Religion

Ash Wednesday thoughts

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Over at Patrick O’Hannigan’s The Paragraph Farmer, he quotes Peter Kreeft’s response to the question: “But is not God a lover rather than a warrior?”

A: No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is — what the love that God is, is. Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.

Read the whole thing. It’s not long.



In a somewhat related vein, I had reason to consult one of Sigrid Undset’s novels today (The Axe, the first novel of her less-famous tetralogy, The Master of Hestviken, which the author preferred to the more famous Kristin Lavransdatter, and I think I agree). Here’s a speech from one character:

“It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man’s faith is put to the test on the day God’s will is not his. But now I will tell you what Bishop Torfinn said to me one day—it was of you and your suit we were speaking. ‘God grant,’ he said, ‘that he may learn to understand in time that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.’”

Olav looked earnestly before him. Then he nodded. “Aye. That is true. I know it.”

Poetry

The Sea and the Skylark

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On ear and ear two noises too old to end

Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;

With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,

Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,

His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score

In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour

And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town!

How ring right out our sordid turbid time,

Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime:

Our make and making break, are breaking, down

To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.

“The Sea and the Skylark” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Uncategorized

Words Used to Mean Things

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Over at “Follow the Money” blog, Brad Setser notes a Wall Street Journal story reporting, “Citigroup officials hope to persuade private investors that have bought preferred shares — such as the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Kuwait Investment Authority . . .”

Setser goes on to point out, “But it is striking that none of the ‘private investors’ mentioned in the Wall Street Journal are actually, well, private investors.”

Speaking of banks, did you hear President Obama say the Feds would strong arm banks to do what they want? Continue reading Words Used to Mean Things →

Fiction, Reviews

The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke

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James Lee Burke is a superior mystery writer. He writes in the tradition of high craftsmanship and sensitivity that characterizes the best Southern literature. I found The Tin Roof Blowdown brilliant and moving.

And I probably won’t read any more by him.

But first, a synopsis.

The setting for The Tin Roof Blowdown is New Orleans and its environs, during and immediately following Hurricane Katrina. The conflict is set off by a group of young black men who steal a motorboat (thus dooming a number of trapped people to drowning), break into a rich man’s house, and discover a treasure trove of drugs, cash and diamonds. That same night one of them is killed and another paralyzed by a bullet fired by someone in the neighborhood. Suspicion falls on a neighbor, whose daughter (by a strange coincidence) was recently gang-raped by some of these same young men.

Although investigation of his death is technically a federal matter (under 1960s laws dealing with deprivation of civil rights by murder), the bulk of the investigation is elbowed off (due to heavy case loads) to Dave Robicheaux, a sheriff’s deputy in New Iberia Parish and hero of a number of mysteries by Burke. He is unofficially assisted in his investigation by his friend Clete Purcel, a former cop and present skip tracer. Continue reading The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke →

Uncategorized

Suburbia in the Twilight

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“Something essential, however hard to define, had been lost en route [to suburbia]; some aspect of innocence, perhaps, that at least to a romantic imagination, once existed in our towns,” according to Rod Serling apparently. “Casting a seductive smile, Serling alone continued to convey on TV what every other serious writer wanted to say but wasn’t allowed to”–that message being the dangers of commercialism and fear of current events.

Thanks for Delanceyplace.com for this excerpt.

Music

Bruremarsj

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Last week, I risked offended our readers and my fellow blogger by recklessly posting a poem lightly referred to by one of the world’s finest, Michael. Let me attempt to make up for that misjudgment by posting something beautiful, a bridal march.

Goofing

The real Oscars. Accept no substitutes.

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My weekend was remarkable only for its nondescript character, and I had no idea what I was going to blog about today.

Then, while on the Nordic Track tonight (I have Nordic tracks all over my house, left behind by the slushy shoes of Nordic people) I came up with a silly gag that I thought would do.

I would start out in Clueless Voice™, saying how everybody’s talking about something called the Oscar awards today, but I don’t see anything about anybody named Oscar in any of the lists.

Then I’d list some awards for people actually named Oscar, like Oscar Wilde, Oscar Levant, and Oscar Mayer.

Must have been a good gag, too, because Wankette over at Threedonia beat me to it.

However, her list is far from comprehensive.

Below the fold, the true winners of some of the less-known Oscars. Continue reading The real Oscars. Accept no substitutes. →

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Is This the End?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

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At first I thought this was ALL THE Evidence YOU’LL EVER NEED to see the World is going to Hell in a Handbasket. Some Sadist asked people whose coffee they preferred, McDonald’s or Starbucks. “Overall, McDonald’s won 43 percent to 35 percent, but if you break down the numbers, you’ll find the stereotypes about ‘latte-drinking liberals’ prevailing. Self-described liberals favored Starbucks 46 percent to 33 percent, while conservatives favored McDonald’s 50 percent to 28 percent. Moderates fall in between, with 44 percent favoring McDonald’s and 37 percent going for Starbucks. Protestants and Catholics favor McDonald’s, while the religiously unaffiliated choose Starbucks.”

But there is a touch of hope. Alisa Harris, the coffee shop beat reporter, writes, “In independent coffee shops, people get their coffee in actual mugs and sit down in actual chairs, and look at art or create it on laptops, and have actual conversations.”

The Press

What’s Wrong with Newspapers

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Two Philadelphia newspapers filed for bankruptcy today, and Frank Wilson, who used to work on the book pages for the Philadelphia Inquirer, explains why the papers and any other newspapers are in trouble. He says the front page has no news. “One of the abiding problems with contemporary journalism – most obvious in the broadcast variety,” Frank states, “is this insistence on providing commentary on what the rest of us have witnessed.”

Book Reviews, Creative Culture