On My Way to the Higher Countries

Tagged By Carrie

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:33:00 +0000

A - Attached or single: Delightfully attached. At the hip...
B - Best Friend: Betty, Art, Joshua, Jon, Nathan W, and Nathan H.
C - Cake or Pie: Yes, please!
D - Day of the Week: Friday afternoons...the weekend seems just about eternal right now, beer in hand, sun shining down.

E - Essential Item: Book and Computer (sadly enough about that second one...bleech...)

F - Favorite Color: The color of the mountains and ocean under a clear sky.
G - Gummi Bears or Worms: Worms. More tart and chewy.

H - Home town: Port Townsend, WA
I - Indulgences: Beer. Tillamook Chocolate Mudslide.
J - January or July?: January in New England, July in Seattle.
K - Kids: 13 or so...
L - Life is incomplete without: God. And books, friends, and beer.
M - Marriage Date: to be determined…
N - Number of Siblings: 3 brothers.
O - Oranges or Apples: Apples, but oranges have their place too. In juice.
P - Phobias or Fears: Spiders (in the house) Early death after a meaningless life. Lingering death. (Prefer to be blown up or just shot if I have to go young. Though, I do plan a grand exit the last 10 years or so, acting as crazy as possible while still keeping power of attorney.)
Q - Quote: Sursum Corda
R - Reason To Smile: Dogs. Particularly Golden Retrievers and German Shepherds. Kids. Sunshine. Cool breezes on hot days. The smell of Betty's hair. Sailboats, the beautiful 1989 M5 I saw on the freeway today. Garden. Mts. Rainier and Baker.

S - Season: Fall in New England, Summer in Seattle.
T - Tag Three: Too lazy.
U - Unknown fact about me: My sinuses make dolphin noises. I was also raised by pirates. (Seriously!)
V - Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: If God hadn't wanted us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of tofu. Truly though...I like it mooing when it hits the plate.
W - Worst Habit: Their name is legion...
X - Rays or Ultrasounds: I don't have health insurance...so for now, 'it's not a tumah'
Y - Your favorite food: Tie: Thai and Lebanese
Z - Zodiac Sign: Taurus. I can also produce the bull.

Privilege...Courtesy of Beth

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:41:00 +0000

This exercise in recognizing privilege was developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University.

Directions: Bold the statements that apply to you.

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher social class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18. (I paid for them.)
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child. (My mom painted it?)
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parents owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I'm a Godfather

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:26:00 +0000

Here's the proof...
He name is Ainsley Elaine Mahar.
To date her primary responses to me have included falling asleep and throwing up. Both of which I've had before from others. I'm looking forward to more complex and rich interactions in the future. Particularly when it comes to teenage boyfriends...

I Love my German Shepherd

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:56:00 +0000

http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.3323/pub_detail.asp

If You Love the Poor, Become a Capitalist...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:48:00 +0000

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/cuckoo-for-switzerland

Why I Don't Watch the News...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:53:00 +0000

I don't watch TV. I'm rather busy and it seems to be largely a waste of time. Not to mention it turns ones brains to mush and makes an all too mold-able clay of the heart. That being said, TV News is the worst aspect of TV...

To wit,

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-02-13.html#feature

Lately...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:16:00 +0000

So,
It's been quite some time since my last post. A lot has happened, and seemingly not much has happened at all. That's how it always feels to me when I survey a chunk of my life. I know some important things have happened, but rarely have I slowed down enough to take notice of them. I need more liturgy in my life, and a little less desperation. Anyhoo, for those of you who care, here is what's up:

I've moved back to Seattle to pursue my girlfriend Betty. She flew out to to Boston, and we drove across the country in Emma, my Black Honda Civic, with WAY too much crap packed into and on the car. We live in a glorious and spacious land.

Betty and I are getting on swimmingly.

I miss the North Shore quite a lot, and will never carp about New England ever again. It's a positively wonderful place. (Particularly in light of Christ Church, Beer and Bull, the sunny winters, the vicious wild Turkeys, the Wrights, and the Mahars)

Times have been hard here in Seattle. I've been homeless up until a few weeks ago and my job has been unpleasant to say the least. Hopefully in the next couple days I will have a decent job for the first time since I've moved back. Though, I'm thankful to God for my amazing friends (particularly Jon, Arthur, Josh, and Nathan) who have been no small help in this time.

I've been working at a call center for Starbucks. Daily I contemplate seppuku as an act of protest. It's subhuman work, being a living cog in a dead machine. If there were a computer program with the adaptive and improvisational abilities of human being, we'd be replaced before the week was out. Our flesh and blood is merely provisional. We are expendable, and treated accordingly. Though, in all honestly, I do suffer from a bit of an entitlement mentality because I've worked sucky jobs for too long in my own (rather spoiled) estimation.

I've decided that the following things are spiritually important on a scale that I never realized before:
Tea
Homebrewing
Gardening
The keeping of horses and other livestock
Wooden sailboats(you that know me will readily acknowledge that I've always seen sailing in spiritual terms, but now things have moved on to another metaphysical iteration...ask if you're interested)

Sacramentalism continues to more fully work it's way into the nooks and crannies of life. Epistemologically and ethically it's been particularly relevant of late. The beat of the bird's wings is the beat of my heart is the rhythm of God's masterpiece.

Sigur Ros is positively the most beautiful contemporary music I've ever encountered.

I've come to miss the following people acutely: the Mahars, the Wrights, the Conrows, Lydia Frazier, Jurgen, Mario, and Bart; George Wingate, Thomas Howard, and the rest of Beer and Bull as well, the couple who hosted Beer and Bull (whose names I can't remember right now, to my great shame!). The Fee family. Richard Lints. Pete and Christine Alvarez. Arica Heald. Mark Dirksen and Beth Maynard. Matt Miller. Eve Amendola.

I'm coaching my old debate team from college. It's fun, and it pays well. How nice to get paid for something that you enjoy doing and really believe in, so to speak.

I live in a community house, where I often lead liturgical prayer, and have many conversations that hopefully bring a little bit of Christ into people's lives.

My car has been stolen. I had such fun plans for a new camo paint job and some interesting decals on the side too...this has been a significant financial setback for me.

I have become a neo-Thomist as far as I can tell. I've been reading and taking notes as if this were true, anyway. Hopefully Fordham, St. Louis, or Boston College take a liking to me.

Ironically, the poorer I've gotten and the harder things have been, the more conservative I've become. For a decent (though not exhaustive) summation of some of my thoughts, see this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_Conservatism
I'm open to discussion and expansion on such matters. Unlike many of my liberal friends.

All that to say, it's now the Lenten season. Reflection, self-denial, participation with Christ, ultimately...repentance and hope.

I hope, for those of you that care, that this catches you up a bit

Love,
t.

Christmas Wishlist

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:26:00 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/V1IK967LXSNO

Seminary

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 01:28:00 +0000

CAVEAT LECTOR (Reader Beware!)
It should be known that I wrote this at a point of deep despair and resentment against the institution I am getting ready to leave now. Things have gotten markedly better. I am not angry anymore like I was when I composed this. Now it's just funny.

What I’ve Learned at Seminary
By Troy A. Henley

1. Pretty much no one cares about you, and the ones that do have no power except to commiserate with you.

2. You are on your own. No one is going to help you. If you find help, they’ll have no money or power to change anything. The people with the money and power are about as interested in you as they are the plague. Correction, the plague has a bit of mystique and cache about it, being deadly and all. i.e. “I met the Plague once. He was cool. I liked his Ferrari.” You, on the other hand, are pond scum. Deal with it.

