Love and do what you will.

Lowered Expectations for America

2009-06-12T09:46:00.001-07:00

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's

It's Over (a script for a future Youtube Video)

2009-05-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

Fade in- a voice ominously whispers - "It's Over.'

The sound of rustling wind over a devastated landscape of gnarled trees and burned out buildings.

"It's Over" voice repeats in a slightly louder fashion, accentuating the annoying breathy voiced nature of the whisper.

A chorus of foreign tongues then chimes in, their words are superimposed on the screen until it is filled:

Spanish

Se acabó

French

C'est fini

Italian

È finito

Indonesian

Sudah selesai

The original voice then resumes in a crescendo of irritating whispering which drowns out out the foreign chatter:

"It's over!!"

A sermon by Samuel Johnson

2009-05-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

In addition to the Parochial and Plain Sermons of Newman in the 19th, there is perhaps no better sermon writer than Samuel Johnson in the previous century. This year being the 300th anniversary of his birth, it is appropriate to take a closer look at his writings. In particular, I will examine excerpts from his Sermon 1 pertaining to marriage and comments on the ideas expressed therein:

As a general relation to the rest of the species is not sufficient to procure gratifications for the private desires of particular persons; as closer ties of union are necessary to promote the separate interests of individuals, the great society of the world is divided into different communities, which are again subdivided into smaller bodies, and more contracted associations, which pursue, or ought to pursue, a particular interest, in subordination to the public good, and consistently with the general happiness of mankind.

Each of these subdivisions produces new dependences and relations, and every particular relation gives rise to a particular scheme of duties; duties which are of the utmost importance and of the most sacred obligation, as the neglect of them would defeat all the blessings of society, and cut off even the hope of happiness; as it would poison the fountain whence it must be drawn; and make those institutions, which have been formed as necessary to peace and satisfaction, the means of disquiet and misery.

(Man is a social creature and therefore he must be necessarily in relation to his fellow. Thus society is subdivided into different groups which in turn have their own subdivisions. This entire edifice is cemented by different the different social duties we owe one toward another; otherwise the system breaks down and can become oppressive.)

The lowest subdivision of society, is that by which it is broken into private families; nor do any duties demand more to be explained and enforced, than those which this relation produces; because none is more universally obligatory, and, perhaps, very few are more frequently neglected.

(At the most basic level, the family is the building block of human society. And thus it is for the common good of society that this institution should be protected from abuse.)

Almost all the miseries of life, almost all the wickedness that infects, and all the distresses that afflict mankind, are the consequences of some defects in these duties. It is, therefore, no objection to the propriety of discoursing upon them, that they are well known and generally acknowledged; for a very small part of the disorders of the world proceed from ignorance of the laws by which life ought to be regulated; nor do many, even of those whose hands are polluted by the foulest crimes, deny the reasonableness of virtue, or attempt to justify their own actions. Men are not blindly betrayed into corruption, but abandon themselves to their passions with their eyes open; and lose the direction of Truth, because they do not attend to her voice, not because they do not hear or do not understand it. It is, therefore, no less useful to rouse the thoughtless, than instruct the ignorant; to awaken the attention, than enlighten the understanding.

(Social ills are not primarily the fruits of ignorance as is often believed. Solutions will not come from endless educational programs and increased awareness. The problem lies at the heart of man and his rebellion against the good. His willful blindness towards the Truth, as it were.)

But cruelty and pride, oppression and partiality, may tyrannize in private families without controul: meekness may be trampled on, and piety insulted, without any appeal, but to conscience and to Heaven, A thousand methods of torture may be invented, a thousand acts of unkindness or disregard may be committed, a thousand innocent gratifications may be denied, and a thousand hardships imposed, without any violation of national laws. Life may be embittered with hourly vexation; and weeks, months, and years be lingered out in misery, without any legal cause of separation, or possibility of judicial redress. Perhaps, no sharper anguish is felt than that which cannot be complained of, nor any greater cruelties inflicted than some which no human authority can relieve.

(Although autonomous in their own realm subsidiary institutions like the family run the risk of becoming to unregulated when abuses of power are allowed to occur unabated. These insults often do not go directly against the law but are still unjust. More importantly, what is right and wrong is not limited to what the laws state as a strict positivism would have it.)

It may, indeed, be asserted, to the honour of marriage, that it has few adversaries among men, either distinguished for their abilities or eminent for their virtue. Those who have assumed the province of attacking it, of overturning the constitution of the world, of encountering the authority of the wisest legislators, from whom it has received the highest sanction of human wisdom; and subverting the maxims of the most flourishing states, in which it has been dignified with honours and promoted with immunities; those who have undertaken the task of contending with reason and experience, with earth and with heaven, are men who seem generally not selected by nature for great attempts or difficult undertakings: they are, for the most part, such as owe not their determinations to their arguments, but their arguments to their determinations; disputants, animated, not by a consciousness of truth, but by the number of their adherents; and heated, not with zeal for the right, but with the rage of licentiousness and impatience of restraint. And, perhaps, to the sober, the understanding, and the pious, it may be sufficient to remark, that religion and marriage have the same enemies.

(Until recently no one really questioned the importance of marriage for the maintenance of society. Only a select minority who felt resentment for some reason or another toward it sought its overthrow. But through numerous societal changes over the years this is no longer true and the married state is no longer seen as necessary. It is at best a private contract of some sort which is solely dependent on consent. To wit, the enemies of the traditional idea of marriage are also, as Johnson points out, the enemies of religion; that is, religion in its traditional cast as well as our connection to human wisdom accumulated over the centuries.)

Dangdut- Music in Indonesia

2009-05-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

While most of popular Indonesian music is like Western pop, there is a subgenre called dangdut that combines both Middle Eastern and Indian rhythms to create a unique sound. The following is a clip from a popular song right now in Indonesia that is influenced by this style of singing.

Back from Indo

2009-05-19T05:40:00.001-07:00

Just got back from Indonesia yesterday. I spent about a month there from April 17- May 17. Here is a short summary:

We started out from Columbus, flew to Houston and then- for no apparent reason- had a transit in Moscow for an hour. 11 hours later we were in Singapore. After a few days there with her older sister and husband we took another flight to Jakarta and drove about 3 hours to Bandung, Diana my wife's city. In the course of the first few days I got sick from some stupid dust allergy or something and we had to put down Diana's sister Eveline's dog. In total we ended up spending three weeks there getting to know relatives and going to Bandung's various shopping malls.

Later we went on to Surabaya for one night on our way for a week vacation in Bali.

In Bali went to Seminyak, near Kuta; Ubud, further inland; and Tanah Lot.

In the final days of our trip we went back to Jakarta in transit to Singapore and then back to Houston via Moscow once again.

That's all for now since I'm kind of beat- it being a 12 hour time difference and all.

Against the fourth commandment

2009-03-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

The following is a translation of a Spanish short story:

Saul’s mother was a character. She had managed to get her numerous family ahead without ever letting them get out of her shadow. Despite her advanced age, that night, in the hospital emergency room, she showed her character again. When she saw her son cross the hallway on a stretcher, she went towards him and reacted like one would expect:
“But, Saul, are you stupid? Are you?”
The young man showed signs of confusion and bruises that took a while to disappear. “I don’t know what happened to me, mom,” was all he could say. It was strange, without a doubt, that such a capable horseman like him would have undergone such a predicament. But he was dedicating himself a lot to his work, just like his mother had thought many times before, and the past few weeks had been very bad- a lot of hustling about. So what his wise mother heard from her son’s mouth afterwards, she chocked it up to that.
“Besides, mom, I’m very confused. It must have been the blow but now I see in the Christians in a different way.”
“Don’t say stupid things, Saul,” his mother blurted out at him, yelling. How were they going to let such a secure salary like that stop coming into their home?. “Soon you’ll see things differently.”
“No, mom. No. I see it very clearly, like a burning light.”
A doctor interrupted the maternal-filial argument to discharge Saul. “Again,” the doctor said to him with a certain tenderness, “drive more careful next time.”
Saul got down from the hospital bed with difficulty, clumsily helped along by his mother. “I’m serious, mom, I’m convinced.”
His mom took her son’s protective armor and placed it noisily upon his shoulders. “Not one word more!” she yelled, scandalizing the emergency room. “You’re not going to give up such a good salary for such foolishness!”

(From the blog: Bola de espejos)

En contra del cuarto mandamiento

La madre de Saulo era una mujer de carácter. Había conseguido sacar adelante a su prolija familia sin dejarla salir más allá de sus faldas. A pesar de su avanzada edad, esa noche, en la sala de urgencias del hospital, volvía a demostrarlo. Cuando vio a su hijo traspasar el pasillo tendido en una camilla, fue hacia él y reaccionó como cabía esperar: “Pero, ¿estás tonto, Saulo, estás tonto?” El joven daba muestras de aturdimiento y de unas magulladuras que tardarían en desaparecer. “No sé qué me ha pasado, mama”, acertaba tan sólo a decir. Era extraño, sin duda, que un jinete tan hábil como él hubiera podido sufrir semejante percance. Pero se entregaba mucho a su trabajo, tal y como tantas veces había pensado su madre, y estas últimas semanas habían sido muy malas, de mucho trajín. A eso achacó la sabia madre lo que escuchó poco después de boca de su hijo: “Además, mama, estoy muy confuso. Ha debido de ser el golpe, pero ahora veo a los cristianos de otra forma”. “¡No digas tontadas, Saulo!”, le espetó su madre gritando. ¿Cómo iban a permitirse en casa dejar de percibir un sueldo como ése, tan seguro? “Pronto verás las cosas de otro modo”. “Que no, mama, que no. Que lo he visto muy claro, como un fogonazo”. Un médico interrumpe la discusión materno filial para darle el alta a Saulo. “Y otra vez”, le dice con cierta ternura el doctor, “conduce con más cuidado”.
Saulo se baja de la camilla con dificultad, ayudado torpemente por su madre. “Que esto va en serio, mama, que estoy convencido”. La madre coge la chatarrería protectora de su hijo y se la coloca con estrépito sobre sus hombros. “¡Que ni una palabra más!”, le grita escandalizando la sala de urgencias. “¡Que no vas a dejar un sueldo tan bueno por semejante tontería!”

Too big to fail and too big for the law

2009-03-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

Then he [the judge]ordered that a mosquito be hanged without further ado and that it be drawn and quartered because the unfortunate thing had fallen into the net of the law. But to an elephant that had trammeled over them all, without distinguishing between human and divine laws, he doffed his hat to him as he passed by, weighed down with prohibited weapons, fire arms, good lances, lock pics, and pikes. And he also told him that even though he was doing his rounds, if he were obliged, all his ministers would go accompany him and drop him off at his cave.

(From El Criticón by Baltasar Gracián, Crisi VI, Volume I: In the Springtime of Childhood, p. 141)

Mandó luego ahorcar, sin más apelación, un mosquito y que lo hiciesen cuartos porque había caído el desdichado en la red de la ley. Pero a un elefante que las había atropellado todas, sin perdonar humanas ni divinas, le hizo una gran bonetada al pasar cargado de armas prohibidas, bocas de fuego, buenas lanzas, ganzúas, chuzones, y aun le dijo que aunque estaba de ronda, si era servido, le irían acompañando todos sus ministros hasta dejarle en su cueva.

(El Criticón, Crisi VI, TOMO I: En la primavera de la niñez, p.141)

Fray Luis and Neo-Stoicism

2009-02-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

“For, in truth, what is in the body powerful enough to put at peace the one who is ruled by such a reason and will? Perhaps the desire for the goods of this life will worry him or the fear of its evils break his rest? Will he change on account of an ambition for honor or love of riches, or come out of himself brought on by an enthusiasm for poisonous delights? How will poverty perturb him who only desires a short passage through this life? How will the hunger for high dignities and honors unquiet him who tramples upon all that is valued on the earth? How could adversity, contradiction, different changes, and blows of fortunes put a dent in him who has all his goods secure in himself?”
“Neither does good worry him, nor evil frighten him, nor does happiness puff him up, nor fear makes him shirk back, nor do promises lead him on or threats unsettle him, nor is he one that either prosperous or adverse circumstances can change. If he loses his property, he is glad as free from a heavy weight. If he lacks friends, he has God in his soul, Whom he embraces continually. If hatred or envy set other people’s heart against him, since he knows they cannot take away his good, he fears them not. He is staid amidst change and secure in frightening times. When everything around him goes to ruin he remains firmer still and as that great eloquent man said, ‘he shines in the darkness and is not moved from his place’” (Cicero, Pro Publio Sestio Oratio, LX).

(From On the Names of Christ by Fray Luis de León, Book II: Prince of Peace)

The Beloved

2009-02-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

The innumerable army of true lovers that Christ has and will forever have is an admirable thing. A faithful friend is a rare and difficult matter. As the Wise Man says: ‘A faithful friend is a strong defense; he who finds one will have found a treasure’ (Ecclus. 6:14). But Christ found and finds an infinite number of friends that love Him with so much faith that they are called the faithful among all the people as a proper name only appropriate to them. For in all the ages of the world and in all its years, and we can say in all its hours, there have lived and been born souls that endearingly love Him. And it is more do-able and possible that the sun lack light than there lack men in the world that love and adore Him. For this love is what sustains the world, which holds it in its hand, so as not to perish. For the world is nothing save for he who can be found in it that burns for Christ.

(from On the Names of Christ by Fray Luis de León, Book III: Beloved)

Christ as Fruit- The Cosmic Christo-Centrism of Fray Luis de León

2009-02-12T17:14:00.000-08:00

Well, this is Christ being a fruit. And Scripture gives Him this name to make us understand that Christ is the end of all things and He for Whose happy birth all creatures were created and directed. For just as the tree root was not made for itself, nor the trunk that is born and sustains itself on top but one and the other together with the branches, flowers and leaves and all the rest that the tree produces is ordered and directed toward the fruit that comes out of it which is its end and finishing-off; thus, in the same way, these extended heavens which we see and the stars that shine in them and amongst them, this fount of clarity and light that illuminates everything, the round and beautiful earth painted with flowers, the waters teaming with fish, animals, and men, and this whole universe so great and beautiful, God made it for this end: to make His Son a man and produce this unique and divine fruit that is Christ, which we can truly call the common birth of all things.

(From On the Names of Christ by Fray Luis de León, Book I, Chapter 1: Blossom)

Every movie ever

2008-12-18T08:36:00.001-08:00

President To Face Down Monster Attack, Own Demons In Action-Packed Schedule

Un amor de narices

2008-12-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

I am doing some translating of Fray Luis de León, a 16th Spanish theologian, who often paraphrased the Bible. However, his versions are often very unique sounding in that they try to render Semitic expressions into Spanish. Previous translations had not captured this aspect which also sounds very weird in the original Spanish.

For example:

«Yo soy amoroso entrañablemente, compasivo, ancho de narices, sufrido y de mucha espera, grande en perdón, fiel y leal en la palabra, que extiendo mis bienes por mil generaciones de hombres.»

Here is my translation:

“I am endearingly loving, compassionate, wide-nosed (i.e. slow to anger), longsuffering and waiting, great in forgiveness, faithful and loyal in words. For I extend My goods for a thousand generations of men” (Ex. 34:6-7).

Compare this with the NAB, RSV, and King James:

NAB
6
Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out, "The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity,
7
continuing his kindness for a thousand generations

RSV

[6] The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
[7] keeping steadfast love for thousands

King James
[6] And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
[7] Keeping mercy for thousands

However, we can then make the following Spanish joke:

O sea que Dios nos tiene un amor de narices. Ya caigo.

Advice for a Graduate School Potluck from Manolo

2008-12-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

Manolo says, here is the Manolo’s latest column for the Express of the Washington Post.

Dear Manolo,

I’m going to a graduate school holiday potluck with my boyfriend. I have never been to the school and I am not sure what to wear. My style is pretty conservative. What do you recommend?

Sandra

Manolo says, Ayyy! Merry Nonspecific Period of Non-Oppressive Festivities to all!

Let the Tofurkey and Macrobiotic, Bargain-Priced Sprouts flow like organic wine!

And now, let the Manolo stipulate that if the phrase “graduate school potluck” does not strike dread into your heart, you are not the feeling person. The very words alone conjure up the sort of lugubrious hilarity and culinary achievement one associates with Moldovan politburo lunches, sans the lubricating effects of vodka.

It is the little known fact that graduate students are among the most miserable peoples in the world.

Yes, the first year begins in high spirits, but then gradually, inch by inch, the lonely misanthropic gloom settles in, brought on by the low pay, the low status, the low self-esteem, and above all the low muffled beating of the unfinished dissertation, which, like the tell-tale heart, lies insistently beneath the floorboards of the mind.

Of the course, no reason you, the non-grad student, should not be cheery. Here is the Laugh from Franco Sarto, the perfectly partylicious affordable black ankle bootie.

(http://shoeblogs.com/2008/12/05/manolo-the-columnist-153/)

Desde las alforjas- from the saddlebags

2008-12-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

Well I just got back from Thanksgiving with the 'rents and went through some of my books that I left there. Of which I brought seven or so choice ones home:

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Poesía lírica

Sor Juana is the most important poetess of the Baroque era. Meaning, she is not included in anthologies as a gesture of pity but really measures up to everyone else.
Her long poem Primero Sueño details the journey of the human intellect in its quest to comprehend the universe. Very impressive stuff.

Garcilaso de la Vega

Poesía castellana completa

I had been looking for this volume and thought I lost it. Garcilaso was one of the innovators of Spanish poetry in the XVI who was able to adapt the language to Italian poetic meter with a balance and harmony of style unequaled by anyone.

