Progressive Lutheran Feed by IPC

Earlier this spring I returned to running for the first time in 17 years (thanks to the wonderful Couch-to-5K running plan). I began losing weight and feeling better about myself, but most importantly I just really enjoyed running. After a little while my days felt incomplete without a run, and during the day my mind would often wander to thinking about my next run. I can't overstate what my return to running has meant to me. I even blogged about the joy of getting reacquainted with running. It's been an amazing, life-giving experience.

Thus I can't overstate how disappointed I am that, on doctor's orders, I've been shut down for four weeks.  No running, he said.  Get on your bike instead.

But I'm a runner. Not a biker.

You see, by early August I was getting comfortable running 7+ miles twice/week. My last long run was an 8-miler to the Washington Monument on August 9.  After a day of rest, I went for a short 4-miler on August 11, but didn't even last 2 miles.  I felt a shooting pain in my left shin, and a throbbing pain in my right. After feeling this horrible pain on another run following several days of rest, I went to the doctor, who told me to stop running for two weeks.  Two weeks came and went, and I went out for two short runs - 1.5 miles - on Monday and Tuesday of this week.  While I felt better, the sharp pain persisted in my left shin.  And so I called the doctor back, and that's when he gave me the four-week extension to my running moratorium.

I went to the running store last week, before the call to my doctor, and in hopeful anticipation of a cautious return to running this week. The guy at the store looked at my shoes - purchased in May at another running store - and said, "they're shot." "But they have less than 200 miles on them," I said. He then told me that they had a 180 lb limit (I weigh, ahem, a bit more than that), and that he himself had prematurely blown through a few pairs of this brand.  So while I don't want to blame my current predicament entirely on a poor choice of shoes, there's part of me that wants to find the guy who sold me those shoes and have a word or two with him.

Well, I bought new running shoes, the pair I wore on my two short runs earlier this week. They feel great, and hopefully I'll be running with them in a month or so.

So my hopes and plans to run the Army Ten Miler in October and the Richmond Half Marahon in November are shot.  For even if my shins feel great after four weeks, there is no way that I could get my body ready for the Ten Miler in less than a month, or for the Half Marathon in about five or six weeks.  These goals are now out of reach. For this year, anyway.

So today or tomorrow I'll take my bike to the shop, get it tuned up, and pretend to be the kind of person who likes bicycling. And tomorrow I'll go to the gym for a training session to learn how to use the machines properly, and pretend to be the kind of person who likes the gym. Let me be clear: I'm not the kind of guy who really likes cycling or the gym. Bikes and gyms don't come close to matching the simplicity and purity of running. Cycling is complicated - special shoes, helmet, gloves, and a bicycle with hundreds of parts, riding on busy roads or crowded paths where you've got to dodge pedestrians, runners, and cars, stop for cross traffic, and so forth. The gym is equally compliclated - what machines to use, how to use them, what is the proper weight? - not to mention the stale, sweaty air inside.  Running is so much more straight forward - strap on your shoes and run according to some plan. Running is the only kind of fitness I've ever really liked or enjoyed. Running is so meaningful for me (see that blogpost I referenced earlier). Shifting gears is going to be hard.

Well, this is the test, isn't it, to see if I'm so dedicated to this running thing (and to my general fitness) that I'll do anything - even ride a bike and do gym workouts - to get my body ready for an eventual return to running? I hope and pray that I can do this. I may even come to like it. But like it or not, it's my only option.

If the Holy Spirit spoke through Glenn Beck, or through any part of his "Restoring Honor" event, I didn't hear the words. Or the tune. Maybe others did.

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The following is a parable that was revealed to me while watching runners - including my dear wife, Jessicah - finish a 10K race on Saturday.  I'm pretty sure it was one of those parables that either got lost in translation or didn't make the final cut for the synoptic gospels, perhaps due to its high hokeyness quotient  ;-)

Then he said to his disciples, "The Kingdom of God is like a 10 kilometer race. Not one of those big charity races with thousands of runners in a big town or city, but a grassroots run in a county park with only a few hundred racers.  It's a race with many participants but few spectators, and when the fastest runners finish, there is nobody to cheer them on.  But when the slowest among them cross the finish line, there are scores cheering them on, for the faster runners had already finished, and were standing nearby the finish line, welcoming their fellow runners home."

