Letter to the Vermont Legislators

The HRC has a web page where, if you're a Vermont resident, you can e-mail the members of the Vermont legislature in support of overturning the impending veto by the Governor of their marriage equality legislation. The letter application has a space for a personal message. Even though I don't live in Vermont this is what I wrote:

On a special note to Rep. Sunny Audette and my fellow Catholic legislators. Rep Audette I understand that you are a devout Roman Catholic who worries about the reaction of such a vote from the Church. I read with sadness that, though you wished you could support the measure and congratulated all those pushing for the legislation and its passage that, because of the church's current stance on Gay marriage you were impeded on voting in favour of the marriage.

I too am a devout Catholic, and on Friday I prayed the Stations of the Cross especially with you in mind. It was while praying the stations that I recalled in my mind something that our Holy Father recently said in a letter to the Bishops, and I rather lengthily quote:

"At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint."

"Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another." I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this "biting and devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love? The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He will be our guide – even in turbulent times."

(http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2009/03/to-bishops-b16s-letter-on-sspx.html)

Even though this letter was in response to the SSPX controversy of earlier this year, how true is it in this situation? It's so easy to read St. Paul, like the Pope says, as rhetorical excess. To overlook or oversimplify what it means to "use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh." As the Pope intimates flesh here and the act of mutual consumption is an occasion of the sin of fear, misunderstanding, self righteousness, exclusion and hatred.

You see these occasions of sin infecting the church - not only in the realm of theological differences, but even down to the issue of our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters. How the Church, indeed the world, should single out so small a group of people - should ridicule, exclude and hate... "Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians?"

Dear sir you have an opportunity, if you believe in your heart what you said, take a bold step and reject the flesh and follow the simple command from the Lips of Christ himself of showing love to your neighbor as you do for yourself.

God bless you in this Holy Week and approaching Easter-tide, may you and your fellow legislators have firm resolution to support love in the face of those who would oppose it in favour of fear and exclusion.

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It Means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes....

shoes
Originally uploaded by gemma101679

Remember the scene from the Godfather where they find out that Luca Brasi has been murdered. A rolled up newspaper arrives with a fish in it, and Sonny Corleone doesn't understand until Tom says "It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi Sleeps with the fishes..."
I had in mind with this post to urge folks to send shoes wrapped in Newspaper to the Governor as a mixed metaphor to encourage him to accept the money.

As much as I like the idea of throwing a shoe at him, there's no need to get arrested (because you know he'd press charges) and hear him whine like he did before the last election when he 'burned his eyes' because of stage lights. But then again, the hacks and neanderthals he surrounds himself with wouldn't get it.

But operation "Shoe Drop" isn't going to be necessary, because the professional organizers are doing what they do best... organizing.

Next week on April 1st there's going to be a protest at the State House to encourage the Governor to leave the gun and take the Cannoli, to accept the Stimulus money and put it to work in a proactive way for the folks of this state. So come out from 5:30 to 6:30 and,

Tell the governor to quit grandstanding at our expense!

If the governor does not sign the stimulus agreement by April 3, SC will have to lay off thousands of teachers, public safety employees and increase tuition at our colleges and universities.

Join teachers, public workers, students, and your neighbors who are facing cutbacks, layoffs and increasing debts to tell Sanford:

Governor, it's OUR money!

Instead of pouring our money into bailing out wealthy bankers, we need government investments that create new jobs, provide health care and quality education for all, end the foreclosure epidemic and support sustainable, clean energy.

As with everything these days, there's a facebook group you can visit to sign up and attend. But apparently the other metropolitan areas aren't to be left out. Via Indigo Bunting,

Support the Stimulus Rally
When: Tuesday, March 31 from 12:15-1:15 p.m.
Where: Brittlebank Park, Charleston (180 Lockwood Blvd)
Contact: StimulusRally@gmail.com

No word yet if Greenville-Spartanburg area (and the rest of Jesus Land for that matter) will participate, the ratio of suburban white Christianist-Republican to everyone else is such that it's doubtful.

But hey, if you can't make it to the rally -- you can always send him a shoe.

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Who's in charge of our military?

With Obama in office and in his first week signing an executive order closing GITMO, as well as an order limiting CIA officials to interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual - one would think 'hey, America's back!'

But the neoconservatives who have entrenched themselves amongst the higher ranks of the military orders are not giving up so easily. According to the Huffington Post, the Supreme Nato Commander - General John Craddock - has come under scrutiny from his subordinates and alliance member states because of his barbaric tactics and one order in particular.

The Craddock Order literally granted a license to kill civilians to every NATO soldier under his command and required the soldiers to perpetrate a massacre of Afghani civilians who were merely 'suspected' of involvement in the drug trade.

The German Magazine Der Spiegel is reporting now that the objections of the German Military and Government, as well as of US Commander General McKiernan, have finally been taken seriously. General Craddock has rescinded his barbaric order. And soon Craddock may be out himself as reported by Der Spiegel:

But it may soon be Craddock himself in the hot seat. Already, there are those in NATO headquarters in Brussels, as well as in the alliance's military headquarters in Mons, who are speculating about "the last days of Craddock." Hardly anyone believes that the "hard-core Rumsfeld man," as some refer to him, will make it to the end of his term of service this summer. Craddock is seen as a leftover of the George W. Bush administration. It is seen as likely that his defeat in the just-ended dispute among NATO generals will speed his departure.

But it's not just the tensions and ire we drawing from our allies. New information has surfaced about efforts by some Pentagon insiders, including American Hero General Petreaus, to discredit the new President over his insistence on keeping with the Iraq/American agreement issued in November withdrawing troops within 16 months,

There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.

This networked plan includes

The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning.

and there's more....

Keane, the Army Vice-Chief of Staff from 1999 to 2003, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star Army generals, and since Obama's Jan. 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow U.S. withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network's plans.
The source says the network, which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama's withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.
If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.
That line seems likely to appeal to reporters covering the Iraq troop withdrawal issue. Ever since Obama's inauguration, media coverage of the issue has treated Obama' s 16-month withdrawal proposal as a concession to anti-war sentiment which will have to be adjusted to the "realities" as defined by the advice to Obama from Gates, Petreaus and Odierno.