3. We are kind to each other only inasmuch as it assuages our consciences for not really giving a damn.

4. God may not like you after all. Thanks Calvin.

5. Christians are as dysfunctional, if not more so, than the folks ‘in the world.’

6. Life is hard. Really hard. It doesn’t get any better. (see point #4)

7. If you’re white and poor, you’re a non-entity. In more ways than one.

8. Common sense has no place here. At all. Ever. Esoteric hyper-spirituality or rote rationalism are your two choices. Hurry up and choose. You’re holding up the line.

9. Don’t be too fat, no one will want to date you.

10. Don’t be too skinny, no one will want to date you.

11. Don’t be different, no one will want to date you.

12. Don’t be like everyone else, you’ll be boring. And no one will want to date you.

13. Don’t be Arminian, no one will think you have a brain.

14. Don’t be Calvinist, no one will think you have a heart.

15. Be loud, self-aggrandizing and puerile is all your actions and mannerisms, and people will respect you for it.

16. Be kind or at all sophisticated in speech and manner and you’ll be thought strange. Or a flirt.

17. Never flirt with anyone or ask anyone out (You lecher, you’re supposed to be spiritual!)

18. Always flirt and ask people out (What, are you too good for me?)

19. If you are not perfect in every way, become androgynous and accept your fate.

20. Don’t break taboos. Ever.

21. You will be gossiped about. A lot if you have even a whiff of individuality about you.

22. Be happy. Or else…

23. If you can’t be happy, at least be drunk.

24. There is always one good cop who likes to talk with you and share a smoke on the steps. Then there is always a bad cop. He will shoot you. Then ticket your dead body for littering.

25. Don’t be too smart, or prone to too many intelligent questions or conversations, no one will think you love Jesus.

26. Don’t love Jesus too obviously, people will think you never ask any good questions, or can hold up your end of a conversation.

27. Practice before you come.

a. Have someone you trust beat you with a hardwood dowel several times a week for the year leading up to your departure for Seminary. The dowel should be at least as big around as your thumb. Preferably bigger. Bible College can be good practice also.

b. Prepare for fun and engaging roommate experiences. Sleep with a wet dog in the room and/or dry your soaked gym shoes on the heater. Stare at the wall for hours to get accustomed to the level of intellectual discourse you’ll soon be taking part in.

c. Wear a hair shirt

28. Get ready for New England culture:

a. Find the surliest drunk you know. Now shackle your legs together. Keep him liquored up and listen to “Shipping out to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys on repeat.

b. Administer blunt force trauma to your skull until all your ‘r’ sounds become ‘ahh’ sounds. Redeploy aforementioned ‘r’ sounds as a suffix to words ending with vowels. i.e. “sofer” as opposed to “sofa” or "cah" rather than "car."

c. Driving: Take your family sedan off road while having your friends do their best to hit you with their cars. Scream obscenities and practice unkind gestures for quick use in the cabin of the car.

d. Start hating where you’re from right now. No place will ever be as cool as New England. And I’ll kick your lily ass if you tell me different. Wait...you don't like the Yankees do you?

29. Bring a snow shovel.

30. Adopt the mindset of a farmed mushroom: Be content living in the dark and having shit thrown on you.

31. Always check your mail. Notices of loan default and forced “F” grades go there first.

32. Eat at the cafeteria a lot. You’ll need the protective layer of blubber to see you through the winter. Fatty.

Stupid Things I Think about While Praying...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:21:00 +0000

So, this morning in Church during the "Prayers of the People, Form IV" my mind wandered. Now, before anyone goes 'ahah, proof the deadness and woodeness of that silly old liturgical Christianity!' let me say one thing. Everyone wanders off during prayer, and the beauty of the liturgy is that it can go on without me. I'm not conjuring up spiritual feelings and fervor when they just aren't there. I can come with my humanity, my broken-ness, my sinfulness, (and even occasionally, some HONEST fervor), And still the real worship of God moves forward, even when I don't because of my weakness. The liturgy takes bringing glory to God off my shoulders. The liturgy takes into account my weakness, and makes a way for a less than perfect shmoe like me to know myself in my sinfulness, deal with my sin, know myself as an object of God's love, and then to give Him glory and thanks, and receive Him into myself in fellowship through the Eucharist, and through the Spirit...

More importantly, when I do check back in, I still know whats going on, and I'm not fishing around for some hyper-spiritual mish-mash to recover my appearances of holiness.

Anyway...that being said, what I really wanted to talk about is how much I am amazed at my own weirdness. This morning, during prayer, after the lady that was leading us in prayer (I was doing good up until that point, staying on the ball...) asked God to 'help us Lord to use the resources of the earth rightly, to your glory and to serve others...' my mind began it's first little trip. I though, 'mmm, I like using the the earth...hiking is fun...what if I go hiking in the Southwest someday....what about rattlesnakes? What if one crawls into my sleeping bag for warmth? What would I do?" And so it went....I thought out the options: a fast exit, hoping the little bastard wouldn't get a hold of me before I got out. Perhaps I could slip my arm out quietly and push down on the outside of the sleeping bag between my self and the snake so I could get out with the snake pinned to one side. Maybe I could just go the 'direct' route and keep a big stick near the head of my sleeping bag to whack it to death...

I came to somewhere near the end around where the lady was asking God to have mercy on those who had died and take them into His presence. Then I heard my own voice...
"Is that really want I sound like? Man, I must be distracting...I hope I'm not distracting Nathan....shit, I'm distracting myself...where are we again?"

Intellectual Cowardice

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:39:00 +0000

I can bear many things, one thing I cannot, however, are those who abandon meaningful conversations, or refuse to give reasons for actions that have ramifications for others. Perhaps they do not want to go to the trouble of defending themselves and making sense of their actions. Perhaps they just don't like to act in ways that make sense. Perhaps they are afraid of Truth, thinking He will enslave them. They forget that ultimately we will all serve something, whether we are conscious of it or not, and that the only real choice is whether your Master will be beneficent or cruel. Will you be driven by it to Death, or to Life? I am not claiming to be Truth, or even to being particularly truth-full myself. But I know the difference between one who seeks, and one who just doesn't give a damn. Albert Borgmann speaks eloquently to this. To wit,

“At times sullenness is voiced in telling phrases. Indolence comes to the fore in the expression, so often delivered with finality, “it’s my choice.” What sounds like the assumption of ultimate responsibility is usually the flourish of moral retreat, the refusal to discuss, explain, and justify a decision, and the retirement to self-indulgence.”

Albert Borgmann in Crossing the Postmodern Divide

A good article from aldaily.com on Free Speech in France...yes it matters to us too...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 14:32:00 +0000

The Redeker Affair
Christian Delacampagne

This past September, Robert Redeker, a French high-school philosophy teacher at Saint-Orens-de-Gameville (a small city near Toulouse) and the author of several scholarly books, published an op-ed article in the newspaper Le Figaro. The piece, a response to the controversy over remarks about Islam made a week earlier by Pope Benedict XVI, was titled “What Should the Free World Do in the Face of Islamist Intimidation?” It was a fierce critique of what Redeker called Islam’s attempt “to place its leaden cloak over the world.” If Jesus was “a master of love,” he wrote, Muhammad was “a master of hatred.” Of the three “religions of the book,” Islam was the only one that overtly preached holy war. “Whereas Judaism and Christianity are religions whose rites reject and delegitimize violence,” Redeker concluded, “Islam is a religion that, in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred.”

Having been posted online, the article was read all across France and in other countries as well, and was quickly translated into Arabic. Denunciations of Redeker’s “insult of the prophet” spread across the Internet. Within a day after publication, the piece was being condemned on al Jazeera by the popular on-air preacher (and unofficial voice of Osama bin Laden) Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi. In Egypt and Tunisia, the offending issue of Le Figaro was banned.

