Monday, March 27, 2006
Why is Kraft brand fake cheese so much better than the others?
They got all the secret government grants during the War.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Something Beautiful for God
I’ve been reading Something Beautiful for God. It is primarily Malcolm Muggeridge’s reflections on Mother Teresa, but also includes a transcript of one of his interviews with her and some of her prayers. Here are a couple of my favorite parts:
Malcolm: You took [the poor] things that they needed.
Mother Teresa: It is not very often things they need. What they need much more is what we offer them. In these twenty years of work amongst the people, I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. Nowadays we have found medicine for leprosy and lepers can be cured. There’s medicine for TB and consumptives can be cured. For all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures. But for being unwanted, except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be cured. (p. 73-4).
It seems to me that this disease can afflict many of the people you see in an affluent Starbucks: bitter middle-aged divorcées, the successful businessman who bullies everyone, teenagers who were only read to by daycare employees. This is the disease of the culture of death.
But there is hope, and it is not in pity but in active love.
Malcolm: I understand that [love must be expressed in action, and the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing love of God], and even in this short visit I’ve sensed it as I never have before. These lepers and these little children that you get off the street, they’re not just destitute people, to be pitied, but marvelous people. Anyone who’s well can pity a man who’s sick. Anyone who has enough can pity someone who hasn’t enough. But I think what you do is to make one see that these people are not just to be pitied; they are marvelous people. How do you do this?
Mother Teresa: That’s just what a Hindu gentleman said: that they and we are doing social work, and the difference between them and us is that they were doing it for something and we were doing it to somebody. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in, that we give it and we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. Because it is a continual contact with Christ in his work, it is the same contact we have during Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. There we have Jesus in the appearance of bread. But here in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and we touch him. [This is the other part, the greater gift, the harder part.] (p. 87).
These passages resound of Dostoevsky, especially in the Brothers Karamazov. Prince Myshkin (in The Idiot) and Ivan pity from a distance and destroy, while Alyosha and Fr. Zosima love by sharing the lives of others, and they redeem. The similarities are so strong that one is tempted to find out whether the Brothers Karamazov was in Mother Teresa’s library. But she didn’t have a library, and there’s no reason to think that this book was important to her. Dostoevsky and Mother Teresa both discovered the same and fundamental truth of the two great commandments: love of Christ lived through active love of neighbor in Christ.
The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease. (From a reflection, p. 53). Her Home for the Dying is filled with people who were literally picked up off the street. She is doing the work of the Good Samaritan, who cared for the traveler beaten and helpless on the side of the road. But when she sees that those she serves are Christ, she sees the deeper truth of the parable. Christ is the Good Samaritan, but much more so he is the man lying on the side of the road.
Dostoevsky discovered this because—largely through his own fault—he was the man lying on the side of the road, so much so that almost all of his critics have felt free to condescend on a scale that puts Lady Catherine De Bourgh to shame. What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t matter how Dostoevsky got to be on the side of the road, but rather what matters is that once he was there he was with Christ, in pain and ignominy. He learned there that pity, helplessness, and disgust are fellow-travellers, whereas love sees only equality and the means to serve the Beloved.
Mother Teresa learned that Christ was lying on the side of the road without apparent humiliation—certainly not exterior humiliation like Dostoevsky suffered. She learned it by uniting herself to Christ in prayer and in the Sacrament. Christ gave her a profound belief in the verse that she references throughout the book: “I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless and you did that to me.”
Malcolm: You took [the poor] things that they needed.
Mother Teresa: It is not very often things they need. What they need much more is what we offer them. In these twenty years of work amongst the people, I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. Nowadays we have found medicine for leprosy and lepers can be cured. There’s medicine for TB and consumptives can be cured. For all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures. But for being unwanted, except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be cured. (p. 73-4).
It seems to me that this disease can afflict many of the people you see in an affluent Starbucks: bitter middle-aged divorcées, the successful businessman who bullies everyone, teenagers who were only read to by daycare employees. This is the disease of the culture of death.
But there is hope, and it is not in pity but in active love.
Malcolm: I understand that [love must be expressed in action, and the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing love of God], and even in this short visit I’ve sensed it as I never have before. These lepers and these little children that you get off the street, they’re not just destitute people, to be pitied, but marvelous people. Anyone who’s well can pity a man who’s sick. Anyone who has enough can pity someone who hasn’t enough. But I think what you do is to make one see that these people are not just to be pitied; they are marvelous people. How do you do this?