The entire article is worth a read. One of the most interesting and sad part about these developments is that Mr. Obama is the President, he's the commander-in-chief. Folks in the military can grouse, but when the commander gives an order you get in line and do it. The military in this country has been enabled... some would argue (correctly) since the inception of the cold war. Prior to the cold war the military was not a specific interest competing for a majority of our federal budget, but in fact a specific disinterest - the military served, it's commanders issued orders not conspiracy theories. It really makes one look at General Petreaus in a different light and wonder if in fact the move on ad wasn't so extreme?

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QOTD: Food metaphors no longer apply

Gianna Amore, Miss August 1989 from Playboy - The Complete Centerfolds, picture from Here at Playboy

Things go downhill in the 1980s as breast implants became popular: the new boobs are globe-like and tactile only in the way that bowling balls are tactile. Some of them cast a glare, like cartoon balloons. Food metaphors no longer apply.

- Molly Young, n+1

an excellent book review on Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds.

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Space.... the only way to be buried

Gene Roddenberry's wife will join him orbitting above the planet. I've always dreamed about being "buried" in space - however I don't want to be cremated. Just take me up, and push me out to float into eternity.

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Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, this genration's John Chrysostom?

With the recent passing of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, many obits have appeared eulogizing him with praise and just as many have also appeared with, well, not praise. It got me thinking, and I came up with this not very perfect analogy: Fr. Neuhaus is for this generation what St. John Chrysostom was for his.


I say that because when we look by at the Greek Father many scholars have called him an anti-Semite. And yes, his works have been used to inspire many pogroms throughout history, have passed from generation to generation and have been cited as source material to put Jews in ghettos and ultimately gas chambers. But his defenders point out that during his time period his arguments were in direct contention with other ideas on how to interpret and understand the culture... he was in effect a fourth century culture warrior to apply the modern term.


These defenders say he employed the necessary rhetorical flourishing of psogos to craft and stress his, ultimately successful, point of view to solicit conversions. They say the historical record does not support the notion that he would support later violence against the Jews.


To that end I'm sure future generations will look back and craft an opinion on the life of Fr. Neuhaus. Whether they only have pro-Neuhaus information or anti-Neuhaus information is up to time and the efforts of each camp. For me at least, like John Chrysostom, I say he can be both. And with that in mind I did find an even handed obituary of Fr. Neuhaus, one that presents both the saintly serenity of the curious and devoted convert and the angry culture warrior gleefully bending the ear of those in power to quash his ideological opposition.


From The Nation:

The Two Richard John Neuhauses

The following reflection on the passing of Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) is cross-posted at the National Catholic Reporter. Additional thoughts on Neuhaus' life and legacy will appear in this space over the coming days.

In the three-and-a-half years I worked at First Things magazine, I came to know two Richard John Neuhauses. The first is the one I worked with in the journal's offices every day: personally generous and jovial, intellectually and theologically curious, alert to political and cultural complications, overflowing with energy and ideas. This is the Neuhaus readers encountered in his lengthy, erudite essays on philosophy, theology, and history, which frequently graced the pages of the magazine. It is also the Neuhaus who produced beautiful theological meditations such as Death on a Friday Afternoon and As I Lay Dying--and who selflessly served as a parish priest at Immaculate Conception Church on 14th Street in Manhattan.

But there was also another Neuhaus--the one familiar to his political opponents. This is the Neuhaus who aimed to be a "thorough revolutionary" during the 1960s and who later brokered a political alliance between Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants in order more effectively to wage a cultural war against the social changes that flowed from that same decade. This Neuhaus uncharitably savaged his ideological enemies in his monthly column for First Things and walked a fine line between predicting that the culture war was on the verge of erupting into violence and actively inciting such violence. This Neuhaus sometimes spoke as if faithful Catholics had a positive duty to vote for the Republican Party, and he strongly encouraged the American bishops to deny the sacrament of Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians. This Neuhaus was proudly authoritarian, bullying in temperament, and staunchly traditionalist in his attitudes toward women and homosexuality.

During my last two years at the journal--the years of the Iraq war and its immediate aftermath--the second Neuhaus dominated, enthusiastically seeking to provide a theological defense of George W. Bush's polices at home and abroad and sharply rebuking anyone who dared to dissent from those policies. If I'm not mistaken, the first, more thoughtful Neuhaus reasserted himself in the past two years, as he worked to come to terms with the myriad failures and disappointments of the Bush administration. In these years the tone of his writing was somewhat less stridently political, more concerned with exploring the tensions between politics and theological truth than with covering them over. That his final book project was a nuanced study of St. Augustine's political theology is perhaps a further indication that his views on the proper relation between religion and public life were undergoing a subtle revision in light of recent sobering events.

The most sobering event of all must have been the election of Barack Obama, whom Neuhaus considered the most culturally liberal candidate for president in American history. Worse, Obama employed the rhetoric of religion to conceal his liberalism, portraying himself as beyond the stark oppositions of the culture war when, according to Neuhaus, his true aim was to consolidate and expand on the liberal gains of the past four decades. Neuhaus' populist commitments nearly always persuaded him that the American people would do the right thing in the end. This faith buoyed his spirits during every presidential election since 1980. Sometimes his hopes were dashed; other years they were fulfilled. But I suspect the blow from 2008--victory for a liberal Democrat with 53 percent of the vote, a greater margin than any non-incumbent candidate for president since the war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower triumphed in 1952--must have been particularly painful.

Which Neuhaus would have dominated through the Obama administration? Would the first Neuhaus have remained in control, following the lead of Reinhold Niebuhr to offer an ironic commentary on the disorienting dynamics of political life in a pluralist democracy? Or would the second Neuhaus have come roaring back, hurling theological invective at the new president, fretting about the end of democracy in America, rallying the religious right for the next round in the culture war--the battle to wrest the White House from the clutches of the culture of death? Unfortunately, now we will never know which Neuhaus would have prevailed.

May both Richard John Neuhauses rest in peace.

Though Damon then followed up by pushing back against the syrupy disregard of Ross Douthat he then linked to a second remembrance. This one is lengthy but the key is his own refutation of Douthat's blind ideological subservience and a more appropriate summation of the man by use of his own work that is serenely eloquent.

