Midnight snacking on pork ribs just got easier

They're not flying yet. But they are glowing, without any help from the refrigerator.

I kid you not - the Chinese have bred a glow in the dark pig.

Two Hours Before Sunrise

I got up early this morning, because we fell asleep watching Pirates of the Carribean last night at about eight.

Other than blogging, what I could I do? I wondered early this morning. Remembering that my friend J had given me a cabasa (a sort of rattling thing that can make rattlesnake noises), I decided to record a blues instrumental... which I appropriately titled "Two Hours Before Sunrise."

White Boxing Day

This is what I woke up to on Tuesday. Kind of pretty, isn't it?

Green Christmas/White Christmas

I woke up early Sunday morning at the cottage, and tended the fire in the dark. The dusk turned the black into blue, and then colour came into it. The sun rose, a glorious pink and orange, until day broke fully and completely. I stood up and looked outside. The sky was blue, the waves were rolling in, and there was not a snowflake in sight. So I slipped on my shoes, went down to the dock, and had a snooze in the hammock, in the warm glow of the sun, listening to the waves lap the dock.

Later that day, we all went out to get the tree. We had the easiest time of it ever - no snow to fight through, the roads were better than we'd ever had them.

"It is a shame we have so much running around to do on a day like this," I told my wife.

We hustled back into town for my daughter's birthday, and then I headed over to the church for rehearsal (our group was playing the 8 PM Mass.) On the way there, I had a deep spiritual conversation with my cab driver, who was a Sikh.

"Prayer is easier at night," He said. "Fewer distractions."

Mass was beautiful as always, and we did a rousing version of "Go Tell it on the Mountain." I had the opportunity to wish several people a Merry Christmas, and then we jetted back to the cottage in a far easier fashion than last year. (Part 1 | Part II | Part III )

We woke up to a green Christmas, and the baby's first. I can't tell you how much fun it is to witness a baby's first Christmas (an experience I probably share with Lane.) Tearing into wrapping paper once they get the hang of it... then leaving the toy unplayed with as they continue to play with the wrapping paper. Such a happy and excited baby - she certainly made the day for us. Eventually, though, she did figure out the toy piano we gave her, and was playing it with relish by the end of the day.

That evening at dinner - which as usual was a massive effort by my sister in law - it began to snow. As the snow twinkled in the night sky outside, my brothers in law, my nephew, and I sat down at the table after dinner and had a long discussion about the old adage that we allegedly only use ten percent of our brains. My nephew is a herpetologist, and he and I argued that nature is too economical to let a creature walk about who is using so little of its own abilities.

My brother in law said, "I fall in the middle... only ten percent seems like a waste... but what if there's ten percent left, and some people can tap into that?"

Later I took the dogs outside to throw the ball around. The ground was covered with fluffy white snow. A green Christmas is very convenient, for driving, travel, etc. But I was very happy, as I looked around at the winter wonderland, than a White Christmas had come after all.

Merry Christmas

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

That is the title of the next Harry Potter book, the final chapter. There are no other released details about it.

As long as Voldemort doesn't tell Harry he is his father, I plan to read it as soon as it comes out. :-)

Long ago readers

When you write a blog that has very few readers (as I do), you remember just about everyone who has ever posted a comment. My second reader (Lane was my first) was A. I got hooked on her blog, too. She had a delightful penchant for posting whimsical lists. That was supplemented with adoration for Rufus Wainwright and Napoleon Dynamite, and she described the life of her eccentric (but endearing) family and friends in a way that made her fondness for them apparent. Ph will remember her, as we were all mutual readers.

Last year sometime her blog went silent, and I've never seen her in my or Ph's comments since. A few months ago, I took down my own links over there, since the site was blowing tumbleweeds and comment spammers. And while I sometimes fretted that perhaps something awful had happened, I realized that was something that would have to stay a mystery. I let it pass from my thoughts.

Then last night, I had the strangest dream. I was walking in a pastoral setting, and I met a sheep farmer in a field named Angus, Agris, or something. Very Scottish fellow... with a tartan patterned kilt. I just remember my farmer's name started with an A, that's all. When I got home from my walk, I somehow found out that the Scottish farmer was 'A', my old reader.

Now, you have to write your dreams down or narrate them aloud if you want to remember them, and I didn't... so it gets sketchy at this point... but I'll try to recall.

I had to tell 'A' something; I'd learned something she needed to know. (Now that I knew who he was, even in a dream, I knew A was not a he.) Anyway, I had to find her and tell her, I just knew it was urgent. So I went back out to the field, which was just an empty field now... the farm house was gone, there were no mules or sheep, just blowing grass. On the ground was a newspaper clipping. On the left hand side was a picture of the Scottish farmer (who confusingly, was still a he.) I tried and tried to read the article in the clipping.

You can't read in dreams, I told myself. I taught myself how to lucid dream when I was a kid, so I am usually somewhat aware that I am dreaming. So using lucid techniques, I strained and strained to read the article. I woke up just as I began to make out the first letter of the article.

It is very strange to have a blogger be in a dream. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of weirded out to even write about it, but it seemed significant somehow. Wherever she is out there, I hope she's OK.

Moonmaps.google.com?

A Google/NASA agreement may mean Google maps could become extra-terrestrial in scope.

I wonder if they'll include the trip planner?

Bluegrass on the radio

A year or so ago, I recorded a zippy little instrumental bluegrass version of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." I actually like that style of bluegrass, and I'm not sure why I haven't done more of that.

Some radio station in Australia spun my recording of it back in February. The Internet's a wonderful thing... :-)

Misconceptions

Every once in a while you run into a reference to the things you do. Reading our diocese's French website, I ran into a reference to our pastor who, the quote went, was famous for his Sunday night “rock” mass.

Ugh.

Our group was once blessed with the unfortunate name “Rock the Glebe” at one point, a name I don't think our leader D was even involved in picking. But we just call ourselves “the folk group.” And belying such music of my own that I've posted on-line, we really don't do any rock music at all. We are definitely folk.

Not to say that we're not eclectic. We do some lilting Celtic hymns, play a few old African American spirituals in an Appalachian bluegrass style, and sing a Kenny Rogers song about the bible as a soulful blues-tinged piece. There are some traditional hymns, unvarnished. We've been accused of being energetic. And we've even introduced a handful of praise and worship songs.

But we're not rock! (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

And as we prepare the music for Christmas eve Mass, I resist the urge to burst into "Christmas in Sarajevo." ;-)

Time's Person of the Year award

This year's Time Person of the Year is you. Yes, you. No, no need to look around the room to see if I mean someone else. YOU.

The Nativity Story

My wife and I went to see it today, with a couple of friends. We had to go out to Kanata - it was hardly playing anywhere. The film doesn't appear to be doing all that well, which is a surprise to me, given all the Passion hoopla a few years ago. The nativity (Christmas) may be a less important holiday for Christians than Easter, but for me I must confess, a slightly more resonant one. It is easier to share emotionally in this story - not many people have been part of a crucifixion; but there isn't a person alive who hasn't taken part in a birth story of their own.

Knowing the director's reputation, I was surprised by the film, I have to say. Although the narrative centers around Mary, this is really Joseph's story, which is an inspired thing to do since he is the least known of the characters - Joseph always just stands there in a Nativity display - everyone else's representations, three wise men inclusive, have stories to tell about how they got there in their posture.

Hardwicke is a specialist in telling girls' stories, but here she focuses on the emotional journey of Joseph, and it rings true. She authentically captures and amplifies what it is to become a father, through sacred story. Now when I say amplifies, I mean amplifies! Joseph isn't just disconnected from the pregnancy the way we men are - he's been told that Heaven itself is the source of this child. He's not wondering just about how he can be a good father to the child who is coming, but whether he can be a father at all to a child of such stature. And finally, his overcome joy when the baby arrives in a ray of starlight is not just joy at the arrival of his own son, but one who is for "all humankind" as Mary later tells the shepherd.

