Radio’s back and good as new. Having quite a bit of fun with the new FT8 digital mode. Also seemed to have finally ironed out some uncertainty around audio out levels to the radio from the PC, ALC, and so on. On the hunt for the next book to tackle. Something on the Theology of the Body, I’m thinking, to help get ready for the confirmation class I’m teaching this fall.

I finished Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues and liked it very much. I foresee going back to it frequently for refresh and review. Also thoroughly enjoyed Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners, so much so that I have another of his books, Theology and Sanity, ready to go for some upcoming travel. In the meanwhile, I’ve (slowly) begun working my way through the Summa Contra Gentiles. You can get it for the Kindle for a buck.

Looking ahead I can see a pivot into deeper scriptural study. I was perusing the reading lists at the Dominican House of Studies and a book on the Wisdom literature by Richard Clifford caught my eye. Apropos, I started re-reading Job last night, making it as far as Elihu’s appearance.

The HF rig is headed back to Yaesu. Something is wonky with the transmit circuit and it’s still under warranty, so off it goes. Bummer, too - the new FT8 digital mode is taking off and and I had just dipped my toe in it before everything went ahoo. Such is life.

All just order in the world is based on this: that man give man what is his due. On the other hand, everything unjust implies that what belongs to a man is withheld or taken away from him - and, once more, not by misfortune, failure of crops, fire or earthquake, but by man. \ — Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

And if anyone would reduce it to the proper form of a definition, he might say that “justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will”: and this is about the same definition as that given by the Philosopher (Ethic. v, 5) who says that “justice is a habit whereby a man is said to be capable of doing just actions in accordance with his choice.” \ — St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T., II II Q. 58

Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the “virtue of religion.” Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. \ — Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1807

I was asked recently about God’s justice and mercy and specifically, how to reconcile the two. The question caught me off-guard, so I asked for a bit of time to think before giving an answer.

If justice lies in giving someone what they deserve, then mercy is giving someone something that they don’t deserve. God is infinitely just, yes. This ought to catch our attention like nothing else, for what would that mean for most of us, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves? In the face of something so awesome, despair and existential paralysis are the only reasonable responses. Who among us could be saved?

But He is also infinitely merciful, and we can - and should - draw comfort from this. This doesn’t mean we algebraically balance both sides of the equation and then go about our lives. Balancing the two isn’t a puzzle for us to be solved: with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

Or in Catholic-speak: this is a mystery. Let it go.

If we want to try to wrap our minds around it, we have no better example than the parable of the prodigal son. A wastrel son asks for his inheritance early, a request tantamount to announcing to his father “I really would rather not wait until you’re dead,” and takes his leave of his family and home to go out into the world. Finding himself destitute and alone in the midst of famine, he comes to his senses - returning to right reason - and makes his way home. The father would have been completely justified in sending him away again. Who would have blamed him for it? Sorry you spent everything, but we’re done here. Go figure it out elsewhere. Instead, incredibly, the exact opposite happens: he is welcomed home and restored to his place. He desires our restoration and reconciliation. He will run to meet us on the road like the father in the parable.

Neither can truly exist without the other. Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution, says the Angelic Doctor. Justice without mercy, he continues, is cruelty. These two find their nexus in the person of Christ, Emmanuel, who made his dwelling among us and told us to be merciful as our Father is merciful.

Went ahead and robbed the hive. The top brood box was 60-70% full of honey, no brood at all, and still no activity in the super. I got into the lower brood box and only saw a little bit of larvae, and no eggs. Also a fair number of supersedure cells, so something’s gone awry in there. I’ll give them another week or two and re-check to see if a queen’s been hatched and laying. If not, I’m going to let them go and reboot with new stock next spring with 2-3 nucs. The yield is 24 lbs so far (about 2 gallons), and there’s still some to bottle. I crush-and-strain the honeycomb through a couple of coarse filters to keep out any bug parts and bits of wax.

Upside: it’s super cheap and I don’t have to worry about getting ahold of an extractor.

Downside: you lose the drawn comb and it takes a while for the honey to filter out.

It ends up cloudy and so forth from some pollen that gets in there and yes, it’s delicious. This year’s is almost overwhelmingly sweet.

Colony, that is. The questionable one petered out and that was that. Pulled the comb and put it in the freezer for awhile to kill off any wax worms. Should serve a split well later on this summer.

