Over at the Inside Catholic blog, Zoey Romanowsky has a nice weekly feature which I’ve been meaning to mention, “Flannery Friday,” in which she posts a quote from Flannery O’Connor. Usually it’s from one of O’Connor's letters collected in The Habit of Being. I especially liked this week’s entry. It’s from a letter to the friend who is kept anonymous in the book and known only as “A” but who has since been identified as Elizabeth Hester. She entered the Church during her correspondence with Flannery but left a few years later. I won’t steal Zoey Romanowsky’s idea by reproducing the whole quote, and you should go read it, but I was struck by this sentence:

“I don’t think any the less of you outside the Church than in it, but what is painful is the realization that this means a narrowing of life for you and a lessening of the desire for life.”

I think most Christians have an A in their lives, probably more than one. We pray for them, but many of us are hesitant about trying actively to persuade them. Or at least I am, unless the person clearly wants the dialog: too often such efforts are counter-productive or misunderstood, especially in a culture where corrupt and/or misguided evangelists have to some degree poisoned the atmosphere.

And yet what I want to communicate is something like what Flannery O’Connor says here. I don’t want to defeat you in an argument or dominate your will with mine; I don’t want to bully you into thinking and behaving in certain ways simply because they are the ways of which I approve. And lurking behind it (or maybe quite out front) is the uneasiness that the other may take any challenge as disapproval or rejection, although “I don’t think any less of you outside the Church than in it.” I want you to have life. I don’t want you to settle for a life of disappointment that ends in death. I want you to have a desire for life that can’t be satisfied with anything less than the absolute—perfection in eternity, God himself.

Absence of belief means a gradual narrowing of possibilities. For most people youth is a time of seemingly endless possibility, but because one is not infinite, some of these possibilities must be passed over. And even if one is not disappointed in the narrow set of things which is all even the most fortunate person can attain, time will see to it that those things are taken away, if not by circumstances or personal fault then, with absolute certainty, by old age and death. This makes even an apparently and mostly happy and successful life a tragedy in the end.

...a narrowing of life... Life without the hope we have in Christ is a sort of funnel-shaped tunnel closed at the end, wide at the mouth but getting more and more narrow as you go, until final it comes to a point beyond which nothing can pass. Life as a Christian is the opposite. It may seem narrow at the opening, it may exclude some things one might have enjoyed, but for the spirit it gets wider and wider until it finally opens out into eternity.

As if to illustrate the point, Betty Hester eventually committed suicide, twenty-plus years after Flannery herself died of the disease that kept her in discomfort and pain for much of her life. I suppose Flannery was probably praying for her as long as she was alive, and I wonder if she offered some of her own considerable suffering for her friend, and possibly kept suicide from being the last word between Betty Hester and God.

The other day when I posted a picture of the shy and modest spiderwort I mentioned that there are so many azaleas around here that I almost stop noticing them. Here’s what I was talking about.

Take that, Woodward.

I call the picture above “an azalea” because that seems to be the custom around here—people use the singular for the bush more than for the single flower, perhaps because you hardly ever see a single flower. That is not my azalea, by the way; I don’t know whose house that is. The only azaleas at our house currently are babies, planted six or eight weeks ago, and just a foot or two high with no more than a dozen or so blossoms. Last Sunday on the way home from Mass I asked my wife to take a few pictures of azaleas for my blog. The ones here just happened to be good specimens that we passed. I like the next one for its variety.

The azaleas usually start blooming in late February and early March, and are now beginning to wind down. We’ve had heavy rain for the last couple of days, and azalea flowers don’t handle that well; these bushes probably now look like they’re covered in wet toilet paper.

Related to the previous post: when I was a sophomore or junior in college, in the late ’60s, I had to take a couple of psychology courses—a social science requirement or something. One of them was something like Psych 102, not the first course but not very far along, either. In an early attempt to harness technology for educational purposes, the lectures were recorded and delivered via what I think was “closed circuit” TV, a term which seems to have disappeared. At any rate the classroom had desks and a TV, but no teacher, and we sat and watched the lectures on TV.

Well, after about 1.6 of those, I thought the hell with this and left.

