How do you capture your inner life?

I've seen some bloggers who are really able to capture their inner life. They themselves seem to spill out on the page. How do you do that? I wish I could write more authentically in that way. At least I don't always blog news stories now....

Insulting people with strange turns of phrase

In an episode of the Simpsons, I think, groundskeeper Willie coined the phrase "cheese eating surrender monkeys" as an insult to the French.

I laugh whenever I hear this, because I try to imagine it said in French; "des singes qui mangent du fromage et qui se rendent" (which goes something like 'monkeys who eat cheese and who hand themselves over.')

Loses its kick a bit, no? I wonder if some of the other epithets coined over the years lack punch when translated into the language of the people who are the target...

Kabbalah is NOT a religion

Kaballah is not a religion. There's a great article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach that decries the gentile fad and the Kabbalah Centre's appeal to superstition.

I'm appalled at the shallow appeal of something like this, but I understand it. Mysticism is for most seekers a lifetime's journey within the realm of their own already-held faith; it is the reward for going deeper than the trappings of the religion's surface and reaching faith's heart through meditation, love, prayerfulness, and awareness. It is a journey whose purpose is the pilgrimmage, more than the arrival.

So when some author or speaker comes along and offers you this with all the convenience of newly bought ringtones, how tempting it must be to a busy person. Like some BeliefNet Ad I saw selling tapes with the catch phrase "Meditate deeper than a Zen Monk in ten minutes!", busy people might wonder if there's an end-run they can do to fix that missing hole in their life.

But think about this! A trappist monk will spend decades learning to meditate. Other than helping keep the abbey's grounds, making meals, and doing dishes, this is what they do - all the time! There's no shortcut to the "What is revealed" (what the word Kabbalah means, and what most mysticism is.) No huckster can offer that for you.

Similar to the exploitation of Jewish Kabbalah as a new age fad for gentiles, I saw some book in a Picton bookstore's religious section called "The Dark Night of the Soul" by a former monk named Thomas Moore.

But while the book draws on some of the ideas of St. John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul", it strips the cross from St. John's mysticism, and instead offers the usual self-help new-age chicken-soup pap, quoting everyone from Gandhi to the piano player Glenn Gould.

How dreary and dull a thing - St. John's triumph over imprisonment and desolation reduced to self-rendered pop therapy. And that's what Kaballah fads (like Kabbalah Yoga) do. By stripping the rich 2100 year old interpretive tradition of Judaism - Maimonides, Martin Buber, even the Lubavitcher Rabbi all removed - Kabbalah is reduced to a bunch of red strings and home redecorations. It lacks all the depths that ten minute Zen monks also lack.

Our church made the national news... again.

Speaking of my parish, I glanced the headlines on the National Post in the paperbox, and I noticed the article, about young people rediscovering a role for religion in life, began with a vignette set at my parish in Ottawa, talking about Father Joe (our pastor) at dinner with some parishioners. I'll have to buy the paper. There's no online link, the NP makes people pay to access any content beyond basic headlines.

I'm going to have to tease him about his having become the apostle to the media. This is about the two dozenth time he's gotten himself in the papers, TV, etc. :-)

Church last night

I had a rather different experience than A last night when I went to church. I had been feeling lost and disconnected over the weekend, and longing to come home like the prodigal son, and wondering if I even could.

The answer was made apparent to me so quickly, so easily - of course I could! I had been asked to lead the folk group last night, as our leader ran a marathon yesterday and was totally wiped out. We arrived at church about 7:25 PM, and I was not looking forward to this experience. Leading the music is very, very stressful. Normally I have to set up the PA system from scratch, I have to find overheads for hymns that I've planned to do, and then can't find them, and I have to find someone to show the overheads. And when I'm alone, I invariably develop tuning problems. Ugh.

But when I wandered in, things were very different right away. A good friend of mine was the Sacristan, and she had set up the PA system for me, knowing how much it sets me back. Talk about finding the Christ in others! She had already changed the timbre of the evening for me. With not having this to do, I went to the cabinet to begin the dreaded task of pulling overheads. But not only did I not have difficulty finding them, they basically leaped out of the cabinet at me. Every folder I turned over was one of the hymns I had planned - it was astonishing, and past coincidence (there's a thousand hymns in there.) I wandered downstairs with an ease of mind that was beginning to disconcert me.

Perhaps as if to assure me that things can never go perfectly smooth, I discovered our song books were missing one of the songs I planned to do, as I prepared the books for our rehearsal. But, coincidence again, I happened to have the words to the song in my music bag upstairs, so I ran up and dashed back down again.

When we began rehearsing our first song, Be Exalted, my jaw dropped; we were astonishingly good! Even though we traditionally only do this song once a year, everyone was jumping in with rich harmonies and deep feeling. I was more than moved. At this moment I knew: God's gentle touch in my life was reminding me that we are never past grace. That grace is always there, always rushing out in joy with a ring for your finger when we decide to trudge home in shame to the Father's house.

Yesterday was the The feast of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, and I am reminded somewhat ironically of a Protestant hymn, There's Power in the Blood. I believe that quite literally, and communion is an ecstatic experience for me. If only I can touch the hem of his garment, I often think to myself, I can be made clean. In communion is the complete mystery of the faith journey, past, present, and future united in a heaven beyond the scope of time itself in a glorious moment of divine peace, ecstasy, and serenity, Anima Christi, the name of the prayer that follows.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.
Suffer me not to be separated from Thee.
From the malignant enemy, defend me.
In the hour of my death, call me.
And bid me come to Thee.
That with Thy saints I may praise Thee.
Forever and ever. Amen

Sin

I know people cringe when they hear the word "sin", especially in a blog. How many would wince as the word strikes their field of vision, trembling as they fear the onset of a lecture regarding gay marriage, the culture of life, Janet Jackson - or conversely, Iraq, globalism and George Bush? (Though rarer, I've seen Christian pastors from the progressive coterie label these sins as surely as the former are held to be on the other end of the spectrum.)

And yet despite the right side's having recently acquired ownership of "moral relativism" lecturing rights, I think most people appreciate that morality is more than a culture-specific tool for creating social order. It is more even than the genetic imperative in the human genome to refine ethical sensibilities in a way that improves survival odds.

It is because of years of agonizing over ethical questions than I can no longer comfortably define myself as liberal or conservative (we in Canada have political parties by these names, which makes voting along those dichotomies theoretically easier.) My instincts are liberal, in both the modern and Lockeian sense. Jesus said to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. The separation of church and state is not the separation of two factions of power battling for control, in the executive vs. legislative branch sense. The separation of church and state is the separation of two dominions. The dominion of state is one of providing peace, order, and good government. The dominion of religion is providing the balm for the soul that allows existence to be about more than survival in a world that barely even allows for survival.

