And anyway, there’s no proof! You’ll never find the dead silicon body!
Ahem.
I uploaded a bunch of chapters of Intro to the Devout Life today, but archive.org doesn’t seem to be in a good mood about letting the rest of the world see them. I’m going to stop fiddling with it and go see my parents.
Basically, I don’t know if the new chapters will show up for you folks or not. You’ve got the links. If I don’t do anything else, in 48-72 hours, the archive.org directory should stop contemplating its navel and get on with life. That’s the way archive.org is supposed to work, anyway. It being a holiday weekend with potentially high traffic and high attraction for Murphy’s Law-ions, who knows?
An Introduction to the Devout Life continues, with a discussion of how to take little spiritual breaks throughout the day, retreating to God for stolen moments here and there. In tandem with this, we learn about incorporating feelings of aspirations, holy thoughts, and short, spontaneous mental/vocal prayers and exclamations. We also have some fun comparing devotion to God with the constant preoccupation with the beloved, of someone crazy in love. (The tree simile.)
Seeing as people nowadays often don’t really believe in sin, examinations of conscience have often gone by the wayside. But even if you were interested in business profits or sports success instead of God, you would surely want to examine how you’ve acted during a day, what has been done well and what hasn’t, and what needs to be changed. So surely, there’s nobody who wouldn’t benefit from such a summing up. (Before your mind does it to you, instead, and you end up laying awake replaying events behind your eyelids.)
“The Were-Wolf” is a Norse historical fantasy story by Clemence Housman. (She was A.E. Housman’s sister, and did both professional writing and illustration.) I think you’ll enjoy it both as a slice of olden life and a dark fantasy.
On Christian Doctrine continues, as we get to yet another important meaty part of the book. Back in the day, one Tichonius, a Donatist, wrote an important book on scriptural interpretation which is now lost. So all we have is the Cliff Notes version from St. Augustine. In this installment, we hear Rules 1-4. Next time we’ll hear the other three rules, and that will finish out this volume. (There’s only one more.)
There’s always something very melancholy about a good book being lost, through the vicissitudes of history.
The Brand of Silence continues, after several months of neglect by me. (You can listen to the first three parts over at the story’s page at archive.org.) I know it may seem to have worked up a bit slowly, but bear in mind that this was originally a serial novel, IIRC. The first four chapters would have been the first month’s installment. So it’s really my fault for reading it so slowly, instead of in more chapters per week. I’ll try to repair this error.
I’m sorry, folks. Yesterday was a near total wash, thanks to all these fronts moving through, and I’ll probably be spending most of tonight curled up with my sinus medicine, too. With any luck, I’ll be able to post something tomorrow morning.
In the meantime, you can always check out Amazon’s free music downloads or celebrate the feast of St. Cassius of Narnia (Narni, Italy = Narnia in Latin), or something else fun.
If you’d like something historical, you can listen to this very seasonal excerpt from Tacitus, as he gives the pagan Roman viewpoint on the terrifying nightmare that was the Great Fire, and thus on the First Martyrs of Rome, whose feast is tomorrow. It starts with some very non-worksafe recounting of Nero’s actions right around that time.
An Introduction to the Devout Life continues, as I impatiently wrap up Book 1 in a single installment. (I’ve changed the track numbers of the first few chapters of Book 2, accordingly.)
As St. Paul said, all sins are wrong, but not all sins are deadly. Deadly sins = mortal sins. Not deadly = venial. As you will hear, however, Catholic teaching doesn’t regard venial sins as something to sneeze at, and even faults and bad tendencies are stuff you’re supposed to try to fight. Your mom the Church doesn’t want you getting away with anything! And in this case, Mom really does know best. (Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t do a good job with this. But do what the podcaster says, not what she does!)
We’ve talked about “attachment” before; it was a big topic for St. John of the Cross in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and its sequel, The Dark Night of the Soul. Basically, any time you get too wound up in a thing or even a person, and treat that thing or person like your own little god instead of what it really is, you are attached to it. The thing or person isn’t bad, or even bad for you; your attachment is what’s hurting you. So basically, a lot of the job of becoming holy is finding and unwinding the silly little attachments you have somehow managed to twist yourself into, so that you can be free to love God, and so you can love all His creations for what they are, and not what they aren’t. So again, St. Francis de Sales isn’t saying that fun stuff is evil. He’s saying that maybe his young friend Philothea gets herself a little too worked up about some fun stuff, and may therefore have to avoid it for her spiritual health.
Since there’s no super-cool fannish letter column yet in this, the second issue of the magazine ever, and since I do not really feel like reading the huge amount of copy included in a typical 1930’s magazine ad — of which there are a gazillion in the issue — this is the end of my audiobook version of the February 1930 issue of Astounding Stories of Super-Science. “The Thief of Time” has a nice solid ending, and I think you’ll find it satisfying. If you like Carnes and Bird, Meek wrote a whole series of stories for them, all of which appeared in the Bates-edited Astounding.