Neuhaus's profound commitment to both cultural change and Christian orthodoxy led him to develop the idea--and to, let's admit it, to convince many others of its truth--that America's liberal tradition, if it was not to be corrupted, necessitated a "positive duty" on behalf of believers to sustain certain kind of religious language, a religious language that is objective enough that one can identify it with a specific political party, a specific political agenda, and maybe even a specific president of the United States. That's not a prophet calling America to its better nature from the street corners; that a precinct captain explaining to a mob on that same street corner why God logically can't possibly want Americans to do otherwise. And so, it's not that I'm a leftist Mormon communitarian (though with traditionalist religious and moral beliefs) that turned me off on Neuhaus's very conservative, very Catholic, and often brilliant polemical work; it's that too often he took the spirit of the best of American Christianity--the reforming, chastising, praising spirit of it--and insisted that it must be disciplined and contained within a single electoral box.

Now with that said, I have to confess: what do I really know of how Neuhaus prioritized his work over the hours and days? (I should ask Damon; he'd know better than me.) He was a parish priest and a faithful believer, in the midst of all these theoretical, philosophical, and moral controversies; if I have any core to my faith, it is that such work will be far more meaningful in the life to come, and is far more important to his and my soul right now, than any of the rest. Many of those who have spoken in praise of Neuhaus's pastoral writings have focused on the brilliant, haunting, deeply truthful work, Death of a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus From the Cross; I endorse that praise. In particular, I endorse the praise for the first chapter of that book, a revised version of which Neuhaus published as a separate essay in FT, "Father, Forgive Them." It is an essay that all Christians should read; it is an essay that I, especially as I have dealt with some difficult and painful truths about myself of late, have been reminded how much love for its clear, powerful, and deeply right sense of just what it means to ask for, and receive, forgiveness:

We confess to hurting someone we love and she says, "Forget it. It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter." But she knows and we know that it is not nothing and it does matter and we will not forget it. Forgive and forget, they say, but that is surely wrong. What is forgotten need not, indeed cannot, be forgiven. Love does not say to the beloved that it does not matter, for the beloved matters. Spare me the sentimental love that tells me what I do and what I am does not matter.

Forgiveness costs. Forgiveness costs dearly. There are theories of atonement saying that Christ paid the price. His death appeased God’s wrath and satisfied God’s justice. That way of putting it appeals to biblical witness and venerable tradition, and no doubt contains great truth. Yet for many in the past and at present that way of speaking poses great problems. The subtlety of the theory is overwhelmed by the cartoon picture of an angry Father who demands the death of His Son, maybe even kills His Son, in order to appease His own wrath. In its vulgar form-which means the form most common-it is a matter of settling scores, a drama vengeful and vindictive, more worthy of The Godfather than of the Father of whom it is said, "God is love."

And yet forgiveness costs. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness; not counting their trespasses is not a kindly accountant winking at what is wrong; it is not a benign cooking of the books. In the world, in our own lives, something has gone dreadfully wrong, and it must be set right. Recall when you were a little child and somebody-maybe you-did something very bad. Maybe a lie was told, or some money was stolen, or the cookie jar lies shattered on the kitchen floor. The bad thing has been found out, and now something must happen, something must be done about it. The fear of punishment is terrible, but not as terrible as the thought that nothing will happen, that bad things don’t matter. If bad things don’t matter, then good things don’t matter, and then nothing matters, and the meaning of everything lies shattered like the cookie jar on the kitchen floor.

Trust that child’s intuition. "Unless you become as little children," Jesus said, "you cannot enter the kingdom of God." Unless we are stripped of our habits of forgetting, of our skillful making of excuses, of our jaded acceptance of a world in which bad things happen and it doesn’t matter.... I may think it modesty when I draw back from declaring myself chief of sinners, but it is more likely a failure of imagination. For what sinner should I speak if not for myself? Of all the billions of people who have lived and of all the thousands whom I have known, whom should I say is the chief of sinners? Surely I am authorized, surely I am competent, to speak only for myself? When in the presence of God the subject of sin is raised, how can I help but say that chiefly it is I? Not to confess that I am chiefly the one is not to confess at all. It is the evasion of Adam who said, "It was the woman whom you gave me." It is the evasion of Eve who said, "The serpent beguiled me." It is not to confess at all, and by our making of excuses is our complicity compounded.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do." But now, like the prodigal son, we have come to our senses. Our lives are measured not by the lives of others, not by our own ideals, not by what we think might reasonably be expected of us, although by each of those measures we acknowledge failings enough. Our lives are measured by whom we are created and called to be, and the measuring is done by the One who creates and calls. Finally, the judgment that matters is not ours. The judgment that matters is the judgment of God who alone judges justly. In the cross we see the rendering of the verdict on the gravity of our sin.

We have come to our senses. None of our sins are small or of little account. To belittle our sins is to belittle ourselves, to belittle who it is that God creates and calls us to be. To belittle our sins is to belittle their forgiveness, to belittle the love of the father who welcomes us home....

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Yes, we were there when we crucified our Lord. Recognizing the line that runs through every human heart, no longer do we try to draw the line between "them" and "us." Who can look long and honestly at the victims and the perpetrators of history’s horrors and say that this has nothing to do with me? To take the most obvious instance, where would we have taken our stand that Friday afternoon? With Mary and the Beloved Disciple or with the mocking crowds? Knowing myself and fearing God, knowing a thousand big and little things that I have done and failed to do, I cannot deny that I was there. In ways I do not fully understand, I know that I, too, did the deed, wielded the whip, drove the nails, thrust the spear.

About chief of sinners I don’t know, but what I know about sinners I know chiefly about me. We did not mean to do the deed, of course. What we have done wrong-they seemed, or mostly seemed, small things at the time. The word of encouragement withheld, the touch of kindness not given, the visit not made, the trust betrayed, the cutting remark so clever and so cruel, the illicit sexual desire so generously entertained, the angry answer, the surge of resentment at being slighted, the time we thought a lie would do no harm. It is such a long and tedious list of little things. Surely not too much should be made of it, we thought to ourselves. But now it has come to this. It has come to the cross. All the trespasses of all the people of all time have gravitated here, to the killing grounds of Calvary.