But my good sense and even my liberalism have caused me to be conservative on certain issues. Not everything need or should change all at once. There is a virtue to the slow and deliberate care in the changes society brings to itself.

But this does not lead me to the issue of sin. Conservatism and Liberalism, at least as expressed in our era, are policy perspectives more than actual philosophical perspectives. And ethics and sin are not the same, because ethics is a part of developing policy. But sin, for all the truth that some morality may be absolute, is deeply personal. Can we define it? We risk relativism if we answer no. But it is not relativism to try and seek a simple explanation. After all, even in science, the simpler elegant solutions have a knack for often being the correct ones.

In my experience (and according to both Rabbi Hillel and Jesus) sin is simply the result when you fail to do unto others as you would have them do to you, when you fail to love neighbour as yourself, and when you fail to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul. (I speak not of atheists and agnostics for this last, as lack of belief is often a simple case of not hearing or feeling God's hand on the doorbell.)

Why are you doing something? Is it for yourself? That's not inherently bad. But it can be if the thing is either harmful to yourself or others, but out of sheer self-interest you do it anyway. I am very well aware of this. There are many times I do something anyway despite clear signals from conscience and awareness of my environment that I am not on the side of others or myself when I do so. That is really the most disturbing thing about sin: the clear unambiguous knowledge that you have put your own interests first. Hell is here on Earth in the moment you realize that. It is also for me the prelude to the Heaven on Earth of confession as you realize that God can stand in the sewers of disease, just like his most exemplary servants, and pull you out of it with the strength of his arm.

My Hell on Earth today regards a letter I sent to the editor yesterday, regarding the Creature of habit cartoon on www.rabble.ca. It is a cartoon that depicts Pope Bendict gliding up to a statue of St. Mary the Virgin, looking both ways to see if anyone sees him, and then giving the icon the Nazi salue, while saying "Heil Mary!"

When I saw this in the paper, I was furious. I rushed to the computer and in seconds, poured off the fastest and most eloquent letter to the editor I ever have. In my letter, I pointed out that this was not satire of the man, Joseph Ratzinger, and his politics. It was a depiction of a bishop, vested with mitre in Easter colours, robed as if for Mass, making a profane gesture at an icon of the holiest saint there is. I suggested the editor of this magazine was siding with the men in white sheets who burn crosses to support such a profaning of the very heart of peoples' faith. I was certainly satisfied with myself when the letters' page editor called me up and congratulated me for something so well written.

Today I am far more ambivalent. The editor of this magazine is somebody who has devoted her life to the bettering of conditions for women and minorities, even if from a radicalized angle I can't always agree with. How much good does my righteous fury do when Jesus says to bear ills, and turn the other cheek, presenting it to be slapped as well? Do not return evil with evil, St. Peter says, but a blessing. All my eloquent letter will accomplish is a dark satisfaction - a "he showed her" harumph from those who agree with me, and another ping-pong echo of righteous fury from those who see a nobility in Rabble's anti-Catholic stance.

I suffer a little for this and the many other things I overthink. Please pray for me, that I might do in love rather than dwell in shame.

The Wedding Singer

Actually, the wedding guitarist would be a better title. My church folk-group leader and I were hired to accompany the music at a wedding in a couple of weeks. This is notable (and cool) because it is the first time I've done a wedding because people liked us, and not because I was cousin, brother-in-law, etc.

I do so love weddings. I may someday write about ours, just because it brings me so many happy memories.

Funny coincidences

mscamille has been interested in
strange coincidences lately, and that got me thinking about the
funniest coincidence I can remember. It wasn't the most patently
strange one, I just found it funny. Its topical since I think Bo sang
a snippet of it on American Idol last night. (I wasn't really watching
- background TV for the ambience.)

I mentioned I used to run a Deli. Well one day, I'm on the front
counter, and for no particular reason, I started myself singing, "Well
I hope Neil Young will remember..." I headed into the backroom singing
as loud as I could, "SWEEET HOOOME ALABAMA!!!" and stopped cold - the
radio was playing the song at exactly the same point in the song.I was
right on time!

Now, I know there's a chance this was subliminal. Maybe my
subconscious has hearing like Superman. But it was damn funny.

By the way I've been to Alabama a few times. The sky's been blue every
single one.

CIOL : News : Brain downloads 'possible by 2050'

CIOL : News : Brain downloads 'possible by 2050'

This will never happen. Mathematician/Physicist Roger Penrose wrote a fantastic book/essay called the Emperor's New Mind in which he makes a convincing case that consciousness in vertebrates, whose neurotransmission techniques are different from insects and arthropods, is a quantum phenomenon. We don't evaluate probabilities as we reason - we recognize and sieze that recognition with a 'Eureka!'

If cognition is a quantum effect (which as I've posited before, essentially builds 'free will' into the fabric of our being), then no computer can replicate our minds.

Could we someday offload data from our brains? That may be possible. But we will never, ever be able to transfer our consciousness into a computer. We are, in our very design, too quantumly unique to be transfered a la mad scientist. In short, it will never happen!

Don't try this at home, folks

You know, if you do decide to film light saber battles between you and your cousin, "Darth Bob the Invincible", there's something you should know about the process. The lightsabers in the movies? They're not real. They don't actually glow like that. They use prop swords, and then the special effects guys rotoscope them in Photoshop (or whatever), making them glow after the fact.

So... with that established, no fighting with fluourescent tubes, OK, fellow Star Wars nerds?

'Star Wars' fans hurt replicating saber battles

Space... the final frontier

For the first time ever, a human spacecraft is poised to leave the family of celestial objects and dust that surrounds our sun, and forever embark out into the depths of outer space.

Voyager reaches boundary of solar system - (United Press International)

A Rules Religion

There's this young fellow on a bulletin board that I've kind of allowed myself to get in a heated discussion with - about liturgical music in the Catholic church. He's basically throwing a lot of rules at a group of us who do liturgical music, and telling us that guitars are banned, and anything that isn't chant or pipe organ accompanied is banned.

Now - experienced as I am, trained as I am (I've taken courses on music and liturgy), I know this to be bunk. Sacrosanctum concilium explicitly permits forms of music other than gregorian chant, and explicitly permits accompaniment other than the pipe organ, and allows episcopal councils (like the bishops' conferences) to set the parameters for music in Mass. The folk music written by the St. Louis Jesuits may not be to everyone's tastes, but it is entirely permissible in the North American context.

What disturbs me even more, however, is people who can't seem to see God past the rule book, though. Catholicism may have a lot of rules, but they're not there to send people to Hell. All the guidelines and rules for the conduct of church services, liturgies, and Masses are there to purify our worship, to help us meet God at the table God has set before us. I don't do my disciplines during Lent because some rule book says I've got to - I do it to burnish away the things I don't like about myself, and try to make the small improvements that, given enough time, will become big improvements.

