Tradition and Grizzlebeard

Thomas Smith, Don Briel, and Alasdair MacIntyre: New Programs in Old Universities

2010-12-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

This video features an excellent panel discussion between Thomas Smith of Villanova, Don Briel of the Catholic Studies Department at the University of St. Thomas and Alasdair MacIntyre at Notre Dame. Here they discuss new programs exploring theology, philosophy, literature, history, and other disciplines in an academic, integrated, and rigorous way. The popularity of these programs rises exponentially every year. And where are they gaining ground? In the undergraduate world as well as amongst faculty who want to teach in such an environment, who want, as Thomas Smith says, "something unique, interesting, and necessary." This panel discussion was part of the Center for Ethics and Culture Conference Joy in the Truth (2005).

Walks and Leisure

2010-11-29T22:50:00.000-08:00

Overwhelmed these last few months by the amount of work I felt I had to do, I decided to consider serious ways to carve out time for leisure. Here were my resolutions.

One month ago, I began walking to work. At the end of a month, I find I sleep better and notice more--the kind of things I used to notice as catalogued in What's Around Me.

Last week, I set timers so that I would end work at a certain time, and then upon going home was allowed to work only forty more minutes. At the end of one week, I found the important work had been accomplished. In fact, the unimportant work had also been accomplished. I was still returning tests and quizzes in less than a week. I had even found one free evening to total all my grades. And in the meantime, I wrote a paper, gathered music for Christ the King, attended a conference, got my house ready for guests, cleaned, listened to a novel, and got enough sleep.

So there you have it. Leisure is indispensable. Try it.

Debating Historical Moments

2010-11-28T20:36:00.000-08:00

I am running three debates in the next week for my students who recently finished studying the "Glorious" Revolution. I let them read James II's Declaration of Indulgence and sang them six Jacobite songs (Cam Ye O'er Frae France, Prince Charlie Stuart, Wae's Me For Prince Charlie, Bonny Moorhen, Will Ye No Come Back Again?, and the Skye Boat Song), so they got the Jacobite view as well. The following site helped me prepare how to run the debates. Part of the goal is to give time for the students to think seriously and carefully about arguments on the losing side.

These will be the resolutions:

1. The Act of Union (1707) will benefit Scotland.

2. The Act of Exclusion (1679) is justifiable.

3. The Act of Succession (1701) is justifiable.

Students will prepare to argue for or against the resolution, and then debate in the following day.

Educating for Resistance

2010-11-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

Enjoy Wendell Berry's excellent commencement address at Bellarmine University.

Here is a great excerpt:

You will have to avoid thinking of yourselves as employable minds equipped with a few digits useful for pushing buttons. You will have to recover for yourselves the old understanding that you are whole beings inextricably and mysteriously compounded of minds and bodies.

You will have to understand that the logic of success is radically different from the logic of vocation. The logic of what our society means by “success” supposedly leads you ever upward to any higher-paying job that can be done sitting down. The logic of vocation holds that there is an indispensable justice, to yourself and to others, in doing well the work that you are “called” or prepared by your talents to do.

Christ the King at St. Paul's-Outside-the-Walls

2010-11-18T17:47:00.000-08:00

A good idea . . . This time in 2006 I was in Rome at St. Paul's-Outside-the-Walls where an amazing event was going on. For the feast of Christ the King, the priests, choir, Knights of Malta, and parishioners had put together a kind of Lessons and Carols. The readings were from both Old and New Testament. The music was a mix of hymns, chant, and polyphony on the theme as Christ as King. The readings ran the gamit--from Christ as the humilated King crowned with thorns (and music like Palestrina's Jesu Rex Admirabilis) to Christ Risen and Triumphant with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.

Now that there are 51 weeks left to prepare for Christ the King 2011, this might be worth exploring.

All Hallows' Eve

2010-10-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Faces of the Reformation

2010-10-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

I found an excellent site called Luminaria: Anthology of English Literature, easy to navigate and full of great pictures and fairly good explanations of major English figures in the following four areas: Medieval, Renaissance, 17th century, and Restoration history and literature. Many of the faces below come from this site. I have my students choose a face, draw it, and write about the person's significance.

Christopher Blum, The Historian and His Tools in the Workshop of Wisdom

2010-09-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

New in the Fall 2010 issue of Logos (13.4), the scholarly journal of the Center for Catholic Studies, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota is Christopher Blums's robust article on the role of the historian. He uses John Henry Newman as guide in determining what that role might be. Now, of course, as Blum points out, "history" does not make it into Newman's Idea of A University. For Newman, history had always a subordinate role to play in "the workshop of wisdom" (to borrow a phrase from Pope Gregory IX). And yet--the study of history played such an important role in Newman's own life and conversion. So where does the study of history fit in education, if at all?

Blum answers this in three steps. He first explores the role "that historical study played in [Newman's] conversion, then attend[s] to his reflection upon the place of historical study within a liberal education, and, finally, sketch[es] an answer to the question of the historian’s role in the workshop of wisdom today."

The sketched answer is striking and Blum's prose on the way to that answer profound and invigorating--rather worthy of Newman. Here is one passage near the end of the article. "It is in an age of cultural dislocation and fragmentation that the historian takes on another role, becomes a raider of archives and a wielder of footnotes, and rides out like a knight-errant in defense of wisdom" (30). Read Blum's article here.

Christopher Blum is a professor at Thomas More College, Merrimack, NH and author of two books of translations from the French, Critics of the Enlightenment: Readings in the French Counter-Revolutionary Tradition (ISI Books) and The True & Only Wealth of Nations: Essays on Family, Economy, and Society by Louis de Bonald (Sapientia Press), and a number of essays on topics of Catholic interest.

Newman on History

2010-09-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of the beatification of Cardinal Newman, enjoy these historical essays available from the full database of his works http://www.newmanreader.org/.

Try "The Benedictine Schools" or jump straight to the collected sketches:

Volume 1
1. Lectures on the History of the Turks, in their relation to Europe
2. Personal and Literary Character of Cicero (From the Encyclopædia Metropolitana of 1824.)
3. The Apollonius of Tyana(From the Encyclopædia Metropolitana of 1826.)
4. Primitive Christianity (From the British Magazine, 1833-1836.)

Volume 2
1. The Church of the Fathers
2. St. Chrysostom
3. Trials of Theodoret
4. The Mission of St. Benedict (From The Atlantis of January, 1858.)
5. The Benedictine Schools (From The Atlantis of January, 1859.)

Volume 3

1. The Rise and Progress of Universities
2. Northmen and Normans in England and Ireland
3. Medieval Oxford
4. Convocation of Canterbury

Codes and Decoding

2010-09-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

This marvelous website is dedicated to famous codes. My history students and I were discussing Enigma, the famous code of WWII, so I looked up how to make a cipher and stumbled on this site. I've been taking topical historical phrases (something that actually might have been a secret message between characters we're studying), and coding them.

This site is just plain fun. (It falls into the category of existential Calvin and Hobbes cartoons at the foot of theology tests. Low-brow, I know, but one must consider one's audience.)

Papyrus

2010-09-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Any Ancient History teachers looking to buy some cyperus papyrus for their classroom, might look into Bonnie's Plants out of North Carolina. Bonnie Hale runs this business, purveying pond plants, koi, and more. The service was outstanding. Twenty dollars got a healthy papyrus plant, carefully packaged, from North Carolina to my desk in 48 hours. Wow. And now I have this plant to show my students and to grow. When it gets to be about 6 feet, it's ready for the papyrus press. More later.

Way of Beauty series

2010-09-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

David Clayton, Artist-in-Residence at Thomas More College now has a program airing on Catholic TV which you can watch here.

According to the program:
This new series examines Catholic traditions in art as an expression of a Catholic worldview. The series will be focusing on authentic Catholic artistic traditions (iconographic, gothic, baroque and sacred geometry). The Way of Beauty will examine what constitutes a tradition, how it is taught and passed on so that it can respond to the times, while retaining its essential principles. The series will show how the style of these traditions can be related directly to the liturgy, theology and philosophy of the Church. The Way of Beauty is hosted by David Clayton, an iconographer and artist in residence at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, N.H.

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars

2010-09-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

Duffy's meticulous research and compelling argument gives much food for thought. Duffy is Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow and former President of Magdalene College.

He sums up why his book matters thusly: If medieval religion was decadent, unpopular, or exhausted, the success of the Reformation hardly requires explanation. If, on the contrary, it was vigorous, adaptable, widely understood, and popular, then we have much yet to discover about the processes and the pace of reform.

--Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 5.

Should you read it? Yes, if you want a window into medieval culture. Yes, if you want a sturdy background for exploring Reformation History. Yes, if you have anything to do with upholding or understanding Catholic Liturgy. Here's a quick Table of Contents so you can see what Duffy covers.

Part I: The Structures of Traditional Religion
A: Liturgy, Learning and the Laity
1. Seasons and Signs: The Liturgical Year (The Ceremonies of Holy Week | Sacred Place, Sacred Time | "Sacred" and "Secular" Time?)
2. How the Ploughman learned his Paternoster (Priests, People, and Catechesis | The Impact of Catechesis: Imagery and Dramatic Evidence | The Impact of Literacy: Lay Didactic and Devotional Collections | The Coming of Print)

B: Encountering the Holy
3. The Mass (Seeing the Host | Seeing and Believing | "Dredd" into "Sweetness" | Spectators or Participants? Lay Religion and the Mass | Praying the Mass: the Individual's Experience | Praying the Mass: Privatization? | Praying the Mass: the Parochial Experience | Making the Peace)
4. Corporate Christians (Gild and Parish)
5. The Saints (The Saints in their Images | "The debt of interchanging neighbourhood” | Old and New Allegiances | Holiness and Help | Coins, Candles, and Contracts | Gift, Grace, and Fellow-feeling | Pilgrimage | St Walstan of Bawburgh)

C. Prayers and Spells
6. "Lewed and Learned": the Laity and the Primers (The Primer and Lay Prayer)
7. The Devotions of the Primers (Devotions to the Passion | The Mass of St Gregory and the Wounds of Jesus | The Seven Words on the Cross | Devotions to the Virgin)
8. Charms, Pardons and Promises: Lay Piety and "Superstition" in the Primers (Pardons and Promises)

D. Now, and At the Hour of Our Death
9. Last Things (The Image of Death | The Hour of Death | Ars Moriendi | Death and Memory)
10. The Pains of Purgatory (Purgatory: Ante-room of Heaven or Outpost of Hell? | Christendome and Kindred | Ways of Deliverance: Shortening the Pains of Purgatory | The Works of Mercy | The Rejection of Penny Doles | Bridges and Highways | Prayers and Supplications)

Part II. The Stripping of the Altars, 1530-1580
11. The Attack on Traditional Religion I: From the Break with Rome to the Acts of Six Articles
12. The Attack on Traditional Religion II: To the death of Henry VIII
13. The Attack on Traditional Religion III: The Reign of Edward VI
14. The Impact of Reform: Parishes
15. The Impact of Reform: Wills
16. Mary (Religious Priorities in Marian England | The Marian Primers | The Programme in the Parishes | The Visitation of Kent, 1557)
17. Elizabeth

Blank Map of England

2010-09-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

For all you folks out there teaching history that involves England and France--Medieval or Renaissance or Reformation, etc. here is a handy blank map for students. You can use it to develop your own map tests or have the students fill it in. There are many uses.

Drama Exercises

2010-08-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

Here are two drama exercises to warm up a passel of young actors. One I developed just this summer; the second is tried and true.

Something new: have the student enter a room full of novels. Have each choose one and choose from this novel a single, short sentence to read aloud. Re-assemble in fifteen minutes around a table. Check each student's sentence. Then have the students read their sentences in turn aloud to the group, first with absolutely no expression at all--monotone, dead-pan. Then have each student re-read his sentence in an angry way. Then on the third cycle, in a sad way. Then fearfully, happily, sullenly, etc. Each student should have the opportunity to reread his sentences in at least three ways. This exercise is very difficult but very revealing of the students' emotional breadth and ability to portray this by voice and facial expression alone. Sometimes it is surprising! This exercise is an enormous amount of fun, too.

Something old: below are a set of skits. Divide the students accordingly; assign roles if necessary. Hand each group one slip of paper with their skit on it. They are not to reveal what they are doing to the other groups. The real trick is that the following skits must be performed without words. Actors may gesture and use their bodies but the only sound they can make must be a single vowel sound: either A or E or I or O or U. Assign only one sound per skit per group. The students learn by the end that tone, volume, and pitch, as well as body language can convey a lot. Give them 15-20 minutes to practice. Then let them perform before their peers and see how minutely their peers can guess what was going on. The skits follow.

Man, Man, Woman: Undercover cop goes into purchase drugs from drug dealer. Caught in the act, drug dealer tries to explain, then plead, then bribe, then escape. Cop stands firm, pulls out gun, shoots to wound and succeeds, instead in killing an innocent grandma.

Woman, Man, Man: Male director tries to direct a song-and-dance routine between world-famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. However, the two dancers aren’t Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but two bad dancers from Dubuque, Idaho, who thought this was a try-out. The dancing gets worse, the director gets mad, and huge fight ensues.

Woman, woman, man, extra[m/f or either]: Mother is trying to teach inept daughter how to cook. Father comes in and laughs at whole proceeding. Daughter is crushed. Wife tries to intercede. Neighborhood busy-body comes in to snoop.

Woman, Woman, Man: Olympic ice-skater is just about to go for the gold medal. She is scared stiff; her coach and her mom convince her to strive for her dreams. She wins the gold medal—coach, mom, and crowd go wild.

Man, Woman, Woman, Woman/Man: Three top secret spies must infiltrate Communist headquarters and obtain the secret documentation to save the future of the free world. Using laser technology, and advanced computer skills, they evade the night watchman, hack the central security system and then after drugging the night watchman, break in to get the vital information.

Man, man, woman, woman, woman
Owner of restaurant and cook are pretty put out as the health inspector has just arrived and decided to shut them down for gross violations of the FDA code. Suddenly, WHILE the health inspector checks the rest of the place out, the RICHEST couple in town walk in. Owner & cook try to serve them dinner AND keep health inspector & couple from seeing each other.

Babysitter(s)[m/f or either], crazy friend(s)[m/f or either], dad, mom, child(ren)[m/f or either]
Any number: Parents are away. Two teenage babysitters must lay down the law, tell the rules and keep discipline. Instead, they just want to party, and invite all their friends over. Unfortunately, the antics of kids drive them crazy, and then the parents come home.

Public Walking Paths

2010-08-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

David Clayton at his blog wrote up a wonderful article on farms, country walks, private property, and the common good. The photographs (like the one at left) are his own--and enchanting. Where can you walk in the country without getting chase out for "trespassing"? Read the article and the comments. A few mentioned places where you can take a country walk. Does anyone know of other places to walk?

David Clayton and The Way of Beauty

2010-08-05T19:44:00.000-07:00

Out running summer programs at Thomas More College, I had a chance to meet David Clayton, a singular artist who developed the unique Way of Beauty Program for the college. He, too, was running summer programs, yet managed to post weekly on his blog about anything and everything from Fra Angelico to John Singer Sargent to the Golden Section.

He is also a regular writer on sacred art for the New Liturgical Movement website and the advisory board of The Foundation for Sacred Arts, based in Washington DC. Before taking up his position in the US, this year, he taught at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham, England where he designed, along with the staff at the institute, their unique art-theory course: Art, Beauty and Inspiration from a Catholic Perspective. He did his undergraduate studies in Materials Science at Oxford University, and then went on to do a Masters in Metallurgical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. As an artist, he is trained in the Byzantine iconographic style, and in Western classical naturalism, which he studied at Florence, Italy. Aside from the work he is currently doing for the Thomas More College chapel, major commissions include: St Luigi Scrosoppi, for the London Oratory; the crucifixion at Pluscarden Monastery in Elgin, Scotland; and the Sacred Heart at Maryvale Institute. He has also illustrated books for children including one just published and written by Scott Hahn entitled God’s Covenant With You.

Mr. Clayton was received into the Church in London in 1993.

Extreme Scrabble

2010-06-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

A friend introduced me to speed scrabble on an extreme scale. This game wonderfully combined brain power with sport: players had to think as fast as they could to develop new words, and run as fast as they could to obtain new tiles. It was fun to watch and to play.

To make the set:

My friend had a complete set of 4x4" tiles, made from leftover baseboard molding. The letters had been drawn with a permanent marker, according to the guide in this picture left. There were some extra j and z tiles (I think). All the tiles were kept face down in a box. No board was necessary as players can play on a bare table or the floor. Something to mark a line for players to play behind is good.

Rules for Speed Scrabble:

Draw a line around and several feet out from the box of tiles so all players are equidistant from the box.
Each player draws seven tiles and looks at them.
Then start.
The goal is to use all the tiles to make adjoining, interconnected words, like in a crossword. There is no playing board. Players are permitted to rearrange tiles, creating and destroying words as needed in an effort to get rid of their tiles.
As soon as a player has used up his tiles, he calls "Take 2!" Everyone must rush in and take two more.
Game ends as soon as one player announces he has used up all his tiles and no tiles remain to be drawn.
Players with unused tiles must subtract their value from the total score.
Total score counts points from every word formed down or across. If a letter was used in two words it gets counted twice. Winner is the player with the most points.

The Recipe Borrower

2010-06-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

Sailor has posted about experimenting the summer away with some new cookbooks. But what about turning to your own family and friends? This summer why not set yourself the goal of learning and perfecting five recipes from your forefathers and five recipes from your friends. These recipes can be for any kind of thing--what knits them to you is that they were part of your communal life and that you benefited from the skill and talent of another cook who cooked for you. And you will, in turn, cook for others.

For me the top ten would be: (from family) Cheesecake, Bavarian torte, Yorkshire pudding, Champignons Bordelaise, and a tie between Anise cookies? Blonde brownies? Seafood quiche? (from friends) Wild Mushroom bread pudding, Zabaglione, Torta Rustica, Siamese Chicken Curry, and a tie between Lime Torte, Coconut Cake, Spinach soup . . .

What about you? A great present for someone would be collecting all the recipes from family and friends and putting them together in some kind of cookbook.

Literary Foods

2010-06-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

Explore these foods and meals, enshrined and immortalized in great literature. I think they taste better than regular food, or, at least, offer a richer experience. Literature also immortalizes many wonderful drinks--mead in Beowulf, madeira in Dombey and Son, coffee in The Old Man and the Sea. But that is for another post. I recommend Convivial Dickens: The Drinks of Dickens and His Times. Also visit the Sailor's post on cooking.