Still the story was so close to my own fatherhood that I leaked, as my wife put it. A mother's connection begins right away. But during a pregnancy, a father worries, wonders what to do with himself, and tries to be strong when the mother is looking. But when the baby comes, the moment is exactly like it is for Joseph in the film. It is as though the Heavens break open, and the light of God shines down, and joy permeates and infuses all of existence. I am a father! And you are a mother!

I don't think I have ever been more moved during a film... there have been better movies. But few have spoken to me like this.

Eight long ago nights

We're now within the eight days of Hanukkah, which commemorates the rededication of the temple after Judas Maccabee defeated Antiochus Epiphane's general Lysias and retook Jerusalem. It is an irony that the only scripture that tells this story is 1 Maccabees, found only in the Catholic canon of the bible.

Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, that is, the month of Chislev, in the year one hundred and forty-eight, they arose and offered sacrifice according to the law on the new altar of holocausts that they had made. On the anniversary of the day on which the Gentiles had defiled it, on that very day it was reconsecrated with songs, harps, flutes, and cymbals. 

All the people prostrated themselves and adored and praised Heaven, who had given them success. For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar and joyfully offered holocausts and sacrifices of deliverance and praise. They ornamented the facade of the temple with gold crowns and shields; they repaired the gates and the priests' chambers and furnished them with doors. (1 Maccabees 5:52-57)

Antiochus embodied the cynical religion of the politician: faith, not as an end and a good in and of itself, but as a political tool. He felt that by homogenizing all religious belief, he could gain control of all the people. For if you can get the gods to agree with you, surely you can get your subjects to.

What the Jewish people accomplished, in staring down the Hellenic impulse to make everyone believe the same thing, is a thing they accomplished for everyone. For the first time in history perhaps, a people declared that their right to remain who they were, the right to be culturally distinct, was worth fighting for. In this battle, self-preservation became more than bodily survival; it became a people's right to retain unique characteristics.

It is not just today's Jews who owe those long-ago rebels a great debt. All of us do.

What is truth?

This is one of the most profound questions of the Johannine gospel; actually, it is one of the most profound questions ever asked. The vignette is this: after Jesus has told Pontius Pilate that he has come to testify to truth, Pilate asks him, "What is truth?"

Jesus never answers him.

In a series of comments I was reading in a discussion about Richard Dawkins' new film, one respondent writes, "Most religions proclaim to know truth and hence aren't searching for it."

Of course, in most cases this couldn't be further from the truth (pun intended.) It is true that fundamentalists are certain they have the truth - whether that fundamentalist is Richard Dawkins or Fred Phelps.

For most of the rest of us, our lives are a search for truth. That is one of the reasons I am interested in science. And it is also why I am a seeker within my Christian faith as well. We are each born knowing nothing, nothing at all. Not one of us can walk, comprehend, or even see clearly when we are born. (It is an interesting side anecdote, but people born blind who become sighted are usually unable to make sense of the sensory input - we even have to learn how to see.)

So how do we learn? As an adult, I experience things. And then I cross-reference those experiences against other things that I have experienced, and try and frame the new event in the light of those past referents. And yet, I vaguely remember not knowing anything at all - my earliest memory is an astonishingly clear understanding of my own newness.

From this clarity, we descend into an abstract world of interrelationships. Grass is green. Plants are green. Grass is a plant. Our faculty of reason works this way too. We deductively validate hypotheses by extrapolating from observational data and the existing body of scientific knowledge.

But what if this is not the only way to find truth? What if there is one truth for which there is no cross-reference or precedent? A truth our deductive faculties can't reach, but which spiritual faculties perhaps can?

The ceiling of the Cistine chapel more eloquently expresses in imagery what I am trying to with words. Something inside ourselves - a longing that is hard to describe - reaches to the sky, to the unknown, to find some transcendent, unprecedented source that might answer that question, "Why am I here?" And on my very best days, I feel like perhaps my outstretched finger brushes up against something unimaginably immense and powerful, something I have no other experience I can compare it with. It is an unspeakable knowledge, one which any eloquence I have or lack is unable to touch. But as near and far as it always is, I must always try to touch it, even if I never quite can.

Could this perhaps be "truth"?

Freshwater dolphins extinct

One of three freshwater dolphin species has gone extinct. Over-development of the Yangtze River and excessive pollution in China did in a unique twenty million year old creature.

God created the great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems, and all kinds of winged birds. God saw how good it was,and God blessed them, saying, "Be fertile, multiply, and fill the water of the seas; and let the birds multiply on the earth."

(Genesis 1:21-22)

Getting to know your child

When my elder daughter became a teenager, she became a slightly different person. This is simply a rite of passage, I think - don't we all become different people, when the impending arrival of adulthood stares us in the face? In her case, just the kind of person she is - she wears her heart on her sleeve, so the altered version of my daughter was fairly easy to get to know. Like everyone going through adolescence, there were many hurts and stumbles in the road for her, but I never felt we had to worry about not seeing them.

That's not quite as true with my younger daughter, who is reserved and intensely private. I even began to worry to myself that I might not be able to cross this bridge, and that as she becomes something new, I might not be able to know who she is.

The only answer I have to this challenge? Stay interested. As I sat in the barn last night watching her ride a horse around and around, I realized that is a lot of it, perhaps all of it. So all the way home, I let her regale me with horse stories... the dream horse she'd like to own, the many different lives she'd like to live and how she might arrange to live all of them, and where she'd keep all of those horses she'll have.

They are still the dreams of a girl. But they are the dreams of this girl, and the key to knowing who she is.

People who don't see how wonderful they are

My wife had to give a talk on the "You Shall not Kill" commandment to a Catechism class the other night. Rather than a dry or technical discussion, she designed a personal witness talk; rather than address a single issue, she planned to talk about them all - war, abortion, suicide, euthanasia, palliative care, and bioethics. While she wasn't as nervous about this talk as she has been for other talks in the past, I don't think she really thought that she was going to do really well at it. I wasn't there, but I heard from some folks who were that she knocked it out of the park with a touching, funny, heartfelt, and personal address - several people said afterwards that nobody but her should ever give that talk again.

One fellow even phoned our answering machine yesterday morning and told her she had changed his life. She seemed perplexed by this.

That kind of humility is a wonderful thing to behold, and a good part of why I love her like I do.

An outrage

If there ever needed to be proof of the utter banality of evil, here it is. They've invited every kook, nut, and white supremacist they can find. The Iranian Foreign Ministry might as well just get it over with, throw white hoods on their heads, and burn a cross on their lawn. Unfortunately, far too many people will take this seriously. If only they could be laughed off the world stage, instead of put on the front page.

I am as sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian population as anyone is, although frankly I think a lot of that suffering comes from the poor choices of their leaders and violent extremists. But trying to re-snuff out the six million people who died in concentration camps (this time by eliminating them from the very pages of history) does nothing - nothing at all - to help the Palestinians.

All it does is diminish us all.

Man hurts man
Time and time again;
Though we drown in the wake of our power
Somebody tell me why!

(Amy Grant, in 1988's Lead Me On)

I guess you can't cook 'em

Researchers have found several previously unknown species, including new kinds of clams and shrimp, living near the bottom of the ocean. The interesting thing about these guys is they are living in temperatures that make the steamiest hot tub seem tepid.

Deep-sea shrimp defy heat and cold

I guess these guys are the best of both worlds - after you cook 'em, they're still sushi! :-)

Recovery

I've spent the last two days recovering from surgery on my jaw Wednesday afternoon. I'm not allowed to do anything atheletic at the moment. This has been harder on me than I thought.

The reason for this is that I have been in a hurry all my life. When I was younger and my wife and I both worked at the restaurant, I ran home from work, I ran to work. Or I biked in high gear. We didn't have a car, so together we walked everywhere. But when I was alone, I ran. I ran down Somerset street, and then on to Bronson, all the way past Gladstone, and then home.

