Fallingwater

Fallingwater is, first of all, in Pennsylvania, which makes it immediately a wonderful thing. It was also my first experience of genius. Frank Lloyd Wright's relation to nature is fascinating--for instance, the floor of the living room is made of stone and glazed to look like the wet stone of the creek/crick. There is a staircase from the living room down to the middle of the water; the door can be opened to let in a cooling breeze from the water in the summer.

I was also struck by the windows, which could open at the corner. And the art on the walls (Picassos, Audobon prints). And the guest house can't be seen from the main house, so there were no window coverings.

Interiors of Washington, Part 2

The exterior of the National Building Museum is rather unremarkable:

The interior, on the other hand, is surprisingly beautiful:

Inside the National Building Museum there is a sense of space and lightness that is much grander from than the brick exterior. The fountain inside contributes to the sense of endless space that is barely shut in from the outdoors.

Tintern Abbey

Imagine my delight when on a driving tour of Wales with no particular route in mind, we stumbled upon Tintern Abbey (built between 1136 and 1536)! We picniced on a nearby mountain in the graveyard of an also ruined church, after exploring the remains of the church. Wordsworth captures the serenity and beauty of the place:

Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

This seclusion was interrupted only by a giant aircraft that flew quickly and low through the Wye River Valley.

Would that ruins were respected and allowed to remain in America. I suppose we have too many practical prairie skills in our blood to have a place for decaying buildings (or people, we hide ours away in nursing homes).

Interiors of Washington, Part 1

The Library of Congress is quite possibly the most beautiful interior in Washington, DC. The reading room is okay, although I don't particularly care for it. But the Great Hall is striking.

Sure, it is something of a temple to reason and human learning and books, but the decoration is so attentive to loveliness, that you feel emotion to be well represented. The ceilings are quite remarkable as is the proliferation of mosaics and clean white marble.

On Architecture as Social

"Architecture is thus the type and mother of all the arts. Herein is combined, in equal balance and each in its highest degree, both what is useful and what is delightful. Architecture is not merely good building--though good building is absolutely necessary to architecture. Architecture is delightful building. It is building by which the mind of man is delighted.

But architecture, more than any other of the arts of man, is a social art. Even if it were possible for a single man, all by himself, to build a house, or even a garage, it would not be possible to build a house which he alone would see and use unless he were a hermit in a desert. Architecture more than any art depends upon the collaboration of many men working and living together. What many combine to build many must necessarily see and live with."

--Eric Gill, Beauty Looks After Herself

Thoughts from Akhmatova

Dante

Even after his death he did not return

to the city that nursed him.

Going away, this man did not look back.

To him I sing this song.

Torches, night, a last embrace,

outside in her streets the mob howling.

He sent her a curse from hell

and in heaven could not forget her.

But never, in a penitent's shirt,

did he walk barefoot with lighted candle

through his beloved Florence,

perfidious, base, and irremediably home.

In this poem, Akhmatova captures the pain of an exile--that betrayal by the one you love most, your hometown (metaphorically, your mother), is the worst sort of betrayal. Akhmatova identifies with Dante here. She tells us that this pain is so great that even in heaven, it doesn't go away. Although Florence is faithless to him (and Russia to her), it is irremediably beloved and home.

Also, writing of a tree that she grew up with but was cut down in her poem, "Willow," she says, "Oddly, I have survived it: / out there a stump remains." This captures the strange feeling you sometimes have when something or someone, whom you'd assumed as a child would live forever and was much stronger than you, dies. It is a surprise to have survived it, and this increases one's grief.

Serendipity and the Internet

how to write plane letter for girlfriend--You learn how to write a letter with practice. You should probably start with a pen-pal, preferably one from another country. Add sweet nothings and it will be a nice letter for a girlfriend. Above all things, correct spelling is important.

superstition "cow's tongue"--Getting licked by a cow brings three months of bad luck.

I remember, as a very young child, visiting my great-grandmother "Mamo Carothers" (also known as Mamo piano, because she had a piano, to distinguish her from Mamo marbles, who had marbles), and she was cooking a cow tongue on a small saucepan on the stove. I got a look at it, and it was frightening.

pentecostal service--I think that Leif Enger gives the best literary expression (or perhaps the only literary expression) of a pentecostal service I've seen:

"I heard an urgent voice say, approximately, bahm, toballah, sacoombaraffay; straight off a different voice raised up to translate: 'I am among you tonight, my children,' it said, amid blooming amens. Cracking the door we saw the Reverend Johnny Latt reach out to touch a man on the forehead. ... The reverend's eyes were shut, and as his fingers touched Mr. Layton's bright scalp Mr. Layton fell backward without utterance, slipping between the ineffectual arms of the younger Latt brother, who'd crept up behind to make the catch. The impact had no visible effect on Mr. Layton, who lay at peace in a room littered with supine Methodists. Reverend Johnny opened his eyes and peered around for others in range."

