Election post at W4

I've been having a terrible case of blogger's block recently. I can think of philosophy stuff to write or to prepare to write but just don't feel inspired to blog at all.

But I did put up a piece here at W4 concerning election day. I feel curiously detached (though perhaps you wouldn't guess it to read that post) because in my particular district there are no federal elections in which I am voting. We have no Senate seats empty in my state this year, and my U.S. Representative is a RINO incumbent whom I opposed in the primary and stopped voting for in the general years ago. (Did I ever vote for him in the general? Can't recall.) I imagine he'll retain his seat without my help, but what he'll do with it is up for grabs. He's certainly not reliably conservative on much of anything at all.

I can't help but be somewhat inspired by the election fever in the conservative blogosphere, though. No matter what, I think we can say with some confidence that President Punish-your-enemies Obama won't have things as easy as he had hoped for during the next two years, which is worth a good deal in itself.

I'll go vote later today when I get my car back out of the shop--quite a number of in-state races to vote in.

I've gotten the "put not your trust in princes" thing down pretty well over the past few years. But I haven't quite given up hoping that some "princes" will be better than others, and some interest in watching to see whether that works out. If the Republicans do get a solid majority, let's hope they use it to the max.

Worthy Is the Lamb--Hallelujah Chorus

Today in the church calendar used by my church is the Feast of Christ the King. In the spirit of bringing together old and new, liturgical year and Protestant music, I give you an unusual arrangement of Handel.

The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir:



Collect for Christ the King:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast exalted thy beloved Son to be King over all worlds, and hast willed in him to make all things new, mercifully grant that th kindreds of the earth which are wounded and dispersed by sin may speedily be knit together under his gracious sovereignty, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end, Amen.

Where am I?

In case my readers wonder where I am, I am taking most of my free time to draft a paper on the existence of the external world.

Another day, another tale of homosexual totalitarianism

Here's the story:

We're apparently nearing "National Coming Out Day"--as if normal people should have to know about such a "holiday." So a homosexual activist in Indianapolis makes contact with a bakery called Just Cookies and asks for rainbow-frosted cupcakes to celebrate this faux "holiday." The owner could have told him they don't sell cupcakes, just cookies, as the name of the business says (which is apparently true). But the foolish owner (for whom I have the greatest sympathy), not realizing that he lives in a homosexual totalitarian state and that his city has a "sexual orientation public accommodations law" instead tells him that he wouldn't want to make rainbow-frosted cupcakes to celebrate "National Coming Out Day" at his bakery because it's a family business, and he doesn't want his daughters exposed to that. Perhaps the poor guy was afraid the customer was going to ask for rainbow-frosted cookies if he told him they didn't sell cupcakes.

Uh-oh. This perfectly normal statement from this perfectly normal man has now gotten him in trouble. His business may lose its lease, as the mini-mall or whatever it is where he's located has of course a non-discrimination statement that includes sodomy as one of the things you're never supposed to say anything negative about in your business. And of course he may be fined. His only hope appears to be that the city doesn't seem super-eager to prosecute, but they're being pushed by the homosexual lobby. Such laws have been used to apply to situations like this before--e.g., the Elaine Hugonin case, in which she was required by non-discrimination law to use her photographic talents to celebrate lesbianism. If your business can in any way shape or form be used to make a statement, then it can be co-opted to make a pro-homosexual statement, and woe betide you if you resist.

Mike Adams gets on a wonderful rant here in which he asks whether a Jewish bakery owner should also be required to make baked goods with swastikas on them. No, no, Mike, you don't get it: Neo-nazis don't have power, and the homosexual activists do. So the answer to your question is, "No, of course not. What a terrible suggestion. How could you make such a comparison? As for the rainbows and the bakery, well, it's just obvious: If people don't want to create rainbow-frosted baked goods in honor of Homosexual Sodomy Pride Day, they just shouldn't own bakeries."

(Since we have commentators at W4 who would bore me, annoy me, and waste my time by saying pretty much exactly this, I put this entry here instead.)

But let this be a warning if you run a business: You thought you lived in a free country? Think again, and watch your words at all times. National Coming Out Day is a hallowed day in your community if your city has a sexual orientation clause in its public accommodations law. If you don't want to help celebrate it using the resources of your business, including your children who help you...well...good luck getting out of it. And say as little as possible when you refuse.

"Down in the River to Pray"--Allan Hall

This a great song I just heard tonight. Very much of an early American folk sound. The musician is the pianist for the group Selah.

Explosive letter on global warming fraud and cover-up in the American Physical Society

Wow. Just wow. You've gotta read this. This is a resignation letter from Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor at U of CA, Santa Barbara to the president of the American Physical Society. It's incredibly damning and shows the utter corruption of science over "global warming." Read the whole thing. As I read the letter, the ghost of Richard Feynman--who, whatever else one may say about him, was no tolerator of politically motivated baloney and the suppression of scientific inquiry--kept rising up before me. This is a letter Feynman would have appreciated and might very well have written, except his language might have been a little saltier than Lewis's. Here are just a few nuggets (my emphasis).

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

[snip]

About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate.

The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

Okay, now that your appetite is whetted, go read the rest.

By the way, I recently saw a commentator at another blog literally state that AGW is basic physics, demonstrated in the lab, because the radiative properties of carbon are well-understood and demonstrated in the lab. I replied that I exercise a gravitational pull on the planet Jupiter. This also is basic physics. But it does not mean that I am going to cause the planet Jupiter to crash into the earth and that something must be done to prevent this.

In other news, the EPA is considering shutting down the U.S. beef industry by means of draconian regulations on...dust.

Oh, I'll lift here out of obscurity a comment I made about environmentalists in a thread at W4:

Plenty of environmentalists dislike the developed world's economy, period, because they have a romantic love of what they view as a more "pristine" earth in which man doesn't do all the things that really are good for man. How can you reason with people who think that composting toilets are great because they're natural and need less fresh water to operate? Seriously, I think you're leaving out the substantial proportion of this movement that is plain, unvarnished, anti-development, anti-technology, and anti-human and would be just as happy if human flourishing were seriously damaged so long as the world and the human "environment" were left in the end dirtier, smellier, more dangerous, and more like things were before man ever came along. This, as an end in itself.

(And I wrote that before I heard about the EPA's insanity vis a vis the beef industry.)

HT on both the letter and the beef industry news: Secondhand Smoke

Anti-Israel idiots get fisked

There's a great, great, ranting post on idiot clerics and their recent anathemas against Israel. Desmond Tutu comes in for a well-deserved fisking. One of Tutu's biggest foot-in-mouth moments appears to have been this, which he doubtless thought was profound:

[S]urely we must recognise that people caged in, starved and stripped of their essential material and political rights must resist their Pharaoh?

Joining in the party, the Anglican Primate of Wales, one Barry Morgan, says,

[O]ur own Prime Minister has described Gaza as a prison camp.

To which Midwest Conservative Journal replies,

Then your own Prime Minister is a blithering idiot. He might be anti-Semitic as well but let’s just stick with what we know for the time being.

Midwest Conservative also gives us this great line,

All we’re doing is saying that until Israel works out a “peace” deal with people who want kill every Jew they can and wipe Israel off the map and comes to terms with the fact that Jewish deaths really don’t bother us at all, we’re going to treat Israel as a pariah.