Now at the age of forty one, I still run everywhere that I don't bike. I don't walk, because it always seems to take too long. So I run, wearing the most un-ergonomic dress shoes imaginable, like my life depends on it. Last night, thinking it was time I get some fresh air, I offered to go to the store to get my wife and daughter some ice cream. And as I set out, I had to fight the strong urge to run... and I had to fight that urge all the way there, and all the way back.

On my way back, I thought to myself, How am I ever going to be able to handle being old?  I doubt I will be able to admit to myself that it is time to stop running. So if in twenty five years, you see some senior citizen running wherever he goes... come say hello. It will surely be me!

Boy time goes quick

The granddaughter stood up on her own the other day, when my daughter came over with "Superman Returns." I still think of her as a newborn, and yet there I was looking at her stand!

The praise night came and now is done. It went really well - I am a worry-wart, and yet it all turned out fine. Some stronger singers made the next practice, giving confidence to the more nervous ones. By Tuesday night, I was comfortable that it was going to turn out fine, and it did. We went longer than I expected, an hour and a half. And it took a while to get people singing - participating, instead of observing. But it happened.

We sang the gospel number, "Total Praise" and "Praise You in this Storm," because I thought the psalmist's line "I lift my eyes unto the hills" would make a great Advent theme for this Praise Night. It is the shining city on the Hill we look to in our own lives: the city we long to get to, the metaphorical Jerusalem. Advent, as a season, is all about the promise that someday we will reach it.

And now December is well underway. It is a busy month, with nowhere near enough days in it.

Stuff

So the cat, remarkably, has made a complete recovery. He has relearned the use of his back legs, and you'd never know anything was wrong. He's also got a healthy appetite back... although he's grown more finicky because of all the good stuff we gave him, nursing him back to health.

The praise and worship night is set for Tuesday. That's not going quite so well... I have hardly any singers for it, and as a result, the few I have are singing timidly, since they don't want to stand out, I guess. I'm going to have to belt it to compensate. Oh I hope that goes well... Might not do another, if this is how they're going to go. :-(

Older than the Sun

The organic compounds found in a recently fallen meteorite found in Tagish Lake are older than the sun Before our star was even lit, asteroids were preparing the way for life itself to enter our world.

Spam copy editor needed

Ms. Camille notes that spammers are getting cleverer at covering up their dirty tracks by incorporating grammatically correct sentences (but still fairly obscure) into the body and subject lines.

Why they are doing this, of course, is because the newer Bayesian filters are able to detect the nonsense messages and appropriately filter and delete them. Still, now that they are using real sentences, what is a spammer to do? After all, when I think of a spammer, I think of a hulking sociopath sitting in his trailer with his fold-out kitchen counter covered in beer cans and chicken bones. The spammer of my imagination is not someone who is going to be able to work up clever prose for his subject line.

So perhaps we can invent a new profession: the spam copy editor! For the LOW FEE of $10o do1lars per hundr3d th0usand mailings, I w1ll write you a BULK MAIL subject line WORT3Y of SHAKESPEARE!!

Simple Things

As the old man walked along the beach at dawn,
he could see someone far down the beach flinging something into the ocean,
Time and again,
the person would bend over, pick up something, stand up,
and throw it into the water.
Finally the old man caught up to the young man,
and asked him why he was doing this.
The young man replied that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun.
"But the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of Starfish."
retorted the old man. "How can you really make a difference?"
The young man looked at the starfish in his hand
and then he threw it into the safety of the waves as he replied
"It makes a difference to this one."

(The Starthrower, by Loren Eisley)

Francis Collins, the geneticist whose The Language of God I am currently reading, describes a trip he made as a relief worker in Africa in the chapter "Truth Seekers." As a western doctor, he knew there were limitations to what he was going to be able to accomplish. The health care system was not going to be the same as in the developed world. Still, he imagined he was going to do great things, maybe save all kinds of people.

The reality was more brutal, and he found himself worn out by the apparent hopelessness of the situation. "I grew more and more discouraged," he wrote, "wondering why I had ever thought that this trip would be a good thing."

Then one day, a farmer came in near death. He recognized the symptoms right away of something called a "paradoxical pulse", probably brought on by tuberculosis. He knew that the only treatment available was something a cardio specialist would normally do. Collins wasn't qualified for the procedure. But it was the only way to save him. So using a large needle, he bore a hole in the man's chest, drew out the fluid, and the man's symptoms subsided.

The next day, the young farmer told him, "I get the sense you are wondering why you came here. I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me." (You can hear Collins tell this story in his own words here.)

Collins learned what so few of us do. We are all called to do great things. But the great things we are meant to do are not necessarily things that will change the world, dramatically altering the flow of history. Maybe the great thing we are meant to do will only save one person; maybe the great thing we will do will be known only to God - maybe we won't even be privileged to know what it is, or when it happened. But live every moment like it is your great thing, your vocation. Every moment you face may be the one reason you were put on this Earth.

So live every second like it is the one thing you are here to do. For who knows? Maybe it is.

The Language of God

I am reading a book called "The Language of God" by Francis Collins, who was the head of the Human Genome Project, the team that produced a map of the entire genetic code of the human species. It was a monumental achievement, modern medicine's "landing on the moon" moment in terms of the scale of the accomplishment.

Collins makes the case that being a believer does not mean you have to disbelieve science, or even segment it off to a different part of your mind - he explicity disavows Stephen Jay Gould's suggestion that science and theology are non-overlapping disciplines. He then goes through the most common alternatives put before the modern believer - creationism, intelligent design, or atheism, and rejects them all. He makes the strong case that we can recognize God, even the traditional conception of Abraham's God and not just the clockwinder of the Deists, in the world as we know it.

Resorting to C.S. Lewis and Augustine, he makes the case for an involved God, but a God who nonetheless created the universe as a self-running system that does not require numerous acts of special creation or intervention in order to exist. He does not argue that this makes God uninvolved today; Collins is prepared to accept that miraculous intervention does exist, but for its own sake - and not as something God needs to do to prop up the universe. A good architect who puts up a house shouldn't need to constantly come back and put up supports and repair the foundation, just to keep the house standing.

I'm only halfway into it, but I think Collins is quite courageous. Many of his scientific contemporaries, such as Richard Dawkins, are violently hostile to religion, and Collins will surely pay a price as a scientist for writing an unabashedly pro-religious work. At the same time, Collins forcefully rejects creationism and the "irreducible complexity" of proponents such as Michael Behe. 

Personally, I think that religion that insists on rejecting science is doing great harm. I was kept mired in a painful agnostic existence for a decade because of Christians at my work who led me to believe that accepting modern science was incompatible with Christianity. I had spent enough time reading about paleo-anthropology and cosmology that I had no way of accepting the idea that the Earth was 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs chased Adam around. And the people who insist on this being the case are quite literally keeping people like me from God.

"Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter." (Luke 11:52)

The cat nurse

I am thinking - knock on wood - there is a chance he might pull through. He's getting steadier on his back legs. The first day, he could hardly move and kept falling over. But slowly he's gone from immobile to just awkward, and he doesn't just give up and sit there now - his spirits have risen, and if he wants to go somewhere, he goes there, even if he looks funny doing it. Every day, his back legs are getting stronger.

Last night, on the way home from the rehearsal, I tried to think of something he'd love so much that he'd eat it, even if he has been disinclined to eat lately. Tuna, I thought, and so I stopped by the store on the way home, bought myself Sunchips, and him, a can of tuna.  Sure enough, he gobbled it down. That morning, I had set out milk for him, and he had lapped up that as well. And best of all, this morning he begged at his dish! Begged! So he got more tuna out of me.

When I talked to my father over Skype yesterday, he thought that perhaps Dusty had had a stroke. It makes sense. Four days ago he looked like he had lain down to die. He could hardly move, see, or do much more than lift his head in a sickly way. Now he's just a stiff and clumsy version of his old self.