Diccionario de escritores latinoamericanos (siglo XVI a siglo XX)

This is volume containing the biographies of the most important Latinamerican writers from the 16th to 20th centuries. Very cool.

The Essential Plotinus

Selection from Plotinus' works.

Giovanni Verga

I Malavoglia

A novel from the 1880's which popularized Il Verismo- as the incarnation of the Realist movement in Italy was called. It features down to earth proverbial dialogue and language, charting the fortunes of one family and their eventual decline.

Juan Ramón Jiménez

Platero y yo

A children's book about a village idiot and his donkey written in poetic prose.

Embajada a Tamorlán

A record of a Castilian expedition into Asia during the early 1400's. Features descriptions of Greece, and Constantinople right before it was captured by the Turks.
It was a diplomatic mission in response to a letter sent by the Mongol monarch Tamburlaine to King Enrique of Castile.

Ronald Knox

Captive Flames

A selection of addresses given over the years on various Saints.

Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels

I had to read this book in high school and really enjoyed the last book. But I have always wanted to read it again given my better knowledge of European Baroque culture.
Also my interest in satire is a plus. Along with the whole "damn human race" he nails the Whigs pretty good in this one.
Actually, it confirms what I have been forming in my mind for a while, that through out history Satire been cultivated by and large by Conservative elements in society. This goes contrary to the trend that the Counterculture ushered in during the late 60's but I think it holds true in the long and the thick of it from the Romans, who started the genre, up till now. More on this later.

Cardinal Stafford's Controversial Speech

2008-11-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: “Being True with Body and Soul”

For 51 years of priestly ministry I have been attentive to res sacra in temporalibus in American culture, i.e., “to the elements of the sacred in the temporal life of man” or, in a more Heideggerian idiom,“to man as the sacred element in temporal things”. In 1958 John Courtney Murray, S. J. was my guide. With further guidance from the Church over the years, I have learned that the nucleus of this principle, enunciated by Pope Leo XIII, maintains that the sacred element in secular life, especially our use of language, escapes the undivided control of the supreme power of the State. The secular life of man is not completely secular, nor totally encompassed within the State as the highest social organism, and subject ultimately only to the political power. The sacred word within man in secular life transcends the control of the supreme power of the State. A person’s public life is not encompassed within the State as the highest social organism, and not subject ultimately only to the political power.

President Thomas Jefferson’s celebrated 1802 letter to the committee of the Danbury Baptist Association asserting “a wall of separation between Church and State” formally denied the reality of res sacra in temporalibus. He introduced a latent and powerful virus which would eventually be used to diminish and then to wound mortally a theology of discourse in the public arena. It has led to the increasingly secularized states of the American union and their active hostility towards the Catholic Church. Some of these governments are threatening Roman Catholic adoption agencies because of their refusal to select same-sex couples as potential adoptive parents. They are forcing Catholic hospitals to accept medical procedures which are contrary to the dignity of the human person. They are insisting on hiring practices which will destroy the Catholic identity of health and social services under Catholic Church auspices. They have not refrained from coercing the individual conscience. Here the federal and state governments are enshrining the primacy of secular laws over against religious principles. These decisions are the legal and moral progeny of Jefferson’s insistence on debarring personal faith from the public forum. And this is only a beginning. Their seeds can be found in the 1787 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom sponsored and promoted by Jefferson. His self-proclaimed epicureanism and crypto-utilitarianism furnish the hermeneutical keys for interpreting the opening paragraph of his 1776 Declaration of Independence.

This evening. I will cover the following areas: 1) the narrow, calculative, mathematical mind and its manipulation of the humanum and, more specifically, of human sexuality since 1968; 2) the response of the Church’s magisterium in the encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae and teachings of later Popes; 3) other Catholic philosophical and theological responses to what John Rawls calls the “embedding module”, namely the increasingly disenchanted world in which we work and pray.

Furthermore, since this month, November, is the time in which the liturgy of the Church reflects on the final things - heaven, hell, purgatory and death, I will be attempting to strengthen the Catholic faithful, as St. John did in the Book of the Apocalypse, against the ever increasing pretensions of the state making itself absolute. For the next several weeks the Book of the Apocalypse will be read at daily Mass. The theme of that final book of the Bible is that the Battle of the Logos has always already been won on Calvary. In the immense conflicts associated with the teaching of Humanae Vitae, the overarching task of the Church is to make manifest for the faithful the apocalyptic victory of the Lamb in our historical time. The Church, the bearer of revelation, insists that the mysterious beginning and earthly end of every member of the human race is illumined by the light of the divine Logos. [“Every human being] comes from the source of light that irradiates him”. Finally, I will be using the word “apocalyptic” in the Christian sense of “expressing the fundamental law of post-Christian world history: the more Christ’s kingdom is manifested as the light of the world......the more it will meet determined opposition.”

(1) The apparent triumph of what has been described as “the manipulable arrangement of the scientific-technological world and of the social order proper to this world” over the past several generations.

1968 was the year in which Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae (HV); it was the long-delayed and long-awaited encyclical letter on transmitting human life. It met with immediate and unprecedented opposition. American theologians were its choral directors. The encyclical arrived in Washington, D. C. in late July 1968. It had to contend with the chaos of assassinations, overseas wars, the conflicts surrounding the Democratic/Republican national conventions, indiscriminate killings, university strikes and riots, growing use of barbiturates, and ubiquitous insurrections within the cities. It preceded by one year An Aquarian Exposition, the for- profit, rock-music event staged on a Woodstock dairy farm in New York State. Since then, the chaos has become chronic, more insidious because partially hidden. If 1968 was the year of the year of “America’s Suicide Attempt”, 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion.

In the intervening 40 years the United States has been thrown upon unlit roads. There have been few, if any, “clearings” (Heidegger’s Lichtung). In 1973 alone the U. S. Supreme Courts’ pro-abortion decision was imposed upon the nation. Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the identity, unity, and integrity of the American republic. It has undermined respect for human life. We have been horrified and uncomprehending witnesses for over two generations to America’s decline from “a mansion to a dirty house in a gutted world” . Yet honesty compels me to admit that this decision against human life is in historical continuity with the pragmatism on the part of the Fathers of the 1787 Constitutional Convention for the recognition of Black slavery and, following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, in continuity with the same meanness toward Native Americans on the part of the politicians, entrepreneurs and settlers. The 1803 event was a meanness enshrined shortly in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

The 1973 Court’s alteration has even more radically transformed the way we think about others, especially the least among us. Its inexcusable evasions about the dignity of human life, and their prolongation to the present, have condemned those of us who oppose it to disillusionment and bitter isolation. Both Republican and Democratic partisans have abused rhetoric on this issue. The President-elect is a skillful rhetorician. Civic life has been invaded with an anti-humanism so toxic that it is proving mortal to the body politic.

Nothing has been left untouched by the court’s lethal wand. Social engineering and the price-systems have infected all Americans with a pervasive, technological mind-set. Economics, administration, sexuality, language and, above all, human life are being manipulated by complex strategies of power. “Politics in turn becomes an arena for contention among rival techniques.” Obama’s campaign raised over $600 million, a record, and McCain’s over $300 million. An uncritical, unspoken “metaphysics of presence” dominates American life, both private and public. This new way of thinking has led to the creation of a worldwide colossus, America’s military. It is generally acknowledged that nothing in the nation’s economic, social, or political institutions approaches its influence. Freedom itself has been reduced to power.

Part II of Humanae Vitae, called “Doctrinal Principles”, ends with a description by Pope Paul VI of the “Serious Consequences of the Use of Artificial Methods of Birth Control”. His apocalyptic vision has been prophetic of the epoch we have entered. After 40 years of widespread contraceptive practice, the consequences appear now as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse ravaging what St. Paul described as the “ten logiken latreian hymon - “the humanly proper worship” (Rom 12: 1) of the baptized. The demonic four are the following: marital infidelity; disrespect for woman, governmental despotism in the regulation of births, and the human body manipulated and destroyed as a technological artifact. The four horseman have been responsible for the calamitous meltdown in Western demographics and in real development. Sexual aberration has become a way of life for many. These four shades are insinuating their deathworks upon whole nations and cultures. The Middle East is an obvious example.

Mary Eberstadt in a recent article entitled, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae”, commented on the prophetic vision of Paul VI, “Contraceptive sex.......is the fundamental social fact of our time.” She continues, “In the years since Humanae Vitae’s appearance, numerous distinguished Catholic thinkers have argued, using a variety of evidence, that each of these predictions [of Pope Paul VI] has been borne out by the social facts.” Human life has been conceded to the arbitrary will of the state.

Governments are dissolving religious and philosophical values and remaking them into the distortions of a dominant, cybernetic model. Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella, Metamorphosis, is not far off the prophetic mark. The good has been drained of ontological content; it has become “a mere cipher, a monadic carrier of information, a unit of cybernetic science” . The British government has recently set as a national goal the manufacture of human life by technology. Its reductive anthropology allows the unprecedented to happen: the radical manipulation of the substance of the biological heritage of the human race. It has allocated £40 million of public monies for stem cell research. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair envisions Britain to be leader of the world in cloning human embryos for research. Potential benefits, he claims, will be huge. Furthermore, a consortium of leading British bankers and scientists have launched a £100 million fund to finance stem cell research. Plans are being made for a national stem cell research institute, costing £16 million. In 2005, the British Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt announced that the Government would spend more than £1 billion on biotechnology by 2008. 'We want to send a signal to scientists that Britain is open for business in some of the most controversial areas,' she said. It is not simply a coincidence that economics and technology dominate. Bankers, financial investors, and MBA executives are mentioned consistently with the scientific midwives of this cultural monstrosity, the nub of which is the forgetting of the question of God.

In the United States President - elect Barack Obama and the Vice-President-elect Joseph Biden, a Catholic, campaigned on a severe anti-life platform. Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, analyzed America’s descent since 1968-1973 into deathworks by summarizing Obama’s vision. George’s analysis appeared in the journal, Public Discourse. “[Obama] has co-sponsored a bill.....that would authorize the large-scale industrial production of human embryos for use in biomedical research in which they would be killed. In fact, the bill Obama co-sponsored would effectively require the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage that were produced by cloning.”

The assumption undergirding the positions of Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, and Tony Blair results from a technological mind-set. Such technologically-driven men eventually may assert that human nature, until recently acknowledged to be a unitary composite of two polarities, body and soul, must not only be changed by technology, but, if necessary, be suppressed. It has proven to be the next logical step after the decision to control and manipulate technologically the origins of human life.

But ‘phusis - nature’, has been essential in Western metaphysics for describing the truth of beings. Martin Heidegger writing about the radical reduction of the goals of medicine to what is technologically possible, and its relation to human phusis, asserted that, in the past even until very recent times, “techne can only cooperate with phusis, can more or less expedite the cure; but as techne it can never replace phusis and itself become the arche of health itself. This could happen only if life as such were to become a ‘technically’ producible artifact. However, at that very moment there would also no longer be such a thing as health, any more than there would be birth and death. Sometimes it seems as if modern humanity is rushing headlong toward this goal of producing itself technologically. If humanity achieves this, it will have exploded itself, i.e., its essence qua subjectivity, into thin air, into a region where the absolutely meaningless is valued as the one and only ‘meaning’ and where preserving this value appears as the human ‘domination’ of the globe. ‘Subjectivity’ is not overcome in this way but merely ‘tranquilized’ in the ‘eternal progress’ of a Chinese - like ‘constancy’. This is the most extreme nonessence in relation to phusis-ousia”

A similar technological mind-set has contributed to the recent economic turmoil. Hedge funds were heavily invested in the technology bubble. The October 21, 2008 issue of The Financial Times read, “Blame it on Harvard: Is the MBA culture responsible for the financial crisis?” Technology and operations represent a major component of the MBA imagination at work at Harvard. The news story described the 100th anniversary celebration of the pre-eminent Harvard Business School. “You would have to have a heart of stone not to be amused by this piquant accident of timing. Here, at the spiritual home of the Masters of the universe, distinguished graduates could only look on as that same universe threatened to collapse.”

2) The response of the Church’s magisterium.

The issues now facing us are all entwined within the above-developed linguistic and actual deathworks informing Rawl’s “embedding module”. The response of the Church’s magisterium has been based on the ancient Catholic imagination recaptured happily by Pope John Paul II in his now famous phrase,”the nuptial meaning of the human body created as male and female.” The response includes “being true with the body and the soul.” The title of my talk has been taken from Francois Mauriac. He struggled for many years to overcome the unbending austerity and narrow rigidity resulting from the theological pessimism of the Jansenism of his childhood. In 1931 he overcame this heritage. Thereafter life became a creative drama that engages the fullness of the person by being true with body and soul. Mauriac’s “clearing” was where he discovered the dramatic convergence of form and content. The wholeness of two polarities is manifested within the unity of body and soul in the human person. David L. Schindler in a recent paper on human sexuality summarized his first principle supporting the differentiated unity of body and soul: “The Soul as it were lends its spiritual meaning to the body as body, even as the body then, simultaneously, contributes to what now becomes in man, a distinct kind of spirit: a spirit whose nature it is to be embodied”.

The Church’s response to the technological/scientific hegemony just described has not involved any condemnation of technology or of science as such. Rather is based on her recognition of the present spiritual climate for what it is: A New Ice Age. The great American poet and convert to Catholicism, Wallace Stevens, coined the image. “‘America was always North ....... ‘ where God was in hiding.” . We must turn south and even return to our origins, the desert. How? By recovering the structure of truth in its relation to goodness and beauty. Only a linguistic imagination that is analogical - and ultimately liturgical and sacramental - is capable of such rediscovery. In her devastating critique of the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida, Catharine Pickstock has recaptured the apostrophic voice of Catholicism’s high desert origins, the responsorials first heard in the Sinaitic and Judean wildernesses. The poiesis of the Catholic imagination finds itself in the title of Pickstock’s book, After Writing: the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy.

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (27), Pope Benedict XVI echoes what is partially anticipated by Pickstock, “The Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage. A deeper understanding of this relationship is needed at the present time. Pope John Paul II frequently spoke of the nuptial character of the Eucharist and its special relationship with the sacrament of Matrimony: ‘The Eucharist is the sacrament of our redemption. It is the sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride.’ Moreover, ‘the entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist.’ The Eucharist inexhaustibly strengthens the indissoluble unity and love of every Christian marriage. By the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically linked to the Eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church (cf. Eph 5:31-32)”. In Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II called for the celebration of the Sacrament of Marriage within the Eucharistic sacrifice to demonstrate the living connection between the two Sacraments. He thereby made more visible “the rich analogy between the una caro of the Eucharist and the una caro of the spouses through which their gift to one another becomes a particular form of participation in the Body ’given’ and the blood ‘poured out’ of Christ that becomes for the Christian family the inexhaustible font of its identity (with) its missionary and apostolic dynamism” . Here we sense the flavor of Karl Barth’s analogia fidei in explaining the origins and meaning of linguistics.

What are the philosophical/theological foundations for such assertions? What are the meta-anthropological presuppositions for this vision of linguistics, of reality? Two elements should be highlighted: the biblical image of God and the biblical image of man. In his first Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI proposes that the Bible presents us with new image of God - his Trinitarian self-oblation, the self-surrender characteristic of immanent Trinity - and with a new image of man, of which the most sublime sign is the Eucharist. “The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving. The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God’s presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus’ self-gift, sharing his body and blood” (13). The Eucharist builds up man and woman from within in the image of the Triune God and man learns the complexity of love: St. Augustine’s insight is helpful here: “Capit ut capitur. One grasps in being grasped.” Preeminently in marriage, the Eucharist draws with the cords of love each spouse in the depths of their interiority toward a mutual, total, integrally human, and fruitful self-oblation. The total giving of the Word in the Eucharist is the mirroring of the real language of the human body as created as male and female.

In his Wednesday audiences during the early 1980s Pope John Paul II called spouses to a deeper understanding of the theology of the body. When he described the prophets’ of the Old Testament use of marriage as an analogy of God’s relation to man, the Pope expressed the astonishing insight about the specific “prophetism of the body” . In interpreting this prophetic language, he indicated, one must “reread” the language of the body for “it is the body itself which ‘speaks’; it speaks by means of its masculinity and femininity, it speaks in the mysterious language of the personal, it speaks ultimately -and this happens frequently - both in the language of fidelity, that is of love, and also in the language of conjugal infidelity, that is of ‘adultery’”. A correct rereading must be done “in truth”. The human body speaks “a ‘language’ of which it is not the author. “Its author is man, who as male and female, husband and wife, correctly rereads the significance of this ‘language’. He rereads therefore the spousal significance of the body as integrally inscribed in the structure of the masculinity or femininity of the personal subject.” In other words, the human body as created by God as masculine/feminine is the Ursprache, the primordial utterance from the beginning. The “nuptial meaning” of the human body originally was the Adamic language.

All of these texts from John Paul II and Benedict XVI refer to the inner dynamic of the relationship between the two spouses. The subject of moral acts is each person, a dual unity of body and soul, a psychosomatic whole. Anything that smacks of a body-soul dualism is firmly rejected. One cannot attempt to free the soul from the body. When a human being seeks the truth and the good, his body is not an afterthought or an accident or a ‘tomb’ for the soul. The language of the human body, rightly reread, is a language by which “the likeness with God shows that the essence and existence of man are constitutively related to God in the most profound manner. This is a relationship that exists in itself, it is therefore not something that comes afterwards and is not added from the outside.” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church [CSDC] 109). In the words of the International Theological Commission, “Human bodiliness participates in the imago Dei.” They echo the ancient teaching of St. Irenaeus, “”the flesh ....was formed according to the image of God” .