If you're not a believer in the Christian faith, then all the foregoing is, of course, of at most merely formal or abstract interest, if not an example of the kind of religiosity you may find pernicious. But if you are any kind of Christian, then my judgment may make sense: a judgment which declares that the man who can write lines like that is so much more than the sum of everything I think he theoretically, philosophically, morally got wrong. The man who can write lines like that is, very simply, a treasure. And so Neuhaus was, for all he wrote worth disagreeing with or rejecting, for all he said that will not stand the test of time.


St. John Chrysostom indeed. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

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QOTD: Lamentations on Art

I had what was for me a memorable conversation with an art student when she was my patient. She was in her second year of art school, and told me that one of the things she enjoyed most about it was art history. I asked what they taught in art history.

'The first year,' she said, 'we did African art. But now in the second year we're doing western art.'

I asked what particular aspect of western art they were doing.

'Roy Liechtenstein.'

As satire would be impossible, so commentary would be superfluous

When I read that I nearly choked from laughing so hard. The question becomes is Mr. Dalrymple - aka Anthony Daniels - an oversensitive critic or is he speaking the truth about our concept of art (the author's greater point about art was, for me least, valid)?

Mr. Dalrymple/Daniels was railing against the presentation of the creations of Mr. Jeff Koons in the Versailles Palace. Mr. Koons is a sculptor - I use the term loosely. His main form is giant stainless steel balloon dogs of varying colours and hanging lobsters. Talk about Arts and Crafts! But Dalrymple goes beyond the follies of Mr. Koon and laments,

The successful modern artist’s subject is himself, not in any genuinely self-examining way that would tell us something about the human condition, but as an ego to distinguish himself from other egos, as distinctly and noisily as he can. Like Oscar Wilde at the New York customs, he has nothing to declare but his genius: which, if he is lucky, will lead to fame and fortune. Of all the artistic disciplines nowadays, self-advertisement is by far the most important.

It was his deconstruction of the problem that led to the anecdotal story which is our Quote of the Day. 'Shallowness,' he says, 'has triumphed everywhere.'

But why? Dalrymple cites two reasons, one being an excessive emphasis on the concept of originality as an artistic virtue and the other is the falsehood of art imitating science.

As damning and true as these criticisms may be Dalrymple forgets something about the origin of Post Modern movement in Art, something perhaps even forgotten by those claiming to be artist of the movement themselves. I shared this article with my partner earlier today and though he appreciated the perspective and may have agreed with some points of it, Dalrymple's conclusion, for him, missed the point.

According to my better half:

Postmodernism, with its roots in Dadaism, is more like Nihilism applied to art, in that it does not assume there can be transcendent meaning in art. It was an anti-art movement.
Dadaism itself was a reaction to the horrors of World War. If Western Culture, based on its long pursuit of transcendent meaning in art, could not steer itself away from the horrors of mass killing and war, then what good was it? Dadaists rejected meaning as an altogether bankrupt concept, and started a new way of thinking about "art." One can argue that nihilism as applied to art is just the absence of any kind of ethos or aesthetics, but it marked a transition from a kind of art that had lost its influence on society.

Consider the term "classical music": the word "classical" means something ancient, definable and static. Something that we go back and visit, like a museum piece. When the music was written, it wasn't "classical". It was the contemporary art of the day. We can still appreciate its beauty, but it was written for a different time.

If art is supposed to make people think, how should it speak to the problems of the present age? Genocide and disease rules much of the continent on which we now know life began. A small portion of the world's population holds most of the world's wealth. Wars rage on. These were not things that were collectively understood by the masses when the depiction of "beauty" ruled the art world. With the dawn of mass communication, the world has come out of its Eden-like notion of beauty. We've eaten the apple and seen our naked ugliness.

So anti-art has persisted. It is still the predominant form of contemporary art today. Is it winding down? I don't really know, but it seems to me that as a reactionary movement that caused people to think about value of art, it did serve a purpose, even if it's only temporary. I don't claim any expertise on these things. I suspect it's time for a new movement in art, which is perhaps in its underground stage. Art started on the walls of caves, so it probably isn't dead yet.

[As an aside, I also think "self-aggrandizement" might be a byproduct of our overly-connected society, but nothing new in the art world. There's a romantic notion out there of The Great Artist laboring in anonymity until his work is discovered posthumously, but I'm not sure that is accurate. Art is self-expression. It takes a self-possessed person to create a statement of self-expression. If artists 300 years ago had the kind of easy access to media and audiences they have today, I'm not sure they would have stayed in hiding.]

Maybe hipsterism, defined as the pursuit of authenticity (the appearance of being HAND-crafted, HAND-stitched, hand-made, hand-rolled, hand-- bleh and yet available to the masses), is a symptom of the absence of meaning in art as well. And how about the proliferation of digital self-portraiture as a search for meaning? The MySpace mirror pic? Hundreds of facebook pictures of one's self? Clearly, we're still grasping at meaning.

I hope I'm around long enough to see the next movement take shape. As the saying goes: Ars longa, vita brevis.

What interests me both is that while Dalrymple laments the lack of meaning and absence of the transcendent, for the latter generations in the post modern movement especially - those who have been removed by decades from the first generation who espoused such detachment in art - there's an effort to reclaim the transcendent precisely because there's a search for the authentic.

"Authenticity" is my generation's category for the ever ethereal meaning, and our starting point is not in high culture, is not necessarily in "Art" as in our basic consumer goods (see the emphasis on "hand" above), we're reversing the process, it's a perilous task that isn't always successful. Who knows when anti-art gave way to consumerist crap that has populated the galleries of the last 28 years. Perhaps the logical conclusion is that the lack of communicable meaning which started out as a reaction created an actual vaccuum that could only be filled by the other forces which normally stand in contention with artistic expression from the solipsitic and acediatic to the economic forces of hyper capitalism where everything becomes a product and aesthicism is replaced with utility.

All I can say now is if there's one good thing about this recession/Depression it's that the art bubble is bursting and those folks who have capitalized and received what can only be described as Thorazine induced patronage (the Jeff Koons' of the world) will whither away and perhaps then we can rise above the frey and the understanding of everything as self and consumption. Then can we reclaim and reassert commuicable "meaning" despite ourselves or perhaps in response to ourselves as both creatures of profound Good and unspeakable evil.

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Christmas Wishes...

