View from inside…this is my amateur radio antenna.

Thwack

You ever read something and then hear the whistling of an approaching clue-by-four? This is from Cassian's Institutes, Book 7 ("The Spirit of Anger"):

XVI. Sometimes, when we are overcome by pride or impatience and are unwilling to correct our unseemly and undisciplined behavior, we complain that we are in need of solitude, as if we would find the virtue of patience in a place where no one would bother us, and we excuse our negligence and the causes of our agitation by saying they stem not from our own impatience but from our brothers' faults. But, as long as we attribute our own wrongdoing to other people, we shall never be able to get near to patience and perfection

XVII. The sum total of our improvement and tranquility, then, must not be made to depend on someone else's willing, which will never be subject to our sway; it comes, rather, under our own power. And so our not getting angry must derive not from someone else's perfection but from our own virtue, which is achieved not by another person's patience but by our own forbearance. 

I don't consider myself a particularly angry person, but I know that when I do get upset, I tend to linger in it far longer than is right. In fact, if I'm being completely honest, I'll invent reasons to stay angry - imaginary conversations where I always have the upper-hand against whoever has wronged me. I'll spin out long, drawn-out, completely imaginary scenarios in support of whatever has made me upset.

It is true that there is a place for righteous anger. It is equally true that the greatest part of our anger is probably not, unless it be turned inward against our own failings. Even then we must temper it with certainty of God's mercy. No wonder at all that the prayer most commended to us is O God come to my assistance! Lord, make haste to help me!

“The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers…. In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

— Hillaire Belloc

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Phil 4:8

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle. That verse from the Letter to the Philippians spoke deeply to me during the long run-up before my eventual return to the Church about twenty years ago. I had it pinned to my cubicle wall at work and eventually took St. Paul's name for my Confirmation at the Easter Vigil. I can't say I identified much with Saul. I had no faith to speak of, never mind feeling strongly enough about anything to actively fight against others. The Damascus road, though, is a different matter.

I, too, can point to a particular moment and place where the presence of God was made plain and demanded a response. I learned about strength perfected in weakness, and the more excellent way. Saint Paul has haunted my spiritual life since then - sometimes in clarity, other times as something of an enigma, seen in a mirror darkly.

I've been thinking a bit about the HBO series The Leftovers recently, probably because part of the soundtrack came up in a Spotify playlist I use when I'm working. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Beneath the weird-fiction/sci-fi/supernatural elements of the premise is a profound meditation on grief in response to inexplicable, massive loss. The Departure, as it's called in the show, stands in for any number of similar events: Sandy Hook, 9/11, and so on. People seem to either love the show or hate it, and my feelings ought to be apparent.

It occurred to me this morning, though, that if Damon Lindelof were making The Leftovers today, he'd need to account for the large numbers of Departure-deniers: the ones running around claiming that those who lost loved ones were crisis actors, and that the Departed were all somehow involved in a plot masterminded by...someone. In-show, there'd have to be a persistent dismissal of the whole thing as fake and frankly I think this group would be more evident (and pernicious) than The Guilty Remnant, a nihilistic cult that forms in the post-event period.

I never understood the QAnon stuff. For me, big conspiracies tend to assume a level of competence that's usually not in evidence, and when actual conspiracies do come to light, things tend to change pretty quickly - hearings are held, arrests made, and so on. The bigger the secret and the bigger the crowd involved, the less likely everyone's going to keep their mouths shut. I mean, let's set aside the actual substance of the Q theory, which is too much to go into here, and focus solely on its first principle.

Compartmentalization works. No one has a full picture, and those who do have it are few and far between, making it unlikely that they could leak and remain hidden for very long. People get caught relaying secrets all the time, and some of these ought to know best how to do it. Moreover, they're passed things along to one or maybe two people, not broadcast them to the world on the Internet. They're caught all the same. The idea that these disclosures proceed from some highly-placed government source - and continue to do so over time without identification or arrest and prosecution, well, it just doesn't fly, sorry.

For a long time it smelled an awful lot like Gnosticism to me. Certainly it has a lot in common: deliverance via secret knowledge, unavailable to all but the initiates. Or perhaps I'm making too much of one and selling short the other. In either case, QAnon occupied a peculiar spot in people's lives. What will take its place now?

I'm thinking especially for the people who, having gone all-in with it, are now finding themselves disillusioned. Some of them have sundered ties with families and friends, finding comfort with their fellow-travelers online and occasionally in-person. They sought to explain the world and everything in it, and now what? Prophecies failing to deliver, goalposts moved, just be a little more patient. When you have trusted in something completely, and it fails just as completely, it feels very much like the earth has dropped away from your feet: disorienting and terrifying. Things that made sense before are now turned inside-out. Everything has to be re-interrogated, and perhaps without much help from others. If you're lucky, you have support around you while you figure things out. If not, maybe you go grabbing for the next available thing that looks solid.