I never went back to another lecture. I browsed around in the book, thought it looked like pretty simple common-sense stuff, and put it aside. For the rest of the semester I didn’t do anything at all except keep track of when there was going to be a test and go take it. I made a B.

I’ve known several people who report having dreams like the one described in this cartoon from xkcd (click for larger version if you can’t read it).

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it may have been in a comment discussion: this sort of dream seems to be a fairly widespread phenomenon, but I have never had one anything like it, though I know several people who do, regularly.

There are people who are natural students, and people who are not. The natural students basically like school, or at least are very conscientious about it, and care a lot about it. I am a not-student. Of the many hours I have spent in school (first grade through Master’s degree) I probably hated over 90% of them. That was where I received my training in daydreaming, in travelling away in my mind to a more interesting place, which is one of the few things I was ever very good at (not to mention having a natural aptitude for it) but which unfortunately does not facilitate the acquisition of more useful skills. And I never really cared that much about grades, which my record amply shows. In most subjects I could do all right without working very hard, so that was all I did, shrugging off the occasional D in math or something.

So it’s not at all surprising that I’ve never had this dream, while others are regularly tormented by it—my wife, for instance, who was a straight-A student.

I started to call this post “I Was a Teenage Underachiever,” but since I’ve continued to be one for the rest of my life so far it wouldn’t be quite accurate. An underachiever avant le lettre, maybe.

Two of my favorites: “Alison,” from Souvlaki, with a rather nice somewhat ’60s-nostalgic video; where are the girls of yesteryear? (3:34):

“Waves,” from Just For a Day—no video, just the album cover. This would be a candidate for my favorite Slowdive song. It seems to be about death, forgiveness, and salvation (5:54):

The lyrics are beautiful but a bit worrisome:

Leaving all my sins I turn away
Like soaring birds I watch my sorrows play

That’s lovely, but then:

Don’t you know
I’ve left and gone away
You’re knocking on the door I closed today

That could be taken as a reference to suicide. If it is, then I must say, for the record: to take one’s own life can never make “everything look brighter” or “soothe the pain away.” It can only lead further from the light.

Ok, one more. This one, “Avalyn,” is an instrumental, and although pleasant is not all that good, but I’m including it for the rather striking message at the beginning of the video (5:28):

There are so many azaleas blooming here at this time of year that I almost stop noticing them. Instead, it’s this little flower that represents the real arrival of spring to me. They pop up in the yard and close by, and I always try to avoid mowing until they’ve stopped blooming. This picture is a little larger than actual size, depending on your screen’s resolution—the blossoms are usually about an inch or so across (2-3cm).

Another sign that the real warm weather is here: when I went out for lunch my car was uncomfortably hot. We may get another brief cold spell, but it’s pretty much over now.

“Sitting in it...I find myself striking an action pose quite unconsciously.” What is it?

Warp factor definitely operative, I would say.

(Hat tip to Will.)

I tend to forget that the people who read this blog don’t necessarily read the Caelum et Terra blog. So, apropos the discussion of the Byzantine liturgy in the comments on the previous post, if you haven’t already seen it you might want to check out Daniel’s post about his Byzantine Rite parish.

In New Orleans on Sunday we went to Mass at St. Patrick’s, where there is a weekly Sunday morning Tridentine Mass (note to non-Catholics: this is what’s commonly referred to as “the old Mass” or “the old liturgy”—it’s in Latin and is different in other significant ways from the current Mass in local languages). I want to say two quick things about it:

(1) I don’t necessarily want the Church to return to this liturgy, and if it were available in my area I don’t know that I would go regularly. (My fondest dream, as I’ve mentioned before, is of an Anglican Rite.) However, I am pretty convinced that as an aesthetic object the old liturgy is superior. Although there were several points at which I wasn’t sure what was going on, I had a sense that the rite, considered from first words to last, possessed a unity superior to that of the new liturgy, and that this unity really brings out the elegant shape—the architecture, you might say—of the rite. And it’s also superior in many details—many of the prayers, for instance, had a greater spiritual depth than is commonly found in the new texts.