Then the disciples asked him, "What does this mean?"  And he answered them, "Do you not yet understand? In a race the first receive the least amount of praise, since nobody but the race staff are there to cheer him on.  And what joy is there when a 21 year-old stud cruises to a first place finish in a community run?  We all expect young studs to win the race!

"But the last runner receives the greatest praise.  For when an overweight 54 year-old with achy joints sweats through the race, crossing the finish line in last place after running 6.2 miles without stopping to walk even once, the whole gathered crowd of racers who had already finished the race, cooled down, stretched, and begun replenishing their system with sponsor-provided food and drink, will put down their Gatorades and bananas to cheer on this last place finisher.  The cheers will be much louder, and words of encouragement much more plentiful, and admiration much greater for this last runner than they were for the first.  For they all know that the last place runner spent more time suffering on the course, and overcame more challenges, than any other runner in the race.

"And so it is in the Kingdom of God.  The angels and heavenly hosts will hoot and holler more loudly for those who stumble and straggle into the Kingdom than for those who sprint in hardly breaking a sweat.  For this world honors with heaps of praise the best and fastest among you; yet in the Kingdom of God, it is the least among you who are celebrated the most."

Yes, I know it's Sunday, not Friday...we've had a somewhat busy week, you see, a SON's WEDDING AND ALL (20 years in the making, but it's a long story), so I'm running a little behind. Actually, this first post-wedding afternoon, Fellow Traveler has conked out in the bedroom of the cottage we're renting here in the Portage Lake area north of Ann Arbor, while I'm brewing some iced tea and getting caught up on the 'puter.

But this is all actually somewhat relevant to today's Friday Five. Because we've spent much of the past week running errands back and forth between here, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti -- homes, respectively, of the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. The campuses there, as well as their surrounding cities, are gearing up for Welcome Week and the start of the fall semester; we found ourselves sharing the local highways with cars jam-packed and spilling over with back-to-school stuff, and even gave one befuddled parent in an Ann Arbor parking lot directions to campus while the flushed, freshman-y young woman beside her could barely contain her excitement. That did bring back memories of our own university days. (The photo above, by the way, is of Yakeley Hall, my home for three years at Michigan State.)

So, with that in mind, I commence to our Friday Five:

1) What was the hardest thing to leave behind when you went away to school for the first time?
Our new puppy. My parents' sweet little fuzzy-faced mutt had been killed by a car earlier in the summer; but despite their initial declaration that they were never having another dog ever again, by August they'd placed a classified in the local paper inquiring about "Benji-type" dogs. The day the paper came out they'd gotten a phone call from someone who said she'd rescued a cute terrier-mix puppy from a downstate freeway median but just couldn't keep her; might we be interested? My dad said sure; so the next day the family drove by and introduced us to a raggedy, rail-thin but flamboyant pup who leapt from the car, gave kisses to everyone within licking distance and proceeded to race around and around our house as if saying, "I like it here! I like it here!" So Mitzi became part of the family -- two weeks before I left for school. That was tough.


2) We live in the era of helicopter parents. How much fuss did your parents make when you first left home?
The concept of helicopter parents has certainly changed over the decades. When I was in school the deal was that, barring emergency, I would call home every Sunday evening to check in; I'd let the phone ring twice, then hang up, and the 'rents would call me back so I wouldn't have to pay for a long-distance call. This would wind up being maybe a 10-minute call if any of us were particularly chatty. My mother would write me every other week, and I in turn might manage a monthly written summary/unload of stuff too personal to communicate over the phone lines. And this was a rarity; most of my friends talked to their parents far less. How odd this seems now, in these days of families attached 24/7 to their cell phones and Facebook pages.