Jesus was not fond of people who followed the letter of the law and broke its spirit - people who tithed mint and cumin so that they could be found to be technically within the law. Legalism destroys the heart and soul of faith - which is doing good for its own sake. Or in the case of liturgical music, worshipping with holiness and sanctity because God is Holy and deserving of it. I've pointed out many times that King David returned the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem in a spirit of high mirth, dancing and singing. His wife Michal looked dourly on David, when he arrived, complaining about his lack of properness. David's response is essentially How dare you condemn me for singing before the Lord? If I make a fool of myself, I will continue to make a fool of myself!

God's gifts to us are abundant and amazing. They should be amazing in our sight. There's a reason St. Augustine said, "He who sings, prays twice." Singing should be a thing of joy, done with enthusiasm and real feeling. The rules are not there to constrain that; they are guidelines reminding us that music must also be holy, too - warning us not to get too carried away with secular fads that may distract rather than add to worship.

But if you can't see past the rulebook, how can you pray twice to a God you've hidden behind the regulations?

"Yoda.... meesa yousa father, okie day?"

I'm sorry, but I just could not resist.

ABC13.com: Jar Jar to Yoda: I am your father

Darth Vader can read your mind

Check this out - http://www.sithsense.com/ - its a quiz of sorts, where you think of something, and then Darth Vader asks you twenty questions and tells you what it is.

Its surprisingly intuitive - I picked a very obscure animal, an ape called a Bonobo, the quiz asked me some very vague questions, and then correctly guessed at what I had been thinking of.

Holding on, Letting go

Irina wrote recently about a sermon she heard at a synagogue she has been frequenting that brought her a revelation - holding on and letting go are not polar opposites. It is possible to do both, especially in the context of loss of a loved one.

This agrees very much with everything I've been reading about the poles of solitude and loneliness, in particular the idea that in embracing the solitariness in which we all travel, there we can find the true and profound love we are able to nurture for our fellow travelers.

Khalil Gibran writes:

Sing and dance and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Stand together yet not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other's shadow.

In the Novalis print of the Roman Missal, a woman named Marie-Louise Ternier-Gommers quotes an acquaintance named Jason, who says, When I moved away, I didn't have to say goodbye. I took the place and the person with me. They had entered my heart.

Leaky pipes

We fled the house yesterday. After my daughter had a shower, the ceiling on the floor below began to leak. And it kept getting worse. It stopped when we cut the water. So we left the water turned off, and flipped off the breaker for the hot water tank, and then headed to the cottage. Hope that was the end of it. We'll have a small fortune in repairs ahead of us - the drywall ceiling in the bathroom downstairs, and whatever it costs to rip out walls and repair the plumbing.

Ironically, I've spent the day hooking up water at the cottage; my brother in law and I hooked the sauna back up for the summer. There have been eight billion mosquitoes, I'm covered in dirt, but I'm happy to be here, far away from the headache that awaits at home. I may take the season's first swim today - if I'm brave. The water is only about fifty degrees. The sky is grey and rain is pouring down, but the day began sunny. I almost fell asleep in the sun this morning, at 7 AM. I would have if the mosqitoes weren't trying to drain me dry. I should have brought my camera. The lake was still and beautiful this morning as the sun came up. There was no mist over the water, as in summer, because the water is too cold to give off much steam. It was like sitting beside a giant mirror.

The day's beauty paled next to the night's however. Last night, just before falling asleep, I stared out the window. The moon was high in the sky, casting a silver light over all the pine and cedar boughs. I could see them all clearly, like pewter ornaments glistening in the moonlight. What can you do at a sight like that but stand in awe and silently thank God for the privilege of being witness?

I did it too!

Template boredom can set in. A knows it.

I've wanted to do something different for a while. It is depressing when you go to a blog and it looks just like yours, and with only thirty or so standard templates, that isn't always a rare thing.

Still, I didn't tinker with the harbor theme too much. I just got rid of the impersonal lighthouse I've never seen, and replaced it with my own marine photography. I took this shot of a moonrise from a plane over lake Ontario. It suits the blog's theme - in the confluence of night and day, the light is at its most beautiful.

Spam answers

If there are any spammers out there, I didn't have time to respond to that one time opportunity, send money to you in Nigeria, or try out your new herbal remedy. But I thought I'd get back to you on some of those interesting subjects you like to email me about!

You didn't kn0w	And I don't want to.
Sale PRICES ARE BEST ONLINE	...and not in my mailbox.
You are being investigated	...and you are being deleted.
Non-Stop spamming	You're telling me!
Best Q:uality Softw:ares	...and bad quality spell checkers
Remember the old days?	...before spam? Me either.
hello ;))	Goodbye. :-P

Bush promises probe into Saddam underwear pictures

You know, there was once a time when I could only have imagined this headline on the Onion. The world is becoming increasingly burlesque, isn't it?

Bush promises probe into Saddam underwear pictures

Star Wars

I first lined up for Star Wars when I was twelve. Some lady ralphed off her eighth floor balcony beside the old Somerset theater where we were lined up, and there was an ad for CFRA radio on a billboard beside the three block lineup. I remember that. I also remember the heavy rumble of the Star Destroyer lumbering across the screen. Twenty years later I took my older daughter to see "Star Wars" at the same Somerset theater, the place where I had let my daydreams drift, about heroes who flew x-wings, and bad guys who wielded red flame and blue lightning. They turned the theater into a supermarket six months later.

Last night, I lined up at one of the new suburban super-multi-ultra-calafragilistic-plexes with my two daughters, my brother in law, and two friends who we held the line for. I grumbled about how I always ended up being one guy holding the line for seven people, and how I always ended up being the one that lightsaber toting nerds glared at as I tried to stretch out my sweaters, jackets, and other clothing to make seven seats look occupied. So everyone more or less stayed put, except for bathroom and beer breaks.

While we were in line Darth Vader, who is about seven feet tall in real life, walked by. At least I think it was Darth Vader, because he looked intimidating, was in fact seven feet tall, and had glowing boxes in the same places he does in the films. He had a red robed imperial guard with him, but I'm not sure who was protecting whom. Lord Vader was fearsome enough. There were a number of lightsaber fights in the line, conducted by guys who had these pretty darn realistic lightsabers that lit up, made sounds, and didn't break when you whacked each other with them. Tres cool, I should think.

There were six lines, actually, as they showed the midnight showing in six places. In one of the other lines, their nerds outdid our nerds. Some fellow had rigged up a twenty inch television somehow (I didn't hear a generator), and various Jedi and stormtrooper clad geeks were watching Luke on Endor tell Darth Vader that, "I feel the good in you, let go your hate!"

