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December 3, 2006
Florida Snow
No! Not Ft. Lauderdale Snow or Miami Snow, Florida Snow!
84 degrees and the late evening. Across the street my neighbor's yard is covered with Florida snow--25 or so white ibis, strutting across the yard plucking up lizards and small insects as they go. The "dirty" gray snow takes the form of three or four young among the blazing white. We watch, restraining boy from going and chasing them and the snow drifts across the yard. Five sentinel drifts on top of the house rise into the air and the drift speeds up, and then blows away, across the street, above the roofs of the house two down from us, and they're gone.
Just one of the reasons Florida is home.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 5, 2006
Yesterday, My Birthday
So we went to the Magic Kingdom and saw the revamped Pirates of the Carribean featuring Jack Sparrow at least three times, Barbossa once, and Davy Jones in that new mist-projection technology. Also while there discovered that they'd done a complete revamp of "It's a small world," new paint, some new animatronics, etc. It's a favorite of Linda's and after I'd finished with a few things (Haunted Mansion, Pirates) we did requests.
Afterwards went home and got ready to go out and see an abbreviated Messiah in a very small theatre. Of course it was wonderful because we were practically sitting in the musician's laps. I've seen on performance of the complete Messiah and found it a trifle much for one sitting at the time. We had Samuel with us and while he enjoyed it, he said, "Not as much as the Operas, but it was good." Interesting--an eight-year-old Critic.
May not post much today, but thought this might be of some interest.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:03 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
More Nonsense "For Our Own Good"
I'm not a liberatarian. I'm not a "small government is good government person" in general principle. But I am annoyed when government finds nothing better to do with itself than meddle in the kitchens of donut shoppes and fast-food eateries.
Yes, trans-fats are probably bad for you--but isn't that a matter of personal responsibility? Why should the government step in if I happen to like the taste of the trans-fats? Alcohol is probably responsible for an equal, if not greater proportion of deaths. Shall we phase out alcohol in our margaritas and rum-punches? Shall we ban raw vanilla?
Sheer silliness, sheer interfering silliness.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 4:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Dies Irae
I will repeat, I am not a traditionalist.
I make this point for effect because I will follow it with the statement that as a "centrist" in Church matters, I find myself wondering what anyone could possibly find to object to in such a lovely chant. (Click the MP3 link) I think of the magnificent thunder of Mozart's requiem Mass and how I wouldn't want that Dies Irae sung at my own funeral. However, what can be found in this chant other than the perfect serenity of God's wisdom and will?
Why do people rage against the Latin Mass? I don't understand. I might not choose to make it my daily Mass, but if it were reinstituted, I wonder whether it might not have a reviving effect upon the Church as a whole? When beauty and holiness are together celebrated and the human spirit uplifted, what can be the fault or flaw?
Part of the resistance stems, I think, from the less than positive spirit with which some who desire the return treat others who, for whatever cause, resist it. Too long, it seems, this glorious part of tradition has been unduly suppressed, for reasons that I cannot comprehend. I think these decisions are often made by people who have a great deal more information to hand than I do. But I would suggest that evidence indicates that the information may have been misinterpreted.
I join my prayers to those who are begging God daily for the indult that seems just around the corner. And I pray that the indult stands long after the man who engineered it has gone to his rest. This is too valuable and too lovely a thing to have lost for so long.
And, I add to that prayers that those who are liturgically right-minded might exert some effort into turning the vernacular mass into the living image of this great Mass. There is absolutely nothing that stand in the way of great poetry, great beauty, and great prayer in the English Language. May the leaden-eared be passed over and a new and Godly, orthodox group of believers begin to forge anew in our own tongue the beauty inherent in this ancient one.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 5:05 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
December 6, 2006
Open Book
For people who love books and reading and who remember well their own first encounters with books, Michael Dirda's memoir/autobiography serves up some delicious moments. Perhaps the most satisfying moments in the book come when we realize that Mr. Dirda simply isn't all-encompassing (as it sometimes appears he must be) but that he has some limits. For example, he reveals that he doesn't much care for Agatha Christie. But don't hold that against him, it's one of the very few weaknesses in his armor of a catholic embrace of literature.
Mr. Dirda's life has some fascinating parallels with my own, and I'm certain that any person who grew up loving books will find moments that reflect their own lives. His discovery of the sonorities of H.P. Lovecraft; his intentional baiting of teachers who were not quite so eclectic in their readings and tastes; the constant pressure from parents to get your nose out of a book and go outside and do something (though I must admit that I didn't get too much of this).
There are enormous pleasures in reading Mr. Dirda's life in books, and some regrets as well. There are the roads untaken and the paths unexplored that one can see more clearly when reflecting on someone else's life and path. And then, there are the books unread--numberless streams and rivers of them--too many to ever even begin to number, and we're counting only the very best. What is one to do in facing the tide.
