Olivier Messiaen - Twenty Meditations On The Baby Jesus - XI The First Communion of the Virgin

Joanna MacGregor, piano

The title of the collection that I've given as "Twenty Meditations on the Baby Jesus" could also be translated as "Twenty Visions" I don't know which would be closer to the composer's intentions.  I'm not enough of a Messiaen scholar to know which sense would be more accurate.  The title of some of them could also be translated in another way from the ones I've chosen.  Some of them are quite mysterious and open to a range of meaning.  Though the centrality of the Baby Jesus, the focus of the entire set and meditations derived from them is certain as is the motive from the very first one signifying God the Father which comes back over and over again.

To Come To A Fuller Understanding Of The Magnificat Through Its Context: From The Gospel At Solentiname

THE SONG OF MARY (LUKE 1:46-55)

We came to the Song of Mary, the Magnificat, traditionally known by that name because it is the first word in the Latin.  It is said that this passage of the Gospel terrified the Russian Czars, and the Maurras was very right in talking about the "revolutionary germ" of the Magnificat.

The pregnant Mary had gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who also was pregnant.  Elizabeth congratulated her because she would be the mother of the Messiah, and Mary brok out singing that song.  It is a song of the poor.  The people of Nicaragua have been very fond of reciting it.  It is the favorite prayer of the poor and superstitious campesinos often carry it as an amulet.  In the time of the old Somoza when the campesinos were required always to carry with them proof that they had voted for him, the poeple jokingly called that document the Magnificat.

Now young ESPERANZA read this poem and the women began to comment on it.

My soul praises the Lord

my heart rejoices in God my Savior,

because he has noticed his slave.

"She praises God because the Messiah is going to be born, and that's a great event for the people."
" She calls God 'Savior' because she knows that the Son that he has given her is going to bring liberation." 
"She is full of joy.  Us women must also be that way, because in our communitiy the Messiah is born too, the liberator."
"She recognizes liberation ... We have to do the same thing.  Liberation is from sin, that is, from selfishness, from injustice, from misery, from ignorance -- eveything that's oppressive.  That liberation is in our wombs too, it seems to me. " 

The last speaker was ANDREA, a young married woman, and now OSCAR, her young husband breaks in:  "God is selfish because he wants us to be his slaves. He wants our submission. Just him.  I don't see why Mary has to call herself a slave. We should be free!  Why just him?  That's selfishness."

ALEJANDRO, who is a bachelor:  "We have to be slaves of God, not of men."
Another young man:  "God is love.  To be a slave of love is to be free because God doesn't make us slaves.  He's the only thing we should be slaves of, love.  And then we don't make slaves of others.'
ALEJANDRO'S MOTHER says:  "To be a slave of God is to serve others.  That slavery is liberation."

I said that it's true that this selfish God Oscar spoke about does exist.  And it's a God invented by people.  People have often invented a god in their own image and likeness - not the true God, but idols, and those religions are alienating, an opium of the people.  But the God of the Bible does not teach religion, but rather he urges Moses to take Israel out of Egypt, where the Jews were working as slaves, He led them from colonialism to liberty.  And later God ordered that among those people no one could hold another as a slave, because they had been freed by him and belonged only to him, which means they were free...

I have reposted this because the insight that these impoverished peasant women and men, in a country under a despot placed there by an imperial power, the United States, who supported him in power, who trained the National Guard that terrorized and murdered them and their children, with impunity, is as good a context as we can find to understand what the birth narrative in Luke must have meant to those who first heard it in an out of the way corner of the mighty Roman Empire.  There is no way for someone who grows up in an imperial state, in 20th century affluence,  certainly not a white man living in the United States in the post-war period, to have their direct knowledge of what the words in the Magnificat means.  For me even my experience as a lower middle-class gay American man who grew up in a relatively modest economic milieu by American standards, doesn't get me near to it.  To try to get there must be an act of imagination that can only be accurately informed by considering what they and others in similar situations have to say.

The words of the Magnificat must have been astonishingly audacious to those who first heard it in the first century Mediterranean basin.  Especially when they would probably have imagined them said, not by a mature woman of even her twenties but a girl in her early teens, the common age of marriage.  For someone that age to claim what Mary does in this text might be unprecedented in literature up to that time.  I'd like to know if that's the case.  Imagine if a poor 14 year old Latina or African American girl who was pregnant and unmarried said something like that today what the reaction would be today.  It would be the butt of jokes and if it was believed it would be fodder for late night stand-up and the clever boys and girls of the online comment community.  Any influence it had in the culture would be laughed out of existence.  Only, that's not what happened in this case, perhaps something of a miracle, as so much about the unlikely existence of Christianity can be seen to be.   Any religion that teaches self-sacrifice, moral obligations and the need to love your enemies even as they persecute you certainly doesn't have the more pleasurable aspects of human nature on its side.  The current test of Christianity isn't science, it is the seductive pleasures of consumer propaganda.

I wish there were more musical settings that would give that aspect of the text more emphasis, by women who have that experience to give them a more genuine comprehension of the words in their fuller context.

OK, I Just Had To Post This

Gustav Holst - First Suite in Eb - 3. March (on ocarinas and euphoniums)

This piece was stuck in my head, so naturally I decided to make a video of it. I made this arrangement for 6 ocarinas and 4 euphoniums.

The ocarinas used in this video are:

- Casper Soprano C
- Focalink Soprano G
- Rotter Z-fans Alto C
- Focalink Triple Alto C
- Dinda Tenor F
- Noble Bass C

Jordan Moore

Hate Mail

It doesn't matter one bit that you would like to be able to find out such information as sociology pretends to discover, if the methods available to you can't do that, you can't use them to find out that information.  It also doesn't matter that the fraud of doing that is generally accepted, it doesn't change the fact that their methods can't yield reliable data or reliable information.

That "nones" are defined on the basis of saying "none of the above" only means that they are otherwise undefined as a group and to make any kind of an assertion about them is false about some of them, perhaps most of them and so it is a false statement.  Any group which is defined on such a loose criterion can't be characterized other than that.   Yet people are always making claims about the "nones" generally identifying them as anti-religious if not atheists.

I would say that the fact that Pew found that it was about the group least likely to retain people identified as such - by the researchers, not themselves -  is a good indication that it isn't a legitimate grouping for researchers to create.   That the sub groupings, atheists, agnostics, indifferent, vaguely believing in some "spiritual force" or "god" would be tiny in numbers doesn't mean anymore than that some of the other groups in such polls are tiny.  Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, are all small groups in such polls, but there is no ideological motivation to make assertions about them for the benefit of anti-religious ideology.

William Bolcom - Just As I Am - Gospel Preludes Book 1 #3

Nicholas Capozzoli, organ
Westminster Presbyterian Church (Upper St. Clair, PA)

I should mention that there is a really good recording of all of the Gospel Preludes played by Gregory Hand on the Naxos label.   Naxos also has what I still believe is the only recording available of William Bolcom's great and massive song cycle on William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience,  certainly one of the great works of the 20th century and arguably among the greatest works ever composed by an American composer.  William Bolcom's choice to not stick to any one style of music produces an experience of incredible intensity and power and of intellectual engagement at its highest.  There should be a dozen recordings to choose from of these works, at least.

Olivier Messiaen - Twenty Meditations on The Baby Jesus - X - Meditation on the Spirit of Joy

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

There is a lot of jazz influence in this one, even hints of gospel music.  I don't know how much of that was intentional but it's there to be heard.  It is the most Ivesian of the set.

There Is Literally Nothing To The "Nones" But The Self Interest Of Those Who Invented And Use It

One point which was asserted in opposing one of my recent posts claimed that there was sociological fact that would refute what I'd said.  Since the person who made that pat claim produced no "sociological fact" it was an empty claim.   In atheist polemic, such vague citations of non-cited "science", counts as a debating point instead of an empty assertion.

The fans of such alleged scientific fact are rather credulous.  They never seem to wonder what the durability of such "fact" is, especially such of it which is the product of surveys.   I strongly suspect that a long term study of such "fact" would show that it is a transparent fiction, lasting only so long as the assumptions it is based in aren't questioned or analyzed for logical coherence, the sample selection is exempted from rules that are needed to come up with a representative sample and a number of other things that prevent their results from being reliable.

