Current Reading

An amazing novel of "dystopian philosophical fiction:" Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. I'm about halfway through. If you make an effort to "translate" the other-world vocabulary, you can follow (or teach) much of the history of philosophy, especially philosophy of religion. It's about faith and reason, sacred and secular, clerical and lay, all turned inside-out, on a post-apocalyptic, suspiciously earth-like planet called "Arbre". In this journey epic, an intrepid fellowship navigates its way through a world that is not only physically hostile, but intellectually cannibalistic.

The Philosopher

A competent philosopher is one who reads slowly and writes very carefully.

"When you're down. and feeling sad ..."

Pope Benedict's Epiphany homily discusses the importance of pursuing the vision of the Kingdom, no matter the discouragements. A teacher takes comfort in this paragraph:

“There is no shadow, however dark, that can dim the light of Christ. For this reason believers in Christ never lose hope vis-à-vis the great social and economic crisis troubling humanity today, the destructive hatred and violence that continue to shed blood in many regions of the world and man’s selfishness and pretensions to be his own god, which leads sometimes to dangerous distortions of God’s design about life and the human dignity in matter of the family and the harmony of creation. As I wrote in the already mentioned Spe salvi Encyclical, our efforts to free human life and the world from poisons and pollution that could destroy the present and the future retains its value and meaning, ‘even if we outwardly achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face of overwhelming hostile forces,’ because ‘it is the great hope based upon God's promises that gives us courage and directs our action in good times and bad’(n. 35).”...

"The most moral army . . .

. . . in the world."

See here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022466.php

I don't doubt the basic truth of this proposition for a second. As I write this, however, I hear some Palestinian representative on the Houston news talking about "a very large scale massacre." Of course, he had to look at his shoes as he said that.

A Seasonal Pleasure

I have XM-Sirius, and they create a channel just for the eight days of Hanukkah. It's a wonderful complement to the Christmas music that's everywhere else. I just can't help but enjoy its mix of religious and pop music, cultural features and bubbling-over joyousness.

Sartre: something that doesn't get much publicity

From Busted Halo:

While serving in the French army in 1940, Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher and playwright, was captured by Germans and placed in a prisoner of war camp. Before Christmas, a fellow-prisoner named Paul Feller who was a Jesuit, persuaded Sartre to write a Christmas play for the Christians imprisoned with them. By 1940, Sartre—who had been baptized a Catholic—was a declared atheist, but he agreed to the request out of a sense of solidarity with the other prisoners. The following is a brief excerpt from the resulting play, called “Bar-Jona,” in which Sartre offers a moving reflection on the Virgin Mother and her newborn son, Jesus.

"The Virgin is pale, and she looks at the baby. What I would paint on her face is an anxious wonderment, such as has never before been seen on a human face. For Christ is her baby, flesh of her flesh, and the fruit of her womb. She has carried him for nine months, and she will give him her breast, and her milk will become the blood of God. There are moments when the temptation is so strong that she forgets that he is God. She folds him in her arms and says: My little one.

"But at other moments she feels a stranger, and she thinks: God is there — and she finds herself caught by a religious awe before this speechless God, this terrifying infant. All mothers at times are brought up sharp in this way before this fragment of themselves, their baby. They feel themselves in exile at two paces from this new life that they have created from their life, and which is now peopled by another’s thoughts. But no other baby has been so cruelly and suddenly snatched from his mother, for he is God, and he surpasses in every way anything that she can imagine. It is a hard trial for a mother to be ashamed of herself and her human condition before her son.

"But I think that there are other rapid, fleeting moments when she realizes at once that Christ is her son, her very own baby, and that he is God. She looks at him and thinks: This God is my baby. This divine flesh is my flesh. He is made from me. He has my eyes, and the curve of his mouth is the curve of mine. He is like me. He is God and he is like me.

"No other woman has been lucky enough to have a God for herself alone, a tiny little God whom she can take in her arms and cover with kisses, a warm-bodied God who smiles and breathes, a God that she can touch, who is alive. And it is in these moments that I would paint Mary, if I was a painter, and I would try to capture the air of radiant tenderness and timidity with which she lifts her finger to touch the sweet skin of her baby-God, whose warm weight she feels on her knees, and who smiles."

Worth saving.

From Rodney Crowell:

The sun comes up tomorrow,
but there are no guarantees;
it can rock you like a baby,
it can bring you to your knees.

Check their shoes.

That's how you know who's been too close to the manure pile. Today's NY Times suggests that Illinois representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., is the "Candidate 5" in the Blago corruption case.

Anatomy of a war

Dennis Prager diagnoses the nature of the conflict now being engineered by the extremist Muslims in the light of the Mumbai events. There is every reason, historically, politically and ideologically, to take seriously what he says--that the war on the Jews is a war on the democracies of the West. What will be our response?

The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour.

Winston Churchill, 12 November 1940, House of Commons

Justice, love and forgiveness

Rabbi Schmuley Boteach has a very challenging comment on the senseless violence perpetrated by terror agents in Mumbai. He suggests that "forgiveness" is not the pure-and-simple right attitude regarding such actions. I'm not sure that his call for a stern attitude is best and most purely motivated by moral revulsion--although this sense deserves to be acknowledged. Retribution always must come from the positive sense of justice and by the ever-present need of civilized, peaceful society to protect itself from the acts of the truly evil and the merely lawless among us. I always have a right to sacrifice myself. I never have the right to tolerate conditions where the violent will violate the innocent. The Rabbi is correct in saying there is a need for the expression of just anger, and for a determined response; but all such expressions must be rightly motivated.