When you want coffee in Alexandria, VA

The family and I had a good experience at "Buzz" (901 Slaters Lane). My egg nog latte was a little bit funky, but egg nog lattes in general are a little bit funky.

All of us were impressed with the customer service from counter man Patrick (no relation), who told Jane that she could trade her German chocolate for a creme brulee if she wanted to (she did). Patrick was also patient while we made up our minds on the order, because, he said, "there's no rushing at Buzz." Several pastries there are gluten-free.

The decor is inviting, the bakery case better than most, and the service top-notch. Looks like they have wine in the evenings, too, though we weren't there late enough to try that.

When history conspires with geography

"As Arizona folklorist Bob Boze Bell has remarked, the 22 odd square miles which encompass Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where Billy the Kid was killed, El Paso, Texas, and Tombstone, Arizona, is America's Bermuda Triangle, a spawning ground of myth. Cochise, Geronimo, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, the Earps, Doc Holliday, Big-Nosed Kate, the Clantons, the McLaurys, Johnny Ringo, Tom Horn, Texas John Slaughter, John Wesley Harding, and later, Pancho Villa, all earned immortality in this region. Has any other area of the United States produced so much folklore in so small a space?"

-- from Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends, by Allen Barra

Why Bethlehem of Judea?

Peter Kreeft says it was all about location, location, location:

"[The wise men] make their pilgrimage from East to West. Oriental wisdom must turn West to find Christ, and the West — Rome — must go East. For Christ is born at the center. He is at the center of all things metaphysically, so it’s fitting that He be born at the physical center of the world as well, between East and West, North and South, between ancient and modern times. All time centers on Him; all dates are B.C. or A.D. Everything is relative to Him. He is the absolute.

The East’s mentality is mystical and mythical. The Eastern mind has no trouble believing in the supernatural. It needs to make a pilgrimage to the material and the natural, to the Christ in whom all truths in myths become historical fact. He is the dying and rising God myths point to like a star.

The West, on the other hand, has a practical, materialistic mentality. This was true of Rome and it’s still true of the modern West. It must make a pilgrimage to the East, to the spiritual and the supernatural. Christ is everything: Each culture can become whole only in Him."

See also this little Christmas catechism, and Pope Benedict's reflection on what our celebrations owe to St. Francis of Assissi.

A good man gone

Wil Kimura was a good man and a great soccer coach. He died unexpectedly last week at age 62. We now pray for him, and for his wonderful wife Amy. If you are so inclined, please add your prayers to ours.

When people from Hawaii talk about the aloha spirit, it's because they have someone like Wil in mind.

Handel and Isaiah both had it right

I know where I stand on the string theory question. Do you?

Johann Pachelbel would approve

(The TSO lineup has changed; this popular clip has Jennifer Cella singing lead vocal on the "Christmas Canon")

Listening to things like this is one of several ways to keep from "crash landing into Christmas" (nice phrase, that!). Thanks also to Elizabeth for the helpful reminder.

Der Music unt der Advent

I know the heading sounds like a bad impresison of the (Muppet) Swedish chef, but I don't know frijoles about Norwegian accents, and Frances McDormand has moved on from that wonderful Chief Gunderson role she had in Fargo.

Brandywine Books has been been heavy on music these days, and it's great stuff: Lars has "Santa Lucia" sung by women in Sweden, and Sissel singing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."

And a virgin shall conceive and bear a child

Of course the Bible is right about the virgin birth. Jeremy Lott gives three reasons why.

This from Lars Walker (and Garrison Keillor) is tangentially related.

An interview with Nat Hentoff

Extremely interesting reading. And if you thought George W. Bush was "unquestionably" America's worst and most dangerous president (I have at least one friend who is sure of that), then Nat Hentoff's nominee for that dubious distinction might surprise you.

John Whitehead's setup of the interview is pretty good:

"At 84, Nat Hentoff is an American classic who has never shied away from an issue. For example, he defended a woman rejected from law school because she was Caucasian; called into a talk show hosted by Oliver North to agree with him on liberal intolerance for free speech; was a friend to the late Malcolm X; and wrote the liner notes for Bob Dylan's second album.

A self-described uncategorizable libertarian, Hentoff adds he is also a “Jewish atheist, civil libertarian, pro-lifer.” Accordingly, he has angered nearly every political faction and remains one of a few who has stuck to his principles through his many years of work, regardless of the trouble it stirred up."

In the course of the interview, Hentoff makes a case that the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment are both in serious trouble.

Mixed nuts from the Associated Press

It is true that Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II are both one step closer to officially being recognized as saints.

But it is not true to say, as the AP does, that John Paul II was the first pope to visit a synagogue.