I have been having one of the perennial arguments over claims made about that artificial and ideological sociological invention, the "nones".   For anyone who hasn't read previous posts on that topic, the often discussed group allegedly representing those who have given up on God, was the invention of Barry Kosmin a founder of The Institute for the Study of Secularism.  He didn't like what his surveys showed, that in the United States, by a wide margin, religious affiliation was the norm, being unaffiliated or not identified with a religious group was not the norm.  He admitted in an interview that that was his motive in inventing a group so he wouldn't have to categorize them as what they were, "unaffiliated".

“Nonreligious” was a possibility. So was “non-faith” and “non-affiliated.”

But Kosmin rejected all of these. The “non” part bothered him. “Non-affiliated” would be like calling people “non-white,” he said. “We didn’t want to suggest that ‘affiliated’ was the norm, and every one else was an ‘other.’”

“Nomenclature,” he added, ” is quite important in these things.”

So Kosmin began calling this group the “nones,” a shortened version for “none of the above” — which is what people often said when asked to name their religion. He never thought the term would stick.

“It began as a joke,” he said, “but now, like many of these things, it has taken on its own life.”

Indeed. Today, “nones” are everywhere. Both in a literal sense and a literary one.

Since he said, "Nomenclature is quite important in these things," it is necessary to ask what was important in this for him.   That can be seen from the fact that Barry Kosmin is actively involved in anti-religious, pro-atheist promotions through his group Center for Inquiry.  He is on the board of Center for Inquiry and on its speakers board.  He is listed by them as

Dr. Kosmin is happy to speak to community and student groups about any of the areas mentioned below. His talks also include:

The Rise of the None Population
Secularism in a Global Context

So he has a clear motive other than as a purely scientific description of what his data actually say.  I don't know what fees Kosmin might charge for such speeches but that would be useful to know.   I would imagine, as the inventor of the "nones" he might be considered the foremost expert on that widely touted and promoted entity.

That his invention, "nones" is unlike the other groups in surveys which include it in their analysis can be seen from the fact that "nones" can be atheists, agnostics, people who are indifferent to the question of the existence of any god, people who don't identify with any particular denomination at the time of the survey but who believe in God (which would, I suppose, be the option I'd have to choose) or any number of other vague or specific beliefs.

There is also another big difference, as constituted in every survey I recall looking at, people were assigned to the group "nones" by the researchers, not themselves.  People counted as members of specific denominations or general traditions in the surveys put themselves there.  If I answered some of those surveys I've seen I would be put, against my will, into a category I don't think exists or is legitimate.   I flatly reject any assignment of my non-affiliation to the bogus category.

The group "nones" is a phony, clearly ideological invention which has created the illusion that religion, especially Christianity, is dying in the United States and elsewhere.   Which is clearly good news for Barry Kosmin and his ideological side of things.  I would say it is as clearly a red flag of warning that the entire enterprise of sociological surveying is an open invitation for the invention of such bogus entities created for the baldest of ideological purposes and sold to a willing press corps through which it is foisted on an unsuspecting public.   The whole enterprise is sold on the guarantee that what is called science carries a guarantee of reliability which the process of its creation, in this and many other cases, doesn't warrant.

Ironically, the sale of the "nones" reveals that sociological science and the behavioral sciences in general practice one of the vices traditional religion has so often fallen prey to, the temptation to peddle bogus lines on the basis of an assumption of reliability.  In the case of "religion" on one hand and such "science" on the other, both are sold on a habit of believing that the hierarchy of those invariably tell the truth and that they are kept in line by their peers.   When that isn't done in religion, you get frauds who  violate everything they are supposed to stand for, the same happens when scientific review fails or, in the cases of the social sciences, it is involved in the same fraud.

That the "nones" isn't a real group was revealed by one of the foremost promoters of the fraud, the Pew Research Center several years ago.  In a paper called Entering and Leaving The Ranks of the Unaffiliated, they revealed.

Paradoxically, the unaffiliated have gained the most members in the process of religious change despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all religious groups. Indeed, most people who were raised unaffiliated now belong to a religious group. Nearly four-in-ten of those raised unaffiliated have become Protestant (including 22% who now belong to evangelical denominations), 6% have become Catholic and 9% are now associated with other faiths. Overall, 4% of the total U.S. adult population now belongs to a religious group after having been raised unaffiliated.