As Archbishop of Denver, in 1996 I addressed a Pastoral Letter to the people of northern Colorado on the historical importance of a culture formed by the medieval Anglo-Saxon Sarum Rite and by the even more ancient Gregorian Sacramentary. Peoples in such a culture intuitively interpreted reality through the covenantal and bridal relationship of God and creation and of Christ and the Church. Consequently, they would find absolutely inapprehensible the acceptance and promotion of homosexuality activity as a valid moral option. Such activities are a direct assault not only upon the Sacrament of marriage but also upon the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

In light of all of the above realities, I cannot accept the judgement of Fr. Martin Rhonheimer, who in attempting to prevent the passing on of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, morally justifies the prophylactic use of condoms in a marriage in which one of the spouses is so infected. He summarizes his argument, “The immediate (or proximate) object of one’s choice in such a case is to engage in marital intercourse” and not “to ejaculate into a condom”. I agree with the conclusion of Bishop Anthony Fisher (and many, many other moral theologians) that Rhoneimer’s arguments are not only unconvincing but philosophically untenable and contrary to the Catholic theological and canonical tradition. Bishop Fisher writes about his agreement with the conclusions of [Janet ?] Smith, “Not only is condomized intercourse not a reproductive type of act, it can also be argued that it is not apt for uniting a couple ‘as one flesh’. In the first place the condom places a barrier to complete physical union: while this looks like ordinary sexual intercourse the couple fail, in fact, to touch in the most intimate way; arguably, they do not become ‘one flesh’.”

Rhonheimer dismisses a meta-anthropological objection as a “psychological and perhaps aesthetic” concern, not a moral one. His body/soul dualistic rupture is enunciated with the repulsion he expresses over integral human copulation, “[I find it] intuitively repulsive to make the consummation of marriage dependent upon factual insemination of the woman’s vagina”. Should the wholeness of marriage in its consummation be considered repulsive? The human spirit finds its inner completion only as something honestly externalized, since the human spirit in this life is always already embodied. The body is the externalization of the spirit. The highest expression of human love is embodied in the total self-giving and self-oblation of a couple as “one flesh”.
What renders such repulsion intuitive? A meditation of the “one flesh” found Genesis two? But God described that unity as “very good” in Genesis one. A repulsive intuition before the image of man and woman integrally united as ‘one flesh’ is not only at odds with the biblical revelation but also with the Church’s reflection on that revelation. Pope John Paul II insists on the need for “a correct rereading in truth......of the spousal significance of the body as integrally inscribed in the structure of the masculinity and femininity of the personal subject .”

3) Other Catholic philosophical and theological responses to the “embedding module” of John Rawls.

I cannot speak highly enough of the reflections on these issues and others by those engaged in the Communio project. According to von Balthasar, Communio’s conversations with the American secularized culture is the project of the Church in the United States. It calls for “the greatest possible radiance in the world by virtue of the closest following of Christ”. Over the decades I have followed and benefitted enormously from reading your quarterly journal. I owe a special indebtedness of gratitude to David L. Schindler, a theologian, and his son, David C. Schindler, a metaphysician and theorist of knowledge. Their clearings have included signs marked “Where we are going!” and “Where we have come from”. I have already cited their works earlier. In these concluding remarks they appear again because they give light for one’s gaze on the mystery of “Being true with Body and Soul”.

David C. Schindler writes that “drama is the structure of being” . From that splendid insight it is reasonable to conclude that the conjugal act itself is a drama that reveals who each individual is and who each is to become. Its principle revelation is not who the individual always was. The meaning of the sacramental act - the summit of the sacrament of marriage in facto esse, is revealed only in the activity of the two spouses. The marital act in its wholeness is a fundamental interpretation or unfolding of the sacrament of marriage.

Each spouse is an actor of truth. Truth has its terminus ad quem, not in the mind of the knower, but rather in a tertium quid, a Gestalt, a structure resulting from the encounter between the appearance of the depths on one hand and the transportation of the seer into the depths on the other. Truth is profoundly relational. It involves the tension of various parts of the whole, the movement from horizontal appearance to the vertical depths. David L. Schindler describes it in this fashion: “The body, always-already informed by soul and spirit and actualized by esse, exhibits an order of love: the body bears within it, already in its creaturely nature as body, the sign of the human being’s constitutive relation to God and to others in God, the sign thus, of a communion of persons and the promise of the gift itself.”

As I mentioned earlier, one of the contested areas of pastoral life today is the predicament of a married couple one of whom has a mortally threatening disease which may be transmitted through the conjugal act. The confusion over this matter is becoming increasingly serious from a pastoral point of view. Fr. Martin Rhoneimer’s position undermines the anthropological teaching of Pope John Paul II and undercuts a coherent Catholic response to the crisis affecting human sexuality.

In concluding, I have underscored that the present crisis is ontological/epistemological and linguistic. At its foundations it is a crisis of signs, which means a crisis that is analogical, liturgical, sacramental. It was a constant theme implicit, sometimes explicit, in the discussions at the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome on the biblical word of God. The participants asked how does religious language refer to reality? The modern response since the Enlightenment has been an “inside-out” approach to epistemological foundations, not an “outside-in”. The Catholic religious education establishment in the USA after the II Vatican Council adopted a similarly subjective-experiential methodology based on an “inside-out” epistemology. Widespread religious skepticism was the outcome. Nothing is recognized as definitive and “meaning itself is forever postponed.” A movement toward “a dictatorship of relativism” is the diagnosis which Pope Benedict XVI has given to this phenomenon.

To counter this nihilism, the discovery of the “Gestalt” character of language, of the word, was pioneered by Hans Urs von Balthasar and brilliantly advanced by many, especially by David C. Schindler in his recent book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation.

The following conclusions may be drawn from the foregoing. First, we must assert the rootedness of language, including the language of the human body, in ontology. A solidly unabashed metaphysics of being, founded on the real distinction between essence and existence, is essential for any recovery of truth and its objective structure. Postmodernists have rejected the tradition of western metaphysics, the concept of being since Socrates, and the real distinction between essence and existence. Metaphysics of this type is fundamental to any discussion of truth and its nature. Using Plato’s Phaedrus Catharine Pickstock has offered a devastating critique of Jacques Derrida’s theory of Supplementation by writing. She insists that his account “is tantamount to a metaphysics of presence” .

Secondly, Catholic scholars must explore the nuptial language founded upon the biblical text and upon the Catholic tradition and enriched by the teaching of John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI affirmed its substance recently, “The Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage. A deeper understanding of this relationship is needed at the present time. Pope John Paul II frequently spoke of the nuptial character of the Eucharist and its special relationship with the sacrament of Matrimony: ‘The Eucharist is the sacrament of our redemption. It is the sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride.’ Moreover, the entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist."

Thirdly, an exploration of the relationship between the nuptial meaning of the human body and the Eucharist, as the triform Body of Christ, should be made. Its development by de Lubac and Pickstock would be advanced if accompanied by an awareness of the critical role of the Gregorian Sacramentary and the Sarum Rite had upon the West and especially upon Anglo-Saxon culture. That culture was informed with the perception of the nuptial character of reality. The high medieval poem, In a Valley of this Restless Mind illustrates this. The anonymous English Catholic poet had the same spousal vision of life as that of the modern French Catholic novelist Mauriac when he described the human as “being true with body and soul”. I wish to contrast his cultural vision with that of the dominant political and cultural classes today.

Before doing so, some contextual background of my criticism is important. In early 2003 as our country was preparing to go to war in Iraq, I spoke out against the war and on two occasions condemned the policies of the Bush administration for contributing to the lessening of respect for the dignity of the human person by the use of torture. In the same spirit today as a pastor of souls I do not hesitate again to flag some serious abuses against the natural and divine laws. Our own cultural ambience is not dissimilar from the period of the 1920's when European intellectuals were moving ahead with an understanding of something “new”. Graham Ward’s description of that period highlights elements which characterize the vision of today’s President - elect, the Vice-President - elect, and the legislators elected to assist them in implementing their vision. Graham wrote, “Briefly modernism’s programme was to ‘make it new’. It courted the unconventional and nonconformist in a conscious effort to overthrow the traditional perspective and stock expectations. Its dynamism was aggressive, disruptive and even apocalyptic. Hostility to the.........War fed its anger against the status quo and its desire for a creativity that would be transcultural, transclass and transfrontier.”

On November 4, 2008 a cultural earthquake hit America. Senator Barack Obama and Senator Joseph Biden were elected President and Vice President of the United States together with a significant majority of their Party in the federal Congress supporting their deadly vision of human life. Americans were unanimous in their joy over the significance of the election of a Black President. However, if Obama, Biden and the new Congress are determined to implement the anti-life agenda which they spelled out before the election, I foresee the next several years as being among the most divisive in our nation’s history. If their proposals should be initiated and enacted, it would be impossible for the American bishops to repeat in the future what their predecessors described the United States in 1884 as “this home of freedom.”

While reflecting about the profoundly negative impact of Obama’s vision on the humanum (and also of Biden’s), I recalled how current are the reflections of Mauriac upon his contemporary, an influential European author. Even though Mauriac disagreed with him on almost every point, he acknowledged his great intelligence and personal attraction. “But under all that grace and charm there was a tautness of will, a clenched jaw, a state of constant alertness to detect and resist any external influence which might threaten his independence. A state of alertness? That is putting it mildly: beneath each word he wrote, he was carrying on sapping operations against the enemy city where a daily fight was going on.”.

Similar characteristics were evident in Senator Obama’s talk before Planned Parenthood supporters on July 17, 2007 - tautness of will, a clenched jaw, etc. - where he asserted, “We are not only going to win this election but also we are going to transform this nation.........The first thing I will do as President is to sign The Freedom of Choice Act........I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional Law...........On this issue I will not yield..” During a town meeting in March 2008 in Johnstown, Pa., he spoke with equal determination on the necessity of universal sex education for preteens and teens, “I don’t want my daughters punished with a baby.” The President - elect did not qualify in any way the methods his single daughters might employ in the event they needed to avoid being “punished with a baby”, that is, giving birth to his grandchild. Obama’s vision is modernist and rooted in the Enlightenment. The content and rhetoric of Obama and Biden have elements similar to those described earlier: aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic.

Catholics weep over Barack Obama’s words. We weep over the violence concealed behind his rhetoric and that of Joseph Biden and what appears to be that of the majority of the incoming Congress. What should we do with our hot, angry tears of betrayal?

First, our tears are agonistic. Secondly, we must acknowledge that the model for our tears is ancient. Over the next few years, Gethsemane will not be a marginal garden to us. A model, I suggest, is medieval. With an anonymous author, our restless minds search in a dark valley during this exhausting year. With him as our guide, we find a bleeding man on a hill sitting under a tree “in huge sorrow”. It is Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church and of mankind.

Thirdly, we listen to the words of Christ as narrated by our mediaeval ancestor. Jesus pointing to his gloved hands says that these gloves were given him when he sought his Bride. They are not white but red, embroidered with blood. He says that his spouse brought them and they will not come off. Fourthly, we focus our attention on the constantly repeated refrain of the Bridegroom and the reason for his “huge sorrow”, “Quia amore langueo - Because I am sick for love”. And finally, we find that before this vision of the wounded young man, our frustration and tears become one with his “huge sorrow” and we make his love for the unfaithful Bride whom he seeks and never fails, our own. I will close with a citation of this spousal model. It serves as a measure of what we need to recapture for the whole Church in 2008:

Upon this hil Y fond a tree,
Undir the tree a man sittynge,
From heed to foot woundid was he,
His herte blood Y sigh bledinge:
A semeli man to ben a king, (handsome enough to be a king)
A graciouse face to loken unto;
I askide whi he had peynynge, (suffering)
He seide, "Quia amore langueo. (Because I am sick for love).

I am Truelove that fals was nevere.
My sistyr, Mannis Soule, Y loved hir thus.
Bicause we wolde in no wise discevere, (because in no way would we part company)
I lefte my kyngdom glorious.
I purveide for hir a paleis precious; (prepared, a palace)
Sche fleyth; Y folowe. Y soughte hir so,
I suffride this peyne piteuous,
Quia amore langueo.

In the autumn of 2008 we must begin anew with that sentiment of our medieval brother. Quia amore langueo. With Jesus we are sick because of love toward those with whom we are so tragically and unavoidably at variance. The reader has now become one with the narrator who is addressed in line one as “Dear Soul”. As Humanae Vitae with the whole Catholic tradition teaches, we are to “be true with body and soul”.

James Francis Cardinal Stafford

499 translation published in Dappled Things

2008-10-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

An English translation of a story I did has been published in the literary journal Dappled Things. It's a humorous take on the Spanish Civil War. You can view an excerpt here: 449. The full electronic text will be available after the next print issue.

The story of my life

2008-10-04T07:03:00.001-07:00

What are we gonna do after Bush leaves office?

2008-09-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

Notes on a parable

2008-09-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

(My latest translation from the Spanish)

In the rearguard in the big city, life was very sad. The smiles from the old days had frozen on their lips; the radio told nothing but news- sometimes good sometimes bad and people scraped by overcome with the memory of those boys that were losing their lives at the front.

The boys lost their lives at the front, singing light-hearted songs and reciting The Ballad of Whitehorse. They would laugh and drunk up the sober taste of risk, fear, and companionship along with their flasks of whiskey.

When they returned to the cities wounded or on leave a cloud surrounded them. It wasn’t only the aura of heroism but the light of an intimate and elemental happiness.

In the beginning only poor left-over sods and some laughable and extravagant patriots went to war. But little by little the number of volunteers grew until they became a multitude. Perhaps no one ever knew, not even the soldiers themselves, but these volunteers were deserting an emptiness, looking to grasp onto happiness and at times a little frivolity. No one knew it or said so and in any case it doesn’t matter because happiness is just another name for doing your duty but one with a better marketing campaign.

(from the blog Rayos y Truenos of the Andalusian poet Enrique García-Máiquez.)

The Spanish original:

Notas para un parábola

En la retaguardia, en la gran ciudad, la vida era tristísima. Las viejas sonrisas se habían helado en los labios, la radio no daba más que noticias —a veces buenas, a veces malas— y las gentes se arrastraban apesadumbradas con el recuerdo de los muchachos que se estaban dejando la vida en el frente.

En el frente, los muchachos, se dejaban la vida, y también cantaban canciones ligeras, recitaban “La balada del caballo blanco”, se reían, apuraban el sabor recio del riesgo, del miedo, del compañerismo y de sus petacas de whisky.

Cuando volvían a la ciudad de permiso o convalecientes, les rodeaba un nimbo. No era sólo el aura del heroísmo, sino la luz de una felicidad íntima y elemental.

Al principio, a la guerra iban los pobres mozos de reemplazo y algunos patriotas extravagantes y risibles. Poco a poco, fue aumentando el número de voluntarios, que acabó siendo una muchedumbre. Quizá nadie lo supo nunca, ni ellos mismos, pero esos voluntarios sobrevenidos desertaban de un vacío, buscaban el arrimo a la felicidad, un poco de frivolidad a ratos. O nadie lo supo o no se dijo; y en cualquier caso no importa, porque la felicidad es sólo otro nombre —con más fortuna publicitaria— del cumplimiento del deber.

And now for something completely different . . .

2008-09-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Indonesian Classical Guitar

2008-09-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

Classical guitar music from Indonesia, what the %$%? Well I was just sent this link from the Indonesian e-mail list and it is quite good. I know a few things about this from a connoisseur's perspective having listen to compositions by Barrios, Tárrega and others.
His name is Juping Kristianto. The piece linked here is Becak Fantasy. A becak is the Indonesian rickshaw, or human taxi.

P.D.

Here is a recent article on Jubing in the English-language Jakarta post.

My Russian best

2008-09-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

Here are a list of my favorite works of Russian literature complete with comments.

19th century

Griboyedov, Aleksandr

Woe from Wit

A great play about generations and the conflict of ideas. Chatsky, the main character, returns to Moscow after studying abroad to find that his hometown considers him insane for the new attitude and ideas he brings back.

Pushkin, Aleksandr

Poetry

His greatest poems include the Bronze Horseman and his novel in verse Eugene Onegin.

Short Stories

Besides being a great poet, Pushkin also pioneered the Russian prose tradition. His short stories are very stylish and concise.

Gogol, Nicolai

Ukrainian Tales

Short stories set in Gogol's native Ukraine featuring stock characters like the lusty seminarian and the horrifying gnome creature Viy with eyelids that reach to the floor.

Petersburg Tales

The strangest part of Gogol, if that is possible. Contains such classics as the Nose, Nevsky Prospect, Diary of a Madman, and the Overcoat. Just think of a Kafka before Kafka.

The Government Inspector

Gogol's play about corrupt city officials and their scrambling attempts to cover up their crimes when they mistake a young stranger for the Government Inspector.

Dead Souls

The story of Pavel Chichikov who wanders rural Russia buying up the dead to serfs who have died in the last year before they are taken of the ledgers. A tour de force prose poem for the ages.

Lermontov, Mikhail

A Heroe for Our Time.

The main character, Pechorin, is everyone's favorite unfeeling prick who uses people for his own purposes before disposing of them. This collection of intertwined narratives is set in the majestic setting of the Caucuses.

Goncharov, Ivan

Oblomov

This novel is about an aristocrat that doesn't do anything. It's as if Alonso Quijano dreamt of being Don Quixote but never quite got around to it.

Dostoyevsky, Feodor

The House of the Dead

This is a fictionalized account of Dostoyevsky's time in a Siberian prison camp.

Diary from the Underground

This short story's main character is a unique creation in all literature.

Crime and Punishment

A maddening novel, like all of Dostoyevsky. A tale of intellectual pride and redemption. My favorite part of the novel is the ending.