Mother Teresa: That’s just what a Hindu gentleman said: that they and we are doing social work, and the difference between them and us is that they were doing it for something and we were doing it to somebody. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in, that we give it and we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. Because it is a continual contact with Christ in his work, it is the same contact we have during Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. There we have Jesus in the appearance of bread. But here in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and we touch him. [This is the other part, the greater gift, the harder part.] (p. 87).
These passages resound of Dostoevsky, especially in the Brothers Karamazov. Prince Myshkin (in The Idiot) and Ivan pity from a distance and destroy, while Alyosha and Fr. Zosima love by sharing the lives of others, and they redeem. The similarities are so strong that one is tempted to find out whether the Brothers Karamazov was in Mother Teresa’s library. But she didn’t have a library, and there’s no reason to think that this book was important to her. Dostoevsky and Mother Teresa both discovered the same and fundamental truth of the two great commandments: love of Christ lived through active love of neighbor in Christ.
The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease. (From a reflection, p. 53). Her Home for the Dying is filled with people who were literally picked up off the street. She is doing the work of the Good Samaritan, who cared for the traveler beaten and helpless on the side of the road. But when she sees that those she serves are Christ, she sees the deeper truth of the parable. Christ is the Good Samaritan, but much more so he is the man lying on the side of the road.
Dostoevsky discovered this because—largely through his own fault—he was the man lying on the side of the road, so much so that almost all of his critics have felt free to condescend on a scale that puts Lady Catherine De Bourgh to shame. What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t matter how Dostoevsky got to be on the side of the road, but rather what matters is that once he was there he was with Christ, in pain and ignominy. He learned there that pity, helplessness, and disgust are fellow-travellers, whereas love sees only equality and the means to serve the Beloved.
Mother Teresa learned that Christ was lying on the side of the road without apparent humiliation—certainly not exterior humiliation like Dostoevsky suffered. She learned it by uniting herself to Christ in prayer and in the Sacrament. Christ gave her a profound belief in the verse that she references throughout the book: “I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless and you did that to me.”
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Sam and comments
Feel free to refer to Sam by name. As someone who has to be watched while he does his duties (so as to be cleaned up after), he has no privacy. His name does not appear in his posts for the same reason that Flannery does not appear in mine.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Iseult of the Fair Paw
One of the other humans that lives in my house has a small statue of a baby lying in a manger that I take care of. The straw can’t be comfortable, so I am removing it piece by piece to make room for a down bed. The down will come from the five or six birds that I am hunting as a present for my mail-order bride, Iseult of the Fair Paw. My mother told me that my father gave her a whole dead badger when they were married, and that I couldn’t get married until I could give my bride a token of my love. I’ve already killed one bird and one rabbit, but both were taken away from me. My person can be so reckless with important things! I tried to tell her that I needed the bird and the rabbit, and that I would keep them under her bed, but she ignored me. Now every time that we go outside I check all the bushes for presents, and sometimes I feel like even a cat would do! I know I just need to be patient, but I’ve already had to wait so long for my fair-pawed darling.
But Iseult never whines at me, although I know that she is unhappy at her job taking care of spoiled children. She has a great soul. Her life, though short, has been heroic. She was orphaned after her parents’ tragic escape attempt and grew up on the streets of East Berlin. (I grew up on the streets of South Dallas, so we have lots in common). Her parents tried to tunnel under the Berlin wall, but were stopped by a horde of communist sewer rats. Husband and wife fought back-to-back, and they took out rat-squadrons by the hundred, but in the end they were overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. She always breaks down at this point, and I try to comfort her, but it’s hard when she’s so far away.
The waiting is the hardest part.
Crunchy oats and honey
If you lived in a communist country, what kind of granola bars would you bribe the officials to stock?
Monday, March 06, 2006
Bull in a Grocery Store
While I was at the grocery store the other day I noticed a fellow shopper who looked (and moved) like a frustrated bull. The store was unusually crowded, and every time he needed to negotiate through a clump of shoppers he seemed to be reminding himself that, although catching the unwashed masses on his horns and tossing them into the displays would do them no end of good, society would wrongly censure such a course, leaving nothing but baleful glares and teeth-grinding to relieve his feelings.