Having such an investment in the category, "nones"  their reports on its increase having gotten them in the news and before the public, gaining standing and status for the Pew label, certainly the goal of any such a group. they won't admit that one of the reasons for that is because it's so much easier to pass into a group involuntarily by assignment and to leave such a non-existent group, likely unaware you were ever considered a member of it.

The issue of the rise of the "nones" as an intellectual entity is an excellent window into what is wrong with sociology and its typically bogus, self serving methods.  If I had unlimimted time I would go over the history of sociological claims and commonly held ideas to check them for durability.   I would guess that they are about as ephemeral as "scientific fact" as much of the stuff in psychology which rises, gains currency, becomes a dominant ideology and then falls through its own accumulated self-permissions to cut corners (some of them enormously large corners) in scientific methodology, logical rigor and even the absolute basis on which any scientific reliability really and ultimately rests, the moral position that you should tell the truth and not lie.

Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship - Song of Mary - Magnificat

Brian Hogans, piano
Tommy Sauter, bass
Dan Baraszu, guitar
Will Scruggs, tenor sax
Marlon Patton, drums
Kinah Boto Ayah, percussion

Note:  This is the list I found online, I'm not sure it's right.

" the dangerous principle was promulgated that men are to be looked upon as means and not as ends "

The posts I did recently in response to atheists peddling their popular lie about the Nazis being a Christian phenomenon led to me reading more about the Nazi atheists' revival of Paganism as a more Germanic, more war encouraging religion for the simple Aryan masses than Christianity.  The posting of that fascist gun nut Christmas card with a Nazi Christmas card from 1944 had more guns as opposed to "Peace on Earth goodwill to humanity", neither of them had anything to do with Jesus.   They did have what a lot of folk believe is stolen by Christians from pagans.  As I've noted two Christmas seasons running that the pagans they were supposed to have stolen it from, along with their Yule holiday prominently featured what you do with guns, killing.   Not much like the late 19th-20th century myth about the Yule its religious aspect under paganism was an occasion for massive blood sacrifice, including human sacrifice.   For the class of people from whom those victims would be chosen, it must have been quite a horrific occasion as well as for the many animals so sacrificed.  As I also concluded as I thought about it, for such people a new and rival religion which banned human sacrifice and did not even sacrifice animals just have come as a blessed relief.   As brutal as Christian medieval Europe was, it lacked that feature of virtually all known European paganism.  Any brutality committed in the name of Christianity was at variance with the gospels and the rest of the New Testament, it is what is more likely held over from pagan times, not Christmas.

By the way, RMJ has done considerable research into the neo-pagan and atheist popular myth that the Xians stole the Yule from those poor beleaguered pagans.   Like so much of that neo-urban-webbian myth, that is rubbish.  

It was only reading about that parallel revival of paganism under the Nazis that I fully came to understand why for people like John Paul II and Bernard XVI a revival of paganism, by name or merely by common practice, would have been something to worry about.   They, growing up under the Nazis, learning more about it in the immediate post-war period and after, would have seen a connection between neo-paganism and Nazism.   That so many in the higher reaches of  the Nazi party saw so much in common between paganism and Nazism is certainly worth thinking about. Why shouldn't Pagans today have to answer for that?   I have, as of yet, found no pagan opposition to Nazism to match the Christian and, certainly, Jewish opposition to them at the time.

-----------

I recently mentioned one of the martyrs of the White Rose movement, Sophie Scholl who was beheaded by the Nazis for distributing pamphlets,  I also recently found a site with translations of  the White Rose pamphlets [for some reason the link to the fourth pamphlet didn't work].   Here's the first one.

Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be "governed" without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day?

If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order in history; if they surrender man's highest principle, that which raises him above all other God's creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.

Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would 
appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now - the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability - are waiting to be hounded to their destruction. So it seems - but it is not so. Rather, by means of a gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become aware of his fate.

Only a few recognized the threat of ruin, and the reward for their heroic warning was death. We will have more to say about the fate of these persons. If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer; then even the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon.

Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western 
civilization, must defend himself against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism. Offer passive resistance - resistance - wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation's last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure.

From Friedrich Schiller's "The Lawgiving of Lycurgus and Solon":

Viewed in relation to its purposes, the law code of Lycurgus is a masterpiece of political science 
and knowledge of human nature. He desired a powerful, unassailable state, firmly established on its own principles. Political effectiveness and permanence were the goal towards which he strove, and he attained this goal to the full extent possible under the circumstances. But if one compares the purpose Lycurgus had in view with the purposes of mankind, then a deep abhorrence takes the 
place of the approbation which we felt at first glance. Anything may be sacrificed to the good of the state except that end for which the State serves as a means. The state is never an end in itself; it is important only as a condition under which the purpose of mankind can be attained, and this purpose is none other than the development of all of man's powers, his progress and improvement. 

If a state prevents the development of the capacities which reside in man, if it interferes with the progress of the human spirit, then it is reprehensible and injurious, no matter how excellently devised, how perfect in its own way. 

Its very permanence in that case amounts more to a reproach than to a basis for fame; it becomes a prolonged evil, and the longer it endures, the more harmful it is...

At the price of all moral feeling a political system was set up, and the resources of the state were 
mobilized to that end. In Sparta there was no conjugal love, no mother love, no filial devotion, no 
friendship; all men were citizens only, and all virtue was civic virtue.

A law of the state made it the duty of Spartans to be inhumane to their slaves; in these unhappy 
victims of war humanity itself was insulted and mistreated. In the Spartan code of law the dangerous principle was promulgated that men are to be looked upon as means and not as ends - and the foundations of natural law and of morality were destroyed by that law...

What an admirable sight is afforded, by contrast, by the rough soldier Gaius Marcius in his camp 
before Rome, when he renounced vengeance and victory because he could not endure to see a 
mother's tears!...

The state [of Lycurgus] could endure only under the one condition: that the spirit of the people 
remained quiescent. Hence it could be maintained only if it failed to achieve the highest, the sole 
purpose of a state.

From Goethe's "The Awakening of Epimenides, Act II, Scene 4:

SPIRITS: Though he who has boldly risen from the abyss Through an iron will and cunning May 
conquer half the world, Yet to the abyss he must return. Already a terrible fear has seized him; In vain he will resist! And all who still stand with him Must perish in his fall

HOPE: Now I find my good men Are gathered in the night, To wait in silence, not to sleep. And the glorious word of liberty They whisper and murmur, Till in unaccustomed strangeness, On the steps of  our temple Once again in delight they cry: Freedom! Freedom!

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.

Update:  Steve Simels believes he knows more about the nature of the Nazi regime than Sophie Scholl, her brother, Hans, and Christoph Probst, who were all murdered by the Nazis for their first hand witness in opposition to their criminal regime.  He's typical of an ignorant American who has a number of self-serving factoids they repeat as a rather stupid routine in place of any facts.  I am done answering anything he or his fellow idiots have to say on the topic.  I think I've spent enough fruitless hours responding to their lies which they will repeat in the face of any amount of evidence disproving their ancient fictions.

Smarter Trolls, Please

Anyone who thinks dogs don't have a sense of morality is either entirely unfamiliar with dogs or enormously lacking in perception.   That many such people are in the so-called sciences signifies only that such people can get degrees and jobs in such so-called science.   It is, yes, unsurprisingly a holding of ideological materialism, which doesn't support the existence of morality.  That so many non-scientists buy their nonsense is no more surprising.

Olivier Messiaen - Twenty Meditations On the Baby Jesus - IX The Meditation of Time

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

William Bolcom - What A Friend We Have in Jesus - Gospel Prelude #1

David Harrison, organist
Master's Degree Recital
December 9, 2014


Listening to all of William Bolcom's Gospel Preludes the other day, they're such wonderful pieces that I'm going to post them, too.  They are some of the most significant religious music composed in the last two centuries.