My youngest managed to stay awake for most of the film - she kind of glued her eyes open. We didn't get home until about 3 AM. She played wookiee hooky today. I dutifully went to work, although I am definitely bagged. I am sad to see Star Wars end. From my first time in a huge lineup, to this time in a huge lineup, it feels as though a page of sorts has turned in my life. I am no longer a little kid waiting for the next Star Wars film. There will be no more. :-)

Stupid blogger

Just ate my reckoning of our trip to see Star Wars at 12 AM this morning... stupid blogger. It was a long post, and I lack the inspiration to write it out again.

"Endless beginnings"

Irina's post over at The IgNoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!: A Double Take challenged some of my own conceptions of life. What do I want from life? I've always improvised the answer, and the question for that matter.

She talks about the risk of relationships that "(deteriorate) into a habit and friendly affection" and has a healthy ambivalence regarding, "drinking weak tea with some toothless old guy fifty years from now." I have to say, I love the imagery in that particular scenario. But a life filled with the ordinary has the opportunity to be, just the same, a continuous sequence of endless beginnings.

I tied my fate to a woman who had layers of mystery to me, in a long ago age when I was an awkward goofy looking skinny guy in a Planters Peanut tuxedo, and my wife was a scared looking bride in a perm of a kind they don't do anymore. Although neither of us were religious at the time, we hired a minister to perform our wedding, because grandparents and relatives would like it that way. And I am grateful for this, in particular, because God has walked our long way with us.

I have seen a million sunrises and sunsets since that wonderful day. I have sat out on the rocks at Salmon point with her, staring at a night sky impossibly bright with the distant life-creating energies of the milky way. I have felt my heart sing with a joy I cannot even write of what it is to be in the presence of a blue baby newly entered into the world - it is like an audience at the throne of God! I've seen my daughter's prom dress; and I've seen gratitude on the face of this daughter when finishing high school successfully resulted in a Playstation 2!

I've shared the awful heartbreak of watching my wife and brother in law return from trying to deliver my sister in law to the hospital to save her, and making it only about half way before it was too late. I've watched their faith grow as they struggle to understand that she is in their lives still, even if from a more distant vantage point. I've watched my mother sit in total quiet with a minister, while the rain tapped the windows, as she came to terms with burying her mother. And I've watched my own faith grow as I learn to accept that we are not planted to take root in this Earth forever.

Every day brings a new colour into my life. I don't get to travel to new geographic locales every day, but I do get to go new places I've never been, and I do that almost every day. And, if we scrimp and save, we travel in the non-metaphorical sense, too! And taking in the newer world of a child, through the eyes of your own children – whale watching, sailing – this too is an endless beginning. So is love. My wife is still a woman of mystery to me; for even though I know as much as it is possible to know about which way her sails carry her, I still only guess it right about half the time. And it is wonderful to still learn about her.

Every new thing can take you back to your own beginnings, when you realize that you are in these beginnings, and every new thing's beginnings are in yours. This wonder with which we achingly and tentatively seek to connect, like Adam with his hand extended in Michaelangelo's fresco, was born for us. And we were born for it.

Endless beginnings abound, even in the comfort of endless routine. I know, because I live there. :-)

Bill Clinton pal saves the Canadian government

A friend of Bill Clinton's has switched parties, and likely saved the Canadian government from defeat at the hands of an alliance between the Conservative party and the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

The Globe and Mail: Martin's statement about Stronach

The world's true horror

There is a lot of darkness to be faced. Terrible things happen in this world, and often to those who least deserve it. I can't even repeat (or link to) what I just read, because I don't want to sensationalize it further, or further make the victim in the story's life about her last moments - she had to amount to more than that. More darkness awaits at home - my father lent me Romeo Dallaire's book about the slaughter in Rwanda, and I expect that to be a harrowing thing to hear about as well. It could - it could ruin us if we let it, imagining the scope of the darkness that runs rampant in the world, blighting creation with something much worse than tragedy.

Thank God for being in Henri Nouwen's writings right now. He says, "It would be paralyzing to proclaim that we, as individuals, are responsible for all human suffering, but it is a liberating message to say that we are all called to respond to it. Because out of an inner solidarity with our fellow humans the first attempts to alleviate these pains can come forth."

The first thing we can do is to cultivate a sense of holiness; this holiness is found in the sovereign dignity of every single person, great and small. We are Holy Ground, as Nouwen asserts, and as the hymn Holy Ground goes.

This is Holy Ground, We're standing on Holy Ground
For the Lord is present, and where He is is Holy
These are Holy hands, He's given us Holy hands,
For the Lord works through them, and so these hands are Holy

What God makes is Holy, and he has made us. He has made the space between us Holy, and all the Earth we walk on. If we live lives that testify to the truth of that, perhaps we begin to drag ourselves, and by example the others around us, out of the mires that are tragedy, cruelty, and darkness. Compassion is the light that overcomes the loneliness and heartbreak, that burst forth like a star in the dark, and lights the way to peace.

Making a list, redux

A.) Five Things You May Not Know About My Time in School

1) My best mark in University was in Logical Reasoning (Philosophy.) My wife doesn't believe me. :-)
2. I belonged to the debating club in university and high school. The university members were a bunch of drunks - worse than engineers!
3. I sneaked away from a field trip and walked to Niagara Falls, NY, once.
4. I was so terrified of fire alarms that my mother had to be called to the school any time there was a fire drill.
5. I was equally terrified by snow plows, which I encountered every day as I walked to school.

B.) Five Things You May Not Know About the Job/s I Have (or Had)
1.) I'm the boss
2.) I've been in it eleven years
3.) I once ran a deli
4.) Now I write software
5.) There is nowhere near my work where I can buy smoked meat!

C.) Five Things You May Not Know About My Online Life:
1) I've wanted to journal for about 5-6 years, but only got around to it last year.
2) I once helped turn in one of the Net's most infamous spammers.
3) My real name is apparent to anyone who's followed a link or two, but I keep it out of this space to prevent Google stalking (I've seen Usenet opponents seek each other out and try and ruin one another in real life, getting each other fired from jobs, etc.)
4) I have at times had to fight off Internet addiction. This was particularly hard in the early days. I've done a lot better in the last few years.
5) I have been online for eleven years.


E.) Five Things You May Not Know About My Home Life:
1) I wake up very early in the morning, every morning
2) I love cooking on my Hamilton Beach grill
3) My wife loves to shoot elastics at me and blame my daughter
4) I used to be able to cross country ski out the back door, and miss it.
5) I have fallen asleep to "Star Wars" a dozen times in the last two months.