From C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

A dinner: fish, fresh and pan-fried, boiled potatoes with a great lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table, milk or beer, a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll, steaming hot, and tea.
A tea: a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, sardines on toast, buttered toast, toast with honey, sugar-topped cake, tea.

From J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, a meager supper

Stewed rabbit with bay-leaves, thyme, and sage.

From J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, a tea

Seed-cake, cake, tea, beer, ale, porter, coffee, buttered scones, red wine, raspberry jam, apple-tart, mince-pies, cheese, pork-pie, salad, eggs, cold chicken, pickles.

From J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, dinner in the house of Tom Bombadil

Yellow cream and honeycomb, white bread and butter, milk, cheese, green herbs, ripe berries.

From Kenneth Grahame, The Wind and the Willows, a picnic

Cold chicken, cold tongue, cold ham, cold beef, pickled gherkins, salad, French rolls, cress sandwiches, potted meat, ginger beer, lemonade, soda water.

From Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit, a dinner

Bread and milk and blackberries.

From Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy, three dinners

Hot chicken pie, hot rye & injun bread, green beans, fat pork, pickled beets, pumpkin and apple pie with cheese.
Roast pork, applesauce, milk, pumpkin pie.
Roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, stuffed roast goose, cranberry jelly, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, baked squash, fried parsnips, fried apples’n’onions, candied carrots, with pumpkin/cream/mince pie to follow.

From Caryll Houselander, “The Parish 1st Communions”, a breakfast

Banana, coffee, rolls

From Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome, a dinner

Soup, meat, vegetables, bread, and a little wine. “He gave me also coffee and a little cheese, and I, feeling hearty, gave threepence over for the service.”

From Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, the poor man’s Christmas feast

Roast goose with sage and onion, gravy, apple-sauce, mashed potatoes, a hot drink with gin and lemons.

From James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small, a dinner, to be had occasionally

Bangers and Mash

From Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons books

For supper: meat pie or fresh fish fried in butter—if you can get it, pemmican, roasted potatoes, tea, apples, chocolate.
For breakfast—porridge, bacon, milk, maybe boiled eggs.
On the march—pemmican, hard-boiled eggs, apples, chocolate.

From Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, a dinner

A bit of fish, lamb chops (breaded, with plenty of ketchup), a good salad, roast spring chicken, with a dish of sausages and mashed potatoes, "or something of that sort."

Also:

Apple Tart with cream (Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Cow”) or deep-dish apple pie (Jack Schaefer, Shane)
Blanc mange (Louisa May Alcott, Little Women)
Buttered Toast (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)
Fair food—like one large pickle, raspberry lemonade, sardines, cider, watermelon, popcorn, peanuts, hot waffles thickly powdered with sugar, Neapolitan ice-cream cut in slices and wrapped in paper, hot dogs or “Winnie-wurst” (Booth Tarkington, Penrod). I don’t recommend eating this all at once as Penrod did.
Gingerbread (P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins)
Biscuits, hot (Jack Schaefer, Shane)
Ice-cream on an Angelica Kaufmann plate (Rumer Godden, An Episode of Sparrows)
Lettuce, french beans, radishes, parsley (Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit)
Mushrooms (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
Pancakes (Owen Stephens, The Lawrenceville Stories; The Brothers Karamazov; many Russian fairy-tales)
Plums (Louisa May Alcott, An Old Fashioned Girl)
Pound cake with ice-cream (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy)
Spaghetti (Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome): “I first pulled up the macaroni out of the dish, and said, “Fromagio, Pommodoro,” by which I meant cheese--tomato. He then said he knew what I meant, and brought me that spaghetti so treated, which is a dish for a king, a cosmopolitan traitor, an oppressor of the poor, a usurer, or any other rich man, but there is no spaghetti in the place to which such men go, whereas these peasants will continue to enjoy it in heaven.”

Chapelstone Project

2010-05-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

I found this gem--Pius XII's address to Bee-Keepers--over at the Chapelstone Foundation's blog. The Chapelstone Foundation is a non-profit organization which supports and promotes the application of Thomistic principles to contemporary issues with special attention to questions in philosophy, theology, moral psychology and environmental stewardship. Learn more here.

Bows and Arrows

2010-05-21T17:53:00.001-07:00

I have a nice post next door at Sailor about making bows and arrows. It was for students of medieval history, so I almost put the post here . . .

If Women Stayed at Home III (or if we all did!)

2010-05-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

From a 2003 interview with Alice Von Hildebrand upon publication of On the Privilege of Being a Woman.

Von Hildebrand: The poison of secularism has penetrated deeply into our society. It did so by stages. Men were its first victims: They became more and more convinced that in order to be someone they had to succeed in the world. Success means money, power, fame, recognition, creativity, inventiveness, etc. Many of them sacrificed their family life in order to achieve this goal: They came home just to relax or have fun. Work was the serious part of their life.

Innumerable marriages have been ruined by this attitude. Wives rightly felt that they were mere appendixes -- a necessary relaxation. Husbands had little time for loving exchanges, as they were too busy. The children saw very little of their fathers. That wives suffered was not only understandable, but also legitimate. . . . The amazing thing is that feminism, instead of making women more profoundly aware of the beauty and dignity of their role as wives as mothers, and of the spiritual power that they can exercise over their husbands, convinced them that they, too, had to adopt a secularist mentality: They, too, should enter the work force; they, too, should prove to themselves that they were someone by getting diplomas, competing with men in the work market, showing that they were their equals and -- when given opportunities -- could outsmart them.

They let themselves become convinced that femininity meant weakness. They started to look down upon virtues -- such as patience, selflessness, self-giving, tenderness -- and aimed at becoming like men in all things. Some of them even convinced themselves that they had to use coarse language in order to show the "strong" sex that they were not the fragile, delicate, insignificant dolls that men believed them to be.

The war of the sexes was on. Those who fell into the traps of feminism wanted to become like men in all things and sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. They became blind to the fact that men and women, though equal in ontological dignity, were made different by God's choice: Male and female he made them. Different and complementary.

Free Old Time Radio Shows

2010-05-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

Once I mentioned listening to old radio shows as a common activity to entertain a family or community that had other odd jobs to do--like cleaning, cooking, etc.

But where would you get old radio shows? If an AM station doesn't pick up one of those nostalgic features, what can you do besides purchase Bob & Ray anthologies.

Wait right here. Everything you ever dreamed of--Duffy's Tavern, Suspense, Dragnet, The Life of Riley, Our Miss Brooks, The Jack Benny Show, The Green Hornet, . . . it's all free, all here at the Internet Archive.

The Georgics

2010-05-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Someone told me how good these were, but I only half-believed her. I was wrong. If you teach history or a classic language or gardening . . . and want something to illustrate perfectly the ethos of the Roman character, read these. Yes, Virgil's Aeneaid is the classic work, but his Georgics--this captures the kind of desires that drove Cato, Cicero, Scipio, etc. For someone who gardens or farms, these are a treat.

I found a translation here at A. S. Kline's free Poetry in Translation site. Kline divides the sections with subheadings: Spring Plowing, Weather Signs, Care of the Vineyard, Tending the Flock, The Nature and Qualities of Bees. Yes, it is a book about agriculture--and what a book to write in contrast to Caesar and the kind of international history of that time! Virgil did it on purpose. Kline renders the poetry beautifully, for example:

Winter’s the farmer’s quiet time.
In the cold season countrymen mainly enjoy their lot
and treat themselves, delighting in feasts, together.
Genial winter entices them, and soothes their cares,
just as when loaded ships touch harbour,
and happy sailors crown the sterns with garlands.
But then is the time to gather acorns, and berries
from the bay-tree, and trim the olives, and blood-red myrtles,
to set snares for cranes, and nets for stags,
and chase the long-eared hares, to strike the deer
whirling a Balearic sling by its thongs of hemp,
when snow lies deep, and rivers thrust up ice.

If Women Stayed at Home II

2010-05-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

I'll give you three quotations from this story by Betty Wahl Powers, an author and wife of J. F. Powers.

" . . . Engraved there when ordinary things had tried to look beautiful."
"She was another to whom time was too precious, an administrator lucky to have a spare minute between her momentous decisions."

And finally:
"But, Sister," Rosemary said, "Who's going to preserve Western culture if we don't?"
Sister Timothy turned again to the new building, the source of so much foolishness, and said, "And while you're all so busy preserving Western culture, who's going to be preserving your homes for you?"
"All of us aren't going to be just housewives, Sister."
"Then what are you going to be--the President of the United States?"
"You know what I mean, Sister."
"The only thing I know is that your stitches are getting too big."
"Yes, Sister."

As the abstract in The New Yorker says: Sister Timothy has taught embroidery to three generations of girls at a Minnesota college. Today her work is much curtailed; the girls only work on clever dish towels and sometimes a dresser scarf or luncheon cloth. She recalls the old days when her department was a very important one, but it seems that her work decreases almost daily. She is asked to give a quick three week course in needlework to freshmen. When she looks at the projected syllabus she shudders as the course is to consist of showing the students how to mend.

In a world scornful of homemaking, Betty Wahl Powers' story "Gingerbread" challenges some common assumptions about what it means to "save the world." This story came out in The New Yorker, 28 January 1950. Read it here if you are willing to subscribe.

Historical Mapping

2010-04-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

The University of Oregon in conjunction with Universitat Munster have put together an amazing interactive historical mapping site. Look at this wonderful map of medieval university sites! Useful for teaching history!

Meals in Common

2010-03-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

Why is food sacramental? Why does Babette's work have the power to heal these people's hurts, to bring them joy (see Babette's Feast by Isak Dinesen; a fine clip from the movie of the same name follows)? Why does eating together knit community more specially than other activities? Does it?

Eating is associated with the first sin and redeemed in the wedding at Cana, the multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, the Last Supper, the breakfast on the beach after Christ has risen. Think of all those fine shared meals--from Abraham with his mysterious visitors to the Passover. Think of the marvelous meals in literature--the Fezziweg ball, the pancakes at the end of Brothers Karamazov, the picnics in Wind and the Willows.

And yet, in our busy fast-paced age, how many meals do we eat in common with family or friends? How many are rushed? I was doing chores today at the farm, pouring slops into the pig-trough; our meals oughn't to be merely for nourishment when they could serve this end and so much more. A friend told me about a school in Italy where lunch was served to school students at round tables with silverware and china. Lunch took a full hour. There was a bowl of fruit in the center of each table. And this was not a rich school. This was normal.

How could we rearrange our systems and schedules and influence the wider culture to make meals in common possible? I was thinking how difficult it would be now to schedule the Last Supper these days. Would everyone come--without being told beforehand that it was the last, that it was to change everything?

New Politics

2010-03-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

What about this for a political platform?

"I hereby pledge myself to the service of God and of my people, to the righting of wrongs, to the driving-out of evil, to the bringing of peace and plenty to my land. . . . we will build castles and set guards along the coast so that never again may they invade us: we will rebuild the churches which they have destroyed, and build new ones to the glory of God; and our knights shall ride about the country punishing all those who break the peace and do ill to any. And if any man or woman, be he or she the greatest or the least of my subjects, be in trouble, or have any complaint against any man, let them come to me, and never shall their sorrow go uncomforted and their wrong unrighted. . . . Do not ever depart from the high virtues of this realm. Do no outrage nor murder nor any cruel or wicked thing; fly from treason and all untruthfulness and dishonest dealing; give mercy unto those that seek it--or sit no more at this Table. And always give all the help in your power to ladies and damsels, go out to succour gentlewomen and widows, turn from all else to right any wrong done to any woman in the world--and never, on pain of death and eternal disgrace, do any ill thing to a woman, or suffer it to be done. Nor, for love or gain, fight in any quarrel that is not just and righteous."
--King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Roger Lancelyn Greene

It might be harder to be taken in by thin rhetoric if you had grown up with this standard.

Free Reading Day & Reading Aloud with Accents

2010-03-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

Today for the Feast of St. Joseph, I gave some students an unannounced and unmerited FREE READING DAY! Nothing but interesting books to read for the hour--no reflections, no tests, no deadlines . . . just them and a wealth of books.

On a different note, I found this wonderful website from BBC for accents in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The BBC interviewed and recorded hundreds of people. Their discussions of slang and language are fascinating.

I have been reading aloud King Arthur stories to some students, and I was trying to get the hang of the Cornwall accent. Gawaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and Agravaine (and others like Tristam, Morgana le Fay, etc.) are from Cornwall. T. H. White wrote in the accent in his Once and Future King, but I couldn't distinguish it from something more Scottish.

My ignorance! This is also an interesting website if you like etymology and words.

If Women Stayed at Home I

2010-03-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

1st in a series of passages defending stay-at-home mothers. Be proud!

" . . . someone would know where the children are and the old folks are; food would taste like meat and vegetables again because it would be cooked not just defrosted; life would be wholesome, good and full of love again because she would be home; pianos would shake old music from the scores, children, parents, and grandparents would sing together of an evening and tell stories by the fire. Someone would even be home to love and care for the crippled, sick and dying. Women must be liberated from their modern 'emancipation,' which is really a slavish compliance to a Calvinistic and masculine ideal, so they can return to their proper work--greater than medicine, engineering, business and politics--participating with God in the creation and nurture of human life."
--John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture, 78.

I love this! Of course, I agree with Stephen Clark in Man and Woman in Christ that everyone would do well to be closer to home. But this shouldn't be a nice wish, that we women fear to carry out until we see men doing it first! Go build that hearth, create that beauty!

Files, Folders, Loose Traditions

2010-03-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

We live in a fast age. We learn things and forget them. We have traditions so new we don't remember them. The other day I cleaned out my filing cabinet and realized that I have done a lot of work and collected a lot of great things--and then forgot all about them for lack of organization. Sometimes I even did the hunting all over again.

Also, in a recent family visit, we were sharing some old stories I'd forgotten all about. How do people preserve what's worth preserving? Here are some of the best ideas I've run across.

Keep, repair, and use old family heirlooms--from watches to apple trees to homes. When they break, they break as part of your life. And if you use them, the significance they held for your ancestors blesses you, as you impart new significance to such things for your kids.
Pass such things to your children as important Christmas and birthday gifts.
Listen to your kids tell stories around age four or five and write them down in a big book to reread later.
Keep some artwork from your kids over the years.
Track & organize old family recipes with addendums. Make cookbooks for all the family (and decorate with copies of that funny kids artwork.) Leave room to add new recipes over the years.
Visit favorite family places and retell the stories.
Visit the cemetary, leave flowers and tend the graves of your ancestors. Pray for those whose tombs are crumbling away.
Keep a folder called "Happy Thoughts" or "Good Ideas" for all the loose discoveries, connections, and wonderful things you stumble upon.
Keep a calendar of traditions: these recipes on these dates, these activities then.
Cook in front of the children.
Sing in front of the children.
Pray with the children.
Tell family stories, again and again.
Dress home and town differently for different occasions.
Do think twice before "changing things up a little."
Any skill you have, use it before the children and make it easy and desirable for them to pick it up.

I also recently watched Babette's Feast. You can't belittle the power of simple, tangible things to carry the meaning of life to people. Hold fast to those tangible things; pass them to the young!. The photograph above is of Cream Cheese stollen which I make every Easter.

Kids Read to Us

2010-03-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

Reading aloud--what can I add to endorse this that diverse groups haven't from Werner Jaeger in Paedeia: The Ideals of Greek Culture to RIF to this New York Times article I posted some time ago.

Here's a quotation from another New York Times article by Susan Engel about reading aloud: "Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals. In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own."

Hmmmm! A million websites, books, and studies corroborate that reading aloud to your kids helps them. The ancients read everything aloud. Remember Philip hearing the Ethiopian eunuch reading aloud?

But what I can't find is something to support how good it is to let kids read to you! My mother had us read to her from our McGuffey's Readers when we were learning to read. For fun, my grandmother suffered me to read P. G. Wodehouse, Lewis Caroll, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harriet the Spy, Five Little Peppers, and other books to her many a Thursday when I was 10-12 years old. We had a great time and I'm sure it improved my ability to invent accents and funny voices, as well as my pronunciation and vocabulary. We also discussed the books, exclaimed at the climaxes, and roared with laughter at characters like the White Knight and Galahad Threepwood. I think my mother ironed when I was reading, but I don't know my Grandmother did.

I know what I did, however, when some kids were reading to me the other day. Did my mending, tried to sweep, and kept standing in the middle of the room, saying "Wait, she did that? What's going to happen?"

What's not to like in this arrangement? We read for an hour and a half. I'm sure the kids were benefiting. And I finished my mending. As I love being read aloud to, and loved the book we were reading, I kept thinking, "I wish this could go on forever."

So pull out those chores you can do in company (see this blog post!) and let those kids read aloud, maybe every day, at least once a week.

Do read to the kids as well. Here's a beloved voice reading Thomas Howard's If Your Mind Wanders at Mass (available from Ignatius Press on audiobook and downloadable.)

When to start Primary Education, especially reading

2010-02-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the website of Raymond and Dorothy Moore, whose research and experience produced Better Late Than Early, School Can Wait, and a host of other related books. The Moore's deal with many educational topics, especially primary education. Here you can find resources and short summaries of the educational research and theories.

My mother taught me to read with phonics and McGuffey's Readers. I don't see why you couldn't use Charlotte Mason, Laura Berquist, Jessie Wise Bauer, etc. (or my wonderful theories all over this site) to great effect, but when? WHEN? Now that's the key question the Moore books answered for my mother and many others. These books take you through some pretty compelling evidence that waiting until 7 or 8 or even later will not be a problem in the long run.

Check it out--save your principles (and maybe your sanity if what you're doing now "isn't working.")

Distributism

2010-02-12T20:58:00.000-08:00

What could I write that hasn't been covered more deeply in this amazing site: The Chesterbelloc Mandate. I found something I was looking for--Fr. Vincent McNabb's imaginative "15 Things a Distributist May Do" here--but there is so much more--theory, practical ideas, explanations, links, action! Aid your community! In honor of this blog, I must post Good Magazine's Picture show on urban chickens.

Omniglot: for all the word, rune, language admirers

2010-02-04T22:28:00.000-08:00

A friend put me on to OMNIGLOT, the most delightful site for perusing the different scripts of different languages, real, dead, and imaginary, from around the world and throughout time. Search the great A-Z index, find scripts by syllabic languages, listen in to people pronouncing sentences in different languages, or follow the wonderful blog of the fellow who puts it all together. The script pictures are wonderful and print easily if you want to introduce your students of history, literature, or language to these new worlds. Cheers!