(2) The standard objection to the old liturgy is that the only people who care about it are very old and “never made the adjustment” to the new one, or “couldn’t accept” it—there aren’t many of them, and soon they’ll die and there’ll be no need to discuss this anymore. This is one Mass at one parish, but if it’s any guide, that’s not true. It was well-attended—I’d say the church, which is fairly large, was well over half full. And grey or white heads were distinctly in the minority. I would guess that a majority of the people there were under fifty, and you’d have to be older than that to have experienced the old liturgy as an adult. There were many who were quite young—college age, or a bit older (and it says something that they had gotten up early enough to be at this 9:30 Mass). There were a number of families with young children. And at some point toward the end of Mass I heard one of my favorite Catholic hymns, the crying baby.

A question for those more knowledgeable about the visual arts than I am, or at least about religious art: if you go to the parish web site link above, there’s a picture of the sanctuary. If you click on the picture, you’ll get a much larger version, probably too big to fit on your screen (it may take a minute or two to load, depending on your network speed). Look at the right panel of the painting behind the altar. I don’t much like this representation of Jesus, and part of the reason is the sort of curvy posture of the figure, which strikes me as somewhat effeminate. One sees it fairly often in devotional art. Is there any particular reason for it—some theological idea behind it, or something of that sort? I know that in icons, for instance, there are definite reasons for things that initially seem oddly proportioned etc. (Note to Janet: see Our Lady’s lantern near the top of the panel.)

I’m going to be out of town and away from computers for most of the weekend. So when you want a hit of LoDW, you can listen to and watch these over and over again instead of reading some balderdash from me. They say a lot of what I want to say but can’t, anyway. (Of course you may well have come here for the comments anyway, right?) I’m indebted to my friend Daniel for introducing me to this band some years ago. He included a few of their songs on a mixtape, and since then I think I’ve managed to get hold of pretty much everything they ever released.

I would like to try to describe the way the best of their music makes me feel, but I wouldn't be able to. The closest thing is something we’ve discussed here several times, what C. S. Lewis called Joy but which is better described as an almost unbearable yearning.

I picked these two partly because the videos actually complement the music. Wish they were sharper. Here’s “Shine” (5:20):

“Catch the Breeze” (4:28):

I haven’t posted many pictures recently, and the reason is that they never look very good as they come from the camera, and I spend a lot of time and drive myself a little crazy tinkering with them. For instance, it was quite foggy Monday morning, and I took a number of pictures when I walked the dog. But it was also rather dark, and things tend to come out dark from this camera anyway (I’m thinking of reading the instruction book). So none of them are post-worthy without adjusting the brightness, at least. And once I start adjusting I can’t make up my mind what looks best, and/or what looks most like what I actually saw.

So anyway...here’s one that comes close to the way things actually looked:

I haven’t posted many pictures recently, and the reason is that they never look very good as they come from the camera, and I spend a lot of time and drive myself a little crazy tinkering with them. For instance, it was quite foggy Monday morning, and I took a number of pictures when I walked the dog. But it was also rather dark, and things tend to come out dark from this camera anyway (I’m thinking of reading the instruction book). So none of them are post-worthy without adjusting the brightness, at least. And once I start adjusting I can’t make up my mind what looks best, and/or what looks most like what I actually saw.

So anyway...here’s one that comes close to the way things actually looked:

You may have heard this film recommended; I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned at least once in comments here. It was very highly praised a year or two ago when it came out. Set in 1984 in East Germany, it’s about a Stazi (secret police) official who finds himself sympathetic to a couple on whom he is spying, and gets involved in their lives. Well, “spying” doesn’t quite tell the whole story—the couple’s apartment is bugged, and the Stazi are listening to them 24 hours a day. Part of the effect of that movie is that you are left with an all-too-convincing sense of what that meant, and how it felt to know that it had been done to you.

We watched it last night, Monday night, and I’ll say no more about the plot—I’ll just say that it’s every bit as good as people have said, and you should see it. It’s only partly about politics, but its portrait of life in a totalitarian society is sobering and disturbing. Much of the world might have gone this way, and may yet.

Monday also saw Mr. Obama’s declaration of triumph on behalf of what he called “science” but which was actually a question of ethics, in which he declared, magisterially, that any moral reservation about the use of human embryos as raw material for medical treatment is an unfounded scruple to be dismissed with mild contempt. I suppose the mildness of the contempt is the reward, likely the only reward, of those who supported him in spite of their disagreement with him on this and other life-related matters, and who believed him when he said he would listen to them.

