The Disqualification of a Candidate

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this short article.

Geneva's Large Hadron Collider

So they turned on this atom smasher yesterday, this ginormous atom smasher. The good news is that, contrary to the fears expressed by some (and even a filed lawsuit to stop them from proceeding), the earth was not turned inside out like a dirty sock. But then time will tell. They're hoping to learn some interesting things about physics with this monster and I wish them the greatest success. And that I don't die.

Here's a link to a First Things article today that talks a little about the collider.

Among other things they're hoping to find out more about how this whole universe came into being. Maybe spin off a couple of tiny black holes. Learn more about theoretical particles and dark matter. Insanely geeky stuff like that.

Here's a picture with an itty-bitty man inside the collider to give you some reference for size. It is huge: Its circumference is 17 miles. They'll begin bumping and grinding particles on October 21. I'd suggest Confession the weekend before, but that's just me.

Palin 2: Equal Time

To say that I don't get Sarah Palin does not mean that I don't like her - just that I don't get all tingly when I think about her. I'm cautious about her because she's a wild card - I don't feel like I know who she is or how competent she is. She may do swimmingly. She may even be wicked good. I'm waiting.

In the meantime, it unnerves me, as it unnerves many of you, that some in the press and some Democrats disparage her so. And all of it stems out of, or seems to from my listening to their coverage, the fact that she is staunchly pro-life. They despise that this woman (that any woman) could be against women's rights, against advancing women's health. They continue to ignore or reject or spin the fact that we who are for life are not against women's rights or against advancing women's health, but that we do not believe that any person - male or female - has the right to end human life, especially not the innocent among us. They refuse to acknowledge that we believe, from both theology and science, that life begins at conception. This is a life issue; it's a human rights issue for us rather than a civil rights issue. That it even needs to be said 30+ years into the disagreement is a sad commentary. The constant spinning from the Left, since Palin's selection, aggravates even me.

At least be gracious enough to understand that we approach the issue from two distinct places rather than label all who disagree with you as sexist or ignorant or just dumb. There is no danger of Roe v. Wade being overturned in the admission that we are in disagreement about when life begins, when human rights are given by God. The "new culture war" that the Left so lately chatters on about is not the doing of the Right, but rather the result of the silencing efforts of the Left. Yes, we still disagree. We haven't gone anywhere or become "enlightened." But, at the same time, our disagreement doesn't need to be a cause for apoplexy; it ought to drive us forward into conversation. Until we acknowledge what each of us believes, we will be doomed to "culture war." We need some domestic diplomacy.

That also means that those of us who are pro-life need to calm down. We must stop the name-calling and the diatribes and the condemnation. Those on the Left are people. Image-of-God people. People God loves and on whom he pours out his mercy - no more or less than you. It is not us-them (it never is with people), it is only us. And it is incumbent upon me to love them and to honor them. That is my obligation as a Catholic.

Nevertheless, I need to go clean up the kitchen. That, too, is my obligation.

My Nothing Flowers

It's strange how my yard has begun to measure life for me as surely as a calendar, only lovelier. My argiopes (garden spiders) are one such marker, my spider lilies are another. And my spider lilies have come up. They appear out of nowhere in early to mid-September and they're gone as quickly as they came. They're fairy. Oriental. Perhaps it's their shy, lovely glances that so attract me. There is nothing boisterous about them, nothing demanding. They're tucked away under the shade of my river birch, almost hidden by its branches, almost lost. They bloom and they die, and if you miss them, you miss them. They're satisfied to be nothing. That is their glory. Like morning mist over the water, they mark summer's end.

Palin

I don't get Sarah Palin. Maybe she's like Facebook for me: I enjoy having the page, but I don't find it particularly engaging or addictive. I like the connection, certainly, I just don't get the buzz. (As I've said here before, I'm a little slow.) So the only thing Palin has going for her, that I can determine, is that she's your average Jane Evangelical. But I don't understand, as Peggy Noonan recently wrote, that she "killed" at the convention. I suppose it depends on your meaning and, perhaps more, your perspective. The only thing I heard at the convention from Palin was trash talk - and not even uncommonly good trash talk, but just your ordinary trash talk that you read daily on conservative blogs. Rush trash. She came out swinging, certainly.