There's much more, and it's quite well done.

adios kansas--A perversion of Dorothy's "We aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto." It's one thing to realize that you aren't at home anymore; it's another to stop fighting to get back there.

On Straussians and Statesmen (Part 2)

I asked two political philosopher friends about this question last night at dinner.

One suggested that the Straussian emphasis on statesmen is connected to their interest in foundings (as opposed to a sort of Kirkean focus on the continuity of tradition). Statesmen, then, are partially restrained by their historical circumstances, but also free to affect the circumstances.

The other suggested two reasons for the Straussian interest in statesmen. First, the statesman is consistent with Plato's model for politics in The Republic as the way to work within the existing political order without overturning it, but also without conceding to historical forces. Second, there is the separation between the elites and the masses--the statesman appeals to the masses through rhetoric.

On Why Straussians Like Great Men/Statesmen

This is a provisional first attempt at defending this proposition, which seems obvious to me but for reasons that I have trouble articulating.

First of all, in Leo Strauss's Natural Right in History, Strauss is, among other things, reacting to historicism, which understood humans as unable to escape the external forces of history that shaped them and can entirely explain their actions. The statesman, understood as impacting his social environment, violates historicism in a bold way.

Second, West Coast Straussians have adopted Lincoln as The Man. I think that this might be tied to their approval of a lawgiver, someone who is outside of the law, but establishes it for a particular community. This goes along quite nicely with the elitist idea that there are only particular people who are able to see the highest message of a work. It is appropriate for some few people to see that message (the lawgiver and those for whom it is safe to know it) and not for the masses (those to whom the law is given).

Moreover, in my conception of how ideas develop, historical forces interact with the philosophical forces of a particular thinker. These feed off of one another and interact with each other and neither is reducible to the other. In Straussianism, however, the truth of the philosopher is removed from his historical circumstance (except insofar as historical conditions may require that he encode his ideas) and applicable, without adjustment, to any historical situation.

More to come, one day, I think.

On Faith and Autonomy

Theologian Ernst Troeltsch writes about the nature of belief in Religion in History: "...[I]n this way does faith bring the subject into truly complete and vital contact with the divine life. Only through such elevation and communication of power does faith become capable of autonomy. Autonomy is not the starting point but the climax of religious training." It is through faith, then, that our autonomy and freedom develops. In this way we can understand the autonomy of Christians past centuries as likely stronger than our own autonomy, although they probably had fewer options from which to choose.

When Tradition Fails

Female genital mutilation (see the NYTimes article interestingly titled, "A Cutting Tradition") seems to be a clear case of the failure or disintegration of tradition. It calls for the need to be able to critique tradition--to be able to call particular practices of a tradition wrong.

If we agree that tradition cannot be critiqued from a sort of Enlightenment perspective that purportedly comes from within no tradition (from a universal perspective that we get at through pure, unadulterated reason), then we are left with only the ability to critique a tradition from within that tradition (although this critique may include drawing on the insights of other traditions as Eliot did when he turned, for example, to the Bhagavad Gita).

If we can only get to the universal through the particular, then perhaps we must hope that within every tradition is the potential for correcting and purifying its tradition (in accord with truth). Additionally, this practice of passing on and adjusting tradition seems to be necessarily comprised of both philosophical/critical interaction with the tradition as well as unreflective/practical interaction with the tradition. Neither of these elements can be wanting in order for a tradition to develop and thrive.

In Translation

I loved you; perhaps that love

has not yet gone out entirely from my soul,

but do not let it trouble you more;

I never wanted to sadden you.

I loved you silently, hopelessly,

now too shy, now too jealous.

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

May God grant you another to love you likewise.

-- Aleksandr Pushkin

A new translation by my friend, Wendell (not the writer).

Breast Implants

...Need to be kept up, just like a manicure. This is such a horror. It really makes me almost wish I'd never had braces.

Ordinary Time

As you might imagine, I don't like Ordinary Time. I prefer drama.