Building Blocks and Roman Roads--tools for teaching History

2010-01-30T21:04:00.000-08:00

Below are wooden blocks a friend made to use for teaching Ancient History (though they would come in handy everywhere!). You can use them to make a Roman arch and feel what a keystone works like. String arches together to make an aquaduct--see how supports are only needed at the extreme ends. Or build a barrel vault and see how the outer walls would need thickness or buttressing.

Using some instructions from a website that seems to be down (offering free online Waldorf lesson plans), I made this cross-section of a Roman road in some plastic desk organizer. The layers are:

Packed earth
Rubble (I used gravel)
Heavy stones (I used larger stones)
Gravel ( I used sea salt)
Pavers (I broke pottery into flat shards)
Sand
Make sure to leave a drainage ditch on each side.
Seal all with pourable polyurethane coating and let it air out where it won't bother people for about 3-4 days.

"The Role of Reverence in Education"

2010-01-22T20:43:00.000-08:00

I just read and am recommending this short essay by Dietrich von Hildebrand, included in The New Tower of Babel. It is deals with reverence as the fundamental precondition both to virtue and to learning. It is especially helpful in its directives about how we speak and act towards our students. And for parents ready to teach their children about human sexuality, Hildebrand's thoughts on reverence give the perfect framework. A must read.

Incidentally, the back of Hildebrand's book promotes an obscure work called My Friends, The Senses by Charles Damian-Boulogne, O.P. The jacket says it "nourishes" and "enheartens" the reader in such a way that no one could ever be a Manichean again. The Sailor sat up! The library has it. More later.

A Saxon Song

2010-01-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

Tools with the comely names,
Mattock and scythe and spade,
Couth and bitter as flames,
Clean, and bowed in the blade,—
A man and his tools make a man and his trade.

Breadth of the English shires,
Hummock and kame and mead,
Tang of the reeking byres,
Land of the English breed,—

A man and his land make a man and his creed.

Leisurely flocks and herds,
Cool-eyed cattle that come
Mildly to wonted words,
Swine that in orchards roam,—
A man and his beasts make a man and his home.

Children sturdy and flaxen
Shouting in brotherly strife,
Like the land they are Saxon,
Sons of a man and his wife,—
For a man and his loves make a man and his life.
--V. Sackville-West

This wonderful poem I found online at a most interesting blog dedicated "to observations on trees, languages, lexicography, etymology . . ." See Laudator Temporis Acti

Liturgy of the Hours

2010-01-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

I've begun to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Was anyone daunted by it, as I was? Here is a website to help, and here but the best instruction I had was doing it, side by side with someone who knew how to do it. She is now with the Nashville Dominicans, bless her. Even if your kids never want to say it when they're older, show them how to navigate it. And find someone to show you!

For those of you who have already been praying it--were you struck by how ancient it was--by the fact that you were praying an ancient Psalm, as Christ would have prayed, as the Benedictines prayed beside thick woods, as Francis prayed beneath a tree, as Dominic prayed in an old inn, as Teresa of Avila prayed and Xavier amid the green and Japanese fields.

Was anyone struck by the fact that every day all over the world, men and women, old and young will be reading or reciting a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins or John Donne? And saying the same psalms? And praying for the same things?

Was anyone anyone struck by the fact that Flannery O'Connor said the one thing she was able to keep faithful to was saying the Liturgy of the Hours. "Happiness is to be dissolved into something great and beautiful" says one of the characters in Willa Cather's My Antonia. The Liturgy of the Hours is something like that. The version at right is my favorite of the short versions--more easily navigable and cheaper.

Curious? Try it.

South Korea Confronts Open Secret of Abortion

2010-01-15T19:58:00.000-08:00

Check out this New York Times article from 5 January 2010.

A group of doctors held a news conference in Seoul to ask “forgiveness” for having performed illegal abortions.

By Choe Sang-Hun/International Herald Tribune

SEOUL, South Korea — Displaying images of fetuses on her computer screen, Dr. Choi Anna described what happens to them during an abortion. For years, she said, she washed her hands in contrition after each one she performed.

Her colleague Dr. Shim Sang-duk said that until it halted the practice in September, their Ion Women’s Clinic in Seoul did 30 abortions a month, twice the number of babies delivered there. Nearly all were illegal.

“We sold our soul for money,” Dr. Choi said. “Abortion was an easy way to make money.”

In a country where abortion is both widespread and, with few exceptions, against the law, Dr. Choi and Dr. Shim are hoping to force South Korea’s first serious public discussion of the ethics of the procedure. In November, they and dozens of other obstetricians held a news conference to ask for “forgiveness” for having performed illegal abortions.

The group they formed, Gynob, has called on other doctors to declare whether they have performed illegal abortions. In December, they set up another organization, Pro-Life Doctors, which tries to discourage women from having abortions and runs a hot line to report clinics that perform them illegally. This month, they plan to begin reporting practitioners of such abortions to the police.

Gynob’s morality-based campaign is unusual for South Korea, where abortion carries little of the emotional or religious significance that it does in many Western countries. But it is gaining attention here in no small part because it is coinciding with a very public reassessment of abortion by the government, which is looking for ways to reverse a decline in South Korea’s birthrate.

Until now, abortion had never really become a hot issue here, said Hahm In-hee, a professor of family sociology at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “The society considers it a family issue, and there is a strong taboo against discussing a family matter in public,” she said.

For its part, Gynob is focusing on highlighting the hypocrisy of having a law that is almost never enforced. The group’s goal is not to resolve this by liberalizing the law but by ending abortions altogether.

Gynob has support from Christian activists, but the group says that its motivations are not religious and that it has non-Christian members. And while some feminists have advocated for a woman’s right to have an abortion and Roman Catholics have stated their opposition to the procedure, those efforts have attracted little public attention. Abortion has yet to emerge as a political campaign issue here.

The country’s Mother and Child Health Law permits abortions only when the mother’s health is in serious danger, or in cases of rape, incest or severe hereditary disorders. It is never legal after the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Based on insurance data and a government-sponsored study, academic researchers have concluded that those exceptions applied to only about 4 percent of an estimated 340,000 abortions performed in 2005. But that year, only one case of illegal abortion — which, on paper, is punishable by up to a year in prison for the woman and two for the doctor — went to court, according to data that prosecutors submitted to Parliament in October.

For decades, the South Korean government tended to look the other way, seeing a high birthrate as an impediment to economic growth. In the 1970s and 1980s, families with more than two children were denounced as unpatriotic, with official posters in South Korean villages driving the point home. Until the early 1990s, men could be exempted from mandatory army reserve duty if they had vasectomies.

Now, the government has concluded that this policy was too successful.

South Korea’s fertility rate, which stood at 4.5 children per woman in the 1970s, had fallen to 1.19 children by 2008, one of the lowest rates in the world. The government fears that the recent financial downturn may have depressed it further, and that the country’s rapidly aging population will undercut the economy’s viability.

In November, President Lee Myung-bak called for “bold” steps to increase the nation’s birthrate.

“Even if we don’t intend to hold anyone accountable for all those illegal abortions in the past, we must crack down on them from now on,” the minister for health, welfare and family affairs, Jeon Jae-hee, said.

But Ms. Jeon added that any crackdown should be coupled with an increase in medical fees for all doctors. The government cap on payments for medical services is thought to have encouraged doctors to perform off-the-books, and potentially far more lucrative, services like illegal abortions.

With fewer women having babies and the government holding down medical fees, many obstetrics clinics are struggling. Some obstetricians have switched to more lucrative skin care and obesity clinics. To those who remain, abortion — which usually costs about $340 and is paid for in cash up front because it is not covered by insurance — has become “a source of income we find really difficult to give up,” said Dr. Kang Byong-hee, an obstetrician in Paju, north of Seoul.

In addition to government policy and the economics of health care, social factors have contributed to the abortion rate. A bias for boys and against the disabled led to the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses or those with physiological defects, said Choi Sung-jae, a professor of social welfare at Seoul National University. A stigma against unmarried mothers, women’s increasing participation in the work force and the high cost of education are also seen as contributing to the trend.

Dr. Choi, of the Ion Women’s Clinic, said: “We see a tendency to have one perfect child and abort the rest. We had women demanding an abortion simply because they had taken cold medicine or drunk too much while pregnant.”

Gynob’s anti-abortion campaign is meeting resistance, notably from other doctors.

“We credit them for bringing a widespread but hushed-up social anomaly to the surface, but we can’t go along with their radical tactics,” said Baik Eun-jeong, an obstetrician who runs a clinic in Seoul’s upscale Kangnam district and speaks for the Korean Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The association, which claims 4,000 members, says that a sudden crackdown that does not address the causes of abortion will only cause greater problems.

“More women will now go abroad for abortion,” Dr. Baik said. “Illegal abortions will go deeper underground, causing more medical accidents. There will be more abandoned infants.”

Meanwhile, the government has begun putting out a new message in public service announcements and posters in subways: having more babies is more patriotic. “With abortion, you are aborting the future,” says one such notice.

The latest government budget calls for increased cash bonuses for families with more than two children as well as greater financial aid for single mothers in need and vouchers for couples seeking help at fertility clinics.

All these voices are fueling a broader public discussion of abortion as Parliament deliberates about revising the Mother and Child Health Law. In November, President Lee said, “This is the time to start the debate.”

Looking for Good Plays

2010-01-09T19:03:00.000-08:00

Running a Drama group? Especially with high-school or college students? There's always Shakespeare and the wonderful greek tragedies . . . but what if you can't get the right number of people together? Here are some more ideas--

Mysteries
Christie, Agatha. The Mousetrap.
Christie, Agatha. Witness for the Prosecution.
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White.

Fun musicals
Gilbert & Sullivan. All works.

Religious
Anon. Everyman
Anon. Hickscorner
Anon. The Second Shepherd’s Play.
Bolt, Robert. A Man for All Seasons.
Eliot, T. S. Murder in the Cathedral.
Hroswitha. Dulcitius.

Serious drama
Chekov, Anton. Uncle Vanya.
Eliot, T. S. The Cocktail Party.
Calderon, Pedro. Life is a Dream. (though it is also a bit magical and imaginative and funny)

Whimsical yet thoughtful
Chase, Mary. Harvey.
Rostand, Edmond. Cyrano de Bergerac.

One-acts
Giraudoux, Jean. The Apollo of Bellac.
Goodman, Kenneth Sawyer. Dust of the Road.
Ives, David. Words, Words, Words.
Milne, A. A. The Ugly Duckling.

And for something really different--why not try Commedia dell'Arte, an Italian form of theater that can showcase any particular odd talents your students might have. There is room for improvisation and jokes. Learn more with John Rudlin's book or here. Here's a description of something typical from another website: An important part of every play, given always to the most expert and popular actors, were the humorous interruptions, called lazzi, which often had nothing to do with the play itself. It might be clever pantomimic acting, acrobatic feats, juggling, or wrestling. For example, three characters meet at a cook shop, where they hear of an accident which has befallen the wife of one of them. While they express their dismay at the affliction, they fall to eating greedily from a huge dish of macaroni; and as they eat, tears stream down their faces. Or again, a servant, disgusted at an order his master has given him, delays carrying it out until he has turned a complete somersault. One famous actor could execute this trick having a full glass of wine in his hand, without spilling a drop.

Cut out the Heart: liturgical prayer in Mansfield Park and Brideshead Revisited

2009-12-28T14:01:00.000-08:00

An idea for a class or book club study would be the effect of the presence/absence of liturgical prayer in human life. The chapel in Brideshead Revisited was a focal point for the events of that book. Francois Mauriac's Holy Thursday would be a good addition. Having just read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, available here for free at Gutenberg or here, I'd also include one of the sharpest critiques of a decadent Christian society. How can Austen be so subtle, yet so pointed. This scene might be the center of the book--everyone is revealed here, and all the events of the book seem to unravel from this central and illuminating scene. The characters are defined by their response to the chapel:
* * * * * * * * *
"They entered. Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above. "I am disappointed," said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'"

"You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. There you must look for the banners and the achievements."

"It was foolish of me not to think of all that; but I am disappointed."

Mrs. Rushworth began her relation. "This chapel was fitted up as you see it, in James the Second's time. Before that period, as I understand, the pews were only wainscot; and there is some reason to think that the linings and cushions of the pulpit and family seat were only purple cloth; but this is not quite certain. It is a handsome chapel, and was formerly in constant use both morning and evening. Prayers were always read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the memory of many; but the late Mr. Rushworth left it off."

"Every generation has its improvements," said Miss Crawford, with a smile, to Edmund.

Mrs. Rushworth was gone to repeat her lesson to Mr. Crawford; and Edmund, Fanny, and Miss Crawford remained in a cluster together.

"It is a pity," cried Fanny, "that the custom should have been discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!"

"Very fine indeed," said Miss Crawford, laughing. "It must do the heads of the family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice a day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away."

"That is hardly Fanny's idea of a family assembling," said Edmund. "If the master and mistress do not attend themselves, there must be more harm than good in the custom."

"At any rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such subjects. Everybody likes to go their own way—to choose their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the restraint, the length of time—altogether it is a formidable thing, and what nobody likes; and if the good people who used to kneel and gape in that gallery could have foreseen that the time would ever come when men and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke with a headache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets—starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different—especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at—and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even to what they are now."

For a few moments she was unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked at Edmund, but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little recollection before he could say, "Your lively mind can hardly be serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel at times the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but if you are supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown into a habit from neglect, what could be expected from the private devotions of such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a closet?"

"Yes, very likely. They would have two chances at least in their favour. There would be less to distract the attention from without, and it would not be tried so long."

"The mind which does not struggle against itself under one circumstance, would find objects to distract it in the other, I believe; and the influence of the place and of example may often rouse better feelings than are begun with. The greater length of the service, however, I admit to be sometimes too hard a stretch upon the mind. One wishes it were not so; but I have not yet left Oxford long enough to forget what chapel prayers are."

Philosophy Humor

2009-12-28T12:43:00.000-08:00

My sister showed me this website by a Stanford University student who took the idea of an Adam Smith action figure (with Invisible Hand chopping motion) and his philosophy notes and went crazy.

I thought it highly amusing. It doesn't foster tradition, support community, teach salvation history, promote the classics or story-telling or local business. It doesn't really have much to do with feasts. It has a tiny bit to do with leisure. I thought I'd include it for your Christmas holidays.

The Best Game I've Heard of in a Long Time

2009-12-19T21:01:00.000-08:00

Gathered for a delightful evening with your family or friends, drinking mulled wine, or hot buttered rum, or eggnog, as the case may be--please--build community with the following game.

Have everyone find a book in the house. Let each person write out the first sentence of his book.
Let everyone see the books. Choose one book in particular.
Have the person who chose that book put the correct first sentence into the pot.
Then have everyone attempt to write the first sentence of that book--they might guess it, know it, or just mimic it. Add those sentences to the pot.
Shuffle.
Pull out and read the sentences.
Then have everyone vote for the sentence he thinks is the correct one (except for the person who chose the book who must abstain from voting). 1 point to each person whose sentence is voted for. 5 points to anyone who guesses the correct sentence.

This game recommends itself because it will call on the creative and intellectual powers of the whole group, yet it is not too difficult for anyone to participate. Winning is not really the object so much as the delight of hearing the different sentences. (The friend who told me about this said both Leisure, the Basis of Culture and a Golden Book about horsies made it into the selection-can you imagine!?) It will put you in touch with all kinds of great authors and try your skill at wit. And wit can't be had without a serious and common education. That's why P. G. Wodehouse and Chesterton are so funny--people get all their references and spoofs of poems and authors and common sayings, because they know all those poems and authors and common sayings. You don't get a spoof of something you don't know about.

If you're with your youth group or students, play this game, but maybe drink spiced apple cider, with a big pomander sunk into the middle of the pot. You know, one of those oranges studded with cloves.

Holiday

2009-12-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

I don't mind the word "holiday" at all. I like it better than vacation, as in "I'm on Christmas vacation." Christmas holiday makes more sense.

Holiday comes from the Old English "Holy day." Seems like only a fool would try to repress the reference to Christ in Christmas by substituting a word that means the day is HOLY. Subscribe here to get the OED word of the day.

The Manhattan Declaration

2009-12-11T20:03:00.000-08:00

Just read about this punchy, pithy statement and looked it up, intrigued by the fact that Archbishop John Neinstedt, Archbishop Charles Chaput, Dr. Peter Kreeft, and others were signing it. And it reminded me of something I talk more about in Sailor: Education for Wonder.

What is it?

A statement by Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians "who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

the sanctity of human life
the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
the rights of conscience and religious liberty."

Learn more here at the Manhattan Declaration.org.

In Defense of Miss

2009-12-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

The use of Ms. is pervasive. Ms. seems to have won the day. Is it so? It seems to be the default address, even for Christians, despite its caustic roots in the Sexual Revolution a la Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine. I hear it defended by the words “my marital status doesn’t define me.”

Doesn’t it? It doesn’t? Then it will not matter if you do or do not have children or how you raise them. It will be of little consequence whether you marry or not, and, of course, whether you stay married. Does it even matter how you act while you are married? Cheat. Why not? It’s not really cheating any more, is it? It’s like switching credit cards or patronizing a different restaurant. Those choices don’t define me. So why would my marriage?

But all our choices define us, and marriage most of all. In fact, everyone in a community is defined by his (or her) relationship to marriage.

As the Son is defined by His relationship to the Father and the Father likewise, who we are depends on who we are for others. Of all the ways to relate to humans, marriage is the ultimate relationship, depicting not only God’s relationship to the soul, but the Trinity and Christ’s relationship to the Church. The sacramental promise of marriage is earth-shattering in its symbolism and world-shattering in its consequences. Today as you stare at the small face, the small hands and brown eyes, ask this: who are you, child? Born into human history, endowed with an immortal soul, destined to rise in the resurrection, what will you do, who will you be? Can it be that your parents made you in their marriage? Can it be that Christ held them when they made their wedding vows? Did they hear Him saying: “I am ready to die for any child you bring into being. I have awaited that child from all eternity.”

Marriage is no small thing—the whole world is made and knit together by marriage. Marriage is the model we have for what it would mean for humans and nations to love one another as God loves us.

Thus, marriage defines us. If you marry, you can never be the same, your spouse will never be the same, and the world will never be the same. Who you are will depend ultimately on how you lived within the calling that was given you. Mrs. is a badge of honor, weighted in gold like a crown.

It seems foolish to point out that men do not take a special title for marriage; they do not change their name. The second person of the Blessed Trinity took flesh, took a new name, died on the Cross. The Father? All He had to do was sit by and watch. The wife becomes a Mrs., takes a new name, bears the children. The father? All he has to do is sit by and watch. Does anyone seriously think that some kind of oppression is going on? That these differences are the sign that someone is more important than the other? Does anyone think that a vocation to mirror Christ in relation to the Father is getting the short end of the stick? Does anyone think that watching the beautiful free one bow and suffer—when you love this one more than life itself—does anyone think that is “coming out on top”?

Marriage is the living icon of the Trinity in the world. Marriage must define us. Ask yourself what Wendell Berry asks:

So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: will this satisfy
A woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
Of a woman near to giving birth?
--"Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front", in Reclaiming Politics, Fall/Winter 1991, 62.

I rejoice when women use Mrs. I use Miss. According to Alasdair MacIntyre (see After Virtue, p. 240), the spinster, before that title had its sad, teary connotations was an integral part of society—directly in proportion to her role within and for families. Before the highly romanticized 19th and 20th centuries and the sexually liberated 20th century, it was the honor of the spinster to help families live up to their calling, to come into their glory. It was for the spinster to carry the load wherever helpful, to afford the parents a break, to help them model for the children, to be the kind of Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee character, who like the woman in C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce turned wives to husbands and made husbands “truer, to their own wives.” However, if marriage doesn’t matter, doesn’t define us, then why lift a finger to watch someone else’s kids or teach them history? Let parents wipe their own kid’s snotty nose—or not. If marriage doesn’t define us, let parents walk out.

Although mean and ignorant people can beget and bear children, to beget and bear children is neither mean nor ignorant. We expect mean people to do mean things. We do not expect God’s extraordinary mercy to let mean people cooperate in His creative work. And then even further—to cooperate and know you are cooperating and want to cooperate in His creative work—isn’t this to come into the Kingdom?

In the end, I defend titles. If you are a king, take the title; if a wife, go by Mrs.; if a priest, go by “Father.” We are not honoring you—we’re honoring the revelation of God you put before us. Though, maybe we are honoring you a little for having the guts to accept your calling.

And I hope I have the guts to go by Miss while I am unmarried. Contrary to what some might say, it is not a woebegone back-handed plea for a husband. Isn’t the age-old temptation for women to loathe themselves, to feel inadequate, to want admiration? Only God can give it to us. He calls people to different, more or less glorious callings. I’d go with the Church and rank vowed virginity over marriage, and both over “being single.” But I’d never suggest that women should pine after some other calling to make themselves feel worthy. I’d never suggest that women act as if the callings were the same or as if callings didn’t matter. Throw away callings, and you don’t elevate women, but denigrate them. God loves us all—and that you can’t earn. Want a glorious calling, want to be truly admirable? Then take the calling you have been given and live it well. A Miss is not admirable if she pines for marriage “to improve her status.” A Miss is not admirable if she “goes cheap for power” and sweeps away the titles as if “marriage didn’t define us.”

A Miss is admirable if she marries for love, determined to live out her heroic calling. A Miss is admirable if she does not marry, but isn’t too jealous or self-doubting to honor marriage for what it is. I think I’m in good company with Miss Jane Austen, Miss Anne Eliot, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Miss Flannery O’Connor, Miss Caryll Houslander, Miss Anne Shirley, Miss Cordelia Flyte, Signorina Caterina di Siena, Miss Louisa May Alcott, Miss Jo March, Miss Willa Cather, Miss Antonia Shimerda, Miss Edith Stein and Miss Dorothy Day. Some married, some didn’t, some gave it up for the Lord, all knowing (more or less consciously) that who they were depended greatly on how they prized and served the mystical adventure that is marriage.

There. I have done.
Secunda me,

Miss Gwen Adams

A Roman Empire Family Tree

2009-11-27T22:23:00.000-08:00

Teaching Ancient History or Classics? Here's a wonderful family tree, which takes you from Julius Caesar and the 1st Triumverate all the way to horrid old Nero. Printable and helpful!

Aeschliman on Eliot and Dante

2009-11-27T20:47:00.000-08:00

A great read, originally a lecture Michael D. Aeschliman gave at the University of Virginia in 1987. This I found when I was actually looking for his wonderful "A Cold, Gray Glow: Television Comes to the Tuscan Hills." You can access it here at Harper's Magazine if you are willing to pay a subscription fee . . . Now that, too, is a wonderful article.

The Most Famous Journeys in History

2009-11-13T20:20:00.000-08:00

GOOD magazine traces the most famous journeys in history--interactive route map and good photographs abound. Beware the mediocre historical summaries--the traditional secularist interpretation--but aside from that, the website is fascinating.

Sly Reading for the Latin Grammar Master

2009-11-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

Grammar Masters: you deserve this great story by Charles Dickens, entitled "Captain Boldheart." Buy it here (in the wonderful version illustrated by Hilary Knight and accompanied by "The Magic Fishbone.") Or download it for free here. The Latin Grammar Master's brow-beating forces a young lad to a life on the high seas. Tsk, tsk! All is now excitement!

English Grammar Masters! Latin and German Teachers! To your Aid!

2009-10-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

Try Gene Moutoux's wonderful website a friend put me on, or on to which a friend put me . . .
He taught on the university and secondary education level: revel in his experience and good ideas with numerous German fairy-tales, Latin translating pieces, and diagrammed English sentences.

Look at this fantastic diagram he does for an early sentence in The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne:

"In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf--but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood--at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass--here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick."

To Cultivate Sound Traditions

2009-10-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

A line from John Paul II, in Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way in reference to customs such as Krakow’s Eucharistic Procession for Corpus Christi:

“I believe that in these multiple forms of popular piety lies hidden the answer to a question that is sometimes raised concerning the significance of such manifestations of local tradition. The answer is simple: when hearts are united, the result is a great force for good.

“To be rooted in what is ancient, strong, and profound, and at the same time dear to the heart, gives an extraordinary interior energy. If this rootedness is then joined by a bold and strong intellectual dimension, there is no need to fear for the future of the faith, or the prospect for human relationships within the nation. Amid the rich humus of tradition, in fact, culture is nourished, and this unites the citizens, enabling them to live together as a great family, sustaining and strengthening their convictions.

“Our great task, especially today in the age of so-called globalization, is to cultivate sound traditions, so as to promote a bold consensus in thought and imagination, an openness toward the future, and at the same time, an affectionate regard for the past. It is a past that endures in human hearts, in the form of ancient words, ancient signs, memories, and customs inherited from previous generations.”

Mentor Addendum

2009-10-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

I prepared another chicken today, again without a mentor, but this helpful website suggested a different way to get into the body cavity. It's a whole blog devoted to nothing but preparing a chicken!

Mentor

2009-10-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was again convinced by experience of the need for tradition. I tried to kill, pluck, and gut my own chicken according to the guidance of internet articles. Here and here were the serviceable Internet articles--which worked after a fashion. The latter site has fascinating photographs about gardening, off-grid energy, making money with a life like that, animals, etc. No offense to the websites--I am eating the chicken after all.

The chicken tastes delicious, but the experience was three hours of confusing horror. I'd do it again, but I need a mentor. I should have looked for the guidance of someone who knew what he was doing, someone standing behind me saying, "Now do this, no, not like that, like this!"

Buying Local

2009-10-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

Question: do you save more money by driving farther to a big chain, than you would by stopping at the local store on the way home from work?

If just half the employed U.S. population spent $50 each
month in independently owned businesses, their purchases
would generate more than $42.6 billion in revenue.*
Imagine the positive impact if 3/4 of the employed
population did that.

For every $100 spent in independently owned stores,
$68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and
other expenditures. If you spend that in a national chain,
only $43 stays here. Spend it online and nothing comes home.

Thus runs the provocative poster of the 3/50 Project. Shop local? Where? How? Why? Find out here:

http://www.the350project.net/ puts you in touch with thousands of local stores and how to find more.
Access the American Independent Business Alliance here.
Indie Store Finder: find independent stores mapped within ten miles of your home by typing in your zipcode.
Try the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies to search by state for networks of local stores.
Books: use the search engine at Alibris to locate booksellers in your area. With the Alibris site, type in your city and sort sellers by most books. When you do the math, you'll see that you could find the used book you wanted at a nearby store and save yourself $3.99 in postage by asking them to hold it for you and picking it up while you're doing errands. Spend a little on gas, save on postage, keep local businesses open, jobs and good stores in your area. Why should only big cities be able to afford awesome used bookstores?
Groceries: Local Harvest: Family Farms. Type in your zipcode and find local farms in your area and a list of their produce, hours, directions, and websites. And another similar index is at Eatwellguide.org

Also, if you're ever in the Milwaukee-Chicago area, you might check out Will Allen with Growing Power. He's helping people build community gardens and small farms in urban settings. His goal is to make buying local not just a luxury that only a few can afford. He has it in mind to make it accessible to everyone--a goal I heartily sympathize with. Buying local serves the community in so many ways. Yet it is financially difficult for the backbone of communities--large families--to participate. I also like how he decided not to be "officially organic" because that's a buzzword that takes hours of time filling out government forms. Who cares--just grow stuff. Probably "local" will become a certified word soon, and you'll have a mom and pop telling you that although they did grow these tomatos in their yard, planted, mulched, hoed and picked them, they're not officially local.

Memory and Thinking on Your Feet

2009-10-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

A friend and I have an ongoing conversation: in the information age where everything can be stored in databases and libraries and online--what need do we have to memorize anything? Of course, I have lots of reasons and lots of gut reactions--one being that ideas and images need to tumble against each other like rocks to produce synthesis and further conclusions. You can't do that if nothing is stored in your mind.

But last week I got two more reasons.

What an apostle we have leading the Archdiocese of the Twin Cities! I got an invitation in the mail and then someone telephoned me to invite me personally to a free symposium on current ethical issues facing families. I had to call back and say, "What is this? Is it really free?" Apparently, the Bishop just wanted to teach--imagine that! Prof. Teresa Collett of the St. Thomas Law School outlined the legal history of Roe v. Wade. Two break-out sessions got people talking about practical ways to explain and communicate the Church's teaching on marriage and family life. But the two reasons.

Fr. William Baer, Rector of St. John Vianney Seminary spoke about communicating the truth and he made several fascinating points. One was that it is very destructive to perpetuate the idea that the Catholic Church is not unified in her teaching--she is, and here it is. The other was that we need to be able to think on our feet, just as if you were trying to speak in another language.

So there it was! If you want to communicate with people in other languages, with our brothers in other lands, we have to learn their languages. And one cannot rely on databases and the Internet for that--you have to have the vocabulary, etc. in your head. It also seems to me that if you never use your memory, except for languages, then your memory will be ill-prepared indeed.

And of course, there is Fr. Baer's main point. When you are having a very important conversation with someone, about something critical--about anything that matters--it seems that the only kind of person who would wait while you look up what you want to say is someone who already agrees with you. So what would you do when counseling a woman considering abortion? Or in a lawcourt? Or in a caucus meeting or city council debate? Conversation is not just a pastime or hobby where everyone's has all night. Some conversations are important--and they demand thinking on your feet. And that means cultivating a strong memory.

Which reminds me--must pray for Bishops, and Bishop Neinstedt in particular. What a good idea!

Preparing the World for the Incarnation

2009-09-25T19:21:00.001-07:00

I have been collecting "stories that I tell"--complete with voices, colorful imagery, repetition, etc. These posts talk more about that. For various reasons, my stories are all retellings of ancient myths. I have polished "Demeter and Persephone" and "Psyche and Eros." I am working on The Epic of Gilgamesh and perhaps then the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis.

Now here is my current project: as I gather ancient myths, I'll examine this question. How much did people want immortality, love, to draw near the gods, etc., how much did people want beforehand what Christ came to offer? I know He satisfied our deepest human need, but it would be interesting to see how well the myths reflected this need. I am in full agreement with Chesterton's The Everlasting Man that the world was temporally, culturally, philosophically, physically prepared for the coming of Christ. It might have been prepared in desire, too.

Identity and Magnanimity

2009-09-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

Magnanimity enchants. Here is my article on Gasparo Contarini, a Venetian 17th-century hero of magnanimity. And here is a quotation by Josef Pieper from a book I've been reading called Living the Truth. Get it here. Who are we and why are we here? Pieper weighs in:

"An attitude of willing readiness for an unlimited variety of challenges and tasks seems to correspond best to man’s intrinsic orientation toward the universe of all that is. This ethical attitude of openness, which readily acknowledges what is required in a given situation, was seen by Thomas Aquinas as one of the foundations for a truly human life, especially in his teachings on the virtue of prudence. For him prudence ranks as the first, the ‘mother,’ of the other cardinal virtues of justice, fortitude and temperance. This concept of prudence, of course, does not make it ideal behavior to remain uncommitted, ever neutral and ready to do anything, as it were. The realm of prudence is the realm of all that lies at man’s disposal, and indeed it does not include the ultimate ends of man’s life. ‘Not the final goals are we to determine, but only the ways leading there.’[1] Thus it is not the task of prudence to decide on life’s final goals and determine the basic aspirations of human nature. Rather, the virtue of prudence consists in finding, here and now, the right approach to attain those goals and aspirations. Prudence does not answer the question whether I ought to be just or not; instead it answers the question of how I can pursue justice here and now. Accepting the goal, having the right objective, acting with ‘good intention’—these are the preconditions, the preceding attitudes, of any prudent decision. Without that lasting determination to pursue what is right, going beyond the immediate situation, all efforts to find out what would be prudent and good here and now amount to nothing more than self-deception and empty busywork. Important here is that all inner determination, transcending specific circumstances, be indeed aimed at the true and highest goals of man’s life. These goals themselves should not require, again and again, our personal decision. It could happen, however, that someone ‘exempts’ from conscientious consideration even those points of prudence; that is, the domain of all those contingent things to be pondered and decided in each case and in view of each specific situation. This is a quite common accommodation on a factual and practical level, to fashion for oneself some sort of moral enclave to escape some of life’s particular demands. Not only that, but such an approach is found even on a theoretical level, justified and legitimated in certain systems and theories of ethics and education, say, through authoritarian prescription of ‘ideals,’ and ‘models’ or else through casuistical directives. But in no other manner are the noble purposes of life achieved and man’s ethical call fulfilled than by struggling, in each specific case, for the appropriate answer to a reality whose ultimate extent we cannot measure once and for all and whose inner nature is marked by unlimited, changing diversity. Plato, in his ninth letter, says, ‘One part of out life belongs to our country, another to our parents, another to others we love. The largest portion, however, is dedicated to all those moments, coming to us quite accidentally, when we are challenged to accomplish something good.’

The spirit-based self, ordered as it is toward the whole of reality, is in its very essence called to face with an attitude of receptive, unbiased openness this universality of its world, revealed in countless concrete experiences. Only in this way, indeed, can man realize his own destiny, a destiny, not of his own invention, a destiny, moreover, whose final features he may not even behold beforehand. Nobody is able to anticipate his personal destiny and set it up as his ‘ideal’: man is positioned too much in the midst of a world that constantly deals out surprises beyond all presumed knowledge; man is living too much face to face with the absolute of it all, so that his own inner boundlessness constitutes but the counterpart to an unfathomable world.

Yet this world itself, according to its inner nature, is beholden to the creative word spoken in God’s knowing mind, and there, by God’s ‘artistry’, its primordial ideas have and are life. For the world of all existing things ‘is placed between two knowing minds,’ the mind of God and the mind of man. And precisely from there, as classical Western metaphysics have always known, springs the truth of all things.”
--Josef Pieper, Living the Truth, trans. Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 96-98.
[1] ST, II.1.14.2

Another Project for Ancient History

2009-09-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

This interesting website is devoted to slings and slinging. There are articles, videos, and how-to demonstrations. Apparently, King Tut had a sling in his tomb; apparently slingers were an important part of ancient armies. And who forgets David and Goliath?

At any rate, making one according to the directions here or here might be a worth-while project for class, if the students are pretty developed in their motor skills. Trying to use it, however, is very popular with students of all ages.

Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud

2009-09-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

This article originally appeared in the New York Times. Nice to see a modern plug for something Augustine noticed Ambrose doing--a typical part of Ancient and Medieval education and a great pastime for communities.

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: May 16, 2009

Sometimes the best way to understand the present is to look at it from the past. Consider audio books. An enormous number of Americans read by listening these days — listening aloud, I call it. The technology for doing so is diverse and widespread, and so are the places people listen to audio books. But from the perspective of a reader in, say, the early 19th century, about the time of Jane Austen, there is something peculiar about it, even lonely.

In those days, literate families and friends read aloud to each other as a matter of habit. Books were still relatively scarce and expensive, and the routine electronic diversions we take for granted were, of course, nonexistent. If you had grown up listening to adults reading to each other regularly, the thought of all of those solitary 21st-century individuals hearkening to earbuds and car radios would seem isolating. It would also seem as though they were being trained only to listen to books and not to read aloud from them.

It’s part of a pattern. Instead of making music at home, we listen to recordings of professional musicians. When people talk about the books they’ve heard, they’re often talking about the quality of the readers, who are usually professional. The way we listen to books has been de-socialized, stripped of context, which has the solitary virtue of being extremely convenient.

But listening aloud, valuable as it is, isn’t the same as reading aloud. Both require a great deal of attention. Both are good ways to learn something important about the rhythms of language. But one of the most basic tests of comprehension is to ask someone to read aloud from a book. It reveals far more than whether the reader understands the words. It reveals how far into the words — and the pattern of the words — the reader really sees.

Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words. To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone. The language becomes a part of the body, which is why there is always a curious tenderness, almost an erotic quality, in those 18th- and 19th-century literary scenes where a book is being read aloud in mixed company. The words are not mere words. They are the breath and mind, perhaps even the soul, of the person who is reading.

No one understood this better than Jane Austen. One of the late turning points in Mansfield Park comes when Henry Crawford picks up a volume of Shakespeare, “which had the air of being very recently closed,” and begins to read aloud to the young Bertrams and their cousin, Fanny Price. Fanny discovers in Crawford’s reading “a variety of excellence beyond what she had ever met with.” And yet his ability to do every part “with equal beauty” is a clear sign to us, if not entirely to Fanny, of his superficiality.