Well, it appears that Mr. Dirda, like the Chinese brother of fame, faces them with mouth wide open, ready to take in the entire sea of them and more. We know it isn't true, but those of us in the book-reading competitive world know that we have our work cut out for us when we face a man who read War and Peace by age 16, and kept lists of what he was reading as early as 14.
Next time the wife complains about the seventy or so volumes of journal that litter odd corners of our house, I'll just direct her to Mr. Dirda.
Highly enjoyable, highly recommended. In fact, can't be recommended highly enough.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How Fiction Means
Some people just don't "get" fiction. It's all made up, right? So how can it say anything that is true?
That is an excellent question, one that I'm probably not the best-equipped to answer, but one that I think about a lot and speculate on.
Fiction that is properly composed does not tell you anything at all, except by implication. The writer of a great work of fiction shows something and leaves the reader to experience that event. In every great work of fiction the reader experiences some everyday things and some new things. These new things are the nucleus around which new thought occurs, if the reader is inclined to treat them so.
In "The River" by Flannery O'Connor, the young protagonist is followed as he witnesses and is driven by the experiences of Church and baptism. So driven is he that he meets his fictional destiny in the course of the story. In that moment the reader is left to wonder about the nature of baptism and the nature of the thirst for God. O'Connor allows the reader to experience an event that forces him or her to clarify what and how they think. She does not tell the reader what to think--although it is clear she has something in mind--but she allows each person to draw conclusions. For some, those who have little understanding of faith or longing for God, the story will seem absurd, hideous even. For others, the absurdity vanishes to be replaced by a concrete sense of what the young protagonist's desire means.
Fiction means not by telling but by showing and eliciting from us a response--sympathetic or antagonistic. Harold Bloom, in one of his books on reading the great books says that great literature is not so much read by us as it "reads us." By that, I take him to mean, that it unearths things we generally like to keep buried. Nonfiction can do this, as shown by the fact that the Bible has been the source of inspiration and constant conversion for countless people; however, in general, in nonfiction the normal attitude assumed is that of "objective scientist," testing the facts, images, and truths brought to us.
The screens for fiction are not so strong, and because fiction does not generally tell but shows, we are in the role of critics in the cinema of the mind. What we experience in reading fiction is something of the author's intent mixed with something of our own experience, and the two together lead to revelation. Our reaction to the fiction can be the measure of the impact of the revelation.
Fiction uses different techniques and different strategies to bring us to similar ends as nonfiction, an understanding of the world around us. But fiction tends to focus on hearts and minds--too often nonfiction focuses on the analytical and external. Even philosophy does not tell us so much about hearts and minds as it tells us how hearts and minds should, ideally work. Fiction tends to show us how they actually do work.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 7, 2006
The Incarnation--Baptism of History
It is said that when Jesus received baptism, its effect was the obverse of the usual--rather than Jesus being cleansed of sin, because he had none, the waters of the world were made capable of this sacramental ability because of the power that went forth from Him and charged them to do so. In a sense the Baptism of Jesus was in effect, the baptism of the waters for all of us.
Like wise, when Jesus entered time, our linear perception of events, time became baptized in the waters of eternity. That is, time as we understand it and eternity had always existed together. A privileged few were given the ability to "enter into Eternity" and communicate directly with God. In the Old Testament, most of these were noted as "having a portion of His Spirit." In the New Testament, with the birth of Christ, eternity opened up in the here and now for all to enter into. Through Jesus Christ every person has been given the invitation to approach the Father more closely and love Him more dearly. In contemplation, we are given the privilege of entering for a time into God's timelessness and being there with Him. We speak of "spending time with God." In actuality, we "spend timelessness with God"-- in the ordinary realm of things, linear time marches on, but in our prayer, we are engaged in eternity and time has no real meaning.
This is the gift of Jesus Christ in the incarnation. Not the sum total of the gift, but one of the many aspects of the Divine that are now brought to intrude daily into the life of the believer. God no longer communicates only through one or two chosen prophets or priests--although He continues that mode of communication as well. Now God has chosen to open the doors to all--to allow all people to enter into eternity even as they live.
Sadly, most people choose not to do so. They don't really understand the nature of the gift or what it is they are supposed to do with it. But the entry into Eternity, those sublime moments of prayer, be they in private or in the celebration of the Mass, they are revivifying. If we deprive ourselves too long of them, our lives become wan and sere, dominated by the concerns of the only world we choose to know in any detail.
When Jesus entered into history, it can be said that History entered into the heart of Jesus. We all walk a road that leads directly to the Father, if we only choose to allow His grace to be the predominant force in our lives.