Saint Peter went to synagogues every week.

Father John Zuhlsdorf knows more about these goings on than anyone at the AP. Catholic Exchange has details.

And Pope Benedict still keeps his critics off balance. (not just with the steps described above; his little-noticed December 5 critique of "liberation theology" was masterful)

Fatherhood

Most of the people around here are leaving work a bit early today because snow and sleet are in the forecast, and North Carolinians are not as sanguine about such weather as Minnesotans might be.

I thought wrapping up my work day from the kitchen counter might be easy-- a simple matter of "have laptop, will travel."

Since getting home, I've been disabused of that notion.

The task list, in order:

Sweep broken glass off the garage floor;

Mediate an argument between boys armed with "AirSoft" and BB guns and girls armed with rakes and hedge trimmers;

Verify that a BB shot to the shoulder didn't actually harm the boy who received it;

Use a plunger on a toilet that Thomas, Jane, or one of their friends had stopped up without telling anyone else;

Take a half-eaten chocolate-covered orange away from the dog.

UPDATE: See also Cassandra's entry, which I think of as "all that snow and no Shafer Merlot" (but she's got an unnamed Cabernet).

Segue of the week

Brian Taylor, the afternoon DJ on WRVA, impressed me by cueing up Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" to follow The Who's "Baba O'Riley"

The two songs are written in different scales (the one for Baba O'Riley is stadium-sized), but Keith Moon's drum line ends with what sounds in hindsight like the perfect setup for the first few bars of "Heart of Gold."

That inspired pairing wasn't quite enough to keep me from walking the frequency selector northward afterward, where I found another station playing the Janis Joplin (Big Brother and the Holding Company) version of "Me and Bobby McGee."

All three songs still hold up just fine.

Book Review: Harvest of Stars

Harvesting Stars and Assumptions

Poul Anderson (d. 2001) described interstellar space as well as anyone ever has. Consider this recollection from astronaut pilot Kyra Davis, the heroine of his 1993 novel “Harvest of Stars,” who takes a look around while traversing part of Olympus Mons, the mountain on Mars that rears higher than any other in our Solar System:

“A stride set her afloat. The worldlet was little more than a darkness, faintly asheen where a crest jutted out of shadow, a piece torn from the sky that otherwise encompassed her. Stars filled that night, their multitudes overwhelmed it, unwinking brilliances, colors clear, steel-blue Vega, amber Arcturus, smoldering coal that was Betelgeuse. The Milky Way torrented in frost and silence.”

Beautiful, no? Almost every reference to starlight in the novel has similar poetic reach. Anderson’s gift for vivid description trumps his workmanlike plotting, and may have been what caused Larry Niven to praise “Harvest of Stars” as “more tightly integrated than Moby Dick.”

Whoa, Nelly! Nothing in this book has the iconic heft of “Call me Ishmael,” or describes a profession with Herman Melville’s mania for the minutiae of old-time whaling. Niven exaggerated. Nevertheless, “Harvest of Stars” deserves a good solid B+. Only two things keep it from earning the slightly higher grade associated with literary classics: The first is Anderson’s secular materialist outlook, and the second is his antiseptic approach to his protagonists. On the one hand, Anderson apparently thinks that macro-evolution is settled science, population control is necessary, and artificial intelligence must eventually supplant our own. On the other hand, a civil war and other events in the story are described in strangely dispassionate terms or after they happen rather than while they are happening.

It may not be fair to ding a novel because its characters make a few wrong assumptions, but I don’t care. I grew up around too many cops and military veterans. Dad still calls candy “Pogey Bait,” and an old marine expression says that if you find yourself in a fair fight, you planned poorly.

At plot level, “Harvest of Stars” ponders the nature of freedom and the relationship between man and machine. Anson Guthrie, the visionary CEO of a multinational company with extraterrestrial assets, must outwit a formerly secret duplicate of himself whose mind was forcibly reprogrammed to serve a totalitarian regime. The high-stakes game between “good Guthrie” and “bad Guthrie” spawns strife on Earth and a problematic alliance with a civilization on the moon. Soon enough the motley collection of human, near-human, and Lunarian protagonists must make decisions on which their collective future depends.

“Harvest of Stars” wants to be epic, and Anderson knows what any trek to that plateau requires. A soldier of fortune with a bit part in the story describes his time as “the kind of age where four stand at the corners of life: the worker, the warrior, the priest, and the poet.” Forgive the man his word choice (by “corners,” he means “center,” unless you shift perspective enough to see how people at the corners hold up what is between them); the description seems otherwise apt.

