Lift Up Your Hearts!

What happens when an atheistic science fiction writer becomes a Christian?  You get Christian blog posts with attitude, such as John C. Wright's response to the rationale behind an anti-Christian ad campaign planned for the Christmas season.  As an atheist-turned-Christian science fiction fan, I find the fantasy-style metamorphosis both delightful and amusing.  An excerpt:

I realize that, now that I am on the opposing side, I have no more right to feel contempt for weakness in the ranks, but, by Jupiter's holy lightning-flinging scrotum, this kind of whiny talk used to really bug me, and I still suffer flashbacks to my old self. How can you feel lonely during Christs' Mass when YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN CHRIST??!! The crowd of lemmings is rushing off after the Pied Piper to worship the Unseen Flying Spaghetti Monster, and you are feeling all lonesome because you are not in the crowd? Who wants to be in any crowd when the crowd is mad? 

(more, simlar ranting, followed by)

As a Xtian, I have to be nice and kind, and invite in to our cheerful feasts and celebrations the poor, the tired, and the unbelieving. All are welcome to partake of the spirit of Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward Man, even if you don't believe in spirits. A lamp is lifted for you by the open door: within, the feast is spread. Come, and be fed.

Distributism, as an economic philosophy, is totally new to me.  (My decision to circumvent Pennsylvania's high school graduation requirement of a course in economics, which I ditched in favor of AP physics, continues to haunt me.)  I came upon it while looking for a good G. K. Chesterton link for my O God of Earth and Altar post; Chesterton was one of distributism's more vocal proponents.

Since one obviously doesn't hear much about it, distributism may be outmoded, impractical, unworkable, or just plain wrong; I don't have time to learn more about it now, and Li'l Writer Guy is still chanting with the monks.  However, I find it most intriguing, since at first glance it accords well with my own philosophies, bringing together such diversities as homeschooling, home birth, home cheesemaking, family farms, independent businesses, public transportation, artisan breads, adn above all recognition of the family unit as the basic structure of society.  Here are some quotes from the Wikipedia article: (More)

I checked the date of the article; it's not April 1.  Mexican physicists have made diamonds from tequila.  One can only speculate how they came up with the idea of heating tequila to around 800 degrees celsius and turning the resultant carbon atoms into an extremely thin diamond film, but it might make a good comic routine.  Uses for the diamond film include the manufacture of ultra-fine cutting instruments, and as an alternative to silicon in computer chips.

The scientists found that even the cheapest of tequila brands, averaging at $3 a bottle, are good enough to make diamonds.

 The cost of an 800-degree oven might keep this from becoming a do-it-yourself project, however.

I'd hate to see local bookstores go out of business, even chain stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble.  Nothing long-distance and electronic will ever replace the atmosphere of a physical store, and the ability to wander, browse, and hold a book in your own hands.  However, I am also one of Amazon.com's more loyal customers, and not solely for their discounts.  Frequently both Borders and Barnes and Noble will send me coupons that I would love to use in their local stores.  Borders is an easy walk from our house, and I could easily be a frequent shopper there.

Except for one problem:  they rarely have what I'm looking for.  This morning I received a 30% off coupon offer with pleasure, because there's a book that I thought to buy only after sending of my most recent Amazon order.  It's a children's book, and not an obscure one, so I figured the odds of my convenient Borders having it were great.  But alas, no.  It does no good for the sales clerk to suggest that he order the book for me; I can do that myself.  It's rather like calling a reference librarian, having exhausted my own resources, only to hear her typing my question into Google.

Too often, also, the stores not only don't stock what I'd like to buy, but fill their stores with items I most definitely would not like to buy.  The experience is similar to that I've had at so-called farmers' markets, which were populated more by gourmet popcorn stands and vitamin sellers than fresh, local produce.

Regardless, I'm thankful for Amazon and other online sellers.  The local stores are worse-stocked now, but they never did have much of what I was looking for.  How wonderful to have such resources available now for a few clicks (and a credit card).

It must often be so...when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

 Thank you, all veterans and current members of our armed forces.

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  (Book of Common Prayer, American Episcopal Church, 1979)

Like it or not, our country has placed itself under the threats I mentioned in Part I, and I can only hope that the mitigating factors of Part II will enable me to say, at the end of four years, "That wasn't so bad."  Regardless, although I believe the results of this election will make life more difficult, the important things do not change.  Here's some of what I believe we need to do in the coming years.

Who is the "we" in the following ruminations?  Mostly I'm speaking for myself, to myself, but often there will be a more general application, anyone who wishes to come along for the ride is welcome. (More)

Housing markets are funny.  I know, it's all in supply and demand, but I've found it somewhat amusing, ever since several of our friends in a missionary organization ended up living in upscale houses when the organization moved from California to Florida, because for tax reasons they had to reinvest in housing the large profits they made from selling their missionary shacks in California.  That works both ways:  having moved to Florida from the Northeast, we found ourselves caught in a real estate market that was flat for almost 20 years while places like Massachusetts and Connecticut skyrocketed, effectively precluding a return to our roots.

