2000 years of natural selection, as universally significant. But here in New Orleans we have sacraments (Mardi Gras and Jazz Funerals), and the US has a few all over (like the Red Mass). I have personal sacraments - writing every day has become one. I share some with friends, like Wednesdays with Melanie, Izzie, and Connor. And I want to do more, like Vespers, which is blatantly and apologetically ritualized community singing in a 1600 year old tradition.

These are all rather religious examples, but they set the template for our experience of transcendence in the West. But trees are also sacraments, as is water, and (increasingly, and arguably,) television. I cannot speak to a river's experience of the sacred, but our experience of the sacred, our being made aware of our interconnectedness, is prompted by any number of things. I say 'our' and I mean the plural, because sacraments benefit from a plurality of persons. You can pray (metaphorically) alone, certainly, but its by praying together that we heighten our awareness of the past and future and, thus, divinity.

Living Music

Having just come from a lovely hour at the Neutral Ground, and in light of yesterday's post, today I will write on the experience of live music: how it is worth money on a different scale from recorded music, how the experience of it differs from other music forms, and how it affects our society. But first, I will stop watching youtube videos of Who Dat.

The fundamental difference between recorded and live performance is the audience's ability to interact with the performer and with each other. We experience the music-making together, instead of partaking in it as a consumer good at some later date. As a community of ears we hear something unique being made, and we can pay close attention to the details of the craftsman at work.

I will pay a few dollars to listen to a handful of songs once live, but I rarely pay a few dollars to buy recordings. When I witness the craftsman/musician and share the moment with him/her and the community, my empathy butts out my calculating reason and convinces me to be a pillar of the community and support the artist. When I browse Amazon or the record store, said empathy is lost, and the best a musician can hope for is an impulse buy or, very rarely, a sought-after grail of music. The difference is empathy, relationship, between myself and the artist and the community of music-lovers, and that is itself worth something.

Relationships like this (and like watching sports together, or sitting on a plane) give us a minimal contact with others that helps us define our common humanity. They are temporary and focused away from ourselves towards some object who is objectifying himself (such as the musician or sports team) or towards a common act (such as riding the bus or a plane, or even going to work). These relationships demand almost nothing from us in terms of empathy, barrier-lowering, or other methods to promote personal intimacy. Live music helps all of us remember how we are human - through being together. (whoa double meaning, did you catch that?)

Live music, then, has become an integral part of social gatherings. A football game is not the same without a live band - a good PA does not pass. And we all know about church and music. A good choir that is in tune with the tastes of the congregation (and with a meaningful, rich liturgical/theological message) can really improve the mass. A stereo with a cd cannot do this. We are emotionally invested in the choir, whereas we do not care about the recorded praise music. We create the music together, they are our brothers and sisters, and we sing, ourselves. Our connection with the choir and with each other through music symbolizes and actualizes the presence of God. And I am very ready to say that God is present in a special way at the Neutral Ground, and even on Bourbon Street.

I am a very harsh critic of liturgy, and especially of liturgical music. Not until the UPIC masses in Leuven (thanks to Gabriella), and now at Ignatius Chapel (thanks to Ken), have I been brought to the place of relational selflessness that allows me to be spiritually present and fully participate in the mass. I am still hit-and-miss. The line of good liturgical music is very thin, so fine that I did not believe it existed. But now I do believe, so much so that I help organize the sung Vespers once a week. By singing these ancient songs we not only connect with each other (in an unusually intimate way due to the small size, regular participation, and actual friendship), but also to the past and future generations of singers of these same songs, all over the world.

Good music brings life, in the form of recognized humanity through relationship. So it is no wonder that live music brings more life.

The Saints

I will write about holy men and women some other time. Tonight I want to write about The New Orleans Saints, and the meaning of organized spectator-friendly sports. I have just finished yelling myself hoarse, and I am ready to start deconstructing the experience rationally, soberly (hic). I am also ready for bed, and the rapture, in case you were wondering.