You get the picture. If you are pro-Israel, you'll love it. If not, you'll hate it. I think it's great. Go read the whole thing if you're on my side and give yourself something to smile about this Sunday. Here's that link again.

HT Romish Graffiti

Hey! It's Michaelmas

I put up a particularly good via media set of Michaelmas posts here and at W4 two years ago, so I'll link to them here and here.

(Trivia bit which I have gathered from novel reading: In Cornwall and perhaps other parts of England you are not supposed to eat blackberries after Michaelmas on pain of illness and possibly death. Something to do with witches. Okay, end of trivia digression.)

I'm surprised to see that I never seem to have put up the BCP collect for Michaelmas. This was remiss of me, as it seems to me to embody Cranmer's approach, which I find very congenial, to such holy days. Both my Catholic and my non-Catholic readers will notice both what Cranmer says and what he does not say. But hopefully both will acknowledge that this is great liturgy:

O everlasting God, who has ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order; Mercifully grant that, as thy holy Angels always do thee service in heaven, so, by thy appointment, they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

But for Wales?

From A Man for All Seasons:

Thomas More: There is one question I would like to ask the witness.                     
(To Richard Rich) That's a chain of office you're wearing.
May I see it? The red dragon. What's this?
                 
Cromwell: Sir Richard is appointed Attorney General for Wales.
                 
More: For Wales. Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his
soul for the whole world.
                
But for Wales?

I realize that I appear to be have been living in a cave for the past year or two, but I just recently learned that Douglas Kmiec, the "Catholic pro-lifer" who so ardently and suavely supported Barack Obama through his presidential campaign and beyond, has been appointed U.S. Ambassador to Malta.

"I Thirst"--off-schedule Good Friday meditation

Okay, time for some more Gospel music. Here is the late, great George Younce and the Cathedrals singing "I Thirst."



Here are the words to the chorus again:

He said, “I thirst,” yet He made the rivers.
He said, “I thirst,” yet He made the sea.
“I thirst,” said the King of the Ages.
In His great thirst, He brought water to me.

In line with my desire to bring together high church and low church, Protestant and Catholic, I give you the following parallel, from the liturgy of the reproaches for Good Friday:

I did feed thee with manna in the desert, and thou has stricken me with blows and scourges.

(Response: O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.)

I did give thee to drink the water of life from the rock, and thou hast given me to drink but gall and vinegar.

(Response: O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.)

In his 9/11 post, my college Jeff Culbreath at W4 reminded us that we must be careful not to turn 9/11 into some kind of holy day of mourning that overshadows much more important Christian days such as Good Friday.

We're not anywhere near Good Friday just now, of course. (In fact, we're right in the middle of Trinitytide and recently had this great collect.) But having heard "I Thirst" recently and having been reminded of the reproaches, I thought it was as good a time as any to post on it.

Man who burned a few Koran pages on camera fired

...from New Jersey Transit after an 11-year career. The reason? He violated an "ethics code."

Let me get this straight: People who work with trains for New Jersey Transit are subject to an ethics code that prohibits (somehow) mistreating a Koran? I'd love to see the quotation from the ethics code in question. What does it say? "Everybody who works with train logistics for New Jersey Transit must be a multiculturalist in good standing"? I mean, seriously.

And these are the same people who would no doubt be horrified if someone were fired from New Jersey Transit for appearing in drag (or in nothing at all) in a Gay Pride parade or doing a spread for Playboy. Wouldn't they? Bet they'd find a way to sue over it.

Ethics code, indeed.

HT: VFR

What 9/11 means to me [Updated]

In case I have any readers here who aren't friends on Facebook, this is what I said there about 9/11:

I remember 9/11. And the moral I take from it is this: Islam is the problem. We must defy and oppose Islam. It is a major problem that nine years after 9/11, our country is far, far more deferential to Islam than it was before, far more afraid to say that Islam is _not_ a religion of peace. Take off the blinders, America! This is what 9/11 means.

P.S. If anyone hears about whether Bob Old of Tennessee actually burned a Koran and posted it on Youtube, let me know and post a link. I'm very curious.

Ah, here we go: Bob Old followed through. And there was some poor woman (whose husband is in Afghanistan) outside his house saying, "Someone's got to stand up for our troops." Say, what? We are insane.

More pictures of...er...related incidents, including a video link to another pastor, at VFR here.
I really have to hand it to Lawrence Auster. He has his readers inspired to take oaths not to submit to Islam even at the cost of their lives. Pretty impressive.

"Musical child abuse" page

I've been researching penny whistles lately, and in the process I found this absolutely hilarious page about a penny whistle set sold at Christmas some years ago. Be sure that you are all set to laugh when you read this, though actually, I agree with the guy. Whoever did this should be shot, figuratively speaking.

Acoustic Sunday--Kevin Williams, Buddy Greene, et. al.

If you like acoustic country and bluegrass music and hymns, you should buy this album. My favorites are "At Calvary" and "Amazing Grace."

Really beautiful stuff.

Amazon link here. Detailed review here.

HT: Eldest Daughter

The Pooh Community

Very fun satire by Richard Bauckham. Some tidbits:

The stories afford us a fairly accurate view of some of the rivalries and disputes within the community. The stories are told very much from the perspective of Pooh and Piglet, who evidently represent the dominant group in the community - from which presumably the bulk of the literature originated, though here and there we may detect the hand of an author less favourable to the Pooh and Piglet group. The Pooh and Piglet group saw itself as central to the life of the community (remember that Piglet's house is located in the very centre of the forest), and the groups represented by other characters are accordingly marginalized. The figure of Owl, for example, surely represents the group of children who prided themselves on their intellectual achievements and aspired to status in the community on this basis. But the other children, certainly the Pooh and Piglet group, ridiculed them as swots. So throughout the stories the figure of Owl, with his pretentious learning and atrocious spelling, is portrayed as a figure of fun. Probably the Owl group, the swots, in their turn ridiculed the Pooh and Piglet group as ignorant and stupid: they used terms of mockery such as 'bear of very little brain.' Stories like the hunt for the Woozle, in which Pooh and Piglet appear at their silliest and most gullible, probably originated in the Owl group, which used them to lampoon the stupidity of the Pooh and Piglet group. But the final redactor, who favours the Pooh and Piglet group, has managed very skilfully to refunction all this material which was originally detrimental to the Pooh and Piglet group so that in the final form of the collection of stories it serves to portray Pooh and Piglet as oafishly lovable. In a paradoxical reversal of values, stupidity is elevated as deserving the community's admiration.

Such insight into the tensions between various factions in the Pooh community could easily be extended into more debatable territory (the identification of the Eeyore faction e.g. is still debated - some recent scholars have argued that Eeyore is best seen as representing the adults of the village). But I move on to give you an example of the way in which various crises in the community's history have left their mark in the traditions. One such crisis, we can be sure, was caused by the arrival in the village of an Australian family. This was a highly disturbing event for such a community of rural English children - otherwise isolated from the rest of the world. Rabbit (in the book) voices what must have been the general reaction of the community: 'We find a Strange Animal among us. An animal of whom we had never even heard before!' While Rabbit voices the indignation, Piglet expresses the community's fear of the newly arrived Australian children: 'Generally Regarded as One of the Fiercer Animals.' The Australians are represented in the story, of course, by Kanga and Roo.

