The Community of Saints

The Community of Saints:

The Belmont Club joins our old friend Baldilocks in exploring the concept of the communio sanctorum:

The Communion of Saints (in Latin, communio sanctorum) is the spiritual union of all Christians living and the dead, those on earth, in heaven and, in Catholic belief, in purgatory. ...

The earliest known use of this term to refer to the belief in a mystical bond uniting both the living and the dead in a confirmed hope and love is by Saint Nicetas of Remesiana (ca. 335–414); the term has since then played a central role in formulations of the Christian creed.

The term is included in the Apostles' Creed, a major profession of the Christian faith whose current form was settled in the eighth century, but which originated from not long after the year 100, the basic statement of the Church's faith.

Baldilocks had said, referring to the Reverend Mr. Wright controversy:

Yes, our ancestors in this country and our kinsmen across the water fought to be just as Christian as other Christians—as Christian as our brothers who are white. And many of the latter stood for us and side-by-side with us—not because of us primarily but because of the One Who is Primary. Has that particular battle been won? I say yes, though the war continues. But Wright not only continues to fight the battle, he willfully misunderstands the nature of the War and identity of the Enemy. And by doing that, he becomes the tool of the Enemy. That’s his choice, but not mine and not that of those who focus on the Redemption offered by Christ instead of getting upon the Cross themselves.

To quote myself, there is no “black church.” There is only the Church.

The Belmont Club's response, finally, is to simply to repeat the Creed's on words: "I believe in the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting, forever and ever. Amen."

Now we add in our friend Dad29, commenting on a different topic: how the Pope's embrace of the American separation of church and state means.

At the very deepest level, his apparently pro-U.N. speech turned out to be a stunning endorsement of the United States’ understanding of religion in the public sphere, and the need to apply that understanding to international dialogue.

In the past, Rome has looked askance at the American formulation, and had never come close to endorsing it. But B-16 noticed something: it works, and works very well. The formulation has served to keep 'religion' in the square, not to suppress it.

It's interesting to see the effect of that fact. A political campaign allegedly premised on reconciliation has proved bitterly divisive, even within its own party. Yet outside of politics, even reacting against those politics, people of good heart are reaffirming that they believe in that community.

That has not always been the case, and it is not only religion that makes it work now. It is also America. These two separate systems, political and spiritual, come together to make real what neither has been able to do alone.

Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship:

From Sly, this beautiful tale of the joyous spirit of the game:

And then the senior did something she had never done before -- even in batting practice. The career .153 hitter smashed the next pitch over the center field fence for an apparent three-run home run.

The exuberant former high school point guard sprinted to first. As she reached the bag, she looked up to watch the ball clear the fence and missed first base. Six feet past the bag, she stopped abruptly to return and touch it. But something gave in her right knee; she collapsed on the base path.

"I was in a lot of pain," she told The Oregonian on Tuesday. "Our first-base coach was telling me I had to crawl back to first base. 'I can't touch you,' she said, 'or you'll be out. I can't help you.' "

Tucholsky, to the horror of teammates and spectators, crawled through the dirt and the pain back to first.

Western coach Pam Knox rushed onto the field and talked to the umpires near the pitcher's mound. The umpires said Knox could place a substitute runner at first. Tucholsky would be credited with a single and two RBIs, but her home run would be erased.

This, however, was not to be.

Mallory Holtman is the greatest softball player in Central Washington history. Normally when the conference's all-time home run leader steps up to the plate, Pam Knox and other conference coaches grimace.

But on senior day, the first baseman volunteered a simple, selfless solution to her opponents' dilemma: What if the Central Washington players carried Tucholsky around the bases?

The umpires said nothing in the rule book precluded help from the opposition. Holtman asked her teammate junior shortstop and honors program student Liz Wallace of Florence, Mont., to lend a hand. The teammates walked over and picked up Tucholsky and resumed the home-run walk, pausing at each base to allow Tucholsky to touch the bag with her uninjured leg.

"We started laughing when we touched second base," Holtman said. "I said, 'I wonder what this must look like to other people.' "

Holtman got her answer when they arrived at home plate. She looked up and saw the entire Western Oregon team in tears.