So we continued the advent journey and reflect on the manifold mysteries of the incarnation--that what is all Power and all Time chooses to become human so that what is human may become all Power and all Time even for a time while living. Christ entered history so that we might enter through Him into eternity and that we might become His servants and doormen--showing others the way to the Father.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The End of an Era
If this turns out to be true, it is a very sad, very touching event. Pearl Harbor survivors meet for the last time.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
"The Shifting and the Solid" and Debussy
For those of you who are admirers of the fiction of Virginia Woolf, you will already know to what I refer by these words--and she was among the leading practitioners of them. If you read Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse or most particularly Jacob's Room you will experience within the works an oddly disconcerting element, a subtle ambiguity of character and incident. There is about her stream of consciousness a looseness, an almost frightening element of uncertainty, instability, which resolves into a rather gentle, perhaps slightly surreal, serenity. It pervades the works and its ambiguities make the characters themselves rather ambiguous in some ways.
I was thinking about this solid and shifting as I considered how whatever I was feeling, wheresoever my emotional state, I could put on Debussy (and for me, it is only Debussy, not Ravel, not Vaughn-Williams, not Delius, not Holst, not even Satie--Debussy alone) and the entire world seems to shift for a moment in its orbit and is suddenly a better place--better lit, better coordinated, better composed. Debussy captures the serenity of flowing water, the tumble of the stream over a rocky bed, the smell of smoke in autumnal air, all things momentary, evanescent, ephermal, diaphanous--all things that shift in a moment and are gone. Debussy encapsulates them all and contains them so that shifting and solid are together. Those glimpses, those moments, those intuitions, are suddenly tangible--no longer vague and fleeting and gone, but substantial, permanent, perennial. The moments of the opening of a blossom are suspended, it is forever opening--not a loop, but a continuity that never reaches an end. In this way, for me, Debussy capture eternity--time vanishes while I listen to his music and I am caught up in the flow of the eternal where all that happens happens not in a moment but in a continuity that never ends. The blossom never stops opening even though at some point the flower is full-blown.
And if that isn't vague enough for you, just post a comment and I'll see if I can make it even more vague.
Later: Although on reconsideration, there are parts of Daphnis and Chloe that approach the power of Debussy to bridge the shifting and the solid.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 8, 2006
Florida Weather Silliness
People elsewhere in the country would laugh themselves silly if they could see those of us basking in the [relative] warmth of Central Florida. Last night and this morning the weather forecasters put on their dire and doomed faces and warned us about bone-chilling and dangerous cold that was coming our way. Last night the temperatures were to plunge to 54 degrees, with a high not much above sixty today. And tonight, horrors! bring in the dogs, batten down the hatches, get out the emergency supplies--the temperature is to plunge into the forties, perhaps resolving at about 42 degrees.
I remember the first year I was hear, my wife and I were wandering around Sea World wearing shorts and a light jacket and the people manning the ticket stations were in parkas, gloves, hats, and even scarves. We had just come from Columbus, Ohio, where the temperatures were at a steady 30-40 degree range, and it was 65 and breezy here in Orlando. We laughed ourselves silly. Unfortunately, the next year, similar circumstances, and we had already adapted--parkas, gloves, and hats at 60 degrees.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:07 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Two Ways of Avoiding Sin
It seems that there are at least two reasonable ways to avoid sin, one, to my mind more desirable than the other.
This came up as I heard a news story about a young woman who had been arrested for taking small amounts of money as she had access to a company safe. I thought, "I would never do that." But then it occurred to me why I wouldn't--I would fear being caught. If I could do it in the absolute certainty that I would not be caught, I cannot say that I would have so firm a conviction as to my integrity. I'm pretty certain that it wouldn't cross my mind; however, the fact that I could consider it suggests that there is always the possibility.
Fear of being caught is the first means of avoiding sin. It is certainly effective for those things that are public and noticeable, but it is a poor means of combatting sins that are private and known but to oneself and God. Still, it crosses most of the big things off the list for us--murder, theft, adultery, even vandalism.
The better way of avoiding sin is for the desire, temptation, or thought of doing it never to cross one's mind at all. For most of us murder, armed robbery, vandalism, direct theft fall into this category. In my right mind I would never consider any of these things--and for me the concept of adultery is just mind boggling--it's more than I can do to manage and maintain reasonable relations with just one woman, the thought of two or more is simply an enigma beyond consideration for me. I think each of us has these places of natural strength and they differ by person. And they are not impregnable--rather they are simply stronger areas in our defenses. Left on our own, we can fail in ways that we simply can't imagine. Fortunately, God does not leave us on our own. He strengthens our defenses and make the feasible unthinkable.
By far it is better if the very thought of a possible sin never crosses one's mind, if one were, in some sense, innocent of the concept that such an act were possible. However, in the absence of that innocence, fear of the Lord, fear of being caught is a sufficient deterrent when strengthened by Grace.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:13 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack