Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Calculating Christmas, by William Tighe

Like alcoholism and drug addiction, nihilism is a disease of the soul. It can never be completely cured, and there is always the possibility of relapse. But there is always a chance of conversion — a chance for people to believe that there is a hope for the future and a meaning to struggle. This chance rests neither on an agreement about what justice consists of nor on an analysis of how racism, sexism, or class subordination operate. Such arguments are indispensable. But a politics of conversion requires more. Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul. This turning is done through one's affirmation of one's worth — an affirmation fueled by the concern of others. A love ethic must be at the center of a politics of conversion.

— Cornel West, "Nihilism in Black America," Race Matters 📚

Currently reading: Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI 📚. So short I’ll have to pace it at 1 chapter/week to stretch it through Advent.

Incoming books:

• Race Matters by Cornel West
• Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives by Pope Benedict XVI
• Learning the Virtues by Romano Guardini

I finished the Rilke collection the other night. On the whole, I liked it - particularly The Duino Elegies. Much of it was gorgeous opaque, but then:

And now in vast, cold, empty space, alone.
Yet hidden deep within the the grown-up heart,
longing for the first world, the ancient one...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

That's from "Imaginary Career." Even in translation, Rilke turns a phrase. I also finished The Sign of Jonas, and I'm going to have to think about that one for awhile. Coming as it does at this time of my life - in these particular circumstances - it sheds a great deal of light on the contradictions of a vocation. What God wills against what you expect (or even desire). And this according to the You that stands apart! What he sought in Gethsemani was not what he found. Not at first, anyway. In the end he found it, but he had come so far in his understanding that he barely recognized the person who had begun the same book he was finishing. This book was recommended to me, I think because I had expressed an affinity for both Jonah and Thomas Merton. Certainly I'll be turning over contradiction for some time to come.

Lectio has been alternating between Isaiah and the Gospel reading for this Sunday, which marks the beginning of Advent. As I'm writing this, that would be Mark 13:33-37. The things that 'jump out' and stay with me from session to session continue to astonish me.

At first it was watch and pray. Surely we only watch when we are confident that the master will return? We wait in perfect expectation. And we pray in all things, at all times. Let prayer be unceasing, but not unconscious. A man once told me that he wasn't sure when he wasn't praying! That's what I want, how I want to be. David Steindl-Rast shows us that gratitude as a response to a gift is an act of profound love and prayer. It recognizes the gift, as gift, which means it also acknowledges the giver.

The next night it was what I say to you, I say to all.  All are to watch. No one is exempt! The invitation is universal. Could this also be read a bit differently? Those who hear have a solemn charge to show and tell. As He speaks to us, so He speaks to all - if we let Him. "The medium is the message." Did you know that McLuhan was Catholic? I only learned that a few years ago, to be honest.

Last night I stayed with whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. I'm still pondering this one. These are nighttime and the liminal moments surrounding darkness, maybe when watchfulness is most difficult.

I'm not even sure if trying to capture these thoughts and responses is worthwhile - something seems to be lost between the heart, the head, and the keyboard.

Race day!

The Last Children of Down Syndrome by Sarah Zhang. I'm a subscriber and try to hold off on reading the cover stories until I have the magazine in hand, but I broke that rule this time.

The introduction of a choice reshapes the terrain on which we all stand. To opt out of testing is to become someone who chose to opt out. To test and end a pregnancy because of Down syndrome is to become someone who chose not to have a child with a disability. To test and continue the pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis is to become someone who chose to have a child with a disability. Each choice puts you behind one demarcating line or another. There is no neutral ground, except perhaps in hoping that the test comes back negative and you never have to choose what’s next.

What kind of choice is this, if what you hope is to not have to choose at all

Later:

In late 2018, Genomic Prediction, a company in New Jersey, began offering to screen embryos for risk of hundreds of conditions, including schizophrenia and intellectual disability, though it has since quietly backtracked on the latter. The one test customers keep asking for, the company’s chief scientific officer told me, is for autism. The science isn’t there yet, but the demand is.

Just finished (in near-record time) both Building A Bridge by Father James Martin, SJ and Made for Love by Father Mike Schmitz. Both explore the same subject: LGBTQ+ people and their place in the Church. I thought the books complemented each other very well - Building A Bridge sets the stage very nicely, opening the way to a dialogue based on respect, compassion, and sensitivity. It is thoroughly pastoral in its focus. Made for Love covers some of the same ground, but takes a closer look at some of the theology. In any event, both converge in and around the same place: the universal call to God's love is just that: universal. None are exempt or cast out. The living Christ meets each of us where we are, as we are. Yes, the call to love is accompanied by a call to conversion and none are exempt from that either. The encounter of Jesus with Zaccheus the tax collector shows us a pattern: welcome and community first, conversion next. 

I see from reviews that most folks fall in an either-or stance with respect to the two authors. Sorry, but I'm not seeing it. Neither sets out to be the definitive pastoral or theological manual. Each comes off as sensitive to the struggles of the individuals and their lived experiences. Both point to our final end: life abundant in the glory of God.