F.) Five Things You May Not Know that I Desperately Want:
1.) To be at peace
2.) A mandolin
3.) To get my bass guitar's neck adjustment and intonation done
4.) To travel to Israel, Australia, Rome, and Greece, Paris, London.
5.) To visit all fifty states and ten provinces


G.) Five Things I'm Absolutely Terrified Of:
1.) Spiders
2.) Losing loved ones
3.) Losing keepsakes and valuables
4.) The unknown
5.) Did I mention spiders?

3 Screen Names You Have:
evolver
Fred on Bread (the very first I ever used, a decade ago)
leavethelighton

3 Things You Like About Yourself:
The ability to feel
The ability to express how I feel
That I've never completely grown up

3 Things You Hate/Dislike About Yourself:
I can be lazy
I can't always concentrate on things, or give them my focus
I am a procrastinator

3 Parts of Your Heritage:
Scottish
Welsh
Acadian

3 Things You're Wearing Right Now:
Shoes
Socks
A shirt

3 New Things You Want to Try in the Next 12 months:
Learn how to play the mandolin
Turning forty
Scuba diving (not really new, but its been a while)

3 Things You Want in Your Relationship:
My wife
Me
Our love

3 Things You Just Can't Do:
Be non-neurotic
Grow up
Stop caring

3 of Your Favorite Hobbies:
Making music
Writing
Logging/getting firewood

3 Careers You've Considered (don't include what you do now):
Astronaut
Fireman
Lawyer (the only 'older than six' consideration here)

3 Places You Want to Go on Vacation:
The Sandbanks
British Columbia
Cape Breton Island

3 Things You Want to do Really Badly Right Now:
Breathe deep, relax, and watch all my troubles evaporate
See Star Wars
Did I mention the Star Wars? :-)


3 Things You Want to Do Before You Die:
Put out another album
Give my daughters away at their weddings
Play with my grandchildren, and watch their grandmother spoil them :-)

Pentecost

Let the fire fall, Lord
Please help me to do what I otherwise can't.
Be my guide, my shepherd,
Lead me from the wilderness, Lord
Give me words to praise, a heart to follow
Eyes to see, a mind to obey,
Lord, like David, wash away my iniquity
And cleanse me of my sin.

Let your spirit consume Lord,
And burn away what is not in you,
Touch my tongue with coal,
So that I can speak clearly.
Take my heart of stone,
And breathe to life a new heart of flesh, Lord
Help me in my hour of need, my God,
Help thou my unbelief, make me worthy

A work I cannot do; but only in your Holy Spirit.

Luke, I am your Father, eh? Give yourself to the dark side, ya knob!

(Apologies to Bob and Doug Mackenzie and Strange Brew from which the quote is drawn.)

We have our tickets for the midnight showing on Wednesday. My wife is still trying to talk me into wearing a Darth Vader helmet to the show. I'm going to need a bit more convincing. Perhaps my inner nerd has turned, oh, twelve or so - too old for such shenanigans. :-)

Incidentally, it will be interesting to see a Canadian inside the Darth Vader suit this episode. Maybe that big control device on his chest is to keep the beers cold! :-)

Went to work this morning, by bus...

...and the bus guy was there on the bus, too. Guess he also had to work this Saturday. He didn't say anything. I mean, not only did he not say anything to me, he didn't say anything at all. Did not talk to the driver or anyone, and that is indeed a first!

I can't help but laugh

I know it is a bit partisan, but it is terribly funny. I heard someone say that the reason the President was not contacted regarding the runaway Cessna until 34 minutes after the incident, is that they couldn't find the emergency copy of "My Pet Goat." Bu-doom-boom! :-)

Men blog from Mars, Women Blog From Venus

The NITLE conducted a census on bloggers, to determine the breakdown of the way in which bloggers blog. It confirms one of my long held suspicions about the way blogging breaks down, and even explains why I read more female bloggers than male ones.

The survey shows that, in terms of the use of one's journaling space, men are far more likely to be political commentators, women are somewhat more likely to be personal diarists. This makes intuitive sense to me for many reasons, not the least of which is that I have an almost instinctive feeling that I need to address political issues, and that this comes from the small piece of me that cares who the alpha male is. The early days of my blog were split between personal and news issues, but leaning more heavily towards the news. Introspection does not come easily for men... or does it? I only have an in-depth sampling of one on that count. I've never had too much trouble finding things to dine on ashes about, but formulating the dark clouds and sunrays of one's mind into essay form came far less naturally to me, when I began doing this.

I know there are exceptions to every rule. Irina's The Ignoble Experiment deftly combines her middle eastern studies and philosophical musings with personal reflection, for example. Phillip writes convincingly about a life lived, not a Colmes and Hannity agreed or disagreed with. And I've consciously tried to be one of the exceptions myself. If I find diarists (usually) more interesting, why not seek to be what I admire? It risks being a little self-indulgent, I suppose. I know that I am not important enough in the scheme of things to think that the journal of an expository essay-exhibitionist does not approach vanity. But then, I know what I read in a diarist's journal is more interesting than the societal prescriptions of a million mediocre news bloggers' journals - how many times and in different ways can you read that "liberals" or "fundamentalists" are screwing up the world? So am I writing for readers, or for myself?

Both, I guess. I distill my own thoughts more clearly now, in ways that allow me to better understand who I am. My kids may someday read some of what is written here, and I write in part for them. And I write to entertain you too. :-)

One of my favourite reads ever is St. Augustine's Confessions, which was probably the first diaryblog-like writing in the world's history. He takes us intimate into the life of an ordinary man who rose to become a great man, and took all of his baggage, his sorrows, his shame, his joys, with him on the road to that greatness. Letting people in helps them to see themselves. Vanity? Perhaps. But diarists, like St. Augustine did so inimitably, do a great service to their readers in providing that reflection.

Pilot Error

Phillip, the runaway Cessna must be all over the news in your town!

What I find incredible is that reports say that when the plane was finally contacted by radio, the pilots refused the order to turn away, asserting they had a right to continue flying the way they were headed. Um, excuse me, but the two f-16s on your wing politely decline to agree?

Slunk home early today

I slunk home early today, hoping to avoid the guy who's got something to say about everyone by taking a different bus. One of the guys at work knew who I meant when I described it this morning.

I don't know why I fret about it. It isn't as though I am physically intimidated - at six foot three, and with Canadian standards for gun control, I don't often have to worry about such things. :-) But I hate confrontation, I hate having to face people I have embarassed myself in front of. Ah well.

After dinner, we went to Vincent Massey park. While my wife figured out the trajectory for a Girl Guide scavenger hunt, my daughter and I went for a walk by the river. When we got to the rapids, we sat on the rock as three green drakes chased a duck around us over and over again. They chased her into the forest, and she tried to sneak out and make a break for the shoreline. Is that the male courtship pattern in all species? Wear her down until she gives out? I wondered.

