"Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
Hate crimes argue need for gun ownership?
FBI statistics, cited by the National Rifle Association, show that “right-to-carry” states have 22 percent lower total violent crime rates, 30 percent lower murder rates, 46 percent lower robbery rates, and 12 percent lower aggravated assault rates, as compared to the rest of the country. I wonder what would be the effect on hate crimes.
Stats (I mean statistics) that don’t fly in major media. [HT: the indispensable Instapundit]
Voter’s choice:
* Roller-coaster with tough, smart, go-his-own-way Newt, who aims with devastating effect at media eager to destroy Republican candidates, or
* Cruise with Mitt, the super-organized, smooth as silk, cautious-in-a-desperate-time, quick-to-smile when being trashed when he should be grim and tight-lipped, overall less a national leader than a manager.
Assuming not Santorum, the growingly insufferable choir boy from Pennsylvania who at best exaggerates the usefulness of big government.
Newt’s kids are on his side in the Marianne war: big point here in his favor.
Another very big point, mentioned above: he is prepared to take the mediums head-on. Very important to marginalize them.
Another: he also marginalized the indignant don’t-criticize-bad-habits crowd who take his food-stamp-president and get-a-job-kid remarks as racist. Very important to shoot down phony racism accusations, which are at the heart of many bad policy decisions and call for a stake in their black hearts — as as dictionary-dot-com’s “without any moral quality or goodness; evil; wicked: His black heart has concocted yet another black deed.”
“A book is a machine to think with,” said the critic I.A. Richards. Useful notion, that. A book as sacrament, leading you on. My confessor assigns my penance as an Our Father and three times making people smile. Not laugh. Smile.
I do that anyway. It gives me pleasure. Walking along, I search out the one coming at me, and half the time find recognition of a sort, and a smile. (Except when I’m grumpy, of course.) The two of us, young, old, male, female, handsome, nondescript, fetching, ordinary. The look does it, prepped by the gait, the carriage, the whole here-I-am-what-do-you-make-of-me coming down the street. (We give off signals, do we not?)
Penance (now Reconciliation) sacramentalizes this, gives me a two-fer. Smile as establishing familiarity, smile as sanctifying grace.
Sanctifying grace! What the heck is that? It’s old-church talk, and quite useful. Are you right with God, as far as you know? You’re in or you have sanctifying grace. On the way to getting and staying there you use actual grace, which comes in all sorts of ways, from saying your prayers to exchanging smiles with a stranger.
Get it? Like I.A. Richards’s note on a book, a machine to think with, these are very useful concepts, almost never mentioned, having been washed away in the waves of new-style Catholicism since Vatican II.
Yes, Virginia and all you ships at sea, there is grace, and you can call on God to supply it when you’re in trouble. Not how we talk these days, but is that so bad?
The late Joseph Sobran on how politicians talk about greed:
“Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money—only for wanting to keep your own money.”
As if there’s something wrong with that.
This writerly woman with no religion in her life but lots of stress went on retreat, explained herself to the good sister-director at the Jesuit Center, Wernersville PA:
Sister Barbara listened closely and then said, What I hear you saying, Susan, is that you feel forsaken.
Not dealing with abandonment issues: forsaken. Sister Barbara did not then press me to process my relationship with, say, my mother or to consider that I should own my feelings.
Bingo. Biblical language did it for her. She knew the difference. Words matter.
I am shocked that Hollywood moguls talk or even think this way:
Several moguls, in response, ”sent back word saying ‘Fuck You’ basically,” one insider tells me, expressing how they feel used and abused by the President despite their campaign contributions.
Moguls are “pissed” at his non-support of their anti-Internet-freedom legislation and are cutting off Obama’s water.
There was this to-do night before last, where Juan Williams pressed Newt on his “foodstamp president” remark etc. and Newt socked it to Juan. If you know about the exchange, you will consider this image right-on. If you don’t, you will look it up.
The image: http://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons/2012/01/image_by_richard_terrell_of_40.html
The background: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/16/video-gingrich-vs-juan-williams-on-the-food-stamp-president/
Is politics fun, or ain’t it?
The parish book discussion group met last night regarding Richard Rohr OFM’s “revised and updated” Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (Crossroad), a “spiritual classic,” with “over 100,000 copies in print.” My apologies to Fr. Rohr and Crossroad, but the blurb writer must be kidding.
One of us last night noted the “rant” quality that turns up in the book. I’d call it good blog copy. What the heck? Here today, gone later today, from readers’ minds, if not the blog page. Go for it, put your ideas out there for commenters and enemy bloggers to thrash and trash if they wish.
“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,” cried Barbara Frietchie at the English troops in Whittier’s poem, “But spare your country’s flag (she said).” Spare what in this case? Contemplative prayer? Franciscan fathers everywhere?
Pre-discussion, I had gone into Rohr shock when I tried to read the book — inkblot, you know, tell the good doctor what it means to you, don’t feel shy.
Last night I said this book has been dictated, not written: Fr. Rohr in his New Mexico hermitage and a recorder. He’s a speaker not a writer, so he talked the book out. If you’re good enough at this, some light editing will do. The publisher can handle that, this fellow sells after all. Send it to the designer, and there we are.
Then one of us found Fr. Rohr’s candid admission opposite the publisher’s boilerplate page: “I want . . . to thank . . . [so&so, whose] years of friendship . . . have sent my taped words all over the world [the years did it, don’t blame the friend]. . . [and] put it [sic] down in writing . . . ”
Notice that “years . . . sent.” Have you ever seen a year sending? Fr. Rohr has. Notice also the “put it” intended to agree with “words.” Fr. Rohr is something of an antinomian in matters of syntax, is he not? In any case, tapes are book.
I say now, post-discussion, that Fr. R’s writing is chock-full of OK words (those inkblots: fill in the blanks) and assumptions — largely psycho-therapeutic, with a heavy dose of psycho-babble, as in “If your prayer is not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an occasional ‘threat,’ [why the quotes?] you probably need to do some growing up and learning to love.” Probably.
We have here some sloppy work, like that submitted many years ago by the maybe apocryphal Jesuit high school graduate to a state university professor. The kid had put AMDG over the top of his page, as he was used to doing in high school for the holy Jesuits. The professor, not at all happy with what was submitted, asked him what that meant. “For the greater glory of God,” the kid said. To which the professor: “Is THAT your contribution to the greater glory of God?”
Is this book Fr. Rohr’s contribution?