What I hope and pray for is that they find an easy return and an open door. I could never take it very seriously - I know too many people who work in government. But I recognize that many people did (and still do). And having walked down a long (and weird) road, the best thing we might be able to do is make sure that the return path is as clear as possible. I also think of the families that have been divided over this, by the very real losses they feel over someone who has taken this path, and pray for their healing and restoration.

May the ones who are leaving this - or have already left - and now find themselves struggling encounter patience and charity, instead of the laughter and derision they might fear.  We could do a lot worse than offer a way off the island to which some of our neighbors and loved ones have collectively paddled out.  

Strive to preserve your heart in peace and let no event of this world disturb it. Reflect that all must come to an end. Keep spiritually tranquil in a loving attentiveness to God and when it is necessary to speak, let it be with the same calm and peace.

— St. John of the Cross

Currently reading: Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton 📚

On deck: The Holy Week volume of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth and Cassian’s Institutes. It’s beginning to feel a lot like Lent.

A list of text-heavy sites I visit regularly:

The National Weather Service has text-only forecast pages, like this one, which you can adjust for your own area. You can go deep into their weather nerd stuff, too.

There are also some great lectionary resources. The Dominican House of Studies in DC had some wonderful patristic resources online but had to take them down because of copyright concerns. They helpfully point to places like this one, though. Here's the Catena Aurea as well.


A reminder: social media is not the Internet, and you can use the latter without the former pretty effectively. I wonder how long before a sort of 'primitive/retro Internet' movement takes root and spreads among the younger crowd - text-heavy, low-latency, self-curated/owned, free of the exquisitely-tuned engagement and telemetry.

Sometimes I get nostalgic and revert back to pure-text in as many places as I can. Linux makes this a little bit easier. Only the email bit was a little tricky to perfect. Here is the list of apps:

  • elinks for text-only browsing
  • newsboat for RSS
  • neomutt for email (I use a commercial email provider and a tool called offlineimap to transfer mail)
  • weechat, principally for IRC, but it also has plugins for Slack and Jabber.

If you're wondering how much of the web is useful without graphics, javascript and all the rest, the answer is: a lot more than you'd think. Many sites have "lite" versions for bandwidth constrained users. Other sites render pretty well, but to be sure, places like Amazon still need a modern browser.

Now I'm off to see if there's a way to update micro.blog with vim, vscode, or atom...

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are...

- W.H. Auden

I've started The Moviegoer, and am enjoying it so far. Fulfilled in Christ turned out to be more of a reference book than something you'd read straight through. The introductory materials were good and I'm sure I'll be reaching for it a lot in the future.

The light outside is changing as the days lengthen, which is nice. The season has been mild so far, but we usually don't get our coldest days until about now. The seed catalogs came a couple of weeks ago (on the solstice, if you can believe it) and we sketched out some timelines for starting some seeds, which we've never done before. Our last-frost date is in mid-April, so there's still some time for planning and repairs of a couple of the raised beds.

The Real Deep State

I added Rod Dreher back to my RSS list and today he referenced this excellent open letter to the QAnon crowd:

The Deep State you worry about is mostly made up; a fiction, a lie, a product of active imaginations, grifter manipulations, and the internet. I’m telling you this now because storming the Capitol building has drawn the attention of the real Deep State — the national security bureaucracy — and it’s important you understand what that means.

You attacked America. Maybe you think it was justified — as a response to a stolen election, or a cabal of child-trafficking pedophiles, or whatever — but it was still a violent attack on the United States. No matter how you describe it, that’s how the real Deep State is going to treat it.

The impact of that will make everything else feel like a LARP.

Is it just me, or is half the fun of a new book finding the next things to read in the footnotes?

A Little Office for Evening Prayer

Our family prayers at day's end have developed into the following routine, which I am calling here A Little Office of Evening Prayers, because it's short and suitable for little ones. It's basically a single decade of the rosary with some extra stuff added to the end. Feel free to adapt for your own use. Enjoy!

Leader: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Response: Amen

Leader: O God, come to my assistance
Response: Lord, make haste to help me.

Leader: Glory be to the Father…
Response: As it was in the beginning…

All: Apostle's Creed

Leader: Glory be to the Father...
Response: As it was in the beginning...

