Merci! À bientôt!

February 5, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush.  He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit.  Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

–Mark Twain, writing in Tom Sawyer, 1876

OK, folks, replace the name “Tom” with “Elizabeth.”

Got it?  Good—Now get rid of the long-handled brush and the fence.  Instead, set the protagonist
in front of a keyboard.  She’s wringing her hands, asking “What to do?  What to do?”  And then she’s smiling.

Along come three friends:  Dwight, Elizabeth, Kathy.  “Oh, please, please!” they beg.  “Let us do that work for you!”

Keep the bucket of whitewash!  Whitewash, according to Wikipedia, “aids in sanitation by coating and smoothing over the rough surfaces.”  We may be able to use that somehow!

*     *     *     *

It’s been a busy week at The Anchoress’ place! Elizabeth had a mountain of work to do, deadlines to meet, other fish to fry; so she enlisted three Anchoress wannabe’s to take her place and keep things stirred up.  In the end, the political events of the week compelled her to chime in, and she gave us the same high-quality analysis we’ve come to expect—offering up some great insights on government intrusion, on Komen, on Benedictine spirituality and more.

It was a great privilege, certainly, to fill in for such an esteemed communicator—and to share the desk with the likes of Fr. Dwight Longenecker and Elizabeth Duffy, two great writers!  I got to shake hands (electronically speaking) with some of the other Patheos bloggers and columnists.  I’ve enjoyed the lively interchange in the comboxes, a veritable rock tumbler for ideas.

But The Anchoress’ self-imposed “work vacation” nears an end. As the week draws to a close, we hand the keys back to their rightful owner.  I want to thank Elizabeth Scalia for giving me the opportunity to be a Faux Anchoress—and I look forward to reading her posts next week!

Thanks, too, to the readers for making me feel welcome.  Your engaging comments helped advance our common understanding.  The great apologist C.S. Lewis wrote, “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” Our friendship has been born.

Today, I’m going back where I came from.  I hope my new friends will continue to keep in touch over at my blog, Seasons of Grace.

And finally, Elizabeth has given me permission to tell you that soon—later this month, I think—my blog will be moving over to the Catholic Portal here at Patheos.  Like Arnold Schwarzenegger—I’ll be back!

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

C. S. Lewis: Finding Faith On the Way to the Zoo

February 4, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

Men Must Endure Their Going Hence.

So warns Edgar in Shakespeare’s classic King Lear.

And so says the tombstone shared by illustrious Christian apologist Clive Staples Lewis and his brother Warren.  The tombstone, located in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford, commemorates the writer C.S. “Jack” Lewis, who died 48 years ago on November 23, 1963, and his quieter older brother who died in April 1973.

Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, contributing a wealth of literature ranging from children’s literature and fantasy (most popular being The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and others in the Chronicles of Narnia series), to allegory, to literary criticism and popular theology.  During World War II, his reflections on his BBC radio broadcast—later republished as Mere Christianity—made the case for Christianity through the use of logic.

Despite Lewis’ prominence in Christian apologetics, he was not always a follower of Christ; during his university years, he was an avowed atheist.  At Oxford, he often debated philosophy and religion with several Christian friends including J.R.R. Tolkien (best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy).  And those friends were persuasive!  “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully,” Lewis confided in his conversion story, Surprised by Joy.  “Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.”

Lewis wrote poignantly in Surprised by Joy about his first steps toward faith, toward confirming the existence of God:

“You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

So Lewis embraced Christianity, albeit reluctantly. But was Jesus real?  His interest piqued by the faith of friends who seemed too pragmatic to fall for a myth, Lewis read the Gospels—and he was amazed to find them believable.  The writers, he thought, were too unimaginative to have made the whole thing up; they seemed to truly believe the accounts of Jesus’ ministry, death and Resurrection.

Perhaps Lewis’ best known application of Aristotelian logic is his “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” syllogism. Evaluating Jesus’ claims to be God, Lewis points to three possible explanations: either he really was God, he was deliberately lying, or he was not God but thought himself to be (in other words, he was delusional or insane). Nothing in the Gospel, according to Lewis, suggests that Jesus was not a person of truth; nor did he appear mentally impaired. The only logical answer, then, was that Jesus is truly what he said he was:  He is God.