...from the President of Iran? Yes, Mahmoud is delivering the "Alternative" Christmas Message on Britain's Channel 4. What's surprising is the message is not at all what one would expect from such an ethnocentristic and ravenous lunatic. Remove the Muslim context and one could almost expect to hear such a message from the Pope, or even Jaba the Hagee.

[Aside: I'm sure some of my more 'librul' friends feel comfortable drawing similarities between B.XVI and M.A]

The full text from Ruth Gledhill:

In the Name of God the Compassionate the Merciful.Upon the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary, the Word of God, the Messenger of mercy, I would like to congratulate the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain.

The Almighty created the universe for human brings and created human beings for Himself. He created every human being with the ability to reach the heights of perfection. He called on man to aim to live a good life in this world and to work to achieve his everlasting life. On this difficult and challenging journey of man from dust to the divine, He did not leave humanity to its own devices. He chose from those He created the most excellent as His Prophets to guide humanity.

All prophets called for the worship of God, for love and brotherhood, for the establishment of justice and for love in human society. Jesus, the Son of Mary is the standard-bearer of justice, of love for our fellow human beings of the fight against tyranny, discrimination and injustice.

All the problems that have bedevilled humanity throughout the ages came about because of humanity followed an evil path and disregarded the message of the Prophets.

Now as human society faces a myriad of problems and succession of complex crises, the root causes can be found in humanity's rejection of that message, in particular the indifference of some governments and powers towards the teachings of the divine Prophets, especially those of Jesus Christ.

The crises in society, the family, morality, politics, security and the economy which have made life hard for humanity and continue to put great pressure on all nations have come about because the Prophets have been forgotten, the Almighty has been forgotten and some leaders are estranged from God.

If Christ was on earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.

If Christ was on earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over.

If Christ was on earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime. The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine Prophets. The solution to these crises can be found in following the prophets -- they were sent by the Almighty, for the happiness of humanity.

Today, little by little, the general will of nations is calling for fundamental change. This is now taking place. Demands for change, demands for transformation, demands for a return to human values are fast becoming the foremost demands of nations of the world. The response to this demand must be real and true. The prerequisite to this change is a change in goals, intentions and directions. If tyrannical goals are repackaged in an attractive and deceptive package and imposed on nations again, the people, awakened, will stand up against them.

Fortunately, today as crises and despair multiply, a wave of hope is gathering momentum. Hope for a brighter future, hope for the establishment of justice, hope for real peace, hope for finding virtuous and pious rulers who love the people and want to serve them – and this is what the Almighty has promised.

We believe, Jesus Christ will return, together with one of the children of revered
messenger of Islam and would lead the world to a rightful point; to a world of love, brotherhood and justice. The responsibility of all followers of Christ and followers of Abrahamic faiths is to move towards that and to prepare the way for the fulfilment of this divine promise and the arrival of that joyful, shining and wonderful age. I hope that the collective will of nations will unite in the not too distant future and with the grace of the Almighty Lord, that shining age will come to rule the earth.

Once again, I congratulate one and all on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ and I pray for the New Year to be a year of happiness, prosperity peace and
brotherhood for humanity. I wish you every success.'

Part of me wants to quote James 2:19, but even that's to harsh. I'm not adverse, however, to acknowledging the subtleties of the situation and quote Mr. Stephen Smith the head of Britain's Holocaust Centre, “Many of his political and historical views are very dangerous and do not uphold the views in his message. I think this benign message is deception. People need to be alert to the fact that this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Whether this is really an act of deception is only known to Mahmoud, but his past actions and statements belie the point that as syrupy and sweet as the rhetoric may be there is vinegar behind the gilded flourishes of brotherhood and commonality.

He speaks of righting injustices, of being charitable, of fighting tyranny and discrimination, practically sings the Magnificat of Mary, though he is no Marian supplicant or imitator. To quote the same Jesus that Mahmoud extols:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye (Matthew 7:3-5)

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QOTD: The Historian's Craft

... it sometimes seems to the general reader that "dispassionate historian" is an oxymoron.

- John Derbyshire, When Worlds Collide

Derbyshire in the preface to two excellent book reviews is commenting on the fact that in our day writing about Islam automatically elicits the question what's the angle.

In the case of Islam as Derbyshire points out you have Islamophobes and alarmists on one hand like - Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, and Ibn Warraq who he says are "keen to tell us about the fundamental, irreducible wickedness of Islam and its founder," and then on the other hand you have everyone else, albeit in not so neat a categorization.

It doesn't automatically mean that the rest are Islamophiles - certainly there are some of those, but also included would be apologists (David Lewis who he is reviewing in this piece) and that oxymoron he spoke of - those who's approach to History is of the more traditional variety which is simply to understand (through your own cultural schema) and explain the ebb and flow of history (Hugh Kennedy).

This though can't simply be explained as a product of our own national history, and the cultural rupture that occurred nearly nine years ago, that's only part of it.

It can't simply be written off as the intellectual dalliances of a few elites, as he notes "Historians with a bill of goods to sell are of course nothing new. Gibbon's pro-classical, anti-Christian bias; Macaulay's Whiggism; Carlyle's heroes; the Marxists' modes of production; Spengler's declinism; [and] Churchill's Anglo-Saxon triumphalism" Having bias doesn't automatically mean revisionism, it simply is extolling some attribute or group over another.

Even more so it's also a product of critical theory, post modernism if you will -- and to be trite, everyone's doing it - we're all Post Modernists now!

[cue creepy tragic music: DUH DUH DUUHHH]

And by everyone, in regards to history - replace Islam with any other ethnocultural group or value. The same question will be asked, what's the angle?

Critical Theory used to be the plaything of the liberal elites in academia - but with the increasing democratization of knowledge, the tools of critical thinking have broken free of their socio-economic, ethnocultural restraints. As Tim Cavenaugh so wryly put it in Reason Magazine, "the mainstreaming of pomo thinking has been largely a stealth project, something Americans do without committing overt acts of academia. We thought we were trying to clear away the cobwebs of shoddy analysis and elite hypocrisy, but all along we were bringing the tools of critical thinking to the masses."