Unfortunately, while a poet and several workers feature prominently in this story, “Harvest of Stars” gives warriors and priests short shrift. Apart from early and unserious flirtation with worship of the state, religion is irrelevant to Anderson’s main characters. They are fascist, monarchist, or libertarian, but they have no need of priests because they are never pious. Pilot Kyra thinks faith might be incompatible with reason, and pointedly leaves that hypothesis untested. On the other side of the ledger, her sometime bodyguard enters the story as a warrior, but spends the rest of the book either laying low or regretting the profession of arms, mostly because Kyra finds his itchy trigger finger reprehensible.


Anderson mishandles certain relationships. Mick Jagger burned hotter for honky-tonk women (and Marc Cohn hotter for a silver Thunderbird) than anyone in this novel does for his or her spouse. While several characters sprinkle their native English speech with Spanish endearments, scattered references to “jefe” and “querida” never overcome the impression that Anderson would rather describe the difficulty of storing antimatter safely than round out his portraits of the good-hearted jock, her larger-than-life boss, and her poet friend. Tellingly, Kyra herself is described in terms that a shipwright might use for his current project. She is “broad-shouldered for a woman,” wears her blonde hair in a Dutch bob, and is “slender but well outfitted fore and aft.” The secondary problem with language like that is that Anderson describes the tree that grows in a space station more lovingly.

Alien psychology also gets superficial treatment. In what might be a tip of the hat to starship captain James Tiberius Kirk, Lunarian lords and ladies – taller, thinner, and more delicate than most humans but otherwise similarly equipped -- are depicted as inscrutable or coolly seductive.

This is a book where the journey matters more than the people on it, yet Anderson’s craft is such that Shakespeare provides an interpretive key by which we can understand it better. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. Characters here suggest that we answer ultimately to Nature. The “primordial soup” theory that had been discredited even before Anderson spiced it with nanotechnology makes an appearance, and so does evolution as a tool for making humans less quarrelsome or “chaotic,” which perhaps explains why the United Nations in this future calls itself the “Peace Authority.”

Stepping up to his own podium late in the story, Anderson announces that “A natural ecology is no more than a set of relationships among organisms.” Materialist assumption uncloaks itself in the next sentence: “However wonderfully complex and subtle, [these relationships] are the result of geological eras of strife, blind chance, the modifications that life itself has made to its surroundings, and pitiless winnowing of all that does not find ways to belong.”

Egad, I thought, who let Al Gore and his Copenhagen Climate Conference cronies into a perfectly good space opera? Can “blind chance” account for irreducible complexity? Not bloody likely! Anderson there wrapped one science fiction in another. The irony is that in a figurative sense he puts Darwin on the front porch, trumpeting evolution like Louis Armstrong, while intelligent design slinks through the screen door out back, close-lipped and quiet as magi dodging the minions of King Herod.

Despite the flaws in “Harvest of Stars,” I like its ambition and most of its craft. If you time-traveled back to Bethlehem in the first century and wanted a compelling account of what it must have been like to encounter a multitude of angels, you could do worse than tap Poul Anderson for the description. He might not be able to guess what the angels were doing and why, but he’d do poetic justice to the star-flecked radiance of the heavenly host, and we all have to start somewhere.

The worth of stories

Lars has bronchitis, but he's still thinking.

An oddly compelling case

Scott Stanzel explains why "Straw Man" should be named "Person of the Year." Thanks to Hot Air for the find.

I think Nice Deb might agree with him.

A Christmas story

Thanks to friend Mark for the heads up on this heartwarming story from the Washington Post, involving the reunion of three people linked by a good deed done 20 years ago.

Emmylou Harris sings Leonard Cohen

It doesn't get any better than that.

65 years teaching the Bible, he says

But you wouldn't know it to listen to Jimmy Carter natter on about Catholics or Southern Baptists or the Lord whom we all claim to follow.

Not Mr. Right, but Mr. Rewrite

Washington Post columnist David Broder thinks we can learn history by listening to the president's speeches. But as Cassandra points out, it's the kind of history where "We have always been at war with Eurasia."

Actually Cassaandra more than points that out. She fillets Broder's argument and cooks it up in sea salt.

Jen writes about what motivates God

I love it when Jennifer gets going on that kitchen table theology that she does so well. Here's a paragraph worth framing:

I eventually understood that God's highest purpose is not efficiency, and the more I studied the history of his gradual revelation to humans, the more it seemed clear that one of his purposes in remaining hidden was to bring people together. Once I understood him as the God of love, it made sense that he would want us to reach out to one another rather than communicate exclusively with him.

Yes! I read that and think of The Youngbloods ("Get Together") and the best of the Beatles covers (Joe Cocker's version of "With a Little Help from My Friends").

