A word we need

No, this isn’t anything spiritual – just about one mundane but very useful word that has fallen into disuse.

One fun little Christmas song that’s been on the radio is a children’s choir singing “Children, Go Where I Send Thee”. This is an example of a grammar mistake that annoys me far more than it ought. If we change it to the third-person statement: “the children must go where I send her”, the error should become obvious to everyone. So why “thee” instead of “ye”? “Thee” isn’t used in ordinary conversation and, due to its role in the KJV, folks use it in the religious context, stripped of its original role as the familiar.

Folks from some parts of the country have replaced ye with y’all, youse, you’uns, y’ins or all’y’all. At least they recognize the utility of a second-person plural pronoun.

I remonstrate: “ye” is a word that we need!

Another meme

courtesy of Shot in the Dark:

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
1) inner-city school teacher
2) paralegal
3) archivist
4) hospital business office manager

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
1) Airplane
2) The Gang’s All Here
3) The Blues Brothers
4) Casino

FOUR BOOKS YOU COULD READ AGAIN & AGAIN
1) The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
2) Brave New World
3) The Imitation of Christ
4) Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartenders Guide

FOUR CITIES/PLACES YOU'VE LIVED IN
1) Denver!
2) Los Angeles
3) Orange County, CA
4) San Diego, CA

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
1) House
2) The Sopranos
3) NFL Primetime
4) American Idol

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION
1) New Mexico
2) Alaska
3) Northern Minnesota
4) Manhattan

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY
1) Lileks
2) Open Book
3) Catholic & Enjoying It
4) Dappled Things

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS
1) green chile
2) red chile
3) ribeye steak, bone in, blood-rare
4) bucatini all’amatriciana

FOUR PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW
1) Rome
2) Milan
3) Taos
4) bellied up to the bar

Merry Christmas to all!

Links to a few of my fave songs for the season follow. They aren’t likely to be heard much outside Whiskeypalian circles these days it seems.

In the Bleak Midwinter;

Once in Royal David’s City; and the classic

Adeste Fidelis.

There aren’t great links to the songs of my childhood. Lutheran Hymnal Online has tunes and texts (unaltered even!), but is structured so as to prevent deeplinking. Slightly altered versions are elsewhere:

Most years we sang all 15 verses of “From Heaven Above to Earth I Come” on Christmas Eve – sometimes broken into groups with readings between them.

Now Sing We, Now Rejoice was great in English and better in German.

And the quirky one that I seem to alone in favoring: Let Us All With Gladsome Voice (again, more fun in the original).

Sartorius maximus

Much discussion of matters sartorial about St. Blog’s of late, notably here.

While many would, no doubt, be aghast, I like wearing baseball jerseys in appropriately casual situations. They’re uniquely comfortable and they do better than T-shirts and the like at making me look like something other than a circus freak. So I was happy to see on Sports Illustrated’s webpage the other day a link to Christian Throwback Jerseys. CTJ is a business apparently run by evangelicals that produces jerseys that look like, for instance, Barry Bonds’ jersey but with a change to the name (in his case, “Giants” becomes “Genesis” and, in case you didn’t know, that team doesn’t include individual names on the back, so there’s no change needed there). Most of the jerseys seem to pick the numbers of popular athletes, adding Bible book names that fit the look of the jersey: e.g. Angels’ #27 becomes Acts 27. I liked the idea a great deal, but noticed they didn’t include many of the chapters I’d like to wear about town.

I sent an email suggesting a few name/number combinations:
• Psalm 51;
• Matthew 16;
• John 6;
• Romans 1; and
• Genesis 19.

I got back a pleasant e-mail that they’d consider adding these. We’ll see what happens.

Later I thought it would be big fun to make jerseys with name/number combinations of great Popes. I call the rights to the first Leo 13 jersey!

I feel a rant coming on . . . .