The other colony is doing well and has drawn out the second brood box. Still haven’t started in on the super yet. Hopefully soon. The weather has been cool and damp and I’m sort of crossing my fingers for some extended clover time. The nectar dearth traditionally starts about now but maybe we’ll get a little extension.

Radiowise: I ordered an LDG Z100+ antenna tuner and look forward to seeing if I can lick 60m and 20m on my end-fed setup.

The questionable colony seems to have laying workers, which means there’s no queen. Not much to do but wait until it peters out completely and then reclaim the comb for a split or something later on this summer. Main colony seems to be doing fine, though they still haven’t moved into the super yet. Clover starting to show up in places, and this is normally about the time that our main nectar flow kicks off. Not sure how much of a factor the weather has been, though.

Radiowise - have put the fan dipole back into place so I could get back on 20m for awhile. I need to just invest in another run of coax and an antenna switch and keep it all connected all the time.

Checked on the hives this weekend and went ahead and supered the big one. At the rate they’re going, I expect the top brood box to be drawn out completely in another week and I wanted to give them some room to keep working.

The second colony was doing OK at last check, but was looking a little lackadaisical from the outside and sure enough, seems to have superseded. I saw eggs and larvae but no capped brood, so hopefully things are starting to ramp up here shortly. If not, I should be able to move a frame or two over from the boomer and kickstart things. I had added a feeder with 1:1 last weekend to encourage comb building but they’re not finding it.

Couple of the kids suited up for some close up help. It was windier than I would have liked, but we inspect with the weather we have, not the weather we want. In and out without any sort of incident, so I’ll call it a win. They’re still working henbit and dead nettle which has been thick on the fields now for a couple of weeks. Dandelions are starting to come on now strong and it looks like some tree pollen is still out there. The next waves will be clover and privet. Cross your fingers.

Radio-wise, I was able to work Ireland and the Netherlands JT65/17m on Saturday morning. It was surprising (and fun) to have them coming back to my CQ rather than the other way around. Putzed around a bit decoding weather fax transmissions out of New Orleans and made a couple of PSK31 contacts in the evening. After running HRD/DM780 for a month or so, I’ve switched back to Linux (flrig/fldigi/cqrlog) and will probably stay put for awhile. Stability hasn’t been a problem and I’ll have an easier time transitioning from the VM to a dedicated workstation. It’ll certainly be cheaper in any case.

Still having a ball with the digital modes, obviously, and along with my PODXS 070 membership (#2497) I joined the 30M Digital Group last week too (#8217)

Eyeballing RTTY next.

I gave up on getting the EARCHI to tune up on 20m for now. As it is, I was able to make enough contacts on PSK31 (50 unique callsigns) to qualify for PODXS070 membership. I was awarded number 2497, in the off-chance we cross paths on the waterfall at some point. If I want 20m, I just run into the attic, move the feedline back to the dipole, and hoist it back into the rafters. Another piece of coax and an antenna switch would be pretty useful. I’m good for all bands between 80m and 6m (except for 60m, which the EARCHI can’t seem to do either).

Also had my first QSO via CONTESTIA the other day. It’s an interesting mode, and the users seem to eschew the macros that pervade PSK31. Had a nice chat with a guy down on the FL panhandle and will be on the lookout for more of those. So between JT9/JT65, PSK31, and the oddball other thing now and again (I saw a THOR-16 alert pop up the other day), I’ve got plenty to do. And I haven’t even really explored RTTY yet, beyond “reading the mail” and trying to get a sense of the QSO etiquette.

In other non-radio news, we’re in the midst of a late-season cold snap that’s had the bees hunkered down for a few days. We should be clear of it by the weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing them get back to work. Weather permitting, I’ll try and do a quick inspection of the upper brood boxes to see what’s up, with an eye to splitting into a third colony once things are warmer and drones are flying again. I’ve got supers with frames ready to go, though I won’t install the wax foundation until the last possible minute. It’s still sitting here, boxed up in my office. No way am I letting the wax moths into it. Swarm season will be upon us soon, so I’ll be putting boxes up in a few places and crossing my fingers for free bees.

Books: still working my way through Etienne Gilson on Aquinas and Anthony Esolen’s translation of Dante’s Purgatory.

I added back an RF choke (“big ugly balun” style) on the EARCHI antenna and seem to be able to get all of the 40m and 80m bands now. SWR is a little higher at the bottom of 40m, but still well within the internal ATU’s range. I’ve been able to work 10m, 15m, 17m, and 21m, including some great DX to South America on 10m yesterday.