I read aloud to my writing students, and when students read aloud to me I notice something odd. They are smart and literate, and most of them had parents who read to them as children. But when students read aloud at first, I notice that they are trying to read the meaning of the words. If the work is their own, they are usually trying to read the intention of the writer.

It’s as though they’re reading what the words represent rather than the words themselves. What gets lost is the inner voice of the prose, the life of the language. This is reflected in their writing, too, at first.

In one realm — poetry — reading aloud has never really died out. Take Robert Pinsky’s new book, Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud. But I suspect there is no going back. You can easily make the argument that reading silently is an economic artifact, a sign of a new prosperity beginning in the early 19th century and a new cheapness in books. The same argument applies to listening to books on your iPhone. But what I would suggest is that our idea of reading is incomplete, impoverished, unless we are also taking the time to read aloud.

Memory Building Exercises for Students: Fable, Narrative, and XREIA

2009-08-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

Henri Marrou describes Hellenistic writing exercises including “fable,” “narrative,” and “XREIA" appropriate for adolescents.

1. FABLE
An excellent exercise for strengthening the memory and attention, “fable” directs students, as much as they can, to write down word-for-word a story they have just read or heard.

2. NARRATIVE
“Narrative” then has students repeat a story in his own words, with attention to brevity, clarity, verisimilitude, and correctness.

Narrative also requires the student to identify

the agent
action
time
place
manner
cause
type of literature from which the passage is taken

3. XREIA
The “XREIA" calls on memory, imagination, and attention, contributing to every aspect of Christian Integration. The student is given a short passage (Henri Marrou gives this example: “Isocrates says, ‘The roots of education are bitter but the fruits thereof are sweet.’)

The student must then discuss the passage, giving

an introduction and eulogy on Isocrates
a paraphrase of the passage at least three lines long
a brief defense of Isocrates’ opinion
a proof by “contrast” refuting the contrary opinion
an illustration of the passage by analogy
then by example from history
quotation from any authorities in support
brief conclusion.[1]

A well-prepared reading of a passage was an essential element of both Hellenistic education.[2]

Here are some sample passages to use with students.

“Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.”—Achilles (Homer)
“To delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought . . . this is right education.”—Plato, The Laws
“False confidence often leads to disaster.” (Aesop, “The Ass, the Cock, and the Lion.”)

THE WOLVES AND THE DOGS Once upon a time the Wolves said to the Dogs, "Why should we continueto be enemies any longer? You are very like us in most ways: the maindifference between us is one of training only. We live a life offreedom; but you are enslaved to mankind, who beat you, and put heavycollars round your necks, and compel you to keep watch over theirflocks and herds for them, and, to crown all, they give you nothingbut bones to eat. Don't put up with it any longer, but hand over theflocks to us, and we will all live on the fat of the land and feasttogether." The Dogs allowed themselves to be persuaded by these words,and accompanied the Wolves into their den. But no sooner were theywell inside than the Wolves set upon them and tore them to pieces. Traitors richly deserve their fate. (Aesop)

NARRATIVE READING (from Xenophon’s Anabasis, VII )
Passing on from thence in four stages of twenty parasangs, they reached a large and prosperous well-populated city from which the governor of the country sent them a guide. This guide told them that within five days he would lead them to a place from which they would see the sea, "and," he added, "if I fail of my word, you are free to take my life." Accordingly he put himself at their head.

On the fifth day they reached the mountain, the name of which was Theches. No sooner had the men in front ascended it and caught sight of the sea than a great cry arose, and Xenophon, in the rearguard, catching the sound of it, conjectured that another set of enemies must surely be attacking in front.

But as the shout became louder and nearer, and those who from time to time came up, began racing at the top of their speed towards the shouters, and the shouting continued with yet greater volume as the numbers increased, Xenophon settled in his mind that something extraordinary must have happened, so he mounted his horse, and taking with him Lycius and the cavalry, he galloped to the rescue. Presently they could hear the soldiers shouting and passing on the joyful word, "The sea! the sea!”

Thereupon they began running, rearguard and all, and the baggage animals and horses came galloping up. But when they had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another—generals and officers and all—and the tears trickled down their cheeks. And on a sudden, some one, whoever it was, having passed down the order, the soldiers began bringing stones and erecting a great cairn, whereon they dedicated a host of untanned skins, and staves, and captured wicker shields, and with his own hand the guide hacked the shields to pieces, inviting the rest to follow his example. After this the Hellenes dismissed the guide with presents: a horse, a silver bowl, a Persian dress, and ten darics; but what he most begged to have were their rings, and of these he got several from the soldiers. So, after pointing out to them a village where they would find quarters, and the road by which they would proceed towards the land of the Macrones, as evening fell, he turned his back upon them in the night and was gone.

[1] Marrou, 173-174.
[2] Marrou, 154, 166.

Walker Percy, Lost In the Cosmos

2009-08-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book explores self, identity, and alienation--via a rather engaging medium. It is full of hypothetical situations and quizzes, satire and searching questions. It is humorous, acerbic, and profound. Watch for the parakeet diagram, a particular favorite. This is an entertaining addition, even introduction, to a study of identity formation. Read this in conjunction with Wilhelmsen's Metaphysics of Love and Alasdair MacIntyre's Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry. Buy Percy's book here.

(Table of Contents)
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
or
The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, the Ghost which Haunts the Cosmos
or
How you can survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist Christians
or
Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos--novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes--you are beyond doubt the strangest
or
Why it is possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you've been stuck with yourself all your life
or
How it is possible for the man who designed Voyager 19, which arrived at Titania, a satellite of Uranus, three seconds off schedule and a hundred yards off course after a flight of six years, to be one of the most screwed-up creatures in California-- or the Cosmos
plus

A Twenty-Question Quiz which will not help you become rich or more assertive or more creative or make love better but which may--though it probably won't, considering how useless most self- help books are--help you discover who you are not and even--an outside chance--who you are
plus

A preliminary short quiz which you can take standing in a bookstore and which will allow you to determine whether you need to buy this book and proceed to the Twenty Questions
plus

A short history of the Cosmos, including a semiotic theory of the Self which explains why it is that man is the only alien creature, as far as we know, in the entire Cosmos
plus

A space odyssey which gives an account of what can happen to an earthling astronaut if there is somebody out there and what can happen if there is no one out there
********************************************************************************************************************************************************
A Preliminary Short Quiz
so that you may determine whether you need to take the Twenty-Question Self-Help Quiz. If you can answer these questions, you are not lost in the Cosmos

Twenty-Question Multiple-Choice Self-Help Quiz
to test your knowledge of the peculiar status of the self, your self and other selves, in the Cosmos, and your knowledge of what to do with your self in these, the last years of the twentieth century

The Amnesic Self: Why the Self Wants to Get Rid of Itself
The Self as Nought: How the Self Tries to Inform Itself by Possessing Things which do not Look like the Things They're Used as
The Self as Nought (II): Why Most Women, and Some Men, are Subject to Fashion
The Nowhere Self: How the Self, which Usually Experiences Itself as Living Nowhere, is Surprised to Find that it Lives Somewhere
The Fearful Self: Why the Self is so Afraid of Being Found Out
The Fearful Self (II): Why the Self is so Afraid of being Stuck with another Self
The Fearful Self (III): How the Self Tries to Escape its Predicament
The Misplaced Self: How Two Selves Confronting Each Other can Miscalculate, Each Attributing a Putative and Spurious Reality to the Other and Trying to Match it, with the Consequence that Both Swelves Become Non-selves
The Promiscuous Self: Why is it that One's Self not only does not Prefer Sex with one's Chosen Mate, Chosen for His or Her Attractiveness and Suitability, even when the Mate is a Person well known to one, knowing of one, loved by one, with a Life, Time, and Family in common, but rather prefers Sex with a New Person, even a Total Stranger, or even Vicariously through Pornography
The Envious Self (in the root sense of envy: invidere, to look at with malice): Why it is that the Self--though it Professes to be Loving, Caring, to Prefer Peace to War, Concord to Discord, Life to Death; to Wish Other Selves Well, not Ill--in fact Secretly Relishes Wars and Rumors of War, News of Plane Crashes, Assassinations, Mass Murders, Obituaries, to say nothing of Local News about Acquaintances Dropping Dead in the Street, Gossip about Neighbors Getting in Fights or being Detected in Sexual Scandals, Embezzlements, and other Disgraces
The Bored Self: Why the Self is the only Object in the Cosmos which Gets Bored
The Depressed Self: Whether the Self is Depressed because there is Something Wrong with it or whether Depression is a Normal Response to a Deranged World
The Impoverished Self: How the Self can be Poor though Rich

The following section, an intermezzo of some forty pages, can be skipped without fatal consequences. It is not technical but it is theoretical; i.e., it attempts an elementary semiotical grounding of the theory of the self taken for granted in these pages. As such, it will be unsatisfactory to many readers. It will irritate many lay readers by appearing to be too technical; what does he care about semiotics? It will irritate many professional semioticists by not being technical enough and for focusing on one dimension of semiotics which semioticists, for whatever reason, are not accustomed to regard as a proper subject of inquiry., i.e., not texts and other coded sign utterances but the self which produces texts or hears sign utterances.

A Semiotic Primer of the Self: A Short History of the Cosmos with Emphasis on the Nature and Origin of the Self, plus a Semiotic Model for Computing Impoverishment in the Midst of Plenty, or Why it is Possible to Feel Bad in a Good Environment and Good in a Bad Environment

How the Self Characteristically Places itself vis-a-vis the World, particularly through modes of Transcendence and Immanence
The Orbiting Self: Reentry Problems of the Transcending Self, or Why it is that Artists and Writers, some Technologists, and indeed Most People have so much Trouble Living in the Ordinary World
The Exempted Self: How Scientists Don't Have to Take Account of Themselves and Other Selves in their Science and Some Difficulties that Arise when they have to
The Lonely Self: Why the Autonomous Self feels so Alone in the Cosmos that it will go to any Length to talk to Chimpanzees, Dolphins, and Humpback Whales
The Lonely Self (II): Why Carl Sagan is so Anxious to Establish Communication with an ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
The Demoniac Self: Why it is the Autonomous Self becomes Possessed by the Spirit of the Erotic and the Secret Love of Violence, and how Unlucky it is that this should have Happened in the Nuclear Age
The Self Marooned in the Cosmos: What would you say if you met a man Friday out there? What do you think he would say to you? Could you understand him?
The Self Marooned in the Cosmos: What do you do if there is no man Friday out there and we are really alone?

The Idea of a Pilgrimage

2009-08-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

Thousands will be on foot this coming week for the Feast of the Assumption. In Poland, they'll be heading to Czestoschowa, the shrine of Jasna Gora.

Pilgrimage essentials:

Water

Trail-mix: equal parts dried fruit / M&Ms / unsalted peanuts; add popcorn

Pocketknife, not too heavy

Knowledge of where cold beer may be had at end of 20-30 miles

Helpful: Extra pony-tail holder, bandaid, lipbalm, sunglasses, ID, money.

For your pilgrimage preparation, enjoy the full text of Hilaire Belloc's "The Idea of a Pilgrimage" from Hills and the Sea. A collection of essays and musings, Hills and the Sea is available at Project Gutenberg here.

THE IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE
A pilgrimage is, of course, an expedition to some venerated place to which a vivid memory of sacred things experienced, or a long and wonderful history of human experience in divine matters, or a personal attraction affecting the soul impels one. This is, I say, its essence. So a pilgrimage may be made to the tomb of Descartes, in Paris, or it may be a little walk uphill to a neighbouring and beloved grave, or a modern travel, even in luxury, on the impulse to see something that greatly calls one.

But there has always hung round the idea of a pilgrimage, with all people and at all times—I except those very rare and highly decadent generations of history in which no pilgrimages are made, nor any journeys, save for curiosity or greed—there has always hung round it, I say, something more than the mere objective. Just as in general worship you will have noble gowns, vivid colour, and majestic music (symbols, but necessary symbols of the great business you are at); so, in this particular case of worship, clothes, as it were, and accoutrements, gather round one's principal action. I will visit the grave of a saint or of a man whom I venerate privately for his virtues and deeds, but on my way I wish to do something a little difficult to show at what a price I hold communion with his resting-place, and also on the way I will see all I can of men and things; for anything great and worthy is but an ordinary thing transfigured, and if I am about to venerate a humanity absorbed into the divine, so it behoves me on my journey to it to enter into and delight in the divine that is hidden in everything. Thus I may go upon a pilgrimage with no pack and nothing but a stick and my clothes, but I must get myself into the frame of mind that carries an invisible burden, an eye for happiness and suffering, humour, gladness at the beauty of the world, a readiness for raising the heart at the vastness of a wide view, and especially a readiness to give multitudinous praise to God; for a man that goes on a pilgrimage does best of all if he starts out (I say it of his temporal object only) with the heart of a wanderer, eager for the world as it is, forgetful of maps or descriptions, but hungry for real colours and men and the seeming of things. This desire for reality and contact is a kind of humility, this pleasure in it a kind of charity.

It is surely in the essence of a pilgrimage that all vain imaginations are controlled by the greatness of our object. Thus, if a man should go to see the place where (as they say) St. Peter met our Lord on the Appian Way at dawn, he will not care very much for the niggling of pedants about this or that building, or for the rhetoric of posers about this or that beautiful picture. If a thing in his way seem to him frankly ugly he will easily treat it as a neutral, forget it and pass it by. If, on the contrary, he find a beautiful thing, whether done by God or by man, he will remember and love it. This is what children do, and to get the heart of a child is the end surely of any act of religion. In such a temper he will observe rather than read, and though on his way he cannot do other than remember the names of places, saying, "Why, these are the Alps of which I have read! Here is Florence, of which I have heard so many rich women talk!" yet he will never let himself argue and decide or put himself, so to speak, before an audience in his own mind—for that is pride which all of us moderns always fall into. He will, on the contrary, go into everything with curiosity and pleasure, and be a brother to the streets and trees and to all the new world he finds. The Alps that he sees with his eyes will be as much more than the names he reads about, the Florence of his desires as much more than the Florence of sickly-drawing-rooms; as beauty loved is more than beauty heard of, or as our own taste, smell, hearing, touch and sight are more than the vague relations of others. Nor does religion exercise in our common life any function more temporarily valuable than this, that it makes us be sure at least of realities, and look very much askance at philosophies and imaginaries and academic whimsies.

Look, then, how a pilgrimage ought to be nothing but a nobler kind of travel, in which, according to our age and inclination, we tell our tales, or draw our pictures, or compose our songs. It is a very great error, and one unknown before our most recent corruptions, that the religious spirit should be so superficial and so self-conscious as to dominate our method of action at special times and to be absent at others. It is better occasionally to travel in one way or another to some beloved place (or to some place wonderful and desired for its associations), haunted by our mission, yet falling into every ordinary levity, than to go about a common voyage in a chastened and devout spirit. I fear this is bad theology, and I propound it subject to authority. But, surely, if a man should say, "I will go to Redditch to buy needles cheap," and all the way take care to speak no evil of his neighbour, to keep very sober, to be punctual in his accounts, and to say his regular prayers with exactitude, though that would be a good work, yet if he is to be a pilgrim (and the Church has a hundred gates), I would rather for the moment that he went off in a gay, tramping spirit, not oversure of his expenses, not very careful of all he said or did, but illuminated and increasingly informed by the great object of his voyage, which is here not to buy or sell needles, or what not, but to loose the mind and purge it in the ultimate contemplation of something divine.

There is, indeed, that kind of pilgrimage which some few sad men undertake because their minds are overburdened by a sin or tortured with some great care that is not of their own fault. These are excepted from the general rule, though even to these a very human spirit comes by the way, and the adventures of inns and foreign conversations broaden the world for them and lighten their burden. But this kind of pilgrimage is rare and special, having its peculiar virtues. The common sort (which how many men undertake under another name!) is a separate and human satisfaction of a need, the fulfilling of an instinct in us, the realisation of imagined horizons, the reaching of a goal. For whoever yet that was alive reached an end and could say he was satisfied? Yet who has not desired so to reach an end and to be satisfied? Well, pilgrimage is for the most a sort of prefiguring or rehearsal. A man says: "I will play in show (but a show stiffened with a real and just object) at that great part which is all we can ever play. Here I start from home, and there I reach a goal, and on the way I laugh and watch, sing and work. Now I am at ease and again hampered; now poor, now rich, weary towards the end and at last arrived at that end. So my great life is, and so this little chapter shall be." Thus he packs up the meaning of life into a little space to be able to look at it closely, as men carry with them small locket portraits of their birthplace or of those they love.

If a pilgrimage is all this, it is evident that however careless, it must not be untroublesome. It would be a contradiction of pilgrimage to seek to make the journey short and rapid, merely consuming the mind for nothing, as is our modern habit; for they seem to think nowadays that to remain as near as possible to what one was at starting, and to one's usual rut, is the great good of travel (as though a man should run through the Iliad only to note the barbarous absurdity of the Greek characters, or through Catullus for the sake of discovering such words as were like enough to English). That is not the spirit of a pilgrimage at all. The pilgrim is humble and devout, and human and charitable, and ready to smile and admire; therefore he should comprehend the whole of his way, the people in it, and the hills and the clouds, and the habits of the various cities. And as to the method of doing this, we may go bicycling (though that is a little flurried) or driving (though that is luxurious and dangerous, because it brings us constantly against servants and flattery); but the best way of all is on foot, where one is a man like any other man, with the sky above one, and the road beneath, and the world on every side, and time to see all.

So also I designed to walk, and did, when I visited the tombs of the Apostles.

Combining Conversation, Community, and Chores

2009-07-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

If you want to build community, within your family or neighborhood, the absolute requirement is frequent, unplanned encounters in combination with structured meeting times. One or the other is insufficient.

A list of fruitful ways to spend time family members and neighbors. By fruitful, I mean ways that will help you learn about the other people.

Conversation
Listen to book on tape/ baseball game and comment
Read aloud and comment
Sing
Story game—each person tells a bit of the story before passing it on
Tell stories

Sunday is a day of rest. That's a good day for the kinds of communal recreation that takes all your attention. So after Mass and a lovely lunch, try these:

All sports and games
Attend concerts / listen to music
Fly kites
Ride horses, bicycles, drives in the country
Visit museums / art institutes
Watch good films / plays
Water sports & activities
Winter sports

But on other days, I (and perhaps you're like me) don't have much time for the kind of encounters which demands all my attention and participation--eating at restaurants, playing games, "hanging out," the kinds of meetings where you leave all your work behind. I find it kind of stressful to "hang out" when I have half a dozen things to do at home. One solution is never to see people except on Sunday. Another solution is never to finish some of your tasks.