I also wonder whether that insight into the character of God might explain why Scripture says that there are many things that Jesus did that are unrecorded.

A virtual duet

This came in an email from friend Ramon, and I like it a lot.

It's a fun use of editing technology to put Elvis in his prime singing "A Blue Christmas" together with Martina McBride.

Pegging the POTUS rhetoric

Mark Steyn has those Obama speechwriters figured out:

The usual trick is to position their man as the uniquely insightful leader pitching his tent between two extremes no sane person has ever believed: “There are those who say there is no evil in the world. There are others who argue that pink fluffy bunnies are the spawn of Satan and conspiring to overthrow civilization. Let me be clear: I believe people of goodwill on all sides can find common ground between the absurdly implausible caricatures I attribute to them on a daily basis. We must begin by finding the courage to acknowledge the hard truth that I am living testimony to the power of nuance to triumph over hard truth and come to the end of the sentence on a note of sonorous, polysyllabic, if somewhat hollow, uplift.

Friend Bookworm gets the Obama style to, as witness her rewrite of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and her comments in the post introducing that rewrite.

Why we celebrate on December 25

I linked to William Tighe's essay "Calculating Christmas" at least once before, but as Joel reminds us, it's a classic.

Tighe did his homework:

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

[Tighe offers fascinating detail not excerpted here, before his big finish]:

December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.

And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”

Visualize whirled peas

As most visitors to the Paragraph Farm already know, President Obama took his World Apology and Bumper Sticker Tour 2009 to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize. James Kushiner posted a very helpful analysis. George Neumayr added some entertaining vinegar to his writeup of the Obama speech, but I like Tom Maguire's reaction even better than the others to which I've linked.

It's Maguire who wrote that "If platitudes were warheads, Obama would have violated a treaty."
Then there was "OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE" as his reaction to the part of the speech where "Obama took a moment to explain that anyone with a religious motivation is a moral midget."

Buy that man a drink! He thinks the way I do!

Fun with economics

Andrew B. Wilson on "Lies, Damned Lies, and Job Creation:"

"...you cannot exaggerate the importance of a really good multiplier, because the multiplier is the magic wand that allows some people to believe that real jobs can be conjured up by government fiat, like rabbits out of a hat. The bigger the multiplier, the more rabbits you get."

Daniel Henninger on "Uncle Sam's Hiring Hall:"

"Set aside income taxes as the unransomed hostages of progressive dogma. Justify this: The Senate health-reform bill imposes a $4 billion annual excise tax on medical devices and diagnostic equipment. In a slow-innovation economy, which is what we have now, medical and diagnostic miracles sit at the intersection of American science, technology, education and IQ. That stuff defines American entrepreneurship and ingenuity. If the Obama Democrats will tax these people, they'll tax anything that produces income, no matter how innovative or job-creating.

The Obama bet is that the U.S. can be a Franco-German welfare state, with a mammoth public sector, and still compete with China, India, Brazil, Korea and the rest. This is a pipedream. We are going to spend four years treading water. If we tread quickly enough, we may get enough growth to save the Democrats, but not the nation. "

What the pope is doing

I think Jeremy Lott understands. Here's part of his summary:

BENEDICT'S CONSUMING INSIGHT as pope seems to be that time has made a lot of old theological differences matter less and brought new ones to the fore. Anglicans used to want Catholic tradition but not the pope. Now they may need him to hold on to their tradition. The Orthodox must contend with a demographic decline, but wouldn't have to if they grafted themselves onto Rome. Traditionalists wanted iron-clad protection for the Latin Mass, and got it.

His message will not appeal to everyone, as well he knows. In her book Ratzinger's Faith, philosopher and theologian Tracey Rowlands points out how utterly opposed he is to feminism. At some level, he just can't bring himself to take it seriously. Against calls for female ordination, he "cited the judgment of feminist theologian Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza that ‘true feminists' should actually oppose the ordination of women and work to abolish the phenomenon of ordination itself" -- since ordination is a product of patriarchy and thus, by their logic, bad. In other words, good luck with that, ladies.

Benedict thinks that his Church has got the basics all right and that it is well positioned to hold out against current trends and decide, in the fullness of time, whether innovations are wise. He's willing to extend that protection to Christians of other communions, to consolidate the faithful under a rule of faith that is both flexible and at the same time unyielding.

That makes him a conservative but a radical one.

UPDATE: Damian Thompson has more on the subject, with specific reference to Pope Benedict's overtures to Anglicans.

Who speaks for the chicken?

Remember the wonderful musical tribute to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that debuted on Broadway some years ago as Big River?