If I can get 20m back, I’ll declare total victory across the board.

I recently bought an “EARCHI end-fed antenna”:www.earchi.org/proj_home… put it together in about 30 minutes (20 of which were winding and re-winding the toroid) and have been testing it out, by which I mean, trying to get it to tune

• in the attic,
• using the included 30' wire with and without a counterpoise,
• with and without an RF choke
• outside the attic
• with a longer wire and a counterpoise

I switched out the 30' wire they included with a 53' length, and here’s where things stand right now, using the internal ATU of the radio. The matchbox end is just inside a second story attic window, with a 16' counterpoise in the attic. The main antenna element slopes down to a nearby tree to about 6' above ground. It’s not ideal, but it’s the closest tree I have. Herewith the latest results:

So on the one hand, here are a whole pile of new bands! On the other hand, losing all of 20m and the bottom edge of 40m sucks because I just started working JT65, JT9 and PSK31 there. The consensus is that an external tuner will do the trick. Hard to fault the built-in one too badly, though. I will add an air choke back to the feedline at the matchbox, though, and see if it makes a difference. If nothing else it’ll minimize RF coming into the shack. Now if only the weather would clear out so conditions would improve a bit…

Two nice things. First, a blessing from the 1946 Roman Ritual that was originally for a telegraph, but adapts quite nicely for any radio-related endeavor:

O God, who walkest upon the wings of the wind, and thou alone workest wonders! By the power inherent in this metal, thou dost bring hither distant things quicker than lightning, and transferest present things to distant places. Therefore grant that, instructed by new inventions, we may merit, by thy bounteous grace, to come with greater certainty and facility to thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This courtesy of Monsignor Charles Pope’s blog.

The second is something I’ve posted before in previous blog incarnations (ha). The weather is warming up sooner than usual and I’ve been in and out of the apiary quite a bit over the last couple of days. The results of yesterday’s inspections look good: both colonies are showing good brood patterns, manageable levels of beetles, and lively foraging. A shipment of frames and foundation arrived today and I spent a bit of time cleaning off old woodenware and getting it ready. Appropriately, herewith an excerpt from a letter given by Pope Pius XII to a delegation of beekeepers who had come to pay their respects to The Holy Father after their annual meeting in Rome:

Ah, if men could and would listen to the lesson of the bees: if each one knew how to do his daily duty with order and love at the post assigned to him by Providence; if everyone knew how to enjoy, love, and use in the intimate harmony of the domestic hearth the little treasures accumulated away from home during his working day: if men, with delicacy, and to speak humanly, with elegance, and also, to speak as a Christian, with charity in their dealings with their fellow men, would only profit from the truth and the beauty conceived in their minds, from the nobility and goodness carried about in the intimate depths of their hearts, without offending by indiscretion and stupidity, without soiling the purity of their thought and their love, if they only knew how to assimilate without jealousy and pride the riches acquired by contact with their brothers and to develop them in their turn by reflection and the work of their own minds and hearts; if, in a word, they learned to do by intelligence and wisdom what bees do by instinct — how much better the world would be!

Working like bees with order and peace, men would learn to enjoy and have others enjoy the fruit of their labors, the honey and the was, the sweetness and the light in this life here below.

Instead, how often, alas, they spoil the better and more beautiful things by their harshness, violence, and malice: how often they seek and find in every thing only imperfection and evil, and misinterpreting even the most honest intentions, turn goodness into bitterness!

Let them learn therefore to enter with respect, trust, and charity into the minds and hearts of their fellow men discreetly but deeply; then they like the bees will know how to discover in the humblest souls the perfume of nobility and of eminent virtue, sometimes unknown even to those who possess it. They will learn to discern in the depths of the most obtuse intelligence, of the most uneducated persons, in the depths even of the minds of their enemies, at least some trace of healthy judgment, some glimmer of truth and goodness.

As for you, beloved sons, who while bending over your beehives perform with all care the most varied and delicate work for your bees, let your spirits rise in mystic flight to experience the kindness of God, to taste the sweetness of His word and His law (Ps. 18:11; 118: 103), to contemplate the divine light symbolized by the burning flame of the candle, product of the mother bee, as the Church sings in her admirable liturgy of Holy Saturday: Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam pretiosae hujus lampadis apis mater eduxit. (“For it is nourished by the melting wax, which the mother bee produced for the substance of this precious light”.)