I know that ranting isn’t really a very appropriate activity for someone who aspires to being a serious Christian at any time – let alone in these last days of Advent, but a coarse old man am I, I choose the second best . . .

Late last week multiple ostensibly Catholic websites participated in the PR blitzkrieg for this morally offensive film – oops, I meant this morally offensive film – on the grounds that it can teach us about love. It actually might not have been quite so bad had they promoted the former rather than the latter.

In the first film, some men motivated by their love of their (misguided) beliefs and their (narrowly defined) community engage in a barbaric act of violence as an attempt to (1) frighten their enemies into surrendering and (2) embolden their allies in a struggle they see as just. Outsiders generally see the act of barbarity for what it is and are so edified. It becomes clear that the end does not justify the means and that the end sought by these people is evil.

In the second film, two men engage in behavior that violates their human dignity and benefits no one. The story is framed in such a way as to present these men’s vicious acts as virtuous. Cf. Isaiah 5:20-24.

At least one of the ostensibly Catholic websites has backed away from its endorsement of this latest mass media inversion of good and evil, after some unwanted attention. Others persist. Miserere, Domine!

The music we get at Sunday Mass at our parish is usually pretty dreadful, not just in execution, but particularly in selection thanks to the perpetually-aggrieved boomer leftist uebermenschische music-director (“pablum”). I was pleasantly surprised that the song at the presentation of the gifts started out as an English translation of Conditor alma siderum. After the first verse we got some Disneyish chorus added on, but then the going got weird. No more translation, like this or, if the archaic sound of that translation grates, here, but an entirely new (and tiresome) text.

Since the pablum does still believe there are two sinful behaviors – the rich oppressing the poor and warfare – the lyrics included petitions to the great Campus-Chancellor-in-the-sky to rid the world of these annoyances. Now I grant that war is often, if not always, sinful, as is oppression of the poor by the rich. Decrying these, though, is no great task in our parish. Almost no one sees himself as rich and those that do are generally quite confident both that their wealth is justly earned and that they’re singularly generous about sharing it by dropping a check for $15 or $20 in the collection plate each week and giving away some old clothes at the holidays.

How about condemning gluttony, pride, anger, dishonesty or envy? Don’t those still count? Or do those hit too close to home? Sheesh! I’m not even asking for the ones that would get lots of folks uncomfortable like adultery, fornication or sexual depravity. Heck, we needn’t even mention murdering inconvenient family members! Baby steps, that’s all I’m asking here.

Besides the narrowness of the pablum outlook, there’s the fact that the boomer liturgists in general wouldn’t know poetry if it walked up to them, gave them a wedgie, and smote them about the head with a flurry of rhymed tetrameter.

Then again, I’m in no position to shirk any penance that comes my way.

Daybreak, and a candle-end

A couple of truly outstanding posts

You’ve probably already seen them as they are blogs that are deservedly more popular than this one, but:

• Don Jim reminds us of the relative value of knowing what’s right as opposed to doing what’s right; and

• Mr. O gives a concrete example.

We don’t have the Deep Magic from before time began, so redemption could have been accomplished in any way approved by the Most High. He chose the cross.

Meme

Given the small readership of this blog, it may be folly to attempt starting a meme, nevertheless . . .

Children often write Christmas wish lists to give to Santa and/or their parents. What one thing would you most want Holy Mother Church to give you (and your sisters and brothers in the Faith) for this Christmas?

My answer: for every parish to offer confession during at least one weekday every week, preferably during either morning rush hour, midday or evening rush hour. (No one should be dissuaded from seeking forgiveness by mere inconvenience, but by the same token, why would anyone want to reduce the opportunities for reconciliation?)

I tag . . . . all Catholics who read this before Christmas!

Not sure if I should post this, but . . .

This morning a prayer formed on my lips and I found myself able to pray it, if only briefly. Perhaps someone who sees it here may benefit from it.

Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Creator of all good things, Who today sends me pain that I might remember both my own weakness and the pain I bring to Thee and to others by my sins; may this pain impel me to true repentance, abundant good works and, by Thy grace, the opportunity to serve Thee in the life to come, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

What’s new?

The other day Eve Tushnet summed up most of the last eight years of my life in one pithy sentence: “The sacrifice you want to make for God may not be the sacrifice He wants from you."

I sometimes face temptations to despair. The latest round sprung from an overreaction to an off-hand remark on a website much more popular than this blog. (I’m confident that author doesn’t read this site.) One priest of my acquaintance speaks often of experiencing God’s love in unexpected moments – often moments having to do with the beauty of nature. Saturday morning I had such a moment, hiking through ankle-deep powder snow under a cloudless sky amid stillness and quiet. Surely God would not tease me with such indescribable beauty if I were predestined to wrath. Such beauty – and more - may be mine again, despite the fact that I clearly don’t deserve it, so long as I accept the grace to enter by the narrow gate.

Despair's a particularly nasty bugger as it can dispose one to give in to other temptations that he might otherwise resist.

In Te, Domine, speravi; non confundar in aeternum!

You want cold? I’ll give you cold, buddy!

It’s so cold that :
- the emergency supply in my trunk has now become a Single Malt Slurpee;
- I got icicles on my beard just from walking across the street;
- a fox and a jackrabbit are huddling together for warmth;
- the steam from the power plant is condensing into localized snow just feet from the towers; and
- I’m thinking about turning the thermostat all the way up to 60.

We had some snow overnight Friday and it’s still around – how tiresome! It was powder, so it’s blown around quite a bit. In fact, our tracks in the park were hidden several times over with the driven snow. Some spots outside the park had some melting, but the cold snap’s glazed lots of shaded spots with ice.

I do love the cold. Quite the reminder of just how little and how weak we humans are. Not so fond of the ice as it's a more serious danger, even though it is beautiful.

Something that appears beautiful but that is really very dangerous has taken much attention lately. Serendipitously one line from a favorite old prayer has also been stuck in my head lately: Illumina tenebras cordis mei (enlighten the darkness of my heart).

Media critic guy redux

Watched the first half of CBS’ JPII movie. It was better than I expected. There were a few visual cues I thought they really botched, but they were relatively minor (e.g. young Karol serving Mass on 9/1/39 in street clothes, Abp. Sapieha dressed as a simple priest while already being addressed as “Excellency”). They weren’t very clear bout the length of the episcopal vacancy in Krakow either – it was over twelve years after all.

I was quite impressed with the inclusion of the short discourse on sexuality that Fr. Wojtyla gave as the surreptitious wedding party started its journey. Good to see mass media own up to the ill intentions of communism – would that the “news” programs might do the same.

One seemingly bigger goof. I missed the beginning of the scene of the open air Mass in Nowa Huta, so I don’t know why he would have started reciting the middle section of the Gloria in Excelsis by himself after his remarks about religious freedom. Perhaps that’s accurate, but it seemed highly peculiar.

I was also pleased that CBS was bright enough to refrain from showing adverts for their sexy fashion show during this one – though during the afternoon football game both programs were advertised quite a bit.

Looking forward to the conclusion, fortuitously scheduled for the evening of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

What's with Chinese restaurants lately?

We recently got a menu from a Chinese restaurant that’s moved into our neighborhood. I perused it as a courtesy, even considered that some dishes sounded pretty good until I got to “Mao Tse Tung Chicken”. After a double-take, I read on to find “Chicken prepared in the favorite style of famous Chinese Premier Mao Tse Tung”.

Does ordering this dish make you into a more effective genocidal dictator?

The one upside is that it may draw our local state legislators away from our favorite Chinese restaurant since they're big supporters of Mao's policies toward the youngest people among us.

Perhaps they’re only marketing to the kids in the Che Guevera t-shirts, but it’s still nearly as reprehensible as this more famous Chinese restaurant moral lapse.