My native land is a prey to barbarism

I haven't had time to check on the accuracy of this citation but it is attributed to Saint Jerome. Whoever wrote it, it is a good and surprisingly timely observation. Substitute whatever land you happen to live in.


The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.
Saint Jerome

Saint Jerome, The great name-caller

The church calendar says its Saint Jerome's day. Saint Jerome was an amazing contradictory man and scholar. He fought with everybody. He as an incredibly gifted Bible translator and also promoter of virginity and ascetism. He was a theological attack dog, he did nothing halfway. You can get some sense of him in this poem ( taken from this blog


God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of Libel
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.
Quick to disparage
All joys but learning
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s
Painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans,
Didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.
In a mighty prose
For Almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn’t a plaster sort of a saint.

But he swelled men’s minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a heaven.

From "Times Three" by Phyllis McGinley

A fish and a guest ...

A fish and a guest often become worthless after three days.

Plautus, cited by Luther, AE, Vol. 5, 286.

Another version ( via google)

"A fish and a guest go bad on the third day and must be thrown out" "

You're all wore out from being nice

Here is an entertaining and accurate essay by Megan Mayhew Bergman about Southern accents and trying to capture them in prose and their slow disappearance. Some bits:

Take this example of how word choice, as opposed to a writeable accent, works--a line from a George Singleton interview about an old school southerner seeing llamas for the first time: "What the hell kind of donkeys is them?" Or a line from Barry Hannah's Yonder Stands Your Orphan: "You're all wore out from being nice." We don't need to see how these lines were phonetically delivered--we know. Sound is important, but if an author makes it too important, the concern tends to mock the character.

...


My grandmother said things like, "over yonder," "rightchere," (right here), "likeyat," (like that), and "haint" (spook). Any non-sleeping dog had a "wild hare up its ass," and if Grandma was angry, she was "some kinda burnt up." She was prone to redundant modal verbs ("I done told you before") and a big fan of the circumfix "a-in"--such as an owl "ahootin' and ahollerin'." Similar to Barry Hannah and Singleton's backwoods characters (consider Hannah's use of "sumbitch" or "You're all wore out from being nice," in Yonder Stands Your Orphan), my grandmother would speak the same way in front of her family as she would royalty--period.

Latest book review on Popmatters: The Great Fire of Rome

Here is my latest book review on Popmatters. It is a review of Stephen Dando-Collins book: The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City.


Read the entire review here. Here is the first little bit:

Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned. He was a contestant in American Idol. At least, he was involved in the ancient Roman equivalent. That is the central assertion of Stephen Dando-Collins slim, fast paced, history of the Emperor Nero and the great fire that consumed the city of Rome in 64 A.D. Nero was in a singing contest in the south of Italy when Rome caught fire. How he came to be there and what that says about Nero and how such an Emperor reacted to the destruction of much of the most powerful city on Earth are the questions that propel this narrative.

The flesh of the Lord is life giving

One of my favorite portions of all church writings:

Proclaiming the death, according to the flesh, of the Only-begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, confessing his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, we offer the Unbloody Sacrifice in the churches, and so go on to the mystical thanksgivings, and are sanctified, having received his Holy Flesh and the Precious Blood of Christ the Saviour of us all.

And not as common flesh do we receive it; God forbid: nor as of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of worth, or as having a divine indwelling, but as truly the Life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself. For he is the Life according to his nature as God, and when he became united to his Flesh, he made it also to be Life-giving, as also he said to us: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood.

For we must not think that it is flesh of a man like us (for how can the flesh of man be life-giving by its own nature?) but as having become truly the very own of him who for us both became and was called Son of Man.


...

11. If anyone does not confess that the flesh of the Lord is life-giving and belongs to the Word from God the Father, but maintains that it belongs to another besides him, united with him in dignity or as enjoying a mere divine indwelling, and is not rather life-giving, as we said, since it became the flesh belonging to the Word who has power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.


From Cyril of Alexandria's Third letter to Nestorius

Life begins at forty

I just finished reading an entertaining book on Al Capone, "Get Capone" by Jonathan Eig. Two interesting tidbits: Elliot Ness had almost nothing to do with putting away Capone. The credit goes to a now unknown humble, Lutheran, Swedish, Assistant DA named George Johnson.

