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.