"My whole team was crying," Tucholsky said. "Everybody in the stands was crying. My coach was crying. It touched a lot of people."

Thereby they granted their opponents an advantage in the contest, and won a greater victory.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character. It is true, of course, that a genius may, on certain lines, do more than a brave and manly fellow who is not a genius; and so, in sports, vast physical strength may overcome weakness, even though the puny body may have in it the heart of a lion.

But, in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character.... If rowing or foot-ball or base-ball is treated as the end of life by any considerable section of a community, then that community shows itself to be in an unhealthy condition. If treated as it should be — that is, as good, healthy play — it is of great benefit, not only to the body, but in its effect upon character.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Here are some young ladies who understood that, and got it right.

Two historical pieces

Two Men of History:

First, via Kim du Toit, a genuine British adventurer.

A tall man, handsome and weather-beaten, wipes the blood of a giant scorpion from his hands and squints into the middle distance as he ponders his latest quest for sacred artefacts.

He could be the ultimate Hollywood hero — living a life packed full of excitement and peril, usually with a beautiful young woman on his arm.

He uncovers lost civilisations, is hailed as a god by grateful villagers, snatches priceless Christian treasures from under Nazi noses and begins revolutions. And his name will now be linked for ever with a mysterious crystal skull...

Second, via Greyhawk, the world's oldest milblogger.

Born in August 1887 in Awsworth Notts, to Henry and Sarah Lamin. Elder Sisters Catherine (Kate) and Agnes (Annie) and Elder brother John (Jack). Educated at Awsworth Board School, just outside Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England.

This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written.

Another whiner

Another Whiner On the South:

Sweet Mercy. Is this what it has come to?

This thought, which has been recurring to me regularly over the years as I've watched the Southernization of our national politics at the hands of the GOP and its evangelical base, surfaced again when I read a New York Times story today. The article was about an "American Idol" contestant--apparently quite talented--who was eliminated after she sang the title song from "Jesus Christ Superstar." When it debuted 38 years ago, the rock opera was considered controversial for its rather arch portrayal of a doubt-wracked, very human Jesus, but the music was so good and the lyrics so clever that it quickly became a huge hit. In the delicate balance of forces that have always defined American tastes--nativism and yahooism versus eagerness for the new and openness to innovation--art, or at least high craft, it seemed, had triumphed. But our national common denominator of taste is so altered today that the blasphemous dimension of "Jesus Christ Superstar" now trumps the artistic part. And somehow, no one is surprised.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. "Jesus Christ, Superstar?"

My father, a good lad from Tennessee, asked me for a copy for his birthday. It's always been a favorite of his. I sent it to him. So there.

If this is the ne plus ultra of your complaints against the South, is it too much to ask that you shut the @#$#@ up?

I mean, I'll be glad when we never hear another song written in the 1960s or 1970s that wasn't sung by Johnny Cash. "Classic" is a term not properly given to rock music, which was never meant to last longer than milk, and which retains about the same odor past its expiration date.

But that's not a regional complaint. And I'm as Southern as it gets.

UPDATE: And ya'll just tell me what's wrong with this bit of wisdom:



And if you don't like that one, how about this one, from the former Lieutenant Governor of the Great State of Georgia, Zell Miller?

New Iceland

New Guinea Iceland:

An interesting piece from The New Yorker about the rules of honor in New Guinea's "payback culture." The term is an unfortunate choice, because it gives a modern flavor to what is really an ancient feud. It is ruled by ideas of honor, though. (By a quirk of fate, the tribesman's name is Daniel, much like our own companion whose ethical ideals are not without harmony here.)

On one occasion, I asked Daniel whether there are any rules that limit how one may kill enemies. He said, “In a night raid in which we sneak into an enemy village and surround the hut of a targeted enemy individual, we can tear down the hut to force the enemy to come out so that we can kill him. But it’s not acceptable to set fire to the hut and burn him to death.” I then asked, “Is it acceptable for six of you surrounding a hut to attack and kill a single outnumbered enemy?” Daniel answered, “Yes, that’s considered fair, because it’s already extremely dangerous for us to penetrate enemy territory, where we are greatly outnumbered.”