One small correction for Prof. Bauckham and his Pooh community scholars: He states that honey is not found in the Narnia books (while it is found in the Pooh books). I beg to differ. The Bulgy bears give honey as a gift to the exiled boy king Caspian when he is taken to visit them in Prince Caspian, and we are told that it took him a long time to get unsticky again afterwards. No doubt modern scholarship will provide us with at least one scholarly article or perhaps a dissertation on this matter.

Enjoy.

HT: Esteemed Husband

A foreign events fantasy

My fantasy speech from an Israeli Prime Minister:

I have no interest whatsoever in the so-called peace process. The peace process is a sham and worse than a sham. We do not have a "partner for peace." The only thing that can come of our engaging in such talks is that we will make dangerous concessions to our bitter enemies, enemies who relentlessly seek our eradication. Why should we do such a thing? So far from asking for the opportunity to engage in "direct talks" with representatives of the "Palestinians," I ask only that we be left alone to get on with governing our country and keeping our citizens safe. Oh, and by the way, a construction freeze in our capital city of Jerusalem is obscene, and construction in the eastern part of our capital begins tomorrow. Have a nice day.

I can dream, anyway.

Sam Harris and the Jews

I have recently become aware of The Devil's Delusion, David Berlinski's book on the New Atheists. Berlinski has in excelsis the gift of biting invective, and to let him loose on the New Atheists is almost unfair but also highly satisfying. One might almost say that he writes like an angel, but one would immediately have to add that he writes like a cynical, secular, and very Jewish angel.

Through Berlinski's book I have become aware of something that I'm sure caused a flap in the blogosphere, but as it was a flap I missed, and as some of my readers may have missed it too, I will report it here. The atheist Sam Harris has made some...striking comments apropos of the Holocaust in his book The End of Faith. Predictably enough, Harris attempts to blame anti-semitism in part on religion (Christianity and Islam, which he treats as equivalent in this regard), but Harris has an additional theory about the causes of anti-semitism that is more surprising. After documenting contemporary Muslim anti-semitism for a couple of pages, Harris proceeds (pp. 93-94) to say this:

The gravity of Jewish suffering over the ages, culminating in the Holocaust, makes it almost impossible to entertain any suggestion that Jews might have brought their troubles upon themselves. This is, however, in a rather narrow sense, the truth. Prior to the rise of the church, Jews became the objects of suspicion and occasional persecution for their refusal to assimilate, for the insularity and professed superiority of their religious culture-that is, for the content of their own unreasonable, sectarian beliefs. The dogma of a "chosen people," while at least implicit in most faiths, achieved a stridence in Judaism that was unknown in the ancient world. Among cultures that worshiped a plurality of Gods, the later monotheism of the Jews proved indigestible. And while their explicit demonization as a people required the mad work of the Christian church, the ideology of Judaism remains a lightning rod for intolerance to this day. As a system of beliefs, it appears among the least suited to survive in a theological state of nature. Christianity and Islam both acknowledge the sanctity of the Old Testament and offer easy conversion to their faiths. Islam honors Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as forerunners of Muhammad. Hinduism embraces almost anything in sight with its manifold arms (many Hindus, for instance, consider Jesus an avatar of Vishnu). Judaism alone finds itself surrounded by unmitigated errors. It seems little wonder, therefore, that it has drawn so much sectarian fire. Jews, insofar as they are religious, believe that they are bearers of a unique covenant with God. As a consequence, they have spent the last two thousand years collaborating with those who see them as different by seeing themselves as irretrievably so. Judaism is as intrinsically divisive, as ridiculous in its literalism, and as at odds with the civilizing insights of modernity as any other religion. [Emphasis added]

Berlinski on this passage is inimitable.

Having rejected the suggestion [that the Jewish people brought their troubles on themselves] as an impossibility, Harris at once proceeds to embrace it....Although Harris is officially committed to assigning the blame for intolerance on the intolerant, there is blame enough left over to assign some to the intoleree as well....To be a lightning rod for intolerance is a moral defect, the more so when the remedy--get rid of those divisive sectarian beliefs--lies close at hand. (pp. 28-29)

Berlinski on the "civilizing insights of modernity" with which Judaism is allegedly incompatible:

No doubt the civilizing insights of modernity appear considerable in Santa Barbara, where Sam Harris lives; but as travel broadens one's mind, it enlarges one's perspective, and those civilizing insights of which he writes are apt to seem a good deal less persuasive five thousand miles farther to the east, where modernity expressed itself in cattle cars rumbling from all the ancient civilized cities of Europe in order days later to deposit their famished, suffering victims at German extermination camps. (p. 30)

There's much more, including a terrific riff on Richard Dawkins's attempt to claim that atheism had nothing to do with the evil behavior of Stalin, Mao, et. al. (pp. 25-26).

I am, in point of fact, seriously considering sitting down and actually reading the entire Berlinski book, and if you knew how seldom I actually sit down nowadays and read a new book cover to cover, you would know how high a compliment that is. From what I've seen already, it's highly recommended.

As for Harris's disgusting anti-Jewish remarks I have nothing much to add to Berlinski's scathing response, except that when, just past the section I quoted, Harris manages to drag in the Evil Israeli Settlers (a principle obstacle to present peace and a cause of future wars, according to Harris), a few dots connected up for me. A certain type of secularist does find anti-Israel sentiment to be a gateway drug, as it were, for more sweeping anti-Jewish opinions.

I think that Harris's remarks should be more widely known and should call down upon him a due measure of opprobrium from non-Christians as well as Christians. But they probably won't. When I was seeking the electronic text of the Harris passage for easy copying into this entry (and, yes, I did also find it in its context in Harris's book on Google books), it was interesting to find one atheist blogger seeking help to answer criticisms of Harris based on the remarks--anti-atheist propaganda, as he called it.

That tells one a lot about the way a "rational skeptic" thinks. At least, it should.

Clueless in Iowa

You can't make this stuff up. Black wilding gangs openly hold a "beat whitey night" at the Iowa State Fair ("Our state fair is a great state fair..." sorry, Rodgers and Hammerstein), and the police merely find it "very possible" that the attacks had "racial overtones."

And you thought the British were the masters of understatement.

HT: VFR

The Obama administration's "special policy"

On tax exempt applications from pro-Israel groups. See the lawsuit here. An IRS agent got a little too talkative. (It was a woman, in case that's relevant.) Apparently applications from groups whose educational activities concern Israel are sent to a special unit to see if the group's policies contradict those of the present administration. That's, um, problematic from a legal perspective. It doesn't surprise me at all, though. What does surprise me is that the agent blabbed about it. I hope the lawsuit is successful and embarrassing for Obama. Not that we're hearing about this elsewhere in the news, of course.

HT: Carl in Jerusalem

Ayn Rand was a prophet

Rand once said that she had seen someone claiming that people had a right to, shall we say delicately, sexual satisfaction.

Well, look here. It's true. Britain is paying for the disabled to go to Holland and visit prostitutes. It would be a violation of "human rights" not to do so.

Apologies!