The Brothers Karamazov

A challenging work. The character of Elder Zosima and Alyosha the monk in the world are classics. Also, one cannot forget the Grand Inquisitor as told by the atheist Ivan

Tolstoy, Leo

Anna Karenina

I have read most of this work but did not quite finish due to some unforeseen event. Yet I still remember many of the characters and descriptive language.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

A novella about the decline and fall of an ambitious minor noble.

Vladimir, Soloviev

The Antichrist

An unforgettable fable of the end times.

Chekov, Anton

Short Stories

Chekov is one of the best short story writers in the history of literature.

20th century

Bely, Andrei

St. Petersburg

This experimental novel is akin to Joyce's Ulysses some 20 years later.

It portrays the conflict between the old guard and the rising generation that would head off the Revolution.

Bulgakov, Mikhail

Heart of a Dog

A novella about a Soviet scientist who takes a dog of the street and turns him into a man by altering his pituitary gland. A satire of Stalinist Russia.

Master and Margarita

A phantasmagorical romp through 1930's Moscow featuring the Devil and a cat named Behemoth.

Voinovich, Vladimir

The Ivankiad

A satire about collective housing in Soviet Russia.

21st century

(same author)

Monumental Propaganda

The history of a staunch Stalinist woman and the changing currents within the USSR political establishment from de-Stanlistization, Brezhnev and beyond.

Georgia on my mind

2008-09-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the Orthodox theme I would like to comment a bit on the recent Georgian conflict by sharing a bit of this country's culture. Georgia along with neighboring Armenia were some of the first countries to establish Christianity as the official religion around the 4th century A.D.
I have saw a Georgian movie in my Soviet Cinema class at college. The language is very different than Russian complete with its own alphabet and artistic heritage. Here is an example:

შენ ხარ ვენახი, ახლად აყვავებული,
ნორჩი კეთილი, ედემს შინა ნერგული,
(ალვა სუნელი, სამოთხეს ამოსული,)
(ღმერთმან შეგამკო ვერვინა გჯობს ქებული,)
და თავით თვისით მზე ხარ და გაბრწყინვებული.

The above is a medieval Georgian hymn to the Virgin Mary which you can listen to here- Thou Art A Vineyard.

P.D.

Of course one can never forget the most famous Georgian of the 20th century- Stalin. They help to highlight the delicacy of the Russian-Georgian situation. But that's a story for another time.

A brush with an Eastern Orthodox Saint at the Greek Festival

2008-09-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

This past Labor Day weekend we went to the Greek Festival at The Church of the Annunciation near downtown Columbus for the third year in a row. We go mainly because it is cheep, the food abundant and good, and the contact with Greek Orthodoxy is always interesting. My favorite part of course is going to the Cathedral bookstore to peruse icons and theological tomes. In previous years I had bought a book about the Ecumenical Councils as well as works by St. John Chrysostom.

This year; however, there was a clearance sale which included Russian Orthodox Saints' writing. For a Western Christian, Russian Orthodox thinkers are often more accessible in that they enter into dialogue with Modern Western ideas. Therefore writers like Vladimir Soloviev, Sergius Bulgakov can be very instructive in their critique of modernity and the concern for Tradition.
In this same vein, 19th century Russian Orthodox works like the Pilgrim's Journey contain much of the drama and pathos of the great Russian writers of the period all placed in a religious context. So it was a stroke of great fortune that I happened across a copy of My Life in Christ by St. John of Kronstadt.

Born Ivan Ilyich Sergiyev, he was a son of a poor family in Northern Russia near Archangel born around 1829. Ivan eventually became a parish priest near the Imperial capital St. Petersburg on the island of Kronstadt which was home to society's undesirables including sailors, convicts, and factory workers. From what I can gather he was the only married priest ever to be canonized in the Russian Orthodoxy. In Orthodoxy as in Eastern Catholicism the spiritual ideal centers around monasticism, so this fact is surprising and illuminative of his character.

My Life in Christ consists of his personal spiritual journal he kept over many years from the 1850's onward. This is a truly great work. What follows are two extracts:

How is it that the saints see us and our needs and hear our prayers? Let us make the following comparison: Suppose that you were transplanted to the sun and were united to it. The sun lights the whole earth with its rays, it lights every particle of the earth. In these rays you also see the earth, but you are so small in proportion to the sun, that you would form, so to say, but one ray, and there are an infinite number of such rays. By its identity with the sun this ray takes an intimate part in lighting the whole world through the sun. So also the saintly soul, having become united to God, as to its spiritual sun, sees, through the medium of its spiritual sun, which lights the whole universe, all men and the needs of those that pray.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Think oftener: Whose wisdom appears in the construction of your body? Who has ordered the laws of your thoughts, so that until now these laws are followed by all men? Who has engraved in the hearts of all men the law of conscience, so that until now it rewards the good and punishes the evil in all men? The Almighty, All-wise, and most gracious God! Thy hand is constantly upon me, a sinner, and there is no moment when Thy mercy leaves me. Grant me, then, always to kiss, with living faith, Thy gracious hand. Why should I go far to seek for the traces of Thy mercies, of Thy wisdom, and Thy omnipotence? O! how clearly these traces are visible to me! I, I myself am a miracle of God's goodness, wisdom and omnipotence. I myself--on a small scale--am a whole world; my soul is the representative of the invisible world; my body--of the invisible one.

My Life in Christ is accessible on-line by clicking here.

In addition to the above work St. John also wrote a number of poems touching on the spiritual life. He died near the end of 1908, three years after the Decembrist 1905 uprising, but before the real horrors would be unleashed.

Funny Russian Video

2008-08-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Turbo Turtle

Category: Funny, Technology, Video |

This turbo turtle video actually is a viral video ad for one of the Russian cellphone providers selling fast cellular modems for laptops.

Comments (19) 4:52 pm

Screwed in '08

2008-08-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Baby for President

vs

Kitten for President

Stuff White People Like- Book Presentation

2008-08-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

My Italian best

2008-07-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

Duecento- 1200's

Saint Francis Assisi- Il cantico delle creature- (The canticle of the sun)

This is Saint Francis' hymn to creation including the Sun, Moon, Water, Air etc.

It is also one of the earliest poems in an Italian romance dialect, Francis' own Umbrian variety.

Trecento- 1300's

Dante Alighieri- la vita nuova, le rime, la divina commedia

The best part of Inferno is where Dante meets his old teacher Brunetto Latini sent to perdition for metrosexuality. Also, he condemns the soul of the pope of the time to Hell letting his body walk the earth.

Cecco Angiolieri- Poetry

Basically the anti-Dante. In his poem s'i fossi foco, he talks about getting back at his father and burning the entire world.

Guido Cavalcanti- Poetry

Dante's friend a fellow poet. His heart wrenching verses are the stuff of legend.

Quattrocento- 1400's

I would say Petrarch and his Canzoniere but it has been so successful it has outdone itself in a way. So there are better Petrachists than the old man himself by the 16th and 17th centuries.

Cinquecento- 1500's

Ludovico Ariosto Orlando furioso

This is an intense epic poem that keeps getting better along the way.

Niccolo Machiavelli Il principe

This book has a very bad reputation, yet it is immensely entertaining to read.

Here I would also put Machiavelli's play La Mandragola, but while I find the play fluid and strangely modern I can't say I like it that much.

Seicento- 1600's

Giambattista Marino- L'Adone

A full-blown baroque poet often compared to his Spanish contemporary Gongora. His poetry is all about surfaces and textures such as the human body.

Settecento- 1700's

Cesare Beccaria Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crime and Punishment)

A study on crime and punishment as they existed in penal codes and the need for reform. One of the first scholars to argue against the death penalty.

Ottocento- 1800's

Giacomo Leopardi- Poetry

Deeply pessimistic, oddly beautiful poetry.

Alessandro Manzoni- I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)

The best Catholic novel ever written. Set in 17th century Milan during Spanish rule, it is the story of an engaged couple and their struggle to get married when things get out of hand with bandits, food riots, and disease. The best character is Don Abbondio, a bumbling cleric who does just enough and yet still doesn't do much.
Manzoni is the grandson of Beccaria and so had an intimate knowledge of legal history. He parodies many of the laws and legal codes of the time in the novel. Indeed, part of the work's appeal is its view of the limits of human law.

Giovanni Verga- I Malavoglia (The Malavoglia family)

A novel from Verismo, the Italian movement of Realism. This novel tells the story of the decline of a merchant family in Sicily. The narrative incorporates a lot of colloquial, spoken language such as proverbs to give it a real-life feel.

Novecento- 1900's

Dino Buzzati- Il desserto dei tartari (Desert of the Tartars)

A soldier named Drogo is sent to a remote fortress on the outpost of an enemy border. Thing is, there hasn't been an attack in about a hundred years. So not much happens at first but routine. In essence, the novel delves into the monotony of modern life via a militaristic/bureaucratic fable.

Luigi Pirandello- Il fu Mattia Pascal (The former Mattia Pascal)

A man tired of his hum-drum life goes to Montecarlo for a weekend and wins big. On his way home he finds out that they have mistaken the body of a stranger for his and as a result he has been declared dead. He takes advantage of this to start a new life with his wealth. Yet he is still haunted by his past.

Italo Svevo (Ettore Schmitz)- La coscienza di Zeno (Zeno's Conscience)

Zeno Cosini tells his life story at the urging of his psychologist, which evolves around his attempts to quick smoking. This novel is unique in both style and form. Italo Svevo was the pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz a business man from Trieste (formerly part of Austro-Hungary). He represents the melding of the cultures of Central Europe, Southern Europe, and Judaism. A very interesting author.

Umberto Eco- Il nome della rosa- The Name of the Rose

One of the better historical novels about the middle ages. The style of the narrative, in fact the language itself makes you feel as if you're reading a Latin manuscript. The only criticism would be the characterization of some aspects of the inquisition but other than that it is an intriguing read that delves into the medieval mind.

Italo Calvino - Se una notte d'inverno un viaggatore
(If on a winter's night a traveler)

This work begins with a man reading a novel which ends suddenly. He goes to buy the next installment only to find that it is another book and so on and so forth. This goes on for ten cycles. It's an extended experiment in meta-fiction something like what Cervantes' does in parts of Don Quixote.

The Gospel of Obama

2008-07-26T08:34:00.001-07:00

(Source: The Times online)

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.
Background

* Obama fears the Blair effect as tour continues

* The Europhiles are not the future, Mr Obama

* The Bugle - Barack Obama is coming to Europe!

* Our leaders go after some Obama magic

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

(Source:Mark Shea)

A collage of quotes from sycophantic supporters and Obama's own speeches.

The Beginning of the Gospel of Barack Obama, the Son of God (According to Mark Shea)

1:1 As it is written in the AP Manual, "Behold, I send my press corps before thy face, who shall prepare thy way". And so it came to pass that pundits went forth into all that country, preaching a vote of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And lo, these pundits spake by the Spirit of the Age, going into all their towns and cities and declaring:

1:2 "He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . .[he is] the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century." - Gary Hart

1:3 "Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence." - Eve Konstantine

1:4 "This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament." "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event." - Chris Matthews

1:5 "[Obama is] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time." - Toni Morrison

1:6 "Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves." - Ezra Klein

1:7 "Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind." - Gerald Campbell

1:8 "We're here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth." - Oprah Winfrey

1:9 “I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan." - Bill Rush

1:10 Therefore did the multitudes go out to Obama in the wilderness of Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Utah. And seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

1:11 Blessed are those who Believe. For they shall say, “Yes We Can!”

1:12 Blessed are those who say, “Yes We Can!”, for they shall audaciously Hope.

1:13 Blessed are those who Hope, for they shall speak of Change.

1:14 Blessed are those who speak of Change, for they shall Get Fired Up.

1:15 Blessed are those who Get Fired Up, for they be baptized with the Spirit of the Age.

1:16 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst during long rallies, for they shall drink the waters of Evian and I shall not lose my photo op.

1:17 Blessed are we. For we are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the Change that we seek.

1:18 Blessed are you, when men shall question you, and ask specifics, and seek all manner of policy detail for clarity’s sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad: for so persecuted they the vague-minded which were before you. They shall drag you before TV cameras and microphones, and ask all manner of questions about specifics and you shall give testimony to me before the kings of the earth. But he that remains vague until the end shall receive a great reward in the Administration that is come.

1:19 And behold, great multitudes from Idaho, Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington followed him, And more than ever believers were added to Obama, multitudes both of men and women, so that when he came by they might at least touch the hem of his garment.

1:20 And the All Knowing Quantum Field of Intelligence did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Obama, so that handkerchiefs were carried away from his body to the worshippers, and spirits of cynicism came out of them and they were found dressed and in their left minds.

1:21 Many who heard him were astonished, saying, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom given to him?"

1:22 And they were amazed at him. For he went throughout the land, preaching new wine for new wineskins and the multitudes came to him in prayer and supplication.

1:23 Therefore did his disciples proclaim: "If any one thirst, let him come to Obama and drink. He who believes in Obama, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'" He is the Chosen One consubstantial with the Father and the Paraclete.

1:24 For Obama is our peace, who has made the two Americas one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. Now, speaking in vague generalities, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Obama, from whom the one big organism, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love of him.

1:25 And behold, there appeared a great wonder in the heavens, a woman clothed in stylish raiment, with Jimmy Choo heels under her feet and necklace of 12 beads around her neck, interceding for the faithful.

1:26 And there appeared another wonder in heaven: Behold! A great dragon in a pantsuit. And her tail drew the third part of the superdelegates, and did cast them into four star restaurants to schmooze them.

1:27 And there was war in heaven: Blessed Michelle fought against the dragon; that old serpent, called Rodham, and Clinton, which deceiveth the whole electorate.

1:28 There were signs in the Sun and moon, and Blessed Michelle appeared unto millions on televisions, iPods, and streaming computers warning that the consummation of all things was at hand and saying "He that is whole needeth not the physician, but he that is sick. Thy broken hearts are restless till they rest in Obama."

1:29 And behold the Good News spread and multiplied, so that the monks of Clooney came to him and declared, “Master! I will follow you wherever you go!” and a sister of the Halle Name went before him, making straight his path, lest at any time Obama dash his foot against a paper cup.

1:30 And on the third day, he rose in the polls.

1:31 And the dragon was exceeding wroth, and went to make war on with the remnant of uncommitted delegates. But though she struck at his heel, he crushed her head.

1:32 For lo, all that was written by the pundits must be fulfilled, for it was necessary that Obama go from race to race and glory to glory, for he is with us always! He is the Alpha and the Omega of American History, who was and who is and who is to come. For the Metaphysical Force is with him.

1:33 Amen! Marana tha! Come, Lord Obama! The Spirit of the Age and the Brights say, “Come!” Even so, come, Lord Obama! And we shall have no God but Caesar!”

Election in November

2008-07-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Pontificator's Laws

2008-07-02T02:55:00.001-07:00

First Law: When Orthodoxy and Catholicism agree, Protestantism loses.

Second Law: When the Bible alone is our authority, the Bible ceases to be our authority.

Third Law: It’s one thing to read Scripture and the Fathers; it’s quite another thing to read Scripture through the Fathers.

Fourth Law: A church that does not understand itself as the Church, outside of which there is no salvation, is not the Church but a denomination or sect.

Fifth Law: When it comes to doctrine, earlier is better, except when it’s not.

Sixth Law: When the Church Fathers and the Rabbis of the Talmud agree on a commandment of God, odds are God spoke it.

Seventh Law: Justification by faith is not a theory of salvation; it is the verbal and sacramental enactment of salvation.

Eighth Law: Any christology, soteriology, or ecclesiology that undermines the Church’s evangelistic mission to the heathen and their baptismal conversion to Jesus Christ is wrong.

Ninth Law: If a Catholic cannot name at least one article of faith that he believes solely on the basis of the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium, he’s either a saint or a Protestant.

Tenth Law: All dogmas of the Church Catholic are infallible, but some are more infallible than others.

Eleventh Law: It doesn’t matter how vigorously you protest your belief in the eucharistic real presence: if you are not willing and eager to prostrate yourself before the Holy Gifts and adore, worship, and pray to the glorified Lord Jesus Christ, present under the forms of bread and wine, you really do not believe in it.

(Taken from

http://pontifications.wordpress.com/pontificators-laws/)

Eddie Lawrence- "The Old Philosopher"

2008-06-30T02:57:00.000-07:00

Book Meme

2008-06-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

Grab the nearest book, turn to page 123. Write down the fifth sentence:

The people of the golden age lived without the advantage of learning and lived under the influence of instinct and nature.

(The Essential Erasmus: The Praise of Folly)

Excerpt from Barchester Towers

2008-06-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

A goodly man- Septimus Harding

The novel Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope is a hilarious novel about politics and religion in Victorian England where all the moral ambiguity of human life is made manifest. Somehow all of this is made funnier when applied to clerics.

One of these individuals, Mr. Harding, is inspirational in his conduct and character.

Here is an extract from the novel in which Mr. Harding laments the shifts coming about in the Church of England and the culture in general toward faddish mores which lack any real substance. Another character, Mr. Slope, represents said shift.

Take this and transfer it to the Humanities and the Intellectual Life and you will understand my suffering. Where innovation is deemed solely for innovation's sake alone and all that is True and Beautiful is banished as old-fogey and politically incorrect:

‘New men are carrying out new measures, and are eating away the useless rubbish of past centuries.’ What cruel words these had been; and how often are they now used with all the heartless cruelty of a Slope! A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only be shown that either in politics or religion he does not belong to some new school established within the last score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era; an ear in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at every thing that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart. We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit of the times, and write up to it too, if that cacoethes be upon us, or else we are nought. New men and now measures, long credit and few scruples, great success and wonderful ruin, such are now the tastes of Englishmen who know how to live. Alas, alas! under the circumstances Mr Harding could not but feel that he was an Englishman who did not know how to live. This new doctrine of Mr Slope and the rubbish cart, new at least at Barchester, sadly disturbed his equanimity.'