For Historians, much like the rest of society which has been pomo'd, what Derbyshire here laments is that truth get's spun to fit the desired narrative. In the case of Spencer - it's to demonize Islam, for Lewis (the subject of Derbyshire's review) it's a beef with the dominant white western culture. To underscore the point,

The new Carolingian order [of the later 8th century]...was religiously intolerant, intellectually impoverished, socially calcified, and economically primitive. Measured by these same vectors of religion, culture, class, and prosperity, 'Abd al-Rahman's Muslim Iberia was at least four centuries more advanced than Western Christendom in 800 CE. An ironic intelligence from another planet might have observed that if Carolingian Europeans believed that Charles the Hammer's victory at Poitiers made their world possible, then it was a fair question to ask whether or not defeat might have been preferable.

To this Derbyshire responds -

What can one say about this sort of thing? Is there any truth in it? Well, yes, there is some. It is often the case, in history's great churnings, that one nation strides ahead of another, only to fall back into decadence or barbarism a century or few later. And as Michael Hart notes in his recent book Understanding Human History: "Although at times the Moslem world was more advanced culturally than the Byzantines, it was never much more advanced." Notice Lewis's comparison, though: Western Christendom, Carolingean Europeans. His is a much narrower scope than a thorough comparison of Islam and Christendom would require.

Counterfactual speculations of the kind that Lewis is trading in are in any case airy and insubstantial because we lack the knowledge required to evaluate them.

The most telling thing about this type of history is the second and third sentence of the response. Is there any truth in it? Well, yes, there is some.

And that's the difference between the likes of Gibbon and the rest - the standards and approach to epistemology. For most modern historians of any ideological, ethnocuoltural or political stripe - narrative and perspective is the dominant factor in determining truth not the otherway around. That's why Derbyshire says "some" in relation to truth in Lewis' work. It's not enough for a fact to speak for itself, to establish a truth as one may not have the ability to know that truth, one has to create categories to interpret the fact to establish the truth.

On the other hand, for Derbyshire - Kennedy does a decent job of presenting a historical understanding of Islam in his work. In Kennedy's work facts are presented and the narrative arises from those facts. And so Derbyshire says, "His aim in The Great Arab Conquests is strictly narrative: to tell a curious nonspecialist what the Arabs did between the death of Mohammed in A.D. 632 and the fall of the Umayyads 118 years later. There are no counterfactual speculations here." In fact he asserts that Kennedy as a writer of History, "is at pains all through his book to emphasize the scarcity and unreliability of sources for the period. This was, after all, the Dark Ages. Kennedy tells us what is known. When he has to choose between conflicting accounts, or fill a void with speculation, he does so with utmost caution and many warnings..."

So what's the angle? I've recently acquired Philip Jenkin's latest book (Merry Christmas to me), The Lost History of Christianity. He recently did a promo (as opposed to pomo) in the Boston Globe that was quite a teaser, enough for me to buy it, also there's an interesting Q&A at BeliefNet.

The beauty and danger with Jenkins' writing is that he challenges assumptions, but generally does it with a healthy balance of fact and narrative. This doesn't mean that Mr. Jenkins is innocent of pomo tendencies in writing - he's just more of a Gibbon, than a Spencer or Lewis. He's not out to completely change and scrap the narrative framework that we operate in as much as expand it to be more inclusive without having to make extreme mental leaps. He is a passionate dispassionate historian.

All of this to say that I can't wait to read it.

[Full disclosure: I had the honour and pleasure of meeting Dr. Jenkins at a series of Lectures he gave at USC on Europe, Islam and Christianity. They can be read here and here.]

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Cheney has watched Frost/Nixon one too many times already

But unlike Frost and Nixon, Dick Cheney is showing that he can surpass Richard Nixon these days with all the "confessions" and logical fallicies and obfuscation to justify his actions and assertions that at no time is the President accountable to anyone, and he does it blithely and nonchalantly and with such hubris - it's like watching a crumudgeoned serial killer's dance during an interrogation with cops, the same sociopathic pyschosexual gratification when the killer believes and tells you that you will never catch them.

The cops can posture and sputter and question, and for the serial killer they can admit gleefully yes, all the while not believing that they can be touched - and scariest of all is that sometimes they're right.

[On Monday of this past week, Cheney admitted to Jake Tapper of ABC that he was instrumental and authorized torture]

God help us all that this shadow of a man should not live much longer but hurry to fade and to become the distant nightmare that he is destined and willing to become - a ghost story used to scare children at halloween.

The latest from Fox News Sunday is so telling, it's like looking at an alternate universe, except sadly it's not, from this week's creature feature:

WALLACE: If you could conceptualize it for me, sir, what do you think are the powers of the president relative to Congress and relative to the courts during war?

CHENEY: Well, I think in wartime, when you consider his responsibilities as commander in chief, clearly that means command of the armed forces.
It also, when you get into use of forces in wartime, means collecting intelligence. And therefore, I think you're fully justified in setting up a terror surveillance program to be able to intercept the communications of people who are communicating with terrorists outside the United States.
I think you can have a robust interrogation program with respect to high-value detainees. Now, those are all steps we took that I believe the president was fully authorized in taking and provided invaluable intelligence which has been the key to our ability to defeat Al Qaida over these last seven years.

WALLACE: This is at the core of the controversies that I want to get to with you in a moment. If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?

CHENEY: General proposition, I'd say yes. You need to be more specific than that. I mean — but clearly, when you take the oath of office on January 20th of 2001, as we did, you take the oath to support and defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
There's no question about what your responsibilities are in that regard. And again, I think that there are bound to be debates and arguments from time to time, and wrestling back and forth, about what kind of authority is appropriate in any specific circumstance.
But I think that what we've done has been totally consistent with what the Constitution provides for.
The president of the United States now for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States.
He could launch a kind of devastating attack the world's never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.

WALLACE: So what...

CHENEY: It's unfortunate, but I think we're perfectly appropriate to take the steps we have.
And go back and look at how eager the country was to have us work in the aftermath of 9/11 to make certain that that never happened again. Now we've had a lot of time pass over it, so we've had, I think, people more complacent, perhaps, than was true some time ago.
We've also had a lot of our critics who want to score political points made what I think are outrageous charges. But in my mind...

WALLACE: So what rights do the Congress — what constitutional rights do the Congress and the courts have to limit the power of the president when it comes to these matters of national security?