William Bolcom is the only white composer I know of who has, with total conviction, total respect and such great mastery learned from the black gospel tradition to this extent.   That tradition, from the experience of people subjected to oppression and discrimination, disrespect and hatred, the same forces that informed just about the entire prophetic literature of the Bible, is so much of the life of Christianity today, That William Bolcom would seem to have known that going on thirty years ago might be show that heightened perception and thinking  as well as an ability to make audacious choices with no fear are important components in what makes the difference between a great and a merely talented composer.

Update:  I specified with total conviction, total respect and such great mastery, all of those you mention are disqualified on one of more of those criteria.

Update 2:   The likes of you telling me I'm an idiot will go to my head if you don't stop it.

Messiaen: Twenty Meditations on the Baby Jesus - VIII. Meditation From The Heights

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

I'm not sure about my translation of the title.  The original is, Regard des hauteurs, "hauteur" can have a number of meanings, the heights as in a high place or position, physically, high mindedness, spiritual elevation or its opposite, arrogance, conceit, etc.  I'm not sure what meaning Messiaen meant but I am guessing from the context of the titles that he meant physical position or spiritual elevation.

Still Recovering From The Rigors of the Dog Search

Yesterday's run away dog episode with all its many vicissitudes reminded me of the kerfuffle over the New York Times misquoting Pope Francis about all dogs going to heaven and the fuss it caused among traditionalists who hold that animals don't have souls.  Actually, Pope Francis didn't say that, it was Paul VI who more or less said that to comfort a child whose dog had died,

 “One day we will see our animals in the eternity of Christ.”

I don't know why the idea that animals had no souls came about, the word "animal" implies that they have soul anima.   I can't, offhand, think of any scripture which denies that animals have souls.  That passage from Isaiah I noted last week certainly implies that animals, not just pets, will be in the Kingdom of God.

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
The calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.
The cow and the bear shall be neighbors,
together their young shall rest;
the lion shall eat hay like the ox.
The baby shall play by the cobra’s den,
and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.
There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD,
as water covers the sea.

Despite the joke Woody Allen made about "the lamb won't get much sleep" .Isaiah obviously wasn't talking about animals that needed to eat each other, though they apparently will all be vegetarians. So plants will also be a in heaven.  Or whatever Isaiah envisioned.   And elsewhere in the same book he said,

Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together;

He didn't specify human beings.

Looking at the book of Isaiah I think it's quite a useful book for the political upheavals we are at risk of experiencing, considering the risings and falling of kings, invasions, etc. his prophesies concern. His religious criticism of the highest level of the religious establishment and The Temple as well as the political rulers is always worth thinking about.   There's a reason Isaiah was quoted by the most radical of all prophets, Jesus.

I don't think I've ever known a dog who wasn't the moral superior of many of the people I know, I've never known a dog as mean and base as, perhaps, most of the people I observe.   I remember that when I was a kid and found out what this word that got thrown around "bitch" meant that I couldn't understand why it was used in a derogatory way to refer to women, female dogs being in nothing like that.  It had more to do with people who devalued dogs as they did all animals, I'd guess.   If anyone deserved to be excluded on the basis of species, it would be ours.

My old dog is just fine today.  Wherever he went while he was missing, it doesn't seem to have caused any lasting damage.  I suppose I'll get over it, even the horrendous blisters I got from walking several miles with the wrong socks on.  If you ever have to go on a search like that, remember to take the two minutes it would take to put on the right foot gear.

Update:  I don't care what Steve and the Eschatots say.  They are the ever dwindling number of people who still go to Duncan's blog to hang out, as I was reminded again last week, the grownups who used to go there stopped going.  Some of them write better stuff than Duncan ever wrote and say things that are more important and interesting than anything that gets said there today.  It's a source of pocket change for Duncan, that's obvious from the amount of effort he doesn't put into it.  I'm surprised a few of them are willing to put up with the coercion to not say what they want to say by the enforcers of the house ideology.  It is it of no political importance.

Update 2:  It would be easier to come up with a list of the few adults who still go there on anything like a regular basis, Derbes, Grommit, Um..... I suppose Moe when he's talking about what he knows, what's going on around Halifax.  Maybe a few others are part time adults.    When I had occasion to look at some of the comment threads from a couple of years ago there were many names of regulars which have disappeared, not including the ones who Duncan has banned.