We wandered back up the hill and over to a podium that had been erected in 1967 for the centennial. We took turns pretending to be rock stars - she introduced "the Rolling Stones!" I sang "Start Me Up" as badly as I could. I introduced "The Backstreet Boys" and she strutted about, miming their dance moves perfectly. Hilarious! We horsed around in the grass, the sun went down in a splendour of rainbow colours, and it occured to me this was the perfect evening.

It will be cold tonight - it is going down to below zero celsius. That makes for nice sleeping weather. During the days it has been summer for the past week. A cool night will cap off this perfect evening quite nicely.

Peintures de singe

Will Chimpanzee art be the latest craze at art house auctions?

Congo the chimp had a gifted sense of colours, but little sense of geometry. However, in the post-cubist world (sorry Pablo) shape gives way to wild brush strokes. Have humans been bested by their simian cousins with the paintbrush?

Liberals and opposition parties disagree over meaning of vote

Canada could have its second election within a year. The Conservative party used a procedural trick to try and force a confidence vote. However, because the voted procedure is simply an instruction to a committee, the government can dodge this with little more than embarassment.

However it is a matter of only days before the Conservatives find a way to force a vote for real. So instead of hockey, Spring will be filled with Canada's second-most watched sport - the hot air olympics!

Americans should consider themselves fortunate that they get a four year break between this stuff - mind you, I guess even that's not so, since there's a Federal election of some sort (be it only congressional and/or senatorial) every two years... plus all those primary campaigns...

Vive le Canada - Liberals and opposition parties disagree over meaning of vote

I'm so embarassed

On the bus this morning, I sat in the front, which I now wish I had not done. I was sitting across the aisle from a guy who had many opinions, and was making sure the bus driver was absorbed in conversation with him about these many opinions. A few of them were about public transit, so the bus driver was interested and responding.

At first I ignored it. Opinionated people are not a rarity, and I know that I may be among their number. But finally, he made a remark about how our area was becoming "Vanier south" because of all the French people, then made a snide remark about not being able to tell Quebec jokes anymore. My blood began to boil, but I kept to myself.

At that moment, the woman beside me heard a ring from her purse, and pulled out a phone and answered it. This fellow, as loudly as he could (to ensure she heard his grievance), started talking about how there should be cell phone blockers on buses, and how people should set their phones to vibrate, and how, if they weren't going to do this he was going to buy a personal cell phone blocker from a vendor of such devices in Montreal and "do it for them."

It was my time to get off the bus. I was furious at how this man was deliberately trying to shame the woman beside me, and upset that the bus driver, who must have heard the proximity of the ring, was allowing his own passengers to be disparaged so casually in a conversation he was engaged in. Shaking with anger, I turned to the driver as I got up to get off and said, "You realize the woman he is complaining about is sitting right behind you?" The driver said something to express his confusion at my remark - what I don't remember - the adrenaline was rushing too hard for me to remember. The other fellow switched to stony silence, and I disembarked.

My passions cooled as soon as I got off the bus. I realized to myself, "Wait a minute, I've got to ride the bus with that guy every day!" I also realized that by my choice of words I might have sounded to the woman being maligned like I was joining in, so not only have I complicated my own life, I might have made worse what I wanted to better.

Oh how anger always kacks things up. Even "righteous" anger. :-(

Truly "man's best friend"

A dog nestled an abandoned human infant among her pups.

CTV.ca | Dog saves newborn abandoned in Kenyan forest

Seen in the blogosphere...

Someone's assertion, "Blogroll me, or the terrorists win!" :-)

Thought for a moment

Our archbishop prior to the one we have now was our bishop... oh.... for a million years or so. He's got to be older than dirt, but he still holds parish retreats. In a book based on those retreats called This is Your God, he wrote:

But we must not think that God has said everything and that we know everything about human existence and creation. There will be no end to discovery in the realm of God's creation.

I have always carried a lot of anxieties about the future, and in that I know I'm not unusual. And the only reason anxiety exists is because there are things to be anxious about. Not a day goes by that people don't get a clue about their futures, and hope is always intermixed with at least a little anxiety. In my case, I heard from my cousin yesterday, who wants me to sing at her wedding. She's picked the songs she wants me to sing, and that is good; it is a great honour she has accorded me, and now I will know what exactly her expectations will be. But what it I can't learn to do a good job with this music? :-)

The answer to anxiety does exist, I am convinced. Love. Love the way Buffy St. Marie describes it.

The road is long
There are mountains
In our way
But we climb the steps every day

I remember lying awake after learning that my second daughter was coming. I'd just lost work, and my wife was working at a new post office job that paid a lot less than the ones we'd had before (we had worked together.) Financially, I just did not imagine us getting by. Our life was more expensive than our income as it was. I lay there staring at her in the pale moonlight, asking myself, "How are we ever going to get through this?"

A voice - loud as a trumpet, like gold if gold was a sound, a voice outside my own head but heard, I knew, only by me said, Everything will be alright. I had never heard it before, and I've never heard it again - not like that.

And He (yes, I believe it was He, to this day) was right. We were poor, and that burden I anticipated was very real; we remained poor for a few years. My wife lost her brother a few months later, just a week before my daughter was born. We had hard years ahead of us. But they were the best years of our lives. Love got us through. We laughed harder, smiled longer, played more enthusiastically than ever before - if we couldn't spend money, we could still make picnics and spend the afternoon at Vincent Massey park. We could still find the means to go camping with our neighbours down the street, even if our tent was too small and leaked too much, and our poor car couldn't take everything in one trip. We could still take our two kids to the neighbourhood park, and watch our new daughter delight in the discovery of wading pool water while my eldest kept trying to get me to be the gorilla, while she would be the banana. The money thing was a struggle, and it would take years to shake off poverty, even after I started to do well again at work. But money never gets you through.

Love got us through.

Emily

In the town of Delta, not far from the Rideau lakes system, is a beach and a campground. My parents' farm was only about two miles way, and when we came up to visit my parents, sometimes we would camp there, because we loved camping. At the Delta campground, the skies are big, and the pines are tall. On the beach one night, I looked up at a cloudless night sky, and I swear I saw the whole universe.

There is a small graveyard beside the campground. I often wander through cemeteries; my parents once owned one (on the farm), but that's another tale for another time. When I wandered through this one about ten years ago, I came across a grave with more feeling than the others.

On the tombstone, it identified the twenty four year old woman as having been born in Montreal, and the name with the most prominence was not her last name, but her maiden name, "Atkin." At the bottom it said, Taken into eternity November 23, 1987. But none of these things was what struck me.