Fabulous Things I Heard on the Radio

"There's nothing sadder than a country song. Except bad hair."

The Children of Men and Madagascar's Exploding Palm Tree

Lately, a palm tree has been discovered in Madagascar that lives for decades, flowers and dies. It uses all of its energy to flower and reproduce, and, having done so, its life is over. This reminds me of my grandparents--all of their love, work, and interest is ordered toward their family; it is their only pride and delight. This also reminds me of the role of mankind as a result of being created in the image of God--to participate in His creative power. Just as He created man, not because He needed company, but because it is in the nature of His love to be generous and overflow with new life, so the end of man's love ought to be new life as well.

The film of P.D. James's The Children of Men illustrates this point movingly. The film is futuristic--the world has collapsed (except for Britain) and fertility has ended. A pregnant woman, Kee, is found, however, and the film's hero, Theo, works to get her away from the corrupt government and corrupt rebels to safety.

The message of the film is that in a world without new life, people become selfish and isolated individuals and the social order even collapses. The baby's birth, however, leads to many people risking their own lives for that baby's safety, even though it is not their own child. There is a particularly poignant Flight-to-Egypt scene in which intense fighting stops as the two sides part to make way for Kee, her baby, and Theo, who is not the baby's father, but who plays the role of Joseph. People reach out and touch even the feet of the baby; other people kneel or cross themselves.

Even Theo's relationship with Julian, the leader of the resistance movement is impacted by fertility: they had a child together, but their child died; after the child's death, they separated. I wonder if the commentary here on the modern world isn't to reveal the disintegrative effects of birth control on the family.

Finally, the line "shantih, shantih, shantih," which recurs in the film, is the last line of Eliot's The Wasteland, borrowed from The Upanishads, and it means something like "the peace which passeth understanding." It is a really fine film that quotes Eliot.

Spoilers Abound

If, like Foucault says, discursive practices do indeed create and reify rather than simply report a society’s ideas about a subject, movies like Juno and Knocked Up are important not only because they model the ultimately positive outcome of an unplanned pregnancy, but also because each movie’s discourse about abortion creates it as something that is morally problematic. In Knocked Up, a friend of the father indirectly mentions it: “I won't say it but it rhymes with shmashmortion.” In Juno, the pregnant character’s step-mother hesitatingly asks “Have you considered, you know, the alternative?” By representing abortion as something so reprehensible that it cannot be named even by those advocating it, these movies not only recount a prevailing attitude toward abortion, but also effectively recreate the stigma and reattach a sense of wrongness to the concept.

Two Points from Wisdom

"When the savage rage of wild animals overtook them and they were perishing from the bites of writhing snakes, your wrath did not continue to the end. It was by way of reprimand, lasting a short time, that they were distressed, for they had a saving token to remind them of the commandment of your Law. Whoever turned to it was saved, not by what he looked at, but by you, the universal savior." Wisdom 16:5-7

A foreshadowing of purgatory?

Also, it is clear that cooking and, consequently, grocery stores are a result of the fall (dear Myrrh): "You gave them [your people] the food of angels, from heaven untiringly sending them bread already prepared, containing every delight, satisfying every taste. And the substance you gave demonstrated your sweetness toward your children, for, conforming to the taste of whoever ate it, it transformed itself into what each eater wished." Wisdom 16: 20-21

This is a foreshadowing of heaven, where our food will already be prepared!

No!, People have Babies in Their Twenties?

Or, This Crazy Town/Day in Which I/We Live

More on MacIntyre and Disabilities

Some Czech children with disabilities are still kept in cages. This forces me back to MacIntyre. So people with disabilities still need a voice in the community; how can they have that voice? Through a proxy. MacIntyre maintains that we speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves, and we do this through friendship. This points out the need for us to attend first to those who are close to us, rather than putting responsibility for them on the government alone. Furthermore, we learn to speak on behalf of another "in the course of learning how to speak for myself, something more complex and more difficult than it is often taken to be." Learning to speak for another, then, and for one's self are tied up together, our ability to speak for ourselves, as we shall see, relies on our ability to speak for others.

Speaking for ourselves and speaking for others are tied up with one another in achieving accountability, or the ability to "assume the other's point of view, so that the concerns to which we respond in giving our account are the ones that are in fact genuinely theirs. If we are successful in so doing, we become able to speak with the voice of the other systematically ... In achieving accountability we will have learned not only how to speak to, but also how to speak for the other. We will ... have become--in one sense of that word--friends. "

And key to acting well in this role, MacIntyre tells us, is truthfulness.