My parents -- neither of whom went to college -- did not make a great deal of fuss when they moved me into my first dorm room; it was a pretty businesslike transaction (despite my inner "YIPPEE!" ready to burst out). But many years later my mom told me that they were both traumatized by this event; that they cried all the way home.


3) Share a favorite memory of living with schoolmates, whether in a dorm or other shared housing.
Even though I loved being in college, I always felt the odd woman out on my particular dorm floor; a poor country kid surrounded by affluent suburbanites, daughters of auto-company execs and other professionals. I only knew of perhaps three other women on the floor with a similar background.

One night, after coming home late from a Lutheran campus ministry function (I was a church geek even then, although in those days church geekery tended to involve beer before, during or after said church function), I found one of the blue-collar women, a studious education major from a homeftown nearly as small as mine, sitting forlornly in the hallway; she'd forgotten her room key and was waiting for her roommate to return from the bar. The floor seemed otherwise empty; it was the weekend, after all, and most people were out partying. She had been out herself, and had evidently had a lot more to drink than I had with my Lootern buddies; enough to completely disable her self-censoring mechanism. And she was in the mood to talk. To me. About everything.

So I kept her company out in the hallway, as she proceeded to unload all the deliciously snarky observations about the rich girls around us that I shared deep down but had never been able to articulate to anyone before: the materialism and conspicuous consumption; the lack of real interest in academics and the life of the mind; the not-terribly-hidden bigotries against various minorities on campus and petty unkindnesses toward other students in general; the silliness of Greek life; the sense of entitlement that was often mind-boggling to those of us who didn't come from well-to-do or education-friendly families; the way the reality of their behavior conflicted with the fantasies we'd had about escaping our smallminded small towns for ivy-covered halls filled with big ideas and progressive thinkers.  When I heard, "____ YOU, you BITCHES," come out of the mouth of this normally meek future schoolteacher, each word suspended in echo down the empty hall, I felt like a therapist helping someone through a catharsis...maybe even my own.

After that evening, whenever we met in the hallway or at some gathering we always seemed to give one another a special raised-eyebrow acknowledgement: We've got their number, sisterfriend.

4) What absolute necessity of college life in your day would seem hilariously out-of-date now?
Typewriters; typing paper; typewriter erasers; carbon paper; press-on type for graphics projects.


5) What innovation of today do you wish had been part of your life in college?
Laptop computers. Back in my college days, only the geekiest of the geeks over in the honors science dorm had access to personal computers -- and we're talking the Atari/first-iteration Apple kind. I remember taking an off-campus adult enrichment class on the Apple, being totally befuddled by the whole thing, and thinking, "What possible practical use will this ever be to me?"

Bonus question for those whose college days feel like a long time ago: Share a rule or regulation that will seem funny now. Did you really follow it then?
Co-ed dorms had become the norm at MSU by my time, so my own single-sex dorm, and the rules that governed male visitors, already seemed like a quaint novelty -- as did the Women's Lounge in the Student Union. I myself liked the restrictions; I didn't particularly care for running into other students' male sleepovers in the communal shower room, or the puerile types who tried crashing the Women's Lounge (which was very well-appointed, quiet and comfortable compared to the other common areas of the Union)  to make a point about reverse discrimination or to pick up women or to leer at lesbians or whatever.

In recent weeks, there has been a controversy in New York City involving a Muslim center that is a few blocks from where the Twin Towers once were. This controversy highlights the misperceptions that many people in this country have about Muslims.

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Glenn Beck is certainly aiming high. Tonight, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, he will "help heal your soul" at his "America's Divine Destiny" event. Then tomorrow, at his "Restoring Honor" event at the Lincoln Memorial, he expects the Spirit to speak.

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See You at the Pole risks turning the discipline of Christian prayer into a segregated rally that can unnecessarily divide the school community. Chris

I recently received a brochure encouraging me to attend or organize a See You at the Pole event in my area.  See You at the Pole is a national movement organizing Christian prayer events on school campuses, usually at a flagpole, prior to the start of classes.  This year the event is on September 22.