I like that she's pro-life. I love that she kept a baby with Down Syndrome and has a fairly large family. I like that she's able to come out after a week of media battery and deliver. I like that she's a woman and a mother and a wife.

Is there something more here, something I'm missing? Or is it simply that unenthusiastic McCain supporters ("Well, he's more pro-life than that baby-killer Obama") finally got someone ardently pro-life and unarguably alive?

Forgive my sarcasm.

I tease you because I love you.

1:21 p.m.

So I haven't been the ideal blogger lately. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. And I don't have much to say at 1:21 p.m on Tuesday, except that while playing Monopoly Junior with my four-year-old son this morning, he said, "I wuv pwaying wif you."

Staying home with the kids isn't sexy or glamorous. But who needs rock and roll when you've got that?

Piper Hit a Home Run

I laughed out loud when I saw little Piper Palin with her brother. My girls do the same thing to our babies when we're not looking. It's insanely sweet.

Some Dostoevsky

"See, here you have passed by a small child, passed by in anger, with a foul word, with a wrathful soul; you perhaps did not notice the child, but he saw you, and your unsightly and impious image has remained in his defenseless heart. You did not know it, but you may thereby have planted a bad seed in him, and it may grow, and all because you did not restrain yourself before the child, because you did not nurture in yourself a heedful, active love. Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time. Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance."

(Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. 319)

Prayer

"O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere and fillest all things; Treasury of Blessings, and Giver of Life - come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One."

- Traditional Orthodox Prayer

Love Is from God

From The Paradise of the Desert Fathers:

Sayings:

The old men used to say, "there is nothing worse than passing judgment."

They said of abba Macarius that he became, as it is written, a god upon earth, because just as God protects the world, so abba Macarius would cover the faults that he saw as though he did not see them, and those which he heard as though he did not hear them.

Abba Pastor said, "Judge not him who is guilty of fornication, if you are chaste, or you will break the law like him. For He who said 'Do not commit fornication' said also 'Do not judge.' "

A brother asked abba Poemen, "If I see my brother sin, is it right to say nothing about it?" The old man replied, "Whenever we cover our brother's sin, God will cover ours; whenever we tell people about our brother's guilt, God will do the same about ours."

Stories:

A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to him, saying, "Come, for everyone is waiting for you." So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug and filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said, "What is this, father?" The old man said to them, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another." When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.

A brother sinned and the priest ordered him to go out of the church; abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, "I, too, am a sinner."

When I first read the Desert Fathers, I kept running up against this teaching. At first, I kept my reservations about it. Milquetoast, I thought. A spade ought to be called a spade. In the course of time, I have begun - and only just begun - to realize that this teaching is, perhaps, central to what it means to me to be Christian. Because a refusal to judge springs out of a heart of love. And a refusal to judge springs out of the recognition of one's own sinfulness before God, one's recognition of one's own forgiveness. And my sin is great. My need for God leaves me breathless before Him, without legs, casts me upon his greater grace and love.

I know less each passing day. I have learned that I don't love well. I would grind my teeth in darkness and utter solitude - that is what is in my heart, and it draws at me constantly. And that is hell. When I first heard the Fatima prayer within the Rosary, I was unsettled by its talk of hell: "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, bring all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy." I'm not big on hellfire or, for that matter, brimstone. But as I submitted myself to the practice of the Church, I began to realize something about me and about this prayer. When I pray O My Jesus, I am asking Jesus to rescue me not from some eternal damnation that will come one day if I embrace death rather than life, but I am asking him to rescue me from the hell within my heart, that is there each moment of every day, that threatens to engulf me. That is the recognition that I'm coming to understand: Heaven and hell are within my heart.

Neither science nor bad theology makes me doubt God. The thing that makes me doubt God, when I doubt Him, is those who claim Him. Those who would tear down everything and everyone that they might be taller. I read, I listen. I hear such terrible judgments pronounced. I see personhood overrun by ideology and pride. Where is love? There is God. So I must slap my hand over my mouth - because I am that man, that woman, who curses God in my neighbor and who engenders doubt within my own heart and countless others.

People are people. More than that, we are persons. We have such hidden hurts that are run over roughshod by those who ought to, should, must, need to know and behave better. But then, they have their own hurts, their own pain. Love is a better balm than judgment. "Beloved," says the Evangelist, "let us love one another."