I apologize for not moderating comments in a timely fashion. I had thought that blogger would be sending me e-mail notifications when they were awaiting moderation, but evidently not. I've now entered the e-mail address in a second place on settings, and we'll see if that works as planned.

Apologies again.

Comments moderation enabled

Dear friends,

I'm sorry to have to do this, but I am getting sufficiently fed up with the steady trickle of spam (and nothing but spam) and have enabled comments moderation. Those of you who do post substantive comments, please do not be put off by this. I will be quite quick at moderating.

Thanks!

Get up in Jesus' name

If you didn't listen to the song in the previous post, go listen to it now. I'll wait here.

Okay, great. That song ("Wake up Dancin'") is beautiful and should be widely known.

This next one is completely different, though it's also sung by Gordon Mote. In fact, this one is not the kind of song I would usually post. It's not very melodic, and it's a bit too rocky for my taste, though I don't see how anyone could fail to appreciate the fun, wonder, and glory of Gordon's jazz piano playing, which you didn't get to see much of in the previous song. The harmonica and electric guitar here are also pretty cool, and the complicated rhythm with the Gaither Vocal Band backup is fascinating.

The reason I'm posting this is because of the Prop. 8 decision. Yeah, I know, leave it to me to politicize a great song. But wait until you hear the second verse, and you'll know what I mean. It talks about how the church seems discouraged and fearful, the world full of evil, and about how we need to get up in the name of Jesus and be His soldiers.

So now you see why I made the connection. Get up, Christians. Get up, church. Don't listen to those who would tell you to give in. Resist. Get up, in Jesus' name.

Songs to Die For: "Wake Up Dancin'"

Just encountered this wonderful country song (not even gospel, just country) yesterday, courtesy of Eldest Daughter.

The artist is Gordon Mote, the blind pianist for the Gaither Vocal Band, but as you can see, a singer in his own right.

But of course, there could be no "rational basis" for...

...a state to restrict marriage to one man and one woman.

See here. In case you're wondering why you should read it, it's called "Open Monogamy" and is about how some social scientists think it's just ducky that homosexual "marriage" will lead to a redefinition of "monogamy" to mean...um...I'm not sure. I think it means that you can have sex with anybody you want to and still call yourself "monogamous" as long as you are emotionally unattached to all the sexual partners other than the partner with whom you are said to be in a "committed relationship."

I'm waiting for the apologies from all the people who said, "How could this possibly hurt straight marriages?" in 3...2...1. Oh. Guess I shouldn't bother waiting.

We Give Thanks to Thee for Thy Great Glory

I've started going through parts of the Anglican liturgy (the Cranmerian parts, mostly) with two of my daughters. We were doing the Gloria in Excelsis the other day and came to my favorite line: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory..." There have been plenty of songs and, I'm sure, many sermons on this line. We praise God and thank God for who He is, not only for what He has done for us.

As I was trying to explain what is so important about this particular line, I was inspired to make a point I have never made before: We catch a small glimpse of this notion of praising God for who He is when we have a sense of thankfulness for someone we know, just for that person's being, for that person's existence. Sometimes we have this sense about a person in the past whose works we have read. It's hard to communicate this to children, especially children who have been loved and sheltered, but there is so much evil in the world, so many people who are not what they seem, who fail us and let us down, so much bad faith, that to find and know a man of integrity and greatness, to be able to admire someone, brings a sense of enormous relief. The mind and the heart rest in the sense that here at last is someone truly good.

If, in mere mortal human beings, sinners like ourselves, we can find greatness, if we can feel gratitude for their character and for our opportunity to know them or even just to know of them and to be refreshed by the knowing, how much more is this true of God Himself, the source of all goodness?

And so the mind moves upward from the creature to the Creator, and we say with the church throughout the ages, "We give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory."

"Shall We Gather At the River" with Irish whistle

Here's a really nice rendition of "Shall We Gather At the River" with accordion, penny whistle, and acoustic guitar. Has a folk sound. Buddy Greene singing, Jeff Taylor on accordion and penny whistle.




Buddy Greene is the harmonica player for many Gaither homecomings, and here he is bringing the house down at Carnegie Hall (!) with his harmonica:

New manuscript discovery (satire)

Those of you who have been following the outrageous treatment of Christian missionaries in Dearborn, MI, through my coverage at W4 or at the blog of Acts 17 ministries may or may not be aware that the Acts 17 guys and their friends have had a fair bit of their time wasted--on blogs, on Facebook, etc.--answering Christian "friends" who accuse them of being "too confrontational," etc., and hence getting themselves in trouble. (Never mind the rule of law, the freedom of religion, the mandate to proclaim the gospel, and all that. We're busy proving how hard we can be on fellow Christians who have the audacity to run afoul of the sharia police.)

Anyway, I cannot reveal here how the following came into my possession. I will only say, for the record, that I did not write it. I wouldn't want to take credit for something that isn't my own.

Don't forget to note the acronym at the end...

***************************************************************************

[The following document, written in Koine Greek on a surprisingly intact sheet of fine vellum, was recently found in a drawer in the British Museum, where it had lain uncatalogued for an unknown time. Scholarly opinion is divided, but some experts believe that it may have been a document that was considered and then rejected for inclusion in the fourteenth chapter of Acts. It is translated here for the first time.]

Dear Brother Paul,

We were grieved to hear of the commotion caused when you and Barnabas were here last month. Though we are, of course, grateful that you suffered no bodily harm, we feel it our duty to point out that what you were doing was in every way calculated to inflame strong passions and to incite violence. Because we love you as brethren, we feel it necessary to “show unto you a more excellent way,” lest your actions should cause a breach in the excellent relations we enjoy with the Jewish community here and in our sister cities to the south, Lystra and Derbe.

First, it is reported that you and Barnabas entered a synagogue. You of all people must understand that this placed you in a sensitive position. It is one thing to speak on a public street – sensitively, of course – but it is quite another to go forcing one’s way into the very house of worship of our Jewish friends. Ask yourselves: what would Jesus do? Would he have caused trouble in the Temple itself?

Second, it is reported that when you and Barnabas had entered the synagogue, you began openly preaching the gospel. Brethren, this is out of character with the behavior of our blessed Lord and Saviour, who, as the prophet Isaiah foretold, “opened not his mouth” – a moving description that we have taken as our motto for the Ministerial Society.

Third, it is reported that you engaged in this activity for an extended period of time, speaking boldly and with confidence. We entreat you: was there any need for this? Was there not a time and a place for sharing your convictions that would have been more compatible with the excellent advice you yourself have been known to give from time to time, that “all things might be done decently and in order”?

Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that the civil authorities and a sizeable portion of the religious population joined forces to prevent your actions. Without seeming to condone any violence you might have suffered, we feel compelled to point out that we in the Ministerial Society have never been the focus of such actions from either the civil or the religious direction. Indeed, several of the leading Rabbis here in Iconium have assured us that they have not the least problem with the manner in which we conduct ourselves.

This manner of conduct we earnestly commend to you. There is no need for you to suffer for your faith, whether out of misplaced piety or a juvenile desire for public attention. Our God, who is able to make the rocks cry out His praises, neither requires nor is glorified by brash attempts to proclaim His word in unseasonable circumstances. It is better – safer, and, we think, wiser – to remember the words of the preacher, that there is “a time for silence.”