We are on bonus time with a much-loved kitty who is already twenty, and for this, I believe we are very fortunate. :-)

The accompanist

I don't know how to say no, and our youth group asked me to accompany them for four hymns they are singing in their play. So teaching kids to sing is how I spent my Friday evening. One thing I will note about young teenagers and singing. The young ladies will sing. It takes a bit of coaxing, but they'll do it.

The young lads? They don't sing. They don't have it in 'em. I told them, when we were trying to get them to sing "Silent Night" that last year at midnight I had a guy who is normally with a heavy metal band singing it. And that still didn't make 'em sing. :-)

My baby

He's still hanging in there. Last night he slept between my wife and I, just like he used to. I got him to drink a little a few moments ago. The first time he's done that in a couple of days. He even hobbled down to the top of the entryway stairs to wait for mommy, which he'll do when one of us is out. But I'm not optimistic enough to think he's rallying. At this age, it is just too big a hurdle.

Most people don't understand why I would be as upset about this as I am. But if you have a cat, one like mine, you know what I mean.

Preparing to say goodbye to an old friend

I think my cat is on his last legs. We've had him since the eighties, a long ago decade in another century, and he has been a healthy twenty years old. Until now.

He stopped eating yesterday, seems to have trouble getting his back legs to cooperate with what he wants to do. He does not seem uncomfortable, but he seems resigned to something, and wouldn't take a drink when we put his glass next to him (yes, he prefers to drink out of a glass. If it is good enough for us, I guess.)

I am not quite ready for this. If love alone could save him, I would love him until he is well, and I wouldn't let go. But it does not work that way. I have to learn to say goodbye to a friend we have had in our lives longer than most of our friends and acquaintances. I have to. But I do not want to.

That other Christian Story

A few years ago, as we came upon a holy season (Lent), a movie was released that had been anticipated a long time, and which had fanned great controversy. I speak of course of "The Passion of the Christ."

But we have another seminal story, a much less controversial one, and in many ways, even more beloved. And it is as we approach another holy season (this time Advent), that a film promises to flesh out the tale for us: The Nativity Story. The trailer depicts Mary and Joseph not as icons adorning the sanctuary or manger scene, as we are used to seeing them, but as flesh and blood ordinary people, barely able to comprehend the enormous thing they know they've been swept up in.



I personally think a film like this is worth supporting, because film makers have to make money. And if we don't go to see movies like this, they'll stop making them for us. :-)

Jacob's Ladder

One of my many guiding lights are the words to a song that was actually meant to take a poke at religion. The song is "Jacob's Ladder", and it was recorded by Huey Lewis back in the eighties. And even though this song badly misrepresents Christian faith and what it can mean, there is one poignant line in the song.

"Step by step, rung by rung… all I want for tomorrow is to get it better than today"

In Genesis, Jacob sees a ladder in a dream. The ladder goes up, up, out of sight, all the way up to that impossible height that is heaven. Coming up and down the ladder (or perhaps staircase is a better word) are angels bearing messages. And standing right beside him is God, who says to Jacob, "Know that I am with you; I will protect you wherever you go, and bring you back to this land. I will never leave you until I have done what I promised you."

Jacob's reaction is to simply say, "Truly, the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!"

Isn't that how it always is? God is always there, and we just don't know it, we just don't see it. Whether the reason for that is the dim eyes in our spirit, our lack of spiritual sensitivity, or the hardness of heart that comes from the way our lives scar the soul, there is a blindness to the presence of God that sets in; the brilliant awareness we had of it as a child, the wonder at all the new things we experienced even if we couldn't put a finger on it. Increasingly, this is lost to us - lost in the maelstrom of an over-stimulating culture that assaults our senses, and our own accumulated grief, a grief which we no longer know how to heal from.

The skills need to heal that grief and to crack the opacity of our lives are ancient skills, but simple ones we all have in some measure already: empathy, tenderness, compassion, silence, wisdom, and above all humility: humility before others and before God. In the silence of the early morning, the matins would have us say, "O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth proclaim your praise!"

Instead, our cares and worries are the first things at our throat; how will I get through this day? How will I even get out the door on time?

Let it go.

For much of the last year, I've been in what could only be described as a spiritual funk. I've been so focused about what has been wrong on my walk, what I haven't yet fixed, and how I might recharge those batteries, that I've forgotten the one essential fact. I don't walk it alone. I don't fix it. And I don't recharge those batteries. I've been so busy wondering how a person goes about their spiritual renovations, that I forgot that it wasn't a person who fixed it up in the first place at all. It was God.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way." (John 14:1-4)

As I prepare for the next Praise and Worship night I am leading, there are many signs that I am where I am supposed to be, and in them, I find I am renewed. The blessings I have struggled so hard for are just there, were just there... laying in the desert like Jacob's Ladder. They were there all along, "though I did not know it" like Jacob. And so I climb, step by step, rung by rung. Climbing and climbing. I can't see the top yet, and perhaps am not meant to while my heart still beats. But I do know the way.

And the way is up, up, into the clouds.

Sweet Schadenfreude

Is it OK to delight in someone's misfortune? It is when that someone is O.J. Simpson, trying to profit off of the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman killings, for which he was found civilly responsible.

O.J. is not going to get the chance to explain how he "hypothetically" killed the pair. He can tell the devil when he meets him.

The blue baby

It was thirteen years ago this day my wife brought into the world my
blue baby - our younger one. And what a delightful young woman she's
grown to be: interested in so much, particularly horses; beautiful,
and yet shy and sensitive; yet private and dignified.

I wrote her a letter today, telling her about the great happiness her
presence in my life has been. Why take the chance that you'll never
tell the ones you love just what it is they meant to you?

The Neanderthals

Over the years, we have learned many interesting things about the Neanderthals.

• We've learned that they probably could speak as well as we do, because they appear to have had the anatomy for it and technological skills such as advanced tar brewing that suggest it.
• We know they interacted with modern humans. The Chattelperonian tool flaking technology of some later Neanderthals seems to be a hybrid of their own Mousterian technique and the technique then used by modern humans. This suggests trade and even the exchange of skills between the two kinds of humans.

Now we've potentially learned something new. Neanderthals interbred with us.

A gene controlling the regulation of brain size that appears in about 70% of living human beings appears to have been injected into our gene pool from a non-Homo Sapiens source approximately 37,000 years ago. That means about 70% of us probably have a little Neanderthal in our blood!

The Creation (James Weldon Johnson)

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely -
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down -
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas -
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed -
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled -
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

The God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down -
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

(The Creation, from "God's Trombones", by James Weldon Johnson)

Hi-tech T-shirt turns air guitar into the real thing | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

You know, I've carefully made guitar decisions, choosing the right instruments, effects processors, and amplifiers. I'd even come to think I'd made the right choices.

 Turns out all I really needed was a shirt.

Hi-tech T-shirt turns air guitar into the real thing | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Last day of forty

Today is my last day of being forty. Which means I will be, as my niece pointed out to me with glee last night, "more than forty." The evening I turned forty, I sat and watched a fiery red sunset on a perfectly calm evening. It was a reminder to me that some things become very beautiful as they fade.

And my life has become very beautiful indeed. If I were to sit down next to that slightly younger version of me today and tell him, "Dude, you'll be a grandfather before the year is out," I am sure Younger-Me could scarcely believe it. Things are changing, and the old patterns of my wife and I's lives are shifting.  I can't tell yet exactly where it is going to go, but I don't fear it. I'm looking forward to it.

Tooth Finding Shakes Human Family Tree - Forbes.com

Grass for dinner again? maybe not. ;-)

Link to Tooth Finding Shakes Human Family Tree - Forbes.com

UK scientists ask permission to create human-cow hybrid

You know, every once in a while you see a headline that reminds you why some people might have an issue or two with that whole stem cell thing.

UK scientists ask permission to create human-cow hybrid - 07 November 2006 - New Scientist

Politics

"Bipartisanship" is a word you don't hear in Canada. American politics is downright cordial compared to Canadian politics. Sure, congressional elections may mean negative ads and angry televised debates, but once that is done, US politicians tend to settle down and cooperate with those in other political parties.