These are sometimes honored in the breach.

[T]he quest of a Tudawhe friend of mine, Kariniga, to avenge the killing of his father and many other relatives by the Daribi tribe culminated when Kariniga and his surviving relatives marched through the jungle at night to surround the Daribi village just before dawn, set fire to the huts, and speared the sleepy occupants as they stumbled out.

This was true elsewhere: "We shall have to boast of something else than that Njal has been burnt in his house," says Flosi, "for there is no glory in that."

Another thing that is true is the rule that our Daniel was referencing below:

“If you die in a fight, you will be considered a hero, and people will remember you for a long time,” he said. “But if you die of a disease you will be remembered for only a day or a few weeks, and then you will be forgotten.” Daniel was proud both of the aggressiveness displayed by all the warring clans of his Nipa tribe and of their faultless recall of debts and grievances. He likened Nipa people to “light elephants”: “They remember what happened thirty years ago, and their words continue to float in the air. The way that we come to understand things in life is by telling stories, like the stories I am telling you now, and like all the stories that grandfathers tell their grandchildren about their relatives who must be avenged.

But read all the way through, for a remarkable tale of an unavenged murder in the anthropologist's own family. "I came to appreciate the terrible personal price that law-abiding citizens pay for leaving vengeance to the state," he writes, contrasting the Western system of government with the old way.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori:

My sister recommended this gallery of the dead. The photos came from a hospice, and were taken in pairs: one before, and one after death.

The photos are respectful, but the accompanying text hides nothing of the horror -- and, sometimes, the peace -- of dying. What sorts of things give peace? What sort of man and woman can die well, and what sort dies hard? Confer the experience of those who have religious faith with those who are famed for their personal strength at that hour when personal strength fails.

A memory of death is keenly important to also remembering to live a good life, now, while you have the chance. This concept has a long and high history not only in the West, but also among the Samurai of Japan.

Lord Tennyson wrote, of the knight Geraint and his lady Enid:

And there he kept the justice of the King
So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts
Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died:
And being ever foremost in the chase,
And victor at the tilt and tournament,
They called him the great Prince and man of men.
But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call
Enid the Fair, a grateful people named
Enid the Good; and in their halls arose
The cry of children, Enids and Geraints
Of times to be; nor did he doubt her more,
But rested in her fealty, till he crowned
A happy life with a fair death, and fell
Against the heathen of the Northern Sea
In battle, fighting for the blameless King.

That is a phrase we do not often hear: "He crowned a happy life with a fair death." It is a good concept, and a meaningful one. It is wise to think, now, not only of the fact that you have to die, but of how you want to die.

The King Who Comes Again

The King Who Sleeps:

In our talk about England and Saint George, Joel wrote:

A nation that will so publicly sacrifice their heroes and legends to mollify an implacable minority will go submissively to the gallows when that same minority becomes the majority.

It is for that reason I mention a new theory of King Arthur, locating him and his court in Lincoln:

Broughton-based Dr Leahy (61) said: "Following the withdrawal of the Romans in the early fourth century, Lindsey was a nation in its own right with its own kings and bishops.

"Excavations and metal detecting have shown how rich and exciting the kingdom was.

"We have decorated metalwork, some of which is of outstanding artistry, as shown in the book."

Dr Leahy, who retired last March as the keeper of local archaeology at North Lincolnshire Museum, believes King Arthur, who led the Celtic resistance against Saxon invaders, fought many of his battles in the Kingdom of Lindsey at Brigg.

"An eighth century account of King Arthur's battles states four of them were in Linnuis - which is likely to have been Lindsey," he said.

"If I had to bet on where these battles were, I would put my money on Brigg which, controlling the crossing of the Ancholme, was of great strategic importance."

A former foundry engineer, Dr Leahy - who now works as a part-time consultant for the British Museum - accepts many Arthurian experts will find his claim 'remarkable'.

But, he added: "The legends of King Arthur in their original form describe not a man but a military situation where the Britons and the Anglo-Saxons faced each other.

"This is true more of Lindsey than anywhere else.