I had a dream sometime in the small hours which somehow involved three things: the anxious and paranoid atmosphere of the movie, Mr. Obama’s venture into ethics, and a counterfeit Catholic Church which featured more pomp and color than the real thing has these days—there were a lot of people in red and gold robes—but which was a fraud concealing something very evil. I can’t remember anything more specific about the dream, but the atmosphere of it troubled me off and on all day.

Update: Remembering a little more about that dream, I realized that this church-thing wasn’t really posing as the Catholic Church, but rather was a substitute for it. It was a dressing-up of secularism to satisfy the human need for ceremony and ritual, a structure built on and around nothing. And the evil thing that I sensed at the center was not some specific thing, some barbarous practice, but nothingness. There was something horrible—horrible in that indescribable dream way—about the lie involved, the trappings of devotion directed at the void. Something like the reaction I’ve always had to the Objective Room in That Hideous Strength.

You may have heard this film recommended; I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned at least once in comments here. It was very highly praised a year or two ago when it came out. Set in 1984 in East Germany, it’s about a Stazi (secret police) official who finds himself sympathetic to a couple on whom he is spying, and gets involved in their lives. Well, “spying” doesn’t quite tell the whole story—the couple’s apartment is bugged, and the Stazi are listening to them 24 hours a day. Part of the effect of that movie is that you are left with an all-too-convincing sense of what that meant, and how it felt to know that it had been done to you.

We watched it last night, Monday night, and I’ll say no more about the plot—I’ll just say that it’s every bit as good as people have said, and you should see it. It’s only partly about politics, but its portrait of life in a totalitarian society is sobering and disturbing. Much of the world might have gone this way, and may yet.

Monday also saw Mr. Obama’s declaration of triumph on behalf of what he called “science” but which was actually a question of ethics, in which he declared, magisterially, that any moral reservation about the use of human embryos as raw material for medical treatment is an unfounded scruple to be dismissed with mild contempt. I suppose the mildness of the contempt is the reward, likely the only reward, of those who supported him in spite of their disagreement with him on this and other life-related matters, and who believed him when he said he would listen to them.

I had a dream sometime in the small hours which somehow involved three things: the anxious and paranoid atmosphere of the movie, Mr. Obama’s venture into ethics, and a counterfeit Catholic Church which featured more pomp and color than the real thing has these days—there were a lot of people in red and gold robes—but which was a fraud concealing something very evil. I can’t remember anything more specific about the dream, but the atmosphere of it troubled me off and on all day.

Update: Remembering a little more about that dream, I realized that this church-thing wasn’t really posing as the Catholic Church, but rather was a substitute for it. It was a dressing-up of secularism to satisfy the human need for ceremony and ritual, a structure built on and around nothing. And the evil thing that I sensed at the center was not some specific thing, some barbarous practice, but nothingness. There was something horrible—horrible in that indescribable dream way—about the lie involved, the trappings of devotion directed at the void. Something like the reaction I’ve always had to the Objective Room in That Hideous Strength.

...how bad an idea it is to forget the root password on an HP-UX system in trusted mode, the answer is: pretty bad.

Not at all related, but just because I’ve been having a bad day, here’s some humor from xkcd (click to enlarge if you can’t read it):

This one’s not funny but I like it.

And while I’m here: Daylight Saving Time is a capitalist plot, and I don’t like it. The writer of the piece reports that he got some responses giving good reasons for the change, such as fathers saying that they now have more daylight after work during which they can play with their children. Yeah, well, for every one of you there are probably two that go fishing. You could also go inside and read them a story.

And one more bit of miscellany: did Ross Douthat read the same Atlas Shrugged that I did? I was in fact expecting a bad but interesting book, but found it deadly dull after the first hundred pages or so, and only pressed on because I was determined not to express an opinion about it without having read the whole thing.

...how bad an idea it is to forget the root password on an HP-UX system in trusted mode, the answer is: pretty bad.

Not at all related, but just because I’ve been having a bad day, here’s some humor from xkcd (click to enlarge if you can’t read it):

This one’s not funny but I like it.