If you know Big River, you'll recall that while trying to encourage Huck to stay in school, the Widow Douglas and a chorus of Midwestern townspeople sing "You better learn to read and you better read your Bible, or you'll never get to heaven 'cause you won't know how!"

Won't know how?!

You'd think Huck had never met a priest, minister, or preacher. Who knew that "dukes" and "dauphins" were in greater supply along the Mississippi River than deacons?

The song is catchy, but as a theological statement, its advice is like the sheltered life that Huck leaves behind for his iconic rafting trip with his friend Jim, which is to say (as Mark Twain put it) that it’s "all cramped up and smothery." It can be nothing else while flirting with the implication that God puts a premium on literacy as a prerequisite for salvation.

(My friend Kyle-Anne, who has a lovely way with using italics to share her thoughts, would have a field day here. Sliding as we are toward the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I'm also reminded of the critique an illiterate sustenance farmer might have endured from the people trying to get Huck Finn serious about book learning: "Hey, Juan Diego! We can't explain that painting of a beautiful woman upheld by an angel on your tilma, either, but you've got trouble in River City if you can't read the Good Book!")

I thought of that while pondering friend Gary's attempt to get me to view church and scripture in terms of the old chicken and egg riddle. I will not abide that “which came first?” business, I said. Everybody knows the chicken came first.

Gary conceded that much, but then added a puzzler: "Scripture now defines what the church is," he said.

It’s Christianity we’re talking about, and Christian Scriptures, i.e., the New Testament.

And I think he's wrong at least six ways from Sunday (pun most definitely intended).

Here's why:
• One: Gary's thesis is illogical. To say that "The Church cannot now define itself in a way not supported by Scripture" (which is true, and something Gary also said) is to pay the Church the backhanded compliment of acknowledging that her mission and structure are consistent with the written portion of the "deposit of faith" handed down to us from the apostles.

That is NOT the same as treating Scripture as though it were equipped to pass judgment on what is and is not Church. In fact the opposite is true, because the canon of Scripture is a gift to us from God through the Church.

• Two: The marks of the Church (that she is "one," "holy," "catholic," and "apostolic") are what have defined her for two millennia. They were codified in the Nicene Creed by the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.

• Three: Scripture is not a constitution, a charter, or a court of appeals; it is a record of God's saving work among His people.

• Four: After blessing him, Jesus changed Simon's name to Peter and (per both the original Aramaic and the Greek into which it was first translated) said in Matthew 16:18 that Peter was the rock on which He (Jesus) would build His church. He then gave Peter the keys to the kingdom -- how's that for an object lesson in authority and responsibility?

• Five: Early Christians of good repute were clear on what it meant to say that something was -- to borrow from the metaphor that Gary and I were playing with -- "just between us chickens."

Assuming for the sake of argument that Augustine of Hippo has enough street cred to be welcome in a conversation about things like this, here he is writing in A.D. 397: "[T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house" (Against the Letter of Mani Called "The Foundation" 4:5)

• Six: The Council of Jerusalem as recorded in Acts 15:1-21 was an early example of the Church defining what she is through how she acts. Mr. David B. Currie explains it very well:

“On the occasion of the Council of Jerusalem, the bishops met with the apostles to determine whether the Mosaic Law was necessary for salvation. To put the question another way: Were the Gentiles to obey the Bible or not? They decided that Gentiles did not need to be Jews first in order to qualify for God’s grace. This meant that Gentiles were freed from obedience to much of what was contained in the Old Testament, the only Bible of that day. What is striking, however, is how the Council came to its decision. The Council did not refer to any word from Jesus, nor was the Old Testament the basis for its deliberations. The issue was decided on the basis of the Council’s own authority! What we believe was determinative (Acts 15:11). Only after the question had been discussed and decided did James add that Scripture was in harmony with the decision (as we should expect).”

The upshot of these points is that when Gary asks “Who speaks for the chicken in this day and age? Who represents the church?” the only answer consistent with history, mainstream Christian theology, and the logical principle known as Occam’s Razor (wherein “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”) is “the Bishop of Rome” -- that is to say, the pope.

It is more diplomatic and more common to say “the pope and those bishops united with him,” but ultimately the duty falls heaviest on the pope, because it was the first pope whom Jesus commanded to “feed my sheep.” By being open to the Lord, the stubborn fisherman who had three times denied even knowing Jesus then became in spite of himself a heroic “proof of concept” to his fellow apostles and the men whom they appointed to succeed them.

There is nothing “blithe” about asserting Petrine (papal) leadership as integral to the Church, because it’s a heavy responsibility that cannot be discharged without the help of the Holy Spirit.

The other thing worth remembering is that we who are part of the Church also represent it, albeit not in the same way that the pope does. As Francis of Assissi reportedly said, our task is to “preach the gospel always – and when necessary, use words.”