The complete text is here.

So the DIY digital modes cable seems to be a success. I’ve been working JT65 on 20m and 40m, including one 3000 mile QSO with a station in Alaska. That’s my longest DX yet, and pretty amazing on only 5 watts. The full BOM for the interface ran about $20: some stereo plugs, a USB soundcard about the size of my thumb, and a mini-DIN adapter to connect to the radio itself. I already have a serial cable in there for rig control.

There was quite a bit of trial and error at first, and I ended up resoldering the mini DIN plug after I began suspecting that my initial run had introduced a short, confirmed with a multimeter. With that out of the way, it was a little more flailing to get rig control and decoding working at the same time. Oh, and to throw an extra twist in, I was alternating between Windows and Linux VMs for all of this.

Where I finally landed: as much as I want to rely on Linux 100% for my amateur radio stuff, the apps running in Windows (an early version of HRD, WSJT-X, and JT65-HF) have been rock solid, no issues whatsoever. They’ll run all day without freezing. I’ve tried old and new versions of WSJTX on Ubuntu, and it won’t run for more than a few minutes without freezing up. Running fldigi ends up cranking the CPU way up. HRD + Digital Master runs fine, though the UI is a bit on the complex side.

Some of this flailing would be from running everything in VMs. I’m eyeballing some dedicated hardware for this. I also need to see about switching out the quick/dirty choke on the antenna with something a little more substantial. At 5 watts of power, I’m getting moire patterns on monitor. At higher power, the wifi hub craps out and both monitors turn off completely.

Just cobbled together a BOM for a homemade USB/sound interface for the FT450D. I was all set to buy an off-the-shelf version (Signallink or RigBlaster), but after some research and a short conversation with another ham at last night’s club meeting, I figure there’s not much to these things. For $20 or so, it’s worth a shot: USB soundcard dongle, a 6-pin mini DIN connector (think: PS/2 mouse) and a couple of 3.5mm stereo plugs seem to be all that’s required. It’ll be fun to give a shot, anyway. I already have the serial connection bit worked out for rig control.

Speaking of the club meeting, we’ve a new president and he seems pretty energized. Hoping we’re able to pull off half the stuff he was sketching out at the meeting last night.

I think I finally have my head around most of CQRLOG, and especially its integration with LoTW. Parts of the UI had baffled me, but someone on /r/amateurradio set me straight and I think I’m good to go. I can definitely see how the hooks into fldigi will be useful once I get into digitial modes.

Had a chance to run the local ARES net last night, which is always a gas. Not nearly as nerve-wracking as the first time. Twenty-nine stations participated, which is pretty good. No major errors, except realizing afterward that I probably didn’t ID as frequently as I needed to. Will definitely have to keep one eye on the clock, or just follow along with the repeater when it IDs.

In other hobby news: the bees are getting out and about on our recent warm days. It looks like both colonies came through the winter well, which is a good sign. It looks like we’re headed for another cool spell, but I’ll be getting an order in for frames and foundation anyway. They’re working something - I saw white-gray and reddish pollen coming in. Dandelions are starting to show up, but not seeing much yellow stuff come in. The grey is probably early maples. The red is likely henbit, but none of the henbit on our property is blooming yet as far as I can tell. As usual with bees: who knows? Probably somewhere else.

During the Skywarn classes, the trainer mentioned that we our current El Nino pattern portended a mild winter followed by active spring weather. Active in terms of convective weather, which is what we were learning to identify and report. I am hoping this sets us up for a repeat of 2013-2014, which was an epic year in terms of honey production. I pulled nearly 8 gallons out of a single colony and got fooled into thinking it would like that every year. They showed me.

I significantly adjusted the 20m legs and re-tied them so that they’re not quite on the same plane as the 40m, hoping to reduce any interaction. Success! The radio is showing under 1.5 across the band, even before letting the ATU do it’s thing. I seem to be good for 40, 20, and 15m. I’ll probably add 10m for the sake of completeness and then lay off multiple trips to the attic while I’m ahead. Now it’s time to nerve up and actually key the mic a few times. O_o

…at least according to the meters. After some sanity checking from a couple of youtube videos and the Amateur radio subreddit, I shortened both legs by about 5" and now have a good, sub 1.5 SWR across 40m! Frustrating though it was at first, I learned the process of tuning/pruning, which should be useful for future antenna work. If I can pick up an inexpensive SWR meter at a hamfest, I probably will, but the meter in the radio is going to suffice for now.

