Confessions, St. Augustine

More of an Idiot: Confessions, St. Augustine: "Now that I have finished this book, I can't believe how long it took me to read it. I think, somehow, I have retained the idea that classics, especially non-fiction ones and those in translation, are difficult reads. Lies. However, let me make a few clarifications. I read a 1961 Penguin Classics edition with a translation that was accessible. If I had found another version, I may have found the going a little tougher. Also, I have been a long time at reading this book. I picked it up about a year ago, left my borrowed copy at home when I returned to St. Louis, bought a copy, read it for a bit, got distracted by the Epistles, picked it up again, got distracted by novels, finally decided I needed to finish, and devoured the last five or six books.

In his Confessions, Augustine describes his story of gradual conversion and the consequences of it. He shares his life before and after he realized the Truth of the Church, with an emphasis on the process of change. His story covers philosophy, as he seeks the meaning of concepts such as Truth and Beauty; identity, as he seeks to know God in the Trinity and himself; and morality, as he struggles with the lifestyle implications of the Christian Way.

I knew intellectually that people see Augustine as still applicable to the world today, but the modernity of his questions and struggles struck me. He follows the ways of the intellectuals of his time who have twisted the way of truth to make it easier. He prays, famously, "God grant me continence and chastity, but not yet." He longs to give his life to God, but does not go all the way, holds back. And God breaks through all his opposition, partly through the steadfast intervention of his mother.

After his conversion, Augustine begins to chronicle some of the blessing which God has bestowed upon him and to meditate on some lines of Scripture. In fact, he starts with Genesis 1:1a : "In the beginning." After writing at length he moves on to Genesis 1:1 : "In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth." He lost my interest for a while as he mused over abstract ideas of time and matter, mostly because he has a tendency to repeat himself seven or eight times over in the section. However, in the last book, he writes that he does not have the time, nor his readers the energy (true!) to go through the Scripture in such detail, and he addresses the six days of Creation in one fell swoop, regaining my interest.

If you are Catholic, read this book. If you are a non-Catholic type of Christian, read this book. Augustine speaks of joining the Catholic Church, but he wrote at a point in history where all our modern denominations did not exist. If you are not a Christian, I still recommend it for an interesting theological and philosophical read. It would be an excellent book for a discussion group, because it has a lot to digest."

Let's Project the Hymn's Words on the Wall!

Protestant congregations do it. Not all of them, not all the time, but it certainly isn't unheard of to find a screen or blank wall and projector in some church. When we want to suggest something ludicrous, I joke with Catholic friends or coworkers that we should place screens and projectors on either side of the altar. So I had a momentary laugh to myself on Christmas Sunday, when I sat down in my grandmother's parish and saw a projector on the ceiling. However, I assured myself that it was not used during Mass and probably just cast that lovely spotlight on the crucifix.

After a nice Christmas homily, the priest told us that he was going to show us "a little video." The projector came on, and the "video" began. Within the first few words, I knew I recognized it : a commercial from Catholics Come Home. If you haven't seen the commercials, check them out here. I mostly watched in shock, thinking, Are they really projecting something above the crucifix? Really?

My mother processed more (maybe because she's better at being up at 7:30 without caffeine, food, or exercise, at least one of which needs to be in my system for me to wake up) and pointed out the rationale behind showing that particular video on that particular day. Besides being Jesus' birthday, what is Christmas? The day when everyone comes to church (though Easter has its fair share of the crowds). The priest meant the video to call out to those Catholics who came only once or twice a year... a different approach to the "We do this every Sunday!"

Incarnational

Around this time last year, I decided that I couldn't be a serious Catholic blogger if I ignored Christmas. So, I present to you my second annual Christmas post on the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

Today, Father accidentally referred to the Octave which we are currently celebrating as the "Octave of Easter." He was a few months off. However, it served as a reminder of the connection between the two Holy Days.

When we decorated for Christmas, we took the crucifix off the wall in the living room. I was not a huge fan of this decision. (As much as I hate the fights Christians have over externals, such as art work, I fall into miniature versions at home. Not cool, Beth.) Christmas can be fluffy and full of cozy visions of the Christ-Child in a warm manger... but then it is missing something. It is missing the rest of the story of the Incarnation, a story that carried through the life and ministry of Jesus, that continued through the Last Supper, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and did not end at the Ascension, but lives on in the Church today. It's a rich and textured story that draws together a baby wrapped with love and a man stripped naked without compassion. It draws together a stable and a hilltop. A cross and a crib. A Savior... and sinners who are becoming saints.

Computer Update

Friends and faithful followers! I have excellent news : my faithful, beloved, and inexpressibly slow laptop is functional once again.