"There is good evidence that in Lindsey the local Romano-British authorities managed to stay in control when the Anglo-Saxons arrived.

"Lincoln kept its original name, and there are no early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries near the city.

"For an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Lindsey has produced an amazing amount of Welsh-type metalwork."

The point here is not that Lincolnshire is, or is not, likely to have been the site of Camelot. It is that the English still care: that their scholars and archaeologists still wonder and search for Avalon, and the books they write still sell.

So long as that is true, there remains hope for Britain.

2 + 2 = Blue

2 + 2 = Blue

Pizza hut fires a deliveryman for defending himself from armed robbery. Turns out, they don't like that he was carrying a gun. From the comments:

[We] discussed this last night in an adult ed college class, in Des Moines. The mostly female, liberal group thought Pizza Hut was right, for all the stupid reasons unarmed people usually do. Too dangerous, why did he have to shoot multiple times, etc, etc. But here’s the strange part. They all agreed that if the crook has shot and killed an unarmed Pizza Hut delivery driver, the driver’s family should sue Pizza Hut because the driver was not protected.

Let's all pause to ponder the majesty of that thinking.

The Danes are Right

The Danes Weigh In:

...and once again, we see that beer points the way to wisdom.

Pron MWOW

Maintaining Our Pron Rating:

Since we remain banned at Camp Victory as a pornography site, I feel obligated to maintain our status. Naturally, being mostly virtuous myself, I am obligated to turn to certain wives for some aid in this regard. If you appreciate their aid, by all means buy their album.

Now: "Come Roll Me Away" by the Merry Wives of Windsor.

I met with a soldier whose sword was so long
When I first did unsheathe it, I burst into song!
We battled for hours, up there in the flowers;
But then came the dawn, and I rolled him away!

I met with a sailor who'd just come from sea
Sure the list in his mast sure did fill me with glee;
Starboard and port for and that was well store'd
But then came the dawn, and I rolled him away!

Come roll me, come roll me, come roll me away!
For a toss in the furs, or a romp in the hay!
I can roll any man, at least three times a day!
So dear laddies, come roll me away!

...

I met with a tinker who fixed all the locks,
His tools were so fine that I opened my box,
And he fixed my tick-tock with his glorious... hammer?
But then came the dawn, and I rolled him away!

Come roll me, come roll me, come roll me away!
For a toss in the furs, or a romp in the hay!
I can roll any man, at least three times a day!
So dear laddies, come roll me away!

There's quite a bit more, if you like that sort of thing -- and if you don't, I'm not sure why you're here, given our pron status. At any rate, I trust there won't be any complaints from the distaff side.

St George! For Merry England

St. George for Merry England!

Gateway Pundit warns us that England has canceled the St. George's Day Parade, which would have featured 1,500 schoolchildren who'd made little flags to carry, out of fear of Muslim riots. He posts this graphic (now that I think of it, I believe that graph from a couple of posts down was also his, originally):


There was apparently some streetfighting in 2001, when a Muslim was stabbed by a National Front member. That one bad act touched off a riot in the Muslim neighborhoods that injured 300 policemen.

The English are naturally being careful here. They have seen this sort of thing before, in their neighbor Ireland. For years there were regular riots on many a 12th of July, because of the celebration of the Battle of the Boyne, where William of Orange and his Protestant army defeated the Stewarts, and the Irish Catholics who made up the majority of the population. The similarity with St. George, insofar as it exists, would appear to be this:

The saint became an English hero during the crusades against the Muslim armies that captured Jerusalem in the 11th century. An apparition of George is said to have appeared to the crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098.

So this is part of efforts to avoid increasing tensions between Englishman and Muslim, by avoiding any symbolism with even the most tangential association with violence or discord. It's sad for the schoolchildren, but recognizing that there are a small number of bad actors in their community, the English are sacrificing as a group in order to protect the feelings of their neighbors. Of course, the Muslim community has been equally circumspect.

Conservative opposition spokesman David Davis said slogans such as "Massacre those who insult Islam" and "Europe you will pay, your 9/11 will come" amounted to incitement to murder and that police should take a "no tolerance" approach to them.