Will work to re-add the 20m legs soon, but not right now. I’m done with the attic for a day or two.

The ham tickets are frequently described as a license to learn. The impatient guy in me just wants everything to work. On the other hand, trying, failing, and getting better is one of the actual points of the hobby and it’s good to be regularly reminded.

It turns out that my dipoles are wonkier than I thought. Possibly way wonkier. I finally figured out how to effectively use the SWR meter built into the FT-450D and both the 40m and 20m antennas are reading too short. At the low ends of the bands, the readings are pretty good. At the top end, they’re off the chart, which is not good at all.

How did I finally get an accurate reading? A commonly suggested setting for operators using external tuners is to map the C.S button onto the front to the SWR setting. Once this is done, pressing C.S will generate a 10 watt CW tone for as long you hold it down. The procedure is covered on page 16 of the fine manual, by the way. This kick-starts the external tuner and you’re off to the races. In my case, the constant signal on the internal SWR meter turned out to be enough for me to see that things were not optimal at all.

This is easily fixed, in principle, by splicing some more wire into them and then trimming back as appropriate. In practice, it’s not so simple, since it means returning to the attic and we all know how much fun that is. In any case, another possible culprit is an anti-static-electricity component built in to the Alpha Delta center insulator. I found some information on a forum thread that said it could make tuning screwy, and as the antenna is basically indoors, it’s probably not necessary. I can yank it easily enough to see if it makes a difference.

So I learned more about the radio, my antennas, and the rudiments of tuning them. I’ll call that a win.

Reviewing the FT450 docs and scrounging around online, I think the SWR readings for the 40/15 and 20 meter elements are good, and if not good, at least acceptable. I tried to make contact another station on 20m yesterday, but the band was fading fast and he lost me in the noise. Band conditions seem to be pretty good in the morning and mid-day hours, which are unfortunately when I also have to work. If I can pull it off without crashing through the ceiling again (since the most recent sheetrock repair is actually still drying as a type this), I’ll carefully add elements for 10m as well. That should about do it for the time being. Then it’s just a matter of, you know, actually making some contacts.

I had the radio connected to an old and pretty flaky Macbook for rig control. It worked, but was sort of meh. Probably a little more interesting when running stuff like fldigi, so a Signalink is probably in my future.

…in “Amateur Radio.” After a couple decades of putting it off, I got my Tech and General licenses this past summer.

Current gear:

• Yaesu FT-60R HT
• Yaesu FT-450D
• Kenwood TM-V71A
• Uniden BCD396XT scanner
• Mobilink TNC2
• Elk 2M/440
• Diamond NR770HN (for mobile work)
• Diamond SRH77CA
• Homebrew 40m dipole

The FT-60R goes with me when I fly. I also use it with the Elk for working satellites and the APRS digipeater on the ISS. When I’m not working satellites (which is not often, because it’s cold outside right now), the Elk sits up high in my office feeding the scanner. It works extremely well for both applications.

Satellites are a ball to work, by the way. I’m just a wimp when it comes to the cold. My first attempt to hit the UHF digipeater on the ISS made it into one of KG4AKV’s Space Comm videos.

The TM-V71A resides in my office most of the time, though my truck is wired up appropriately for a mobile installation as well (hence the mobile Diamond antenna). When it’s set up at home, the Kenwood feeds an Ed Fong Dual-band J-pole in the attic. I run an RF->IS iGate most of the time via Xastir on one band; the other VFO scans local repeaters. I took the NWS Skywarn classes, then joined the local club and ARES groups to help out during the bad weather (read: tornado) season.

I play around a (very) little bit with SDR in Linux, generally for decoding digital stuff on FM.

The HF rig is new. For the dipole, I picked up an Alpha Delta center insulator, some good coax, and a big roll of wire. Owing to the peculiarities of our property, it also has to live in the attic for the time being. My first contact was about 500-some-odd miles away, so it seems to be working pretty well. I want to get some more contacts under my belt and then start looking into some of the digital HF modes.

Until I put my foot through our bedroom ceiling fooling around with it. In any event, my attempts to add 20m elements haven’t yielded a whole lot of luck quite yet. I probably need to invest in an SWR meter to make sure things are tuned correctly. As it happens, the local club meets in a couple of days. I’ll ask around and see if anyone has one they’d like to sell. I tried to hand-build my first satellite antenna awhile back and could have used one then, too.