Sincerely,

M. W. T. Rollos, secretary

Worship, Iconium! Ministerial Peace Society

“... ουκ ανοιγει το στομα αυτου”

New phonics material

A couple of years ago I put up on the Internet a first set of phonics lessons for beginning readers, along with some instructions for starting to teach your child to read. Here is my post on that, which I see is almost exactly two years old.

I now have a huge amount of additional phonics material available here. It begins with quite easy lessons, and most of the first one hundred pages or so are hand written. (Some of these were small pages from a tablet, so it isn't quite as impressive as it sounds. Still, I'm impressed looking back at how much was hand written. Don't know quite why I didn't start typing sooner.)

The lessons get quite advanced as they go on, teaching complex phonics concepts like words ending in -tial, hard and soft c and g, and many more. There are, unfortunately, no supplementary materials such as instructions or even a table of contents. It's just the lessons themselves. You have to browse for what you need. One suggestion for browsing would be using the underlying OCR layer to search for a word that has the phonics idea you need to drill, though this won't work on the handwritten portions.

The lessons are obviously written for my own children and sometimes refer to specific family situations and so forth. Parents who want to use the material might have to skip some of that or adapt it, unless you just want to use it as drill as you would with any material that uses unfamiliar names and situations.

I'm proudest of the stories in this big document. With a very few exceptions (toward the end) these stories were written by me (occasionally adapted from other things I have read), and nearly every story drills or reviews a phonics concept. Sometimes this leads to stiltedness in the prose, but looking back from the distance of a decade, I'm surprised at my own energy and ingenuity.

Here, for example (from pp. 122-123 of 327 total), is a fairy tale that drills single and double consonants before suffixes (for example, filling, filed, stopping, hoping). With apologies to lots of other stories, including the stories of Pandora, Psyche, Cinderella, the fairy tale version of "Beauty and the Beast" (not the movie), and probably others I'm not thinking of. I think I called the girl "Marie" because my reader at that time was having trouble distinguishing "Marie" and "Maria." (I also notice now that for most of these I wasn't observing the requirement to start a new paragraph for every new speaker in a dialogue.)

Once upon a time there was a lovely little girl named Marie who lived with her wicked stepmother. Her father and mother had died, and Marie's stepmother made her work hard all day, filling buckets of water and scrubbing the floors. If she did not do the work fast enough, she was whipped and put in a dark room in chains. Marie was very unhappy, but she kept hoping that she would be free some day.

One day, while she was sitting in a small room, wiping tears from her eyes, a little mouse came in carrying a file which he had stolen from the kitchen. He began sawing away at her bonds. Finally he had filed them loose, and Marie was free. The mouse led her quietly out of the house and into the woods. Suddenly, when Marie looked, the mouse was gone. At first she was frightened, but then she saw a robin looking at her very brightly. "Can you help me?" she asked the robin. It said nothing, but it pointed the way with its wing and then flew in front of her.

At last, she arrived at a golden house in the middle of the wood. Marie went up to the door and rang the bell, but no one she could see carne to the door. The door opened, and invisible hands led her inside. They took her into a room with a long table, filled with all sorts of food, and helped her to sit down. Marie began to get the feeling that she was not alone. The room appeared empty, but soon, someone spoke. "You cannot see me, but I am the master of this house. I am a prince, and I am under a spell. Your wicked stepmother is a witch who has also enchanted me, so that I am invisible. Only if you will go on a long journey can I be freed." "What must I do?" said Marie. "You must take this golden box, without saying a word to anyone, and without opening it, and carry it through the woods to the good fairy of the lake."

Marie picked up the box and carried it away. But the task was hard. The wood was scary; it was full of matted thorns, and bats which hated people and flew at her. Once she met an old woman who tried to talk to her, and once a man who looked kind asked her where she was going, but she remembered what the prince had said and refused to say a word. sometimes she found herself scraping away clinging vines in order to make her way. Sometimes she stopped and rested, but she never gave up. And sometimes she wished she knew what was in the box, but she never opened it.

And at last, the wood was behind her and a beautiful lake was in front of her. And there, beside the lake, was a lovely woman who could only be the good fairy of the lake. Taking the box from Marie, the fairy said, "My child, you have fulfilled the task which was laid on you. Now I shall open the box, and both you and the prince will be free forever." The fairy opened the box, and a sweet smell filled the air. Suddenly, the prince was standing beside Marie, now visible. He kissed her and said, "Your wicked stepmother, the witch, is dead, because you were faithful. Now you shall be my queen."

And they lived happily ever after.

I hope there are some parents out there who will find the material useful, despite the need for browsing. I've been wanting for a long time to get it preserved electronically. The problem was that much of it was hand written and, beyond that, the old floppy disks containing all the typed lessons have been misplaced. My heartfelt thanks to Jason Thueme for the scanning job and to Tim McGrew for help with the scanning, for the use of his fancy scanner, and for the underlying OCR layer.

Welcome "Ruminations" readers

At the urging of a friend I've recently installed Statcounter, a free software that allows me to find out how many people are viewing Extra Thoughts and where they are coming from. In this way I have learned something I hadn't noticed before--namely, that the Israeli historian Yaacov Lozowick has a link to Extra Thoughts from his blog, Ruminations. And people do come to Extra Thoughts by way of that link. I am extremely pleased to learn this.

Those of you who come to Extra Thoughts by that route may find yourselves a bit surprised or even disoriented. Here is a link from a blog by an Israeli historian to the personal blog of a devout, Protestant Christian who, nowadays, seems to be blogging American gospel music videos in more than half of her posts. Well, stranger things have happened in the blogosphere. Nor should this be very surprising to the politically astute, who have long known that evangelical Christians in America are Israel's best friends--sometimes even more vocal in Israel's defense than Israel's own leaders. Please do look around, and especially, please see the Israel label, the Holocaust label, and the Buchanan label. (There is some overlap among the posts under these labels.)

If you are an Arab or Muslim reader of Yaacov's blog, please understand that I am much less nice than he is, as well as a good deal farther to the right. I treat Extra Thoughts more or less as a personal space, and I don't lose a wink of sleep over deleting comments from Israel-haters, leftist trolls, and the like.

Just now my main thought about Israel is a feeling of bafflement that Netanyahu would consider it something gained to have "direct talks" between Israel and the "Palestinians." As far as I'm concerned, something gained would be cutting off all talks, since they are obviously worse than pointless from Israel's perspective and can do only harm to Israel and no good. (Lawrence Auster calls the Middle East "peace process" the Dance of the Undead, and boy, is he right.) Which, if you are new to Extra Thoughts, probably tells you (along with the scare quotes around "Palestinians") all you need to know about my perspective on Israel.

Bonus: I just learned today of this incredible outrage. The rule of law in England is taking a real beating. A judge (who, despite his blandly British name, apparently was born in Jaffa) led a jury by his summing up to aquit seven thugs who did 180,000 pounds in damage to a factory on the purely political grounds that they were motivated by opposition to Israel. (Evidently they believed that the company in question sold arms to Israel.) The judge sympathizes with their political motives and brought the supposed plight of the Gazans into his summing up to lead the jury to aquit them, despite the fact that the evidence of their actual destructive actions is beyond all question. This isn't the first time that political motivation has been used to acquit thugs in England. The previous time a jury found that a group of thugs had "lawful excuse" to damage a power station because it was allegedly contributing to global warming. But in the anti-Israel case, the judge appears to have been more directly involved; in the "green" case, the cause of the jury's acquittal was apparently sheer propaganda from defense attornies. (HT on this story, VFR.)