Though I pray for our schools and our nation frequently, I have serious misgivings, both theological and social, about organized public Christian prayer events to take place on school campuses at the foot of the American flag.  In short, I worry that See You at the Pole risks turning the discipline of Christian prayer into a segregated rally that can unnecessarily divide the school community.

First, let me be clear that my critiques are about the event itself, and not the youth who participate.  The youth who participate likely do so for a variety of reasons, including the urging of their pastors or youth leaders, and many genuinely find it to be an exciting, faithful event bringing diverse Christians together to pray.  What Christian kid, when invited by their friend to a prayer rally, would say no?  And what Christian pastor or parent would say "no" to a child who wants to pray with other kids?  But despite the enthusiasm and faith that might be cultivated by See You at the Pole, and the great intentions that might be held by those who organize these events, I fear that See You at the Pole is so rife with problems that we should caution our youth before they participate.

See You at the Pole almost can't help but become a platform public posturing.  After all, it seeks to gather Christian kids in front of the school to pray, allowing fellow students, teachers, and passerby's to see and hear them pray in the name of Jesus.  Yet when teaching his disciples how to pray, our Lord Jesus instructs them to pray in private, so that the one who prays isn't tempted to turn an act of faith into an opportunity for "look at me" pious grandstanding (see Matthew 6:1-18).  And note that this event is not called Pray at the Pole, but See You at the Pole.  Clearly, seeing and being seen is central to this event.  (The See You at the Pole FAQ page responds to the Matthew 6 critique, with an argument based on one's motive for public prayer rather than the act of public prayer itself.)

But I also question the wisdom of praying at the foot of the American flag.  Our faith is a universal faith, not tied to or identified by any national or ethnic identity.  When Christians pray, we are addressing the Lord of all nations.  Thus, prayer should not be done in a way that conflates our Lord with our nation; but praying at the foot of a flag does just that.  National symbols are not appropriate gathering places for Christian prayer (see past post, Praising God, Honoring Country).  (The See You at the Pole FAQ page explains that the flagpole is a meeting place simply because nearly every school campus has a flagpole.  Some See You at the Pole events meet at other locations on campus.)

There is also a significant social aspect to this event.  The event's name - See You at the Pole - makes it clear that this event is about being seen in prayer, just before the start of the school day.  But what about those kids who will not be seen at the pole?  Essentially, See You at the Pole gathers Christian kids at the flag pole to pray, to the exclusion of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics, Christians who don't believe in praying outside of their fellowship, and others.  And what about Christian kids who don't participate?  Will they risk being accused by some participants of not being true Christians?  I fear that drawing faith lines so dramatically and so publicly at this age, over and against the diversity of the public school environment, is harmful to the school community.  The last thing we need is for Christian prayer to become an opportunity for division in our school communities.

And more.  By gathering at the foot of the flag to pray in a Christian manner, these kids are identifying the American flag as a gathering place for Christian prayer, thus alienating Americans of other faiths from their own flag.  It's a way (however unintentional, perhaps) of claiming the flag as a Christian symbol, rather than lifting it up as a national banner that flies over Americans of all faiths and traditions.

The organizers of See You at the Pole could faithfully and wonderfully encourage prayer in many other ways, without running afoul of the problems outlined above. 

• They could invite children and families to pray at home, behind closed doors, in accordance with our Lord's teaching.  An organized, at-home prayer event joining millions of households in prayer would be quite powerful.
• Or, if they really want to gather people for prayer, they could hold events behind the closed doors of a local church one morning before school. 
• But if they insist on holding an event on a school campus, they could do so on a weekend, when they are less likely to start a school day by dividing the student body according to religion. 
• But if they truly insist on holding these events on a school day and on campus, they could at least pick a different spot, a more modest spot, away from the main doors to the school building where the flag is usually located, and away from the bus lanes or other very visible locations.