Not so in Canada. Every day is an election campaign. Because all power is essentially consolidated in the House of Commons (we have a senate and a Governor General, but no real power sits in those offices), the machinery of government does not have to be greased with quite as much cooperation. There is one particular session, called "Question period", that is specifically blustery and cantankerous by nature. Question period's entire purpose is to offer opposition leaders the opportunity to rise, red-faced and angry, and basically shout rhetorical questions and political campaign slogans at the Prime Minister and leaders, who will then rise and respond with non-answers and political campaign slogans of their own.

Here in the city, we have an election of our own coming up on Monday. Our choice for mayor is between three guys: Bob Chiarelli, longtime mayor and architect of a plan for a billion dollar Light Rail system that doesn't go anywhere, Alex Cullen, a former city counselor, a fellow with more sensible light rail plans but a perceived record of spending like a drunken sailor, and Larry O'Brien, a businessman with absolutely no experience in politics whatsoever (other than sitting on some some board of trades and business committees) yet who decided to go straight for the top job.

Not an inspiring set of choices. Chiarelli is polling way down at the bottom, so I might vote for Alex Cullen to help fend off the inexperienced businessman. Or I might vote for the inexperienced businessman to fend off the drunken sailor. But either way, I won't be doing it happily.

BUSHORDUCK.COM

Every once in a while I come up with something that makes me laugh at myself. Today's one of those days. I heard the term "lame duck" on the news today, and it just came to me. :-)

Oozing love

In a Yahoo discussion thread the other day, people were asked to say something good about another religion. One woman said that Christians "ooze love." We may leave a lot of bad impressions in other ways, but I've heard other people say this about us. At our best, we do ooze love.

I got to witness that tonight. I have a friend who is suffering from a serious chronic illness. So a whole bunch of people went over to his place to sing him his favourite hymns, pray over him, and ask for blessings upon him. I saw what love looks like tonight. And it is very beautiful.

Guitarman

My brother in law gave me a tripod for Christmas last year. The result? A cheap guitar player trying to take his own publicity shots.

Ugh! 

I boycott Trans-fats

When I go down the supermarket aisle, now, for our weekend snacks, I will pick up the bag that I really want - cheese bits, popcorn, potato chips, bits and bytes. Yes, I pick up the bag, and turn it over, inspecting the ingredients. If I see trans-fats, I put it back on the shelf and refuse to buy it.

So this is my message to vendors of these junk foods. I am something more powerful than any government trying to ban your cooking or deep frying process. I am more frightening to you than yesterday's ghouls and ghosts, or even today's consumer advocates and medical professionals.

I am your customer. Correction - I am your ex-customer, and potential future customer. I do not buy your product right now, because I do not want your product to kill me. You want my money? Ditch the trans-fats.

Spooktacular

Probably for the last time , I took my daughter out trick or treating. She might not have gone even this year, but I think she felt sorry for me.

I was thinking yesterday how differently time must be passing for my other daughter: when your children are babies, time seems to pass so slowly. The routine of changing diapers, warming milk, burping just goes and goes... and slowly fades into the routine of putting up the baby gate and watching the baby bounce in the jolly jumper.
It feels like you have eternity. But you don't, and one day you turn around and your children are grown. And your grandchildren - well - they spend almost no time as a baby. She's already crawling.... crawling!

My wife and our neighbour decorated the front lawn in spooktacular fashion. That's what these are! 

Leaving the Light On

Reveal Your presence,
And let the vision and Your beauty kill me.
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Your presence and before Your face.

John of the Cross, the Spiritual Canticle

About Baptism

If there was one area you would think Christians would be in much agreement on, it would be baptism. After all, it is a joyous occasion. There are the white gowns, the words that bespeak hope of a new life, the water, symbol of life... and the innocence of the newly beloved of God, the catechumens truly becoming something new in this wonderful initiation into new life.

Although we Catholics can be closed up (perhaps even too closed up) in how we will interact sacramentally with other Christians, one way in which we do throw open the doors is baptism. For us, any baptism that is in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a baptism. The baptism of a Baptist or Presbyterian minister is as real and powerful as one done by the Pope himself. I guess we see baptism as the truly unifying thing that all Christians do, and indeed submitting to baptism was in many ways the first important step in Jesus' own ministry.

But as with all things Christian, we can't always seem to agree. Some Christians have a more restrictive formula of what makes a baptism valid. Mormons rebaptize just about everyone. Baptists insist in full immersion. The Orthodox are often skeptical that any baptism undertaken by the churches of the west is valid, and often insist on re-baptism.

Although it is often suggested that the Bible never portrays anything but immersion baptisms, in truth, the New Testament does not go into much detail about how baptism should take place at all. All we do have for certain is the baptismal formula from Matthew 28:19, "baptizing... in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit." Where water is concerned, the New Testament does not give only a single mode. The baptism of Acts 16 clearly does not happen at the river, since it appears to obviously be in the context of treating the wounded Christians who have just been let out of jail in a bath.

Also, St. Peter clearly warns against "water legalism" earlier in Acts 10, when he tells of the holy-spirit filled catechumens, "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the holy Spirit even as we have?"

Then there's the scene that you'd have noticed in "The Gospel According to Matthew", "The Passion of the Christ", "the Gospel of John" or any Jesus film: water left the side of Jesus, the very symbol of the "life giving water" Jesus spoke of at Sychar. The moment baptism took on its efficacy was when the water and the blood emerged from his side.

Now clearly this didn't happen in amounts that would have "immersed" anyone. And yet this was the very moment that true baptism into eternal life was born. So how can we say that immersion was necessary when this first baptism of the new life itself probably produced no more than a trickle or stream?

Insistence on immersion puts the emphasis on the rite or sacrament, and not on the saving power of Christ. It isn't the amount of water that saves - it is the grace and truth of Jesus, given in baptism, that saves.

Its about Jesus. Not the abundance of H20.

Unsolicited advice of the day

If you ever have boy children, name your first Schmendrick the Magician. And not because it is a good idea for you, or his prospects for keeping his lunch money at school.

But it would please me. That's what counts, right?

The Forgotten Fall Leaves

I haven't taken any fall pictures this year, I am sad to say. The leaves peaked in the middle of the week at one point, and then when I went for a walk in the woods with my folks Thanksgiving weekend, I forgot my camera.

But I don't think I blogged any pictures from last year, so here is this year's fall meditation. These were shot up at the cottage. I believe my daughter shot the middle picture, but I am not entirely sure.


EARTH! my likeness!
Though you look so impassive,
ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect
there is something fierce in you,
eligible to burst forth;
For an athlete is enamour’d of me—
and I of him;
But toward him there is something
fierce and terrible in me,
eligible to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words—
not even in these songs.

(Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass) 

My weird cat...

Is chasing imaginary mice on the floor, and running around the room like he fell in a vat of catnip. I hope I can still do that when I'm a hundred years old! (He's twenty, which in cat years is a hundred.)

Ahmadinejad the strange

Anyone who knows me knows I'm almost instinctively against any military resolution of conflict. I find it hard to even think of the idea of how much suffering civilians experience in war, a policy tool too many governments rush to all too quickly. Iraq is the classic example of it for me, a situation clearly local in scope that never needed to be resolved in a quagmire that has resulted in so many casualties among Iraq's civilian population and the US' military.

However, the leader of Iran and his pronouncements that so eerily echo those of Hitler's are making it very difficult for me to find the inevitable here objectionable. His latest claim is that Israel has no reason to exist, and soon won't. This is a chilling statement, and an example of exactly the kind of thing that necessitated Israel in the first place - with so many people determined to literally extinguish the Jewish people, the tools of statecraft (diplomacy and a standing army) do seem to be the only things that can warrant their safety.