Jimmy, Jimmy

2008-06-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

Hilarious video.

A Tajikistani worker singing Bollywood songs during a work break in a Russian factory.

The Douchiad: Part the Third- Republic of Douches

2008-06-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

Honorary citizens of Douchistan.

Nestled amongst the stans is the little-known country of Douchistan, the only country to be forcibly separated from another against its will. It appears that the inhabitants of Kurmenistan thought that people to the Southeast were total douches. Bigger douches even than their former supreme ruler Saparmurat Niyazov.

In Douchetown, the capital city, is a main square which has a giant, monumental douchebag carved in granite. Every year they have a celebration commemorating their expulsion and the formation of Douchistan, declaring honorary citizenship to worthy individuals.

Congratulations! to:

Richard Dawkins

Supposedly an Evolutionary Biologist, Dawkins now spends his time writing polemical tomes advocating the New Atheism. Someone has forgotten to tell him what science is and how philosophy and theology deal with the question of God. What we get instead is a badly thought out rehash of 19th century scientism.

If you look at the rest of the world only English-speaking countries have real controversies over the Evolution vs Religion question. Largely because of douches like this who attack their opponents with ad hominem arguments that taste of straw.

As if the positing of a completely random universe doesn't contradict all moral posturing in the first place.

P.S. Read the Church Fathers, especially Augustine.

James Cameron

From Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2 one would have thought he has a bright future ahead. But it was not to be. There was the ultimate chic flick writ large which cheapened the noble story of Titanic. However, thus far all could be forgiven. Cameron's douchehood only became apparent upon declaring "I'm king of the world" at the Academy Awards. His wife summarily divorced him, even she couldn't stand this giant douche. Then came the documentary Forgotten Tomb of Jesus which just solidified him in the annals of douchitude. Anyone with a passing knowledge of First century Judaism or Actual History, for that matter, could see this dookie coming.

Ward Churchill

Each time you fill out Human Resource forms dealing with race and gender involves a moment of truth. Especially for the white man who would gladly check Pacific Islander to qualify for some funds for over-priced higher education. This guy actual went all the way through with it and became chair of Ethnic Studies at Colorado, Boulder. Add to this his "Little Eichmann" theory which blamed the victims of the 9-11 attacks for their fate. They were wholly responsible for US policy in the mid-east thus they deserved to die, falling like rag-dolls from burning buildings. Nice.
If you don't find this moral reasoning disturbing then try again.
Yes, we are all connected and share, to an extent, the iniquity of our society but we also are responsible at an individual level.
Its called individual and collective judgment in eschatological terms. But these are judgments reserved to God alone not to douche-wad professors.

Obama? Yo mama!

2008-06-11T21:18:00.001-07:00

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about lameness. Well I think Americans are tired of the same old dillweeds. Ordinary Americans believe in America, they want less bastards, they just aren't sure if their leaders believe in phattyness."

The Douchiad Part the Second

2008-06-09T03:50:00.000-07:00

A douche by any other name . . .

Unfortunately the plague of Douche Baggery is not restricted to the States. Here are some equivalents in other languages.

Italian

Stronzo (from Lombard strunz meaning excrement) A piece of crap at the metaphysical and moral level. A complete douche bag.

Spanish

Cretino- stronger than the English 'cretin'. Basically a moron or idiot.

Yiddish

Schmuck - (Lit.- The male member). A stupid or detestable person.

The Douchiad: Part the First

2008-06-06T02:53:00.001-07:00

This series will examine the psychology and accessories of the most modern of men: the douche bag.

definition of douche Bag (adapted from www.urbandictionary.com)

A person with an unbelievable size of ego without the substance to back it up and normally deludes himself that he is the "numero uno" in the universe. A douche bag is normally narrow-minded but thinks otherwise, disrespectful but thinks he is cool, thinks he knows everything and has a peculiar habit of treating other people like crap.

Lessons in Douche-Baggery or How to be a Douche Bag without Really Trying.

1. Get a Bluetooth- that annoying ear phone thing-a-majig.

The key accessory of the 21st century douche bag. To paraphrase Wesley Willis "get that damn thing out of your ear and tell people you're tired of looking like an a-hole!" Given the ludicrous design of the devise and its wide-spread use it may be a vast conspiracy to make everyone in America into a complete jackass. "I'm sorry but pushing the answer button on my cell-phone just takes too much effort. I mean, my time is important. The sun rises and sets in my pants, for God's sake!"

Next installment- A douche by any other name. Equivalents for douche bag in other languages.

Sticking it to the man in Moscow.

2008-06-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

A hard day at the office in Russia.

(via English Russia of course)

Quevedo's last verses

2008-05-29T21:17:00.000-07:00

Here is an extract from a story I wrote about Quevedo followed by a translation of what are thought to be the last verses he revised before his death.

In The Peace of These Deserts45

The ghost went on explaining himself as we continued on our zig-zagging path, “Ever since I put pen to paper I had roused anger in certain people. Some even went so far as forming the Tribunal of Righteous Revenge against my writings.46 So, I was often forced to retire to my tower of St. John of Abad to avoid unpleasantness.47 Which was fine by me because I enjoyed my solitude where I could write in peace.

“As I said, I had enemies in abundance but few real friends. Although sometimes the company of another is desirable. So on occasion I would play cards with the Duke of Medinaceli on his estate and engage in pleasant conversation. One night in particular we where deep into a game of Hombre.48 I believe the year was 1639 or so, I was leading the Duke with my last hand when out of nowhere a swarm of soldiers stormed the palace.

““What is the meaning of this?””

““Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas Gómez?””

““Yes.””

““I hereby place you under arrest by order of His Majesty King Philip IV.””

“Of course I knew it was his minister the Count-Duke of Olivares who was behind it all. We had fallen on bad terms since I began criticizing his politics. I saw them ruining Mother Spain, now reduced to a shell of her former self.49”

““So be it,” I said calmly and with that I was led away to a solitary castle of my order on the cold central plateau near León.50”

“By 1643, four years later, that dolt the Count-Duke of Olivares had fallen in disgrace, having since passed on, when I was finally released from my imprisonment. “Ten months of winter and two months of hell”51 as we say. How the cold of Castile got into my bones during those years! The chains chaffed at my skin, opening sores. I then retired to my Tower of Abad like Charles the Fifth to his monastery at Yuste.52 Defeated by life and fortune.”

“But the cold would still not leave my bones. Every member of my being was now as cold as ice. So I fled the chill to Villa Nueva de Infantes53 where I arrived more dead than alive.”

“One night in September, the year of Our Lord 1645, I sat a my desk preparing a book of my verse when a distant bell struck nine. I heard a horse galloping on the dusty plain. Clip-clop, clip-clop. I turned back to my work again as the pounding hooves seemed to come ever closer cutting through the night. Still unconcerned, I resumed my work hoping for posthumous glory. Closer, closer the hoof-falls came until they suddenly stopped. Relieved I turned my attention back to my work. Then I heard the neighing of a steed and the sound of a rider dismounting. Footfalls that could only come from massive boots sounded out in the night. And the rider like his horse came closer, closer . . .”

“Considering the matter to be more serious than I had suspected, I position myself strategically with my crutches. I was in a sorry state of decay. So I readied my steel as a loud pounding came at the door. Come what may.”

““Who goes there?” I called out. But the only answer that came was the howling wind.”

“Again the pounding came but much harder this time. I feared that the poor wooden door would not withstand much longer. Meanwhile my heart raced inside my chest as I readied my blade. Crack! A massive arm broke threw the door and tore it asunder. There stood a figure with a feathered hat and dressed in a black overcoat. On his feet were massive boots accompanied by punishing spurs. The intruder motioned toward me with an outstretched blade. Then I wondered whether the tortured spirit of the fencing hack Narvaéz had come back to prove himself. After all, I had revealed the stupidity of his method to everyone that night in the President of Castile’s house so long ago.54”

““So, Pacheco de Narvaéz, you’ve come at last. I heard you died forgotten and unsung. Which proves that the shortest distance between fame and oblivion is a straight line, eh?””

“There was no answer. The visitor beckoned once again with his blade at which point I administered a counter attack. The swordsman disengaged and almost threw me across the room but I stood my ground. I wasn’t a renowned swordsman for nothing. Still the battle was hard and at times the cold still clung to my bones. Yet I resisted and persevered.”

“I continued to fend off the intruder harnessing all my skill as a swordsman.

After what seemed like hours I looked to find my study was a mess with papers strewn about. I felt much weaker than before. Indeed, I felt I was fighting for my very life. At this point I wondered maybe it wasn’t Pacheco de Narvaéz after all . . .”

“Just then the stranger made a counter thrust and knocked my sword out of reach. I groped for it sadly as the black rider closed in. If I could only just . . . but I was too weak from sickness and age to do anything and lay helpless on the floor as he directed his blade towards my neck.”

“As a sign of victory he mockingly doffed his hat at me revealing a hideous skull underneath!”

“It wasn’t a stupid fencing master that had come calling that night. It was Death. Death had come for its own!”

You, oh wayfarer, listening to me now,

If you mean to obtain victory

Against the monster against whom you struggle;

You’ll make it so your memory goes on

To receive death,

That comes darkly and silently to unmake you.

Do not pay attention to anyone else,

For life flees step by step

Amidst false pleasures,

And dying you are born and living you die.

Tire, oh mortal,

In acquiring treasure and riches

For in the end, time must inherit thee

And all gold and silver be left behind.

Live for yourself if you can,

For if you die,

You only die to yourself alone.

Sólo la muerte . . .

Tú, pues, oh caminante que me escuchas,
si pretendes salir con la victoria
del monstruo con quien luchas,
harás que se adelante tu memoria
a recibir la muerte,
que oscura y muda viene a deshacerte.
No hagas de otro caso,
pues se huye la vida paso a paso;
y en mentidos placeres
muriendo naces, y viviendo mueres.

Cánsate ya, oh mortal, de fatigarte
en adquirir riquezas y tesoro,
que últimamente el tiempo ha de heredarte,
y al fin te dejarán la plata y oro:
vive para ti solo, si pudieres,
pues sólo para ti, si mueres, mueres.

(Escarnio, Quevedo)

In the Peace of These Deserts

45 See 33

46 Tribunal de la Justa Venganza contra los escritos de D. Francisco de Quevedo, maestro en errores, doctor en vergüenzas, licenciado en bufonerías, bachiller en suciedades, cátedra de vicios y Proto-diablo entre los hombres (1635) The Tribunal of Righteous Revenge against the writings of D. Francisco de Quevedo, master in errors, doctor in shamefulness, laureate in buffooneries, bachelor in dirtyness, chair of vices and foremost devil among men.

47 La Torre de San Juan de Abad. In Quevedo applied for the lordship over this small Manchegan town complete with imposing tower. He would spend his exiles there removed from the frantic life at court.

48 El Juego del Hombre “Man’s Game”- A popular card game of the time. Also known as Tresillo.

49 Felipe IV- El rey poeta- “The poet king”. Although more strong willed than his father Philip III, he enjoyed the finer things in life over the concerns of government like poetry, painting, plays, and many, many mistresses. As such the Count-Duke Olivares had free reign on government policies.

50 San Marcos, a residence of the Order of St. James where Quevedo was to stay under house arrest.

51 <>

52 After years of leading wars in Italy and Northern Europe the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V retired to a monastery at Yuste in Extremadura where he spent his last days as a monk.

53 A city near San Juan de Abad.

54 Luis Pacheco de Narvaéz, fencing master of Philip IV, with whom Quevedo maintained a bitter antagonism. It is said that Quevedo challenged him to show off his fencing skills one in the President of Castile’s mansion. Quevedo humiliated Narvaéz by removing his hat with a quick motion of his blade. Pacheco is also said to have headed up the Tribunal of Righteous Revenge and made his own efforts to have Quevedo’s work reviewed by the Inquisition. He was a proponent of a technique called “The Mysterious Circle” which used complicated math and geometry in order to avoid an adversary’s blade. Quevedo made fun of this method in his satirical writings.

More George Herbert en español

2008-05-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

El Elixir

Enséñame Mi Dios, Mi Rey

a verte en toda cosa

Y lo que haga

Obrarlo por Ti

No de forma grosera

Cual bestia

Que la acción embiste

Mas hacerte poseedor

Y dotarle de perfección

El hombre que en telescopio mira

Puede mantenerle en la mirada

O si le place traspasarlo

Para contemplar los cielos

Todos de Ti compartir pueden

No hay cosa tan ruda

Que con tal tinta

No brille y se vea más limpia

Por esta cláusula

El criado hace divinidades de groserías

Quien barrare el suelo

Según Tus leyes

Rinde buena la labor.

Pues, esta es la piedra famosa

Que transforma todo en oro

Pues de lo que a Dios le toca y pertenece

No se podrá decir menos.

The Elixir.

    TEach me, my God and King,

        In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

        To do it as for thee:

        Not rudely, as a beast,

        To runne into an action;

But still to make thee prepossest,

        And give it his perfection.

        A man that looks on glasse,

        On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,

        And then the heav’n espie.

        All may of thee partake:

        Nothing can be so mean,

Which with his tincture (for thy sake)

        Will not grow bright and clean.

        A servant with this clause

        Makes drudgerie divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

        Makes that and th’ action fine.

        This is the famous stone

        That turneth all to gold:

For that which God doth touch and own

        Cannot for lesse be told.

A letter from Unamuno to Clarín about Socrates' Rooster

2008-05-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Unamuno to Clarín

Socrates' Rooster gave me a lot to think about. It's my favorite thing of yours I've read. And it seemed to produce in me, upon reading it, the state of mind you would have written it in since I've gone through similar moods. How many times have I thought about second-hand sages and the will of imbeciles!

The story Socrates' Rooster seemed interesting to me, above all, as a product of its time. More specifically, the late 19th century conflict of Faith and Reason that lies behind this story from Ancient Greece, reflects contemporary concerns under the guise of the New Atheists. Unamuno and his El sentido tragico de la vida- The Tragic Sense of Life- are particularly instructive in this regard. This work clearly demonstrates, despite the author's explicit intention, the shallowness of positivistic scientific reason in the late 19th century. This same standard is now elevated as the apex of reason in much pop atheistic exploits of late. A different tack is the classical and Christian concept of reason, which is much more broad and inclusive and not an enemy of life.

Secondly, the concept of charisma is an important element in the story with an influential history. It reminds one of Weber's theory about the founding of world religions. Supposedly all the great world religions were founded by charismatic leaders. It was there charisma, not their message, which made followers. Then the original momentum and truth behind the movement is thought to have been corrupted by later accretions or obscured by mediocre followers as is the case of Crito in the story. Thus small men take the big truths of the founder captive and adapt them to their own limited understanding.

While the truth of the theory of charisma is debatable it reflects what we ourselves look for in our own leaders in contemporary society. Just look at the whole primary fiasco. It's as if we're choosing class president, not the leader of our country. I doubt it was Socrates' personality as such, or Jesus' coolness that gained them their subsequent influence in history.

Their is a fine-line between truth and BS, but people still know the difference. The difference lies in the will to be deceived and to hear what we want to hear.

Es amarga la verdad, quiero echarla de la boca

The truth is bitter, I want to spit it out of my mouth.

Socrates' Rooster part IV (the end)

2008-05-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

“No way. There isn’t a second-rate idealist alive who can lay a hand on me. But why? What cruelty is this? Why are you chasing me?”

“Because upon dying Socrates ordered me to sacrifice a rooster to Esculapius in thanksgiving since he gave him true health, freeing him from all his ills by way of death.”

“Socrates said all that?

“No, he said that we owed a rooster to Esculapius.”

“So you made the rest up?”

“What other meaning could those words have had?”

“A most beneficial one. One that doesn’t cost blood or errors. Killing me to satisfy a god that Socrates didn’t believe in is to offend Socrates and insult the true gods and to inflict on me, which does exist, an immeasurable harm. For we don’t know all the woe or all the prejudice that lie in mysterious death.”

“Well Socrates and Zeus want your sacrifice.”

“Note that Socrates spoke with irony, with serene irony and without gall. His great soul could amuse itself with the sublime game of imagining reason and popular daydreams to be harmonious, without danger to himself. Socrates and all the creators of new spiritual life speak in symbols: they are rhetorical. When they become familiar with the mystery they close it in poetical form, respecting its ineffable character. The divine love of the absolute has this way of kissing their souls. But notice when they stop this sublime game and give lessons to the world how austere, laconic, and how unattached their maxims and moral precepts are from all useless imagery.”

“Gorgias’ rooster, shut up and die!”

“Go away and be quiet, unworthy disciple. Be ever quiet. You’re unworthy of your kind. You’re all the same. A genius’ disciple, a deaf and blind witness of the sublime soliloquy of a superior consciousness. By way of both your fancy and his you attempt to immortalize his soul’s perfume when you embalm his doctrine with drugs and recipes. You mummify the dead man in order to make him an idol. You petrify ideas and you use subtle thoughts like a blade that draws blood. Yes, you are a symbol of sad, sectarian humanity. From the last words of a wise man or saint you deduce a rooster’s blood as first consequence. If Socrates had been born to confirm his people in their superstitions he wouldn’t have died for what he died for nor would he have been philosophy’s patron saint. Socrates didn’t believe in Esculapius nor was he capable of killing a fly much less a rooster by following the mood of the crowd.”

“I’m sticking to his words. Come here.”

Crito searched for a rock, aimed at the head and blood came flowing out the rooster’s crest.