Doctrinal Differences

(A longish post on Advent, myopia, theology, and human nature, with cameo appearances from a pirate and an “angel second-class”)

Joseph Bottum wrote an essay lamenting what he called The End of Advent. Every secularized holiday, he suggested, “tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year.” Accordingly, “Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year's has drunk up Epiphany.” This time of year, the thing that sours his gingerbread latte is that even his fellow churchgoers seem to slide from the orange and brown of Thanksgiving into the red and gold of Christmas, with nary a thought for penitential or preparatory purple along the way.

Bottum went on to describe Advent as “a way of forming anticipation and channeling it toward its goal.” Moreover, he mused, Christmas – the goal toward which Advent points – “seems to need its setting in the church year, for without [that setting] we have a diminishment of language, a diminishment of culture, and a diminishment of imagination.” Bottum was light on examples of those diminishments, but wrote movingly about how Christmas seems anticlimactic when it is expanded from 12 days to 30 or more.

How misunderstanding fueled an argment

In comments following the essay, one reader chastised Bottum for his wistfulness. Bottum had ended his piece on a note of hope from Numbers 24:17 (“I shall see Him, but not now; I shall behold Him, but not nigh”), but the reader did not recognize the source of that quote, and claimed not to understand the sense of loss that Bottum had first described. He (the critic) wanted to know why any born-again Christian would feel detached from the presence of Jesus. As for himself, he said, Jesus lived in his heart.

The reader puzzled by Bottum’s sense of loss claimed to have seen Jesus, walked with Him, and spoken to Him “on many occasions.” Yet mystics do not typically pull rank on other believers. Moreover, his question depended on the self-congratulatory idea that “Jesus is with me, so I feel no sense of loss; what is this melancholy of which you speak?”

There are echoes of Clarence the angel’s “we don’t use money where I come from” in that attitude. And in its own way, the smackdown that Clarence got from George Bailey (“Well, money sure comes in handy around here, bub”) still fits.

Would regular conversation with Jesus reduce the range of human emotion? That seems akin to saying that we should never thrill to the scarlet flash of a cardinal alighting on a tree branch, if the image of a cardinal is already in our heads. The critic asked a question born of “either/or” logic. Follow that binary thinking long enough and you’re sucked into iconoclasm: why would you appreciate photos of loved ones if the people in them claimed space in your heart? You carry the love of your spouse or children with you, the critic suggests, so why would you get misty-eyed over the snapshots of those people in your wallet? What right have you to miss what you never parted with? And yet, of course, objections like that are backward, because it is human to enjoy both our relationships and the tokens that remind us of those relationships.

Another reader pointed the critic to an Advent sermon by John Henry Newman, but that did not help. The scriptural allusion at the end of the essay had by then been explained, yet the questioner was angry with Mr. Bottum for having quoted from a disconcerting section of the Book of Numbers rather than a less challenging scripture passage. He also took offense at the characterization of sainthood as a work in progress (“You are either born again and therefore a saint, or you are not,” he declared. “To be a new creation in Christ Jesus is to become a saint”).

A rebuttal came gift-wrapped with the observation that being a “new creation” requires conforming oneself to Christ or “putting on Christ” –- something that does not happen automatically or suddenly, because it is a life-long process involving acceptance of purification by the Holy Spirit. Did Paul of Tarsus have that kind of ongoing conversion in mind while writing to the Philippians that “the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus?” The critic had no time for speculation like that, and no time for the idea that “scriptural references can be found to support two truths that exist in tension,” namely, “in a way known to God, the mission of Christ is complete in God’s timeless eternity (‘it is consummated’) and yet not complete for His people on Earth.”

Nowhere near hurricane cleanup but still stuck on stupid

Several people defended Mr. Bottum’s right to a sense of loss, but—ironically-- the reader who first claimed Jesus in his heart was still unhappy. In an arrogant trifecta of self-disclosure, he said he had a gift for discernment, suggested that ongoing purification by the Holy Spirit sounded too much like “works-based faith,” and cautioned others about “unspeakable evil in the Catholic church.”

Had that parade of comments been a movie scene, every actor on the set would then have dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword, and flexed the blade in its scabbard. Acceptance of purification is an act of humility that has no connection whatsoever with “works righteousness,” the critic was told, but he had already made a mistake that blinded him to the merits of that explanation.

What about the foregoing passage from Paul to the Philippians (Phil 1:6), or the sorrow that the sisters of the recently-deceased Lazarus of Bethany felt even in the gloriously calming presence of Jesus? (John 11:1-45)

Fuggedaboudit. Neither those scripture passages nor any others would sway a critic who climbed on a soap box to say, “The scriptures are the foundation of our faith, but the Holy Spirit interprets them and shows us how to apply them.” It was an assertion that was easy to see coming, after the man making it had declared himself a “proud son of the Reformation.”