In reality, Advent is a preparation for the threefold coming of Christ; that is, it is commemorative of His historical coming in time, it prepares for His mystical coming into the hearts of men now, in the immediate present, and it looks forward to His final coming in the general judgement at the end of the world. \ — With Christ Through The Year, Bernard Strasser, O.S.B.

Complaints about the over-commercialization of Christmas go back at least as far as Lucy’s sotto voce revelation to Charlie Brown about the “big eastern syndicate” that was running the whole racket. Annual complaints about Yule-creep have become an annual tradition unto themselves. It wouldn’t be Fall without that creeping tension as everyone waits for the first note of Christmas music to show up, like the first swallow returning to San Juan Capistrano (though in point of fact, they’re actually hitting the road for Argentina in October).

All eyes are peeled for the first sighting of decorations for sale, reliably in the larger craft and hobby stores around Labor Day. Strings of orange lights are now par for the course in Halloween decorating, and forget about Thanksgiving. If you take part in any of the local Turkey Trot 5Ks on Thanksgiving morning, you’re as likely to see as many people dressed as elves and reindeer as you are pilgrims and Indians.

So it’s no wonder that by Christmas afternoon most everyone is done with a capital D. Box it up and get it out of here so we can at least sip our New Year’s cocktails in peace before grunting our way through the interminable grayness of JanuFebruMarch.

The antidote to the three month Blitzenkrieg is Advent. Dr. Russell Moore recently wrote about this recently in a piece on Christmas carols generally and hymnody in particular. The opening anecdote:

This guy started by lampooning one pop singer’s Christmas album, and I found myself smiling in agreement on how awful it is. But then he went on to say that he hated Christmas music across the board. That’s when I started to feel as though I might be in the presence of the Grinch. But then this man explained why he found the music so bad. It wasn’t just that it was cloying. It’s that it was boring.

“Christmas is boring because there’s no narrative tension,” he said. “It’s like reading a book with no conflict.”

Now he had my attention.

The narrative tension comment caught my eye. If ever a moment was pregnant (pun intended) with narrative tension, it’s the mystery of the Incarnation, that moment when the Author of the story shows up in its very pages to show the other characters a way out. It’s simultaneously the climax and opening the greatest story that ever was. To put it in Shakespearean terms: we’re reading Act III, the traditional high point of action in his plays, over and over without participating in either the rising tension of Acts I and II or the denouement of Acts IV and V. We’d get pretty sick of Hamlet if we only watched him stabbing Polonius over and over.

If Christmas lacks narrative tension, if it feels incomplete or somehow inauthentic, one response is to restore it to its proper context within the larger drama. Not only can we approach the day itself refreshed, the pent-up joy of preparation demands more than a single day from us. How much extra time? Would twelve days do it? The Church in her wisdom seems to think so.

The days are shorter and the weather (at least in this part of the world) tends to be less agreeable. We owe it to ourselves - our sanity if no other reason - to take time, slow down, and enjoy the meditative and, yes, penitential relief that Advent offers. We diminish the joy of Christmas not a single bit by taking time to prepare, slowly if possible, but at least mindfully if not. This is written, incidentally, not in a silent fortress of Christmas rectitude. We’re playing the music here, too, and goodness knows that the Christmas cookies from Trader Joe’s showed up about a week ago.

The point is that a little leavening goes a long way.

I finished Mary Eberstadt’s It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies last night. It probably seems pretty easy - maybe laughably easy - to dismiss Christians who see themselves under attack as just the latest round of election-year fearmongering. There they go again, with the culture war stuff, and so on. I believe Eberstadt lays out a pretty good argument in response, heavily footnoted with references and citations:

Professed belief can be professionally dangerous, depending on where you work. It can be existentially threatening, if you happen to live in parts of the middle east. If you’re an organization providing charitable services, you may be put of business soon. A parallel between some of today’s discourse and the witch-hunting, red-baiting, and daycare-abuse hysterias of the past is slowly becoming clear.

I have to confess at the outset that I am probably not the intended audience of the book. The court cases, cultural touchstones, and news recaps are featured heavily in most of my daily current-events reading.

I have just finished reading R.R. Reno’s Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, and will probably be chewing on its thesis for some time to come. Something has gone deeply, fundamentally askew in American society, but it wasn’t until I read through his assessment of meritocracy replacing the democratic in fits and starts that things began to snap into place.

