Stolen from Boortz

Doesn’t it bother you to be celebrating freedom but the government says you can’t do it with fireworks?

An American “god”

Prior to our recent trip to Lake Chatuge and Edisto Beach, I made a trip to Barnes and Noble to pick up some “I don’t have to think about it” reading.  You know, those mysteries and novels that you can read with “half your brain tied behind your back” (sorry, Rush).  I picked up a couple of Tony Hillerman novels and a novel by Neil Gaiman, American Gods.  First of all, let me assure you that American Gods is not a light-brain novel.  It is, however, well-written and so engrossing that I never did get around to reading any of the Hillerman novels.  The plot of the novel revolves around an ex-con who gets involved in a war between the “old gods” and the “new gods” in a mythological, realistic American landscape.  Even though I think that Gaiman wimped out on the ending, the book was a great read and mind-opening.  Gaiman pulls off a coup by doing both in the same book, and doing it well.

This blog, however, is not meant to be a book review of American Gods.  That book merely provided a backdrop for my observations on the hullabaloo surrounding the death of Michael Jackson.  On the television tonight, one of the talking heads said that people were trying to show a reverence for Michael Jackson.  At first, I recoiled at the phrase, but then I began to understand that in the minds of many in the secular culture where God is irrelevant, people like Michael Jackson are the closest things to gods that any of these people have.  I am sorry that Jackson is dead, and I offer my condolences to the family, but Jackson was no god.  He was a human being who made gobs of money and achieved fame by singing and dancing.  It is a  pity is that many in America have let their gods become so small.

Lighting and Tomatoes

This spring when we planted the tomatoes, we added a bunch of compost to the soil.  This compost had been percolating in our compost bins for over a year.  Anyway, this season we have huge plants and tomatoes everywhere.  Everyday, it is a battle to keep the plants staked and tied up since they have grown past the tomato cages we carefully put around each plant when we originally planted them.  The garden is quite a sight now with stakes and white sheet-ropes used to tie up and support the plants.  We have given tomatoes away and I get to eat the meal of the gods-a tomato sandwich on regular white bread, with lettuce, a piece of bologna and Duke’s mayonnaise-every lunch.  Wonderful.

Last year I changed the outside porch light, and I kept the old light fixture  in the shed.  This winter I decided that I needed an outside light on the shed, and so I decided to put that light up on the shed.  It didn’t seem like a big job, but for some reason I kept putting it off.  This week, I did a thorough cleaning of the shed and found that light fixture.  So, this morning, I decided that this was the day I would install that fixture.  I went to Home Depot and purchased a switch and a junction box, and got to work.  I drilled the hole through the shed wall and mounted the light-so far so good-I used a drill and chisel to cut the opening for the mounting box-on a roll now-cut off the power-switch 30 in the breaker box-spliced into the power supply-connected the wiring using those net orange colored plastic twist things-and when I flipped the switch it didn’t work-the breaker would not reset and the lights in the house would dim.  Not only didn’t the light work, it was hot today (high of 100 actual), and a basic flaw in my plan was the lack of electricity going to the electric fan while the power was shut off made the job even hotter.  I rewired, re-rewired, made trips to check the breaker, re-re-rewired to no avail.  I finally went to the computer and found a wiring diagram that a second grader could use, did the wiring that way, and “there was light.”  It is just after 11pm and I have to let the dog back in, but while I am there I am going to use that switch and turn the light on and off.  I hope it still works.

Status report:  The dog is in, the light works, but my clothes are still wet from the perspiration and are still hanging on the fence to dry before they are allowed into the house.

Obama Derangement Syndrome and Iran

I think Michelle Malkin coined the term, “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”  BDS required that every liberal or centrist reaction to everything that Bush did was negative.  It didn’t matter what it was.  If Bush said anything, it was a lie; if he did anything, it was wrong.  It got to the place that it was really tiresome.  Now, that Bush is gone, the liberal agenda is in power with President Obama, and the conservative right seems to have developed a bad case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.  ODS requires that they label everything that Obama says or does as wrong.   I can’t support that.  It becomes too easy.   The present situation in Iran is an example.  The conservative media, its pundits, and many in Congress have called for the President to get tough with Iran by supporting the demonstrations and reviling the government reaction to them.   Early in the conflict, Obama wisely did not get involved.  Lately, however, he seems to yielding to the demands to get “tough with Iran.’  While there is much to disgust in Iran, I wonder just what the President of the United States hopes to gain for the US by supporting either side.  It is probably the ultimate pipe dream to think that a replacement regime in Iran still run by Islamic law would suddenly drop its hatred of the United States and Israel if it assumed power and become our friend.  No matter how much money we spend there, how many troops we commit, or lives we give, the Iranians will still hate us.  Ultimately, the people of Iran are responsible for their own government.  The United States needs to start making policy and decisions based upon the benefit to the United States and its people.  The Iranian people chose their lot.  It is up to them to change it.  In the United States, many disagree with President Obama and didn’t vote for him.  There are those who think that he is ineligible for the Presidency.  These are internal political American problems which we will work out.  So far, the streets are still empty of demonstrations and violence.  We do not need nor would we like for another nation to be telling us how to run our country.  We may disagree vehemently with the attitudes of the current regime in Iran, but it was elected and certified by Iran.  The election may have been rigged, we don’t know; we will probably never know.  In fact, there are those in our country who feel that Bush stole the election from Kerry in 2000.  The people of Iran, if they want change, must do it themselves.  We have shed way too much American blood paying the price for other people’s freedom.  Then, once that freedom is won, the gratitude for the freedom bought with American blood fades quickly into history.