This post is a huge shout-out to Best Buy's Geek Squad. I am not a shout-out to huge companies type girl, but they made my day. I brought my poor lappie into Best Buy and explained my problem. The Geek Squad guy told me essentially it wasn't worth their time or my money to replace a five-and-a-half year old laptop's fan. I should just buy a new laptop. Before I had the chance to be too crushed however, he was running all sorts of diagnostics on my computer, after which he told me the good news. It appeared to be only the fan. So he clicked a few things and got it to boot up without starting the fan. He told me that an external fan would be cheap and a good temporary fix that might extend my poor lappie's life another year. He pointed out the cooling pads to me; I smiled and said thank you and bought myself a little place for my laptop to live.

Now my laptop is cooler and quieter than it has been for a little bit. I'm (still) backing up my data and saving money for its final breaths, but for now I had a fix quicker and cheaper than I was expecting. Thank you, Geek Squad!

On Fire, Dancing, and Feminism

The best part about coming up north when it starts to get cold is the fireplace. My father keeps a fire going every night, and our basement gets warm and toasty, in comparison to the chilly upstairs and the frigid outside.

When I was little, my dad always built the fire. If he was out of town or at a meeting for an evening, the state of the fire was doubtful. Sometimes my mother would attempt to make a fire (I think she loves the fireplace more than I do), but we all knew that building a fire challenged Mom more than Dad. Sometimes, when he was gone, the fire was an utter fail.

At the end of high school, I found a creative solution to the problem of the difficulty of a fire with the absence of my dad : a boyfriend. To make a sweeping generalization, high school guys, especially those still in Scouts, love fire. So on snow days and school holidays, he would come over and make us fire. Around the same period, my brother went off to college, and he decided during his semester break that he wanted to keep the fire going 24-7. Father, brother, boyfriend = can make fire. Anyone seeing a pattern here?

Finally, one winter, finding my brother and father away from the house, and myself boyfriendless, I decided to employ the skills I had learned during a summer as a camp counselor and a summer living at Yosemite National Park. If I could build fire in a fire circle, why couldn't I build one in a fireplace?

I had a remarkable I am Woman; hear me roar moment that repeats itself, just a little, every time I bring a cold fireplace or a tiny red ember into warm, crackling flames. Which struck me as hilarious yesterday compared to the last strong gender-roles-awareness moment I had.

One of my friends got married recently in a beautiful Catholic ceremony that blended US Catholicism, Mexican Catholicism, and traditional Latin chants. Afterward, a mariachi band heralded their arrival at the reception, playing Latin tunes that got my feet tapping. So I responded eagerly when asked to dance.

All my life I have known that I can't dance. It's a fact of life, similar to the fact that I have an excellent sense of direction and can't keep track of time. In recent months, however, I have begun to realize that although I can get myself unlost and I am inevitably late, my dancing skills are not as hopeless as I like to pretend. Given the condition that I have a strong lead. Preferably a strong lead who dances more to have fun than to dance correctly, because I still have no clue what I am doing. Just when someone else is guiding me, I can dance in spite of having no clue what I am doing. However, it breaks my feminist heart to say, "I can dance, but only if I have a strong lead." So much for defying stereotypes.

My approach to feminism has to incorporate both of these parts of being a woman : making fire and liking to dance with a strong lead. Because I am a woman, I both dance and light fires as a woman. That is my first understanding of femininity : it is an integral part of my identity. Everything I do, I do as a woman.

It means that I do not lay aside my femininity when I am self-sufficient enough to light a fire. It means I do not lay aside my feminism when I dance. It means I am constantly navigating the conundrum of letting men be men while being my own strong woman. From what I've heard, courtesy of the men in my life, that can be equally as challenging. Men complain that women try to lead. Women complain that men don't know how to dance. The omnipresent "they" make remote control fireplaces so that no one needs to light a fire anymore. It's all very symbolic and very confusing.

Do I have the solutions and the answers? Of course not. But I'm working on it, one day, one fire, one dance at a time.

On God and Politics

Once again, I share with you my admiration of Stephen Colbert. I really appreciate how much he gets spot-on about Christianity and the way his satire allows him to get away with it. However, as one of my friends pointed out, those issues that separate the Democratic party from the ministry of Jesus are, well, rather important. And, of course, political action must go hand-in-hand with a life-style that reflects the same values, something none of us do perfectly.

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Retreat Above the Bookstore

If I try to play catch-up, I will be at it forever, but I do have a couple stories I want to tell from around the time of the Death of the Laptop.

Right before, I went on retreat with the Daughters of St. Paul in Alexandria. Their ministry is evangelization of and through the media. They have "book centers," where they sell Catholic stuff. So when I went on retreat with them, I got to stay above the book store -- up a little hidden staircase into a maze-like living space.