On September 19, 1931, Jack Lewis engaged his friends Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien in a discussion of myth.  The trio walked and talked all night:  Tolkien explaining how myths were God’s way of preparing the ground for the Christian story, and Dyson showing how Christianity worked for the believer, liberating him from sin and helping him to become a better person.  Lewis’ stubborn arguments for atheism were demolished.

It took days of ruminating and meditating for Lewis’ conversion to be complete.  Lewis himself explained that on November 12, he and his brother Warren traveled by motorcycle to Whipsnade Zoo.  “When we set out,” Lewis wrote, “I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and when we reached the zoo, I did.”

Lewis’ book The Pilgrim’s Regress tells the story of his dramatic conversion in allegorical form.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

St. Peter’s Basilica in a Snowstorm!

February 4, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

I have always heard that Winter is the rainy season in Rome.  This week, though, a surprise snowfall! The children of Rome can have a little fun catching snowflakes on their tongues.

The snow started falling  heavily in St. Peter’s Square Friday afternoon.  The last time the city saw snow was back in 2009.

And look at this beautiful scene at St. Peter’s Basilica!

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

You Say “Tomato,” I Say “To-MAH-to”: St. Blase and the Holy Helpers

February 4, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

OK, so Father Longenecker—This week I wrote about St. Blase, and you followed up with a great post on St. Blaise.

Nonplussed, I went directly to Spell-Check, I did not pass Go, and I confirmed that We Are Both Right. The saint whose feast day we celebrated today answers us, whichever spelling we prefer.

I am not defensive or spiteful or OCD or anything like that, but I did happen to notice that the following websites all spell the name as I did: Blase.

• EWTN
• Holy Spirit Interactive
• St. Blase Catholic Church, Sterling Heights, Michigan
• Catholic On-Line
• Integrated Catholic Life
• Catholic Information Network
• Catholic News Agency

However, lest I grow smug, Blaise was the preferred spelling on these sites:

• Wikipedia
• American Catholic
• Catholic Encyclopedia

WHO WAS THIS ST. BLAISE/ST. BLASE GUY, ANYWAY?

An Armenian bishop, he was martyred around the year 316 A.D., during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Licinius, for refusing to embrace the Roman state religion of Jupiter.

According to legend, St. Blase hid from the Roman authorities in a cave, where he tamed wild animals by blessing them. Local hunters came upon him, curing sick and wounded animals, and took him to the government. As he was being transported to prison, St. Blase encountered a mother whose young son was choking to death on a fishbone. Filled with compassion, Blase blessed the boy’s throat; the fishbone dissolved, and the boy’s life was saved.

Once in captivity, St. Blase was tortured, his skin shredded with wool-combs, and then he was beheaded.

Devotion to St. Blase began in the ninth century Armenia. In the 14th century, when the Black Death (bubonic plague) took the lives of many throughout Europe, the devotion to the “Fourteen Holy Helpers” grew up in Germany, Sweden and Hungary. St. Blase was one of these martyrs known for their intercession in case of sickness.

Still today in Bavaria, the Fourteen Holy Helpers are honored as the “vierzehn Heiligen,” and the Basilica of the Vierzehnheiligen is dedicated to these “Helper Saints.” A pilgrimage church named for the holy helpers, built in the rococo style in the rural hamlet of Bad Staffelstein, was erected between 1743 and 1772.

 

 

 

 

A PRAYER IN HONOR OF ST. BLASE

O God, deliver us
through the intercession of Thy holy bishop and martyr Blase,
from all evil of soul and body,
especially from all ills of the throat;
and grant us the grace to make a good confession
in the confident hope of obtaining Thy pardon,
and ever to praise with worthy lips Thy most holy name.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Filed Under: Communion of Saints, Saints

PEEK-A-BOO! God and the Bornean Rainbow Toad

February 3, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

Wrap your mind around this (can you see it?). It’s a Bornean Rainbow Toad.