What is particularly frightening about these tirades is that they portray this as a religious conflict. Past experience shows us that religiously motivated conflicts are not only brutal, but generational - look at Ireland. And yet here there's no reason for it! The chapters "Ta-ha" and "Al Isra" of the Quran clearly suggest that Islam incorporates the very idea of Israel as a promised land to the people following Moses  - the Quran literally calls these people Israel, just as the Bible does. "Ta-Ha" particularly tells the whole story of Exodus in condensed form, even about how quail were blown into the desert en route to feed the people!

If conflict is to be averted, perhaps the answer lies with religious people. Perhaps the answer lies, as Bruce Feiler suggested in his most recent book, in the prophets. It didn't take kings and empires to turn the tide of history. It took ordinary and often reluctant men and women. Simple people, speaking truth to power. Maybe our job is to keep tirelessly pointing out to the world that the place governments rush to all too quickly is not a place God wants them to go. He does not command them to it, and does not march with their armies.

Maybe our job is to remind people that God is more sovereign than they think, does not need them blurting out genocidal proclamations on his behalf in the name of strange religious theories, and can leave the course of history to him.

Do not remember the formers things,
Or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing,
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-19)

Pictures to remember us by

Tonight I collected some pictures to send to a friend of ours - I couldn't fit many, so I had to find the ones that best represented us. There were some of us camping, that cute baby on the floor I posted the other day, my daughter with a horse, one of us on the beach in Florida... and a picture of my wife and I looking into the eyes of my daughter's newborn baby.

I think I like that best. If you can photograph love, it is such a moment. What a wonderful invention photography is, and what a wonderful gift that inventor gave to future generations. Isn't it a great thing to be able to look back at such precious moments of your life, and to be able to reexperience them so vividly?

Cute baby

That's the granddaughter. This was taken at Thanksgiving, and as you can see - she now has a certain agility to her. We've warned Mom she better start wearing jogging shoes around the house! :-) 

MercyMe

The contemporary Christian pop group MercyMe recorded a great song called "So Long Self" with a fun little video. In it, the band is watching a television announcer saying, "You're watching a live sound-check by MercyMe, who are getting ready for their show tonight."

The singer Bart says, "Hey, that's not us!" to which one of the band members replies, "How can you be sure?"

He answers, "Because we're here, and they're.... we gotta stop those guys!"

They run out of their tour bus and spend the rest of the video tricking the fake band out of performing. Now what I love about the song is the serious message underneath the playful message. Although Christianity is hardly the only religion to embrace the idea of freeing oneself by cutting loose ego and selfishness, the Christian analogy for it is a really effective one: "dying to self."

http://music.yahoo.com/ar-280688-videos--MercyMe

In the last week, I've had a few eye opening opportunities to die to self. There is a large special choir being formed for a onetime event at church. I wasn't going to participate in it, as I often feel our group is under-represented in these things - the soloists that sing with the piano player tend to get the best songs and are showcased more frequently. But I came to realize that none of these things matter to God, and they won't matter to the person this is being done for. The only thing that will make him happy is seeing a large group of people come together to sing for him. "It isn't about me," I reminded myself.

Last week, a song sort of came to me riding my bike. It was perfect for the series of events that the choir is also for. I recorded it promptly at the urging of one of the people who work at the church. She took it to the organizing committee. Last night one of them phoned me, and more or less brushed off my efforts (but in a very friendly and polite way, of course.)

So what do I do with this song? I don't know. I have to start to realize these things are not up to me. They are up to God. It is really for him to decide how things turn out. I have to realize that I don't have to give up all ambition, because unmotivated people are no fun. But it is time that I set aside expectations. That is what dying to self really means. It isn't about what I get out of it. It is about what the moment means, and what you can learn from it.

I sure do love gospel music

I've been picking out songs for another night of praise music, although I haven't got any official approval for doing such a thing yet. It is just an idea that started germinating from the proverbial mustard seed so to speak. While trying to think up songs, I stumbled across an old Richard Smallwood number. It fits in with one of the other songs I've been looking at (Phillip can guess pretty quickly which one I think.)

This is a beautiful song, "Total Praise." I've been busy learning how to play it. And this Toronto gospel choir does the heck out of it.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandI...

Lord, I will lift my eyes to the hills
Knowing my help comes from you
Your peace you give me
In times of the storm

You are the source of my strength
You are the strength of my life
I lift my hands in total praise
To you.

The Iraq war is toast

Come on folks. It is time for us to face the facts. The head of the British army has. So has the Secretary of State from Bush 41.

There's not going to be a victory. There just isn't. The situation has been too badly degraded, and collapse into civil war is inevitable, if it has not already happened. I've already noted that Riverbend has either fled or died. That is becoming an altogether too common fate for Iraqis. Coalition forces aren't able to stop it - they just provide extra targets for insurgents to roadside bomb or shoot at.

People may say, "yeah but Saddam was evil!" Yes - everyone knows he is and was evil. But is at least some semblence of civil order not at least a lesser evil than complete anarchy, chaos, and meaningless and brutal civil war? For this is what has been unleashed. The number of Iraqis who would be alive if Saddam were still in power and contained would be greater than the number of Iraqis alive today. You can't even say that people in Iraq would be in more fear if Saddam had continued on, for most Iraqis are justifiably terrified today.

The just war doctrine has an important principle - the proposed war must not cause disorder and evils greater than those which would result from the situation the war seeks to resolve. Clearly this war has failed that test - the brutal condition of Iraq is arguably worse than how things would have continued with Saddam. Saddam would have met his eternal reward one day anyway - it isn't as though he is immortal. And in the meantime, many Iraqis who did not deserve to die would still be alive.

But despite these objections, the war did happen.

So now what?

[Editorial note: edited for idiocy - "Saddam were still alive" was kind of dumb. What was I thinking? Changed to "Saddam were still in power."]

Translation Troubles

In my other blog, I am very slowly translating the Gospel of John. I haven't been at it in a while, and going back into it tonight, I found it a hard slog. First of all, I haven't been studying much Greek lately, so my Greek's gotten very rusty. Also, I ran into one of the traps translators know well - translation politics.

In this case with the word "adelphoi":

[John 2:12] After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother, and his [adelphoi], and his disciples; and they remained there not many days.

Now, this typically means "brothers," but it can also mean "brothers and sisters," or can mean a group of people with a familial aspect (such as the early Christians regarded themselves), and it can refer to relatives other than immediate family as well. I ended up using 'relatives' here, since the disciples are also refered to separately. But it is a tough call, trying to pull clarity from ambiguity.

There were other tough spots, too. It is not always entirely clear what the apostle John means in his writings, and I often have to really rely on the insight of my Douay Rheims and Vulgate (St. Jerome) forebearers - how did they interpret a passage when I struggle with it?

The more I do this, the more respect I have for real translators!

What's up doc?

Deadly carrot juice. I guess nothing is safe anymore.

Thanksgiving

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and the sun is rising over the just-past-their-peek leaves out my window. It is a pretty site, to say the least.

My parents are coming to stay with us. I am looking forward to it, because I made a mock radio documentary with which to roast my Dad. I'm looking forward to a good roasting. :-)

God is real

Every once in a while things happen that convince me that God is there; he's not just an abstract non-presence who may or may not have created everything. He's actually and really right there.

On Saturday, my wife and I went to a conference on formation, a session on teaching catechism classes basically. Part of the session involved recreating the rites, with a couple of the participants playing the part of catechumens. When we went to the doors to get the catechumens... there's no other way to put this, as quaint as it may sound... the Holy Spirit fell on us, and we were all weeping. I know how this must sound - like charismatic claptrap. But I have to remember that this was not a group of sentimental charismatics. This was a large group of Catholic instructors, generally the most straight-laced and by the book people we have. And we wept freely, like children. Nobody went to move.

Yesterday, I went in to mass early to accompany one of the other music groups on the mandolin - specifically on a spanish song. When mass had ended, someone came up and told us of how her mother had passed away to the strains of that very song, two weeks earlier. None of us had known about this, and yet we had been instruments of both tender gentleness and incomprehensible power.

Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?
Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone,
While the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
(Job 38:4-7)

Is Riverbend (Baghdad Burning) still alive?

