Mighty Athena looks over the castle each Christmas night. Athena is our cat, making twenty years look hard, but still a mighty hunter before the Lord. She has Nessie the Wonder Dog, fifty pounds her superior, quite cowed. If she is not longer lovable, being quite crabby, she is still loved. Almost two decades of ratting, snuggling, and purring encourage toleration of a few years of yowling. One of the most magical Christmas gifts of childhood was a castle my... Read more
Last night I went out with my binoculars, a star chart on my mobile, and saw a marvel. Jupiter and Saturn were close enough together from our earthly vantage point that to my very bad eyes they appeared one light. The binoculars gave me some detail and going online showed me more of the wonder of creation. For millennia men have been able to calculate the motions of the stars, sun, moon, and planets and so predict such sights. The orderly... Read more
This year we should enjoy whatever is good, even when it isn’t much. Here is an example of a small good: I am the virtual Super Bowl champion here at Saint Anne’s having defeated virtual competition over the year. The wizards at EA Sports have provided decades of Christmas gifts and I am thankful to them and Hope! I have developed over those decades an elaborate set of “house rules” that make the game (and the season!) last all year.... Read more
Christmas has villains: Caesar and Herod. Far off in Rome, Augustus Caesar was a colonial ruler who viewed Palestine, when he thought of Palestine, as a source of cash. Herod, the sycophantic local, did the dirty job of ruling the region for Rome. Herod the Great was effective at this job, kept the peace and allowed some of the colonial graft to go to local projects. After all, he built a grand Temple and gave God’s people easy wins. Blasphemy.... Read more
Love (true love) and desire should go together, but sometimes do not. That Hideous Strength, the most important novel for this time, begins with a reflection on a failing marriage and ends in a marriage joyfully consummated. CS Lewis fills, mayhap overfills the book with themes, but one is the relationship of the body to the soul. Picking up on themes in the speeches of Plato’s Timaeus with a heavy use of early and Medieval Christian cosmology, Lewis presents a world of... Read more
An adult child that will remain nameless found our new creche arrangement highly inappropriate. * As very good thinker, she accepted that the one Truth can be expressed in different icons. We see different aspects of one reality in different images. She is busy building a home of her own with different representations of Christmas than we have used. She has gained a new set of customs and new icons from her new family. She has a new patriarch and... Read more
May we make some music, as we can, and so create our own beauty wherever we can. May we read a poem, tell a story, act out a play, in our homes. If you do not feel you can read, sing, or play, then act as the audience. Just now, you may be the only audience a homely performance can have! Living music and theater requires an audience. They are not “viewers,” but participants. Those watching television at home cannot... Read more
“And Mary said. . .” I have been stuck on these words that come just before the Magnificat. Imagine being about to say something so good, true, and beautiful, history remembers it as “The Magnificat.” I once knew a professor, generally a very wise and good man, who said that Mary was not so important, was much less interesting than Saint Paul. The apostle had, after all, written so much of the New Testament and Mary was hardly mentioned at all.... Read more
Bet on the fairy tale. Not the Hallmark version, but the hard Grimm truths that wise women told over fires for a thousand years. If you can put your money on the rich step-sisters or the Cinderella, pick Cinderella. If she does not win in this life, she will win in the life to come. God favors the humble and gives grace to the meek. The mighty are pulled down even if they wiggle and squirm their way to deathbeds.... Read more
The politics of Christmas are the incarnation of jollification: the righteous losers end up winning, the humble are exalted, justice happens. Christmas is a Hallmark move indeed: all is well. Mary broke politics at Christmas. She gave consent to the good God and the good God made all well. Like any courageous human, Mary was not “fearless,” but she chose, did her duty, persisted toward holiness. As a result, in a crooked world, her straight was remarkable. She was unknown... Read more
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