God, in His infinite wisdom and creativity, designed a panoply of creatures so diverse, so fantastic, so colorful, so… well, so HUNGRY.

And because no one—not even a lowly amphibian—likes to be someone else’s lunch, God thought up a bunch of cool ways to hide. It’s called “cryptic camouflage” and it allows a toad or a moth or a caterpillar to blend into the environment so well that a hawk or a sand crane is unlikely to see it and think “Dinner!”

Scientists recently discovered and photographed the Bornean Rainbow Toad, a species long thought to be extinct. I was charmed by its weird beauty and so want to show you just a few more examples of God’s handiwork, some of the winners in the “hide from the enemy” category.

The Walking Stick is a favorite at my house. The 4″- or 5″-long brown stick-like insects drop from the trees and fall onto our house. Children giggle. Old people gawk.

The Flounder is not one I’ve seen personally—but check out how this guy plays on the rocks with his Invisibility Shield.

The Gumleaf Grasshopper looks like dry, dead leaves on the forest floor:

Isn’t God, too, wearing camouflage? He’s in all of His creation—so there he is, in the Rainbow Toad and in the birds and the trees and the mountains and the seas. He’s there in all the people—fat and skinny, short and tall—out buying hot dogs and beer at the convenience store this afternoon.

Can you see Him?

Filed Under: Nature

CAN AN AGNOSTIC BE DIVINELY INSPIRED? “Babette’s Feast” Is a Eucharistic Allegory From an Unlikely Author

February 3, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

You probably know at least a little about Danish baroness and plantation owner Karen von Blixen-Finecke. She was the heroine (Meryl Streep) who had a passionate but ultimately doomed love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter (Robert Redford) in the 1985 romantic drama Out of Africa. She was an author who wrote under the pen name “Isak Denisen.”

But you may not remember that she was an agnostic.

My husband and I recently pulled out our copy of the film Babette’s Feast (Danish: Babettes Gæstebud), which won the 1987 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The story was originally published, I understand, in Ladies Home Journal—and it was recreated in film by esteemed Danish writer and director Gabriel Axel.

Babette’s Feast is Dinesen’s parable about two spinster sisters who, once beautiful young women, had forsaken their chances at romance and fame, taking hollow refuge in religion and caring for their father, a pastor of a stern Christian sect in a rough Danish coastal town.

The sisters are named Martine (after Martin Luther) and Philippa (after Luther’s close friend Philip Melanchthon). [This is an important factoid—more on this later.]

* * * * *

The sisters are approaching old age when Babette Hersant appears at their door carrying a letter of recommendation from Philippa’s former suitor. Babette is a refugee from the French counter-revolution; and the sisters cautiously agree to take her in as a housekeeper. For fourteen years, Babette works as their cook and housekeeper—gradually warming the town with her generosity and pleasant demeanor. One day, she wins the French lottery; but rather than return to her hometown, she decides to use the money to prepare a delicious feast for the sisters and the small religious congregation on the founding pastor’s hundredth birthday.

Babette, in a lavish expression of generosity, spends her entire winnings on the banquet. Not simply an epicurean delight, the meal is the means by which Babette expresses her gratitude and her love for the sisters who sheltered her.

The wary townspeople—unprepared for such a lavish pallet of strange new foods, distrustful of a Catholic foreigner such as Babette, and unaccustomed to joy—secretly determine to eat the meal without commenting, to consume without truly appreciating the generous repast.

But as the guests experience the rich flavors and beautiful presentation of the extraordinary banquet, they are moved—and they are gradually transformed by joy. The director amplifies this joy with color, focusing on the delectable dishes, bringing a pallette of rich colors into the cool whites and grays of the sisters’ modest home. And as the color intensifies, so, too, does laughter and pleasure and love.

* * * * *

What does it all mean?

  • The Washington Post called Babette’s Feast “edible art,” a tour de force for the taste buds.
  • Marjorie Baumgarten, writing in the Austin Chronicle, called it the “food in film” equivalent of Valhalla.
  • Christopher Null at filmcritic.com sees in Babette’s Feast a seminal work about repressed emotions and self-doubt.