Gorgias’ rooster lost consciousness and as he fell he sung to the breeze:

“Cockle-doodle-doo. Let destiny be fulfilled. Be done unto me according to the will of imbeciles.”

And the rooster’s blood flowed down Palla Athena’s jasper forehead.

FIN

Socrates' Rooster part III

2008-05-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

“Oh you idealist philosopher and imitator, “ the rooster said in Greek worthy of Gorgias himself, “won’t you even bother? You won’t even fly as much as a rooster can? What now? It frightens you that I can talk? Well, don’t you know me? I’m the rooster from Gorgias’ corral. I know you. You’re a shadow. The shadow of a dead man. It’s the destiny of disciples to outlive their masters. They remain here like larvae in order to frighten children. The inspired dreamer dies and his wing-clipped disciples remain, who are one more cause for fear and just another tragedy for the world. As well as a superstition that turns the poetic ideals of the sublime, clear-eyed master into stone.”

“Silence, rooster. In the name of the Idea of your Genus, nature commands that you be quiet!”

“I talk and meanwhile you boast about the Idea. Hey, I speak through my own individual ability and without permission from the Idea of my Genus. From so much hearing talk of Rhetoric, that is the art of talking for talking’s sake, I learned something of the profession.”

“And you repay your master by fleeing from his side, leaving his house and renouncing his power over you?”

“Gorgias is just as crazy but not as pleasant as you. You can’t live with such a man. He tests everything and that is both disturbing and tiring. He who demonstrates things all his life leaves life hallow. Knowing the why of everything is to be left with the geometry of things and the substance of nothing. Reducing the world to an equation is to render it meaningless. Look you, get out of here. For I could go on saying things like this for seventy days and seventy nights. Remember, I’m Gorgias the sophist’ rooster.”

“Well then, for being a sophist as well as sacrilegious and because Zeus wills it, you’re going to die. Come here!”

To be continued in part IV . . . . .

Socrates' Rooster (by Leopoldo Alas Clarín) part II

2008-05-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

Crito anticipated the bird’s plans to hop down into the little square so he could pursue and grab him. It had gotten into his head (for when men begin to get stuck in religious ideas and feeling which are found to be irrational he doesn’t stop until embracing the most puerile of superstitions) that that rooster and no other was what Esculapius, I mean Asclepius, wished to be sacrificed for him. Crito chocked up the coincidence of the encounter to the will of the gods.

It appeared that the rooster was not of the same mind, for as soon as he noticed that a man was chasing him, he began to run, flapping his wings and clucking which was very uncomfortable, to be sure. The biped knew perfectly well who was chasing him form having seen him not a few times in his master’s garden endlessly discussing love, eloquence, beauty etc. while the rooster himself seduced a hundred hens in five minutes without so much philosophy.

“But it’s a good thing,” the rooster was thinking as he ran and got to ready to fly as much as he were able in case the danger got worse, “it’s a good thing that those wise men I abhor should try to have me for their own against all naturals laws known to them. It would be great if after freeing myself from the unbearable slavery Gorgias kept me in I were to fall to the hand of this poor devil and second hand thinker, who is a lot less entertaining than his chatter-box of a master.”

The rooster ran and the philosopher followed within reach. When he was about to grab with his hand the rooster flapped his wings and by way of a flight (or hop) and extreme exertion , brought on by panic, he managed to get on top of the head of a statue representing none other than the goddess Athena.

“Oh irreverent rooster,” the philosopher yelled, making himself a fanatical inquisitor, pardon the anachronism. He quieted down the shouting of his honest conscience, which said: Don’t steal that rooster, with a pseudo-pious sophism and thought: Now you surely deserve death on account of your sacrilege. You’ll be mine. You’ll be sacrificed.

The philosopher got on his tip toes, stretching himself as much as possible, and made short pathetic hops. But to no avail.

To be continued in part III . . . .

Socrates' Rooster- A story by Leopoldo Alas Clarín translated into English: part I

2008-05-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

Leopoldo Alas Clarín (1850-1901) was a journalist and author of novels and short stories active during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He remains a rather enigmatic figure in the Spanish literary world, leaving a legacy that encouraged the search for God and humanism simultaneously. This aberrant confluence has facilitated the presence of various interpretations regarding the author's writings, most noticeably of his masterpiece, La Regenta.

(from Wikipedia)

The following is a short story from 1896 entitled el gallo de Sócrates- Socrates' Rooster. It starts off where the Apology and Crito leave off, following the death of Socrates. Crito must carry out his master's last wish as he lay dying . . .

Socrates' Rooster

After closing his master’s eyes and mouth Crito left the rest of the disciples around the dead body and left the jail, prepared to make good, as soon as possible, on the last errand that Socrates had given him. Maybe it was in jest, but doubting whether it was in earnest or not, he interpreted it literally,

For upon dying and showing his disciples the sad, vulgar spectacle of his death, Socrates had said:

“Crito, we owe rooster to Esculapius, don’t forget to pay this debt,” and he spoke no more, these being his last words.

That request was sacred for Crito. He didn’t wish to analyze it, didn’t wish to examine if it were more realistic that Socrates has only told a slightly ironic joke. Or if it were the last will of his master, his last desire. Hadn’t Socrates, contrary to Antitus’ and Melitus’ calumny, always been respectful toward the popular cult and the official religion? Of he course he gave myths (which Crito didn’t refer to in this way, of course) a symbolic, philosophical as well as a very sublime and idealistic interpretation but, amidst his poetic and transcendental paraphrases, he still respected the faith of the Greeks including the positive religion and state cult.

A beautiful episode from his last speech demonstrated this well (Crito noted that sometimes Socrates, in spite of his philosophical system of questions and answers, he would forget about his listeners and speak at length in a very flowery manner). He had depicted the marvels of the other world with topographic detail which contained more traditional imagination than rigorous dialectic and austere philosophy. And Socrates hadn’t said he didn’t believe in all that. Although, neither did he affirm the reality of what he described with the absolute certitude of a fanatic.

But this wasn’t surprising in he who even in respect to his own ideas, such as those he had expounded to defend the immortality of the soul, he had admitted, with abnegation of his illusions and pride, the possibility that things weren’t as he imagined them. In the end, Crito didn’t intend to contradict his master’s philosophical system or conduct by looking for a rooster to offer the god of medicine. And that as soon as possible.

As if Providence were with him, as soon as Crito went a hundred steps from Socrates’ prison he saw a strutting rooster with splendid plumage on top of a garden wall in a kind of solitary square. The bird has just hopped from a garden to the top of the wall and he was getting ready to jump into the street. He was a rooster in flight, a rooster freeing himself from wretched slavery.

To be continued in parts II and III . . . . .

Robert Louis Stevenson en español part III

2008-05-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

Cantando

El pajarillo canta de huevos estrellados

Y nidos entre árboles.

Canta el marinero de cuerdas

y cosas de barcos sobre los mares

Los niños cantan en lejano Japón

Y el órgano del organista

Cantando está

Bajo la lluvia.

Singing

From Child's Garden of Verses

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings

     And nests among the trees;

The sailor sings of ropes and things

     In ships upon the seas.

The children sing in far Japan,

     The children sing in Spain;

The organ with the organ man

     Is singing in the rain.




De todos mis versos

De todos mis versos

Que no te agrade un renglón

Mas guste del título pues no es mío

Se lo robé a mejor escritor.

¡Oh si le hubiera robado el poema entero!

"Of All My Verse, Like Not . . ."

From Underwoods

Of all my verse, like not a single line;

But like my title, for it is not mine.

That title from a better man I stole:

Ah, how much better, had I stol'n the whole!

Robert Louis Stevenson en español part II

2008-05-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

In addition to his travelogues and adventure novels Robert Louis Stevenson also wrote poetry. His 1885 Child's Garden of Verses is a very popular collection of poetry for children. These poems are very simple and elegant as well as easy to memorize. And quite good for learning English. Here are a few poems from the book I have translated into Spanish followed by their English original:

A cualquier lector

Como desde la casa tu madre te ve

Jugando por los árboles del jardín

Puedes ver, si miras por las ventanas de este libro

A otro niño, muy muy lejano,

jugando en otro jardín.

Pero no pienses que puedes

Llamarle picando las ventanas

Para que te oiga.

Absorto está en sus juegos.

No oye, ni mira

Ni se deja salir de este libro.

Pues hace mucho, decir la verdad,

que creció y se fue

Y es sólo un niño del aire

que se queda en el jardín aquel.

To Any Reader

From Child's Garden of Verses

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you.  He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear, he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.

Lluvia

Llueve por todas partes

Y cae sobre árbol y campo

Aquí sobre paraguas llueve

Y hasta en los barcos del mar.

Rain

From Child's Garden of Verses

The rain is falling all around,

     It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

     And on the ships at sea




 Hora de despertar

Un pajarillo con pico dorado

Salteaba sobre mi alféizar.  

Y encarándome el ojo brillante dijo:

¿No te da vergüenza dormilón?

Time to Rise

From Child's Garden of Verses

A birdie with a yellow bill

Hopped upon my window sill,

Cocked his shining eye and said:

"Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!"

Cute little zarzuela video

2008-04-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

Zarzuela (pronounced [θarˈθwela] in Spain, [sarˈswela] in Latinoamerica), is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance. The name derives from a Royal hunting lodge, the Palacio de la Zarzuela near Madrid, where this type of entertainment was first presented to the court.

Dúo Maripepa y Felipe:

Fel. ¿Por qué de mis ojos
los tuyos retiras?
Mari-P. ¿Por qué me desprecias?
¿Por qué no me miras?
Fel. ¿Yo? ¡No!
Mari-P. ¡Tú!
Fel.¡No!
¿Por qué de ese modo
te fijas en mí?
Mari-P. ¿Qué quieres decirme
mirándome así?
¿Por qué sin motivos
te pones tan triste?
Fel. ¿Por qué de mi lado
tan pronto te fuiste?
¿Mari-P. Yo? ¡No!
Fel. ¡Tú!
Mari-P. ¡No!
Fel. ¿Por qué de ese modo
te fijas en mí?
Mari-P. ¿Qué quieres decirme
mirándome así?
Fel. ¡Así!
Mari-P. ¡Así!
Fel. ¿Me quieres?
Mari-P. ¿Me quieres?
Los dos ¿Me quieres?
Fel. ¡Sí!
Mari-P. ¡Sí!
¡Ay, Felipe del alma!
¡Si contigo solamente
yo soñaba!
Fel. ¡Mari-Pepa de mi vida!
¡Si tan sólo en tí pensaba
noche y día!
¡Mírame así!
Mari-P. ¡Mírame así!
Los dos ¡Pa que vea tu alma leyendo en tus ojos,
y sepa (serrana / serrano) qué piensas de mí...

Fel. Why do your eyes
avoid mine?
Mari-P. Why do you despise me?
Why do you ignore me?
Fel. I? No!
Mari-P. You!
Fel. No!
Why do you fix your eyes on me
that way?
Mari-P. What do you want to say to me,
watching me like this?
Why without reason
make yourself so sad?
Fel. Why were you so soon
at my side?
Mari-P. I? No!
Fel. You!
Mari-P. No!
Fel. Why do you fix your eyes on me
that way?
Mari-P. What do you want to say to me,
watching me like this?
Fel. Like this!
Mari-P. Like this!
Fel. You want me?
Mari-P. You want me?
Both You want me?
Fel. Yes!
Mari-P. Yes!
Ay, Felipe, my soul!
Only about you
have I dreamed!
Fel. Mari-Pepa, my darling!
Only about you have I thought
night and day!
Look at me!
Mari-P. Look at me!
Both I see your soul in your eyes,
and know all your thoughts of me.

Fel. La de los claveles dobles,
la del manojo de rosas,
la de la falda de céfiro,
y el pañuelo de crespón;
la que iría a la verbena
cogidita de mi brazo...
¡eres tú!... ¡porque te quiero
chula de mi corazón!
Mari-P. ¡El hombre de mis fatigas,
pa mí siempre en cuerpo y alma,
pa mí sola, sin que nadie
me dispute su pasión!
con quien iría del brazo
tan feliz a la verbena...
eres tú... ¡porque te quiero,
chulo de mi corazón!

Fel. The girl with the double carnations,
the girl with the bunch of roses,
the girl with the fine cotton dress,
and the crepe kerchief;
the girl that walks to the verbena
nestled in my arms...
you are she... because I want you,
girl of my heart!
Mari-P. That man, my grief,
who possesses me body and soul,
who alone holds me, with no rival
to share his passion!
on whose arm I walk
happily to the verbena...
you are he... because I want you,
lad of my heart!

Fel. ¡Ay, chiquilla! ¡Por Dios!
Mari-P. ¡Zalamero! ¡Chiquillo!
Fel. ¡Chiquilla!
Mari-P. ¡No me hables así!
Fel. ¡Te quiero!
Mari-P. ¡Te quiero!
Los dos ¿Me quieres a mí?
¿No te voy a querer, prenda mía?...
De mi, ¿qué seria sin ti?...
Fel. ¡Nena mia!
Mari-P. ¡Felipillo!
Fel. ¡Mi morucha!
Mari-P. ¡Mi querer!
Fel. ¡Tú eres esa!
Mari-P. ¡Tú eres ese!
Los dos ¡Pues si tú no fueras, mi vida!
¿quién lo había de ser?...
¿Me quieres?... ¿Me quieres?
¿Me quieres tú a mí?
¡De mí qué sería sin ti!

Fel. Ay, girl! By God!
Mari-P. Flattering boy!
Fel. My girl!
Mari-P. What things you say!
Fel. I want you!
Mari-P. I want you!
Both You love me?
Do you love me, my sweet?...
What would I be without you?...
Fel. Baby!
Mari-P. Little Felipe!
Fel. My animal!
Mari-P. My desire!
Fel. That you are!
Mari-P. That you are!
Both If you were not, my darling!
what would life be?...
You want me... You want me?
We love one another?
What would I be without you!

Fray Luis desde la cátedra

2008-04-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

This is a satire I wrote around the drafting of the European Constitution and the rejection of all references to Christianity. Here is the Spanish original followed by an English translation.

Fray Luis desde la cátedra

Decíamos ayer . . . .

Cosas bonitas y sublimes que se prohibían

Y hoy igual que ayer las volvemos a repetir.

Fue apenas ayer, me acuerdo que decíamos . . .

Esto y aquello mas sin temor

Y con saña secreta vinieron y nos callaron.

Ahora mismo lo decimos en voz alta,

Mañana y pasado igual.

No se trata de poder y prestigio,

Estimados señores, no se trata de eso en absoluto

Sino de algo más profundo,

De verdades, se trata, de simples verdades

Y si por eso nos critican, y nos zahieren

Muy bien,

No por eso dejarán de ser verdades mañana o pasado.

No hay manera de evitarlo.

Así que adelante , insignes señores,

Adelante con sus mañas silenciosas,

Adelante con todo bozal y censura.

Pues a la postre se oyerá pese a todo prognóstico

Y se grabará en la memoria de las gentes,

Quizá en el inconsciente pero ahí quedará

Para brotar con mansedumbre

Cuando menos se espere, acaso alguna noche de San Juan

Bajo las estrellas, estas palabras volverán a dar su fruto

Pero ésta no será ninguna victoria rencorosa

Sino de paciencia y firmeza de espíritu

Y ojalá aquel día sus afanes y los nuestros sean los mismos . . .

Lo decíamos ayer, lo decimos hoy, lo diremos siempre:

A. ésta no es una pipa.

B. Jesucristo murió y resucitó pero no para redimir la humanidad sino más bien quitarse de en medio de treinta años y pico de impuestos romanos. Acuérdate que fue Judas el que se encargaba de la pasta.

C. Europa y Occidente tienen su historia,

una historia que no se entiende sin el cristianismo.

D. Pascual es la leche.

Translation:

Fray Luis from the lectern

As we were saying yesterday . . .

Beautiful and sublime things that were prohibited

And today the same as yesterday we repeat them once more.

It was just yesterday I remember we said . . .

This thing and that but without fear

And with secret rage they came and silenced us.

Right now we say it aloud

The same as tomorrow and the day after.

It is not about power and prestige

Dear sirs, it is not about that at all,

But something much deeper.

It is about truths, simple truths,

And if they criticize and wound us for that

So be it.

Not for that will these things stop being true today or tomorrow

It is unavoidable.

Go ahead, illustrious sirs,

With your silence machinations

With all muzzle and censorhip

For in the end it will be heard

Despite all predictions

And it will be recorded in people’s memory

Maybe only in the subconscious

But there it will remain to spring forth quietly

When you least expect it.

Perhaps some St. John’s eve

Beneath the stars

These words will once again give fruit

But this won’t be some resentful victory

But fraught with patience and firmness of spirit.

And let us hope that on that day

Your cares and ours will be the same . . .

As we said yesterday, we say today, and we’ll say it tomorrow:

A. This is not a pipe.

B. Jesus Christ died and resurrected but not to redeem humanity but rather to avoid thirty or so years of Roman back taxes. Remember that Judas was in charge of finances.

C. Europe and the West have their own history, a history which cannot be understood without Christianity.

D. Pascual brand Milk is the shiznit.

Kopi Luak on the Colbert Report

2008-04-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

The special Indonesian Coffee, made from the leavings of a cat-like creature, called Kopi Luak- "Luak Coffee" garnered a mention on Colbert Platinum. Amusing.

A fable by Robert Louis Stevenson en español

2008-04-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, and a representative of neo-romanticism in English literature. He was the man who "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins", as G. K. Chesterton put it. He was also greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov,^[1] and J. M. Barrie.^[2] Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their definition of modernism. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon.