And while I’m here: Daylight Saving Time is a capitalist plot, and I don’t like it. The writer of the piece reports that he got some responses giving good reasons for the change, such as fathers saying that they now have more daylight after work during which they can play with their children. Yeah, well, for every one of you there are probably two that go fishing. You could also go inside and read them a story.

And one more bit of miscellany: did Ross Douthat read the same Atlas Shrugged that I did? I was in fact expecting a bad but interesting book, but found it deadly dull after the first hundred pages or so, and only pressed on because I was determined not to express an opinion about it without having read the whole thing.

I’m not, in general, a fan of the poppy Christian-themed music known sometimes as contemporary christian music (CCM) or praise-and-worship music. I do tend to like it better than the Catholic Glory and Praise or Gather sort of thing, which falls into some queasy-making place between The Kingston Trio and Broadway. CCM/P&W tends to be closer to rock—to be rock, quite often—and I prefer that; if we’re going to have Christian music that appropriates the emotive power of popular music, why try to be all dainty about it?

There are only two songs here, but I have multiple performances of each because I wasn’t entirely pleased with any of them. I don’t much like (in fact I mostly dislike) the actual video part of the videos below: Bible verses and the kind of sentimental Christian art that makes me simultaneously cringe and feel slightly guilty about cringing—after all, it’s done with the best possible intentions. Anyway, consider moving another window over the videos after you start them, and just listening to the music.

This is the kind of music we have at the Sunday evening Mass which my wife and I attend at our local parish. (We stopped driving over to Mobile to the cathedral when gas prices went through the roof last year, and, since we are definitely not morning people, we like having Mass at the end of the day.) Some months ago the choir sang a song which had the flavor of the old Protestant hymns I grew up with in the Methodist Church. But there were touches in the words here and there that made me think it was contemporary. With the aid of the Internet I soon found that it was the work of a contemporary British Christian artist, Stuart Townend.

Here is the song as performed by the American Christian rock group Skillet. The video consists only of Bible verses (these are Evangelicals, you know) (4:12):

Here it is performed by the composer, in a more elaborate arrangement (3:14):

The next song is one that just knocked me out some years ago when the choir sang it at Mass. I thought the opening phrases might be some sort of folk tune, but as far as I know the song is completely the work of one writer, Annie Herring. Here it is, performed by the composer in a very elaborate arrangement, with excellent sound, but with maybe the most sentimental video (5:23):

Here it is in a live performance by what I take to be a semi-professional group: a bit rough around the edges, but effective (5:25):

Lastly, here’s a nice acappella arrangement, marred by the overly loud spoken intro and outro added, apparently, by the guy who posted the video (2:45):

That “Is he calling me?” part really gets me.

I’m not, in general, a fan of the poppy Christian-themed music known sometimes as contemporary christian music (CCM) or praise-and-worship music. I do tend to like it better than the Catholic Glory and Praise or Gather sort of thing, which falls into some queasy-making place between The Kingston Trio and Broadway. CCM/P&W tends to be closer to rock—to be rock, quite often—and I prefer that; if we’re going to have Christian music that appropriates the emotive power of popular music, why try to be all dainty about it?

There are only two songs here, but I have multiple performances of each because I wasn’t entirely pleased with any of them. I don’t much like (in fact I mostly dislike) the actual video part of the videos below: Bible verses and the kind of sentimental Christian art that makes me simultaneously cringe and feel slightly guilty about cringing—after all, it’s done with the best possible intentions. Anyway, consider moving another window over the videos after you start them, and just listening to the music.

This is the kind of music we have at the Sunday evening Mass which my wife and I attend at our local parish. (We stopped driving over to Mobile to the cathedral when gas prices went through the roof last year, and, since we are definitely not morning people, we like having Mass at the end of the day.) Some months ago the choir sang a song which had the flavor of the old Protestant hymns I grew up with in the Methodist Church. But there were touches in the words here and there that made me think it was contemporary. With the aid of the Internet I soon found that it was the work of a contemporary British Christian artist, Stuart Townend.