Normally, when I am on retreat, I go out into the middle of nowhere. This retreat took place in the city, which meant we had all the noise and bustle of NoVA outside the walls. We took advantage of this location on Saturday afternoon, when we went for a prayer walk.

I had never done anything like that before. We walked through the city and people-watched and prayed for the people we saw on the walk. It's a type of intercessory prayer I've never thought of before, and it made me understand a little better how God calls us to hold the world up to Him in prayer. We saw a good variety of people, as tend to hang out in Alexandria, and ended up along the water-front and at the Torpedo Factory Art Studio, another good place for that type of prayer.

Later that night, we "prayed the news": watching the evening news and afterward offering prayers for the people and situations brought to our attention there. Both of these prayers focused so centrally on other people and offered a way to do the work of social justice -- as long as you believe in the power of prayer. And the power of prayer was one of my take-home points for the weekend.

Etiquette with Miss E

I have recently learned that getting a name on my blog is a big deal among my group of friends. Emily, especially, has been trying for a while to get a nickname... which was hard, because my computer is still non-functional, so my blogging has been minimal. But -- did you see that, Emily? You have a name now!

The occasion?

A couple weeks ago, I sneezed during Mass. A male friend of mine reached out and offered me a handkerchief. I turned it down, more as a result of reflex than conscious thought. A couple days later, the same young man offered a handkerchief to a girl he did not know in the student center, who had chocolate all over her fingers. These instances made me wonder : What happens next?

Handkerchiefs have fallen out of the mainstream. I know 2-3 people who carry them, one of whom is my father. I have never been offered a handkerchief before that day, and I'm willing to bet this experience is common to most women. So, very few women would know what to do after using a chivalrously offered handkerchief.

The solution to my dilemma : I discovered that Emily had been to finishing school. I had my very own etiquette expert! After discussing the question with her, I decided that Etiquette Lessons with Miss E had to be a new addition to my blog. Each week, I will email Emily a question and report her answer to you, my faithful readers. Do you have etiquette questions of your own? Send them my way, and they will make their way to Miss E!


Lesson One: The Handkerchief

What does a lady do if a gentleman offers her a handkerchief and she uses it?

She takes it home and washes it, of course. With giggling and batting of eyelashes appropriate to her level of interest in him. Which, of course, also informs the speed at which he gets it back -- kind of like when your high school crush loans you his sweatshirt. If, as was the case with the girl in the student center, she will never see him again, she has gained for herself a new handkerchief! Except, of course, that girl. Since it was only chocolate on her fingers, she could have folded it neatly and given it back to him.

As a final note, be careful! According to Miss E, any self-respecting lady knows that bodily fluids are a very important matter. The exchange of bodily fluids, as any gentleman who carries a handkerchief knows, is tantamount to the promise of marriage. If he takes your snot home, he might bring a ring back.

Day-Maker #16

Motorized bicycle. That's all that needs to be said.

Day-Maker #15

Today, an old Facebook photo of a friend came up on my profile, because someone commented on it. I looked back at the photo of two friends and remembered how much I had loved the expression of the man in the background, looking off pensively into the sky. To my surprise, I recognized him : Percy's new roommate! It's a small world!

Black Screen of Dooom

My laptop currently beeps at me and tells me it has a "fan error" when I try to turn it on. So if my posts come with less frequency, you know why.

Thanksgiving?!?

It came, somehow. I'm not sure where the entire month of November went, but all of a sudden I was having a birthday and a Thanksgiving. Who knew?

I traveled home on Tuesday night to avoid the Wednesday rush and enjoy those new 70mph speed limits. This travel plan gave me Wednesday, Thursday, and some of Friday to enjoy the company of my family, although not all of us made it home for Thanksgiving. I suppose I was the missing one last year, but it felt incomplete.

On Thursday I got down to the serious business of cooking. We were having dinner at my aunt's house, so the heavy-duty cooking happened there. However, I made my first-ever sweet potato casserole. I couldn't find a recipe that was quite what I wanted. One of my sisters was highly skeptical as she watched me mash the potatoes and then open the spice cabinet and start smelling things. As I threw in brown sugar, butter, milk, allspice, and ginger, I made her taste it. In the end, I had a delicious dish from no recipe.

Family dinners always degenerate into political, philosophical, or religious discussions with this side of the family, which is probably how I acquired my taste for that kind of conversation. This time, we hashed out WWI, WWII, Iraq, and Afghanistan in light of my mother's pacifistic tendencies. (A lot of her world views mirror Father Dude's, even to the point of how they phrase things.) It's funny how sometimes I can see just how my family formed me.

Day-Maker #14

Past Christmas lights on my neighbor's porch, I can see snow falling in the streetlights above the brick path.