Three Hail Marys offered for the following (shifting each night to the next one in line):

  1. An increase in faith, hope, and charity
  2. The intentions of the Holy Father
  3. The intentions of our bishop
  4. The intentions of our pastor and his vicars
  5. The people of our parish

Leader: Tonight's mystery is ________.

Pray one decade of the rosary, every person present taking one of the Hail Marys.

Concluding prayers:

All: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen.

All: O God, whose only begotten son, by his life, death, and resurrection has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech thee that by meditating on these mysteries of the most holy rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise, through this same Christ, our Lord, Amen.

All: Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do, thou, O prince of the heavenly host, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

All: Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

Sing the Salve Regina

Family Litany: each person in turn names a saint until it wraps around back to me and I add one or two more. When everyone is present (including our son-in-law), the list looks something like the following:

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.
Saint Anne, pray for us.
Saint Marianne Cope, pray for us.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
Saint George, pray for us.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.
Saint Cecilia, pray for us.
Saint John Bosco, pray for us.
Saint Dymphna, pray for us.
Saint Arnaud, pray for us.
Saint Damian, pray for us.
The Fourteen Holy Helpers, pray for us.
Saint Edmund the Martyr, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Leader: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Response: Amen

Leader: now everyone go to bed.
Response: (various)

Guardini on virtue

Finished up Romano Guardini's Learning the Virtues. Father Schmitz referenced it in Made for Love, so into the to-read list it went. I like it, and would recommend it to anyone looking to make progress in the spiritual life, particularly if you're a person who (like me) occasionally gets stuck doing examinations of conscience. Quick-reference cards are useful to a point, but if you (like me) run through a list that closely tracks against the Decalogue, you may come up short in the end. I mean, I didn't commit murder last month or any of these other egregious things so I must be in pretty good shape, right? Probably not.

Was I a peacemaker? Did I hunger and thirst for righteousness? Did I show mercy when it was an option? Here are questions that defy a quick yes-or-no answer. When I got angry that one time and stewed for two days, why was that? Ah, sure looks like my pride had been rightfully stung. I had nearly forgotten it, and that one's an old reliable sort of sin for me. And so it goes.

In any case, books like this can be very useful and instructive. Fr. Guardini was a wonderful writer and a particular favorite of both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. I also highly recommend his book of meditations, The Lord. Wonderful stuff in there. Up next is to clear out the accumulating periodicals: The New Atlantis, among others.

Holiday vacation is over, so it's back to the normal schedule around here: early to bed, early to rise.

Yesterday I met with our bishop for the final step in my application process. It looks like I'll be in the next formation class. I am feeling very hooray and also yikes. Pray for me!

Last few books of 2020 are arriving today: Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, Merton on contemplative prayer, and Fr. Devin Roza’s Fulfilled in Christ, which explores typology in the sacraments. For Christmas I also received the third volume of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth, and will be saving it for Lent.

To fill the gaps I’ve been dipping back into Joseph Conrad. At some point in the past, I shelled out a few bucks for his complete works on the Kindle so he’s something of a go-to: The Shadow-Line, which was pretty good and The Rover, which I’ve just started.

All told, my vacation has been the holidays, which were good (and continuing as I write), an extended communications blackout thanks to the bomb on Christmas morning, a fair amount of ham radio tinkering, and a new game called Factorio, which I’ve needed to strictly ration.

I also just turned 50; the receiving line forms to the left please.

Thanks be to God, we are all well. I pray the same for you and yours.

Rachel

Somewhere in these unending wastes of delirium is a lost child,
      speaking of Long Ago in the language of wounds.
To-morrow, perhaps, he will come to himself in Heaven.
But here Grief turns her silence, neither in this direction, nor
      in that, nor for any reason.
And her coldness now is on earth forever.

— Auden, For the Time Being

I have been reading and re-reading For the Time Being all throughout this past Advent. How it’s managed to escape my attention all these years is beyond me. I have to credit W.H. Auden’s Cure for the Post-Christmas Blues by Jeff Reimer for piquing my curiosity, and I was mighty glad to see the oratorio included in an Auden collection I already owned but had only glanced through a few times since buying it. Serves me right I suppose.

Monday thoughts

A beautiful run on a mild late-December morning, with the echoes of this morning’s Office of the Holy Innocents in my head. Thinking about a dear relative who passed yesterday after a long fight with cancer. Looking ahead gratefully to my 51st year on earth.

Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui. Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus.

Merton

twitter.com

Commonweal Magazine (@commonwealmag) Tweeted: On this day, in 1968, Thomas Merton died tragically and prematurely. One of the most influential mystics of the 20th century, Merton was also a prolific Commonweal contributor.

Here, we’ve compiled some of his most lasting spiritual writings: t.co/9n4v9sqRl…