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In What Direction to Take An Ark To Safety?

paperlessworld — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:41:12 +0000

The view of those who run Europe is that the truth is that its single currency must be saved.

Before the time of Homer was a story of Noah, when the world was destroyed by flood. In the story of the second creation. In the book Sages and Dreamers, Elie Wiesal wrote of the world in which Noah was swimming in the polluted air of the earth which had resulted after ten generations of creation. In the story of Noah, God was still very conscious of the goings on in the world. The crimes of humanity, the corruption, which Noah was above, are never explained in the lines. Who did what to whom? Noah, who is all that others are not. Creation had become chaos. And the story of Noah, like most of the Genesis stories, dealt with the themes of fertility. Fertility and the pairing up — the fertility that you tried to control, just as your tried to plan your own future. It would be what you would leave behind, way beyond your control. All others die, yet Noah lives. There is a certain irony to read the perspective of a Jewish author who lost each and every one of his relatives in the Holocaust — a man who at war’s end tried returning to his hometown which had done nothing to help the Jewish population. What had Noah ever done to deserve his role, to save humanity? Little is ever said. All that the Good Book says is that Noah submits to God’s will and nothing more. God has chosen to talk to him. And he built an ark.

The NYU economics professor (former derivative trader) known as Dr. Doom, Nassim Taleb, who had predicted the 2008 crash, in a January 2009 speech about bailouts: “I want them poor. And they deserve to be poor. You cannot have capitalism without punishment.”

And so the stories about what the flood of money in our times has done. Where there were so many problems pairing up, to save humanity. About where to go with your money. For safety. When you shared a heritage, or a culture. And then the attempt to pass on that culture. With a sense of belonging, in the stories. Through a language which conveyed a sense of belonging. To a group of people. To pass on, in like the eggs.

“One reason the eurozone is tottering is that markets know that its members (by which they mean Germany) could produce the mere two trillion euros required to calm things down, but are refusing to do so.

In Europe “one crisis leads to another crisis unless you find a really effective circuit breaker,” said PIMCO’s El-Erian. The creation of the new government in Italy “is certainly not sufficient. You fundamentally have to convince the people that they have to sacrifice and come up with a set of policies that allows the economy to grow and not just austerity. Europe so far hasn’t come close.” PIMCO continues to favor sovereign debt of nations including the U.S. and U.K. where central banks are keeping interest rates low and embarking on monetary stimulus programs such as debt purchases, said Bill Gross during today’s interview. Canadian and German debt also remain attractive.

Nancy Lazar of Ed Hyman’s ISI Group makes it clear that the Germans are exhibiting an uneasy awareness of the limits of their own less-than-vibrant economy. Expressed as a percentage of Germany’s GDP, German bank exposure to debt from France is 6.1%; Spain, 4.8%; Italy, 4.4%; Ireland, 3%;Portugal, 1%; and Greece, 0.9%. As she comments, the total of German banks’ exposure to peripheral and French debt is equivalent to 20.2% of Germany’s GDP, “high by any standard.” About Germany, Lazar posits that even without capturing fully the fiscal drag and contagion from the crisis, inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, which in the September quarter rose 2.5% year-over-year, will head for zero growth next year. That rather glum prospect is in keeping with recent weak readings of, among other indicators, German business expectations and slowing consumer spending.

Since something like 70% of German exports go to the rest of Europe, German exports have softened. Paced by a 12.1% plunge in demand from the rest of the Continent, September German factory orders were off overall by 4.3%. Corporate earnings have begun to give, with a one-two punch of a weaker economy with the rise in unit labor costs. Retail sales, with diminished consumer confidence, are destined to suffer this holiday season and thereafter.

There was so much irony to read the quote of a French leader that the European Union was set up so that religion would not be the basis of war among nations again. And so the secular nature of Europe, in post war Europe. The EU as the defining instrument of the times, with the euro. When spokesmen for a system of government spent so much time disseminating illusion on issues of unity, if not union. What happens when the confidence is gone?