Including:

Treasure Island (1883)

A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Los cuatro reformadores

Cuatro reformadores se encontraron bajo una zarza. Y estaban de acuerdo, eso sí, de que habría de cambiar el mundo.

-Tenemos que abolir la propiedad- dijo uno.

-Hay que aniquilar el matrimonio- dijo otro.

-Tenemos que acabar con Dios- dijo el tercero.

-Ojalá pudiéramos cargar con el trabajo- dijo el cuarto.

-No nos alejemos de política pragmática- dijo el primero. –La primera cosa será reducir al hombre a un nivel común.

-Primero habrá que darle libertad a ambos sexos- dijo segundo.

-Y antes de eso tendremos que averiguar cómo se hace- dijo el tercero.

-El primer paso será abolir la Biblia- dijo el primero.

-Primero habrá que arrasar las leyes- dijo el segundo

-Pero antes de todo habrá que acabar con la humanidad- dijo el tercero.

(extracto de Fábulas (1888))

The Four Reformers

FOUR reformers met under a bramble bush. They were all agreed the world must be changed. “We must abolish property,” said one.

“We must abolish marriage,” said the second.

“We must abolish God,” said the third.

“I wish we could abolish work,” said the fourth.

“Do not let us get beyond practical politics,” said the first. "The first thing is to reduce men to a common level.”

“The first thing,” said the second, “is to give freedom to the sexes.”

“The first thing,” said the third, “is to find out how to do it.”

“The first step,” said the first, “is to abolish the Bible.”

“The first thing,” said the second, “is to abolish the laws.”

“The first thing,” said the third, “is to abolish mankind.”

(from Fables (1888))

And Now for Something Completely Different

2008-04-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

Photos of an Armenian Church: The Holy Lance Church

2008-04-13T20:22:00.001-07:00

(From English Russia)

Dryden en español I

2008-04-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

John Dryden (August 19 [O.S. August 9] 1631–May 12 [O.S. May 1] 1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright, who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.
Dryden was the dominant literary figure and influence of his age.^{[citation needed]} He established the heroic couplet as the standard meter of English poetry, by writing successful satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays in it; he also introduced the alexandrine and triplet into the form. In his poems, translations, and criticism, he established a poetic diction appropriate to the heroic couplet—Auden referred to him as "the master of the middle style"^[7]—that was a model for his contemporaries and for much of the 18th century. The considerable loss felt by the English literary community at his death was evident from the elegies which it inspired.^[8] Dryden's heroic couplet became the dominant poetic form of the 18th century. The most influential poet of the 18th century, Alexander Pope, was heavily influenced by Dryden, and often borrowed from him; other writers were equally influenced by Dryden and Pope. Pope famously praised Dryden's versification in his imitation of Horace's Epistle II.i: "Dryden taught to join / The varying pause, the full resounding line, / The long majestic march, and energy divine." Samuel Johnson^[9] summed up the general attitude with his remark that "the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry." His poems were very widely read, and are often quoted, for instance, in Tom Jones and Johnson's essays.

(From Wikipedia)

Canción del italiano de <> o El amable guardián

Yaciendo bajo melancólico ciprés

Lloraba Damián, todo pálido y moribundo

-Amable es la muerta que acaba con mi penar

Pero cruel aquella que en vano amé

Las fuentes musgosas mis cuitas murmuran

Montes huecos hacen ecos de mis gruñidos

Toda ninfa me llora

Mientras agonizo

Ella sólo me desdeña

Que dio causa a mi dolor

El amor no correspondido

y negado toda esperanza-

Yaciendo bajo melancólico ciprés

Cual cisne cantaba al agonizar

-Amable es la muerte que acaba mi penar

Pero cruel aquella que en vano amé.-

A song from the Italian from Limberham: or, the Kind Keeper

by John Dryden

By a dismal cypress lying,

Damon cried, all pale and dying,

Kind is death that ends my pain,

But cruel she I lov'd in vain.

The mossy fountains

Murmur my trouble,

And hollow mountains

My groans redouble:

Ev'ry nymph mourns me,

Thus while I languish;

She only scorns me,

Who caus'd my anguish.

No love returning me, but all hope denying;

By a dismal cypress lying,

Like a swan, so sung he dying:

Kind is death that ends my pain,

But cruel she I lov'd in vain.

George Hebert part II

2008-04-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

El resorte

Si pudiéramos ver bajo

La esfera de la virtud y hasta cualquier gracia brillante

Tan claramente como brilla allá arriba.

Este será el mejor cielo, el lugar más luminoso.

Dios ha hecho de las estrellas

El restorte para con la virud

Y los dolores para dejar de pecar.

Mas en este mundo miserable nos afanamos

Como si el dolor maligno no fuese

ni la virtud vencedora.

The Foil.

                                     IF we could see below

The sphere of vertue, and each shining grace

               As plainly as that above doth show;

This were the better skie, the brighter place.

                                     God hath made starres the foil

To set off vertues; griefs to set off sinning:

               Yet in this wretched world we toil,

As if grief were not foul, nor vertue winning.

La muerte

Muerte, eras cosa grosera y fea

Nada más que huesos

El triste resultado de gruñidos más tristes aún.

Tenías la boca abierta pero cantar no pudiste.

Pues te consideramos cosa de entre seis

O diez años por delante

Después de perder la vida y el sentido

La carne convertida en polvo, los huesos en astillas.

Te miramos de esta parte, desatinando,

Donde encontramos

Las cáscaras dejadas por almas recientes

Polvo seco que echar lágrimas no puede mas exhorta aún.

Pero desde que la muerte de Nuestro Salvador

Te escupió sangre en la cara

Te pusiste bella y de gracia llena

Mucha en demanda y solictada

Ahora te vemos alegre y de buen ánimo

Como el dia del juicio

Cuando las almas han de llevar ropaje nuevo

Y todos tus huesos han de vestirse en belleza.

Así que morir podemos cual dormir y confiar

La mitad de lo que poseemos

A una tumba fiel y honrada

Al tener almohadas de pluma o de polvo.

Death.

DEath, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,

                                                         Nothing but bones,

                             The sad effect of sadder grones;

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we consider’d thee as at some six

                                                         Or ten yeares hence,

                             After the losse of life and sense,

Flesh being turn’t to dust, and bones to sticks.

We lookt on this side of thee, shooting short;

                                                         Where we did finde

                             The shells of fledge souls left behinde,

Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Saviours death did put some bloud

                                                         Into thy face;

                             Thou art grown fair and full of grace,

Much in request, must sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,

                                                         As at dooms-day;

                             When souls shall wear their new aray,

And all thy bones with beautie shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

                                                         Half that we have

                             Unto an honest faithfull grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

George Herbert (1593-1633) en español part I

2008-04-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

I am generally more acquainted with Spanish Poetry (especially 17th century), however I have recently been boning up on English-language contemporaries of my favorite poets. As such, much of this English verse is amenable to Spanish translation after drinking in the likes of Lope, Gongora, and Quevedo. Of the so-called Metaphysical poets George Herbert is a good start. Quevedo being the most representative Metaphysical poet in Spanish. However, Herbert has a more limit subject matter in that he wrote strictly religious poetry with the use of a most understated and subtle poetics. So far I have translated 14 or so of his poems into Spanish.

Her is a selection from his bio at Wikipedia:

George Herbert (April 3, 1593 – March 1, 1633) was a Welsh poet, orator and a priest. Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education which led on to him holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, George Herbert excelled in languages and music. He went to college with the intention of becoming a priest, but his scholarship attracted the attention of King James I. Herbert served in parliament for two years. After the death of King James and at the urging of a friend, Herbert's interest in ordained ministry was renewed. In 1630, in his late thirties he gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as a rector of the little parish of St. Andrew Bemerton, near Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need. Throughout his life he wrote religious poems characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favored by the metaphysical school of poets. (From Wikipedia)

La Esperanza

Le di a la Esperanza un reloj mío mas Ella

Me dio un ancla

Luego le presenté un antiguo brevario

Y Ella una lupa me envió

Con eso un bote lleno de lágrimas le di

Y ella sólo mazorcas verdes de maíz

Ay delatadora, ¡no le traeré nada más!

Pues me esperaba un anillo.

Hope.

I Gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he

                                 An anchor gave to me.

Then an old prayer-book I did present:

                                 And he an optick sent.

With that I have a viall full of tears:

                                 But he a few green eares.

Ah Loyterer! I’le no more, no more I’le bring:

                                 I did expect a ring.

Himno-Diálogo

El hombre- Ay, muerte miserable, ¿dónde está tu gloria? ¿Dónde tu famoso vigor, tu antiguo aguijón?

La muerte- Ay, pobre mortal, falto de historia. Anda, estudia y lee como asesiné a Tu Rey.

El hombre- Muerte miserable, ¿a quién le hizo daño?

El mismo hechizo que le echaste te hechiza a su vez.

La muerte- Deja hablar a los perdedores, pues morirás y estos mismos brazos te aplastarán.

El hombre- No te detengas, haz lo que puedas.

Y algún día seré mejor que antes

Y tú cada vez peor pues no existirás.

A Dialogue-Anthem

Alas, poor Death! Where is thy glory?
Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?

Alas, poor mortal, void of story!
Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.

Poor Death! And who was hurt thereby?
Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accurst.

Let losers talk, yet thou shalt die;
These arms shall crush thee.

Spare not, do thy worst.
I shall be one day better than before;
Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.

A Chick-Tract parody explaining Manichaeism.

2008-04-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

Mani Explains It All

Change of course for War on Terror

2008-04-04T10:07:00.001-07:00

Story involving Borges, a token Honorary Doctorate, Michigan and spoon-full of irony.

2008-04-04T04:47:00.000-07:00

From Borges by Bioy Casares on page 1432, in the entry for Saturday March 25 1972, Bioy notes:
"Borges, who arrived yesterday from the US where they gave him an honorary doctorate at the University of Michigan is very animated. Borges: "The doctoral ceremony was obviously political. If I had known I would never have come. They gave the degree to four of us: two whites, one Indian and a Black. I believe it was on account of racism since they chose us only on account of our race. "

It makes me laugh. It appears that Borges never considered the possibility that they gave him the honorary degree because he was the token Hispanic, thus completing the racial rainbow of the continent.

(Translated/adapted from blog: Rayos y Truenos)

Borges de Bioy Casares. A la altura de la página 1432, en la entrada del sábado 25 de marzo de 1972, anota Bioy.

Borges, que llegó ayer de los Estados Unidos, donde le dieron el título de doctor honoris causa de la Universidad de Michigan, está muy animoso. Borges: “El acto del doctorado fue evidentemente político. Si lo hubiera sabido, no iba. Nos dieron el título a cuatro personas: dos blancos, un piel roja y un negro. Yo creo que sólo por racismo, porque toman en cuenta las razas, nos eligieron”.

Me da la risa. Parece que Borges no contemplaba la posibilidad de que la causa de su doctor honoris fuese que lo contabilizaban de hispano, completando así la colección de las razas del continente.

The Wounded Man

2008-04-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

from the writings of Christopher Thompson, Vicar at St. John’s

Imagine if you will a wayfarer in a foreign land carrying all his goods for the journey on his person. Of a sudden he is most violently attacked and stripped of all his belongings and left for dead on the side of the way. Yet during the night several notables pass by, the first of which is the Minister of Education.

“Oh poor chap, “ the Minister declares, “must have got into that devil rum. ‘Tis a pity. But when we implement the new educational plan, by Jove, all will be remedied. For Ignorance is the great evil of the age and Education its balm.”

Later the Bishop of Bath and Wells happens past. “Alas,” the bishop sighs, “there are many of this ilk reprobated by Divine Justice and destined thus to Perdition. For we cannot all be Eton men,” and His Eminence goes his way.

Then a caravan of gypsies wanders past as is this people’s wont. One of the group, a young lad, notices the suffering man. Signaling the rest of his party, they take him into their midst with utmost hospitality and nurse his wounds.

Now then, who is the just? Who is he who does God’s will? Thus did Our Lord ask the scholar to add sting to the parable. But what of His meaning?

It has oft been interpreted that the wayfarer is our neighbour. And he who aides him completes God’s charity. Yet one need not be Christian to be charitable. For a veritable cadre of public works are now trumpeted before us in the name of progress and humanitarianism. Yet I wish to speak of something that all the official societies in the world cannot remedy. The wayfarer is us and his wounds our sins. Attacked by the Devil in our father Adam, we are stripped bare of divine life as skin is torn from the body. After which all the powers and principalities walked on, mocking man’s fall. And were it not for the lowliness of Christ who deemed equality of God not a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself in the form of a slave, we were lost. For it is Christ the wretched, Christ the despised, who harkens to the side of the way and heals the wounded man.

As for the philanthropic societies, who can be a philanthropist, a lover of men, if he not first recognize his own woundedness and that of the whole world? For man, true advancement is not found in material progress but through healing which leads to wholeness. As it is written: “Be therefore perfect as Your Lord is perfect.”

I couldn't live with it

2008-03-31T22:22:00.001-07:00

The ideal candidate for any position

2008-03-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

Honesty not always the best policy

2008-03-24T19:49:00.001-07:00

Chesterton in Spanish 2

2008-03-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

A Prayer in Darkness

G.K.Chesterton

This much, O heaven--if I should brood or rave,

Pity me not; but let the world be fed,

Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead,

Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave.

If I dare snarl between this sun and sod,

Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own,

In sun and rain and fruit in season shown,

The shining silence of the scorn of God.

Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,

If I must travail in a night of wrath,

Thank God my tears will never vex a moth,

Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.

Men say the sun was darkened: yet I had

Thought it beat brightly, even on--Calvary:

And He that hung upon the Torturing Tree

Heard all the crickets singing, and was glad.

Spanish translation:

Una oración en las tinieblas

O cielo si me enturbiara o me enojara

No te apiades tanto de mí mas deja que el mundo se sustente

Y si en mis desvaríos acaso me matara

Sólo cuida la hierba que crece sobre mi túmulo

Si me atreviera a hacer mala cara entre este sol y avena, llanto y clamor

Dame la gracia bajo el sol y la lluvia y la fruta en estacíon

Para sufrir el brillante silencio del escarnio de Dios.

Gracias a Dios que los astros estén fuera de mi alcance

Gracias a Dios que mis lágrimas no ahoguen polilla alguna

Ni mis conjuros corten flores

Si tengo acaso que pasar noches de ira.

Dicen que en aquel instante el sol se oscureció

Mas pensé que brillaba intensamente

Aún en El Monte Calvario

Y él que colgaba del árbol tormentoso

se halló contento . . .

al escuchar el canto de los grillos.

Chesterton in Spanish 1

2008-03-22T20:18:00.001-07:00

To Edmund Clerihew Bentley

 A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
 Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
 Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;
 The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
 Round us in antic order their crippled vices came--
 Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
 Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
 Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
 Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
 The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
 They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
 Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.
 Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;
 When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us
 Children we were--our forts of sand were even as weak as eve,
 High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.
 Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,

Spanish translation:

A Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Una nube posaba sobre la mente de los hombres

Y el tiempo deliraba

Sí, una nube enfermiza posaba sobre el alma cuando éramos chavales juntos

La ciencia anunció la no-entidad y el arte admiraba la podredumbre

El mundo estaba viejo y se acabó,

Pero tú y yo estábamos alegres

Sus voces roncas nos ceñían en orden travieso

Una lujuria que había perdido su risa,

Un temor que había perdido su vergüenza,

Como la trenza cana de Whistler que nos alumbraba la lugubrez sin rumbo.

Los hombres mostraba su propio plumaje tan orgullosamente como un plumete

La vida fue una mosca que se desvanecía

Y la muerte un zángano que picaba.

De verdad, el mundo estaba muy viejo cuando éramos jóvenes, tú y yo.

Transformaban hasta el pecado decente en figuras que no cabe nombrar.

Los hombres se avergonzaban del honor pero nosotros no.

Si fuimos débiles y tontos así no hemos errado, así no.

Cuando ese negro Baal bloqueaba los cielos no le venían himnos de nosotros.

Eramos niños, nuestros castillos de arena estaban tan flacas como la tarde

Ascendían a lo alto, así los construimos para romper el mar amargo.

Tontos como éramos en compañía, completamente gafes y absurdos . . . .

Sticking it to the man.

2008-03-22T08:45:00.001-07:00

Erasmus and Thomas More

2008-03-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

(The previous section discusses the cult of the martyred bishop St. Thomas Beckett)
So the name of Thomas was explicable, but the origins of his surname cannot be so easily discovered. If such names derive from some sense of place, then the great moors or marshes around London might find an echo here. It is also a name upon which a number of puns were constructed. 'More' could be the 'Moor' or black Ethiop and Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch humanist who became his close companion, sometimes called him 'Niger'.

(from the Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd 1998, p.5)

Oh, that Erasmus! This is the same man who said: "Pray for us St. Socrates."

I can see it know:

More: What up Desi?

Erasmus: Hey Thomas, you know you my N-word.

Prose and Cons

2008-03-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

From Russia with Insanity- Biggest Cat Jump Ever

2008-03-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

A Russian man thought it would be fun to take his pet cat skydiving with them. To really see if those furry critters can, well, you know . . .

Biggest Cat Jump

Campaign Hijinks

2008-03-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

Stuff Indonesians Like part 3

2008-03-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

#22 Dangdut

Indonesian pop music with Bollywood tendencies

#23 Weird jelloish desserts

Cendol and pacar bandung.

#24 Semua bule sama

All bule are the same. All white people the same-lah.

#25 Batik patterns

#26 Wayang

Javanese shadow puppets.