I haven't looked lately, how many times has Duncan begged his regulars to buy stuff from Jeff Bezos' sweat shop so he can get some pocket change?   He calls it "Bezos' money" well, it certainly isn't money he's paying to the peons who work in his awful warehouses instead of sending it to the rent boys who shill for him.

Carla Bley - Away in a manger

Carla Bley, piano,
Steve Swallow, bass
The Partyka Brass Quintet

Some of the most delicate settings of Christmas carols and songs I ever heard are on the album she made.   Highly recommended.

Prayers Answered? It Sure Feels Like It

My dog is home, safe and is sleeping soundly on the couch.  He was my mother's dog, a terrier she was given as a present but who I took in when she couldn't handle him anymore.  He's 14 years old and had never, until this afternoon slipped out of the fenced in back yard.  He almost got a mile away, we were afraid he'd gone off in the woods to die but he was down the road a mile.  The man who lived down there brought him in and was going to take him to the police station when the dispatcher told him where he lived.  The four hours he was missing were worrisome, prayers asking for the intercession of my patron saint were said.  I don't know if that was a test of the kind discussed a few days ago but all I can report is he is back, looking a bit ashamed.   He hasn't been scolded, he got fed extra.  I nailed some chicken wire across the door we figured he slipped out of.  He doesn't go out unsupervised anymore.  

There are some striking coincidences involved but I'm afraid my detractors would blow a gasket if I noted them.  I'm feeling like I should make an effort to restrain my baser tendencies in light of the experience.    Instead, here's the Gregorian Liturgy of St. Anthony

This Is The Anti-Christ

This is the family Christmas card of Nevada Assemblywoman, Republican Michele Fiore.   This reminds me of nothing so much as this which I came across in my recent research into the Anti-Christianity of the Nazis, their program of replacing Christianity with "Positive Christianity" in which Jesus was an Aryan and to pretty much bury anything about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, what you do for the least among you you do unto me, the good Samaritan (the stranger among you, etc.) and, last but not least in their intention of NOT following the teachings of Jesus, turning the other cheek.

And other, such expressions of Anti-Christianity which seems, inevitably, to replace guns and the worship of violence for the Gospel of Jesus.

It is one of the worst things that real Christians do that they don't call this what it is, the Anti-Christianity that is so often on the tongues of those who worship that very Anti-Christ.

Olivier Messiaen - Twenty Meditations On the Baby Jesus - VII - Meditation On The Cross

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

Commentary is given below.

Why St. Ita Ford Isn't Talked About - An Anniversary Repost

Some of our mother's heroines and heroes were the Martyrs of El Salvador.   Still too early to write something myself.   From a Maryknoll website:

Born: April 23, 1940 
Entered: September 2, 1961 
Died: December 2, 1980

"I never said, ‘Help, or save me, or I’m drowning’," Ita told her mother on a tape she sent home describing her close call with death on August 23rd in a flash flood which took her friend, Sister Carol Piette, M.M. "Something was happening and I said, ‘Receive me, Lord, I’m coming."

The Lord made her wait for three more months before he accepted the offering of her life. Much of Ita’s life had been spent waiting. When she was a child, she, her brother Bill, and her sister, Irene often waited in hospital rooms to see their father who had tuberculosis. She missed his funeral in 1973 because she had to wait for a visa to leave Chile in the midst of a military coup.

Her life in Maryknoll, too, was full of disappointments and years of waiting. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 23, 1940, Ita joined Maryknoll in 1961 after finishing college at Marymount, but was forced to leave after three years for health reasons. For the next seven years she worked as an editor with Sadlier Publishers while she searched for what she should do with her life. Her search brought her back to Maryknoll in 1971.

Ita arrived in Chile in 1973 during the days of unrest just before the military coup, and stayed to minister to the people in years of great hardship and persecution. Chile had a profound impact on her. It was here that her commitment to the poor grew, and that she learned what this demands. As she reflected in 1977, "Am I willing to suffer with the people here, the suffering of the powerless, the feeling impotent? Can I say to my neighbors - I have no solutions to this situation; I don’t know the answers, but I will walk with you, search with you, be with you. Can I let myself be evangelized by this opportunity? Can I look at and accept my own poorness as I learn it from other poor ones?"