As for Redeker himself, he soon received a large number of threats by letter and e-mail. On an Islamist website, he was sentenced to death in a posting that, in order to facilitate a potential assassin’s task, also provided his address and a photograph of his home. Fearful for himself and his family, Redeker sought protection from the local police, who transferred the case to the national counter-espionage authorities. On their advice, Redeker, his wife, and three children fled their home and took shelter in a secret location. Since then, they have moved from city to city, at their own expense, under police protection. Another teacher has been appointed by the French Ministry of Education to replace Redeker, who will probably never see his students again.

As a long-time friend of Robert Redeker, I was, of course, deeply disturbed by these events and worried about his and his family’s safety. My distress was only compounded by the reaction to the Redeker affair of the French establishment. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was virtually the only public official who took an honorable position, declaring that this “fatwa” against a French intellectual was “unacceptable.” A group of centrist intellectuals, including Pascal Bruckner, Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksmann, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, also issued an appeal on Redeker’s behalf and in defense of France’s “most fundamental liberties.”

But the vast majority of responses, even when couched as defenses of the right to free speech, were in fact hostile to the philosophy teacher. The Communist mayor of Saint-Orens-de-Gameville, echoed by the head of Redeker’s school, deplored the fact that he had included his affiliation at the end of the article. France’s two largest teachers’ unions, both of them socialist, stressed that “they did not share Redeker’s convictions.” The leading leftist human-rights organizations went much farther, denouncing his “irresponsible declarations” and “putrid ideas.” A fellow high-school philosophy teacher, Pierre Tévanian, declared (on a Muslim website) that Redeker was “a racist” who should be severely punished by his school’s administration. Even Gilles de Robien, the French minister of education, criticized Redeker for acting “as if he represented the French educational system”—a bizarre charge against the author of a piece clearly marked as personal opinion.

Among members of the media, Redeker was scolded for articulating his ideas so incautiously. On the radio channel Europe 1, Jean-Pierre Elkabach invited the beleaguered teacher to express his “regret.” The editorial board of Le Monde, France’s newspaper of record, characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, misleading, and insulting.” It went so far as to call his remarks about Muhammad “a blasphemy,” implying that the founder of Islam must be treated even by non-Muslims in a non-Muslim country as an object not of investigation but of veneration.

To be sure, Redeker’s language had not been gentle. But since when has that been a requirement of intellectual discourse in France? One can often find similarly strong language in, say, Les Temps Modernes, the journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and on whose editorial board Redeker has long served. Yet, to judge by the response to his “offense,” large sectors of the French intellectual and political establishment have carved out an exception to this hard-won tradition of open discussion: when it comes to Islam (as opposed to Christianity or Judaism), freedom of speech must respect definite limits.

How did France reach this point?

The first and most immediate explanation is that the country is about to enter an important electoral season, with races for the presidency and legislature scheduled for May of this year. As many as five million Muslims reside on French territory, and most of them are citizens eligible to vote. No political party can afford to be caught in a serious confrontation with this growing community. Moreover, memories are still fresh of the riots that roiled the suburbs of the largest French cities in the fall of 2005. Similar if less dramatic violence remains an ongoing problem in these areas, with their large populations of Muslim, French-born young people of African or North African descent, and fear of another conflagration has steered the French political class away from anything touching on the subject of Islam.

More puzzling is the complicity of the French media. Naturally, they too wish to avoid being perceived as adversaries of the Muslim community. But they have gone beyond the mere exercise of caution. In the wake of the riots, major newspapers, magazines, and news shows have shown little interest in the sociological reality of French Islam, especially the rising influence of Islamist propaganda. Thus, it was not a journalist but the extreme-Right politician Philippe de Villiers who drew attention recently to the Islamization of the workforce at Charles de Gaulle airport. This phenomenon was hardly a secret—the airport is located in the mostly Muslim département of Seine-Saint-Denis, and hires locally—but no respectable publication saw fit to investigate it. In the face of Islamic militancy, French journalists as a class would seem to have lost their nerve and compromised their professionalism.

As for the French academic world, that is a more complicated story. Working on sensitive issues related to race and religion has never been an easy choice for a French scholar, especially one whose views fall outside the conventions of the academic Left. During the 1950’s, the great historian Fernand Braudel tried to discourage Léon Poliakov from writing a Ph.D. on anti-Semitism, a subject about which Poliakov would go on to compose many distinguished books. Years later, I too was steered away from the subject of anti-Semitism by well-intentioned people concerned about my career prospects. Having ignored their advice and published a book titled L’Invention du Racisme (1983), I was unable to find a job at the university level. Happily, I have fared better in the United States.

Today in France, research on the most contested issues of race and religion is taboo unless one exhibits the “right” politics. To speak at conferences or to be considered for important posts, a scholar must be prepared to describe the colonial era in French history as nothing less than an exercise in genocide and to denounce American policy in the Middle East as barbaric cruelty. Those who refuse to comply find themselves shut out.

A notable instance of such blacklisting occurred in 2004, when a scholar applied for a three-year position at the prestigious Collège International de Philosophie. His credentials were formidable, but when his “pro-American” views became known to one member of the committee (the candidate, it seemed, was not completely opposed to the war in Iraq), a quiet but effective campaign was organized to deny him the post. Details of the case were reported in the weekly newspaper L’Express. The name of the unjustly treated candidate was Robert Redeker.

One can point to many explanations for these extraordinary, interlocking biases, but I am convinced that their origins lie in the complex history of the relationship between France and the Arab world over the past 150 years. The dominant factor in that history, of course, has been France’s various efforts to establish an overseas dominion.

French colonialism started in Algeria in 1830, later extended to Morocco and Tunisia, and eventually reached Syria and Lebanon when, after World War I, the Versailles Treaty made France the mandatory power in those two newly established countries. In Algeria, the colonial period was the longest, lasting until 1962, and the most bitter. Its final years were stained by a bloody war of independence, in the course of which Algeria’s Muslim clerics played a crucial role, not only by supporting the military operations of the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) but by making Islam the defining ideology of the war.

So fraught a historical background might be assumed to imply the persistence of a strong antagonism between the ex-colonial power and its former colonies. But, strangely enough, the reality has been just the opposite. With the exception of the aborted Suez expedition of 1956, when France was allied with Great Britain and Israel against Egypt, successive French governments have maintained notably friendly relations with the Arab countries. Indeed, if there has been one permanent trend in French diplomacy from Charles de Gaulle to François Mitterrand to Jacques Chirac, it is the country’s firm position in the pro-Arab camp.1

The foundation for this alliance was laid by de Gaulle. At the end of the Algerian war, he decided that it was vital to restore good relations with the Arab leaders, especially with the Egyptian regime, which had strongly backed the FLN. To achieve that goal, however, he had to break the diplomatic and military partnership that had existed between France and Israel since 1948. The Six-Day war of 1967 offered him the pretext he needed.

The most vivid episode of this realignment (and certainly the most famous) was de Gaulle’s remark, at a November 1967 press conference, that the Jews were “an elite people, self-assured and domineering.” The significance of this comment was not lost on the distinguished commentator and political scientist Raymond Aron, who recognized it as a classic anti-Semitic trope about the supposed Jewish thirst for power. It was de Gaulle’s signal of a new turn in French foreign policy—going beyond close relations with the Arabs to an embrace of the anti-Zionist cause.

De Gaulle’s shift reinforced other ideological trends in French society that were already strong at the time and remain powerful today. The first of these was the long-standing resistance of French Catholics to seeing Palestine—the Holy Land, the birthplace of Jesus—returned to the Jews, whom they regarded as the enemies of Christ. More practically, the Church had always sought good relations with Islamic regimes in order to protect Christian interests in the region. France’s early sympathy with Israel had strained those efforts; de Gaulle gave the Church a diplomatic asset.