Sterner St. Paul Meek really did achieve the rank of Captain in WWI; he eventually became a colonel in the US Army. (Hence the “U.S.A.” after his name in some of his bylines.) You can find bibliographies of his works at ISFDB and Fictionmags.
Since track is mentioned, I think it fitting to wish my dad, a former track coach (though he never goes on the Internet) a happy birthday, and many returns of the day. I should also assure everyone that my dad hadn’t been born yet when this issue hit the drugstores!
We’ve finally come to the last story in the February 1930 issue of Astounding Stories of Super-Science: “The Thief of Time” by Captain S.P. Meek, aka Sterner St. Paul Meek. Yes, we’ve already had a story by him in this issue, “Into Space”, under another pseudonym.
This story, like the other one, relies on a science fictional device. But this one is a bit less dark, and a bit more realistic, within the fantastic framework. I’m a card-carrying member of the New Space Princess Movement, of course; but I like this sort of “urban science fiction” pulp approach, too.
(Assuming of course that you take “urban fantasy” to mean “fantasy in a realistic contemporary urban environment” and not “fantasy Gothic romance, with werewolves instead of Mr. Rochester, and sex partners instead of dance partners”. As a Spacer-American Princess, I don’t believe in putting up with the latter.)
The happy people at the Church Music Association of America (CMAA) Colloquium in Chicago have been posting recordings of their various Masses and Liturgy of the Hours services. (The idea is that you go to classes and workshops about sacred music, but you also go to Masses and prayer services where you sing and play the music. The other idea is that the music gets more complex and there’s more Latin as the week goes along.) You’ll find all sorts of different eras of composition to listen to.
Obviously not everyone will be interested in this music for its sacred qualities, but I think any music lover would be interested in hearing pieces of music in the context for which they were intended. (And if you are interested in music as worship… you’ll appreciate it much more.) But the point is to give this music to God as part of worshipping Him, and hence to make the music as good and suitable as you can. Beyond that, it is to help other people participate in worship as they hear it.
However, bear in mind that while there’s a strong core group of highly experienced and knowledgeable singers, many of the attendees are absolute beginners at chant, absolute beginners at choirs or singing (whether or not they have expertise in other musical areas), or are even absolute beginners at attending Mass or Christian worship. So it’s a lot more like going to Mass with “here comes everybody” than some incredibly flawless album. (Especially when people are singing Morning Prayer or Mass before breakfast, and while unacquainted with the Loyola chapel’s acoustics; or while their voices are feeling rusty after a long journey and an early morning.) For learning about a musical tradition through participation, though, this is just what you want. You don’t learn Celtic music from listening only to virtuosi at the perfect moment. In fact, musical traditions usually live only because lots of mediocre musicians are able to do a serviceable job within it, even when feeling cruddy and sounding less than their best.
This series of assorted letters by St. Jerome continues, as he keeps giving good advice to his young friend St. Eustochium, a patrician Roman teenager and consecrated virgin. Her mother, St. Paula, was all for her daughter’s calling; her other non-Christian and even Christian family members, not so much.
Letter 22, Part 3
On Christian Doctrine continues. In this installment, we get some short, easy rules about interpreting specific words and expressions which appear more than once in the Bible. We also learn that it’s safer to interpret a work from passages inside it than by reason.
Now, I know this sounds like “Turn off your brain when reading the Bible!”. But we are reading Augustine here, who never met a syllogism he didn’t like. All he’s saying is that the primary way to understand any literary work is studying the literary work itself, and that includes the Bible.
You might logically argue that Pip in Great Expectations is really Johnny Appleseed. (Pip means seed, right? So oranges, apples, pomegranates, same thing….) But the greater logic would be in recognizing that Dickens is the primary source for understanding Dickens, and that logical argument should draw on Dickens more than on itself if it wants to point to a true interpretation. Only then do you move to outside sources like history, linguistics, other authors of the time, literary journal articles, and “this is what I think; see if it makes sense.”
On Christian Doctrine continues, with more info on scriptural interpretation for Fun and Profit. In this installment, we learn that if you think the Bible is telling you to do evil things, you’re wrong. Also, that just because they jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge (figuratively speaking) in Old Testament times doesn’t mean you have to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, too. Also, that it might be worse for you to jump into a ditch than for them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, if they were jumping out of necessity and you’re doing it to hurt yourself.
It’s getting funnier and funnier, how today’s Internet discussions of the Bible are so often about this same stuff that had been run into the ground in St. Augustine’s day. To be fair, it’s not like you get to read this kind of explanation book when it would be useful (like junior high or high school). Our educational system saves all this basic material until college or grad school, and then our religious leaders are all surprised that people pull crazy stuff out of the air to replace the info they didn’t get. You can’t think and feel sensibly about something you have no structure for understanding. Sigh.