The blog Baghdad Burning has been silent since early August. It provided the most eloquent window into the life of Iraq's Sunni arabs, humanizing a people who otherwise seem so far away, and who the media might portray as so unlike the every day people you would meet here. Through her eyes, you could see the everyday sameness of Iraqi life to our own - a world of affectionate neighbours, kindly uncles and cousins. But you can't help but grieve for her as her world degraded into the worst of Dante's hells, as uncles, friends, and other aquaintances were killed.

And now she herself has been quiet for so long. I can only pray she is alive and somehow surviving all of this.

Paris in space

Paris Hilton, otherwise known as that person who is famous for being famous, apparently plans to pay $200,000 to Richard Branson in order to be sent into space.

The thought occurs to me... if the rest of us raise $200,000, I wonder if we could pay Mr. Branson to leave her in space? ;-)

Irina's law school inspired musings

A brief editorial note: this wasn't meant to be a post at all, but a comment. It disappeared on me last night, when I made a comment, and reappeared here as a post this morning. At any rate, since it is here, I've edited it to make more sense as a blog post.

The original post is here:

http://sicat222.blogspot.com/2006/09/bloody-murder.html

Deuteronomy 19 is a fascinating exploration of how people of this long ago time developed a different sensibility regarding manslaughter. It recognizes both the lack of intent of the perpretrator, and the righteous anger of the victims family and friends. Although we respond to distinctive kinds of killings very differently today, you have to admire Deuteronomy's great subtlety as a quasi-legal text.

Many have speculated that Deuteronomy is pseudepigraphically from Moses, and is actually mostly the (inspired of course) writing of King Josiah in the middle iron age. If that is so, it is a book that shows the King of Judah to be Godly, progressive, and humane for the otherwise barbaric world he lived in - surrounded by unjust and harsh kingdoms such as Babylon.

Clapton

We went to see Clapton tonight. I will always remember this as one of the highlights of my life. Robert Cray opened for him, and then played with him on "Old Love." The last time I saw too guitarists this good on the same bill was Dire Straits and Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1985; but they didn't play together.

They reproduced several songs from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs almost perfectly - maybe even better than the originals.Some highlights - he hit the perfect tender note on "Wonderful Tonight", and of course the piano break at the end of Layla. And a great version of "Nobody knows you when you're down and out." It was all highlight really. Mind blowing.

When I was a boy, I had maybe five musical heroes. I've seen three now. Two were Hendrix and the Beatles, which are not possible... so I am now a fully requited concert goer. :-)

The Family

I believe this is the first ever picture of all of us... all three generations. It was taken at a Klondike-themed party my brother in law put on this weekend.

"You're good on the phone..."

For some reason, I got the list of the church communications team volunteers,  for the purpose of inviting them all to church to be blessed on Tuesday. So I told the editor of our parish newspaper that I would call them all. Now I'm not much of a phone enthusiast. In fact, I'd be more likely to describe myself as a "fall off a cliff" enthusiast before I ever staked such a claim. But the list came to me, and I knew it would be easier.

When we got home tonight, I got on the phone and started dialing as my wife sat to do her Sudoku. After a few calls, she said, "I don't know why you're afraid of the phone. You're good on the phone..."

"I've heard the messages I've left," I said. "I sound like an idiot. I repeat myself and sound awkward."

"We all do that."

I called a couple of more people, and left a rambling message on one woman's answering machine.

"You see?" I said, "I must have repeated myself  a half dozen times."

"That's always good... I always go to write the message down and then they hang up."

So maybe my rambling is like an executive summary. Maybe rambling isn't so bad.

Root canal

Before work yesterday, I trundled onto a bus headed for Billings Bridge, where my dentist works. I was both dreading and looking forward to this. I had been in agonizing pain for six weeks, so as odd as it may seem for someone to say they are looking forward to a root canal, I mostly was.

I got there before the doors opened. Another fellow was waiting there, and he looked at me as though I didn't belong there. You can't talk me out of being here, I thought to myself. I've often been late to the dentist, but since my dentist switched to this practice, I've been early every time. It is just an easier location for me to get to.

It was not my dentist I was here to see today, though. They have a specialist for that, and that was who I was seeing. So I was a little nervous. Before he began, he took a picture that was broadcast onto a ceiling mounted television in front of me - a picture of my tooth as it looked from the inside of my mouth. A round red hole took up nearly the entire bottom of my tooth. How the heck did he miss it? I wondered about the first dentist I had approached with my pain (not my regular dentist, but that is a long story.)

When he was done, but before the temporary filling went in, he took another picture. Half my tooth, and all of its insides, had been amputated. They aren't kidding when they call it a root canal.

I got to work with my nose numb and the left side of my face not working at all. I impersonated Jean Chretien for everyone, and I guess I nailed it. They all laughed. When the freezing came out I was free of pain - free for the first time since the end of July.

That's not so today. Thanks to the swelling, it hurts - a dull, persistent ache. It is preferable to the stabbing pain from before, but it is a little bit of a come down. It was nice not to hurt for a while. :-)

Ahmadinejab uses Windows

I went - just out of curiosity - to check out his blog, since I heard he was a blogger now. Of course, I cannot read Farsi, so I didn't get very far.

But his "autobiography" link is a missing page, and the 404 Error that comes up bears the signature of Microsoft's Asp.NET technology, version 1.1. So it seems that while the President of Iran may not be a fan of George Bush II, he is apparently a fan of William Gates III. ;-)

So...

In the plus column:

• I have a date with the dentist in two days. I'll be rid of this awful toothache, I hope.
• My bike is fixed. I have my freedom back!
• I'm blogging with Windows Live Writer and I just love it.
• My granddaughter is visiting me at work tomorrow, and I can show her off!
• I've been responding to ads regarding bands who need musicians. And (part of) my church folk group may be on the cusp of doing some work outside the church walls. I'm finally getting off my duff and making music part of my life again.

In the minus column:

• Did I mention I have a date with the dentist in two days? ;-)

Speaking of my granddaughter, she's getting contemptibly cute. She pushes herself up on all fours now, like she wants to crawl. She has that look that says, "Yes! I'm up.... umm... now what?" She can get up on all fours, you see, but hasn't figured out how to coordinate that into forward momentum. That should be fun to watch. And the older she gets, the more she looks like my daughter. She looks like a clone. I've even taken to calling her "Mini-You" to my daughter.

My Avatar

A great piece on theological controversies from the Bangkok Post

Nazri Bahrawi makes a great point, pointing out that the approach Christians took to the Da Vinci Code is a much better model for religious protest than the current reaction in the Muslim world against the comments of Benedict XVI. He writes:

Ironically, Muslims can perhaps take credence from the Christians who also faced an equally damaging controversy with the launch of Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code, which alleges that Jesus Christ was only a mortal, that he married Mary Magdelene who later conceived his child.

Although the book's thesis challenged the very foundation of the Christian faith, the world did not witness widespread pandemonium in the form of bombings or death threats to the author. In comparison, reactions from the Pope's comments resulted in violence like the attacks on churches in the West Bank, and possibly the killing of an Italian nun in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Not that Mr Brown's book lacked strong disagreements from the Christian community. But instead of brute force, the world saw a flurry of books, forums and documentaries by Christians that countered point by point what its practitioners hailed as fallacies about their faith.

Such measured, intellectual neutralism against controversies arguably works far better than taking to the streets and burning effigies of Western symbolism, as Muslims did.

He goes on to point out that the Pope's speech, in which he spoke in favour of the western tradition of welding Greek rationalism to religious faith, has counterparts in Islam; Abdullah Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, made a similar argument for Islam last year.

The rest of the article is here.

Nerd

Phillip recently asked Yahoo's Avatars site if they could add a llama (as a pet that you could choose to add to your background.) In their response they mentioned that they are adding accessories and clothing. So I decided to go check out what they had. When I saw some of the additions, I knew I had to make a change.

So I am now a guitar playing dude standing on the bridge of a spaceship. As my daughter always says with disgust, "You're such a nerd!"