In general, he seemed like he was in a hurry, but he did so much back-and-forth-to-the-opposite-side-of-the-store-ing that I had been sitting by the door waiting for my roommate for some time before he showed up at the check-out lane.
He started issuing extremely detailed instructions for bagging the groceries, but suddenly broke off in despair and frustration, as though he had just heard the checker tell the bagger, “Okay now, if we’re really going to make this model of the Eifel Tower work, we’re going to need to use the bread and eggs for the foundation and save the canned goods for the final spire.” He ground out, “Oh, I’ll just do it myself!” and proceeded to bag his groceries very, very slowly. That is, it took him a long time, but he worked feverishly with fierce concentration the whole time.
When he was finally freed from doing the bagger’s job, he rushed over to pay, which also took a long time because he had to do it just so, and wanted cash back in an intricate breakdown of different bills (involving, if I remember correctly, 20 ones). The poor checker (whose line was curving around the floral department) got the money out quickly, but then had to count it back. The impatient man made “no, just give it to me” noises while reaching towards the money and making little “gimme” motions with his hand. The checker ignored the beefy hand fluttering centimeters away from his own, and counted back the whole sum (it was a lot of money, so he really needed to). The instant he finished the man grabbed the money from him and rushed off to be oppressed by inefficiency and incompetence elsewhere.
[Charity note: This post does not necessarily diagnose the bull's spiritual state. Motives and character have been supplied solely by my imagination.]
In general, he seemed like he was in a hurry, but he did so much back-and-forth-to-the-opposite-side-of-the-store-ing that I had been sitting by the door waiting for my roommate for some time before he showed up at the check-out lane.
He started issuing extremely detailed instructions for bagging the groceries, but suddenly broke off in despair and frustration, as though he had just heard the checker tell the bagger, “Okay now, if we’re really going to make this model of the Eifel Tower work, we’re going to need to use the bread and eggs for the foundation and save the canned goods for the final spire.” He ground out, “Oh, I’ll just do it myself!” and proceeded to bag his groceries very, very slowly. That is, it took him a long time, but he worked feverishly with fierce concentration the whole time.
When he was finally freed from doing the bagger’s job, he rushed over to pay, which also took a long time because he had to do it just so, and wanted cash back in an intricate breakdown of different bills (involving, if I remember correctly, 20 ones). The poor checker (whose line was curving around the floral department) got the money out quickly, but then had to count it back. The impatient man made “no, just give it to me” noises while reaching towards the money and making little “gimme” motions with his hand. The checker ignored the beefy hand fluttering centimeters away from his own, and counted back the whole sum (it was a lot of money, so he really needed to). The instant he finished the man grabbed the money from him and rushed off to be oppressed by inefficiency and incompetence elsewhere.
[Charity note: This post does not necessarily diagnose the bull's spiritual state. Motives and character have been supplied solely by my imagination.]
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Motherhood and the Theotokos
Sometimes I come across people urging Marian piety because “she was Christ’s mother!” with no further argument required. And it’s never been very convincing because mothers tend to be a mixed bag. It reminds me of the Delaney sisters, who voted for Ted Kennedy even though they disapproved of his politics and morals. What was more important for a politician than politics and morals? His devotion to his mother. Their own undifferentiated respect for motherhood led them to vote for an all-around scoundrel because of a supposed regard for the woman who raised him to be what he is.
Consider the mother in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep. She is an avid member of both a society for mothers advocating widespread use of birth control and another society for mothers in favor of unlimited motherhood. She sees no problem with this—it’s all motherhood. There’s a great moment when, unsettled by her daughter’s waywardness, she accidentally begins reading the unlimited mothers a speech prepared for the eugenics mothers and nearly gets lynched.
And in general, mothers can be remarkably callous toward other women’s children. Addie Bundren (of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) seems to have hated her own children about as much as she hated other women’s, but hatred was something precious to her. The norm is what stepchildren often suffer—their father’s new wife is a basically good woman, not a psychopath, but she just doesn’t have the interest in the children living in her house that didn’t come from her own body. Usually it just means that she is not quite as patient with them, doesn’t get them as nice of food when her children aren’t around, is more likely to blame them for things that go wrong, and so on. Their motherhood is strictly biological and does not extend to other children. (I’m not going to talk about what stepfathers do here, but it can be far worse.) Then there are the mothers who kill or wound their daughters’ rivals on the cheerleading squad in a twisted version of the maternal desire for the good of their children. In the end it seems like you have to say that mothers are human, and as such sometimes Lana Lee is right—“Mothers are full of s***.”