CHENEY: Well, the Congress has — clearly has the ability to write statutes and has certain constitutional authorities granted in the Constitution.
But I would argue that they do not have the right by statute to alter a presidential constitutional power. In other words, you can't override his constitutional authorities and responsibilities.

WALLACE: So if they want to say he can't surveille or he can't detain...

CHENEY: Well, they have, for example, said — passed the War Powers Act. The War Powers Act is still in force out there today. That requires him to grant certain notifications to the Congress and give them the authority to supersede those by vote, if they want to, when it comes to committing troops.
No president has ever signed off on the proposition that the War Powers Act is constitutional. I would argue that it is, in fact, a violation of the Constitution, that it's an infringement on the president's authority as the commander in chief.
It's never been resolved, but I think it's a very good example of a way in which Congress has tried to limit presidents' authority and, frankly, can't.

And it goes from there. January 20, 2009 can't get here quickly enough.

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In honor of Waldo: Some where Chester A. Arthur is laughing

The folks over at Mike's America and Sunlit Uplands are biting their nails, gnashing their teeth and generally stocking up to move to cabins in the woods at undisclosed locations.

First the voters of the Country ignored their pleas against the Marxist-Socialist-Communist-Fascist-Muslim-Terrorist-Homo lover-"Pro Abortion"-did-we-mention-he's-black candidate because as they know, he was born in Kenya. The people spoke and cast the majority of votes in more than enough states for Obama to be declared the victor at 11pm on Election night.

Then they got slapped in the face from the Supreme Court who refused to hear their case about his birthplace. Who would have ever thought that the Bush appointments of Alito and Roberts would reject this claim -- then again, Bush doesn't believe the Bible is the literal and factual word of God in the way all good Muslims Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, so no wonder. (By the way check out his 'Above My Pay Grade' remark on Evolution)

Now the Electoral College has cast its ballots - and darnit if they didn't do it in favor of Barack Hussein Obama II, despite the hopes for faithless electors.

The only recourse now is to appeal to members of Congress before they vote on January 6 to ratify the electoral college vote -- that and pray the Prophet of Parowan has foretold.

Good luck to you Yahoo's in the wilderness, don't forget your snuggies and to drink your juice.

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QOTD: Our concept of God gets in the way of our concept of God

Advent does not bring to my mind hope for some miraculous intrusion of the divine into our everyday lives. This season inevitably leads me to reflect on the homely ways in which the divine is already there in our lives—ways that we overlook as we hunger for miraculous intrusion.

- Bilgrimage, Advent: Finding

God at home, and Home in God

Bill has a very interesting reflection on the nature of Church and Family and applies it to his interpretation of Advent, a time that innately emphasizes the ordinary and everday ways we experience the Love of God in our lives through our homes even as we over look them in hunger for something greater, or as Bill puts it, a miraculous intrusion.

But what is the miraculous intrusion? We all celebrate the birth of our God and most exchange gifts, and we've all heard the Gospel message of our God, but have we listened?

God is the God of Power and Might, and heaven and earth are full of his glory - so say Hossana in the highest! But how does our God as great as he is come to greet us; what is the miraculous intrusion we look for and how does it really come about?

Is he in the thunder? the earthquake or the fire? No, he's in a whisper.

Our miraculous intrusion comes to us not in the Palace birthing rooms, it is not the proclamation of Porphyrogennētos - but in a lowly manger and is as frail as any other poor hungry child on the streets. It's through the nail-scarred hands of a teacher, a friend to fishermen, a good son who listens to his mother who shares bread and kindness with friends and stranger a like, not in steel of an acomplished general from the field, the proclomations of a revered oracle, the pontifications of a wise man, nor the crown of a wealthy King that we experience our God.

It's an important reminder that at this time of year though we do look for divine intervention, a miraculous intrusion - the greatness of that miracle often is in its banality, in its everydayness. As Bill says, it is in

a warm house to come home to at the end of the day. As in candles in windows when it grows dark outside earlier and earlier. As in family and friends who care enough to cook a meal for us, to set a table for us, to smile and hug us when we come through the door. As in bread, wine, salt, oil, water, the basics of life that become vehicles of encounter with the divine in sacramentally oriented religious traditions.We value these things all too little. Advent calls us to remember them and their significance in our lives.

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Local Columbia Congregation undergoes a spiritual 'Reformation'

Reformation Lutheran Church in the historic Earlwood Neighborhood has taken a great leap of faith and is now the only Lutheran Church in South Carolina that is a reconciling parish.

Reformation Lutheran Church is known as the church that peals out a welcome on the hour in the Earlewood community.

Now the congregation of the bells is seeking to cast a wider net by welcoming gays and lesbians as a Reconciling in Christ congregation.

“So many faithful people are essentially told in so many ways your church doesn’t want you,” said the Rev. Bill Eiwen, Reformation’s pastor. “The love of God is truly something that we have to share, and I don’t think we get to pick and choose.”

The decision to be more intentional in their outreach was made over several months and after lengthy Bible study and conversations among members and their pastor, along with other Lutheran leaders.

Surprisingly, it came without the overt turmoil that has rocked other Protestant congregations grappling with issues of homosexuality and faith.

“It is not something that is terribly divisive for us,” said Henry Fulmer, the church’s organist and choirmaster.

He said the inclination to be more open to what has become known as the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community comes naturally to a congregation that has evolved as the surrounding Earlewood community has undergone transformation.

Once boasting 1,300 members, the red-brick church at the corner of Union Street and River Drive lost parishioners over the decades to expanding suburban congregations.

Earlewood itself suffered economic decline until an influx of urban pioneers, including many gays and lesbians, flowed in to snap up the arts-and-crafts cottages and other architectural gems that had fallen into disrepair.

But the 150-member congregation, part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, discovered that many of their homosexual neighbors were wary of the church.

“We had more and more wonderful friends in the neighborhoods who were gay or lesbian, and we more and more began to understand they were shy of any church because so many of them had had a bad experience,” said church member Julia Prater.The Reconciling in Christ program was started in 1984 by Lutherans Concerned/North America to recognize Lutheran congregations that welcome gays and lesbians. Since then, the nonprofit has expanded its reach to include people of all sexual orientations and identities, including the transgendered.