From what I can tell, See You at the Pole is a well-intentioned but flawed event that has the potential to sow division in our school communities, and which seems to be just as much about being seen as it is about prayer.  I hope and pray that I am wrong, and that those who participate find it to be a powerful experience of Christian unity and prayer that leads them closer to God, and that through God they draw closer to their neighbor.

I abandoned the old tomato garden and just planted in the perennial garden this year, helter-skelter. It worked really well. Well, except for that night a deer came and ate all my pepper plants. I carefully covered everything with deer netting and checked it all the time - but somehow that night the peps were exposed, and munch! Gone, all of them, the next day.

But great tomatoes this year - lots of them, completely pesticide-free, and still coming. And basil, and sage. Have made sauce already, too....

Ewwwwwwwww! - The Boston Globe
“Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more often and deeper I dwell on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me.”

Where does moral law come from? What lies behind our sense of right and wrong? For millennia, there have been two available answers. To the devoutly religious, morality is the word of God, handed down to holy men in groves or on mountaintops. To moral philosophers like Kant, it is a set of rules to be worked out by reason, chin on fist like Rodin’s thinker.

But what if neither is correct? What if our moral judgments are driven instead by more visceral human considerations? And what if one of those is not divine commandment or inductive reasoning, but simply whether a situation, in some small way, makes us feel like throwing up?

This is the argument that some behavioral scientists have begun to make: That a significant slice of morality can be explained by our innate feelings of disgust. A growing number of provocative and clever studies appear to show that disgust has the power to shape our moral

judgments. Research has shown that people who are more easily disgusted by bugs are more likely to see gay marriage and abortion as wrong. Putting people in a foul-smelling room makes them stricter judges of a controversial film or of a person who doesn’t return a lost wallet. Washing their hands makes people feel less guilty about their own moral transgressions, and hypnotically priming them to feel disgust reliably induces them to see wrongdoing in utterly innocuous stories.

Today, psychologists and philosophers are piecing these findings together into a theory of disgust’s moral role and the evolutionary forces that determined it: Just as our teeth and tongue first evolved to process food, then were enlisted for complex communication, disgust first arose as an emotional response to ensure that our ancestors steered clear of rancid meat and contagion. But over time, that response was co-opted by the social brain to help police the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Today, some psychologists argue, we recoil at the wrong just as we do at the rancid, and when someone says that a politician’s chronic dishonesty makes her sick, she is feeling the same revulsion she might get from a brimming plate of cockroaches.

“Disgust was probably the most underappreciated moral emotion, the most unstudied one,” says Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “It’s become politically much more relevant since the culture wars of the 1990s, and so within the broader renaissance of moral psychology disgust has been a particularly hot topic.”

Psychologists like Haidt are leading a wave of research into the so-called moral emotions — not just disgust, but others like anger and compassion — and the role those feelings play in how we form moral codes and apply them in our daily lives. A few, like Haidt, go so far as to claim that all the world’s moral systems can best be characterized not by what their adherents believe, but what emotions they rely on.

CBC News - World - Pakistan floods leave thousands stranded
Relief workers in Pakistan are struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of people who have been cut off by rising flood waters, the United Nations says.

The floods, caused by heavy monsoon rains, have washed out key bridges and roads in many parts of South Asian nation.

As many as 800,000 people in need of assistance can only be reached by air, the United Nations said.

Access has been particularly difficult in the Swat Valley of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and in the mountainous areas of Gilgit- Baltista, UN officials said.

Conrad Sauvé, the secretary general of the Canadian Red Cross, said reaching people in remote areas has been a major challenge.

He said relief workers are working alongside the government to deliver aid to camps and hard-to-reach communities, but he warned that the crisis is still unfolding.

"This is still an emergency situation, and unfortunately, with the flooding, new people arrive all the time because new areas are flooded," Sauvé told CBC News from Islamabad.

"When they think they have something under control, there's new people that are arriving, so it's a major challenge."