Amidst the fresh flowers lain on her grave, was a seven inch carved wooden heart, with the letters "Emily" carved into it. There was more love burned into this monument than any stone in the graveyard, because this monument was fleeting and fragile, like all of us are.

In my mind, I continue, from time to time, to pay my respects to this Emily I never knew. I had been to the beach to swim many times as a teenager. I wondered to myself if I hadn't been on the same beach, or in the same store in town - maybe one where she worked - at some point in life. Had our paths ever crossed at any point?

It would have been an honour to share a moment with someone so loved that ten years later, they would carve a heart, inscribe her name, and leave it for her with fresh flowers in the whistling wind by the beach.

Padme.... I am your husband!

Only thirteen days until Star Wars Episode iii: Revenge of the Sith!

The shortest verse of the New Testament

"Jesus wept."

Only humans cry. What purpose does it serve? It doesn't make better
hunter/gatherers of us, or enhance our status on the evolutionary playing
field. It does allow compassion to well up, or for us to plead for it,
however. The warm salt water that falls from our eyes, if you think about
it, is much like the ancient seas that gave birth to life itself. Perhaps
the seas of tears are where our hope begins to give life.

The Divine Mercy

Although Catholic mysticism is not for everyone, one of the visions associated with Sister Faustina's divine mercy is so powerful that, for me, it is stronger as a metaphor than as a mystical supernatural vision.

She wrote:

I saw a great light, with God the Father in the midst of it. Between this light and the earth I saw Jesus nailed to the Cross and in such a way that God, wanting to look upon the earth, had to look through Our Lord's wounds and I understood that God blessed the earth for the sake of Jesus.

The mystery of Earthly suffering is a challenge to anyone's faith. Some people are the authors of their own suffering. Most are not. Nobody deserves it. To believe that God understands our suffering - truly understands it intimately, from having suffered himself as both a Father bereaved and a Son unjustly suffering under Pontius Pilate - is to believe that God's empathy is complete. It is not the distant empathy of an enlightened benefactor. It is the instant and immediate mercy of someone who can't even look at us other than through the veil of his own deeply personal loss - compassion moved by Love. And Love proceeds in its truest form from personal experience.

Only the God who suffered is more united by far to the AIDs victim than to the corpulent rich man - as Mary says in the Magnificat, "He has lifted up the lowly, and sent the rich away empty." It is the God who suffered who I believe DOES know to say, "There there." It is the God with the power to make all things new who can wipe every tear away.

Including, Easter Sunday, his own.

Sorrow

I read someone who asked why Christians are afraid to call one another sinners; are they too polite to do something they need to do?

I think the reason Christians should not spend a lot of time making accusations about one another's holiness has a lot to do with the three virtues - faith, hope, and charity, as well as the injunction to "judge not lest ye be judged." We're all broken down in some way.

But why would that disqualify us from judging?

Well there is the whole "log in your eye" aspect of things. It is not so much that you need to avoid hurting the feelings of others, as being cognizant of the fact that in Christianity, we are always the pot criticizing the kettle! (Or as a friend puts it, a hospital where even the doctors and nurses are sick.)

Christ is therapy - the words "come to me all of you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" are meant to have meaning, and we are called to have faith in them. The wages of sin may be death, but Jesus has paid those wages already. "for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them" (as some render Luke 9:56)

In my church, we have sacramental confession to recognize that there is both a "there there" aspect to God's mercy, and at the same time our own necessary participation in seeking God's mercy - we must not play a passive role, but an active role, and ask. Whether you confess with a priest or simply confess in the silence of your heart to God, you're not doing any good casting yourself out for self-flagellation; feeling bad is not the point - feeling better and doing better is. And you find "better" in two ways - one by receiving from God the assurance that he can and will forgive you for anything, and secondly, by, for the Love of God, sincerely wanting to do better.

He asks nothing more.

How to do big long lists in a scroll box without iframes

Check this out:

You can use a DIV tag with special CSS style instructions to section off part of a post inside a scroll box, as one might do with an iFrame. You may find this useful if you don't actually want or need to save content in a separate HTML document.

Here is the HTML Code to use:

<div style="OVERFLOW: auto; Height:60px;border: 1px solid
#9CADE4;background-color:#ededed; width= 100%">

Muh brother Durrell

I picked the most hick picture of myself I could find and made that my profile picture. Talk about instant humility! It might, in an earlier age, have gotten me a guest shot on Newhart, however. :-)

The evolution of a fight to the end - U.S. News - MSNBC.com

The evolution of a fight to the end - U.S. News - MSNBC.com

It is a mystery to me why this should be a subject for debate. A science teacher should teach science according to that discipline - science.

That life forms adapt to their continually changing environment by natural processes of selection is an important principle to understanding the modern science of biology. This knowledge has applied aspects too - with the advent of antibiotics, pharmacology is always in a race with the micro-organisms we are seeking to defeat. Understanding the evolution and adaptations of these micro-organisms is a key to keeping the upper hand.

I understand that obviously for some there are uncomfortable religious implications. A religious viewpoint that sees Genesis as an Audubon field guide to Earth circa 5,000 BC, this reality can't help but shake that rigid belief, and it might be tempting to challenge the science (although in my view, it is far easier simply to understand better what the Bible is and isn't, just as Pope John Paul said, "Truth cannot contradict truth.") But we cannot allow schools to be held hostage to this crisis of faith.

Understand this - the theory of evolution is not just a theory in the vernacular sense of the word theory, which people understand as an idea or intuition. A scientific theory is de facto fact, until a better scientific theory comes along that is more precise. For example, Einsteinian physics updated Newtonian physics. But that does not mean Newtonian physics lack value - they are still stock in trade for architects and physicists.

So how can they know the Earth is in fact billions of years old and that God didn't use a magic wand to whisk everything into being at once?

- Archaeopteryx: "creationists" challenge that there are no transitional fossils in the fossil record. But is that not what archaeopteryx, one of the oldest fossils we have, is? It is a classical theropod dinosaur - one with feathers, wings, and no wishbone. It in no way could compete against a pigeon or seagull today, yet would have gained an important advantage over flightless competitors in Jurassic Germany.

- The entire Homo Genus: we know that there have been human beings of all kinds of shapes and sizes. Last year's Ebu Gogo discovery showed us that an island was inhabited by a small Homo Erectus type creature until quite possibly this millenium. Clearly these beings, associated with fire, tools, and in the case of the Neanderthals, a carved flute, were human beings. Just as clearly, they were not us - two and a half foot hobbits were not mating with Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

- Genetics: most of our genetic code is garbage. We have many recessive traits and features that are vestigial - showing signs of something no longer useful, but still lingering. For instance, humans have slightly more of a tail than do chimpanzees (who, curiously enough, share 99% of our DNA.) We have organs, like an appendix, that serve little functional purpose. If we are off-the-shelf models, instead of inherited models, wouldn't God have cleaned up the blueprints a bit?