That's not mine, baby.... that sort of thing's not my bag, baby!

You have to read it to believe it... I won't even get into it. I mean, if you've seen Austin Powers, you'll get what I mean. ;-)

"Popegate": An Asian commentary that gets it

Samir Kahlil does a little better at explaining the papal comments than I did. Worth a read... but the jist of it is the same. The Pope might have unwisely quoted a brusque Byzantine Emperor, but he was making a much larger point unrelated to the quote itself.

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=7224

Did the Pope draw a cartoon?

I'm not sure when Christianity learned to accept criticism, but it did. Anti-Christian polemics come fast and easy these days, and other than getting stirred up by the occassional broadside (such as the Da Vinci code), it has learned to cope quite well with criticism.

Islam does not yet seem able to to share this thicker skin, however. The other day, the Pope quoted some 14th century emperor regarding Jihad. His remarks were these:

In the seventh conversation ("diálesis" -- controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Now various clerics and legislators in the Islamic world are jumping up and down like the Pope was a Danish cartoonist. But it isn't as though what Emperor Paleologus said was entirely without a point. In the middle ages, it cannot be denied that the Saracens, Moors, and Arabs interpreted Jihad as permitting a rather ardent form of proselytization - the invasion of other countries, such as the transformation of Spain into Andalusia. And one cannot further deny that the terrorist movements that threaten us today are inspired by that medieval quest for a pan-global caliphate. Note that the Pope is not criticizing all Muslims who ever lived, here. He elaborates:

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...."

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

So the Pope is not fulminating against even jihad, the way his many critics in the Muslim world suggest. He is criticizing a strong vein of thought in a great deal of Islamic exegesis, one that suggests that God is so inscrutable that his law does not have to make sense. The Pope is daring to argue that divine instruction does need to make sense! The horror! Heaven forbid that Islam change any of its theological currents to accept such a view...

Given that the image problem Islam has right now comes from a small band of violent renegades who believe they can just make up their own interpretation of Islam's doctrines (such as that of Jihad), on the contrary, I would think the world of Islam would be welcoming a dialogue with the Pope. He's not seeking to exchange platitudes, but have a real dialogue about how to meet God and understand him. We wouldn't want that now, would we?

Learn to love the world

According to the Washington Post, Kimveer Gill was a blogger, a young man who wrote he "hated the world." Writing in an angry nihilist tone, one entry clearly foreshadowed what it was he would do:

The disgusting human creatures scream in panic and run in all directions, taking with them the lies and deceptions. The Death Night gazes at the humans with an empty stare, as they knock each other down in a mad dash to safety. He wishes to slaughter them as they flee. . .

While he may have had enough intuition to predict how his dark plans might unfold, his video-game, Columbine, and Matrix outlook robbed him of the more important intuition: life isn't a lie and it isn't a deception. It is instead what you make of it. It does not need to be a dark hell. The world is full of light and life, if you know where to find it. A darkened heart might observe that destructive forces are all around. Even the universe is full of nuclear violence; but that violence lights up the stars, and sends life-giving elements into the clouds of stellar dust, giving birth to infinite worlds of wonder.

So it is with the human heart. You can respond to misery in life by lashing out at it. Or you can respond to misery with charity and genuine human warmth. For there is nothing more powerful in creation than the human heart - a power which has defeated bullets and swords, a power that quite literally can move mountains and make a tree of a mustard seed. That will be the true legacy here, just as it was with Columbine. Good people will reach out in compassion and charity. They always do, and it never ceases to amaze.

For me, it is that I will let linger.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overtaken it. (John 1:5)

Why students?

Why students? I just don't get it. Not that an incident like this latest Montreal massacre is ever comprehensible - it isn't.

But students are at the very dawn of their adult life. Dawson College is a CEGEP, which is more like a senior high school than University. The kids being shot at were just beginning the journey, with most of their lives ahead of them. The young woman who died was only eighteen years of age - younger than my eldest daughter.

Why do evil people always target the most promising among us? Why do they always want to rob those who haven't had their chance yet?

Echoes of l'ecole polytechnique

On one of Canada's blackest days, a man named Marc Lepine walked into L'ecole Polytechnique and shot fourteen women dead, inspired by his hatred of women.

Today's shooting was a scary echo of both that incident and Columbine. Thank God, it appears nobody other than the shooter died this time.

Neanderthals hang on

I was reading today that in Spain, the Neanderthals hung on about 4,000 years longer than previously thought. But it was another article linked into this one that caught my eye. This one on National Geographic about how tooth growth evidence suggests that the Neanderthals had a long childhood just as we do.

This contrasts with an earlier finding that Neanderthals must have matured younger, since their wisdom teeth came in at about fifteen.

And as these contradictions floated before me, I thought up a possible explanation as to why slow growing Neanderthals might have gotten their wisdom teeth at such an early age. (Presumptious for a layman, I know but bear with me.) Neanderthals had larger mouths than we do. Perhaps it is simply that they could fit adult molars into these mouths at a younger age, and so that is when their adult molars came in!

What do you think?

An open letter to Osama Bin Laden

Five years ago today on the western calendar, the skies were blue and a warm sunny day was just getting under way. You intended to darken the skies that day, and for a short time you did. But today, just as it was that day, the skies are blue and the morning has heralded a warm sunny day. Perhaps the fact that God has seen fit to deliver today exactly the kind of day you interrupted five years ago is his way of demonstrating how impotent you really are.

I know you intended to make us live in fear that day. You certainly brought grief and anguish – there are many people in New York and elsewhere who miss the touch of hands they can no longer hold, and smiles they can no longer see except in the comfort of their memories. And certainly you, Osama, have experienced the fear you sought to bring. I read yesterday that you will not even wear a watch, for fear that the CIA can track you with it. What a miserable life you must live that you have to fear wearing a wrist watch!

But I want you to know that I do not live in fear of you, or people who make cause with you. Statistically, I really have no reason to fear you – for if statistics do mean anything, I have more reason to cower from a deer grazing by the road then I ever would from you. But I do not wish to tell you of statistics.

I began a spiritual journey that year that has only deepened with the passing of time. I know you know something of spiritual journeys from the CNN special that described your early life. But your spiritual journey led you to the philosophy some of your acolytes portrayed with these words: “You love life, we love death.”

You are right to suggest that I love life. For God created life – he created life when he uttered the words, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky.” The mere fact that life exists at all owes itself to the sacred act of God's love, the great artist expressing his heart's desire in the form of living flesh. God saw all that he had wrought and said that it was good.

I do not fear death – certainly not death at your hands – but you are right to say I love life. While you have been busy embracing death, I have been busy embracing life. I know your interpretation of Islam forbids most singing, but in the words of one of our singers (Tim McGraw), “I loved deeper, and I spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.” I have laughed. I have cried. And I have loved, silently, without saying a word at all. I have sung my heart out to God on Sunday nights, and he has listened to me, and I have been in his tender arms.

But you – you will never know God, even though it was in trying to find God that you began your transformation.

It is as you say, you love death. Your heart – when it is not full of fear of being found by the CIA – is filled with thoughts of hurting people, as though you were Ozymandias toiling in the desert to erect a pillar that might stand and impress wanderers of the distant future. But your legacy, a treasure you cherish, is a thing that moths consume and rust destroys. You will never enjoy your seventy two raisins in heaven. You will never meet God. Instead, you will only know the prison of anger and fear you have created for yourself.

It is almost enough to make a person hope that they never find you, although they probably will someday. Your pitiful and miserable existence must be more punishment than most men can possibly endure. Your life is bereft of tenderness and gentleness. You have become full of the very fear you sought to create.

Ultimately, all I want to say to you is that I do not share your fear, nor do I share your hate and anger. You sought to make a great statement. But in the lives of so many like me, your great statement vanished like a puff of smoke from a pipe. You have become a fearful figure of ridicule. To be honest, all I feel for you is pity.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(“Ozymandias,” by Percy Shelley)