Those who look to place his book into quick service of either liberal or conservative viewpoints are likely to be disappointed. Progressive liberalism may take the lion’s share of space, but conservative libertarianism turns out to be not too far removed - both share the same telos: man as the measure of all things, utility, and radical plasticity.

Both claim large portions of the one-percenter crowd, and both fall disproportionately hard on the lower and middle classes.

A careful, humane argument is laid out for Christians remaining as active leavening in society, rather than withdrawing from the public square. Whether this is a meant as a rebuttal of the so-called Benedict Option remains to be seen, though I’d be willing to bet that the sort of intentionally orthodox Christian communities described in Rod Dreher’s writings could serve as exactly the sort of leaven, salt, and light that Reno describes (and Christ demands).

The haves: one-percenters who have the social capital, wealth, and opportunities to navigate and prosper in an increasingly rootless, global economy. The have-nots: everyone else, trying to live out the American dream of general prosperity and self-fulfillment. Compare the middle-class jobs of our parent’s generation to those of today - many have benefited from worldwide productivity and falling prices of goods and services. No one can seriously argue against the technical progress the world has seen. This progress, though, seems to have come at a substantial price, a bill that is being presented over the course of a couple of generations.

Cultural values that have generally worked to preserve the fundament of society have eroded away, even while they’re still practiced at the upper end of the spectrum. To take but one example: however much lip service is given to the fluidity of family structure in popular culture, in one-percent-world, very few children are born out of wedlock. As another case: educational level is the strongest predictor of professed religious belief. The highly-educated, credentialed professionals most likely to be successful in today’s meritocracy are also the most likely to be found in a pew on Sunday.

And for everyone else? Once the family as an atomic unit of society has eroded away, so too do the social networks - the social capital - that provided the sort of safety net that is largely taken for granted at the top end. In the absence of this network of networks, the void is quickly filled by state programs of one form or another, and so the cycle continues.

As he’s admitted in a recent First Things podcast, some of the arguments are complex, but I think they’re cogently laid out and while there might be a temptation to despair, Reno rightfully reminds us that as Christians we are called to try, not succeed. Our ultimate end is not to be found anywhere on this side of the veil of death. There may come a time when America is no more, but the Gospel is for all eternity. In no way does this require withdrawal. There is work to be done - the works of mercy would be a good place to start. Challenging every new thing with the question and how does this affect the poor? would be next, provided we can see through specious justifications for the status quo.

Reno’s book has me thinking about Romano Guardini’s The End of the Modern World, a different sort of polemic written for a different time. Guardini’s book deeply informed Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si - indeed, Guardini is cited frequently throughout the entire document. It’s a relatively short book, and one I will probably be revisiting shortly. T.S. Eliot’s The Idea of a Christian Society, which served as something of an inspiration will probably also get a look.

In any case, two thumbs up for R.R. Reno’s Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, for whatever my thumbs are worth.

I started my reading project with the intent of re-sharpening some mental tools and perhaps acquiring a few new ones in my attempt to make sense of the insanity playing out on the national stage, which insanity seems to me something like a shadow-play cast by the rest of society at large. The temptation is to superficiality, but I think this does a deep disservice to larger questions. The trick is to forswear the immediate flash and noise - the glamour - and look a little deeper, a little closer.

Eight-plus months in, I can slowly begin feeling ideas - which is to say these questions - growing more concrete. This is to say nothing about answers, of course. I intended to start with a framework, and however dim it still seems in my mind, a structure is nevertheless forming. All men by nature desire to know, after all. I don’t pretend that this project will provide any answers. It will certainly not spell an end to the questions. First principles seemed like a good place to start.

I traveled for business today and landed early enough in the day to find a church where I could hear evening Mass. I walked for fifteen minutes, found the building, and then tried all of the wrong doors trying to get in. Someone noticed me, and I was welcomed, then ushered in. This is an urban church, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers and all of the attendant noise and activity of a large city. Inside: candles and the altar. The choir chanted the entrance antiphon and the liturgy began. It was strange being the obvious outsider for once. They stand, rather than kneel, during Communion. The music was different than what I’m used to. But none of this really mattered, because the Mass is the Mass is the Mass. It is always and everywhere the same.