Oh, right.

Happy San Jacinto Day!

April 21, 1836
General Sam Houston led 800 Texans against 1400 Mexicans. In the 15-20 minute battle the Texans killed 630, wounded 200, and took the remainder prisoner. We lost only 9, with 30 wounded.

We gained our vengeance for the Alamo and Goliad and we secured our freedom as a Sovereign Republic.

La Posta di Falcone

La Posta di Falcone:

If any of you saw Kingdom of Heaven, a movie I disliked the first time I saw it, but like better on each subsequent viewing, you saw a bit of genuine Medieval swordwork:

"Genuine Medieval," but not for the time shown: This type of sword was not used in the Crusading period. It is true that the "Italians" called the guard "la posta di falcone" -- at least, we know that one of them did.



Philippo Vadi of Pisa was an Italian student of arms, who thought much of how to maintain social harmony through training in arms. He begins his work with a call to be careful whom you teach:

This way he, with a generous heart, who sees my work should love it as a jewel and treasure and keep it in his heart, so that never, by means, should this Art and doctrine fall into the hands of unrefined and low born men. Because Heaven did not generate these men, unrefined and without wit or skill, and without any agility, but they were rather generated as unreasonable animals, only able to bear burdens and to do vile and unrefined works.

My experience has been that the 'unrefined' folks are that way out of laziness rather than in-born character: as you can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink it, so you can lead them to a "jewel and treasure," but you can't get them to perform the rigorous practice and thinking necessary to internalize it. With this as with other defensive arts of more modern use, there is little to fear: Colonel Coopers' letters are freely available online, but the criminal class carries on not training itself in the fine points of the weapons they misuse. They are not interested: the arms are only the means to a momentary satisfaction of a passing desire. If they had what it took to master the arms, they would not need to be criminals.

In fact, if you can find one whose interest in these skills is strong enough that he does show some willingness to develop newfound discipline and dedication in order to learn them, by all means teach him. Whatever peril there is in his learning the use of arms, there is also at least that much hope in his learning self-control. The first use of the sword is against yourself: to cut away the parts that are lazy, that are cowardly, that are overly aggressive, that are unjust and unforgiving. It is not for no reason that a man who has taken the time to master the sword -- as Vadi -- turns his thoughts more and more to the business of peace.

It is these men who make the peace, and it is the training that makes the men. It also fulfils a mystery:

And with these documents often it happens that a man weak and of small stature submits, brings to the ground and conquers one large, strong and valiant, and the same way the humble conquers the haughty and the unarmed conquers the armed; and many times he who is on foot conquers a horseman. Since it would be very unbecoming that such a noble doctrine should perish and fail by carelessness, I Philippo of Vadi from Pisa, having practiced this Art from the years of my youth, having searched and traveled many different countries and lands, castles and cities to learn from many masters perfect in the Art[.]

Last summer in Iraq, we pushed out of our strong places of fortification, intending to move out among the people and live with them. We built many smaller fortifications, less imposing and easier to reduce. We put more people out on patrol. Our soldiers and Marines spent more time outside the wire.

We said that we knew this would bring worse casualties, but it would be a risk that soldiers would run in order to protect the people. What happened instead -- which we did not expect -- was that our own casualties declined as well:



We should not have been surprised. The chief thing is being willing to meet the danger.

What allows 'the humble to conquer the haughty' is a heart willing to encounter the danger, combined with a mind that is awake and ready to learn. Both of these things can be brought out of a man's character only through training and self-discipline.

If he has them, though, he has learned the 'high guard' -- the posture of the falcon, which surveys all the world and decides how to deal with it.

Moral of the story

The Moral:

My father sends:

The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment:

Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.

The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories.

'Tony, do you have a story to share?'

'Yes ma'am. My daddy told a story about my Aunt Karen.

She was a pilot in Desert Storm and her plane got hit. She had to bail
out over enemy territory and all she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol, and a survival knife.

She quickly drank the whiskey on the way down, knowing it
would shatter and go to waste otherwise and just then her parachute
opened and she landed right in the middle of twenty enemy troops.