Number two: as the syphilis that eventually killed the 38 year old Capone began to ravage his body, he checked a book out of the Alcatraz prison library entitled "Life begins at Forty".

Well, thank you Zwingli. Yeah, way to disregard that whole Im God thingy!

95 Theses rap ... video below


Oh snap, he's messin with the holy communion.
But I ain't never dissed your precious hypostatic union!
One place at one time. Well, thank you Zwingli.

...


Ive come back from obscurity to teach yall a lesson,
Cuz someone here still aint read their Augsburg Confession.
I said Catholicism brings a life of excess,
And we all remember what went down with Philip of Hesse!
But you forgot about me and my demonstration?
Like you can just create your own denomination?
We dont like this part, so well just add a little twist.
Now we Anglican, Amish, and even Calvinist.
I gave you the power, you gone and abused it.
I gave you Gods truth, you just confused it.

Can you convert to being Amish?

I mean, can you enter the community without being born into it? Do they take converts?

The Amish population is growing quickly according to the USA Today. Is this all making babies?

Anyone know?

There she sits, buddy, just a gleaming in the sun

Only Bruce Springsteen could write a song that:


a. rocks out in a great, fun, frat-rock sort of way

b. be all about cars

c. not really be about cars but really be about the great horror of existence: dying and the fear of dying


So the effect is you are singing and shouting along with a big grin on your face clapping and stomping about the hearse coming to get your dead girlfriend.

Such is the glory of rock and roll.

Cadillac Ranch by Bruce Springsteen

To have the true cross is to suffer for Christ

Luther says the Holy Cross is the misfortune and suffering Christians encounter for being disciples, for being the body attached to the head which is Christ who suffers on the cross. In fact, he counts it, in his 1539 treatise on the Councils and Church, as the seventh in seven marks of the church.

Seventh, the holy Christian people are externally recognized by the holy possession of the sacred cross. They must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world, and the flesh --- by inward sadness, timidity, fear, outward poverty, contempt, illness, and weakness, in order to become like their head, Christ. And the only reason they must suffer is that they steadfastly adhere to Christ and God's word, enduring this for the sake of Christ ... Wherever you see or hear this, you may know that the holy Christian church is there.

Luther's Works, American Edition, Vol. 41, 164-165.

In this manner then was the genuine cross discovered

I have always loved this story of the discovery of the true cross by Helena, mother of Constantine.

A sick woman is healed by the touch of the very cross on which Jesus died. Two other crosses (those of the thieves crucified with Jesus) do not heal. I do not love the story because I think it actually happened, though who am I to say? I do not love it because I attribute any healing power to wood whether that wood was the cross on which Christ was laid or not.

I love it because as with much storytelling and tradition and folktales, it tells a great and precious truth by telling a story. The ultimate point of this little tale is not the the veneration of relics. The point is that Christ and his death on the cross heals us. There are many counterfiet crosses, many places we turn to for healing, strength, life and meaning. They are all fakes.

But that true cross, the blood of the Incarnate God that was shed, the self giving of the one true God in flesh and blood, heals us. It heals every disease, every cancer, every depression, every car wreck. It cancels every sin. It is the divine justice offered to sinners.

Well, here is the story :


Accordingly she, having caused the statue to be thrown down, the earth to be removed, and the ground entirely cleared, found three crosses in the sepulchre: one of these was that blessed cross on which Christ had hung, the other two were those on which the two thieves that were crucified with him had died. With these was also found the tablet

of Pilate, on which he had inscribed in various characters, that the Christ who was crucified was king of the Jews.

Since, however, it was doubtful which was the cross they were in search of, the emperor’s mother was not a little distressed; but from this trouble the bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius, shortly relieved her. And he solved the doubt by faith, for he sought a sign from God and obtained it.

The sign was this: a certain woman of the neighborhood, who had been long afflicted with disease, was now just at the point of death; the bishop therefore arranged it so that each of the crosses should be brought to the dying woman, believing that she would be healed on touching the precious cross. Nor was he disappointed in his expectation: for the two crosses having been applied which were not the Lord’s, the woman still continued in a dying state; but when the third, which was the true cross, touched her, she was immediately healed, and recovered her former strength. In this manner then was the genuine cross discovered.

Socrates, Ecclesiastical History

Books are being replaced by reading.

Nicely done essay on the decline of books by Jack Shafer at Slate.