My First Feast of Corpus Christi

Today was my first Feast of Corpus Christi.  The Church of the Most Holy Trinity conducted a procession through downtown Augusta this afternoon.  I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but I participated anyway.  It was strangely moving.  One of the writers at Catholic Online explains it a lot better than I can.

“After having received the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion, Catholic Christians proceed from the Sanctuary into the Streets of the world, pausing along the way for solemn worship, songs of adoration, and holding the Lord aloft, enthroned. The procession symbolizes the ongoing redemptive mission of Jesus Christ to the world as it is now lived out through his Church.”

It was hot, and the streets of Augusta were almost empty except for a remnant of the church walking behind the Eucharist, testifying to the world that there are still real Catholics in the Church.  I was honored and priviledged to be there.

A Week of Red Clay and Sand

When I decided to blog, I chose the title, “Red Clay and Sand,” because I had lived in the Sandhills of South Carolina and the red clay area of Georgia.  Last week, I lived a real Red Clay and Sand Week.  On June 5 and 6, Kathy and I attended the Georgia Mountain Roots and Music Festival at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds in Hiawassee, Georgia.  Most of the music for the two days was Bluegrass.  The exceptions to the rule were a band from Baton Rouge named “Red Stick Ramblers” and another group called “The Greencards.”  These two bands played different types of blended music to create their own style.  They were different, especially the Ramblers who sang half their set in French.   However, as I said the emphasis for the weekend was Bluegrass.  The lineup included Buck and Nelson, Irons in the Fire, Dale Ann Bradley, who won two annual awards as “IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year” without my ever hearing her and sure sounded rather ordinary during the show, Seldom Scene, who seemed really proud of the fact that there was thirty years between their last two records, Town  Mountain, a group of college kids from Asheville who did one great cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” Jim Lauderdale who wore a torquoise suit and talked incessantly about Jim Lauderdale, and my favorite, The Steeldrivers. I actually purchased a Steeldrivers’ CD after their set.  We were tired and left before Dan Tyminski did his set.  Kathy and I were really impressed with the amount of concert time we purchased for $40.00 apiece, especially since it was inside an air-conditioned auditorium.

We camped at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds on Lake Chatuge from Wednesday to Sunday.

Lake Chatuge Campgrounds, Hiawassee, Georgia

We left on Sunday, spent the night at home, and continued to the Sand part of the week at Edisto Island.  We camped in the Live Oak Campground at the State Park on Edisto.  We had a great time-spent a full day and a half sitting on the beach, staring at waves, reading and getting sunburned (not enough experience with continuous spray suntan lotion in the wind), ate seafood at the Pavilion, and bought a couple of souvenirs.  It was a relaxing week.

Edisto Beach

At Least Ruhama is Female, Episcopalian Sigh of Relief

Alberto Curie, a very popular, former Catholic priest in Miami, also referred to as “Father Oprah,” got caught on camera making-out with a woman in direct violation of his vow of celibacy when he became a priest.  He met with his Bishop and requested assistance, they talked and Alberto slinked off to the local Episcopal Church to see what they had to offer.  Of course, they welcomed him and his “fiancee” with open arms.  They had a big public ceremony with the media duly recording each step of the renouncement of Catholicism and acceptance of Episcopalianism.  The Catholic Arch-Bishop of Miami was appalled saying that the Catholic Church never made such a big to-do when an Episcopalian returned to Catholicism.  Padre, you miss the point, it was no big deal that they were accepting a fallen Catholic priest, the big deal was that he was  coming to his priesthood with an actual woman, a female, ”fiancee,”  that’s quite unusual in the modern Episcopal Church.

Written After Reading Eliot

Aqua exedit

(Water eats)

 

Aqua exedit,

Green tendrilous bites,

Holocausts offered by Orion .

Fangs were unseen in the dark

And no one knew until the moon,

On certain tides with certain light,

Screamed the wasted bones of Phlebas

And bloody Promethean chains.

Mountain to trench,

Aqua exedit.

 

That shudder came from the deep brain,

Before stone or fire or wheel or page.

That  dawn brought murmur and wonder,

A flash of who and when and why.

Don’t tell.

But how ?

When no other knows of words,

You are alone in your scream.

 

 

The moon speaks.

 Aqua exedit.

A few twos survived

To divide again.

Aqua exedit

And land dawns green.

Aqua exedit

And cell becomes man.

Alone, the tree on the island falls.