She shot fifteen of them with the gun until she ran out of
bullets, killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke, and
then she killed the last enemy with her bare hands.'

'Good Heavens' said the horrified teacher. 'What kind of
moral did your daddy tell you from this horrible story?'

'Stay far away from Aunt Karen when she's drinking.'

Sadly, the JAGs had to put her away for the violation of General Order #1.

Sometimes, Even Before:

H/t: Euphoric Reality.

Back again, Mike?

Back Again, Mike?

Looks like old-time Milblogger Mike the Marine is back out Anbar way. He and I appear to have almost overlapped in Iraq, briefly: they probably got the better of the trade.

"That flag means a Marine Corps for another 500 years."
- Navy Secretary James Forrestal

Which means we'll outlast the Church of Global Warming. By a lot.
Screw you, Time.
- Mike the Marine

Good luck, lad.

Hawk

Greyhawk at Home:

Hawk is home again, from recent wanderings. He has some thoughts, in his usual form. I've met a few milbloggers, but I suspect that he and I have one thing in common: we are, in person, the least like you'd suspect us to be. We're both country boys, the kind of folks Barack Obama would have you believe 'cling' to guns and religion because we can't understand our real frustrations; and he isn't joking to say that we spent a part of our time together in Baghdad talking horses. Another thing we talked about was this piece, the day he wrote it:

I'm walking to the gym. Under my feet: four inches of gravel pave the way. Concrete t-wall sections form unbroken fortress walls on either side of my path. It's early in the morning, so the shadow of the wall on my left is shading that half of the road. A breeze is blowing, and in the shade in the moments just after dawn that breeze hits me in my shorts and t-shirt and chills me just enough that I take a few steps sideways and into the sun.

And then it hit me - I'd been walking in the shade because that's what I - and everyone else here - had done throughut the 120 degree summer and on into the merely 90 degree days of early fall. And while the change has been gradual, it was only today that I noticed it, as I broke a time-worn habit and passed from the too-cool shadows into the glowing warmth of the morning desert sun.

"I didn't intend anything symbolic in that," he said. Yet it was a perfect symbol for the time, the moment we were in there in Iraq: where enemies had broken and fled before us, and no soldier of our Division had fired his rifle in anger in some time.

What is coming in Iraq is going to be a tense period of negotiation -- and "negotiation" in Iraq can mean some serious violence. Yet this moment couldn't have come without that one: and better moments to come need that we pass through this. The people of Iraq are worth it. I don't know quite how to say that except to say it: at least the ones I met, who were self-selecting in that they they were engaged vigorously in trying to make Iraq a better place. One of them, a kind hearted, round-faced man, took a bullet to the head trying to win a new life for his country. He survived the ambush -- his bodyguard, an American, did not -- and was back to work as soon as he could move from his bed.

Whatever we've "sacrificed" or "spent" or "lost" in Iraq, they have done that, and more. If we are men, we ought to support them.

Hawk is, anyhow. I feel about him like Alfred felt about Mark, the man of Rome, when he sought his aid against the invader:

Long looked the Roman on the land;
The trees as golden crowns
Blazed, drenched with dawn and dew-empearled
While faintlier coloured, freshlier curled,
The clouds from underneath the world
Stood up over the downs.

"These vines be ropes that drag me hard,"
He said. "I go not far;
Where would you meet? For you must hold
Half Wiltshire and the White Horse wold,
And the Thames bank to Owsenfold,
If Wessex goes to war.

"Guthrum sits strong on either bank
And you must press his lines
Inwards, and eastward drive him down;
I doubt if you shall take the crown
Till you have taken London town.
For me, I have the vines."

"If each man on the Judgment Day
Meet God on a plain alone,"
Said Alfred, "I will speak for you
As for myself, and call it true
That you brought all fighting folk you knew
Lined under Egbert's Stone.

"Though I be in the dust ere then,
I know where you will be."
And shouldering suddenly his spear
He faded like some elfin fear,
Where the tall pines ran up, tier on tier
Tree overtoppling tree.