Here we see that MacIntyre is not asking us to step out of ourselves and put ourselves behind a veil of ignorance, making policies based on imagining that we might ourselves be disabled. Rather, MacIntyre asks us to come into conversation and friendship with others, seeing ourselves more clearly in them and learning to know them as an other, in order to be able to accurately articulate their voice when they are unable to speak. We act out of a genuine interest in the other as other, rather than out of a sympathy (which is arguably really selfishness) that we get from imagining ourselves in their shoes.

Fabulous Things I Heard on the Radio

"I'm feeling depressed. I have infertility."



Why does this sound strange? Because fertility used to be something not that you "have," but rather something that you are (infertile). "I have infertility" implies that it is some sort of curable disease (which, in some cases, I'm sure it is, but in many other cases, one's fertility is by-passed, and we call that a cure, such as in the case of IVF).



In this vein, another fabulous line I've heard on the radio is something to the effect of, "You've given money, now give life. Donate eggs and enjoy monetary rewards." Please, make up your mind--appeal to human greed or to human generosity, but it doesn't really make sense to appeal to both in the same line.

I often sign casual emails with only my first initial; my sister often does the same. It is absolutely delightful to receive emails from my father imitating this trend, signed, "D," for dad, and from my mother, signed, "M," for mom.

Movie Spoilers Follow

Atonement raises very interesting questions--questions regarding the relationship between art and life and the role of truth and hope in art. Ought art portray life as it is or should it show us an ideal toward which we can then aspire? Interestingly, the film does both of these for us, implying that art, as a whole, ought to do the same.

There are also interesting references to naming in the film: When Briony becomes a nun, she takes a new name, but in the process of relating to the wounded French soldier, she must admit her real name, for which she gets in trouble with the nuns, but which also frees her to tell the truth.

On Wood

"It is not your will that the works of your Wisdom lie idle, and hence men entrust their lives to the smallest piece of wood, cross the high seas on a raft and come safe to port. Why, in the beginning even, while the proud giants were perishing, the hope of the world took refuge on a raft and, steered by your hand, preserved the germ of a new generation for ages to come." Wisdom 14:5-6

This passage is rich with allusions/foreshadowings: the ark and the manger--"in the beginning even, while the proud giants were perishing, the hope of the world took refuge on a raft and, steered by your hand, preserved the germ of a new generation for ages to come"; the cross--"men entrust their lives to the smallest piece of wood"; that time when Jesus was asleep with His disciples on a boat in a storm--"the hope of the world took refuge on a raft and, steered by your hand, preserved..."; and oh oh ohhh, let's american-ize this (but only sarcastically) to refer to the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

Three White Leopards

"'Tis not enough for thee to have blocked

In other days Admetus' doom

With craft of magic wine, which mocked

The three grey Sisters of the Tomb."

--Alcestis, Euripides

Evidently (thanks Lawrence/Henry), Alcestis was an inspiration for Eliot's The Cocktail Party. These lines offer insight into Eliot's three white leopards in "Ash-Wednesday." The three grey sisters of the tomb seem to be redeemed in the three white leopards, which represent the way to the via negativa in "Ash-Wednesday." These three white leopards, then, stand in relation to the three grey sisters of the tomb in the same way that death (actual or metaphorical) after Christ stands in relation to death with no hope of meaning.

Serendipity and the Internet

Clearly stumbling across this blog is serendipitous (or annoying)...

Sympathetic devil--Possibly an oxymoron, unless this is a reference to Milton's Satan.

"when mathilde finds"--There are not many famous Mathilde's--there is an asteroid and a Belgian princess. But this makes me think of that short story, "The Necklace" in which Mathilde loses an expensive necklace, which she does not, in fact, find, leading to the story's tragic (that might be overstating the case) end.

leopards that were born yesterday--Well, these would clearly be very naive leopards. Naivety, I must note, being a remarkable and advantageous characteristic that ought not be disparaged.

caught stalking on facebook--Uh-oh. I don't even know how one would get caught, although I did notice once some sort of tracker application where you can tell who is looking at your page. This is remarkably unfortunate and only serves to turn people off to facebook, I think (not necessarily a bad thing). Anyway, the answer to embarrassing things is always to go on with life as if they didn't happen. It makes people uncomfortable to discuss embarrassing things. But definitely only engage in un-catchable stalking in the future.


proving love for a woman--Oh, what a nice urge. Men should mostly concern themselves with this--loving women and proving their love for them. And how easy to do--consistency. Only time proves things finally. And typically lots of presents don't hurt.

bracelets with lepords on them--Um, yeah, I'm going to recommend a bracelet without a leopard (or even a lepord) on it. Actually, I would just go for big earrings, preferably not animal related.