Aqua exedit.

The moon speaks.

 

Alone,  the same island sound

Endlessly repeated across ocean soul,

Escapes to other worlds where water has dined and gone.

The Silence of the Bishops

It seems that bureaucracy is bureaucracy, no matter if it is sacred or secular.  For almost a month, I have been trying to find out how many bishops are in the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops.  Googling the Catholic sites achieved nothing; Catholic On-line did not post my comment concerning the number.  So, no matter how much it galls me to admit, I used Wikipedia.  I sat down with the list on Wikipedia and my calculator and determined that there are 262 Bishops with their names listed.  There are 265 if you list the militaryBishops, but I don’t know their standing, so I left them out of the count.  I also have no idea of the accuracy of the list, but at least I now have some kind of answer.  If the United States Council of Catholic Bishops  is concerned about the accuracy, please leave me a comment, I will be more than happy to massage my numbers.

This concern with numbers has nothing to do with trivial pursuit or mathematical anality.  I am, and have been, making a point about the lack of noise from the the Catholic Bishops in the US concerning Obama and Notre Dame.  If one reads Catholic Online and several of the other Catholic blogs, one would assume that there is a major uprising among the Bishops concerning Obama appearing at Notre Dame.  One of the headlines from Catholic Online today reads, “Now it is 46:  More Bishops Against ND Scandal.”  One would assume that there was a groundswell of Bishophic outrage against President Obama speaking at and receiving a degree from Notre Dame.  It just ain’t so.  There is no groundswell.  Most of the media accounts report that the “scandal” is being driven by a small number of conservative Catholics who are out-of-step with the majority of Catholic thought.

“Catholics are a diverse group of people,” said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Center for Religion and the Press, explaining the poll. “There’s been a decline in Obama’s numbers that’s not too far out of step with his decline overall. The rest of this, a lot of this, is internal politics between conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics.”

All this may be media bias, but my small effort at statistics reflects otherwise.  There are 262 Bishops, 46 have spoken out.  That means that 18% of American Bishops consider this a “scandal” wothy of them setting down their miter and picking up a pen.   85%, over 4 in 5, see no problem or see nothing worth commenting about.  Since the majority of the Bishops serve the majority of the Catholics, what does this say about the Church in general?

I left the Episcopal Church because the battle for the Episcopal soul had been won by those who questioned the existence of anything Biblical and were more interested in numbers, popularity, being diverse (there is that word again), being popular, and appealing to all the popular secularist and liberal causes of the day.  As I have heard priests say over and over in that church, “we don’t want anyone turned away from the table of Jesus.”  So, in their effort to compromise and be open-minded, they have ended with a church with gay bishops, women priests, priests who think it is okay to be both Muslim and Christian simultaneously, a female head of their leading theological seminary who calls “abortion a blessing,”  and local congregations who think that none of this applies to them.

So, I came to the Catholic Church looking for unity and find that the cancer of secularism has crept into the American Church.  Maybe crept is not the right word.  Secularism is full-fledged and gobbling more and more American Catholicism every day.  The most notable Catholics are proud of their “liberal Views” and think that they can travel to Rome and teach the Pope.  The Bishops are quiet unless it is to support another liberal political view or be against another war.  They plead for money for the poor and pour millions into settlement funds for priests who couldn’t keep their hands off children.   All of this could be forgiven, if there was some sort of unity or reformation or a return to traditional Catholicism.  As I look around I don’t see it.  As a new convert, maybe I am expecting too much.  Maybe, I haven’t come to terms with being realistic in my faith.  I am too new, and you know what they say about converts. But just  maybe I don’t want to become a once a year, proud to be lapsed catholic – maybe I yearn for the one true faith — the one unwavering, traditional, centuries old church who traces its succession to Peter who knew Christ.  I don’t need modernism, I have seen it at work.  It ain’t purty.

Doubt Rewarded

A part of the gospel reading in Mass yesterday is one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  The story in John 20 of the conversation between Jesus and Thomas after Jesus’ resurrection has always intrigued and satisfied me in a way few other passages have.  The disciples have told Thomas that they have seen the resurrected Jesus and Thomas responds in the way that most of us would, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  After all the disciples, who weren’t your most trustworthy bunch of folks expected Thomas to take their word that they had seen a living, resurrected Jesus.  These were the same folks who, except for John, had deserted Jesus during the whole crucifixion saga, had hid out for fear of reprisal, and one, Peter, had publicly denied him prior to his death.  These were not your most trustworthy witnesses, and no one can blame Thomas for not buying it.  Later, when Jesus appeared to them again, he did not chide Thomas for his unbelief, but rather he offered Thomas the proof Thomas asked.  Thomas touched his hands and put his hand in the wound in Jesus’s side.  Then Thomas made the first post-resurrection testimony to the deity of Jesus by saying to him, “My Lord and My God.”  The truth had been revealed to Thomas and he, like the church to follow, recognized just who Jesus was.  His doubt was rewarded-not discouraged.  Thomas was answered, not chastised.