But where does that leave Marian piety?
Look at Luke 11:27-8. A woman in the crowd shouts out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed the breasts that you sucked!” She is the archetypical proponent of Marian piety as given above. Jesus’s reply at first seems to be a rebuke at her focus on Mary: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” But as M.M. said at a recent Bible study, think about what he said. Mary keeps the word of God when she says “Let it be to me according to your word,” which results in her keeping the Word of God within her in the full sense of biological motherhood. Her motherhood, in fulfillment of her whole life, is entirely focused on the will of God. It is not directed towards her own glory or preference, so much so that she accepts the death of her son for the sake of other women’s children. Christ is not saying that we shouldn’t honor his mother, but that we should honor her for the right reason, a reason that will actually lead to honoring the womb whose fruit was Jesus.
And it is a fruitful honor. On the spiritual level we are given the example of complete surrender to God which we all need to strive for. On the physical level, the reality of childbearing has been changed since it brought salvation to the children of Eve, and should never again be seen as a punishment or an illness. In her fiat, the Theotokos participated in the Divine reversal of sin: In pain she brought forth a child who crushed the head of the serpent who had brought her the pain. And most importantly, Christian mothers are invited to give their own children the same freedom to do God’s will that Mary gave Christ.
The mothers in the first examples are focused on themselves, and on children only as an extension of themselves whose life and character they have a right to. The mother in Twilight Sleep is defeated when her daughter refuses to follow in her footsteps. Addie Bundren imposes her will on her children even in death in the gruesome pilgrimage she forces upon them. Their motherhood is an ugly thing.
But this is not the way it has to be, and it is not what motherhood really means. In a truly beautiful post, Mrs. Bear compares motherhood to contemplative monasticism, and it is clear that for her motherhood is like Mary’s motherhood: the contemplation of God.
Consider the mother in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep. She is an avid member of both a society for mothers advocating widespread use of birth control and another society for mothers in favor of unlimited motherhood. She sees no problem with this—it’s all motherhood. There’s a great moment when, unsettled by her daughter’s waywardness, she accidentally begins reading the unlimited mothers a speech prepared for the eugenics mothers and nearly gets lynched.
And in general, mothers can be remarkably callous toward other women’s children. Addie Bundren (of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) seems to have hated her own children about as much as she hated other women’s, but hatred was something precious to her. The norm is what stepchildren often suffer—their father’s new wife is a basically good woman, not a psychopath, but she just doesn’t have the interest in the children living in her house that didn’t come from her own body. Usually it just means that she is not quite as patient with them, doesn’t get them as nice of food when her children aren’t around, is more likely to blame them for things that go wrong, and so on. Their motherhood is strictly biological and does not extend to other children. (I’m not going to talk about what stepfathers do here, but it can be far worse.) Then there are the mothers who kill or wound their daughters’ rivals on the cheerleading squad in a twisted version of the maternal desire for the good of their children. In the end it seems like you have to say that mothers are human, and as such sometimes Lana Lee is right—“Mothers are full of s***.”
But where does that leave Marian piety?
Look at Luke 11:27-8. A woman in the crowd shouts out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed the breasts that you sucked!” She is the archetypical proponent of Marian piety as given above. Jesus’s reply at first seems to be a rebuke at her focus on Mary: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” But as M.M. said at a recent Bible study, think about what he said. Mary keeps the word of God when she says “Let it be to me according to your word,” which results in her keeping the Word of God within her in the full sense of biological motherhood. Her motherhood, in fulfillment of her whole life, is entirely focused on the will of God. It is not directed towards her own glory or preference, so much so that she accepts the death of her son for the sake of other women’s children. Christ is not saying that we shouldn’t honor his mother, but that we should honor her for the right reason, a reason that will actually lead to honoring the womb whose fruit was Jesus.
And it is a fruitful honor. On the spiritual level we are given the example of complete surrender to God which we all need to strive for. On the physical level, the reality of childbearing has been changed since it brought salvation to the children of Eve, and should never again be seen as a punishment or an illness. In her fiat, the Theotokos participated in the Divine reversal of sin: In pain she brought forth a child who crushed the head of the serpent who had brought her the pain. And most importantly, Christian mothers are invited to give their own children the same freedom to do God’s will that Mary gave Christ.