But here's a better third solution.
Many of the things we have to do, get done while we listen to music or putter about in silence. But they can be done while you spend time with other people. So I keep difficult paperwork, strenuous labor, and solitary activities (like crosswords, letter writing, reading) for the times I am alone. I save the following for when family and friends are around. I find I am less antsy about "what I need to do" when I am doing it already and able to lend an ear to my friends and family. And then--why schedule special times "to hang out" when you're already talking to them?

Chores that Facilitate Conversation
Food prep:

Grate lemon zest.
Make & decorate cookies.
Peel garlic and store in bottles of olive oil.
Peel / core /pare potatoes / fruits / vegetables.
Pit cherries.
Shell eggs.
Shell peas.
Snap beans.

Chores & Activities (either you are doing it with other people or everyone is doing it)

Clean & oil small tools, pocket-knives, etc.
Clean up after dinner
Clean musical instruments, restring, etc.
Clerical work--like stuffing envelopes, folding booklets, etc.
Cut, curl, braid hair
Draw, color, paint
Hoe garden
Iron
Knit / crochet / needlework
Make rosaries
Mend & Darn
Oil boots
Practice knots
Quilt
Shine shoes
Sort & fold laundry
Tie lures (fishing)
Wash dishes
Whittle

Help me add to this ongoing list!

Friends and Foes of Benedict XVI's New Encyclical

2009-07-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

The new encyclical is certainly stirring the pot!

Here are some friends, including Fr. Joseph Fessio, Joseph Pearce, and some interesting praise from Thomas Hibbs at Baylor University and Paul Kengor of Grove City. The comments section that follows is fascinating, too, and my only comment is--economists are . . . interesting.

And here is George Weigel, disgusted with the new encyclical, seeing it as "gentle" Benedict's overture to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He writes "those with advanced degrees in Vaticanology could easily go through the text of Caritas in Veritate, highlighting those passages that are obviously Benedictine with a gold marker and those that reflect current Justice and Peace default positions with a red marker. The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus."

Like Benedict's remarks in Regensburg did with the Islamic world, perhaps this new encyclical will initiate dialogue with fellows like Weigel. I am curious about Weigel's understanding of the papacy. What is it for, if you have to go through it and weed out the interpolations that Jesus did not want? It is reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson's version of the gospels minus the interpolations of the gospel writers, for example, stuff like the resurrection(!).

Interestingly, Weigel and the New York Times loved the first encyclical. Here's Weigel and here's the Times in 2006. And here's the Times, echoing Weigel on the new encyclical. Strange bedfellows--"liberals" and "conservatives" united in mutual discomfort with the Catholic Church's Social Teaching. Hasn't been the first time!

My new favorite quotation: "One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation. If we look closely at other kinds of poverty, including material forms, we see that they are born from isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love. Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love, by man's basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a “stranger” in a random universe. Man is alienated when he is alone, when he is detached from reality, when he stops thinking and believing in a foundation[125]. All of humanity is alienated when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies and false utopias[126]. Today humanity appears much more interactive than in the past: this shared sense of being close to one another must be transformed into true communion. The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side[127]."

And another way to teach History like a Sailor

2009-07-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

I just thought of this the other day, as I taught about Francis of Assisi, originator of the Stations of the Cross. A tiny book of 14 pages plus cover, 1.25 inches by 1.5 inches provides an engrossing and miniscule art project.

For the artist and the one not-so-skilled, it is both challenging and forgiving. Tiny pen & ink drawings, sketches, or colored miniatures can fill its pages.

Here are the 14 stations. A bit of Scripture on the left page can be written in or the old prayer: We adore you, O Christ, and we praise You, because by Your Holy Cross, You Have Redeemed the world.

1. First station: Jesus is Condemned to Death
2. Second Station: Jesus Takes up His Cross
3. Third Station: Jesus Falls the First Time
4. Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Afflicted Mother
5. Fifth Station: The Cross is Laid on Simon of Cyrene
6. Sixth Station: A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus
7. Seventh Station: Jesus Falls a Second Time
8. Eighth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
9. Ninth Station: Jesus Falls a Third Time
10. Tenth Station: Jesus is Stripped of His Garments
11. Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
12. Twelfth Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross
13. Thirteenth Station: The body of Jesus is Placed in the Arms of His Mother
14. Fourteenth Station: Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

Why Pope Benedict is a better Pope than Evelyn Waugh might have been

2009-07-11T19:32:00.000-07:00

"More than once in the preceding pages mention has been made of the obliteration of English villages. The process is notorious and inevitable. Expostulation is futile, lament tedious. This is part of the grim cyclorama of spoliation which surrounded all English experience in this century and any understanding of the immediate past (which presumably is the motive for reading a book such as this) must be incomplete unless this huge deprivation of the quiet pleasures of the eye is accepted as a dominant condition, sometimes making for impotent resentment, sometimes for mere sentimental apathy, sometimes poisoning love of country and of neighbours. To have been born into a world of beauty, to die amid ugliness, is the common fate of all us exiles" (Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning, 33).

I love Evelyn Waugh, and I love this quotation because Waugh loved beauty and tradition--and he missed it when it was missing. And the last century has seen much confusion, barrenness, and even ugliness in every part of Catholic life. It's been awkward, to say the least. But I didn't see anything disappear like Waugh did. I am more like someone reading a travel guide. When I hear that parishes used to process around the "bounds of the parish" blessing the boundaries and partaking of a progressive dinner--I think, "Parishes had boundaries?" When I read Josef Pieper talking about thyme and rosemary on the steps of the church for Corpus Christi, I think, "When did people do that?" The more I study Church history, the more I experience those emotions of Waugh. We have the essential, but where are those quiet pleasures of the eye, and the things that bolster the Faith? Of course, Waugh is talking about English villages, but it's connected. Where are the town squares and the local pubs? Where are those "inns" people used to talk about and "meadows." Every novel pre-1940s talks about a world as remote as Grimms'. I want to scour the Shire, but Waugh says it's too late. The process is inevitable. But he's wrong.

That is why Ratzinger was ever the hero, the scribe who brought from his stores both old and new. His new Encyclical, like his last two, like all his books overflow with courageous magnanimity. He has no fear! Benedict XVI points to Christ, to His Church, to His teaching which is ever ancient, ever new. All the beautiful things we lost or threw away can be got back and transformed to feed the future. That's why he can say we ought not to reject progress and technology, etc. blindly. When he says it, I know he's not following a fad, but the Truth. Here is my current favorite quotation:

"Hope bursts into our lives as something not due to us, something that transcends every law of justice. Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance. It takes first place in our souls as a sign of God's presence in us, a sign of what he expects from us." (Paragraph 34).

There are so many things to like. Pope Benedict: here are 9 Things I Like About Your Encylical. Note these.

P12's careful explanation of Church's teaching as consistent and coherent but also organic, exhibiting "dynamic faithfulness to a light received."
P16 notes Paul VI's: "Every life is a vocation." What! Called to my own life!
P18 "The Gospel is fundamental for development." That made me sit up. Hey, it really is. It is not something nice to take or leave like sugar in your coffee. We NEED this!
P25's recognition of mobility as a major problem of our economic situation, creating "new forms of psychological instability." I'll say!
P26. Cultural levelling vs. cultural eclecticism. Benedict XVI goes more into depth in this area in his book Truth and Tolerance.
P28's connection between "respect for life" and "poverty." Very interesting--are we dealing with poverty when the people are encouraged or forced to kill and hinder life? "Openness to life" is the fundamental prerequisite for every other kind of openness.
P31 points out the "excessive segmentation of knowledge." Is Benedict like MacIntyre or is MacIntyre like Benedict?
P32--I just love the way Benedict XVI writes. His references are razor sharp and wry: "The human consequences of current tendencies towards a short-term economy--sometimes very short-term--need to be carefully evaluated." Who is that aside for?
P34: "The principle of gratuitousness." He really makes love attractive. Evangelization, dialogue, mission, preaching, writing, suffering, serving, teaching, washing dishes--it has to be effervescent, overflowing--like refilling someone's glass. It can never be about crossing t's and dotting i's.

But he is not sentimental and foofy--the generosity he's talking about is the kind that results in houses well-built, earth well-tilled, the hungry fed, and children born and bred in openness. AND--beautiful villages and liturgies. Don't worry Waugh--"Blessed are those who have not seen." There will be heroic people to rebuild the culture--perhaps--and heaven will be ever ancient, ever new.

More on Story-telling

2009-07-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

Listen to NPR's Michelle Mercer enrage me with her condescending interview of Eddie Lenihan, a Seanchai. But forget Mercer--Lenihan's got a wife and six kids and is trying to keep alive the great Tradition. A Seanchai is a . . . read more.

And here's Seanchai Eamon Kelly. He's from Co. Kerry. And the second video is good, too--it's strange--the stories aren't even that good, at least, I don't think so--but when he tells them, they're riveting.

Films about story-telling

2009-06-27T19:39:00.001-07:00

With piercing cinematography and a score by Randy Newman, the 1990 Barry Levinson film Avalon is a must-see for Americans. Here's an old trailer.

What would you give to offer your child these stories and this kind of childhood? What would you do to protect that culture? The suggestive name of this film makes you wonder.

Finding Neverland is another movie about story-telling (and I'm pleased to offer a clip from the very best part of the film). And so is Big Fish (MAJOR caveat here--just check out the warning before you jump into this one--it's rated PG-13 for a reason). But these two movies tell stories about telling stories, while Avalon tells a story about stories that tell our history and our worldview--who we are, why we're here. Finding Neverland and Big Fish are films for Sailor and Poet, but Avalon is for Grizzlebeard.

And here is Michael Wood, a pretty good story-teller following Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia--if you wade through it, you'll see a true Iranian story-teller at work.

15 Ways to Teach History Like a Sailor

2009-06-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Mind and body / tradition and experience come together in this Integrated List of activities geared for young people (perhaps 12 or so) studying Ancient History. Make it come alive. (I will be adding and improving to this list as I figure out where I got some of the materials for the following.) For teachers the indispensable reading is Henri Marrou's History of Education in Antiquity and G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man.

Cuneiform: purchase clay, wedge-shaped sticks, and try to make cuneiform letters.
Eat dates, pomegranates, figs, grapes. With great ceremony.
Learn constellations with the free planetarium at http://www.stellarium.org/ and go star-gazing. Read selections from Bulfinch's Mythology to get the stories.
Listen to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. (Get it here) Tell the story.
Make mosaics. Trace a design or picture on cardboard and fill in with chopped colored chipboard and glue. A long horizontal picture can be worked on if you have long table and can seat students on either side.
Make wooden blocks for building arches. Help students to put them together aquaduct style or like a barrel-vault.
Observe and draw pictures of Greco-Roman art.
Papyrus: follow these directions for making papyrus sheets. Make a press with two pieces of wood and bolts. Obtain papyrus? Try a local university which has a biological science department.
Read Aesop's Fables, color the black & white illustrations by Arthur Rackham (online here); tell them, and write your own.
Rehearse and enact a battle.
Teach Greek letters and write “code.”
Tell the story of Demeter and Persephone, Antigone, Pysche and Eros.
Write fables, narratives, and kreia. Here are directions.
Write letters and speeches. Have students put themselves in the shoes of various characters and write something from their perspective, such a “Last Letter Home from Thermopylae.”
Write riddles. (for example when studying Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphynx)

Or memorize these poems at appropriate times:

Excerpt from Ptolemy’s Amalgest, 2nd century AD;
Well do I know that I am mortal, a creature of one
day.
But if my mind follows the winding paths of the stars
Then my feet no longer rest on earth, but standing by
Zeus himself I take my fill of the ambrosia, the divine
dish.

Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib”

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Hector to his wife from The Iliad,
Someday a man, hearing you weep, will say of you:
“Here is the wife of Hector, breaker of horses,
who was ever the bravest fighter,
in the days when they fought about Ilion.”
But may I be dead and the piled earth hide me under before I hear you weeping and know by this that they take you captive.”

Speech of the Greeks at Salamis from Aeschylus’ The Persians.
And meanwhile there was heard
A mighty shout: "Come, O ye sons of Greeks,
Make free your country, make your children free,
Your wives, and fanes of your ancestral gods, And your sires' tombs! For all we now contend!"

The Case for Memorizing Poetry

2009-06-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Got Poetry?
By JIM HOLT
Published in the New York Times: April 2, 2009

A few years ago, I started learning poetry by heart on a daily basis. I’ve now memorized about a hundred poems, some of them quite long — more than 2,000 lines in all, not including limericks and Bob Dylan lyrics. I recite them to myself while jogging along the Hudson River, quite loudly if no other joggers are within earshot. I do the same, but more quietly, while walking around Manhattan on errands — just another guy on an invisible cellphone. . . .

Read the rest here.

What Grizzlebeard likes about the series "All Creatures Great and Small"

2009-06-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

A Dying Breed (Season 3)
James and Siegfried walk into the modern milk parlor and talk about so-called “progress” and James asks: “I wonder who suffers more, men or the animals?”

Alarms and Excursions (Season 3)
Tristan gets Nathaniel Adamson to make a speech at the bell-ringers' final gathering: "Thanks lads. Thanks for your company. And thanks for all the many happy hours I spent in it. And I’ll say this, too. Things is bad. Skies are black. And they’ll be a bloomin' sight blacker before this lot’s all over and what has to be done, has to be done. And I know, and you know that bells in that parish church’ll ring again, and I hope that we’re all still here to hear’em."

And all the old men weep and he says a poem:

May good ringers flourish
May bad ringers mend
May change-ringing last
till the world is an end
And when we meet
May we meet in brotherly love
And when we pass from here
May we meet in that tower above.

Then they join hands and sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

Get the series here.

Dare to Do as Much as You Can

2009-06-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

My favorite line ("Quantum potes, tantum aude") from Thomas Aquinas' sequence Lauda Sion, composed for the Feast of Corpus Christi. Celebrated more in some areas than others, this feast escaped my notice until I was nineteen. I had just arrived in Toledo, Spain, and wherever I walked there were colored caponies overhead and white petals in the gutters. Watch Orvieto's procession here, the city to first celebrate it before it became a universal feast in the Catholic Church. What you won't see in this video is the preceding night's festivities. When I was there, it consisted in relay races by children from the four neighborhoods. They raced in the dark around the cathedral, led by the headlights of motorinos. Very cool Italian teenagers rode the motorinos. And all the parents watched, cheered, and drank wine on the steps of the great Cathedral. It was like Pieper says: "Whenever anyone reaches out and touches the core of all reality, that person can be said to be having a good time."

Here is a 15th-century English Carol for the Feast of Corpus Christi. The carol like the feast (to borrow some words from Douglas Gray) is good at "vividly combining homeliness and mystery."

And by a chapell as y Came,
Met y whyhte Ihesu to chyrcheward gone
Petur and Pawle, Thomas & Ihon,
And hys desyplys Euery-chone.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mery ways for to gonne.

Sente Thomas the Bellys gane ryng,
And sent Collas the mas gane syng,
Sente Ihon toke that swete offerying,
And By a chapel as y Came.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mery ways for to gonne.

Owre lorde offeryd whate he wolde,
A challes alle of ryche rede gollde;
Owre lady, the crowne off hyr mowlde,
The sone owte off hyr Bosome schone.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mery ways for to gonne.

Sente Iorge that ys owre lady knyghte,
He tende the taperys fayre & Bryte—
To myn yghe a semley syghte,
And By a chapel as y Came.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mary ways for to gonne.

From Greene, Early English Carols, no. 323; quoted in Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-1580 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1992), 129-130.

"The feast of the Blessed Sacrament was established in 1246 by Bishop Robert de Thorte of Liege at the suggestion of St. Juliana of Mont Carvillon. [It was] extended to the universal Church by Pope Urban in 1264. The office composed by St. Thomas Aquinas and customary procession was approved by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV. Celebrated in June, the first Sunday after the feast of the Trinity." (Modern Catholic Dictionary, by John A. Hardon, S.J.)

Pattern Language

2009-05-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

Christopher Alexander is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Click here for more bio . . .

While he is no Christian, Alexander's ideas captivate: he has found the architectural means to support and foster communal life. And he did it (as if he were a SAILOR) by observing which existing architectural patterns foster communal life and which fail.

His book A Pattern Language delights; from town to neighborhood to house to room, his observations ring true. And I just found his website! Sign up and pay a small fee to access this site or get many of the ideas here for free, at his sister site.

Just sample what he has to say about Establishing a Main Center.

Green Thomism

2009-05-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

The St. Paul Seminary located at the University of St. Thomas is hosting a mighty interesting conference this fall--looking for better and better ways to articulate the connection between man and the land. Call for papers and more information can be found here.

Teaching the Hundred Year's War

2009-04-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

After giving the history, I like making this story come to life with the following:

1. Memorize the speech of Henry V from the Battle of Agincourt.

2. Show parts of Kenneth Branaugh's version of Henry V.

3. Read selections from Willard Trask's compilation Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words. This gives the straight story--simple transcription from our surviving records.

4. Show Joan of Arc with Leelee Sobieski. I forgot how well this film tells her story. It is engaging and accessible for a young audience, and fairly historically accurate. Also, I like how it casually references many of the historical and cultural items we have already studied--it wonderfully ties up our course.

5. Play Capture-the-Flag with England & France as the sides (and wave wonderful flags).

Tradition and Identity Formation

2009-04-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a suggested bibliography for understanding the connection between tradition, culture, and identity formation. Is this what you are looking for? Click on a title for a quick summary.

Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckman. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967.

Berger, Peter, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner. The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.

Berry, Wendell. “Does Community Have a Value” in Home Economics. New York: North Point Press, 1987.

Blum, Christopher. “On Being Conservative: Lessons from Louis Bonald” in The Intercollegiate Review 41.1 (2006): 23-31.

Clark, Stephen B. Man and Woman in Christ. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1980.

Hauerwas, Stanley. Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology. Edited by Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

Jaeger, Werner. Paedeia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Translated by Gilbert Highet. Three Volumes. 2nd edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1945.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. 2nd edition, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Can One Be Unintelligible to Oneself?”

MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science.” (This essay is included in the Hauerwas volume).