I am no mystic and no theologian, but I am in good company when I reply that there are at least two reasons why it is a mistake to think of the scriptures as the foundation for Christian faith:

First, such thinking tries to pry the scriptures away from the church whose fathers identified them in antiquity and teach them even now. That dog won’t hunt. Let us remember that we got the bible from the church, rather than the other way around.

Second, such thinking treats the Holy Spirit as incompetent or worse. Ask yourself whether Jesus died for the elect or for the whole world. John Calvin will tell you one thing; John Wesley, another. Both men were Christian leaders, and both claimed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But this is not an area where paradoxical statements may exist in tension with each other, this is out-and-out contradiction. If Calvin is right about salvation, then Wesley cannot also be right, else the Holy Spirit must be a nincompoop or a con artist.

There are other theological disputes among Christians that would not exist if infallibility in doctrinal matters was something we could all claim: Is the bread at the Lord ’s Table only bread, or is it the Body of Christ? Zwingli will tell you one thing; Luther, another-- and both men read scripture. So did Flannery O’Connor, who famously said that if the Eucharist is a mere symbol, then “to hell with it.”

Another example, this one borrowed from writer Thomas Howard: is the Church to be governed by elders and general assemblies, or locally, by democratic vote of the congregation itself? Presbyterians say one thing, and Congregationalists, another.

You see where I’m going with this: to the “authority song.”

Can’t we all just get along?

The question might then become, “Would you please stop dumping on a fellow Christian?”

And my answer would have to be the same as that of Captain Barbossa, who chided a captive for using big words in front of “humble pirates,” but then declared himself “disinclined to acquiesce” to her request.

I share that sentiment, because this is not dumping; it is defending. I have not even named Bottum’s persistent critic. I’m just trying to show how far off the mark I think his criticism was.

So far as I know, Captain Barbossa had no objection to historical or theological twaddle, but those things rile me every time. Neither species of ignorance warrants the “Protection of Parlay” that Barbossa growled entertainingly about, while leaning on that first-syllable “aaar” in fine old pirate fashion.

You might also go further back into pop culture to say that I feel compelled to drag my blanket to center stage for the Christmas pageant, even if the other kids wonder why I cling to it.

Advent makes sense in a liturgical context, where more is demanded of us than literacy and willingness to ask whether the “promptings of the Holy Spirit” accord perfectly with our own prejudices. Looking back, we may feel wistful. Looking forward, we may feel eager. Either reaction can trigger a feeling of emptiness that prods us into keeping our eyes on the prize.

“Why would any Christian feel detached from the presence of Jesus?” is ultimately a question that ignores human nature and its "dark nights of the soul." We are not angels, who can look upon reality without blinking. We are sons and daughters of the king. On His cross, that king said “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Did that anguish not sanctify any detachment that we fallen might later feel?

A generation ago, Thomas Howard reminded us that we also have the scriptural example of a Roman centurion to learn from, the officer who asked Jesus to heal his dying servant: “The God who is invoked in the Christian liturgy is not a God of mere edicts…not ‘sola scriptura.’ He waits to give us his very flesh. He comes to us, as he [walked toward] the centurion’s house, in his complete Godhood and Manhood. To be Catholic is to believe that his Presence is here. His Word alone would do; but his Mercy, in its superabundance, gives that Word Incarnate. Islam is the religion of the book: Christianity is the religion of the Word Incarnate.”

Amen to that. Anyone who wonders whether it is possible to miss those whom we love even when we are in their presence has not thought much about human failing or fear or hope, and the liturgical season that holds those things up for us to meditate on. But as John Denver and the Muppets put it in one of the more tuneful Christmas specials to come down the pike, “Though our minds be filled with questions, yet our hearts will understand, when the river meets the almighty sea.”

Donna Reed was amazing and necessary

That's one of the insights offered by Captain Ed Morissey in his review of It's a Wonderful Life, which as The Anchoress notes in a fine musing of her own, is worth reading in full.

There is much to chew on there, and also in Joseph Bottom's "The End of Advent."

Re that essay from Bottom, the civil war in the comments appended to it speaks to a clash of worldviews that might yet spark an essay of my own.

"The government's capacity is still somewhat limited"

"Sheriff Joe" Biden said that like it's a bad thing.

God love 'im.

The Anchoress has more, and Tom Maguire wants to know where the green jobs are, as John Stossel asks (and answers) basic questions about job creation.