How long, I wonder, before this kind of rank court anarchy comes to the United States?

God Bless America

A happy July 4 to all my readers. America needs God's blessing now, more than ever, with those at her helm who are out to destroy her. Herewith, an America medley:

Ernie Haase Signature Sound

Continuing to blog a bit here about the concert in Shipshewana from (now) two weeks ago. (The beatings will continue until morale improves. Which is to say that I'm going to keep on blogging about Gospel music even if none of my readers are interested in it, though I'm not entirely sure why.)

It would probably be an understatement to say that Ernie Haase is one of the most powerful gospel music tenors of the past fifty years, but I'll just stop with that generalization. He has a truly wonderful voice--able to hit high notes, but also mature and strong--and is, in my opinion, justly beloved by his fans. "Oh What a Savior" is considered to be a song that Ernie "owns," and for good reason.



At the concert two weeks ago, Ernie had a kind of quietness about him. He came out at the very beginning of the concert in jeans and a casual shirt (about which he made a humorous comment) and led the audience in prayer, which somehow I hadn't expected. He did not sing "Oh, What a Savior" nor, as far as I can remember, any "big ballads" that showcased his amazing voice. There was plenty of high energy from the group as a whole, including songs like "Swingin' On the Golden Gate" (not actually one of my favorites), but Ernie himself, by himself, was low-key. He made some comments, always with self-deprecating humor, that made it seem that he was tired and feeling his age. (He's only forty-five.)

Ernie clearly loves children, though he and his wife (Lisa, daughter of gospel music great George Younce) have no children of their own. In a classy break from our tell-all celebrity culture, Ernie doesn't talk about this, though indirect evidence indicates that it is a sadness to them. Toward the end of the concert he sang a song that I'd never heard before, which he said he originally wrote as a lullaby for his nieces and nephews. If you have children, don't be ashamed if it makes you a bit misty-eyed.



After the concert, Ernie was very kind in meeting his fans. Eldest Daughter asked him to sign an old Cathedrals CD (from the group he used to sing with) that was cut in the year she was born. When she told him that (that it was recorded in the year she was born), he said, "Oh, don't do that to me!" smiled, and signed it.

EHSS is on a vacation now for a few weeks. May they come back refreshed to bless more people with their lives and music.

Collingsworth Family

A week and a day ago we were privileged to go to Shipshewana, IN, to a concert by Ernie Haase/Signature Sound and the Collingsworth Family. (The Browns--children and mother--were the supporting artists. I'll say a bit more about them in a later post.)

In many ways I'm still processing the concert and deciding how much to blog about. I can't really do it justice and could say so many different things. The thing that will always stick with me the most is how very, very kind these Southern gospel performers are to their fans and especially to young people. My girls got to meet and have pictures taken with all of the performers, to get autographs, and there was no impatience at all, even though it was quite late by the time the concert was finished.

More in a later post about Ernie Haase/Signature Sound, a great bunch of guys with a great sound.

If you have any interest at all in Christian music, especially somewhat old-fashioned, God-honoring music, hymns, etc., I cannot recommend the Collingsworth family too highly. They are incredibly talented. What I didn't know before going to the concert is how hugely talented a pianist the mother is. Kim Collingsworth is simply amazing. Here is (part of) her rendition of "How Great Thou Art."



The entire arrangement is here. (Embedding disabled on this one.)

I was privileged to speak briefly with Kim Collingsworth during the intermission. She has a beautiful, soft Southern accent and is a true lady, sincere, kind, and gracious, which is so striking in a person of such high musical professionalism. She told me, "If you will do the best for God, God will do the best for you. And that's a good deal."

Here are the Collingsworth ladies (mother and two eldest daughters) singing "Fear Not Tomorrow," which I have not heard elsewhere.



Brooklyn, the eldest daughter, is getting married this winter.

Trinity IV

One of the greatest collects in the Prayer Book or in the English language:

O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here is an earlier post on this collect.

I see that I did not note in that post the epistle reading for the day. It is from Romans 8 and begins,

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

And that's all I have to say. I recommend just thinking awhile about those two pieces of prose, one from the pen of Thomas Cranmer, the other from Holy Writ (and the Apostle Paul). And I present the first to any readers unfamiliar with the Prayer Book as a reason for reading the collects in it and using them in your own devotions.

A Tribute to Walter Kronemeyer: 1910-1996

(This is a post that I thought I already wrote. I was surprised upon googling my own blog to find that it didn't already exist. Apparently I started researching for it and then never actually wrote it.)

When I was quite little, and for something like a decade thereafter, I knew a former missionary to Africa--a missionary for several terms from 1946 to 1960--named Walter Kronemeyer. We all called him Uncle Walt, and he came year after year to do child evangelism at Camp Manitoumi in Lowpoint, IL (which I have also talked about here). Uncle Walt seemed ageless-old when I first new him, and he never seemed to age thereafter. He was like that. His face was bronzed and leathery the first time I met him, and bronzed and leathery it remained. It's hard to imagine that color fading even in the dead of winter, though in Grandville, MI, his home town, winters get plenty dark and long. But I always thought of him in connection with the sun.

Camp Manitoumi has plenty of trees in the surrounding woods, but on the hilltop (such a hilltop as it is) where the buildings are, there is little shade. The landscape is mostly flat, and the sun beats fiercely on the baseball field, the cabins, and the chapel in the center. Occasionally Uncle Walt would seek out a tree to sit under, but often not.

It's an odd thing: Year after year he came and told stories and preached to us children, and I loved him dearly, but I remember now very little of the preaching, except for the sense of a man wholly dedicated to God and to the salvation of souls. I hope he will forgive me. And it's a humbling thing to think, as an adult and a mother--How little do we remember when we are grown up of what the adults said to us when we were children? We remember what they were and what they did.

What Uncle Walt did was to sit cross-legged, often as not in the sun, and carve wood, and talk gently with the children and adults who gathered around. There was a catalpa tree out in the woods somewhere. I don't know who found it for him, but he always liked to use catalpa wood. He would send one of the camp workers out to chop him some round chunks of it, and then he would get to work. I can almost see it now: He would chop off the bark on each side of the chunk in a slab. Those were the sides of the elephant. Then he would begin rough-carving over the top. Gradually the elephant emerged. Always basically the same, yet each one a little different. Acquisitive child though I was, I understood that he had to give them to adults--usually to the camp director or the pastor in charge of that particular week--because there were so many children, and feelings would be hurt if he picked out one child to whom to give an elephant. Occasionally he rough-carved an African mask from one of the side pieces, and somehow I got one of those. I have it still.

It was privilege enough just to sit and watch him. The old hands, very sure and deft. He always knew exactly what he was doing with the wood. And then it was a kind of magic to see the wood get smoother and smoother after he had made the general elephant shape appear.