MacIntyre, Alasdair. “How to Be a North American.” Washington, D.C.: Federation of State Humanities Councils, 1988.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Social Structures and Their Threat to Moral Agency.” Delivered as Annual Lecture of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (24 February 1999); reprinted in Philosophy. 74. (1999): 311-329.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

Thomas Schaefer. "Up from Alienation : the Wilhelmsenian Vision of the Human Person." In Saints, Sovereigns, and Scholars: Studies in Honor of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen. Edited by R. A. Herrera, James Lehrberger, and M. E. Bradford. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.

Wilhelmsen, Frederick. Hilaire Belloc: No Alienated Man. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953.

Wilhelmsen, Frederick. “Introduction” to Romano Guardini’s The End of the Modern World. Translated by Joseph Themen and Herbert Burke. Edited by F. Wilhelmsen with intro. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956.

Wilhelmsen, Frederick. The Metaphysics of Love. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962.

Introduction: Grizzlebeard the Character and Education for Tradition

2009-04-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

Grizzlebeard exemplifies one facet of Christian Integration, an educational vision inspired by Frederick Wilhelmsen and Hilaire Belloc. Click above for more information or read on.

The Character
Oldest of the four travelers, Grizzlebeard is a man of wisdom and maturity. The scope of his knowledge is the widest. Believing “that only is sacred which attaches directly to the Faith,”[1] he is knowledgeable about Theology and History. When the Sailor sings the Pelagian drinking song, Grizzlebeard notices nuances which the Sailor overlooks.[2] Moreover, only Grizzlebeard argues with the philosopher at the Cricketers’ Arms; he alone has the interest and the patience for intellectual dialogue. But Grizzlebeard is not merely smart, and he grasps more than mere information.

First, he knows himself: he is enviably comfortable with his own identity, especially evident in his speeches on Sussex.[3] Second, he understands the interconnectedness of human beings. When he joins Myself, he states “A man is more himself if he is one of a number,”[4] and he calls the worst thing in the world “the passing of human affection.”[5] This explains his great kindness in defending the Poet from the mockery of the Sailor and putting the fox-hunter at his ease; Myself says Grizzlebeard has “the kindest of hearts.”[6] Grizzlebeard not only knows his own identity, but he can help people situate theirs. Not even the Poet understands what he contributes: Grizzlebeard first recognizes their need for the Poet.[7] His comprehensive vision teaches the significance of himself, others, and the entire human community. In addition, Grizzlebeard understands life. Experience has taught him: when he returns to find his first love married, he suffers a blow, realizing the transience of mortal life. “Strong, and at last (at such a price) mature,”[8] he is able to speak with the woman and to find friendship both with her and her husband, whom he counts as an “older friend.” [9] But Grizzlebeard has another mentor besides experience.

Belloc captures in Grizzlebeard what a man can be who, in addition to experience, has the mentorship of Tradition. A son of Sussex, Grizzlebeard is rooted in Tradition—this is his most distinctive characteristic. Everything he knows he has learned from others. Everything Grizzlebeard is, the content of his coherent and comprehensive vision is inherited. Comments Myself to Grizzlebeard “you are the oldest of us, and have in your house so many papers and records, not to speak of in your own mind so many ancient Traditions.”[10] In drawing Grizzlebeard, Belloc indicates that Tradition gives knowledge and understanding, even a complete vision which makes sense of one’s identity and the meaning of human existence and helps one to act out this vision in creative and intelligible ways.

What Is Tradition?
Worldview: A Telos
Tradition answers Who Are We? What is it all for? Who am I? What am I for? and the answers to these questions dictate how a family, a community, and then over time, the community comprising successive generations—a culture—shapes its life. Tradition gives a vision of life, tested and refined in conversations and deeds, developed over generations, articulated in cultural customs. Tradition sets constructive limits on human behavior: it articulates a frame of reference by which we can act consistently according to an overarching telos within our various communities.[11] Tradition integrates our life. We can become the same person in every situation, persons with one identity. [12] A Tradition is a worldview incarnated in social life

Education in Tradition
Grizzlebeard’s identification with a Tradition was once viewed as a key goal of the formation of youth. Marrou explains that Roman education meant “being initiated into a Traditional way of life.”[13] Pieper notes that every culture consciously or unconsciously passes on a Tradition, understanding that “education concerns the whole man; an educated man is a man with a point of view from which he takes in the whole world. Education concerns the whole man, man capax universi, capable of grasping the totality of existing things.”[14] Youth especially desire a cause and identity; why not give them a point of view, help them take in the whole world? Now that so many grow up without a living Tradition, we have to find a remedy. Since the best mentor is a living Tradition, we will require a special plan—the formation of the youth will demand a special widespread effort to resurrect the Tradition, not just teach it like a dead language.

One Religion course alone will not communicate Catholic Tradition. Every aspect of formation should lend itself to this wider vision: both history and religion, but also recreation, entertainment, and all the subjects and activities a youth will experience should embrace and communicate the vision. Such formation will be very different. Nevertheless, this formation will reunite children with the Christian past, give them meaning and clarity of vision, and the strength and purpose to be like Grizzlebeard, that wise and amiable Christian with the hospitable home and four acres of garden.The principles outlined in this site offer a new education which must extend beyond the classroom and permeate every aspect of daily life. All this offers an education “not studied in the past, because men took it for granted like the air they breathed. But now that our civilization is becoming predominantly and increasingly secular it is necessary to make an express study of it, if we are to understand our past and the nature of the culture that we have inherited.”[15] Artists, theologians, and scientists are aware of our debt to the past; they know, like Eliot explains in his article “Tradition and the Individual Talent” that the future is constructed from the creative consideration and synthesis of elements of the past. We, too, with our children must become like Rainer Maria Rilke puts it, “seekers of the inner future in [the] past.”[16]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Hilaire Belloc, The Four Men: A Farrago (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., n. d.), 214.
[2] Belloc, Four Men, 97.
[3] Belloc, Four Men, 18-19 and 200.
[4] Belloc, Four Men, 7.
[5] Belloc, Four Men, 49.
[6] Belloc, Four Men, 193.
[7] Belloc, Four Men, 24-25.
[8] Belloc, Four Men, 220.
[9] Belloc, Four Men, 220.
[10] Belloc, Four Men, 169.
[11] Alasdair MacIntyre, “Social Structures and Their Threat to Moral Agency,” delivered as an Annual lecture of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (24 February 1999), reprinted in Philosophy, 74, (1999), 315-317.
[12] Of course, despite Wilhelmsen’s contention that we have an “ontological need for complete integration of man’s spiritual and temporal destinies” (Wilhelmsen, Belloc, 94), many are content to live incoherently. We value total adaptability in every situation, close our minds to questions beyond what is necessary to succeed here and now in this role, and simply ignore the incoherency (MacIntyre, “Social Structures,” 325-326). Fortunately, these habits cannot totally destroy the deep-seated human need for coherence. Widespread cultural frustration is one indication.
[13] Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 231.
[14] Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. by Alexander Dru with an introduction by T. S. Eliot (New York: Mentor Books, The New American Library, 1963), 36.
[15] Christopher Dawson, The Crisis in Western Education (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961), 143.
[16] Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé,” 15 August 1903 in Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1892-1910 , vol. 1, trans. Jane Bannard Greene and M. D. Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1945), 127.

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality.

2009-04-22T19:06:00.001-07:00

Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967.

Berger and Luckman explore how men and societies strive for a coherent universal worldview or “symbolic universe,” embodying it in language, culture, arts, gestures of daily life (I.3), and then in institutions and social roles (75). In a well-developed symbolic universe, formation has an important role and occurs primarily in the interaction between parent and child. Children find their identity within a symbolic universe and in relation to those who accept the symbolic universe: “subjective identity . . . is dependent upon the individual’s relations with significant others . . . Identity is ultimately legitimated by placing it within the context of a symbolic universe. Mythologically speaking, the individual’s ‘real’ name is the one given to him by his god” (100). Identity formation begins with imitating the social roles of elders, primarily parents. In this “identification with significant others the child becomes capable of identifying himself . . . the self is a reflected entity . . . the child learns that he is what he is called” (132). This identification is an on-going process; no human is ever able to stand apart from all human relationships and claim some identity (150-151). Thus, the most important way to maintain a symbolic universe and our identity within it is by continual communal conversation (150-158).

Berger’s book makes no kind of theological / metaphysical judgment; it merely points out that where the phenomenon above has been disrupted, we begin to question our identity (171). The section on honor is especially insightful.

Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness.

2009-04-22T19:05:00.001-07:00

New York: Vintage Books, 1974.

The Homeless Mind builds on the concepts of Berger’s previous book and explores causes behind the rise of the alienated individual. Two sections outline the implicit assumptions and “cognitive styles” of the technological and bureaucratic structures of modern society. These structures make us feel disposable at work, anonymous before bureaucracy, and divided between public and private spheres. Such attitudes do not help when we encounter the great phenomenon of modern society: life-planning.

We moderns assume that our life and identity lie totally in our own hands. However, this assumption yields certain frustrations. If we control our identity, then every choice has potentially life-determining importance. So we are frustrated with anything that limits our choices (69-70), with postponing the integration of choices with relationships and commitments (71), and with situating choices within an intelligible plan of life. If our life-plan is vague, we will be frustrated at being unable to articulate a plan of life (73) and if articulate the “relevance of particular decisions . . . will often be doubtful and anxiety-provoking” (73). Hence the exorbitant number of self-help books and programs, and “experts” on life-planning.

Berger points out that since we have cast off traditional social roles, the connection between our roles and our authentic self is unclear. Modern identity is open, differentiated, reflective, and individuated. Modern identity is open because “biography is . . . apprehended both as a registration through different social worlds and as the successive realization of a number of possible identities. . . . [this] makes the individual peculiarly vulnerable to the shifting definitions of himself by others” (77). Modern identity is differentiated, that is, the subjective self is seen as more real than the outside world; unfortunately, it is unclear to the self what the self is. Hence we are “aware, tense, ‘rationalizing’ . . . not only the world but the self becomes an object of deliberate attention and sometimes anguished scrutiny” (79). Lastly, as we seek to discover ourselves in our own subjectivity, we becomes peculiarly defensive of personal freedoms and rights. Combine all this with growing pluralization and secularization which challenges the once stable “definitions of reality” (81), we feel alienated, pointless, meaningless—without home: “it goes without saying that this condition is psychologically hard to bear. It has therefore engendered its own nostalgias—nostalgias, that is, for a condition of ‘being at home’ in society, with oneself and, ultimately, in the universe” (82). A final frustration comes after we reject traditional definitions of reality and try to construct our own: “most individuals do not know how to construct a universe and therefore become furiously frustrated when they are faced with the need to do so” (187).

Wendell Berry, “Does Community Have a Value?”

2009-04-22T19:04:00.001-07:00

In Home Economics. New York: North Point Press, 1987.

This pithy essay describes a traditional agrarian community and makes one profound point. Everybody says they value community—but few live in such a way as to promote it. Berry asks if a community can have any real emotional or spiritual value if it is not also practically or economically necessary: “can people be neighbors, for example, if they do not need each other or help each other?” (179-180). Too many expect communities to survive on mere goodwill alone. But only real needs make for real relationships.

Christopher Blum, “On Being Conservative: Lessons from Louis Bonald”

2009-04-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

In The Intercollegiate Review 41.1 (2006): 23-31.

Blum writes that real communities are based on place, on work, and on the family. Blum quotes Robert Nisbet to explain that real communities are not based on “relations of sentiment but [on] real belonging to an association that provides some social or even economic function (23). Communities of place encourage constancy and stability, while communities of work reestablish the need of the young for the wise and the responsibility of elders for the formation of the young. Finally, the community of the family is the root of the wider community. It is the primary locus for formation, and the society that structures itself around the family’s preservation will find real reasons to be connected.

Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ.

2009-04-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1980.

Clark’s insightful book is divided in four sections: a scriptural exegesis on social roles; a sociological / anthropological look at social roles; a historical overview of how traditional societies based on social roles became technological societies of free individuals; and finally a picture of what society should and could look like were we to try and restore social roles in our current circumstances.

Clark’s discussion of male-female roles is grounded in his conviction of the family’s vital importance: “the roles of men and women in human life cannot be understood without understanding the structure of the family” (47). We can not become stable, healthy adults without a formation in a certain kind of family. This implicit understanding led traditional societies to structure social roles in such a way as to reinforce the male-female roles within the family. Social roles also acknowledged the complementary contributions and abilities of men and women: “role difference is based on a difference in their areas of responsibility: the wife’s primary responsibility is internal to the family, while the husband’s is oriented more to broader life of the people, both the Christian people and secular society” (285). Traditional societies recognized the masculine charism for public leadership and functional accomplishment and the feminine charism towards serving personal needs.

A major modern problem has been the abandonment of the feminine charism, either by ignoring personal needs or attempting to meet them in a functional manner. We have shifted from care within a realm of stabilized personal relationships to specialized welfare institutions, from “a social pattern in which relationship is the most fundamental consideration to a social pattern in which functional accomplishment is the most fundamental consideration” (472). The worst repercussion has been the loss of wider familial ties reducing the family to the “nuclear family.” Society has become functional, too, so that family members no longer need one another the way they used to: work, education, medical care, job training, life skills, friends and recreation can and are found outside the home. While the family becomes the last place where one can find emotional support, pure emotion and affection become the only bonds holding the nuclear family together; thus the families do not stay together. Marriages dissolve, children move away, the grandparents find assisted living: “the burden of emotional support falls more heavily on the nuclear family as kinship and neighborhood-type groupings weaken. The family becomes the only place in society where the individual receives stable, unconditional, overall concern. . . . [but] the breakdown of structural supports puts considerable pressure on the emotional bond, and in many cases the bond is too unstable to bear the pressure” (493-495). However, without strong families and communities, social roles become impossible to live and pass on.

Without social roles, we are unsure of who to be or what to do: “social roles do not suppress the ‘true identity’ of the individual, but instead provide the stable social context needed for personal identity to develop properly. Human beings cannot establish identity as individuals, apart from personal relationships and membership in various social bodies. An individual search for identity independent of other people will be unending. True identity, like true personality, does not precede relationship, but is instead produced by relationship” (589). Other problems include the loss of a place for the young, the old, and women in society—all of whom are trying to “find themselves” in our culture—as well as growing loneliness, personal insecurity, guilt, anxiety (such as Berger described), great desire for the approval of others, lack of self-discipline, and susceptibility to psychological problems. Clark sees that the “Christian task in the twentieth century is to reestablish truly Christian relationships” (577). Families must be strengthened and reinforced with real ties to wider communities. Single people are to find identity by assisting families and communities in embodying stable social roles and transmitting them to the young.

Stanley Hauerwas, Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology.

2009-04-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Edited by Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

Hauerwas presents an interesting set of essays on the idea of narrative as a tool for theology or ethics. A few essays are more philosophical and address the use of narrative in giving meaning to human life.

Martha Nussbaum’s essay “Narrative Emotions: Beckett’s Genealogy of Love” examines the nature of the emotions as related to implicitly held narratives and imaginative literature. Emotions are not irrational forces welling up within the human consciousness, but rather socially produced and controllable reactions: “we are all tellers of stories, and since one of the child’s most pervasive and powerful ways of learning its society’s values and structures is through the stories it hears and learns to tell, stories will be a major source of any culture’s emotional life. What fear, or love, is will be, for a child . . . a construct out of stories, the intersection, the somewhat confused amalgam of those stories. Stories first construct and then evoke (and strengthen) the experience of feeling” (225-226). Certain emotions will imply the acceptance of certain stories, and thus, certain beliefs (224).

Stephen Crites in “The Narrative Quality of Experience” adds a dimension to this thought, stressing that “such stories, and the symbolic worlds they project, are not like monuments that men behold, but like dwelling-places. People live in them. . . . men’s sense of self and world is created through them” (70). Crites writes that personal identity depends on continuity of experience through time (78) such that we will constantly review and reformulate our past in order to make sense of the direction of life as a whole. In doing so, stories direct our formulations (MacIntyre writes on this, giving the example of Jane Austen’s Emma who misinterprets her experience as a romance novel like those she reads). Certainly, writes Crites, there is a difference between one’s own identity and the stories one reads, but in reality “the two so interpenetrate that they form a virtual identity, which . . . is in fact a man’s very sense of his own personal identity” (81). Thus, our first stories are pivotal.

Hauerwas with David Burrell in “From System to Story: An Alternative Pattern for Rationality in Ethics” echoes this conclusion, noting that “adopting different stories will lead us to become different sorts of persons. The test of each story is the sort of person it shapes. . . . In allowing ourselves to adopt and be adopted by a particular story, we are in fact assuming a set of practices which will shape the ways we relate to our world and destiny” (185-186).

Guided by story, our actions become a pattern of habits: this is our identity, according to Ronald Thiemann in “The Promising God: The Gospel as Narrated Promise.” Writes Thiemann: “in order to answer questions which inquire after a person’s identity, e.g. ‘Who is Jane? What is she like?’ We relate a story which identifies a pattern of behavior as ‘characteristically hers’ and which allows us to attribute to her certain traits of character. Narrative identification thus entails the description of patterns of behavior which because of their persistence over time we identify as characteristic” (320-321).

MacIntyre has two pivotal essays in here as well, which are dealt with separately.

Werner Jaeger, Paedeia: The Ideals of Greek Culture.

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Translated by Gilbert Highet. Three Volumes. 2nd edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1945.

Werner’s book is helpful as an especially detailed glimpse into one particular traditional culture. He treats philosophy, the role of poetry and tragedy, social roles, community, and education and culture in a society where the formation of personality was wholly communal. The work would be especially helpful for teaching Ancient History or exploring the historical role of poetry and music in formation, especially pre-rational formation of the desires (II. 228-229). Werner credits Socrates with developing the idea of the unity of human life where “human existence [is] regarded not as the mere lapse of time but as a clear and comprehensible unity, a deliberately shaped life-pattern” (II, 46). This was articulated in Greek education so that “the real essence of education [was] that it enables men to reach the true aim of their lives” (II., 69).

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue.

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2nd edition, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

MacIntyre writes that modern individuals lack continuity in identity; they wear masks and play roles to serve individual ends. If Berger is right, the peculiarly modern self, prior to and divorced from society, is miserable; if MacIntyre is right, this individual is also a kind of con artist (68). MacIntyre compares modern rationales for virtue with traditional accounts where virtues are ways of living which enable an individual to achieve his telos within the context of his particular circumstances. Some key concepts for MacIntyre are practices, the unity of human life and its nature as quest, social roles and identity, tradition and history, and the role of stories.