The World Food Program has said at least 40 more helicopters are needed to reach the people cut off by the floods.

Meanwhile, the flood waters sweeping down the Indus River in Pakistan are threatening new areas in Sindh province, forcing thousands of people to head for higher ground.

Rising waters have already poured through several communities in the southern province, and officials are now urging some 200,000 people to move out of the Thatta area of Sindh province, the BBC reported.

Saifullah Dharejo, the irrigation minister for Sindh province, said high tides were preventing the bloated Indus River from quickly emptying into the Arabian Sea as had been hoped.

The UN says more than 1.2 million homes have been damaged or destroyed since the flooding began. Roughly one million people have received tents and tarps, but an estimated five million people still need emergency shelter, the UN said.

At least 1,500 peole have died since the unprecedented floods began in in the north in late July.
Pakistani government must be accountable: USAID chief

The Pakistan government says about $800 million in emergency aid has been committed or pledged so far. But there are concerns internationally about how the money will be spent by the government.

Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the United States would continue to urge nations to donate.

"We are going to work at it, but these are tough economic times around the world and it will require a demonstration of real transparency and accountability and that resources spent in Pakistan get results," he said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday.

Along with the government, local and international agencies and the U.S. military, a number of Islamist groups have been providing aid to flood victims. At least one of the groups is alleged to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned militant organization blamed for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.

The government in the northwest issued an order Wednesday barring banned Islamist groups from operating relief camps, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the chief spokesman for the province.

But it was unclear whether any such camps had been shut down by Wednesday evening or how exactly the government was going about identifying them.

David Brooks in the NYT today:

In 1811, the popular novelist Fanny Burney learned she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. She lay down on an old mattress, and a piece of thin linen was placed over her face, allowing her to make out the movements of the surgeons above her.

“I felt the instrument — describing a curve — cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator who was forced to change from the right to the left,” she wrote later.

“I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision — & I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still.” The surgeon removed most of the breast but then had to go in a few more times to complete the work: “I then felt the Knife rackling against the breast bone — scraping it! This performed while I yet remained in utterly speechless torture.”

The operation was ghastly, but Burney’s real heroism came later. She could have simply put the horror behind her, but instead she resolved to write down everything that had happened. This proved horrifically painful. “Not for days, not for weeks, but for months I could not speak of this terrible business without nearly again going through it!” Six months after the operation she finally began to write her account.

It took her three months to put down a few thousand words. She suffered headaches as she picked up her pen and began remembering. “I dare not revise, nor read, the recollection is still so painful,” she confessed. But she did complete it. She seems to have regarded the exercise as a sort of mental boot camp — an arduous but necessary ordeal if she hoped to be a person of character and courage.

Burney’s struggle reminds one that character is not only moral, it is also mental. Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.

She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one’s weakness.

In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons. It meant conquering frivolity by sitting through earnest sermons and speeches. It meant conquering self- approval by staring straight at what was painful.

This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be skeptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.

The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.

There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.

To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. A few people I interview do this regularly (in fact, Larry Summers is one). But it is rare. The rigors of combat discourage it.

Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.

I firmly believe that religion or rigorous practice can't be applied with pressure and intimidation because that only brings force and violence, not wisdom so it must be fulfilled with reason, debate and intuition.

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I just read Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's opinion regarding the constitutionality of religious displays on public ground during the holidays, including displays of Jesus (pdf document of opinion; Washington Post blogpost on the matter). The sad thing is this:... Chris

I just read Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's opinion regarding the constitutionality of religious displays on public ground during the holidays, including displays of Jesus (pdf document of opinion; Washington Post blogpost on the matter). The sad thing is this: displays of Jesus are allowed on public ground so long as such displays are "not making a religious statement."

Translation: As long as Jesus remains a knick-knack (and not, you know, the Son of God who destroys death, raises up the lowly, feeds the hungry, and inaugurates the Kingdom of God, among other things) He can be displayed on public ground in Virginia, according to the Attorney General.