An Apology for Airplane Letters

Airports are problematic: they are places of transition filled with miserable people exhausted by time changes and poor food and dehumanizing lines and searches. Flying an airplane detaches you from place and time only to reattach you elsewhere, later. Flying alone is particularly horrible--you are forced to endure the misery all by yourself with no one to talk to, or, worse yet, with people you don't know. Due to my hatred of airports (and being cut off from meaningful communication--having no one around me with whom I can discuss everything that comes to my mind) and my love of letter writing, I figured that letters are the only way to redeem flights.

But I didn't figure this out alone: my friend, Lawrence, a man of much travel experience and wanderlust, loves planes and occasionally airports. As my only even irregular correspondent at the moment (as I've lost touch, for a time, with my Latvian pen-pal from childhood, and my other correspondent got a girlfriend, and my childhood bff/neighbor and I have moved to telephone and email), he suggested/perfected the airplane letter, particularly with one written on a map that he found in the in-flight magazine--Hegel would have been so pleased with that fusion of form and content.

The paper may be the most fun part of airplane letters because often you don't anticipate the desire to write a letter while on an airplane, so you have to use whatever is in front of you--Lawrence has used an airplane ticket before; I've often used a flyleaf or title page from whatever I'm reading.

Airplane letters are also necessary in order to share the absurdity of the situations you find yourself in (the cranky old woman who whines for an hour about the stresses of flying, the Chinese translation to English of "Please don't toilet now" while going through turbulence, amusement at or frustration with children around you, etc.).

On Airplane Letters

A gathering before you leave the ground

Of what you've briefly paused till your return,

Or recollection of anomaly.

For traveling alone's a sin, as is

Withdraw. So you converse, but not with spirits, mars.

But with embodied, other plac-ed friends.

The Church asks us to friend the dead!, our goods

And theirs entwined. The Eucharist we eat

With them, connected in place and time and week

Through broken bit that's dropped into the wine.

Sometimes that bit was moved from church to church

Or week to week (both time and place combined).

On Women and Land

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,

over a black mountain, in his giant track,

while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:

"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,

the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,

at the empty windows set in the tall house

where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain

stitching her eyes before she made a sound...

Her body flaked into transparent salt,

and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem

too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,

who suffered death because she chose to turn.

Anna Akhmatova's passion is the most striking aspect of her poetry. A defense of Lot's wife--this is wonderful--what is so wrong with a desire for the past that it makes Lot's wife, in the present, disappear? I think Akhmatova identifies with Lot's wife because both women were concerned with their place. Akhmatova, for example, refuses to be exiled from her land, as we can see in another poem she wrote right around that time, the first line of which translates, "I am not one of those who left the land." Speaking of women who won't leave their land, this makes me think also of Scarlett in Gone With the Wind. I wonder if there is a particular attachment of women to the land or if women attach differently to home and land (i.e. they attach concretely rather than abstractly).

Well, my heart has been broken. This is almost as good as consumption. Anne of Green Gables would be proud. As would Mr. Bennett: "Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions. When is your turn to come? ... Let Wickham be your man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably." Not only has my heart been broken, but I've managed a week-long illness to boot. Rather respectable work, I'd say.

A Computer for Every Lap

One of my best friends is a teacher at a high school in rural Pennsylvania. When I was admiring her mac laptop last weekend, she informed me that all of the students in her school will get one next year. This seems problematic to me at several levels: A) I am jealous of mac's, particularly when you get to push one button and see the weather; B) There are enough years of life to be glued to a laptop, shouldn't highschoolers run around in the woods and play by the creek? C) Why in the world do we see greater access to technology as the salvation of civilization?

If I Were First Lady (Or Look at Me Being Political)

Inspired by the people watching the results come in on the television in the back of the basketball game suite tonight, I am feeling political, or at least imaginative. So, if I were first lady...