The traditional account sees man as inseparable from his social roles. In Heroic Societies, life is a story, not a series of unconnected incidents, and identity is determined by our social role and choices within in this story. Thus, at the same time “the self becomes what it is in heroic societies only through its role” (129) and “man in heroic society is what he does” (122). For example, when the Iliad starts, Achilles is in part who he is, the Greek warrior and friend of Patroclus. On the other hand, Achilles’ full identity has not yet been achieved and depends on how he will choose to live out or fail in these roles. The Iliad itself is a powerfully influential story for a warrior society whose members are seeking to carve out their own character within the context of their roles.

In the traditional view, “the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories” (121). Later in Chapter 13 and 15, MacIntyre also explains the importance of stories for educating our desires and assisting us to understand the demands of our roles. We enter society with roles. Stories teach what our roles are and how we are to act: “deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions” (216). We also learn from our history how these social roles came to be what they are and expect what they do: “the past is never something merely to be discarded, but rather . . . the present is intelligible only as a commentary upon and response to the past” (15). This implies seeing each human individual as a member of a wider historical community.MacIntyre’s account is compelling; in the end, we must choose between his account of the importance and existence of human telos and some real relationship between human beings or the account of men like John Rawls and Robert Nozick who unconsciously see the human race as a group of unrelated individuals shipwrecked on a desert island who need to work out some rules (250). Are we like that or are we as MacIntyre describes? Certainly, the removal of social roles, whether they represent real relationships or are man-made constructs, has made life very difficult. We are waiting for men like Rawls and Nozick to come up with some good rules that will give direction and meaning to human life.

Alasdair MacIntyre, “Can One Be Unintelligible to Oneself?”

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Uncomfortably, the answer is yes, unless an agent’s action can be “exhibited as part of a story embodied in that particular agent’s life” (25). Writes MacIntyre: “we are the authors of our own narratives” (28) in part, but the genre of such narratives depends on social structure (28). Until the modern age, every society had a set of social roles which taught one how to fill a role in someone else’s narrative. Social roles helped define identity: “divest me of these roles and of the identity which I have and which is imputed to me in and through them and what is left over is the most insubstantial of identities, deprived of all key relationships” (33). Different social structures will depict imaginatively, philosophically, theologically, etc. what it means to be a good father. Destroy the social role, and destroy all understanding of how to fulfill a relationship and destroy sometimes even the awareness of the relationship. The relationship, however, will remain.

MacIntyre’s most important point here is to analyze how an individual might become unable to understand the narrative continuity of his life: if he is too distracted to consider his actions (29), if his formation has been meager in equipping him to realize certain kinds of situations or characters, or if he systematically misidentifies situations and characters (35-36). Recovery might begin with contemplative examination of one’s life and with enriching the imagination.

Alasdair MacIntyre, “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science.”

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(This essay is included in the Hauerwas volume).

To understand our own and others’ actions and lives, we must inhabit a common tradition and share a common way to interpret the meaning of our experiences and deeds. Using the example of Hamlet, MacIntyre shows our conception of life can be shattered by the deeds of others. In those situations, we find meaning only “by the construction of a new narrative which enables the agent to understand both how he or she could intelligibly have held his or her original beliefs and how he or she could have been so drastically misled by them” (455). MacIntyre sheds light on the difference between a culture’s symbolic universe / tradition and the individual’s personal interpretation of the symbolic universe. An epistemological crisis can occur if we experience something the symbolic universe cannot account for, in which case we may seek a new or reformulated symbolic universe. Or an epistemological crisis can occur if we experience something but have not yet learned from the symbolic universe how to interpret it, or if we realize we have misinterpreted an experience (like Jane Austen’s Emma).

Alasdair MacIntyre, “How to Be a North American.”

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Washington, D.C.: Federation of State Humanities Councils, 1988.

This marvelous lecture addresses the formation of identity in a pluralistic country without institutions or places for storytelling. Storytelling is vital: “every society enacts its own history as a more or less coherent dramatic narrative, a story in which each of us has to find his or her own place as a character, in order to know how to participate in it and how to continue it further. This is why the initiation of children into the lives of their family, their tribe, their city, their country, in almost all cultures is one in which children learn a stock of stories and so encounter the magical and the religious, the historical and the contemporary, the familiar and the heroic in narrative forms. It is through narrative that they learn to hope and to fear, to love and to hate, to dream and to want, to understand and identify” (3). Given this, what kind of stories do North Americans need? For we have dual identities: American and then ethnic which makes for some key problems in the selection and telling of stories.

1. The language of the story. If English, then the best English. But we each have our own language, and they cannot really be called “foreign languages.” We no longer have caretakers of language who could solve this problem. It used to be poets, but now “we let them teach college courses in creative writing” (5).
2. We have many rival stories, each understood in its own terms. We must understand them and find ways to reconcile them.
3. So we need a shared history.
4. We need shared forms of culture.

Without stories we suffer three losses:
1. At the level of everyday interchange. Our ethnic backgrounds become “mere nostalgia and sentimentality” or we drop them completely and become “bland, homogenized persons . . . one of whose aims is to make sure that we please others, so that they are pleased at being pleased by us. And this wanting to be liked is one of the great American vices that emerges from this refusal of particularity and conflict. Americans tend under the influence of this vice to turn into parodies of themselves—smiling, earnest, very kind, generous, nice people, who do terrible things quite inexplicably. We become people with no depth, no depth of understanding, masters of technique and technology, but not of ourselves” (8).
2. At the level of politics and economics, we become superficial and “rights” and “interests” become abstract, often destructive constructs.
3. At the level of language, we can no longer have constructive debates, so divided are we in thought and impoverished in language.

A solution? We need to read together—the same books, both children and adults, and renew story-telling, beginning with the family.

Alasdair MacIntyre, “Social Structures and Their Threat to Moral Agency.”

2009-04-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

Delivered as Annual Lecture of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (24 February 1999); reprinted in Philosophy. 74. (1999): 311-329.

MacIntyre elucidates further the difference between social roles and the individual. How we perform in our social roles affects our identity, but we are not merely our roles: “what more there is to individuals than their role-playing also includes the continuities of each individual’s history, as they move from role to role, from one sphere of social activity to another” (315). This is where the notion of a tradition becomes important: we need some point of reference that we (and others) can trust so as to maintain integrity when we make practical judgments. MacIntyre defends the virtues of integrity and constancy without which virtue cannot exist. A tradition (or symbolic universe) enables us to achieve an integrated identity: “to have integrity is to refuse to be, to have educated oneself so that one is no longer able to be, one kind of person in one social context, while quite another in other contexts. It is to have set inflexible limits to one’s adaptability to the roles that one may be called upon to play” (317). Ultimately, universal human telos, in its particular personal articulation, drives the integration of our choices. Without an overarching telos, we can be dissolved into our roles (322).

Three vices cause people to be dissolved into their own roles:
1. Valuing total adaptability / flexibility in every situation (325-326).
2. A tendency to close our mind to any questions about human action beyond what is necessary to succeed here and now in this role (326).
3. A tendency to ignore incoherency in our life (326).

Seeking a whole identity, capable of responsible human action, is connected to overcoming these habits.

Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition.

2009-04-22T18:45:00.000-07:00

Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

MacIntyre articulates the Thomistic understanding of the origins of identity. Part of being one and the same person is
1. Having one and the same body through life (196).
2. Being continuously accountable in a number of different social roles and communities (197).
3. Having a telos, the pursuit of which gives to life the unity of a narrative quest (197).

Each of these aspects interacts with the other as we carve out an identity. For this reason, commitment to tradition is key since it enables us to interpret our own experiences. Much of what we experience is the embodiment of traditions, often rival traditions. MacIntyre spends the majority of the book explaining tradition, especially how one is to be chosen over another.

Thomas Schaefer, "Up from Alienation : the Wilhelmsenian Vision of the Human Person."

2009-04-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

In Saints, Sovereigns, and Scholars: Studies in Honor of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen. Edited by R. A. Herrera, James Lehrberger, and M. E. Bradford. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.

Schaefer illuminates what Wilhelmsen’s ontological background contributes to the understanding of identity: just as the self can not know itself except in the act of knowing another, the self cannot be itself except in the act of giving its being to another: “only in charity, the inclination of the soul towards others, does one climb up from the wasteland of the isolated self. This is the message of the Gospels, and it is the Wilhelmsenian vision of the human person” (392). Like Clark, Schaefer and Wilhelmsen value the family as the first and primary context for the charity that constitutes identity.

Frederick Wilhelmsen, Hilaire Belloc: No Alienated Man

2009-04-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953.

Here Wilhelmsen explores Hilaire Belloc’s integrated personality and understanding of what it means to be a human person. Belloc’s Grizzlebeard character from The Four Men embodies both Belloc and Wilhelmsen’s conception that identity is found in cleaving to tradition: “ a man’s understanding of himself depends on where he steps into history” (36). Wilhelmsen saw it as particularly important to identify with a tradition, because it is not enough to know the general historical outline behind one’s present circumstances: “To understand what has caused me to be the kind of man I am, I must understand what caused the men who made me to be what they were” (66). We do not enter this world as already educated, isolated individuals. From our birth we are reared in particular ways and told particular stories. How we think and react when we are older is intimately connected to our past; to understand the past, we must get inside the minds of our forefathers, and that means identifying with, empathizing, experiencing their motivations.

However, Wilhelmsen points out that as modern society abandons tradition, the continuity between ancestors and descendents is broken. Identifying with the past, to understand it and reap self-understanding becomes increasingly difficult. Nevertheless, our culture was once integrated, solving man’s “ontological need for complete integration of man’s spiritual and temporal destinies” (94). Part of the frustration Berger outlines stems from the fact that modern man finds himself a member of many disjointed societies, each with conflicting ends. In reality, man has one end. If he is to have one identity, he must have one overarching quest that somehow harmonizes the particular social spheres and ends with the ultimate quest. Man demands an integrated Catholic culture. See “Sign, Faith, and Society.”

Belloc, Wilhelmsen, Dawson, and Newman revere tradition because it enables us to build. Men who want to teach themselves everything and be free from dependence on anyone, cannot do very much. Wilhelmsen quotes Belloc: “The Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make, that he can befog and destroy, but that he cannot sustain” (46). Thus, a fever of fruitless experimentation in the 20th century, according to Wilhelmsen and much frustration, according to Berger. The four would also agree that ultimately “man’s personal and social integration exists in order that God might conquer the soul” (91).

Frederick Wilhelmsen, “Introduction” to Romano Guardini’s The End of the Modern World

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New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956.

Wilhelmsen stresses the need for rootless modern man to find his place in the universe and embody his conception of reality in tangible ways: “before a reality—be it a reality of the Faith or of the cosmos—can wait for a man, it must take on a structure proportioned by the limits his senses place upon the realities converged to his intelligence” (6). If the ideas of MacIntyre et al. are to be put into practice, we will need to think of tangible ways of embodying them. Mere talk and writing will neither articulate nor realize them. Wilhelmsen proposes two ways—either Chesterton’s method of harking back to tradition or trusting in the inner dynamism of the Church to find new ways.

Frederick Wilhelmsen, The Metaphysics of Love

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New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962.

In this work, Wilhelmsen outlines that the question of identity is really inseparable from the revelation of Christ. If, as MacIntyre write, human identity is found questing for human telos, then because human telos is “divinization . . . we are constituted persons by our beatitude” (14). Wilhelmsen would agree with MacIntyre that the unity of human life is a narrative quest fulfilled in God: “there are questions we ask and question we are. . . . the answer to my being, is the Christian God” (16-17).

The identity of a particular human life is found in self-giving agape. Faced with a fallen nature, we seek healing. Even though we are impoverished contingent beings, we nevertheless are compelled to give of ourselves. If we try to appropriate the being of others to make up for our own ontological poverty, we end up losing our being, “the slave of [our] own conquest” (22). We become ourselves, find our identity, only by giving ourselves away: “the human person is that whole in being who, experiencing himself as finite and contingent, without any grip on his own being, nonetheless exists within an order of being to which his own being is open and in which he must seek his destiny, even to the surmounting of the world and to the giving of himself to a Being who, in no sense needing him, nonetheless gives Himself and thus heals the wounds of his contingency” (37). Given a universal telos, some social roles, particular circumstances, and a set of stories that describe how some men found or failed to find their telos, a man’s identity is formed and transformed as he quests through life, towards a telos which demands the emptying of the self.

Man’s identity is not static, because he is not static: “man is never frozen in such a moment that he can say to himself: this I am and neither more nor less” (55). Identity is linked to our tradition, forefathers, local community: “what we are today in our present is the convergence of the possibilities we possess as a result of having been what we were yesterday” (70). Thus, to the question “Who am I?” Wilhelmsen answers “It is that person who says to himself: ‘I am this man, flesh and blood, bone and spirit,’ a man related in a uniquely historical manner to the whole of reality, a man situated in a world proper to himself within which he must carve out salvation and personhood” (48-49).

Triduum & Easter Traditions

2009-04-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

Incarnate Easter in the world; sign the world with a signature that says Christ is Risen. A few traditions thus far . . .
Holy Thursday: celebrating the gift of the Eucharist and the Priesthood with the Mass Holy Thursday, setting a very beautiful table, lamb, matzoh, red wine, baklava, reading Francois Mauriac's Holy Thursday, vigil till midnight with the Blessed Sacrament, these hymns (Greet We This Mystery Yearly Returning, Father We Thank Thee, Ubi Caritas, If Ye Love Me, By My Side, By the Waters of Babylon). Noting the French legend that the bells disappear this night and go to Rome not to return till Sunday with sweets. They might take your children. Do you know where your children are?

Good Friday: Service of Good Friday, living Way of the Cross, Stations of the Cross, cleaning the church, silence between noon and three, fasting, no media or music, cooking for Easter, ironing Easter clothes, vigil before the Blessed Sacrament for all who may yet make confession tonight.

Holy Saturday: egg dying and competition, more cooking, flower-arranging & making boutineers and corsages from violets, annual washing of the car, arranging of easter baskets, decorating church and tying lavender to the front doors, kindling of the Easter fire, Easter vigil, taking the purple veils off the statues when the bells ring out the Gloria, feast and sing till dawn.

Easter Sunday: egg hunt and baskets in the morning, coffee and cream cheese stollen or babka, first time this year to wear pastels and sandals, walk to grand morning MASS with easter lilies and trumpets and incense, great feast afterwards with ham, mushroom bread pudding, Easter Spice ring, hard-boiled eggs, champagne. First time for gin and tonic this season, friends visit all day, afternoon nap, ham sandwiches in the evening.

Easter Monday and the following days: special trip somewhere, sandals, Italian columba cake with almonds and a cappucino, more friends visit.

Divine Mercy Sunday, 1st Sunday after Easter: kite festival in Florence. We should do that. Pray Divine Mercy Chaplet, go to confession.

Following Forty Days of Easter: feast like its your job. Make and eat coconut cake, lime torte, pralines. Go outside.

Come May, set up May Altar shrine to Our Lady. Load with lilies-of-the-valley and lilacs. Hold 1st of May procession to her, preferably in the country at night. Light the way with Ball Canning Jars filled with tea-lights. Let the brass band inspire you. Ring the bells.

When some child makes First Communion, read this poem by Caryll Houselander, and eat coffee, rolls, and bananas. Set roses on the table.

Ascension Thursday & Pentecost: Mass and this hymn "Come Down, O Love Divine."

Trinity Sunday: Mass and as many Trinitarian hymns as you can fit in.

Corpus Cristi--last feast before Easter Season is over for another year--hold Forty Hours Devotions with Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and talks. Sew banners and pennants. Cut lavender, thyme, and rosemary and set on the steps of the Church. Gather candles and bells and rose petals. Hold a Eucharistic Procession in the streets, scatter the rose petals before the Lord, sing Pange Lingua, follow up with dancing and fireworks under the starlit sky.

AND ALL BECAUSE CHRIST IS RISEN!

Defend Communities of Place, Blood, Work, Thought

2009-04-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here is an approaching problem. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may rescind an important December 2008 federal regulation which implements and enforces three federal laws protecting the conscience rights of health care providers, especially those at risk of being discriminated against because of their moral or religious objection to abortion. For background, see: www.usccb.org/conscienceprotection. The rescission proposal was published in the Federal Register on March 10. See: nchla.org/docdisplay.asp?ID=233. HHS is inviting public comment on this proposal until April 9. Learn more here.

Below is my letter sent yesterday. What kind of culture do we have when we not only permit but push women to kill their children? When we say that a serious moral aversion to this "violates" some so-called right to "health care"? When we force doctors to choose between their conscience and their job, so that the only ones who can remain in the profession would be the unscrupulous? "It is amazing what people will put up with," says Andy Catlett speaking of racism in a novel by Wendell Berry. We will continue to put up with the destruction of every kind of human bond and community we know?

Write a letter. The address is below. Seems pathetic. Pray, too. And honor the bonds of place, blood, work, and thought.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Office of Public Health and Science
Department of Health and Human Services
Attention: Rescission Proposal Comments
Hubert H. Humphrey Building
200 Independence Avenue, S.W., Room 716E
Washington, DC 20201

Re: Rescission Proposal Comments

30 March 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for inviting comments on this issue. I wanted to encourage you to retain the Conscience Regulation, and enforce current laws protecting the right of health care providers to serve patients in a way that accords with their moral and religious convictions. As I see it, no one will be served by requiring health care providers to perform medical procedures that violate their conscience. If health care providers acquiesce unwillingly in order to retain their jobs, then our health care system will rest upon uncommitted, perhaps corrupt health care providers. Women will be served by those who operate from a logic of fear rather than sound medical practice. Please preserve the integrity of the profession by preserving the Conscience Regulation.

Thank you again for inviting comments.

Sincerely,
Gwen Adams

Wendell Berry

2009-03-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

Here is an unofficial website on Wendell Berry with a helpful bibliography. (Berry would never create his own website!) I have been reading his novels on the Port William membership, one after another--and they are rich in characters and place, eloquent of the good of community--with its crosses and joys. Learn more here. You just have to try it. I would not have expected to read an author still living and like him so much. Thomas Stanford of Christendom College gave a wonderful lecture on Berry entitled "Membership and its Privileges: Family and Community in the Novels of Wendell Berry" at the recent Center for Ethics and Culture Conference hosted annually by Notre Dame.

Here is a quotation from Berry's Hannah Coulter.

Most people now are looking for ‘a better place,’ which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned from his time in the army and the war. He saw a lot of places, and he came home. I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no ‘better place’ than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to heaven.”
--Hannah Coulter, W. Berry, 83.