I recommend both.

The mint has grown back so I guess it’s mojitos in November. The cold will be here for good at some point but until then…

Very sad to read that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks passed away over the weekend. His Erasmus speech several years ago set me on a reading project which continues to this day. I very much liked his Essays on Ethics, and anticipate returning to it often in the future.

Requiem æternam dona ei, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

It’s 75 here today so we’re barbecuing and hanging around outside. Winter will get here when it gets here but for now…

Sunny window nap

From The Sign of Jonas, a diary Thomas Merton kept during the first few years after making his perpetual vows at Gethsemani:

The way You have laid open before me is an easy way, compared with the hard way of my own will which leads back to Egypt, and to bricks without straw.

If You allow people to praise me, I shall not worry. If You let them blame me, I shall worry even less, but be glad. If You send me work I shall embrace it with joy and it will be rest to me, because it is Your will. And if You send me rest, I will rest in You. Only save me from myself. Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement's sake, to unsettle everything You have ordained.

Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Than the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. This is what I love for. Amen, amen.

I want to write about Steindl-Rast's Gratefulness but I'm not sure if I'm up to it. Pieces of it come back to me constantly which I take to be a good sign. It has opened doors to contemplative forms of prayer which were sort of on the periphery, just out of the corner of my eye. Close-by, but un-named and maybe unseen. Then you see them and the reaction is "Of course! It was there all along!" It seems strange that such a short book would be difficult to summarize, so universal as to defy simple categorization. It is, in short, a book about prayer and gratitude, and how each reflects and magnifies the other in the smallest of moments. These moments should catch us by surprise, which means we must - paradoxically - be prepared for surprise.

That will have to suffice for now. Maybe more later.

Currently reading: Compensating the Sales Force, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Designing Winning Sales Reward Programs by Cichelli, David 📚

Here is a very rare post that touches ever-so-briefly on work.

I don’t do a ton of business-related reading. When I do, it’s usually because some book is making the rounds in the C-suite of my employer and reading what they’re reading has been helpful in my role, which is nominally manager but perhaps more accurately described as contextualizer-in-chief.

In any event, the start of a new fiscal year comes with the annual adjustments to the sales compensation plan (i.e., quotas, bonuses, spiffs, and the like). These might seem like a minor thing to the rest of the company but I’m here to tell you that they are of nearly existential importance to the sales team, of which I am a part.

I recently got very interested in how compensation plans are developed, so here we are.

Still working through David Steindl-Rast's book on gratitude and prayer. I'll have more to write when I'm done. It's been wonderful so far. He frequently quotes Rainer Maria Rilke, who has been on my radar for some time now. I ordered a collection of Rilke's poetry which was delivered earlier today. Then I'll maybe alternate that with Merton's The Sign of Jonas.

Hopefully Rilke and Merton will serve to more than offset some work-related reading that's coming my way on the design of sales compensation plans.

Currently reading: Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness by Steindl-Rast, David 📚

This was just recently recommended to me, along with Thomas Merton’s The Sign of Jonas, by a deacon with whom I met recently as part of the discernment/application process. He also recommended deeper/further exploration of contemplative prayer, so I’ve begun regular lectio again.

I’ve tried lectio on and off over the years but after our conversation on prayers and praying, I’m really going to try to make it stick this time. Attempting to turn the Office into lectio hasn’t really worked either. I think this is fine; he helped me to reframe some of my thinking around the Office as well.

Timothy Keller, writing in the NYT a few weeks ago:

So Christians are pushed toward two main options. One is to withdraw and try to be apolitical. The second is to assimilate and fully adopt one party’s whole package in order to have your place at the table. Neither of these options is valid. In the Good Samaritan parable told in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus points us to a man risking his life to give material help to someone of a different race and religion. Jesus forbids us to withhold help from our neighbors, and this will inevitably require that we participate in political processes. If we experience exclusion and even persecution for doing so, we are assured that God is with us (Matthew 5:10-11) and that some will still see our “good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:11-12). If we are only offensive or only attractive to the world and not both, we can be sure we are failing to live as we ought.

David French referred to this piece in his newsletter this morning. I recommend reading both in their entirety.

Low blow, Amazon. Low blow. Holiday wishbook? Chock full of toys?

Pickling and fermenting

No. 70, from an extended meditation on the parable of The Good Samaritan, the Holy Father writes:

It is remarkable how the various characters in the story change, once confronted by the painful sight of the poor man on the roadside. The distinctions between Judean and Samaritan, priest and merchant, fade into insignificance. Now there are only two kinds of people: those who care for someone who is hurting and those who pass by; those who bend down to help and those who look the other way and hurry off. Here, all our distinctions, labels and masks fall away: it is the moment of truth. Will we bend down to touch and heal the wounds of others? Will we bend down and help another to get up? This is today’s challenge, and we should not be afraid to face it. In moments of crisis, decisions become urgent. It could be said that, here and now, anyone who is neither a robber nor a passer-by is either injured himself or bearing an injured person on his shoulders.