Of even more enduring importance was support for de Gaulle’s about-face among ideological partisans of the “non-aligned countries,” as the third world was then called. For these elements in French politics, Zionism was just a form of Western colonialism, now backed by the brute strength of an imperialistic United States. This idea has become, over the years, nearly universal on the French Left, to say nothing of bien-pensants intellectuals elsewhere in the West. Indeed, one of the sad ironies of French politics is that the Left, through its unthinking hatred of Israel, has become much more anti-Semitic than the extreme Right, with its long and well-known history of animosity toward Jews.

A final (if often unappreciated) factor in the peculiar attitude of French elites toward the Arab world has been the influence of the country’s academic community of “Orientalists.” As a result of colonization, French universities were early in developing programs of North African and Middle Eastern studies. But the field, despite its many achievements, was tainted from the outset by some of the ugliest ideological undercurrents in French society.

The first of the great Orientalists was Louis Massignon (1883-1962), a Catholic intellectual who published his first books a century ago and, as France became embroiled in the Dreyfus affair, moved openly in anti-Semitic circles. Then along came a famous trio: Jacques Berque (1910-95), Maxime Rodinson (1915-2004), and Vincent Monteil (1913-2005). An expert on Indonesia, Monteil converted to Islam and, after World War II, subscribed to various right-wing theories denying the reality of the Holocaust. Rodinson, a Jew, was a Communist activist during the cold war. As for Berque, who grew up in colonial Morocco, he lived for so many years in Arab countries, both in North Africa and the Middle East, that with the passing of time he became progressively less able to maintain a critical distance.

Indeed, while working in the cultural section of the French embassy in Cairo in 1988, I was regaled by Berque over lunch one day with stories of his complete assimilation into Arab culture. Traveling through Iraq in the early 1970’s, he had pretended to be a Moroccan, and as such was invited by the imam of a big mosque to comment on a Qur’anic verse during the Friday sermon. Had he been discovered as an imposter, he would have risked death. But, as Berque happily told the story, his Arabic was so fluent (he was the only non-Arab member of the Egyptian Academy of Arabic Language) and his knowledge of the material so extensive that no Iraqi could have detected he was a mere Frenchman.

Nor was Berque’s identification with the Arabs strictly cultural. Looking back over his political pronouncements, one finds a clear pattern. He called Israel’s birth an illegitimate act and insisted that the Jewish state would not survive more than a few years. In 1967, he predicted that Nasser would wipe Israel off the map. In the late 1980’s, he declared that Saddam Hussein was a great socialist and secular leader who was going to bring democracy to the Middle East, and demanded that France treat him as a good friend. In his final years, he argued that Islamism might make inroads here and there, but that it could never gain much of foothold among elites in a country like Egypt.

Unfortunately, today’s heirs to this Orientalist tradition in France entertain similar biases and are no more reliable in their political judgments. Gilles Kepel, in The War for Muslim Minds (2004), has proclaimed Islamism a failure and al Qaeda a spent force, going so far as to describe the attacks of 9/11 as an act of sheer despair. Olivier Roy, the author of Globalized Islam (2004), sees Islamism as a revolutionary program that answers popular aspirations, even if it happens to express itself in reactionary terms. Another scholar, François Burgat, argues in Face to Face with Political Islam (2005) that Western countries, instead of fighting Islamist leaders, should enter into a friendly dialogue with them.

None of this is to suggest that these scholars lack knowledge of the political situation in the Arab world. But they give a distorted image of that situation—and, I believe, they do so deliberately. Eager to discourage any sense of menace that the West might feel from the direction of Islam and the Arabs, they minimize both the importance of radical Islamism and its threat to international peace and freedom. In defiance of what the Islamists themselves say, France’s Orientalists insist time and again that there is no “clash of civilizations.”

The effect of these views on the wider political discussion in France is profound. The present generation of Orientalists is omnipresent in the French media, unavoidable on radio and television. They assure the country that the progressive Islamization of European suburbs, plain for all to see, poses no danger. They suggest that the problem with Israel is its very existence. They inspire the open sympathy with Hamas, Hizballah, and Iran that can be found in newspapers like Le Monde and Libération. And they encourage the use of the term “Islamophobia” (a coinage of Iranian clerics) in order to delegitimize all those who might be tempted to disagree with them—individuals like Redeker.

I am neither an Orientalist nor any kind of expert on the issue of Islamism. But I have spent years in the Middle East, as well as in other Muslim countries, and I know that the situation in the Islamic world corresponds very little to the wishful thinking of so many French scholars, journalists, and political leaders. A quick look at a world map—from Chechnya to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir, southern Thailand, and the southern Philippines—reveals that the planet’s most devastating wars are now of the jihadist type. All are fueled by Islamism.

I also know that the growing anti-Semitism one encounters in France, combined with the increasing tendency of the country’s elite to speak of Israel as a “temporary” state, is not only dangerous in itself but bad for France. A republic founded on principles of freedom and equality cannot easily accommodate such noxious ideas. Corruption is difficult to confine, and the moral and intellectual compromises that allow educated people to deny the nature and reality of today’s struggle against Islamism—a struggle facing the West as whole—soon find their way into other aspects of public life.

When I finally reached Robert Redeker by e-mail a few weeks after he had gone into hiding with his family, he was still astonished by his fate. “I never thought that such a thing could happen in our old Republican France,” he wrote to me in a short, stoic message. Neither did I. But things have changed. What was once unthinkable in France has already come to pass.

I'm Thankful for...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:03:00 +0000

Jesus (and other memebers of the Trinity)
Liturgical Worship
The Church Calendar
The Incarnation, and all the good things that stem from it
My Family
My Friends
Dogs and other mammals, (because being affectionate with reptiles seems to be a loosing proposition from the start...think about cuddling with an Iguana) specifically my dog Heather.
Oceans
Mountains
Creeks
Snow
Open Wilderness, be it alpine or otherwise
Sunsets
Snowboarding
German Automobiles
Beer
German Beer?
Liturgical Incense
Priestly Vestments
The Bible
New Zealand
Warm Clothes
Food in abundance
The benefits of being born in America
Hiking
Truth
Beauty
Wildebeest
Seattle, WA
Vancouver, BC
Sailing
Pipe Smoking
The Oregon Coast
Aristotle
Sir Thomas More
Albert Borgmann
My Teachers
Letter Writing
Scarves
Mellowing with age
Hookah, Yerba Mate, eating a shared meal without utensils, and anything else that forces one to sit down, speak in quieter tones, share germs, participate in a high-context and relational event, and otherwise violate American notions of hyper-individuality.
Meals with friends
Wine
Sunday nights at Jon's apartment
Wooden Boats
Bono
The San Juan Islands
The Economist (magazine)
Music
Cheese

I've never come so near to completely agreeing with anyone in my life...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:03:00 +0000

WE ARE ALL BIG BABIES

Bombarded by petty rules, bossy advice and celebrity tittle-tattle, we have forgotton how to be adults. It's time we grew up, says Michael Bywater

I imagine myself to be a grown-up, as, presumably, do you. You think that because you negotiated puberty and developed secondary sexual characteristics, and got qualifications and opened a bank account and subjected yourself to the scrutiny of anti-terrorism laws and anti-money-laundering laws and learned to drive and got a job and perhaps a spouse and maybe children, and quite possibly even pay your taxes, you are a grown-up.

It's time to stop behaving like children and face up to responsibilities

Sometimes, things strike you as a bit odd. It strikes you, for example, as out of kilter that between getting off the plane and reaching the outside world at London Heathrow there were, at last count, 93 notices telling you off for things you hadn't done or which it hadn't even occurred to you to do.