The mothers in the first examples are focused on themselves, and on children only as an extension of themselves whose life and character they have a right to. The mother in Twilight Sleep is defeated when her daughter refuses to follow in her footsteps. Addie Bundren imposes her will on her children even in death in the gruesome pilgrimage she forces upon them. Their motherhood is an ugly thing.
But this is not the way it has to be, and it is not what motherhood really means. In a truly beautiful post, Mrs. Bear compares motherhood to contemplative monasticism, and it is clear that for her motherhood is like Mary’s motherhood: the contemplation of God.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Cuteness and Being
Whether the Infant Confessor (son of the Sapientiae Amatores) is more cute than energetic?It seems that the Infant Confessor is more energetic than cute.
For he is in constant motion. Further, his short and infrequent naps are marked by a concentrated effort to rest as quickly as possible. But motion and concentration require energy. Therefore, energy seems to be an essential attribute of the Infant Confessor, leaving no time when he is not energetic. Therefore he is more energetic than cute.
On the contrary, the Infant Confessor is more cute than energetic.
For his constant energy is in itself cute, such that whatever amount of energy is added, an equal amount of cuteness is also added. Finally, energy is an attribute, while cuteness is convertible with being.
Therefore, the Infant Confessor is more cute than energetic.
Touch the puppet head
Is it legitimate to make up a meme, or do they have to be spontaneously generated? Anyhow, here’s my answer to the one that both Clashing Symbol and Mrs. Bear tagged me with.
7 things to do before I die
Become holy
Pay off my student loans
Write a book
Get a Ph.D.
Be imprisoned in China
Ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad
Visit Pope John Paul II’s tomb
7 things I cannot do
Wolf-whistle
Fly (despite years of trying)
Be silent in the middle of an interesting conversation
Keep food from escaping onto my clothes
Be entirely still
Maintain a savings account balance of four digits
Keep from discovering personalities in things (including numbers) around me
7 things I like about my other half
He’s so vigilant
He’s so easy to please
He’s cute when he sulks
[This is boring. On to the next one.]
7 favorite books
Money in the Bank or The Mating Season both by P.G. Wodehouse
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
7 favorite movies
The Royal Tenenbaums
Rumble in the Bronx
Pride and Prejudice (A&E version)
Conspiracy Theory
Napoleon Dynamite
The Disney Cinderella (this was when I was a little girl)
Horse Feathers (The Marx Brothers)
7 things I say
Right, right, right (Annie says I say this—I’d never noticed)
Well, I think…
No no no no no
Yup
...Sam...
That’s horrible! (Again, Annie)
Make references to obscure songs that only Mrs. Bear or Guy Crouchback would get (see title).
7 people to meme
No one’s left. I came out of my room from being sick, and found myself in a ghost town that all the cool people had left days and days ago.
7 things to do before I die
Become holy
Pay off my student loans
Write a book
Get a Ph.D.
Be imprisoned in China
Ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad
Visit Pope John Paul II’s tomb
7 things I cannot do
Wolf-whistle
Fly (despite years of trying)
Be silent in the middle of an interesting conversation
Keep food from escaping onto my clothes
Be entirely still
Maintain a savings account balance of four digits
Keep from discovering personalities in things (including numbers) around me
7 things I like about my other half
He’s so vigilant
He’s so easy to please
He’s cute when he sulks
[This is boring. On to the next one.]
7 favorite books
Money in the Bank or The Mating Season both by P.G. Wodehouse
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
7 favorite movies
The Royal Tenenbaums
Rumble in the Bronx
Pride and Prejudice (A&E version)
Conspiracy Theory
Napoleon Dynamite
The Disney Cinderella (this was when I was a little girl)
Horse Feathers (The Marx Brothers)
7 things I say
Right, right, right (Annie says I say this—I’d never noticed)
Well, I think…
No no no no no
Yup
...Sam...
That’s horrible! (Again, Annie)
Make references to obscure songs that only Mrs. Bear or Guy Crouchback would get (see title).
7 people to meme
No one’s left. I came out of my room from being sick, and found myself in a ghost town that all the cool people had left days and days ago.
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