The homily focused on Amoris Laetitia, and then segued to today’s Gospel, John 10:27-30. Father allowed that pastoral imagery was somewhat lost on him, but then he related an experience he had as a young man: traveling to Paris for study and taking a day-trip to see the cathedral in Chartres. The cathedral, he said, reminded him of a great mother hen, roosting among the town and gathering it to herself like a brood of chicks. Chicken analogies continued for awhile, but they worked, and it was a lovely homily.

We keep chickens at home (for eggs and amusement) and here I had traveled two thousand miles to hear a homily on chickens. If the priest had somehow managed to work in a bee reference, I think I might have fainted. I left feeling better, as I always do. I certainly felt closer to home, even if everyone around me was a complete stranger. Before the liturgy began, a parishioner called for visitors to raise their hands. I did, as did another man from Indiana,

We may never see you again, he said, so it’s important for you to know that you are welcome here, and that this is your community too.

Mission accomplished. God bless you all.

One may look upon death, as did antiquity, as a shadowy, inexplicable fate hovering over existence and infusing it with melancholy. Or as science sees it: the simple fact of organic disintegration. Thus conceived, death belongs so intrinsically to life, that one might define life as the movement towards death. One may greet death ecstatically as the Great, the Unspeakable, the Dionysian Mystery in which life culminates; or one may relegate it to the farthest corner of the mind, crowding it to the very brink of the consciousness and behaving as if it were non-existent. Death may also be regarded as the ultimate way out of the labyrinth of existence, a leap to be taken calmly or in despair. But as soon as we compare any one of these conceptions with Jesus' words on the subject, it becomes obvious how differently he speaks. \ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

On the fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear about the raising of Lazarus. This is the last of the three Scrutinies undertaken by the Elect - those who will be received into full communion with the Church during the Easter Vigil. The scrutinies guide the Elect into a deeper understanding of repentance and belief.

First, Christ is the living water to the Samaritan woman at the well.

Second, Christ is the true light of the world, bringing sight to the man born blind.

Finally, today: Christ is the resurrection and the life.

In each of these encounters with the Lord, the individual is permanently changed. The Samaritan woman returns to her village and urges others to come and see this man who knew everything about her. The Lord remains with them, and many come to believe. The man born blind progresses from simple facts - I was once was blind, and now I see - to possibilities - He is a prophet and finally, to adoration: Lord, I believe.

Lazarus moves from life to death, and into life again. The Lord has raised others: the daughter of Jairus, the widow’s son. The former is in the intimate surroundings of her bedroom - she is only asleep, he says. The second is almost nonchalant - the young man is raised almost in passing, as the Lord and his followers encounter the procession of the bier at the city’s gates.

But Lazarus is raised before a great crowd in the Lord’s final miracle before entering Jerusalem. Moreover, Jesus deliberately waited before returning and did not mince words with his followers: Lazarus is dead, not “asleep,” like the young girl.

By the time he returns to Bethany, four days have passed since his friend was laid in the tomb. The sisters of Lazarus are mourning: Lord, if only you had been here. Jesus is deeply moved; he weeps. He orders the stone removed, prays to his Father, and calls to Lazarus “in a loud voice.”

…behind the visible event, deep in the last recesses of the spirit, rages a battle…It is against the enemy of salvation that Jesus warns. Christ conquers death by conquering him to reigns in death: Satan. And he does not vanquish by magic, nor by superior spiritual force, but simply by being what he is: invulnerable to the root and vital through and through. He is life itself, that life which is grounded in perfect love to the Father. This is Jesus' strength \ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

Here there is no subtle progression, only a sudden reversal. Lazarus emerges from the tomb, still wrapped in his burial cloths.

The distractions of this world count for nothing in the face of this final, ultimate truth. Death, as Guardini writes, is not something that is simply tacked on to our life, but rather the direct outcome of the sort of live we live. In the act of our dying, a condition that is already present in our sinful nature asserts itself but which nevertheless should not exist. The totality of our disordered existence is made manifest in a single moment.

…Thou shalt lie down\ With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,\ The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,\ Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,\ All in one mighty sepulchre. \ — William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis (ll. 34-38)

To live a life of faith in Christ is to deny mortality the final word on the matter. The path to that blessed assurance leads first through Gethsemane and Golgotha.

Lazarus himself largely fades from view afterward but the word of his raising quickly spreads, one of the main reasons for Jesus causing such a commotion on entering Jerusalem a few days later. He is welcomed by jubilant crowds who will ultimately call for his execution.