Here is the song as performed by the American Christian rock group Skillet. The video consists only of Bible verses (these are Evangelicals, you know) (4:12):

Here it is performed by the composer, in a more elaborate arrangement (3:14):

The next song is one that just knocked me out some years ago when the choir sang it at Mass. I thought the opening phrases might be some sort of folk tune, but as far as I know the song is completely the work of one writer, Annie Herring. Here it is, performed by the composer in a very elaborate arrangement, with excellent sound, but with maybe the most sentimental video (5:23):

Here it is in a live performance by what I take to be a semi-professional group: a bit rough around the edges, but effective (5:25):

Lastly, here’s a nice acappella arrangement, marred by the overly loud spoken intro and outro added, apparently, by the guy who posted the video (2:45):

That “Is he calling me?” part really gets me.

I’m adding John Schwenkler’s blog, Upturned Earth. And Amy Welborn is now blogging at BeliefNet, under the title Via Media, so I’m replacing the link to her old blog, Charlotte Was Both, with the new one. The post which is currently at the top there continues her wrestling with the recent death of her husband, Michael Dubruiel (whose name I misspelled in a previous post; must correct):

I am desperate for Good News. The good news that even though I mess up...all is not lost. I need the Good News that in Jesus, it will—it is—all made right....

Amen. (Read the entire post.)

A Guest Post by Janet Cupo

Janet and I were discussing, in email, the power of certain Christian symbols. I mentioned that in an unfinished (and probably never to be finished) novel I have a character who’s not Catholic but is quietly haunted by the image of the Sacred Heart as a symbol of the relationship between love and suffering. This reminded her of the novel My Name is Asher Lev, which I haven’t read.

It has been a long time since I read the book, but I think I have the story essentially correct.

Asher Lev is a young Hassidic boy who has a remarkable artistic gift. His parents are not particularly happy about this, thinking that it may come from Satan (image-making after all). However, his father works for the Rabbi and the Rabbi, who isn’t entirely convinced that it is good either, believes that Asher should study art.

When Asher is a young man, the Rabbi arranges for him to live and study with a famous artist, who is an apostate Jew. Asher continues to be observant throughout his apprenticeship. The most important thing that Asher learns from his teacher is that there are images in the culture that are so powerful, so evocative, that if you want to say certain things, you have to make use of these images.

So, when Asher later goes to Rome to study art he is drawn by a statue of the Pieta. He spends a long time examining it and thinking about it and finally begins to draw his mother in this likeness. He is not comfortable using this Christian image, but he knows it's the only way to convey what he wants to convey.

During his youth, Asher’s father did some sort of dangerous work for the Rabbi in Eastern Europe. Throughout the story, we see his mother standing, silent, raising the Venetian blinds and staring through the window. She waits and waits for her husband to return, and Asher can see her pain, fear, and grief in her very aspect. Finally, when he paints his masterpiece, it is a picture of his mother crucified on the mullions of the window, held there by the cords of the Venetian blinds. This brings him great critical acclaim, but of course, distances him from his family--bringing about a new kind of crucifixion, I suppose for his mother.

Chaim Potok, the author, sees these essential symbols as being conditioned by our culture, and this is true. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Christian symbols--we see all the time how Christian authors use pagan symbols in the same way. However, I believe that there is more to it than that. I believe that some Christian symbols, like the two mentioned above and the Sacred Heart, convey truth that is beyond the culture. When we are confronted by these symbols, we’re confronted with a truth that originates outside the culture, outside the material world. It’s this use of sacramental imagery that makes Catholic authors—authors like O’Connor and Percy, but even non-practicing Catholics—so powerful.

And to emulate. I’ve put off doing this post since sometime this afternoon, wanting to say something meaningful in addition to linking to these two posts at Toby Danna’s blog. But if it’s possible to add anything useful to them, it would take more time than I have at the moment, so here they are: here and here.

“I’m not the panicky type.”

Very touchingly, here—scroll down and read up to get them in the order they were posted. Also, as of the moment I’m writing this post, the latest one, Part 3, is not included in the label set: it’s here. A sample:

During the time we were friends—two years and change—hearing him tell and retell the Ur-story, it seemed to me that he was becoming as a finely polished stone. The intervals between the retelling of it became shorter and shorter. It was as though he were becoming more and more pure, the traces of disillusionment and anxiety being purged, so that all that would remain of his spirit would be a song of praise—ad majorem Dei gloriam.

You’ll need to read the post—this is from Part 1—to find out what the “Ur-story” is.