The super-bowl was excellent. The game is one thing - various levels of competition between extraordinary athletes around a custom, changing strategy. Physical excellence, emotional prowess, and mental acumen are all on display at their most masculine. Witnessing their skill and strength is proof of our (men and women's) bodies' potential.

But it does not give us escape from death. Who remembers games from two years ago? Old game reels seem like ancient history. The set clock of the game mirrors the clock of mortality, our sister from whose embrace no one can escape. This game, as memorable, historical, and unique as it has been, will not be remembered. [added next morning] Everyone calls this game 'historic', and in a sense it is unique in history. But it is not historic in that it will be remembered forever. A few years, maybe thirty, but even the great Pyramids of Giza will be forgotten at some point.

The most moving facet of the super bowl was the experience of watching it with the entire city. For weeks everyone has worn Black and Gold. The Quarter was insane by 2 pm already. Whenever the Saints win, fireworks and car horns and impromptu parades are the norm. The bar I watched at was relatively empty, but we all yelled with all our voices. Jumping and praying and costumes. Our individual identities as citizens of this city, or fans of the game worldwide, disappear, and we all marvel together at the players and the franchise. The commentators help us rally by quoting random records that we are breaking (Brees has broken the pass completion superbowl record of Joe Montana). We are excited together, and that affirms our commonality, and creates impromptu relationship that feels more important than it ultimately is.

I cannot gloss over the fact that the super bowl promotes our living in fiction. It is escapism. My empathetic relationship with my co-revelers is based upon a for-profit industry that capitalizes on the temporary and limited abilities of particular men I do not know as persons. But it is good escapism, a tradition of escapism that I can full support. Why? Maybe next time. Now to bed with only 370 words.

Mary

I'll jump right into the theology posts. I spent this evening at St. Joe's Benedictine Monastery in Covington. I arrived early to read a new book I finally convinced myself to buy - a critical edition of Hildegard's Symphonia, a pseudo-mystical collection of songs, antiphons, psalters, and everything else sacramental spoken word and/or singing. My, she is way into Mary, specifically the virginal mediatrix version of Mary that was popular then, and which Hildegard helped popularize in her surprisingly widely distributed work. So what about Mary ever virgin?

On the one hand, I can dig Mary. She is Christianity's response to the universal need for a religiously significant woman. She is our goddess, our eternal feminine, our universal womb, etc. Mary has a lot of traction in that psychology and the religious language stemming from it. Hildegard likes to consider Mary's womb as parallel to the universe of raw matter from which God formed all of creation; in both cases God produces the Word, in flesh as Jesus or in the world as Truth, out of something not God. Hildegard adds a certain metaphysical importance to what I would be comfortable leaving as simply a psychological necessity: Mary as mother-goddess ala Freud and Jung.

And Mary is kinda important. She (thought to be) more easily identifiable as human than Jesus, which is why some ask Mary to intercede on their behalf to Jesus, as if talking to Mary is easier than bringing up human crap to Jesus. It is true that, while Jesus was/is God, and had the direct line, so to speak, Mary was not part of planning process. She was out of the loop in the Gospels. In that way, she is a model for us as Christians, who are also out of the loop but want to do right. As she says at the wedding feast, "Just do whatever Jesus tells you." So she is a model for Christian faith as well as a psychological mother Goddess.

The first claim is too vague and latent for me to have problems with. So people treat Mary as they would a co-redemtrix (the custom-coined word for 'also God') - big deal. I could use some more vaguely theological references to a feminine pantheon in art and writing. But as soon as anyone tries on a specific metaphysical system that spins around Mary, I slam the brakes. Systematic ontologies are entirely masturbatory to begin with, but add Mary's foundational involvement based on minor, spurious or invented sources and I read the signature of someone with too much time and not enough to do. Have a sense of Mary the goddess, not a guidebook to Mary's Cloud. I feel much the same way about God in general.