The plain fact is that you are being treated like a baby. You, I, all of us are on the receiving end of a sustained campaign to infantilise us: our tastes, our responses, our behaviour, our private thoughts, our decisions, our buying habits, our philosophies, our political sensibilities.

We are told what to think. We are talked down to. We are distracted with colour and movement, patronised, spoon-fed, our responses pre-empted and our autonomy eroded with a fine, rich, heavily funded contempt.

Here is a random sample of what is implicit in the assumptions that are made about all of us: We are unable to control our appetites;
advertisement

We cannot postpone gratification;

We have little sense of self, and what we do have is deformed;

We have no articulable inner life;

We are pre- or sub-literate;

We are solipsistic;

We do not have the ability to exercise responsible autonomy;

We require constant surveillance and constant admonition;

We are potentially, if not actually, violent;

We have no social sensibilities beyond the tribal;

We have no discrimination.

Do we still want to sign up to this? Do we want to be Big Babies?

My grandfather was born in 1888 and he didn't have a lifestyle. He didn't need one: he had a life.

He had a hat and a car and a wife and two sons and a housekeeper and a maid and a nanny for the children, and the housekeeper had a dog and the dog had a canker and lived in a kennel.

My grandfather read Charles Dickens mostly. Sometimes they went on holiday. His house was furnished with furniture.

There were some exotic things in it, brought back from exotic places. The most exotic things were African carvings and Benares brassware. The African carving had been brought back from a war, possibly the Boer one.

The brassware was brought back from Benares by my grand-father's friend Dr Chand, who lived next door but was a Brahmin from Benares.

Dr Chand didn't have a lifestyle either. Nobody had a lifestyle then, because there was nobody to tell them to, and anyway they were too busy having lives.

They were grown-ups. They went about their business. In my grandfather's case, it was seeing patients and making them better, where possible. In Dr Chand's case, it was the same, because he was a doctor too.

I suspect that my grandfather's life was real in a sense that my father's life hasn't quite been, and my life is not at all.

The crucial difference is my grandfather's lack of self-consciousness, and that self-consciousness is a hallmark of the perpetual, infantilised adolescents we have all become, monsters of introspection hovering twitchily on the edge of self-obsession, occasionally aware that the life that exists only to be examined is barely manageable; barely, indeed, a life.

It is a preparation for a life. The consistently introspective life of the Big Baby is as much a simulacrum as life on Big Brother.

To keep the simulacrum going we need help. And we need that help because that help is available.

It's the old paradox. We need distraction from our fragmented and solitary lives because the distractions available to us have rendered our lives fragmented and solitary.

And we need lifestyle advice from magazines and websites and newspaper supplements and health advisers and personal trainers precisely because we are being nagged about our lifestyle all the time by magazines and websites and newspaper supplements and health advisers and personal trainers…

If one of the markers of adulthood is autonomy, then one of the preconditions of autonomy is being left alone.

My grandfather wasn't nagged. Once he turned 21, he was a man, and a grown-up, and nobody battered him round the clock with opportunities he was missing, miseries he didn't know he had, aspirations ditto, inadequacies doubly so.

Nobody told him about being good in bed, grooming tips, what his car said about him, what he should have to eat, how much he should drink, what his house said about him, how Benares brassware was so over, where he should go on holiday, what this season's must-have product would be, how his suits should look.

He knew some of these things, and didn't care about the others because nobody was drawing them to his attention. He knew what his suits should look like: trousers, waistcoat, jacket, all made out of the same material.

He knew about grooming: you shaved. He knew what he should eat: breakfast, lunch, dinner. He probably had no idea that good-in-bed even existed, or that furniture did anything except furnish, or that where he went on holiday was of any significance, or that his car said anything about him at all, except 'Oh, here comes Dr Bywater, I recognise his car.'

But the Big Babies have no such autonomy, and are harangued to death; nor have they learned the adult trick of simply ignoring the fishwife-and-huckster voices. Instead, Baby tries to comply.

Believing it when he is told that he is unhappy, he then believes the cure the same fishwives and hucksters proceed to offer.

The house, the furniture, the car, the exotic holidays, the new wines to try, the squid and worms and foreign muck cooked in jam with the gravy underneath the meat, the peculiar vegetables like weeds or tumours, best thrown away; the uncomfortable places to go, the uncomfortable ways to get to them ('Travel the Amazon on anaconda-back'), the uncomfortable and dismaying sex ('Do we have to do buggery?'), the uncomfortable and dismaying life, funded on credit, built on debt, Carol Vorderman smiling as the bailiffs home in and the Official Receiver prepares for another day's official receiving.

And it is all a world of make-believe, a set of status symbols notable only for symbolising someone else's status… except that when there is nothing but status for the Big Baby in the Age of Distraction, then our symbols are our status.

We live on a diet of shadows, and we can only imitate them, stuck in the playpen, waiting to be distracted.

Admittedly, it's tricky, being grown up. The great thing about being a Big Baby is it's so easy and so rewarding, and everybody else can just bugger off.

Once one has embraced the 'isms' that characterise the Baby Boomer's creed of modernity - individualism, relativism, voluntarism - and lapsed into the hooting, crooning self-validating babyhood that inevitably follows, then one is beyond criticism.

Anyone who says otherwise just doesn't understand us and, what is more, is just plain wrong.

Being grown up is not nearly as comfortable. Let's, just for a moment, beg the question and say that one of the qualities of being a grown-up is what the Romans called discrimen and what we would perhaps call 'discrimination', though that doesn't quite cover it.

Discrimen is the ability to judge a situation and to take right action without being sidetracked by peripheral considerations. Sailors would call it 'seamanship'.

Surgeons speak of 'decisiveness'. In all cases, discrimen is about knowing what to do in the circumstances, even if there is no guarantee of pulling it off.

But if discrimen is a cardinal virtue of adulthood, the tenets of infantilism work against it. Discrimen calls for right judgment; but the idea of something being 'right' is in profound conflict with individualism (which says I can only claim my judgment as being right for me).

It is in conflict with relativism (which says others may have different ideas, which are right for them) and with voluntarism (which says that those different ideas are just as valid as mine, because they, too, have been chosen).

Infantility, indefinitely prolonged, is also the indefinite prolongation of (false) promise.

It's never too late… never too late to stomp, cadaverous, around the stage singing 'Can't get no satisfaction'.

Never too late to cast off the old wife and find a new one. Never too late to make the big killing, to score the goal, to find the perfect shoes, to acquire the perfect six-pack, rack, complexion, butt, pecs or thighs. Never too late (hell, someone must be answering the spam) to get the perfect dick, pumped up with a scoopful of mail-order Viagra; never too late to give her the perfect orgasm, get the perfect house, fill it with the perfect furniture, take the perfect vacation, drive the perfect car…

As the body ineluctably decays (the mind's long gone, of course; who needs it?), perpetual infantility glosses over the rheum, the pains and creaks and flaccidities. As the opportunities dwindle, perpetual infantility offers us illusion on easy terms with pick-'n'-mix spirituality, self-improvement, angels and goddesses, diversion and aspiration.

As time slides past, doling out its irreversible quanta, perpetual infantility offers us… the perfect wristwatch: shockproof, waterproof, antimagnetic, a perpetual movement which says everything about us except the single intolerable truth: that we have had it and are headed for oblivion, tick by tick.

We have had to make it up as we go along, we Big Babies. And we have not done a terribly good job. We want (don't we?) to grow up. How? Here's the simple answer: watch carefully, ask why, and mind our manners. It's really that simple. How would the world be if everyone did it?

It would be grown up.