Running haunt

Abba Joseph on friendship, and in particular, the “silent treatment” in the Sixteenth Conference:

But what sort of thing is it that we sometimes think that we are patient because, when we are aroused, we disdain to respond but mock our irritated brothers by a bitter silence or by a derisory movement or gesture in such a way that we provoke them to anger more by our taciturn behavior than we would have been able to incite them by passionate abuse, in this respect considering ourselves utterly blameless before God, since we have voiced nothing that could brand or condemn us according to the judgement of human beings? As if it were words alone and not the will in particular that is declared guilty in the sight of God, and just the sinful deed and not also the wish and the intention that should be considered wrong, and only what each person has done and not also what he wanted to do that should be submitted to judgement.

[…]

It is of no value not to speak, then, if we enjoin silence on ourselves in order to do by silence what would have been done by an outcry…

N.B.: this post contains nothing but amateur radio nerding, so consider yourself forewarned.

This past weekend was the CQ WW RTTY DX contest, which is one of the few contests that I try to do every year. I don't take it terribly seriously - if I can make 100 or so contacts over the course of a casual weekend's worth of operating, I'll take them. I enjoy working RTTY, and the big contests are about the only time I get a chance.

In any case, this was the first contest I was able to use the RSPDx as a pandapter for the FT-450D and it worked a treat. Seriously, seeing all of a band at once was something else, especially with all of the stations up and running all weekend. It looked like the matrix or something. Since I run an all-Linux shack, I spent a bit of time tinkering with various CAT setups until I landed on a good rigctld config that let gqrx and the transceiver steer each other, though I did need a little python widget for gqrx to complete the setup. I let fldigi log to CQRLOG for LoTW and eQSL, but will use fllog's data to submit the Cabrillo file for scoring. Everything ran great. As lovely as CubicSDR is, all I needed was basic visualization, and gqrx picked up  the SDRPlay soapysdr libraries just fine.

In any event, band conditions were wonky thanks to a big solar storm that hit us over the weekend, which made for some nice aurora photos but played havoc with HF propagation. Most of my contacts were domestic, but I managed a few good DX contacts: South America, Europe, and getting Hawaii is always fun. I strictly search-and-pounce; maybe next contest I'll try to run if I can find a spot. Getting everything wired together and working well was the main goal this weekend, so mission accomplished.

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

Every hour of the Divine Office begins with this verse from Psalm 69. It's safe to say that we have St. Benedict to thank for that - Chapter 18 of the Rule lays out the plan for monastic Psalmody and it leads right off with these words:

Each of the day hours begins with the verse, God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me. (Ps 69[70]:2), followed by "Glory be to the Father" and the appropriate hymn.

So it was a thousand years ago and so it is to this day. But why? We have to look back at Cassian again. In the tenth Conference, On Prayer, Abba Isaac concludes his two-part lesson by proposing a 'formula' for cultivating an perpetual awareness of God. This verse, he explains, contains all that is absolutely necessary:

Not without reason has this verse been selected from out of the whole body of Scripture. For it takes up all the emotions that can be applied to human nature and with great correctness and accuracy it adjusts itself to every condition and every attack. It contains an invocation of God in the face of any crisis, the humility of a devout confession, the watchfulness of concern and constant fear, a consciousness of one's own frailty, the assurance of being heard, and confidence in a protection that is always present and at hand, for whoever calls unceasingly on his protector is sure that he is always present. It contains a burning love and charity, an awareness of traps, and a fear of enemies. Seeing oneself surrounded by day and night, one confesses that one cannot be set free without the help of one's defender. This verse is an unassailable wall, an impenetrable breastplate, and a very strong shield for all those who labor under the attack of demons. It does not permit those troubled by acedia and anxiety of mind or those depressed by sadness or different kinds of thoughts to despair of a saving remedy, showing that he whom it invokes is always looking upon our struggles and is not detached from his suppliants. It warns those of us who are enjoying spiritual successes and are glad of heart that we must never be exalted or puffed up because of our good fortune, which it testifies cannot be maintained without the protection of God, for it begs him to come to our aid not only at all times but also quickly.

Abba Isaac beautifully explains why these words answer to all parts of the human condition, concluding with the exhortation to:

Let sleep overtake you as you meditate upon this verse until you are formed by having used it ceaselessly and are in the habit of repeating it even while asleep. Let this be the first thing that comes to you when you awake, let it anticipate every other thought as you get up, let it send you to your knees as you arise from your bed, let it bring you from there to every work and activity, and let it accompany you at all times.

It's such a short phrase; we may be tempted to pass right over it rather mechanically as we begin our prayer. It seems well worth lingering over in the moments between prayer, in times of difficulty or joy, frustration or elation, for it simultaneously acknowledges our dependence on God and our confidence in His love and boundless mercy. These aren't "magic words" - they're the cry from a child's heart to a loving parent! In them, we express our surrender and deepest desire: Come, Lord Jesus!

The full trailer for Dune has finally dropped.