What she learned from the poor in Chile challenged her to respond to Archbishop Romero's call for help in El Salvador. She arrived there shortly after Archbishop Romero’s death. The new beginning was not easy. She missed the Sisters and her friends in Chile; the new work was not immediately clear, and it took time to gain acceptance and trust from the people who were being terrorized by the political situation. But in June as she and Sister Carol began their work with the Emergency Refugee Committee in Chalatenango, Ita wrote, "I don’t know if it is in spite of, or because of the horror, terror, evil, confusion, lawlessness - but I do know that it is right to be here...to believe that we are gifted in and for Salvador now, that the answers to the questions will come when they are needed, to walk in faith one day at a time with the Salvadoreans along a road filled with obstacles, detours, and sometimes washouts...."

The obstacles grew increasingly numerous as Ita and Carol responded to the needs of "the hurting, homeless, and hungry." They were conscious of the political implications of feeding the hungry in this repressive society which was in a state of "undeclared civil war", and of the potential for ever greater conflict and growing U.S. involvement. As they wrote to Sister Melinda Roper, Community President on June 11th, "Since the death of Mons. Romero the news coverage on Salvador has declined to almost nothing. The Committee fears that decisive action will be taken by our (U.S.) government under the guise of ‘stopping subversives’ or ‘containing communism’ - and that all of Central America will be involved if this happens. It’s a heavy scene - but if we have a preferential option for the poor as well as a commitment for justice as a basis for the coming of the Kingdom, we’re going to have to take sides in Salvador - correction - we have."

In the midst of this already painful situation, Carol’s tragic death was a heavy blow to Ita. She questioned why she had been spared and grieved deeply for her friend and sister apostle. Ita still carried the burden of mourning with her when she went to the Regional Assembly in Nicaragua at Thanksgiving time. The Sisters there said that Ita seemed to undergo a profound healing during their five days together and at the closing liturgy Ita read a passage from one of Archbishop Romero’s final sermons which foretold what would befall Ita and Maura less than 24 hours after they had prayed. "Christ invites us not to fear persecution because, believe me, brothers and sisters, he who is committed to the poor must run the same fate as the poor, and in El Salvador we know what the fate of the poor signifies: to disappear, be tortured, to be captive - and to be found dead."

Her fate, like that of the poor, was to follow in the footsteps of Christ to the bitter end. "This is how we know what love is: Christ gave his life for us. We too, then, ought to give our lives for our brothers." (1 John 3:16). And so she did with three others on December 2nd, 1980.

Ita’s buoyant personality, her wit, and her sense of humor and fun were a striking contrast to the suffering and pain she experienced throughout her life. Her twinkling eyes and elfin grin would surface irrepressibly even in the midst of poverty and sorrow. Ita loved to sing and dance and was a welcome addition to any party. She had a gift with words which she probably inherited from her father whose letters were full of his own original words and phrases.

Though Ita and Maura spent less than a year in El Salvador and accomplished little in human terms — in their powerlessness, suffering, and death they will be remembered forever. As a telegram from the leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Front of San Salvador so eloquently stated, "Their outstanding lives and their unjustified deaths will be part of the history of our people's struggle for total liberation." In our Maryknoll history, too, these martyrs for justice will have a special place.

Ita has touched all our lives with her many gifts and in death she leaves us the greatest gift of all - the witness of her life laid down in love. Ita found the purpose and meaning of life among God’s poor. Let us ask her to be with us as our guide and companion as we too search for that which she has found. We close with the words she wrote to her godchild and niece, Jennifer, on her 16th birthday this past August:

"I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Some thing worth living for — may be even worth dying for - some thing that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can’t tell you what it might be - that’s for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in the search."

Not Hate Mail

How come you don't post the hate mail that you answer?

Because a. it generally contains a lot of stuff that is just stupid which is a waste of time, b. because it almost always contains misrepresentations of what was said that I'm not obligated to post and which I'd have to waste time by saying the same things again, c. other lies, d. because I choose to use what they give me on my instead of their terms. 

I do post some of it because it serves a purpose to do so, sometimes just to show how stupid the stuff I get generally is.   You don't need to post every one to do that,  the people who tend to send me hate mail are pretty much stupid in the same general way.