Not easy being green

Other people are doing a fine job of covering "ClimateGate" in detail (Senator Boxer's attempt to rebrand it as something else is almost disarmingly inept). I found good stuff at Watts Up With That, Reason magazine (in an essay by Ron Bailey), Washington Examiner, and -- for comedic effect with Al Gore -- Hot Air.

Instapundit's snark about the upcoming meetings in Copenhagen seems fully justified.

UPDATE: See also this recap from the Times of London. And I like Kate's summation ("For perhaps the first time in the history of mass media, the gatekeepers broke a major scandal to an audience fully 10 days ahead of them"), although it would be interesting to compare the timeline here with the "fake but accurate" defense that Dan Rather mounted for bogus memos casting then-president Bush in a bad light.

It seems to me the media was slow off the mark on that one, too. Charles Johnson's archives tell the story, but although he covered himself with glory in that episode, he's since ditched that mantle for a day spa gift package in the fever swamps of the Left, where "Christianity" and "conservatism" are words used to scare little children.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

At least two German observers are underwhelmed.

First, Matthias Küntzel in the Weekly Standard, writing about Iran:

"Whereas in the past Washington sought to increase pressure on Iran, and Europe stepped on the brakes, today it is Obama who is stepping on the brakes while France and Great Britain push for sanctions. Whereas George W. Bush denounced the Islamism of the Iranian regime, his successor attempts to ingratiate himself by offering compliments and apologies. Whereas before it was the Europeans who packaged their failures as successful "dialogue," now it is Washington that does so."

Second, Gabor Steingart in Spiegel Online, writing about the Afghanistan speech, says Obama "left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught."

This is not necessarily because the president was able to thread the needle between dreamers and realists, or should even want to. There are good reasons the speech fell flat. Let's hope the actual policy doesn't.

The problem with President Obama, as Cassandra notes with rueful mastery, is that "this president never saw a tradeoff he couldn't sweet talk out of existence." Do read her meditation -- and yes, that's what it is.

UPDATE: Andrew McCarthy has now written the definitive takedown of the speech.

What I read in 2009

I've been posting lists of the books I've read each month, but I decided that friend Anne the Palm Tree Pundit has a better idea for presenting information like that. She posts her cumulative list, updating it as necessary but not segmenting it out across multiple posts. That format makes spelunking through several clicks unnecessary, which in turn means the list is more usable because more accessible.

So thanks for the idea, Anne!

Here's my list, together with thumbnail assessments for each book. Nonfiction titles are listed in red:

January
-- The Shack, by William P. Young (recommended, with important caveats)
-- Sly Mongoose, by Tobias S. Buckell (uneven but fun)
-- Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, by Alexander Rose (highly recommended)

February
-- A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler (NOT recommended; like walking through sludge)
-- The Forgotten Man, by Robert Crais (highly recommended)
-- How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business, by Dave Hitz (recommended)
-- Sons of Texas, by Elmer Kelton (good story burdened by glacial pacing)
-- The Fathers, by Pope Benedict XVI (highly recommended)

March
-- Finding God in the Shack, by Randal Rauser (well-meaning but surprisingly timid)
-- Heaven in Our Hands: Living the Beatitudes, by Fr. Benedict Groeschel (recommended)
-- Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett (recommended, but not his best by a long shot)

April
-- He Leadeth Me, by Fr. Walter Ciszek (highly recommended)
-- Reckless Homicide, by Ira Genberg (recommended)
-- Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi, by Donald Spoto (highly recommended)
-- Sword Song, by Bernard Cornwell (recommended)

May
-- Zombies of the Gene Pool, by Sharyn McCrumb (intermittently entertaining)
-- Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais (highly recommended)
-- Monday Night Jihad, by Jason Elam and Steve Yohn (interesting concept, flawed execution)

June
(nothing completed-- unforeseen events took me out of reading)

July
-- Thank God Ahead of Time: The Life and Spirituality of Solanus Casey, by Michael Crosby, O.F.M. (recommended)
-- West Oversea, by Lars Walker (highly recommended)
-- Introduction to Christianity, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (highly recommended)
-- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (recommended)

August
-- Without Warning, by John Birmingham (highly recommended)
-- A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle (highly recommended)
-- The Hot Rock, by Donald Westlake (highly recommended)

September
-- Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, by Catherine Drinker Bowen (highly recommended)
-- Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions, by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber (recommended)

October
-- Prayers for the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno (recommended)
-- Back to the Moon, by Homer Hickam (I should have re-read his Rocket Boys/October Sky instead)
-- The Shoes of the Fisherman, by Morris L. West (highly recommended)

November
-- Sins of the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno (recommended)
-- A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt (recommended)