How to be an adult

Don't be affronted Being affronted (or offended, or complaining about 'inappropriateness') is no response for a grown-up. Only children believe the world should conform to their own view of it: a sort of magical thinking that can only lead to warfare, terrorism, unmanageable short-term debt and the Blair/Bush alliance

Mistrust anything catchy, whether it's the Axis of Evil, advertising slogans, or blatant branding ('New Labour'). Catchiness exists to prevent thought and to disguise motive. Grown-ups can think for themselves

Ignore celebrities, except when they are doing what they are celebrated for doing: acting, playing football et cetera. Skill does not confer moral, political or intellectual discrimination. (Except in the case of writers. Writers know everything and can lecture you with impunity.) If a celebrity is not celebrated for doing anything but being a celebrity, smile politely but pay no notice

We should not assume that market forces will decide wisely. The market is rigged by manipulation and infantilisation

Consider our own motivations. We may rail about being treated like children, ordered about, kept from the truth, nannied and exploited… but are we complicit in it? Could the reward actually be infantilisation itself?

Autonomy is the primary marker of being grown up. Babies, children and adolescents don't have any. We don't want to be in their boat

Suspect administration Its purpose is to free the organisation to do what it's meant to do: but the triumph of the administrators - the lawyers, the accountants, the professional managers - means that too many organisations now believe that what they are meant to do is administer themselves. This is a profoundly infantile attitude

Do not love yourself unconditionally. Such love is for babies and comes from their mothers. Ignore fashion, particularly in clothes. You don't want to look like a teenager for ever

Never do business with a company offering 'solutions' as in 'ergonomic furniture solutions which minimise the postural strain associated with sitting' (chairs) and 'Post Office mailing solutions' (brown paper). The word suggests we have a problem, but since we are grown-ups, that is for us to decide

Denounce relativism at every turn. Shouting 'not fair' is childish. Demanding respect without earning it is childish. Don't fear seriousness. Babies aren't allowed to be serious

Watch our language. Is there really much difference between a six-year-old in a fright-wig and his father's waders shouting 'I'm the Mighty Wurgle-Burgle-Urgley-Goo' and an ostensible grown-up demanding to be called 'Tony Blair's Respect Tsar'?

Hide Grown-ups are not required to be perpetually accountable, while the instincts of government and big business, both of which are, almost by their nature, great infantilisers, are to keep an eye on everyone all the time

Eat it up There is nothing more babyish than having dietary requirements

Never vote for, do business with or be pleasant to anyone who uses the words 'ordinary people'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Taken from'Big Babies' by Michael Bywater, published by Granta on 2 November. It is available for £12.99 plus £1.25 p&p. To order, please call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4115 john reynolds

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

Today's...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:06:00 +0000

Music: The Album Leaf
Emotion: Melancholy
Physical State: Exhausted
Activities: Church, Consumption, Dinner
High: Soaring trumpet at the end of this mornings hymns.
Low: Physical pain induced by lack of sleep...
Clothes: Professor-ish
Weather: Gray
Purchases: One(1) Bottle of Beer, One(1) Bottle of Wine, One(1) pair of jeans, and two(!) varieties of hair product...what a nancy...
Hope: Rest
Giddiness: The use of incense, todays priestly vestments, and singing a hymn written by Thomas Aquinas...
Sentiment: The Blessing of the Animals next Sunday (Feast of St. Francis of Assisi)
Snacks: Tuna Melt on very healthy bread, mid-afternoon.
Facial Hair: Chops only, tastefully coiffed.

Where's My Cross?

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:23:00 +0000

O Lord Our God,
In a world that conspires with me to sanitize all things, and make me comfortable, please help me find what it is that I'm supposed to bear. I really don't want it you know, Lord, but I do need it. In this this rubber-room reality where everything of substance and reality is blunted by endless shallow delights, and the thick padding of 'conveniences' I wonder if splinters digging into my back may be the only way of escape from this world of shining tin. I am far too comfortable, and I am far too complacent in light of your love. Rome burns. I play the fiddle. The play goes on, I sit with my feet dangling on the edge of the stage, leaving both earthly actors and heavenly spectators wondering if I have a part at all. I am more happy to finger those things of shining tin than to walk on streets of gold. Help me find my cross Lord, and see fit to secure it firmly to my back, even unto Calvary. Help me to encounter reality as it is Lord, by encountering the lynchpin of reality, the Cross. No more delusions, no more lies about this life. I will not say I am ready, or willing, and sure ability will be left to You also, but I will say come and lead to my Cross as I have shunned it for too long.
Amen

What Sort of John Cusack Am I?

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:18:00 +0000

Which John Cusack Are You?

A Great John Wesley Quote, or "Why I'm glad I am neither Frugal nor Industrious nor Diligent"

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 07:07:00 +0000

I fear wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore, I do not see how it is possible in the nature of things for any period of revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But, as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. How, then, is it possible that Methodism, that is a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as the green bay trees, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently, they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no way to prevent this--the continual decay of pure religion?
John Wesley circa 1740

The Mystery (of the Sacraments, the Eucharist in particular, and the Incarnation, as well as alot of other stuff)

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:14:00 +0000

This is a phenomenal quote, and is a partial insight into why I love Sacramental worship, and why I think it's one of the best things Christianity has to offer the typical young person of our time. It's why young hipster Seattle-ites crowd into St. Mark's Cathedral every Sunday night for Compline, though they hardly know what they're being exposed to, it's why witchcraft and New Age spirituality in various forms is exploding, and it's why Evangelical Christianity is fading into irrelevance and mere self-preservation, (well, there are other reasons for all those things as well, but this one plays no small part!) As we try to know everything exhaustively through our ever-increasing technological apparatus by way of 'the scientific method,' we eliminate mystery. Not because we've actually succeeded in 'debunking' anything, (the whole idea of dis-enchanting the world and being a habitual 'debunker' is a dubious pursuit to begin with I'd say...unless you like places like Auschwitz and the Gulag) but because our claims to know all (or that we will someday know everything, or just about everything) do not permit a notion of mystery. More importantly, our arrogance does not want to permit such a thing. Something incomprehensible would be an insult to our claim to the possibility of complete knowledge of everything, but more honestly, to our sense of power over all those things we might know. Should God Himself make a claim that is beyond our ability to contain rationally, we don't actually argue against it, or for it, or whatever, we simply eliminate it as a possible answer, thereby usually eliminating the question also. As you consider the notion of Sacrament (a material/physical way of giving and receiving divine grace), and why it so powerful, keep the quote below in mind. I believe that in receiving the Eucharist, I am not just memorializing the life, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am actually encountering Him in the elements as well. In the final analysis friends, it may indeed be just bread and wine after all, but what a truly awful impoverishment...so let us keep the feast.

"Partly because the history of the intellect in the West has Christian roots, and partly because Christians wish to remain in dialogue with the secular mind, we in the West fail to satisfy the hunger of those who come and stare at the feast. Living among those utilitarian rationalists who control the world and with whom we seek to communicate, we Christians can forget the nature of Christian perception. We confess to doctrines profoundly mysterious by their nature- that a man should be God, that one God should be at the same time three persons, that we of corruptible flesh should also be temples of the living God. So we believe, but so we cannot comfortably think. For as 'thoughts,' these are in essence mystery. Mystery is what many contemporary minds are hungry for; it is what they seek for afield, in the non-Christian realms and such Eastern, Asiatic sources as the Bhagavad Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. We Christians in the west have not shared what we possess. We have mystery in plenty, yet our own discourse averts it, avoids it as if in embarassment. For mystery is what we have been taught through our education to relentlessly extinguish...Our continual impulse is not to 'apprehend' mystery, but to render it extinct."
Anthony Ugolnik, The Illuminating Icon pgs. 93-94

From an old Professor of Mine circa Fall 2001

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:27:00 +0000

From my friend's colleague at the UN....