A foodie film? A gloomy story of repression?

Well, yes but…. for a Christian, the parallel to the Eucharist, to a heavenly Feast, is striking. In her sacrifice, her pouring out of her resources in an expansive love, Babette is a riveting Christ-figure. The satiating meal, an earthly parallel to the heavenly banquet, is eucharistic. And the grace it imparts, the rich outpouring of emotion among the gloomy Danish congregants, mirrors the spiritual life-giving nourishment of the Eucharist.

But curiously, Isak Dinesen herself seems to have been limited by her secularism, incapable of applying the story’s imagery within the context of faith. Raised in a Unitarian household, she drew upon the Old and New Testaments and other spiritual works for her themes; but she remained an agnostic, never raising her eyes toward the heavens to gaze upon the transcendent God. Her personal life was marred by a failed marriage and unsatisfying relationships. She was addicted to painkillers, and she died in 1962 of malnutrition—starving both physically and spiritually.

So to the question in my title:   Can an agnostic be divinely inspired?

My answer is a resounding “Yes.” It seems that Dinesen reached beyond herself, beyond her wildest imaginings, to reveal a Truth which she, lacking true faith, could not understand.

* * * * *

Now about Martine and Philippe, and their famed namesakes Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon:

Melanchthon, the younger and lesser known friend of Martin Luther, labored with him to reform the church. However, there is an interesting difference between the two: Whereas Luther stood firmly on his self-constructed platform of “justification by faith,” Melanchthon was more moderate. He agreed that one must have faith; but also, he taught, one must demonstrate one’s faith by works.

The two friends are buried side by side at the Castle Church in Wittenberg. I’ve read that Martin Luther has a statue of Mary at his grave.

Filed Under: Critical Thinking, Faith, Film

For Black History Month: Sojourner Truth and the Liberation of America’s Smallest Women

February 3, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

On March 8, 2011, feminists observed the centenary of International Women’s Day—a day when we remember the struggles of women in the fight against gender discrimination, and celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.

I would like to dedicate this post to the smallest of women: those who have not yet seen the light of day, but for whom Jesus also died.  These smallest women, still unborn, have been generated in the heart of God, and have been a part of His perfect plan from the moment of creation.

* * * * *

In the early 1960s, when the National Organization of Women was just gathering steam and abortion was still illegal in America, being a feminist was a good thing. Those were the years when discrimination was real and often severe.  Letter carriers were called “mailmen,” police officers were “policemen,” because those government positions were not available to women. Employment policies decreed that women could not hold certain management-level positions; that women would train men, who would then become their bosses, but that women could not be considered for advancement; that pregnant women would be required to resign by the seventh month of gestation. Many women did not drive automobiles. Few worked outside the home.

But change was coming. Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. magazine, popularized the witticism “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” New York’s Bella Abzug led the way for women into the halls of Congress and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus. “Equal pay for equal work” became the mantra of the1960s gender feminists.

Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Eleanor Smeal and other prominent feminists in the ‘60s and early ‘70s decried the fact that a woman was only considered “valuable” to the extent that she was wanted by a man—either her father or her husband. “No,” the feminists rightly exclaimed, “EVERY woman has an inherent dignity, regardless of her marital status.”

The innate value of all women was a battle cry for the women’s movement at its offset. How ironic, then—how unthinkable—that only a few years later they should abandon that line of reasoning for the convenience of the “women’s rights” movement, hitching their wagon to “a woman’s right to choose.”

For just as a woman is invaluable because she has been created by God, so, too, is the unborn child—the fetus or, before that, the embryo—precious, because God has crafted it in His likeness, has imbued it with life, has granted it a dignity which remains, regardless whether or not it was “chosen” and is desired by its mother.

* * * * *

One of the classic defenses of the value of the human person in America is a speech delivered in 1851 by a former slave, Sojourner Truth. She was speaking at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, as women were clamoring for equal rights.

In honor of Sojourner Truth, and of all persons whom God has created, I reprint her remarks in their entirety.

AIN’T I A WOMAN?

By Sojourner Truth

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.  But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it?  [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.  If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

 

Filed Under: Pro-Life
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