I know that I talked too much while watching him, because I remember the following incident quite clearly: I'd been sitting and watching for a while, not much thinking about what I was doing, when finally Uncle Walt turned to me with a twinkle in his eye. "Now I tell you what," he said. "I want you to try something. For the next half hour I want you to sit there completely quiet and just watch and listen to everyone else, and see what you notice." So of course I did. (I was terribly disobedient and disrespectful to my parents at home, but camp had a magical effect. While there it seems to me now that I became--mostly--conscientious, hard-working, and obedient to authority.) At the end of a half hour, Uncle Walt turned to me again. "Now tell me," he said, "Who talked most while you were being quiet?" I instantly pointed to a lady nearby. This being family week, there were lots of adults around. She was rather flustered, and everyone laughed. "But I was telling a story!" And that was true. But he asked a question, so I answered. From then on, I was much quieter while watching.

I remember one of the last times I saw Uncle Walt. By then I had graduated to the lofty pinnacle of camp worker. I was fifteen years old. I was in the chapel, where I spent much time that summer. It always seemed cool in the chapel at midday, despite the sun beating down outside. And there was Uncle Walt, coming in the door. I ran and hugged him. But something was different. There was a box under his shirt. "What's that?" I asked--not thinking, as usual. "Oh, it's a pacemaker," he said, quite calmly.

Five years later, when I married, I sent him a wedding invitation. Really, just to let him know that I was getting married. He and his wife Ruth wrote back a loving letter, which I wish I had kept. It was reassuring to think that the pacemaker hadn't meant anything, after all. In the end he lived to be 85.

And we also bless thy name, O Lord, for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear, especially Uncle Walt. Amen.

(Thanks to Kim Raterink Fye, Uncle Walt's granddaughter, who responded so kindly to my out-of-the-blue electronic request for information about her grandfather.)

Father's Day

Please see my Father's Day post if you have not already seen it over at What's Wrong With the World. (Aside: It really seems like it should be "Fathers' Day." Wikipedia says that the woman who originally suggested the holiday called it "Fathers' Day" but that Congress passed the declaration for it with the apostrophe moved over.)

An addendum to that post, which didn't seem to fit in it smoothly: I am adopted. Mr. and Mrs. W. adopted me as a seven-month-old baby. There are a couple of different back-stories to this, most of which I knew nothing about until I was grown. Suffice it to say that I have every reason to be extremely grateful for my adoption and for the stability and love that I have received.

Creative destruction

Okay, this is for fun. Periodically one discusses with anti-capitalists the problems of progress and the way that change puts people out of a job. For the most part people like me are not sympathetic to such complaints per se. The invention of the car put plenty of wheel-makers and blacksmiths out of jobs, and by itself that was not a reason not to invent the car. The light bulb put candle makers out of jobs, but the candle makers were themselves better off for the better light and could likely find other jobs. Anyway, this is a perennial irritation between Marxists and anti-capitalists of many stripes on the one side and advocates of the free market on the other.

In the following funny set of videos we see Dudley Moore (of all people) cast in the role of advocating an inferior product as "progress" (and of course, when the product is inferior, that's highly relevant) and as a movement of the "human spirit" and Animal and Floyd defending the old ways and the old jobs. Very funny.





Apropos of the band's comment, "It's a musical garbage can. Playin' musical garbage," I thought of this video, which the Ironic Catholic rightly calls "simultaneously impressive and abhorrent." Color me skeptical that this is going to put many real drummers out of jobs. It certainly shouldn't. I think I prefer Animal.



HT for "Mama Don't 'Low" to Romish Graffiti

You can keep your insurance--Probably not

My assiduous readers will remember this detailed post of mine in which I discussed the repeated claim that if you like your current insurance plan, nothing will change under Obamacare, you can keep you plan. "Move along folks. Nothing to see here but us Democrats helping poor people. You gotta problem with that?"

There I discussed both the elimination of catastrophic-only policies and the setting of all benefits (maximum as well as minimum) by the government for all plans.

Now, post-passage of Obamacare, we hear about something else: So-called "mini-med" plans can and probably will be eliminated under Obamacare by government rules. These are often used for poorer workers such as part-timers or waiters who cannot afford more expensive plans. Poof, gone.

Obamacare--the gift that keeps on giving.

Ordinary care and "expensive" lives

I am not Catholic, but a recent conversation elsewhere has brought back to my mind the fact that the USCCB has implied that a means for preserving life may be "disproportionate" if it imposes "excessive expense."

Some people attempt to use this loophole to justify the murder (yep, I call it that) of helpless people like Terri Schiavo by depriving them of mere nutrition and hydration. The claim is that it is "excessively expensive" to "keep alive" someone like Terri.

My own strong preference would be for understanding ordinary and extraordinary care in biological terms, in terms of whether the body is actively dying, in terms of what everyone needs, and so forth, rather than in terms of expense. But it may be expected that the ordinary/extraordinary distinction will track the "very expensive/not-so-expensive" distinction, on the assumption that extraordinary care involves expensive technology.

People--especially Catholics--who want to excuse depriving the Terris of the world of mere food and water via a perceived "expense" loophole in the Church's teaching need to be brought up short by the following consideration: It is not the "artificial" nature of the nutrition and hydration that are the chief cause of expense for such helpless people. It is the fact that they live, are helpless, and need ordinary care: things like diaper changing, being turned in the bed, bathing, etc. This sort of care is what is most expensive, especially if the people closest to the helpless adult are unable because of strength considerations or unwilling to do that work.

Thought experiment: Suppose that a helpless, severely disabled adult like Terri were magically made able to survive without food and water but still needed day-to-day bodily care. Would the "expense" of her life be drastically decreased? I say that it would not. It's not the cost of the insertion of the PEG tube nor the cans of adult "formula" that are the heaviest expense. It's the fact that the person is alive and needs to be cared for as a baby would.

But so what? Question: Do we consider it "medical care" to bathe, clothe, change, and otherwise care for a baby? Do we consider such normal forms of care to be "extraordinary" or "disproportionate"?

The care of helpless adults is deemed "medical" because their being helpless means that something is wrong with them and also, practically, because it is so much more work to take care of them and is best done (though not necessarily done) by those with special training and a good deal of physical strength.

Once we realize that it is paradigmatically ordinary care that is so expensive for these people--"expensive," at least, in terms of time and effort, even if able to be undertaken by loving family--that it is simply their existence as helpless people that is expensive, I think we will realize that it is the merest sophistry to talk as if it is their "artificial" feeding that is "extraordinary" or "excessively expensive" and focus on that as an excuse for getting rid of them. One irony here is that tube feeding actually decreases the difficulty (and hence, the expense) of caring for a helpless person. It enables that person to get the necessary nutrition and hydration fairly easily, where spoon feeding would be much less efficient, enormously more time-consuming, probably would not provide adequate nutrition to an adult, and takes more skill to do safely.

The issue, then, is not that tube feeding is specially expensive, hence extraordinary, hence conveniently optional. The issue is that people who can't care for themselves need a lot of care.

But we knew that already. And if someone thinks that morally excuses dehydrating them to bring their expensive lives to a quicker end, he has a major problem.

(Warning to liberal trolls: I have a delete key, and I'm not afraid to use it.)

Trinity I--Collect

O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Thomas Cranmer translated this collect from Latin with virtually no change. It sounds like a rather Augustinian collect. We cannot do any good thing without God. All our righteousness is as filthy rags.

