Furthermore…

Readers of the Psalms are familiar with how the beauty of nature can bring  joy to the heart and lead to our praising God.  As an example, 

Psalm 8 has the lines: “I look up at your heavens, made by your fingers, at the moon and stars you set in place ……sheep and oxen, all these,yes, wild animals too, birds in the air, fish in the sea, traveling the paths of the ocean.”

But are we losing touch with nature in our busy modern technological world?  For the most part, we have less and less exposure to the natural beauty that can turn our thoughts to God.

The awesome beauty in nature, such as the stars that fill the heavens, makes us feel small and insignificant. That, at the present time, that is counter-cultural. We are commonly considered the Be-all and End-all.

 But neither nature nor natural beauty are God. Some people say that they don’t go to church but instead they find God out in nature.  Maybe rather God is finding them — because they are ‘lost’.

Nature is often beautiful, but it can be also be hostile and dangerous, ‘red in tooth and claw’ (Tennyson).  Both the beauty and the frightfulness of nature has the potential of leading us to God, either through bringing us intense pleasure — or fear.

Teacher to kid:

“No, Jason, The Stalactites and the Stalagmites were not the people who occupied the Promised Land!”

I watch with interest the way the speakers of our living English (American) language play fast and loose with terminology and grammar, making it more comfy. For example, back when I was working there was project involving  those supplemental  seats that young moms use to secure infants in automobiles.  One of the clerks had brought up the subject using the common everyday term ‘car seat.’  My boss wanted to be sure that we used the right term in what we were doing,  and asked me to look into the matter. I uncovered a number of alternate names such as might befit engineering work, military inventory lists, or company product catalogs.  In the end, we used ‘car seat’.

Another favorite for me is ‘affair’ for marital cheating, along with ‘making love’ for what they do.  Before I picked up on the comfy lingo,  an ‘affair’ was some kind of complicated business or diplomatic undertaking, and ‘making love’ was  ‘necking’, more or less’.

In the sports and jazz worlds there is the quaint practice of  trimming down actual names to just a salient syllable or two, like ‘O’s’ for Orioles or ‘Hamp’ for Lionel Hampton.

Even at church we do it.   For instance,  ‘J-P II’ and  ‘the bread’ and ‘the wine’.

Athletic director to cheer leading squad:

“Thank you for all your prayers, but our team is still doing so badly that we’ll be switching over to jeer leading!”

The weight loss business and other associated activity involves costs in the billions. I am connected with one of the businesses, and have been overweight all my life,  so thoughts about these matters frequently come to mind.

GLUTTONY.   The sin of gluttony is one of the most serious ones, but all gluttons are not fat, and all fat people are not gluttons. More often, they are conflicted and in a battle with unwanted obsessions and compulsions about food and eating which they’d love to jettison. 

TINY VOICES. I’ve noticed for a long time that many women with sweet ‘tiny’ voices are rather heavy.  Could it be that they are drawn to ’sounding small’ as a compensation for not ‘being’ small? I imagine they receive a certain amount of discrimination in everyday life, and it helps to minimize it by seeming especially sweet and non-threatening.  On the other hand, very heavy set men seem to often have rather full, booming voices, perhaps because they take pleasure in seeming large and formidable.

‘NERVOUSNESS’.  I wonder if obesity stems to some degree from an abnormal or heightened nervous feeling of being unfulfilled which calls for and demands  gratification which doesn’t properly lead to satiety.  Along the same line,  I sense that there is a heightened susceptibility in us to out of control impatience which thwarts successful delay of gratification.

Pastor scolding people leaving Mass early:

“You people walking out — are you committed believers, or are you really deserters and  leavers?”

Both poetry and holiness are ways of looking at life and people. One understanding of holiness is “being separated from the secular or profane” (Modern Catholic Dictionary).  Just so, a reader coming across a bit of poetry embedded within a page of prose takes it as a signal that some kind of refined, elevated or special thoughts are about to be conveyed. As is poetry, holiness is associated with  a sense of uplifting the soul, enhanced sensitivity, expanded awareness, and a heightened appreciation of the ordinary.  When praying, or in the presence of someone or something considered holy, a sense of encountering a higher realm occurs.  Browsing books, one recognizes the books of poetry as set apart from the ‘ordinary’ prose and fiction.

Drive-thru church has two windows.

First one PICK UP BLESSINGS HERE and the other PAY TITHES HERE.

Every so often I hear someone saying “I believe blah blah blah…” about some religious matter, but it doesn’t seem to be offered a testimony of faith.  Rather,  it seems to be a statement that the person  has given the matter some thought, and feels that a plausible explanation at odds with the commonly accepted understanding has been struck upon. For example, someone might say, about Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead,  ‘I believe that there was a back entrance to the tomb, and when the body was put to rest some  stealthy henchmen took it up and carried it away through a secret exit.  (Not that I or anyone I know of proposes such a scenario;  it is just a specious example of a kind of assertion.)

The best answer is,  I think,  ‘I couldn’t possibly believe that!’

One person coming out of a parish meeting to another:

“Sure I like to  stand up and say something to the group.  That’s how  find out what I think!”