Furthermore…

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’.

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.

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!’

I keep coming across comments on the Gospels seeming to say that one or another  includes certain material because the particular Evangelist favored or tended to use selected writer’s  devices or saw the world in a certain way.  I dislike  this because it seems to put too much of the responsibilty for what is written on arbitrary whims and preferences of an individual rather than on honest, objective  recounting of what took place and its significance, and even more important, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  Such analysis sometimes seems to almost suggest that Jesus didn’t say what he is reported as saying, that words were “put in His mouth” by the Evangelist.  I want to receive and consider reverently what Jesus said, and what took place.  I’m not receptive to material chosen (fabricated?) as an expression of  a idiosyncratic approach to writing, or an affinity to a topic.

On my way home from church I came to a corner with a flimsy sign asking GOT LOVE? in big letters. Then underneath it gave a singles website.  Seemed like a strange vision, coming from church. I thought: Well, I’ve got God’s love, more or less. But that’s not in their ballpark. Then I thought Well, I’ve got something akin to love for a certain lady I admire from a distance.  Again, not their idea of love.

An old Army buddy did a lot of dating out of single clubs, so I have a little bit of an idea of how that stuff goes.  ‘Love’ doesn’t seem like the right word. Maybe ’struggle’ is closer.   Or ‘hope’.   But I suppose a certain amount of it turns out as love.

I was reading something I received in my email, and came across these paragraphs within a statement attributed to Jimmy Carter about his leaving the  “Southern Baptist church”:

“The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place – and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence – than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.
“I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.”

Hmm – the fourth century, the 300’s.  Well, I guess he’s not hanging the whole thing on the Southern Baptists. They couldn’t be responsible for twistings and distortions supposedly done long before they were formed.   Strikes me as a bad case of modern distortions and twistings.

I always thought of the ‘our’ in ‘Our Father’ as referring to Holy God being the common Father of all us people, and it served to get us to stop thinking ‘me thoughts’ and to switch over to ‘us thoughts.’  But for some reason it suddenly struck me that the Lord Jesus might have been pointing us more particularly to the realization that God is  our Father as well as His Father, and since Jesus  knows Him so well we are being brought to and introduced to Our Father in a very special way through the gift of the prayer the Lord gave us as an example of how to pray.

Likely we could never come up with anything even remotely as well suited to addressing our Great God than what we received from Our Savior. The switching over to ‘us thoughts’ from ‘me thoughts’ in relation to Our Father still takes place, butperhaps it is only secondary to remembering that Our Heavenly Father is first of all the Father of His Son, the God Man.

I believe in being alert and seeing the life and culture around me through Christian (Catholic) eyes to recognize all the ways that the Christian view is upstaged by the secular, hedonist and relativist views. My ISP sends me a page with links to all kinds of ‘news stories’ every day that seem to play up to people caught up in a calculating, cult of the body life style, giving the impression that this is the kind of people at the center of everything and are to be catered to for that reason.

I found an informative ally in the email I receive from the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Institute. Called CMI Culture Links, a current number has articles on ABC’s obsession with alternative sexual life styles, another entitled “When Dad Becomes a Woman,” and one questioning a TV glorification of teenage pregnancy.

It’s good to have a swamp buggy to observe and safely exit from all the steamy bugginess. The swamp dwellers wallow contentedly there, more than willing to have the rest of us dive in and call it home too.

I’ve seen some lists of the names of God, drawn from scripture I guess. The other day I came across a mention of “what God is expecting of us” and it struck me that ‘God the Expecting’ is an evocative title, even though it doesn’t have pedigree or provenance. Maybe one of my acquaintances who knows Hebrew will one day be able to express the title in that language for me, giving it a patina of authenticity.

Encountering a set of expectations, maybe a printed list or a placard on the wall is not a foreign concept to most grownups, especially those who have been married, gone to college, or joined an organized society. Like those of a spouse, God’s expectations might have to be intuited, although many have been clearly spelled out for us. A spouse might go around frowning or acting distant because certain expectations are not being met. In rare cases, the situation might be addressed explicitly, but that involves adopting the methods used in a college dorm — NO LOUD MUSIC AFTER 11 PM, ALL PAYMENTS DUE IN ADVANCE, or a playground — NO DOGS, NO RUNNING, NO SPITTING, etc.

God’s might list of expectations might include NO IGNORING ME, NO GETTING WRAPPED UP IN YOUR OWN THOUGHTS, NO PRIDE and, more positively, develop your love, faith, stewardship, appreciation, kindness, thankfulness and so much more. May the day never come when God says, judgmentally: “Sorry, you didn’t meet My Expectations!”

I hear radio spots on Christian radio from the author of books on how peoples’ ‘love languages’ differ, so that one person feels loved when receiving gifts, while another gets the message best by being listened to, or whatever. He seem to have identified 5 varieties. Maybe the 5 can be subdivided and further subdivided, making room for near infinite variety. It brings to mind the commandment to love the Lord Our God with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and our whole strength. That’s God’s love language, what we must do so as to feel assured that He knows we love Him. But it’s hard to avoid the impression the more common approach is to love Him with part heart, etc. That’s all busy, modern people can summon up between keeping up appearances, the pace, and with the Jones’s. Do we get part credit, or no credit at all?

Starting with the assumption that one is not loving God wholly, but certainly in part, one wonders what would be required to make the transition to completeness. If worldly things are being given more importance than God, eclipsing Him, so to speak, perhaps what is called for is to see all things as created by God for His own purpose, that is, giving Him glory. One might admire, say, a sunset no less, but with new eyes see it as proclaiming and contributing, in its own way, to God’s glory. Likewise, moon, stars, success, riches, delicious food, and almost anyone or anything. Seems feasible.