Bits and pieces:

By making books commodities, the modern market has stripped them of much of their romantic charm. I like the smell of a moldy book as much as the next bibliophile, but not as much as I once did. ... just as I became progressively less romantic about music as my collection has shifted from vinyl to CDs to mp3s. Holding an LP cover or even a CD jacket used to anchor the listener to a something corporeal. But not anymore. The same is happening to books. The ancient ceremony of reading by turning its pages is being disrupted by the e-books clicks and swipes. In the process it distances us from the old magic conjured by books. Books are being replaced by reading.

...

Beyond serving as a marker to your boss that you're a serious person, your subscription to the Wall Street Journal doesn't say much about you these days. Well, it does say that you're old.

...

Once I loved books. I worshipped books. I built defensive perimeters around my desk and bed and stereo and hallways with huge stacks of them.

...

Not that long ago, a free-standing Sunday book-review section was essential to the status of a daily newspaper. But in the past decade, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle have all said to hell with books and shed their standalone sections. The surviving newspaper book section, the New York Times Book Review, has seen better days. It could hit 80 pages in the 1970s. Last Sunday it clocked in at only 28 pages.

Lowly, poor, frail, and eccentric

My children often comment on what a strange person I am.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out to them that, according to the blessed Doctor Luther, the Fourth Commandment still holds even in the event of "lowly, poor, frail, and eccentric parents".


We must, therefore, impress it upon the young that they should regard their parents as in God's stead, and remember that however lowly, poor, frail, and queer (Kolb/Wengert translates "eccentric") they may be, nevertheless they are father and mother given them by God. They are not to be deprived of their honor because of their conduct or their failings. ...

Learn, therefore, first, what is the honor towards parents required by this commandment, to wit, that they be held in distinction and esteem above all things, as the most precious treasure on earth ... Thirdly, that we show them such honor also by works, that is, with our body and possessions, that we serve them, help them, and provide for them when they are old, sick, infirm, or poor, and all that not only gladly, but with humility and reverence, as doing it before God. For he who knows how to regard them in his heart will not allow them to suffer want or hunger, but will place them above him and at his side, and will share with them whatever he has and possesses.

Large Catechism, Ten Commandments 108-111.

How many roads must a man walk down before your clients do not have to be able to see this?

Ian Chillag at the NPR "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" blog pointed out Google Scribe with auto complete. Start typing and it fills in words and sentences. Pretty fun. I tried a few.


Martin Luther on Scribe:

Here I stand, I can not find them anywhere else online or in your area of interest.

I believe that I cannot get them to work in the background.


Bruce Springsteen on Scribe:

Baby we were born to be alive and well informed about their rights.

You can't start a fire in the eyes and ears of their listeners.


Bob Dylan on Scribe:

How many roads must a man walk down before your clients do not have to be able to see this?

Like a rolling stone gathers no moss, but it is not anything too special.


Robert Frost on Scribe:

Two roads diverged in a wooden box with anything else in the world.

The hand which you extend to alleviate the want of a brother is God's hand

Christ's statement in the Gospel is similar: Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said: 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother'?" How shall we in this instance bring Moses into agreement with Christ? For Moses testifies in very clear words that this is Adam's statement, yet Christ asserts that God spoke in this manner.

My answer is: What Adam says, he says by divine authority. Therefore these words are not his own, they are God's. This, then, is the great glory with which the Divine majesty honors us: it works through us in such a manner that it says that our words are its words and that our actions are its actions, so that one can truthfully say that the mouth of a godly teacher is God's mouth and that the hand which you extend to alleviate the want of a brother is God's hand.

Luther's Commentary on Genesis, vol. 3, p. 272.

Wanna buy a George Brett rookie card?

In my youth I was a huge baseball card collector. Not a collector for money, just for fun. To this day I am much more familiar with baseball players of the 1970's than now, even though I play fantasy baseball. I know much more about Enos Cabell and Milt May than any ball players today.

Here is a fascinating article on the collapse of the baseball card industry.
"The Rise and Fall of Baseball Cards" The culprit: greed. The cards were hyped and overpriced. The card companies made way too many cards and supply outstripped demand. A bubble developed and the bubble burst.

By the way, anyone want to buy a George Brett rookie card? I've got one. For real. Amazon says it is worth 89 dollars. Ill sell it to you for 50, no questions asked.