I don't fully understand that. No matter how hard I try, I have trouble believing that the goodness--real goodness--of unbelievers is as filthy rags in the eyes of God. I would prefer to think that even they are, at some level and in some sense, receiving the help of God's grace. Which does not mean that they, we, or anyone can in any measure earn his favor by being good.

But at a practical level, this is a good collect for all occasions, the sort of prayer one can pray on any given day and find applicable. One needn't bother with Augustinian theology. We know ourselves. We know the weakness of our mortal nature. We know how we start out the day and can scarcely get through an hour without some sin--even if it is a mere matter, and not so "mere" either, of tone of voice. We start out full of the milk of human kindness and good resolutions, and then someone does something that throws our plans out of whack, someone else's tone of voice doesn't seem right, we notice that little thing that has always been so darned irritating, and there we are, back in the soup.

One cannot make hard and fast predictions in the spiritual life, but perhaps starting the day with this collect would be helpful.

Breath of Life Quartet--Found on-line [Updated--Lost again]

Update: Bummer. Big-time bummer. Alerted by reader Doug Downing, I checked today and discovered that the music has all disappeared. The site appears to be there, but not only do embeds not work, when you try to download, you get an offer to sell you the domain name. Very bad sign. Looks like the music itself is gone and only the playlist left. We have the tracks, downloaded in June, but I feel bad for readers.

Below is the original post as it appeared three months ago.

****************************************************************************

This is a truly great find. Back in the 1970's and (I think) into the 1980's there was a black group called the Breath of Life Quartet. They seem to have disappeared from the scene without a trace, unless you count a follow-up group that (of course) calls itself "BLQ" a trace. I'd rather not. The original Breath of Life Quartet had an ethereal sound that was absolutely amazing. I've now learned that the album I listened to over and over again on cassette tape in the church van (Pastor Aycock weaving back and forth to the public danger, for which God saw to it that he never received a ticket), was called Spirituals.

Ever since I've had Internet access to speak of, I've been periodically searching for these recordings on-line. Not knowing the name of the album was a real problem, and I never could find it, not even on e-bay. (It doesn't help that there is a woodwind group also called the Breath of Life Quartet.) I have what sounds like a copy of a copy of Spirituals on a cassette tape, labeled simply "Black Quartet" in handwriting. I kept listening to that, copied it again before it broke, and played it for my kids many times.

But a few weeks back, when I was once more lamenting the difficulty of finding the music on the Internet, Eldest Daughter went to work on her own. By the simple expedient of dropping the word "quartet" from her search, she found the entire album on-line for free embedding and download. Within minutes. Kids are amazing on computers.

Suppose that you think my Gospel music craze is more than a bit strange. No problem. Forget that. This is not a Southern Gospel sound. These are black spirituals sung in an indescribably pure style. No emotional vocal display. No blast-your-ears excitement. They are really very beautiful. Below are three of them, but all the rest are available at the link, even though it comes up with a particular one. Just look at the box on the right that says "Album related Spirituals" for the other tracks. And if you like them, download them now and burn 'em to a CD. It would be a real shame if they disappeared again from mortal ken.


Breath of Life Quartet

Breath of Life - Ezekiel Saw De Wheel Found at abmp3 search engine

Breath of Life - No More Sorrow Found at abmp3 search engine

Breath of Life - King Jesus Found at abmp3 search engine

Leaving long-faced religion behind

An old friend, C. B., from whom I haven't heard in a while, used to tell me that the Catholic view is that it's an obligation to get drunk at weddings.

Obviously, I'm not going to agree with him there. But there's a Protestant version of that, which is that we should, in the words of a Stephen Curtis Chapman song, "Leave long-faced religion behind."

Scripture says, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord." It seems to me that in the Christian life there is definitely a place for fun, even specifically Christian fun, and that this carries over to Christian music as well. Not everything has to be deeply nourishing. Some things can just be an encouraging way to start the day.

With which introduction, here is "Every Day, Every Hour" by the Cathedrals. The video features a very young Ernie Haase. As George Younce says in a different video of a different young singer, "I've got socks older than that." I like the studio version better, because it has a higher sound quality and is easier to hear the guitar and the jazzy piano, but the Youtube version is lots of fun, too:

What's wrong with paleoconservatism

Wow. Well, in keeping with my use of this personal blog as a sort of safety valve for all manner of things I can't sound off about elsewhere, herewith an endorsement of the following summary of the problem with paleoconservatism:

Their lack of any larger idea of the good is perfectly expressed in the way the paleocons typically express their positive belief. Over and over, you hear them say something like this: "I believe in hearth, home, and kindred." This is their affirmation of the particular and the local as distinct from the universal and the massified. But the problem is, it's not enough. "Hearth and kindred" boils down to one's family, neighbors, and locality. It has no reference to a political order, no reference to a cultural order, no reference to transcendent moral order, no reference to philosophical truth, no reference to a nation.

The rest is here.

Kudos to VFR on Israel

I am grateful for the coverage at Auster's View from the Right of issues related to Israel, most recently, of course, the pro-Hamas flotilla incident. Auster is the only high-profile conservative blogger I know who is not simply a predictable mainstream conservative (he's interestingly quirky and trad-conservative) but who is staunchly and loudly pro-Israel. And being loud is good in this area, I would add. I can't think of the last time--maybe there hasn't been a time--when Auster said something about Israel that I disagreed with, right up to and including his repeated comments that in reality Israel is far too liberal and near-suicidal, doesn't present its own case forcefully enough, makes foolish concessions to its enemies, etc.

It depresses me when I give myself time to think about it to realize how many people who identify themselves as conservative are anti-Israel and even accept the ridiculous nonsense about the "peace activists" in the "aid flotilla." Here, too, Auster calls a spade a grub hoe and discusses directly the disgusting coverage at TAC and Alternative Right. For some reason I find this refreshing and a kind of relief, perhaps because it's the kind of thing that I wish I had the time, emotional energy, and courage to do myself.

Not being a Bob Dylan fan, I had never before read the words to "Neighborhood Bully" before seeing them the other day at VFR. They really are astonishing.

Christendom Review Volume 2, Issue 1

The latest issue of the on-line journal The Christendom Review is here. Editor Bill Luse has an introduction on the subject of gratitude which is a small work of art in itself. (I just now got a chance to read it.) The emphasis here upon gratitude is spot-on. I find that with every year that goes by I really cannot be grateful enough for all that there is to be grateful for. This is just literally true. There aren't enough hours in the day or enough energy even to think of all the things for which I should be grateful. Says Bill,

I read somewhere to let the evil of the day be sufficient unto itself. The nihilist is right when he opines that we’ll all be carted to the cemetery forthwith, but I also suspect that, like the rest of us, he is grateful for having seen the light in the interim. I’ll try to remember to say a few thank-yous before the first shovelful of dirt comes down. But I’ve a reputation as a procrastinator, for which my wife often rewards me with an observation no less timely for being well-worn: “Better late than never.”

I've just begun to go through the issue and am looking forward to the visual art, the poetry, and the fiction (one short story by Bill himself, which he doesn't mention in his introduction).

And while we are talking about gratitude, let's remember to be grateful to Rick Barnett, Bill Luse, and Todd McKimmey for producing the journal.