Truth be told, I'm not picking on Cuccinelli. I just get really annoyed when Jesus is turned into a knick-knack, whether by politicians, marketers, or by fellow Christians who somehow think that a taxpayer-funded "Court House Jesus" is a good idea.

Question: Why would anyone who respects religion want to rob its symbols of meaning just so they could be set on a court house lawn?

After all, the Supreme Court has already ruled that the phrase "In God We Trust" is essentially devoid of religious content and thus perfectly suitable as a national motto.  How sad it is that we are glad to render God language meaningless so that it can be fit for a coin.

Dear Government: Please keep your hands off of religious symbols. Religious communities and individuals can practice their religion just fine without your help.  Thank you.

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Church/State issues are a favorite of mine.

Harriet Baber in The Guardian:

I got religion when I was 14, at Beaverbrook Music Camp. We were, most of us, instrumentalists—I played the violin—but all of us had to sing in Camp Chorus. Our major work, my first year at Beaverbrook, was the Schubert Mass in G—a warhorse for amateur choirs and one of the sweetest masses in the classical literature. The Benedictus is a Viennese waltz.

In musicianship class we learnt about the music we were playing and singing. We studied the Mass as a musical form and got the English translation, with commentary. Having been brought up unchurched, this was the closest I ever got to religious training. But it was more than enough: I fell in love with the church.

Six years later I was baptised in The Episcopal Church. I would have joined earlier if I'd known how. But I didn't even know that it was possible to join a church: I thought you could only get into a religion by birth or marriage. I never even had the courage to go to a church service: I was afraid I'd be identified as a heathen, embarrassed and ejected.

Joining the church wasn't an easy decision. I was an undergraduate and no one I knew was a religious believer. It was not done—at least not by people like us.

In any case, I didn't know whether I could buy in. Lying in bed I would recite the Creed to myself in Latin as a sort of checklist. "Credo in unum Deum." Did I believe that? Well I certainly didn't believe in any more than one God. But the story seized me—the grand, cosmic scope of all things visible and invisible, the drama of incarnation and ascension—descendit, incarnatus, ascendit—and the slam-bang ending, the power, glory and eternal dominion. Schubert was sweet but only Bach could do justice to the sheer immensity of it.

But did I believe it? I decided, as I then thought of it, to "bracket the God question" and join the church anyway. I just couldn't resist.

Since my music camp conversion experience, I'd sung lots of masses and other sacred music. I'd read T. S. Eliot and the Metaphysical Poets; I'd wallowed in Traherne's Centuries of Meditations lying on the summer grass in the quad when the corn, there in the American Midwest, really was orient and immortal wheat; and I'd discovered George Herbert on an acid trip.

I got religion in order to go to church—to be entitled to participate in the liturgy, to have the right to sing church music, visit church buildings and do philosophical theology.

Of course I could have had all that without signing on. But then my experience of Christian art wouldn't have been the same. The aesthetic character of a work of art goes deeper than the aesthetic surface because what we want in art, like what we want in most departments of life, goes beyond the sensuous surface. All other things being equal most of us would prefer a happy life in reality to a perfect simulation, as a brain in a vat. Those experiences are different, even if superficially indistinguishable, just as our aesthetic experience of an original work is different from our experience of a perfect fake.

The experience of church music in a liturgical setting is different from the experience of the same music as 'pure art.' And even in a liturgical setting, my experience as a Christian participating in that liturgy—even as a skeptical, agnostic Christian—is different from the experience of sentimentalists and Evensong concert-goers.

However skeptical I may be, I am a committed Christian. I came to the Church in what I suppose seems like a peculiar way. The Bible doesn't speak to me and, for me, the historical Jesus is a stumbling block. I would never have been one of Jesus' early followers: the Church that appeals to me is the Church of Constantine. But make no mistake: I am a Christian. However screwy my route into the Church may have been, that it what I am. And being a Christian changed my life.

"What's the point of Christian arts?" This is like asking what the point of pleasure is. Christian art is an end in itself.