Yesterday I came across this property for sale in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it got me thinking.  You can have this "attractively priced" home for a mere $709,000.  Assuming that's Canadian dollars, it might be a bargain at about $663,000 in U.S. currency. (Size measurements are given in feet, however, so I'm not sure which units are being used.) (More)

One banker's box stuffed to the brim with mail:  that's what awaited us as we returned from an extended stay in Pittsburgh welcoming our granddaughter.  I spent most of the evening sorting it into piles:  Urgent, Important, Interesting, Political, Magazines, and Washinton Mutual.  I kid you not.  The mail from WaMu rated a pile of its own, as there were 16 envelopes, one for every two days we were away.  I can't tell you what's in those envelopes, but I know it's not important:  neither of us has an account with that bank.  And yet we rate mail from them at a rate of one every two days?

So I wasn't totally shocked when I read this from the New York Times:  Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history.  I'd say WaMu's downfall was caused by unwise investments, all right—not in real estate, but in paper and postage!

We, meaning our family and friends, were talking about the Y2K problem at least 20 years before it happened.  So how did it become such a big deal?  If we peons knew, why was it an apparent surprise to the U.S. government and business world?  Why were we caught so off guard that we needed a drastic increase in programming staff, which necessitated reaching overseas to Indian programmers, which in turn sparked the subsequent massive exporting of American Information Technology jobs?

We've known for at least as long that our economy was headed for a difficult, possibly even disastrous "correction."  Some borrowing is healthy and makes financial and economic sense—reasoned, careful borrowing with every expectation of timely repayment—but an economy as dependent on foolish borrowing as ours is only a house of cards waiting to crash.  The wonder is that the fall has been postponed so long, even if our current troubles are the needed correction.  (I'm not sure they are; we've weathered disruptions before, and the media live off of doom-and-gloom, making everything seem worse than it really is.)   We've buttressed our card house by extending more credit; then putting mothers to work to bring in more cash; then extending more credit; then putting our teenagers to work, not to support their families but to support the economy through foolish consumerism; then pushing credit on those who are least wise in their spending and can least afford to repay; then putting our homes to work through home equity loans; then stretching credit to the absolute breaking point as those in the highest places of most responsibility began behaving like the most foolish neophyte with a brand-new credit card.  And all, from the dirt-poor to the wealthiest, expecting the government—which, may I remind you, is you, and me, and all those who still believe in responsible spending—to pay for their mistakes. (More)

Instead of writing something more interesting, say about Life with Grandchildren, here's a quick post on another column from The Occasional CEO about the advantage of face-to-face encounters even in today's global economy.

...by not writing something of my own, but I can really identify with this Occasional CEO post and thought you might be amused.

Okay, I'm being really lazy today and merely posting a link to someone else's post, but there are too many other things to attend to, and John C. Wright has another good one:  Albino Jesuit Assassins ... IN SPAAACE!  I mean, really...with a title like that....

Anyway, enjoy!  I have to get on with life.

John Stackhouse has another perspicacious post, this time on the homogenization of music in contemporary churches.  I know nothing about the "white gospel" style he laments in Disappearing (Musical) Languages but his experience strikes a sympathetic chord, since my musical "mother tongue" for worship is equally endangered.

[T]he Welsh, among others, would tell us to keep alive the languages we love. Those who still speak them must take them up as sacred causes, maintaining these vital ways of perceiving and articulating the world without which humanity is diminished.

That's much more encouraging than being told to get over it and learn to like the new languages.  It's helps to realize that when it comes to church worship music I am a Native American child forced to speak only English in school, a deaf child forbidden to sign, or a Scot required to use the language of his conquerors.  Prudence tells me the value of learning the dominant tongue, but a higher wisdom calls me to preserve that which is in danger of perishing.  Call it the genealogical impulse.

It's been harder than I thought to write the "why I blog" post that's been on my backlog for ages.  So I'm just going to do it.

I suppose my blog can most charitably be called "eclectic."  Some blogs are political, some personal journals, some accumulate interesting articles and news stories, some keep far-flung families in contact, some are formed around a specific cause or issue.  I aim to be jack-of-all-trades, and if that means being master of none, I see nothing wrong with that. It depends on your audience.  Five-star restaurants require highly-trained and gifted chefs, but I'd take my mother's home cooking and the family dinner table any day.  Fine.  But why?  Why do I put so much time and effort into blogging?  What do I hope to accomplish? (More)

I've often noted that there is a significant generation gap between my siblings and me; even seven years makes a big difference.  Not that it keeps us from being a closely-knit and loving family, but it's noticeable.  Although for a number of reasons my upbringing was somewhat different from theirs, that's not what I'm talking about, but rather changes in the surrounding culture and "conventional wisdom" between my formative years and theirs.  Perhaps change always happens this way, and I only noticed it because there is that half-generation gap between us.  It does serve as an interesting bridge between our generation and that of our children.  It was a bit of a shock when I realized that certain customs...that our children thought of as "the way it's done" were those of my siblings' era, and quite different from my own views of "normal."

That's what I wrote in a comment on a previous post. Now I've learned that I'm not the only one to notice the half-generational difference.  Apparently those born between 1954 and 1965 are now being differentiated from the rest of us Baby Boomers by their own designation:  Generation Jones.  I don't set much store by this idea of naming generations; as with many attempts to classify people, I believe individual characteristics are more important than mere demographics. Still, patterns are interesting, especially when they relate to something I've observed myself.