Mary as Christian example is more troubling. It is the more prevalent occasion for Mary-worship, and the more diversified. Mary is an ideal mother, and ideal wife, an ideal Christian, and ideal teacher, an ideal teenage girl.... Mary is everything someone desires to be, or pushes someone else to be. The key to why this is, and paradoxically why it unravels, is Mary's virginity.

The ideal and perfection afforded by virginity is an untarnished, unblemished understanding of the divine. Purity-obsession plays with soul/body dualism and an uber-transcendent vision of God. But Mary ever-virgin is not a good model for motherhood, or women in general. Virginity is too unreal, unblemished. It smacks of the old-school Christian obsession (and heresy) of denying Christ's incarnation. Christ pooped. Mary had a vagina. Neither wore white linens all over Jerusalem. They probably stank of olives.

The truth is, Mary seems like a bit of a badass. Gets pregnant, has child, raises child with someone she doesn't necessarily like very much but who provides. Puts up with ontological differences with child. Able to take drastic measures like birthing in a stable and moving to Egypt. Hosts angels regularly. Helps found religion named after child's gruesome execution. In short, Mary does not need our help to be a role model. We don't need to invent ways in which she is cool. The virginity is not her, its us, and its something else entirely.

We like to get it. We like to understand things. We do not like them to change, or be subtle, or relative. When we say Truth we mean Defined Block of Stuff, not relation dynamic love. But that is what we get, I think. Virginity feeds into our hope for simple answers through static, flat characters. But Mary was a person, a woman, before she was a character in the Gospels. She was real, multi-faceted, vibrant, and dynamic. Saying 'Ever-Virgin' is just a plea for a simple universe from its anxious creatures.

PS - my first post over 750 words.

Permanence

At the risk of establishing a disturbing trend of self-referential writing, I want to consider the permanence and impermanence of writing. This is important to me because I have considered writing papers and books, and I always cease because I cannot get over the hump of writing something important or useful or universal enough to be set to type and paper. That is partially why this digital medium is more valuable to me than an actual journal would be - the apparent impermanence of the digital text allows me to write without the weight of eternal future criticism. Not to be dower.

My problem with writing did not originate with my own desire to write. I have big problem with some books, specifically books in which the authors do not include an apology for themselves, or establish a tone of hesitance and mystery. I cannot trust books, and I dislike them to seem trustworthy. This is particularly problematic when it applies to Church documents, like the Catechism or Canon Law Codex(CCC or CIC).

Loveable, respectable theologians recognize the relative impermanence in their writings. It is the shallow theologian who hasn't realized the deep mystery and paradox of the universe, humanity's existence, and God's involvement. Good theologians recognize this even at their most passionate moments. Indeed, any impassioned, univocal claim to truth or right is well argued, clearly the product of years of intense reflection and prayer. No theological truth comes easy, if they come ever. But Vatican documents, especially the CCC, are written with smug self surety. It is ironic and obnoxious at best, misleading and evil at worst.

I am particularly offended by the tone of the CCC, which I only ever own in contest, and hide in the back of my shelf, and let collect dust proudly. Its tone of easily accessible answers in a quick-research arrangement encourages readers to treat it as an encyclopedia of theology. Real encyclopedias of theology exist, but their authors usually require no less than four closely-typed pages for each entry. The CCC delivers each half-truth as a tasty tidbit fact, like the daily stock report. Even in games of Trivial Pursuit the answers are more developed.

The CCC was originally intended for Bishops, who, with a PhD in theology, could benefit from what was essentially the latest checklist of Vatican orthodoxy. Bishops can read paragraphs behind each word, and worlds of meaning and debate behind each trite truism. But it was so darn handy-dandy it has become the standard issue for any religious education, to the detriment of religion and education.

Two big issues are at stake- where does the Church (read, Pope) get off writing anything like this, including the usual Vatican pronouncements; and is all written work bad.

The Church is not democratic. In its structure it is essentially oriented to a head, namely Jesus, or Truth. There is no debate at the top. God is or is not in favor. There are norms. No relativity (ala BVI). While we struggle for a more democratic heirarchy, and while this does make a major impact on the experience and meaning of religion (which is no small change, but the effectiveness of the mission of God), Truth is not up for debate. And, predictably, Truth comes from the top.