FYI

French Intellectuals to be deployed in Afghanistan To Convince Taliban of
Non-Existence of God
[Paris]

The ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed
plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers
into
the country to destroy the morale of Taliban zealots by proving the
non-existence of God. Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade,
or
'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt,
despondency and existential anomie among the enemy.

Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long
occupation of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a
number of pavement cafes at strategic points near the front lines.
There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature
of
life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied
by
a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread
dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five
minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.

Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his
confidence
in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very
intense
and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said,
"The Taliban are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There
is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am
talking."

Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating
freedom
of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of
Alfred Hitchcock.

However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as
inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the
Frenchmens' endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in
the
area.

I Didn't Know Tech Support Dealt with Such Things...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:25:00 +0000

Dear Tech Support:

I recently upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that the new program began unexpected child processing and also took up a lot of space and valuable resources. This wasn't mentioned in the product brochure. In addition Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization where it monitors all other system activity.

Applications such as Boys Night Out 2.5, and Golf 5.3 no longer run and crash the system whenever selected. Attempting to operate Saturday Rugby 6.3 always fails but Saturday Shopping 7.1 runs instead. I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background whilst attempting to run any of my favourite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0 but uninstall doesn't work on this program.

Can you please help.

Phil

Dear Phil:

This is a very common problem resulting from a basic misunderstanding. Many men upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 thinking that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program. Whereas Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM designed by its creator to run everything. You are unlikely to be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0 as Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this and it is impossible to uninstall, delete or purge the program files from the system once installed.

Some people have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but have ended up with even more problems. (See in manual under Alimony/Child Support and Solicitors Fees). Having Wife 1.0 installed myself I recommend you keep it installed and deal with the difficulties as best you can. When any faults or problems occur, whatever you think has caused them, you must run the C:\ I Apologize program and avoid attempting to use the *Esc-key. It may be necessary to run C:\ I Apologize a number of times but hopefully eventually the operating system will return to normal. Wife 1.0 although a very high maintenance program can be very rewarding. To get the most out of it consider buying additional software such as Flowers 2.0 and Chocolates 5.0.

Do not under any circumstances install Secretary (Short Skirt version) as this is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and the system will almost certainly crash. As well as any second operating system. To run Girlfriend 8.0 in the background will lead to total system failure in both operating systems.

Best of luck

Tech Support

Does it always smell like pee here?

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 05:02:00 +0000

Originally written some time in May of this year:

So, it's 2am, and I'm here at my new place of employment. To put it quite simply, 'here' is a home for abused and neglected children called "Health and Educational Services." It smells like pee here right now because the torrential rains that lashed New England last week flooded the bottom floor of the establishment, and they had to rip out the carpets to stave off mold. Unfortunately, whatever happened in the time between the coming of the Floodwaters-of-God's-Judgment Upon-the-Unrestrained-Evil-That-Is-Massachussets and the removal of the offending carpet left the place smelling rather like a truckstop mens room. The word on the street is that the new carpet will remedy all things. It's almost eschatological. The job I am 'training' for is basically an overnight watchman/janitor. I just learned the janitorial part...not exactly rocket science, and it only takes about 40 minutes. Other than that little flurry of activity, the other 90% of my job will be staying awake, and making sure the kids stay in their rooms, and tending to them if they have any legitimate needs. Apparently, these overnight shifts are pretty low intensity. That's putting it mildly. Other than the cleaning duties, I can read/study, surf the net, and basically screw off while getting compensated handsomely. It will pay more than Starbucks, give me more hours, give me plenty of time to study on the clock, benefits, two weeks of paid vacation per year guaranteed, and a load of paid official holidays. Now for the two downsides: First, as I already pointed out, it will be an overnight shift: from 11pm to 9am, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Of course, this means a significantly disrupted sleep schedule on these days, which I will hopefuly be able to more or less 'reset' on Sundays by staying up and going to bed at a regular hour on Sunday evening, rather than sleeping a portion of the daylights hours (as I will have to on Friday and Saturday). Now for other downside: The building we are located in is haunted by the apparition of a young child. Yup, thats right people, a good ole' fashioned New England we-burn-people-at-the-stake-and-other-crazy-shit haunting.

Great...

Apparently, whatever 'he' is, 'he' isn't particularly malicious, and 'he' doesn't appear to anyone directly, only out of the corner of ones eye, or by causing various sorts of mischief like slamming doors, unseasonal temperature variations from room to room upstairs, or by just giving you an incredible case of the willies as you traverse the stairs up to the kitchen and bathrooms. My 'office' is downstairs. My 40-minute per night cleaning duties are upstairs. "He" never appears downstairs, or to any of the children, (who are also securely downstairs at night). "He" only appears upstairs.

Great...

The guy that hooked me up with this opportunity is one of my current roomates, and a Christian. He told me he has only had one run-in with 'him', and that was the thrice-repeated mysterious door slamming. At that point, my roomate spoke out loud to the whatever 'it' was and rebuked in the name of Jesus Christ, told it to never appear or 'affect' him again unless it was ready to be cast out. He hasn't had much problem since, other than what can only be described as a few self-inflicted cases of 'the willies.' Tonight, in the midst of my 'training' I was left alone upstairs for several minutes. I wasn't feeling anything, no presence, no anything. Those of you that know me, know that even as a Charismatic Christian who believes in the immediacy of the spiritual world, know that I am still a bit of a skeptic. So, I hedged my bets...I stopped mopping for a minute, leaned against my mop handle, and spoke out loud (most likely to myself) and told whatever 'it' might be that I served the Living and Most High God, and that in the end, even though I wasn't that fearsome, Who I serve, was. I told it that it would be exorcised and sent packing without further ado if it tried anything with me. That being said, I went back to my mopping.

So...What do y'all think?

As orthodox Christians, we basically believe that whatever composes the spiritual/non-material aspect of a human being departs this existence upon physical death, or actually just ceases with biological death, awaiting resurrection at the end of history. This 'part' is most often referred to as the 'soul.' Moreover, we affirm the the physical body will be resurrected on the last day to biological life, and whatever the soul was doing/wherever it was, it will be reunited with the body at that point, if it was ever seperated to begin with. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection is not altogether that simple, nor would everyone agree with me on what goes on with the persons soul between death and resurrection, but thats kind of the basic nuts and bolts of a Christian notion of what happens to a person between now and the end of time, and the final resurrection of the dead. With that being said, I belive in demonic and angelic forces at work on our plane of existence. These are not dead people, they are righteous angels that enjoy fellowship with God, and fallen angels that rebelled against God at some point in the past.

But...

Apparently, this 'little guy' is not malicious, at least not in a specific sense.
'He' apparently limits 'himself' to poltergeist like things, basic silliness like the slamming of doors, or making things fall, or whatever. ('poltergeist' is actually German for 'mischievous spirit'). I think if there is indeed anything in this place, it's either demonic or merely pscyhological, not a 'ghost' as popularly conceived. By implication, if it is demonic, it means that regardless of its specific activiities here, it is evil by it allegiance with Satan against God.

Once again, what do all of you think?

Does your worldview even permit these things to be anything more than 'in my head'? Do you agree with my basic notions of what happens to humans after death? Do you agree with my ideas about non-human spiritual beings? If you disagree, does the historic Christian faith permit the existence of ghosts proper? If so, what is to be our response to them?

Michigan, road trips, changes, changes, changes...