- Animal husbandry: we've been able to stretch and bend the lineage of our favourite companions, so that a Palmeranium bears little resemblence to a wolf. If we can do this, how can we put God's own ability to do much the same thing off-limits?

Personally, I think strict creationism limits God. Is not the God behind the anthropic principle, master architect of a fifteen billion year old universe designed to emit life, a far more powerful and potent God than a 6,000 year old model kit assembler?

But no matter what I think, the debate between science and religion belongs in a forum devoted to the study of that conflict. The instruction of science itself should be strictly about science. Religion has its own dignity, and can be taught, uncorrupted by science, in religion class or Sunday school.

What makes me happy?

I was asked this earlier today. My blogger friend A takes this personal inventory a lot. What makes me happy? Besides endorphins? :-)

• Sitting under the stars on Salmon Point with my wife
• Listening to my younger daughter teach herself how to play the piano
• Listening to my parents bicker about who drank more wine
• Blue skies without a cloud
• Blue skies with interesting clouds where you can lie on your back and decide what they are.
• Doing stupid s**t with my brother in law
• Footprints in the Sand
• The thought of going to see Star Wars at midnight with my older daughter in two weeks
• Making music
• The Gospel of John
• The satisfaction of something you've worked hard at coming to fruition
• Full moon on silver snow
• Tickling my grumpy wife's feet when she has to get up on a Saturday morning
• Fighting off my attacking children on that same Saturday morning
• Watching my brother torment my mother, and vice versa
• Talking shop with other musicians
• Maundy Thursday
• Seeing places I've never seen before
• The calm in the sanctuary before an early morning or late night Mass
• Summer barbeques
• Cursillo
  
• That my Dad got his book published
• My wife's many missions of mercy to rescue her friends and/or the girl guide district.
• My kids being weird
• The fact that there are people who need and depend on me
• The Experimental Farm
• Conroy Pit
• Smoked Meat sandwiches (especially from Nates)
• Islands
• Swimming
• Small winks from God that let you know he's there, but which you can't tell anyone about lest they think you crazy!
• Singing 'Gracie' in memory of my mother in law
• Lemonade, rasberries, fresh and seedless green grapes
• My brother's exotic collectibles, including a cannon, Lenin head, and giant cast iron alligator.
• Dinosaurs
• Amazing grace
• Amazing Grace
• Watching a child's face when they see something wonderful the first time.
• Main street in Picton
• Hog's Back in summer
• Mooney's Bay on a quieter day
• The O-Train
• Making a difference

You Raise Me Up

The first time I heard Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up" and paid attention, I started crying. I am always astonished at how much in life is an illusion, how much of my own self is illusory.

A song like that sets it straight - it is right to aspire to be "more than I can be," and yet it is not a simple thing to accomplish. But with God, all things are possible. I know I can be more than I am with God's aid, because I can't help but be more. There is so little in life I can derive real and honest pleasure from that does not trace back to Him as its source, and little real accomplishment I have that I can't credit to his help and assistance.

You raise me up, to more than I can be - I would love to know what the potential and possibility of that really is. There may not even be limits - "greater things you will see than these," as Nathanael was told in the Gospel of John.

Technology News: Internet: Regulators To Ban Hunting Via Internet

OK - now I'm an avid fisherman. And I think that many technological conveniences are acceptable - you know, say, a depth sounder, for instance.

Hunters have, I'm sure, some modern tools in the toolkit, too. Like a GPS so you don't get lost. But I never in a million years could have imagined that people would.... hunt over the Internet.

Technology News: Internet: Regulators To Ban Hunting Via Internet

Why not just play Warcraft? You can do that over the Internet, too. You can blow away all the deer you want, as well as dwarves, wizards, and trolls.

No Internet

I have no Internet at the moment. I let my NCF account lapse, partly out of inertia and laziness, and also partly out of annoyance - its an Internet co-op, basically, though it was once an online community, and I was once its volunteer of the year, really believed in the cause. But it was consumed by pet projects like Citrix/Winframe-hosted applications and other weirdness, as well as its own proprietary usenet style forums, that non-members could not participate in. And this was an organization that had been built to foster online community! You don't build community by letting people basically x-terminal into free copies of Microsoft Word, and by refusing to dialogue with the outside world.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world had begun Instant messaging and blogging, taking community generations beyond anything NCF can now easily reach. My wife and I will eventually get broadband, I expect. But if I choose not to renew over at NCF, I may not be posting all that often until.

Up for the sunrise

This morning, I'm up for the sunrise. The water is normally very calm when the sun comes up, but the water levels are so high this year with the amount of rain there's been, that the water is mildly rough. There's a mix of cloud and sky, so the approach of dawn has been spectacular, with coloured whimsical clouds intercepting the yellow sky. On the water, the sky breaks on the waves into prismed light, so I can see it as though I have the many eyes of a spider.

Yesterday's rain was captured by what is officially Ottawa's best blog (and one of my favourite photoblogs as well.)

I woke up early this morning after a strange dream. Two dreams actually - in the first, I had come into a dream about a woman and man who (in the dream) I knew thinking I was a pilot - instead of being flown to work, I would fly to work. She was a stewardess, and he was a politician of some sort. Her last husband had killed himself by walking out on the wing of a plane, and torn between his memory and her new politician friend, she was trying to decide whether to walk on the wing of her plane and follow her deceased husband out of the world in the same way, or commit to her new politician friend, who was waiting in the airport lined up to go through customs to board her plane for a flight (I think I was the pilot, but I didn't show up in the story of the dream, other than to browse through an empty section of the airport with them.) At the end of the dream, she came running down the roped off area with the lineup and threw herself into her politician lover's arms. She had made her choice.

In my next dream, I was standing in a long lineup at what appeared to be a reconciliation service at my parish. At the head of the line, in a chair receiving the confessions, was someone who looked to be just a regular parishioner in ordinary clothes. When I got to the front of the line, I said to him, "You don't understand, I need a real confession."

He said, "Go ahead!"

I replied, "I need a Priest; I've sinned mortally, and I need this to be sacramental!"

He threw up his hands for a minute, and then pointed to another line that crossed the middle pews. "Go there," He said simply.

I lined up in that other line, and to my relief, our parish pastor was at the other end of it. But as I formulated how I was going to word my confession, I realized that I did not have any idea what I was going to confess for. Then it occured to me that I needed to confess for my actions in my dream about the stewardess and the politician. Not that I could think of anything I'd actually done; I just had the strong impetus to confess it.

Perhaps that is what I am doing now.