Jupiter’s red spots in double act | Skymania News and Guide

Amateur astronomers could be forgiven for seeing double on Jupiter as the famous Great Red Spot closes in on a colourful rival. A second oval feature is running up against its bigger brother, giving stargazers two red spots to view at once through their backyard telescopes.

The spectacle comes just weeks after astronomers reported that one of the giant gaseous planet’s prominent dark belts had disappeared.

The smaller feature – dubbed Red Jr and big enough to swallow the Earth – used to be white. It formed from three oval storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Two merged in 1998 and the third was absorbed in 2000 to form a spot labelled Oval BA.

Alert observers noticed that its centre starting to turn red back in 2005 and it became more prominent the following year as it had a previous close encounter with the Great Red Spot. For most of the time, because different bands in Jupiter’s atmosphere rotate at different speeds, the two spots are widely separated. However, they come close together every two years or so, and this has created the present spectacle.

The pair of spots are clearly shown in the accompanying photograph by planetary observer Simon Kidd, of Welwyn, England, taken through his Celestron C14 at his home observatory.

Link

A lovely version of Psalm 91 from the Westminster Abbey Cathedral Choir.



The Coverdale translation:
Psalm 91: Qui habitat

WHOSO dwelleth under the defence of the most High : shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2. I will say unto the Lord, Thou art my hope, and my strong hold : my God, in him will I trust.
3. For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter : and from the noisome pestilence.
4. He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers : his faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
5. Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night : nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6. For the pestilence that walketh in darkness : nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day.
7. A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand : but it shall not come nigh thee.
8. Yea, with thine eyes shalt thou behold : and see the reward of the ungodly.
9. For thou, Lord, art my hope : thou hast set thine house of defence very high.
10. There shall no evil happen unto thee : neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11. For he shall give his angels charge over thee : to keep thee in all thy ways.
12. They shall bear thee in their hands : that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.
13. Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder : the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet.
14. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him : I will set him up, because he hath known my Name.
15. He shall call upon me, and I will hear him : yea, I am with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and bring him to honour.
16. With long life will I satisfy him : and shew him my salvation.

Looking back over my blog(s) through the past few years, I realize I've posted something about all the Chant Propers for Assumption (i.e. for Episcopalians, "The Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary"), which is this Sunday, August 15.

The traditional Introit, Gaudeamus (replaced around 1950 by Pius VII by Signum Magnum); Audi Filia, the beautiful Gradual (also used as the Tract at Annunciation during Lent); and Beatam me dicent, the Communion hymn.

All of them, that is, except for Assumpta Est, the text used for both the Alleluia (mp3 here):


Alleluia, Alleluia. Mary has been taken up into heaven; the host of Angels rejoices. Alleluia.
and the Offertory (mp3 here):


Mary has been taken up into heaven; the Angels rejoice, praising the Lord together and blessing him, alleluia.
Those translations from the Latin are at JoguesChant, and so are the mp3s. (Chant score for the Alleluia is from the Benedictines of Brazil.)

Obviously, these are extra-Biblical texts; the Assumption is nowhere to be found in Scripture. I'm not sure if they come from a particular source, or whether they are just from someplace "in the air" around the idea of Assumption. They are short, so probably pretty hard to pin down to any one originator.

There are lots of polyphonic versions of the texts around, though, you can be sure! Here's Palestrina's version, a lovely, heavenly-sounding thing (with lots more extra-Biblical content!) Can't embed it, or I would; go listen, though - it's gorgeous.

Here's a version of the Offertory sung by "Sr. Marjo and company" and "Dedicated to all Assumptionists"; no idea where the music comes from, but I like it:



Here's another; not sure whose music this is, either, but beautiful. And what acoustics!



Palestrina and Charpentier both wrote Missa(e?) Assumpta Est Maria (and so probably did others!). Here's the Kyrie from Palestrina, and here's the one from Charpentier (wonderful period instruments, too), respectively:





There's lots more stuff out there, too.