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:01:00 +0000

This past weekend I went to a wedding in Jackson, Michigan. My friends Ryan and Katey were tying the knot, so two friends (Mara a bridesmaid, and Ben, another pew-warmer like myself) and I drove out to participate. Ryan and Katey are part of a group of friends I took part in during my first and second years of Seminary, but who have now all decamped to various places around the country and world, save for the few of us who are still here in South Hamilton finishing school. It was very good to see everyone together again, but the normal wistful sentimentality that afflicts me at weddings was compounded by the presence of this group of friends, in toto, at this wedding. 3 seperate times in my adult life I have been forced to part fellowship with a group of close friends due to the end of a step of our respective educations, several people getting married at once, or the arising of some other opportunity far away (hence my leaving Seattle), or just plain growing in distance from one another due to laziness. I think I'm rather tired of it, and it's not over yet. I will avoid ranting (too much) about the evils of a hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive culture and context that makes such hyper-mobility, and such self-seeking individualism (and concommitant loneliness) intelligible or even practical. I will also only mention in passing my complicit participation in this state of affairs. Don't get me wrong, I am the Quisling in this discussion, friends, not the self-righteous looney in the pulpit. In truth, I am more like the Jacob Marley of this tale. I will only say this, are we happy like this? Am I? No...I'm rather happy with my education, with the adventures involved with going to new places, but I must say I am made distinctly miserable by the consistent building up and then severing of relationships that this sort of life entails (and not just this lifestyle, but the general acceptance of hyper-mobility, career-chasing, emphasis upon the individual, or, by way of concession, upon the nuclear family torn from the life of the extended family, neighborhood, and community) and that a permanent and non-optional (i.e. non-consumable and non-disposable) sense of 'home' 'community-with-rightful-claims-upon-me' and 'place' while postiviely medieval, is challenging my other much vaunted and more 'socially acceptable' goals (PhD, professional success, etc.) for supremacy right now. I suppose this is all slightly pathological for me, rather than philosophical. I don't have much of a sense of family, and so go to great lengths to create proxies everywhere I go. Is this the Church to me? Is that what Church is supposed to be? Is it my group of friends? Is this what a group of friends is supposed to be? Should I get married to attenuate some of this? Am I expecting too much from people around me? I'm inclined to think I am. I find myself torn between these things.
Loyalty to a group of friends, to a region, to a set of ideals, to a community, to anything permanent and of 'commanding presence' as Albert Borgmann would put it...the time and place we find ourselves in as a culture are quite corrosive to these things. Nonetheless, they are the thing that give our lives the substance and substrate of meaning that make them live-able, even joyous. All the same, in pursuit of the education I feel that I need to articulate and protect these unseen ecologies and webs of life that hold our realities together, I participate not in them but in their destruction precisely by my departure to the other side of the continent to pursue schooling to point them out and protect them. Who knows if I will ever be able to resurrect those friendships that were left behind? I hope so, but who knows? We'd like to think that all the things we pursue or happen to us are largely for the better. I'd like to think becoming an Anglican is all for the best, not just for me, but for those I love. Is it? While no one from my old church has stayed in touch with me much, the few people I still really care about there are sure to be slightly taken aback by my decision to jump off the Assemblies of God/Foursquare boat and swim for the shore of Anglicanism. Certainly, the dream of planting a church with a particular one of those people that we harbored once or twice in our hearts is dashed. What if my coming to Gordon-Conwell, and coming over to Anglicanism amongst other things are just an outplay of my rootlessness? Not a display of liberty and responsibility, but of disorienting and nauseating freedom. Not a ship free from the constraints of port and under sail, but torn from it's moorings and drifting in a strong wind towards a lee shore? Don't get me wrong on this point, ships are meant to sail, so are we meant for a certain degree of educational, psychological, financial, and geographical mobility...but I am speaking of hyper-mobility here. That prefix assumes a continuum upon which can be found deficiency, normalcy, and excess. I find us as a culture in the excess of this activity/trait at this point in time, and use the term hyper to denote this state of affairs. Anyway...maybe I should just stop whining. Things are going to be ok. Heaven isn't so far away, and there we hope to to find a fellowship forever unbroken with all things. The Road may go Ever On, but luckily it is the odd spots that are lonely, and not the character of this path as such that makes it so, and so we have hope both for Heaven and for Earth.

Dreaming about the end of the World

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:04:00 +0000

So, last night I watched M. Knight Shyamalan's "Signs" with a friend. It was the second time I'd seen it, and it was not the experience I was anticipating. The first time around, I didn't find it all that scary, this time, it was mildly so. I remember liking the ending, but this time being rather nonplussed. Finally, the first time around, I was left with no after-effects, not even an opinion. This morning right before I woke up, I was having a dream about the end of the world. Now, don't feel sorry for me, it wasn't really a nightmare (in the light of my Christianity, the end of all things and the return of Christ generate at least grim trust if not outright delight when looking forward), but it was was extremely vivid, yet left unresolved, and altogether off=putting. What made it off-putting? Visions of Satan and a foul end for me and my loved ones? No... Spooky signs and paranormal events? Nope, save for my car (in the dream) having supernatural powers.
You see, it wasn't the end of all things, or the sense of impending doom that made the dream disconcerting...it was the sense of not being prepared. I'm not even talking about spiritual prepared-ness here (i.e. Am I ready to face this end?). It was a strange sense of 'Donnie Darko-esque' black frivolity combined with the mild annoyance of having forgotten something at home upon arriving at a campsite. I was struggling to do something, to get something done before the looming darkness that seemed to fill the horizon reached me. However, for all the super-powers my car seemed to possess, it was helpless. I seemed to possess weapons on my person, and I wasn't afraid to the point of freezing up, but I somehow knew that I was no match for what was coming, and there was that hated feeling of helplessness. Whatever that task was, whatever I was preparing to do, (regardless if I failed at doing it) I was on my way to it, to meet it. I wished so badly to re-enter the story that I actually hit the snooze button on my alarm, something that I never do. But alas...in the half-consciousness of those few 10 minutes, I just swam around in the images and thoughts of the dream, awake enough to be frustrated by the lack of resolution, but not asleep to do anything about it. I would have liked to have gotten my car unstuck...

My New Home

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:17:00 +0000

So, after a tumultuos 2 day marathon of moving, I am now ensconced in my new home, the Mill Street House. MSH is headed up by two members of my parish (Christ Church of Hamilton-Wenham) Mark Dirksen and Beth Maynard. Beth is an ordained priest, and her husband Mark is a conductor, talent musician, and supports those habits by being a real estate agent. MSH is a neo-monastic, intentional, and missional community in a low-income neighborhood in Beverly, MA. My desk is still in shambles, and I don't have a bed yet (huzzah for inflatable mattresses!), but things appear to be stabilizing. My room is much smaller than my old one, and costs more. However, I have plenty of storage space in the basement of our house, and because of the much shorter commute to both work and school from here, I will recoup the higher rent in fuel savings. So what is a neo-monastic, intentional, and missional community? Basically, the neo-monastic part is regular communal prayer twice a day kept in the form of Church 'Offices' i.e. morning prayer, and evening prayer (aka 'Compline'), observance of the Church Calendar, shared living arrangements with the other members of the community, and a commitment to a lifestyle of contemplation, prayer, and service. The intentional community aspect is rather simple. Rather than living on our own respectively, the members of the community have decided to live together in this house (a three-story multi-family arrangement, composed of three independent apartments stacked upon each other, with a chapel composing one of the rooms on the second floor), and to live a Christian life in community with others. I have much by the way of opining and philosophizing about this aspect, but that can wait for a later post. As for the missional aspect, the community hopes to live together as an incarnation of the body of Christ in this needy neighborhood by keeping the daily offices, as well as the Church calendar, and from that liturgical lifestyle moving outward in service and relationship. We basically just want to go be Christ to and with people. It is at once rocket science and at the same time not. Well, thats seems like enough for now, I should call it quits. I need to shower up, go to Compline, then head off to work.