Stuff Indonesians Like part deux

2008-03-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

#11 Beng-Beng

A chocolate covered rice candy.
#12 Martabak

An insanely rich layer cake. Heart attacks ensue.
#13 Indomie

The Indonesian Ramen. Keeping grad students alive since 1972.
#14 Nasi Goreng

Indonesian fried rice. This is a traditional breakfast food. East Java uses tomato paste in addition to the traditional egg, sausage, and soy sauce.
#15 Satay Ayam

Indonesian satay. Strips of chicken on wooden sticks that you dip in peanut sauce. Genius.
#16 Guling- Body Pillow

#17 Kru puk

Like Chinese shrimp chips. In school there are krupuk eating contests were students must eat a chip hanging from a string.
#18 Becak

Rickshaw- man-driven taxi with parallels throughout Southeast Asia, India and China.
#19 Rissoles

A fried empanada-like dish filled with vegetables and meat.
#20 Sarong tangan buat bayi

Baby no scratch gloves. Indo babies wear these longer than white babies for some reason.
#21 Kecap manis

Indonesian sweet soy sauce. Apparently our word "ketchup" comes from a Chinese word via Indonesian.

kôe-chiap > kecap > ketchup.
The original ketchup was a "fish sauce" which was substantially altered in the UK and the US into a tomato based sauce.

To be continued in part tiga (3).

Stuff Indonesians Like- part 1

2008-03-03T10:56:00.001-08:00

As a take off on the Stuff White People Like blog I have compiled a list of things that Indonesians like (based on communities living in the US)

#1 Garpu dan sendok- Fork and spoon

When eating you must use a fork and spoon. No exceptions. You use the fork to put rice etc. into the spoon which you put in your mouth. Unless chopsticks are around.

#2 Telor- Eggs

In Indonesian food you must have eggs somewhere. It is necessary. Be it a salad, or some random entree.

#3 Makan- Eating

Every activity must involve eating in some way or no one will come.

#4 Bernyanyi- Singing

Take any and all opportunities to sing no matter what the context. Weddings, Karaoke etc.

#5 Saying -lah

You must add -lah to the end of words for emphasis. For example:

How are you today?

OK-lah.

#6 Alcoholic desserts

Desserts must have a licor base like Rum balls.

#7 KFC

Kentucky Fried Chicken should be called Indonesian Fried Chicken since it is the fast food of choice. Church's also applies. In Indonesia Church's is called Texas Chicken. Figure that one out.

#8 Durian

The Durian fruit. That stinky mystery. Even the guy on that Travel program who goes around the world eating disgusting food like a beating frog's heart wouldn't touch the stuff. This fruit is popular in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. In Singapore there is a special sign on the metro with a picture of Durian with a line across it since the authorities don't want it to stink up the place.

#9 Bubble Tea- Durian, Mango, and Avocado

Bubble Tea is the shiznit. It is a tea or a smoothie with tapioca balls on the bottom. Bule like my like the more smoothie-esque flavors while Indonesians prefer Durian, Mango, Avocado or Honey Tea.

#10 Poco-Poco

At weddings people dance the Poco-Poco which I was told was some kind of traditional dance until I learned it was the Electric Slide. May we be more careful in our musical exports next time.

To be continued in Part 2

Horribly awful Hillary campaign song. So bad it's good.

2008-03-03T10:54:00.001-08:00

Later they will look back at this crime against good taste

as the thing that cost her the nomination.

Diebold Does It Again!

2008-02-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

The eternal question- the answer

2008-02-26T18:42:00.000-08:00

Question: What do women want?

Response:

It appears that, as per Dr. Freud, women want a shlong.

Objection:

However, given the premise all men are pigs, all pigs have shlongs and Herr Freud smoked crack. For “sometimes a banana is just a banana”.

Yet, it seems more likely that women don’t know what they want as evidenced by any shopping trip involving shoes.

Reply:

Women don’t know what they want. This is so given that nothing is willed without first being understood. Therefore that which is not understood cannot be willed. Conversely, that which is understood must be finite since it is made of parts. However, the infinite cannot be understood and then willed specifically since it is not composed of parts. Ergo women don’t know what they want since they want everything (i.e. the infinite).

The eternal question meme

2008-02-26T04:48:00.000-08:00

What do women want?

I think I have some sort of an answer to this question (mostly humorous) but want to hear what you have to say first. (Show your work.)

(tagged Advise and Disssent, Torgo Devil, From the Upstate)

How White are You? Meme

2008-02-20T20:12:00.001-08:00

This is a parody blog making blatant generalizations about white people. Actually after the 80's all white people became either yuppies or white trash, sad to say. Before that the only white people were WASPS, only after the 60's did the Civil Rights Movement have the unintended consequence of making Italians, Germans, Jews, Slavs etc, which are grandfathers referred to with short ethnic slurs, all become identified as white.
This site is a lampoon of self-satisfied yuppies, secretly continuing the white man's burden. Sad but funny.

Stuff White People Like

See what White stuff you like (Tag: Advise and Dissent, Torgodevil, The Upstate)

Here are the White things I am guilty of or others which I strongly disagree with:

#71 I feel just the opposite and like it when other white people are around since I am with Asians all the time.

#58 Who doesn't like Japan? Japanese culture is the most accessible of Asian cultures for the White man.

#55 Apologies and White Guilt. This is actually one of the problems of Western Culture. We are too self-hating, not because we actually feel sorry and repent but because we are self-centered narcissists who actually think any one else cares about what White people did in the past. It's all about us you see.

#53 I actually like some of these songs- Bust A Move for example.

#50 I think Sarah Silverman's comedy is very, very crude and stupid. However she reminds of many of the Jewish princesses I grew up with in Cleveland which makes her kind of funny to me.

#47 Whole Food. I've been to Whole Food (Whole Paycheck) several times but have never bought anything since I have no money.

#46 The New York Times. I used to like the Sunday New York Times, however, over the past 7-8 years the periodical has seriously gone down in quality and has become completely irrelevant for all practical purposes.

#44 NPR. I have a love-hate relationships with Public Radio and NPR. It is the whitest thing in the world like mayo spread on white bread tempered by Kenny G playing in the background. The thing is they actually have real foreign correspondents while the TV networks have all fired theirs. So there international news is actually top notch on most cases. However I tire of their gentle disdain for the common man. NPR is far too elitist. Also, it needs more Garrison Keillor and the Car guys Click and Clack to give it some soul. And not crap like Fair Game which is hipster trash.

#43 Who doesn't like Plays?

#42 Sushi is OK but I'm not in love with it. Sushi actually originated in its present from in California. Sure they ate raw fish in Japan but the whole Sushi scene started on the West coast.

#41 Indie music can be either great or completely crappy. And once you think of what other people, especially minorities listen to you feel very white indeed.

#39 I use Netflixs at times but also use Block Buster. Whatever.

#35 Who doesn't like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report? Hilarious stuff, especially in the times we live in. Somebody has to say something.

#24 I used to like wine but Indonesians don't drink it that much so that stage is over.

#22 The use of two last names is Child Abuse. Also the use of last names for first names such as Anderson or Parker. Not right. Kids are not accessories or designer goods.

#20 I like other cultures so I can forget that I am the whitest man alive. Although Spaniards are actually white for all practical purposes. They just are Mediterranean White and not Nordic White. The same for Italians.

#17 I like traveling but it is important not to be a schmuck about it.

#16 I actually like my parents.

#15 I don't care for the tendency of White culture to unquestioningly embrace Eastern Culture such as Chinese or Indian for their own ends and not on that Culture's terms. This is the narcissistic tendency of White Culture to be ashamed of its own tradition and flee to anything but itself. But actually we end up projecting our own beliefs and preferences on that other culture and thus we are never challenged to change our pampered and self-centered ethos. Pretty sad. There should be more attention to how India has many cultures and how Hinduism has a caste system, and how Hindus are actually very conservative morally speaking. And how anti-Christian violence in India is very high. Especially against the untouchables who convert to Christianity because Hindu culture treats them like crap.

#14 I've had black friends but you should never have a racial quota in your friend making but instead have a friend because you appreciate that person for his or her self.

#11 Doh! I am the Rice King.

#6 He can talk but can he actually do anything? Also, he's not very Black. He's half African not Black. An African has a better chance in America, sadly, than an African America. Emigrate from Ghana today.

#2 I was raised Episcopalian and become Catholic. Oh, so different!

In sum, I am the Whitest man alive.

Answer to unanswerable theological meme:

2008-02-20T15:29:00.001-08:00

Would there have been an Incarnation even though Adam had not sinned?

I would say yes, following the radical Christo-centrism of Fray Luis de León which stems from Scotus on this point..

Actually, I got the idea for the meme after reading through some articles on the Christology of Fray Luis de León.

I will put some other unanswerable questions later to flesh out Fray Luis complete view point. I take "unanswerable questions" as being not De Fide- and therefore open to uncertainty- about things that our American minds consider impossible to imagine even thinking about.

And also I thought Advise and Dissent would say yes. Although this question is in no way final, and St. Thomas' discussion is incomplete on this point.

Here is what Fray Luis has to say:

Excerpt from: On the names of Christ, (Chapter 1 on the name Blossom), Fray Luis de León (1583):

“And the greatest thing it was possible to accomplish was the personal union between the Divine Word and Christ’s human nature, which made one person with man.”

“There’s no doubt it is the greatest.” Sabino said.

“Then it necessarily follows that God in order to makes this most fortunate and marvelous union, created all that is seen and unseen which is to say that the end for which the variety and beauty of the world was made was to bring to light this composite of God and man. Or better said, this person both God and man that is Jesus Christ."

“It necessarily follows”- Sabino replied.

“Well Christ being a fruit and Scripture give Him this name to make us understand that Christ is the end of all things. He for Whose happy birth all creatures were created and directed. For just as the tree root was not made for itself nor the trunk that is born and sustains itself on top but one and the other together with the branches, flowers and leaves and all the rest that the tree produces is ordered and directed toward the fruit that comes out of it which is its end and completion. Thus in the same manner these extended heavens which we see and the stars that shine in them and amongst them this fount of clarity and light that illuminates everything. The round and beautiful earth painted with flowers, the waters teaming with fish, animals, men, this whole universe so great and beautiful it is God made it for this end: to make His Son a man and produce this unique and divine fruit that is Christ. Which we can truly call the common birth of all things.

"And thus as the fruit (for whose birth the firmness of the trunk and the beauty of the flower, along with the greenery and freshness of the leaves were made) contains within itself and its strength all that which is ordered in the tree or better yet, the tree contains everything necessary within itself. Thus does Christ for Whose birth God first created the firm and deep roots of the elements and afterwards erected on top of them the greatness of the world with such variety. Thus the branches and leaves contain all within themselves which is then embraced and summarized in Him."

"And lo, I saw the son of man descending from the clouds . .

2008-02-19T18:32:00.000-08:00

Humorous quotes from America's latest obsession:

Barack Obama is the Messiah

Unanswerable Theological Meme

2008-02-18T21:33:00.000-08:00

Would the Incarnation still have taken place if Adam had not sinned?

(Tagged: Advise and Dissent)

What the dealio?

2008-02-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

"One of the ironies of the American scene is that although Catholics have been the largest Christian communion in the US for 150 years (we are nearly four times the size of the next-largest: the Southern Baptist Convention), the primary Christian cultural influence in America today is evangelical Protestantism."

A discussion about this phenomenon:

When Evangelical is Not Enough

From Intentional Disciples Blog:

http://blog.siena.org/

I am Darren Nichols . . . deal with that.

2008-02-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

A horribly pretentious director addresses his cast who are about to start a production of Hamlet. From a Canadian show "Slings and Arrows". Funny stuff.

Election in Potomac Land

2008-02-11T19:46:00.000-08:00

Flash Backs from The Life of St. John of the Cross part I

2008-02-08T20:51:00.001-08:00

I have found a 35 minute video that dramatically evokes the life of San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross). This is the first portion of the video, which is around 5 minutes. The video is in Spanish so I have provided a translation below. Other section will follow if I find the time. The movie is really well done. Down to the period music and his exquisite torture by the other monks.

The video begins with St. John expiring this mortal coil in the city of Ubeda.

Ubeda December 1591

The bells of St. Paul's in Ubeda have rung for prayers during a cold night in December the year of 1591. St. John of the cross has taken shelter in the nearby Carmelite convent and is now gravely ill. What thoughts? What images fill the sick man's memory on that night when is life is to end?

Scene I Úbeda, Juan lays dying . .

Carmelite: Padre Juan, the doctor says your reverence is fading, put yourself right with God . . .

Scene II The Carmelite Priory

(A row of friars walks under a row of cypresses, one of them is forcibly driven along, wearing a black sheet over his head.)

(They enter the Monastery. The Prior speaks.)

Prior: By the authority of the High Pontiff Gregory XIII, it is ordered that all religious elected against the general statutes and against obedience to the prior and master general because they received convents and towns in any whatsoever against the general prior’s will. Any areas they solicited, inhabited or inhabit may they be dispossessed of them and removed from all office and administrative position without appeal. Because some rebellious and stubborn people commonly called discalced religious have lived and are presently living outside the province of Old Castile in Granada and Seville against the general prior’s statutes.
And they refused to humbly accept the prior general’s letters and commands excusing themselves with falsehoods, threats, and avoidances. These discalced religious are under apostolic punishment and censure so that in the space of three days they submit and if they resist that they be seriously punished, invoking secular power if necessary. And let it be known that they are ordered to appear in person before us and in case of resistance they should be provided witnesses.

Juan: If Your Grace will allow me I would like to . . .

Prior: I guess you may defend yourself.

Juan: Of course. If you call something vulgar being born from the heart and intelligence of Mother Theresa of Jesus, her known holiness, I accept the terms. Rebels, disobedient? What punishment can avail me if I come handing out mercy?

Carmelite Brother: Don’t be stubborn, Brother Juan, life can be so much more pleasant with a priory, a nice cell and a gold crucifix.

Juan: A friar should not be overwhelmed by such unnecessary possessions. He who searches out Christ naked has no need of gold or jewels.

Carmelite Brother: Don’t you realize you are to be thrown in prison?

Juan: God also chose the prison of the soul so that man may be free.

Prior: This tribunal proclaims you to be in rebellion.

I decide, I mean we decide that you be incarcerated in a conventual prison.

Scene III

(Juan is thrown into prison)

Juan: Could I be mistaken? Perhaps the prior is right? Oh Lord free me from the terrible lash of doubt. Remove from me any vestige of pride.

Scene IV

Carmelite: What’s wrong Brother Juan, be calm.

Book meme

2008-02-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

1) Find the nearest book to you with at least 123 pages.
2) Turn to page 123.
3) Find the 5th sentence.
4) Type the next 3 sentences after the 5th sentence.
5) Tag 5 people

Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Cardinal Newman

p. 123 Sentences 6, 7 and 8:

"This was about the middle of September. It was on the Donatists, with an application to Anglicanism. I read it, and did not see much in it."

Chinese New Year- All 'Bout Da Red Envelopes!

2008-02-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the start of the Chinese year of the Rat.

Background to Chinese New Year:

According to legend, in ancient China, the Nián (年) was a man-eating beast from the mountains (in other versions from under the sea), which came out every 12 months somewhere close to winter to prey on humans. The people later believed that the Nian was sensitive to loud noises and the colour red, so they scared it away with explosions, fireworks and the liberal use of the colour red. These customs led to the first New Year celebrations. Guò nián (simplified Chinese: 过年; traditional Chinese: 過年), which means to celebrate the new year, literally means the passover of the Nian.

Chinese New Year Customs:

Irreverent children may jokingly use the phrase (Traditional Chinese:恭喜發財,紅包拿來, Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财，红包拿来) (Mandarin PinYin: Gōngxǐ fācái, hóngbāo nálái) ( Cantonese: 恭喜發財,利是逗來 ), roughly translated as "Congratulations and be prosperous, now give me a red envelope."

Back in the 1970s, children in Hong Kong used the saying: 恭喜發財,利是逗來,伍毫嫌少,壹蚊唔愛 (Cantonese), roughly translated as, "Happy New Year, now give me a red envelope, fifty cents is too little, don't want a dollar either." It basically meant that they disliked small change - coins which were called "hard substance" (Cantonese: 硬嘢). Instead, they wanted "soft substance" (Cantonese: 軟嘢), which was either a ten dollar or a twenty dollar bill.

(from Chinese New year article on Wikipedia)

Concentric Circles and Red Dot appear Near Indonesia

2008-01-31T05:41:00.000-08:00

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

A hilarious new book- Homo Politicus- The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government

2008-01-28T17:13:00.000-08:00

Dana Milbank a writer for the Washington Post has written a book from the point of view of a cultural anthropologist in order to understand the rituals and culture of Potomac Man.

Here are some examples:

Human sacrifice: the ritual immolation of Scooter Libby, Al Gonzalez, Colin Powell et al.

The art of war: Hillary's campaign seen as a revenge killing.

The yearly cleansing ritual known as the Correspondent's Dinner where the president has to undergo humiliation at the hands of comedians (see Steven Colbert 2006 on You Tube).

The real players in Washington are not the president and his cabinet but political strategist known as the shamans- Rove, Carville etc.

The warriors such as the "Hammer" Delay, the Amazon Pelosi etc.

The real Big Men of course are the lobbyists. And every Senator or Representative worth his salt aspires to be a lobbyist. Because the Potomac - meaning 'where the goods are brought in' in the native Indian language is their kingdom. A case in point is Abramoff who could deliver on his gifts such a golfing trip to Scotland. He is sorely missed in Potomac-land.

Obviously this book is a satire but a very droll one. He worked in London for a little while so maybe that explains some of it. Even in this interview on CSPAN he manages to come across in a serious manner. You should watch it, it is hilarious! (not your typical CSPAN):

Interview on CSPAN

Hillary- the sad truth

2008-01-22T20:29:00.000-08:00