But but but there is a lot of debate surrounding the infallibility of the Vatican. All bishops are called the Full Representatives of Christ (in the CIC, no less), and an entirely different model of the episcopate is demonstrated by the Eastern churches. Indeed, the Roman approach to the episcopacy - the papacy - is THE major blockage to union with Orthodox, Lutherans, and Anglicans. The favored model, which I think has a fool proof case (another post), has the bishop of Rome presiding in Love, as a fellow bishop, with no extraordinary power but only a sense of prestige for his historical significance. Indeed, then, the earthly Church would be more democratic, even at the top.

And yes, all written words are bad if written as truth. Written words are not truth. They are temporary, limited, brief. Truth is the universe. Read a newspaper article from even the most reliable source, and find what they leave out. How did they firefighters feel? Were the EMT welcome? Did the governor eat breakfast that morning? Was Saturn rotating properly? Words are limited. Remember that, B.

A New Blog

Following the collected advice of several friends, I will try to write something interesting every day. I hope that this will help me like a journal would - collect my thoughts, reflect over time, and improve writing. Starting a blog is easier and cheaper than buying a nice leather book, but the more important advantage is the ability to share my thoughts with others. I hope you (whoever you are, reading this) will make good use of the 'comments' function, or get in touch some more personal way. Today, I will start a tradition of no-less-than six paragraphs with thoughts on writing and relationship.

Yesterday I shared a meal with my friend and former professor Kathleen. Amid our usual (but too infrequent) liberated discussion of religion and the universe, and while giving an equal dose of motherly love to her six doting dogs, she mentioned her plans to travel to Chicago for a Thomas Berry memorial. She has been invited to speak on her personal relationship with the spiritual master, who died last summer. One of her greatest concerns since his death has been the distribution and preservation of her reams of unpublished writings, original manuscripts, and recorded interviews. Her stress is between donating them to Chicago, which already has a Berry archive and which has approached her several times for them, and Loyola New Orleans, which is far less than inviting over the idea.

She has given me copies of these texts in the past, and I read them carefully. Berry is a hero of mine, too, and these unpublished works are golden. Many of them are key to understanding him as a thinker, or touch on unique topics unturned in his (few) published works.

When I was preparing my thesis on Stephen Duffy, just after I had finished my first copy, one of the older professors in Philosophy gave me a copy of a short article Duffy had written for a Loyola reading circle in the late fifties (as far as I can guess). I felt like I was reading sacred papyrus scrolls - hand-typed, signed, faded and yellowed. He still used his priestly prefix and suffixes, which he had thrown off by the time he published most of his work. This manuscript evidenced an unique and challenging image of Duffy who I had not met, even after reading basically everything he had written.

We know, it is obvious, that speaking or singing are done to communicate. We know that there must be an object, a thou to whom the communication is addressed. But not so with writing. Written words are like furniture, or architecture, or functional art, or watches - they straddle communication and meditation. They do not need a thou to address to be beautiful and real. Perhaps because spoken words disappear, while written words etc persist, and can be enjoyed for their beauty later. Doug says that nothing is more sad than a piece of furniture going unused, or a house standing unoccupied. But one day the house or chair may be used, and if they aren't, they are still present. A spoken word unheard is entirely vain.

Thus, this journal replaces vain speech. I am not actually sharing the link, and digital text does not persist like papyrus, so perhaps it is vain. But I will read it, and draw from it, so instead of vain perhaps it is entirely self-serving (like a watch one makes and then only wears when alone, or a painting in a closet). I wonder if I will allow myself to edit it? will I make it every day? (this post took about 20 minutes - I think I can manage that). Will it ever be interesting?

Writing is good. I sign off (into a rainy New Orleans) with a clearer mind. I feel like reading an essay or a book, which was not the case twenty minutes ago. Ask me in three weeks.
-Andy