“You do analyze what is it to be a Christian, and ask, ‘Are you as welcoming as Christ was?’ Phil Soucy, communications director for Lutherans Concerned/North America, said this week.

While acknowledging that the ELCA has worked to welcome gays, Soucy said his organization would like to remove the “caveats” that prevent gay marriage and ordination of practicing homosexual pastors.

Reformation is the only South Carolina congregation associated with the Reconciling in Christ ministry, although Gethsemane Lutheran Church off Two Notch Road has done so in the past.
Reformation’s members are going door-to-door to spread the word that they are “an old church doing new ministry.”

Part of Reformation’s effort is aimed at erasing misconceptions about homosexuality, including whether homosexuals are created or choose that lifestyle, Dot Jeffcoat said.

“If you are created this way, and God says what God created is good ... the story ends,” she said.
Jeffcoat believes the Lutheran church should bless gay unions, noting “we bless animals, we bless bells, we bless paraments. Why can’t we bless people?”

But gay marriage and the ordination of gay pastors and bishops are issues that still divide people of faith. ...

The ECLA continues to wrestle with the issue of gay unions and pastors as the church formulates its social statement on human sexuality, a paper that will serve as a teaching document for Lutherans.

“There are strong opinions on either side,” said Bishop Herman Yoos, leader of the South Carolina Synod of the ELCA.

But he said he has been impressed with Reformation’s discernment on a difficult issue, which emerged out of the church’s call to “Journey Together Faithfully.”

“I think there has been good leadership in this congregation of asking missional questions — ‘Why are we here? Who is missing here?’” Yoos said. “We, as a church, are called to minister to all people, and here is a church that has taken a bold step.”

Yoos said his role is to “walk with people” as they seek faithful answers to questions of human sexuality.

This isn't the first Church in Columbia that has considered becoming a reconciling parish. Last year Washington Street United Methodist Church was considering becoming a reconciling parish but the initiative failed in part because of concerns of divisions that would arise in the congregation -despite the growing numbers of LGBT church-goers in the membership, and in due consideration for pastor who wasn't quite there yet with as many in his congregation. Shando Presbyterian has a group within their congregation that is reaching out to the LGBT community.

Regionally Myers Park Baptist Church was booted out of the Southern Baptist Convention last year for taking the bold step of affirming gays. The local Episcopal Church hasn't seen the division prevelant in the national organization but the Upper Diocese of South Carolina Cathedraled in Columbia is more progressive than the diocese of South Carolina headquartered in Charleston.

Services at Reformation on Sundays are at 10:30 (with Communion) and on every fourth Sunday there is Taize Song and Prayer beginning at 6pm.

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The Monks of Mepkin are back in business

"Mepkin stands for the truth. Mepkin stands for honesty and integrity"

- Father Stan Gumula, Abbot

Well, sort of. The AP reports that the good Monks of Mepkin, who last year were harassed by PETA into giving up their egg farm which sustains their monastic community, are closing in on a replacement industry so that they can continue the ancient tradition of labora et ora - work and prayer.

What is it the monks are planning to do? Make Chocolates? No, though their mother abbey in KY does that, make beer or wine? We wish, but no. They're going to cultivate mushrooms, and while not the magical kind, I'm sure they'll be tasty and their purchase will be a blessing for that community.

The article reports that the brother's plan to sell the mushrooms to restaurants in Charleston, and even now Piggley Wiggley (who plans to sell the Monks' eggs until they halt production at the end of this year) is hoping to sell the mushrooms in their South Carolina and Georgia stores. This will, hopefully, be they're main source of income, though still options are on the table.

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Newt Gingrich, the TAC and Easter 2009

I always find it interesting when well known public figures convert to Roman Catholicism. Today Taylor Marshall, of Culture 11 amongst other sites, reported that Newt Gingrich is swimming the Tiber next Easter (2009), - is he vying to assume the mantle of Pat Buchanan?

My only concern about the conversion story (can anyone esle verify it?) is that he's been married three time previously, which is a little beyond problematic unless he's never been baptised before.

In other conversion news - new info is surfacing about the Traditional Anglican Communion. Deacon Keith Fournier at catholic.org picks up a story from a blog run by an Anglican Priest that the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion are meeting 'en masse' in Rome with the Pope this coming Easter (2009). They are the group seeking full corporate reunion with Rome (although how that full reunion would look is the biggest break back question). But this, like the Newt Gingrich story, is still in the early stages if there is any veracity to them at all. At least in the case of the author of De Cura Animarum he admits as much about the story though stands by the source(s) in hopes of further information.

I guess we'll know Easter 2009.

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Columbia's Proposition 8 Protest

Columbia's protest against California's Proposition 8 exceeded organizer's expectations Saturday. A crowd of over 150 participated at Main and Gervais on the State House Grounds. Carrying signs, banners and flags the group stood for an hour receiving many cheers from passers by honking their horns with very few jeers.

The group in Columbia wasmade up of more than LGBT individuals and families, many of the demonstrators were straight allies standing with the gay community in solidarity and support of their civil rights.

The protest was a part of a nationwide grass roots movement to demonstrate against the passing of Proposition 8 in California which took the right to marry away from Gay Couples.

See the photos from the event below.

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Really? Well, you gotta stand by...

I read a story on WIS where they interviewed a woman who's (estranged) boy friend is accused of sexually assaulting a woman behind St. Peter's Church. Perhaps it's being cooped up in the hospital with gestational diabetes or some bizarre form of prepartum depression that makes her say,

"I mean it would hurt, it hurts, it would hurt any woman to actually know that your man is sexual with someone else," Windham said.
Contrary to what police say, Lindsi believes whatever Porter did with the woman was consensual.
"I feel like it wasn't a sexual assault, it wasn't a rape. If he was out there doing anything, I don't know, the lady probably got mad or something and then wanted to holler rape," Windham said.

or perhaps she's holding out on a fools hope, but usually that would be coupled with assertions of innocence and being wrongly identified. But here she doesn't discount that he would have sexual relations with another woman, rather resigns herself to that fact and holds onto the notion that it wasn't rape -- after all, he has duties and obligations to his soon to be born son, he wouldn't jeopardize that would he?

Pathos is the word I'm looking for, a sort of Color Purple/Peyton Place form of Pathos, and for some reason as soon as I read it this song came to mind....

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