But, as I've warned you before, I'm no Alfred. Chesterton would have made me Colan of Caerleon: "His harp was carved and cunning, his sword prompt and sharp, and he was gay when he held the sword, sad when he held the harp."

But when is a man ever happier, than when in song and ale and love and wrath the tears run down his cheeks? If there is a fitter tribute for a world such as this, for friends made and friends lost, I have not met it.

The Pope 2

Touching Lives:

The Pope's speech to Americans, which talked about the other day, had the power to move hearts. Even hearts that began in a very different place.

I wasn’t quite prepared for the opening salvo of our Holy Spirit, coming in the Pope’s words at the White House:

“Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience — almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad.”

These words crushed me.

How could the Pope repeat United States propaganda, and express admiration for US bloodshed? I racked my mind for ways to interpret his words in another way, but I couldn’t. Not in that context. Not at the White House with the President standing next to him. Not as the Iraq war rages on. The Pope meant what he said, but not as propaganda. He spoke sincerely. He marvels at American monuments and sees those who “sacrificed their lives defense of freedom”. Pope Benedict looks at our country and sees . . . goodness. When I look at our country, I see . . . evil.

And then:

After a great deal of reflection and prayer, my heart has moved, my neck has bent. I have seen something startling: we live in a society where “defense of life” and “nonviolence” are mostly mutually exclusive, and because the defense of life must take priority over a commitment to nonviolence, most Christians are duty-bound to defend life with the least amount of violence possible....

I am not suggesting that violence is good, or even Christian. I am suggesting, however, that the circumstances of our society require us to choose defense of life over nonviolence. In other words - if the only way I can defend life is to use a gun, then I must use a gun....

Boycotts will not save us from a bullet to the head. Strikes will not stop robbers from breaking into our homes. Nonviolent communication will not stop those who do not wish to communicate. We have no nonviolent alternatives to police forces or militaries. We have no nonviolent alternatives to courts and prisons. Nonviolent means of defending life are mostly confined to idealistic exhortations to “love your enemy and trust in God’s grace to work miracles.”

Nonviolent means of defending life must be reasonable, passing the common sense rule, being as readily available as the gun in Target, or a call to 911. To criticize those who use violence to defend life when there are no other ways to defend life is . . . well . . . possibly scandalous.

You may wish to read the rest.

Tax Week

Tax Week

So I've seen a lot of people angry about their taxes this week. I'm not very happy about mine, either. I haven't done the math, but I'll bet it's not that different from this:



The Geek with a .45 is in a foul mood about the whole thing (his response to Michelle Obama is too rude to reprint). He's sharing Rachel Lucas' pain about it (actually, since she paid eleven grand and he paid almost FIFTY GRAND, she and I really have little to complain about by comparison).

I also pay what Lucas calls "the Extra Special Just For Those Who Don’t Work For Someone Else Tax." The fully-15%-of-everything-you-brought-in "self-employment" tax really is painful, because you pay it on income before you get to take your deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. And then, the government charges you income taxes on half of it again, as if you'd ever seen it instead of just sending it straight to them.

So, in other words, the government takes 15% of your income off the top as a "special tax"; and then it charges you income tax NOT on the 85% that is left, but on 92.5% of that original sum. That 7.5% you never had, because you sent it straight to Uncle Sam, you pay income taxes on that too.

That's the sort of thing that will make a man, oh, what's the word? "Bitter."

There are three kinds of Americans: those who are paying the freight, those who are not paying the freight, and those who are so rich that they can't tell the difference. Michelle Obama appears to belong to the last category.

Changes

Changes:

Yesterday, Cassandra posted a short photo essay called How We Have Changed, relevant to Joel's post, below. As we also mentioned Sir Baden Powell yesterday, perhaps you'd like to see a couple of other things I ran across while looking for that piece on canoeing.

"These Boy Scouts Like Knights of Old," The New York Times, December 17, 1910.

"Sees in Boy Scouts an Asset to Nation," The New York Times, December 13, 1910.

This last features a man identified as "Colonel Theodore Roosevelt," a year after he was President Theodore Roosevelt. That it was deemed proper to refer to him by his rank rather than as "former President Roosevelt" is another departure; or, perhaps, part of the same one.