Furthermore…

One devil playing Death Poker, to other:

“I’ll meet your 2 suicides, and raise you 3 abortions!”

I saw a program last night from Polish Television about the Vatican’s art restoration and preservation programs. Real interesting, but the Polish narrator didn’t speak English real well. I bet there are some Polish-American folks who could get a job in their spare time helping the film makers pronounce things better. For tapestries the narrator would say tape-istries. There were a couple of other strange-sounding pronunciations I noticed as well, but I can’t think of them now. I suppose it is desirable in one sense to have a foreign sounding narrator, as it contributes a kind of high-sounding international quality, after the fashion of the announcers on classical music radio programs, who chatter along like Americans, then self-consciously pronounce the names of foreign composers and musicians with foreign phonemes as though instantaneously transporting everyone to Hungary, Germany or Russia. Pretty klassi.

Hospital cleaning woman pushing MEDICAL WASTE cart to mother in bed with newborn:

“Are you going to keep the baby?”

I’m thinking of the parables that were in the gospels the last few weeks. They remind us that God is holy and apart. We need to have ears to hear. Seek Him and ignore the twittering quibbles of every questioner of the faith. In Greek mythology Homer has the ears of his rowers stuffed with beeswax so that they’re not drawn off course by the seductive songs of the Sirens.The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net that pulls in every kind of fish. Then comes the sorting out. It is like: the Master sowed good seed, but an enemy came and sowed weeds. We can’t try to rip out the weeds now. Let them grow along with the wheat, and at harvest time they can be picked out and bundled off. I believe in tending the garden of our own minds and souls with our devotions, prayers, Scriptures, all the Church provides, keeping the weeds of doubt out, or under control.

One fat cat to other walking toward church to attend wedding:

“My wife always cries at weddings. I cry at alimony hearings!”

Our Pastor had a couple of good bits today. First he told a favorite story about a certain 
monastery where every morning a monk would come out of the gate with what seemed to be an
empty cloth sack over his shoulder. The beggars and layabouts outside would wonder what
was behind this.

One day one of them got up the nerve to approach the monk and ask him. The monk said,
“This isn’t an empty sack.  Reaching way down inside he pulled out a beautiful gem, worth
a fortune.

Amazed, the guy said “If I had that I could straighten out my life, get married, settle
down, have kids, and amount to something.” So the monk gave him the jewel.

The next morning when the monk came out the same guy was there. The monk said, “You told
me that if I gave you the jewel you would straighten out your life. How come you’re still
here?”

The guy said, “You can have the jewel back. What I want is what is inside you that made
you give it to me.”

The other good bit was when the Pastor was making an announcement that a family choir is
being formed, and people are invited to join. Then he said that if not enough  people
come forward to join, he threatens to have Father Smith henceforth do all the singing.  

Voice heard outside confessional:

“I don’t care if everyone you know uses it. I’m not hearing your confession in text message!” 

Music Director making an announcement:

“We are forming a new Praise & Worship group. Anyone with musical talent need not apply!”

I got a story today on some kind of news feed that comes into my computer unsolicited. It was about how the British Museum is going to be loading its Codex Sinaiticus (oldest Bible manuscript) pages onto the Internet, giving scholars a look at early material that has largely inaccessible until now. I was reading this with some interest when I discovered there was attached a gaggle of follow-up comments that had poured in, mostly hateful snobbery about how Christianity, Catholicism and the Scriptures as we have them are malicious fabrications and hokum foisted on the world by dark conspirators. Just then I was brushing up a bit on last Sunday’s readings, in preparation for our weekly faith enrichment meeting, so it was a strange experience to come across at such a time these snarly arguments presented as the last word in ripping away the veil of ecclesiastical deception.  Fun though!  It came across to me as getting a chance to eavesdrop on conversations in Hell, each devil trying to outdo the other in vitriolic accusation against belief.