First, I would eliminate the dancers at the basketball game. This is just appalling. I felt as if I were a woman in a gentleman's club, and I've always wondered what sort of woman would go to anything like that, and now I know: they disguise them as basketball games. What sort of man would need to be enticed by female strippers to watch a sports game? Don't all men watch sufficient amounts of sports of their own volition? What sort of woman would dress up in tall boots and undergarments and hold a sign proclaiming, "Southwest" or "Papa John's Pizza." I mean, really, this combines all of the ills of advertising with all of the ills of our sex-crazed culture.

Second, (and this is, perhaps, my favorite idea. It came to me one day when I was driving down the road, wishing that men could tell that I, a woman, was driving, so that they could chivalrously pause to let me pass) I would have all of the women drive pink cars and all of the men drive blue cars, so that all of the blue cars could yield to the pink cars.

That is all I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure that more will come to me later. Also, it is important to distinguish between my intended actions as first lady and my intended actions as mayor. I'm excited about mayor-ing, but I'm certain that there would be very different problems to deal with. Those are for another day.

Wall Rosaries

Wall rosaries are, I think, a problem. I was given one as a gift. It is huge (the beads are the size of white packing peanuts) and made of white plastic and was blessed by the pope, so it can't be thrown away (and because it is big and made of white plastic, it can't be re-gifted). It is stifling to feel stuck with something forever. I was surprised to discover this morning that it is, additionally, glow-in-the-dark! This is probably in case I want to pray the rosary with five or so of my friends in a dark room or in case I meet any giants who live in dark caves and have trouble holding regular-sized rosaries?

My Grandmother's Pearls

I asked for pearls for Christmas (Myrrh says your first string of pearls must always be a gift) and my mom mentioned it to my grandmother who didn't want to buy my sister and I new pearls when she had so many old ones that she could give us. My grandmother can't tell the difference between real and fake pearls, although in the case of the ones she was giving us, it was apparent: the fake ones are old and large and chipping and the real ones are small and yellowed and delicate. There is a quadruple strand of pearls that I can't imagine my grandmother, a tiny little woman, wearing and a pearl bracelet. And the pearls that my grandfather gave to my grandmother the day that he proposed (which was Christmas Eve. He gave her pearls so that if their engagement ended she wouldn't keep the ring as a Christmas gift but give it back!). And there are the pearls, very long and very yellowed beyond wearing that my grandmother's grandmother gave her (she was the oldest granddaughter, as I am). And other old strands that my grandmother doesn't even remember the story of.

Going through her jewelry and her mother's jewelry with my grandmother is delightful--she always tries to make my sister and I wear some of her clip-on (very painful) earrings. And trying on her hats! It makes you imagine the days that she wore cutting edge fashions, at least for our little town.

The thing about grandparents' houses is that they hold tradition--nothing ever goes away from them, but new things get added. Seeing the Christmas decorations at my grandparent's house was comforting; everything was just where it should be--the creche was on its green velvet fabric, the white sled was on a red velvet fabric over the window of the door, the little man with cheeks you squeeze to get a hershey kiss was hanging on the tree.

William Ellery Channing is the most beautiful name I'm aware of. One was a theologian and his nephew (of the same name) was a poet (two of the most interesting occupations). The poet was a friend of Thoreau and Emerson and a Transcendentalist. The uncle rejected Calvinism (!). The poet wrote about Thoreau:

His love bestowed

Was not a gift in fractions, half-way done;

But with some mellow goodness, like a sun,

He shone o'er mortal hearts, and taught their buds

To blossom early, thence ripe fruit and seed.

On the Lost Art of Blessing (Christmas Installment)

Sure you had a wonderful Christmas celebration and my prayer for you is that the peace and joy of this season may fill the New calendar year 2008.

a Christmas of joy and peace, and a new year with days of hope and renewal

I hope the Christmas celebrations are bringing you much joy and blessings.

Let the Joy and Peace which comes from the Bethlehem events of this Holy Night fulfills your hearts. Happy Holidays!

What about blessing? In the Catholic Church it is there often--you bless yourself with holy water when you enter or leave the church, the priest blesses you at the end, and we bless each other at the passing of the peace. Goodness gracious, they bless everything: rings, rosaries, very large, "wall rosaries." In the Pentecostal church we bless, too: "God bless you, sister." But for some reason I notice the habit of blessing more in friends who are not from the United States. One even blessed me at the beginning of a more or less permanent separation. This reminds me of the blessing in Numbers: "The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace."

All in the time of 1 pentecostal service: 1 Catholic service, two beers, 1 1/2 hours of the pentecostal service fire tunnel and celebrating the new year in a graveyard.