Nov 16 (Bloomberg) – Europe has as little as day or weeks to act to avoid a default by a euro-region country, Citigroup Inc. chief economist Willem Buiter said today, “Time is running out fast.” In an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene, Buiter said, “I think we have maybe a few months – it could be weeks, it could be days – before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it. So they have to act now.”

The irony in the story of this flood of money and ancient Greece. And the mottled German leadership role in all of this, seventy-five years after the Third Reich. When money helps to create the illusion of grandeur in this life. When money was a DEFINING INSTRUMENT OF THE Culture. It was the language we communicated, in western civilization. It was how we exchanged things, beyond words. It was a way of understanding. Money reflected the values of a community. Systems of money were created. Capitalism. Communism. We fool ourselves with the systems of grandeur. By nationalism. Fascism. In castes. Or in Aryan supremacy. In the debates about theologies, and the defining instruments of communication, so often stifled by popes, or about radical authoritarianism, with a missing collegiality. With the missing debate not so much over valuations — about buzzcuts on those holding Greek debt, or just needed pruning back — but how to measure valuation. With a meaningful DEFINING INSTRUMENT of the culture.

You cannot have capitalism, the one size which is supposed to fit all, like really the one size that fits Germany. As people without their own currencies, or their own language, cannot correct their own errors, as their debt compounds. As Germans overvalue their currency and the remainder of the EU’s along with them. Without punishment.

Yeah, up until one month ago the view from Europe was that its single currency must be saved. At all costs. Was there an irony, a certain sense of satisfaction, to see the currency pain in Italy and in Germany at the same time, with their real pain in a devaluation in the use of dynamic equivalence. As old men from Italy led by a German, put in place this currency adjustment, at all costs, affecting the way I prayed? In English.

This devaluation, the change in translation, was not about just prayer but about the medium that I used, that all of us within these borders use. So now comes the change. It was a currency adjustment, a devaluation in the use of dynamic equivalence. As these things happened in international systems of exchange. And with it, a change in the spiritual lives of many in thess United States. Mindful of the intense suffering and pain which is part of fertility, it took more than 10 years for all of this to bear fruit. And after the translation comes the real life interpreting, as a church’s true mission has been in the field of interpreting and translating, just like in those services offered for interpreting and translating, to lawyers and court services. With my own ignominy watching the story of the euro play out, I had a certain response – like that found in Germany – that the pain in places all over Europe would not happen here. And I now understood the Occupy Wall Street protest which was now leading to a world-wide movement, about leaders who had no idea where or how they were leading people. The protest like the one over the leadership of the financially chosen people.

From the economic discussion of “Too Big to Save,” came me. Questioning who these leaders were and what they hoped to accomplish — who they thought they were really serving. I felt that somehow my prayer life was caught up in the European wholesale sovereign debt mess, and I was part of the write-downs. The size of Europe’s biggest cathedrals relative to their real life use was disproportionate and far smaller than in parts of the English-speaking world.

Before the time of Homer, when the world was destroyed by flood, except for the story of a man named Noah. When one man was responsible for carrying on. It was what happened in a world during a devaluation in the use of dynamic equivalence. This was the same story later played out in the past, among Chosen People. Like the perverted story eighty years ago with anti-semitism. And members of a church – the ones who see themselves as chosen people concerning issues of salvation – can, in discovering the subtleness of God, play a critical role. Or not. In interpreting the meaning of Creation. Like Noah. Like my own priest, who was above all the petty human politics. With his services carried out, like that by the seasoned and professionally trained interpretors far from the Holy See.

“In very ancient Greece, Homer tells us, the giants tried to scale Heaven by piling Mount Ossa on top of Mount Olympus, and then adding “wooded Pelion”, another mountain in those parts, on top of that. They failed, of course, and “piling Pelion on Ossa” became a by-word for reinforcing failure.” –Charles Moore in “The Left and Right Should Join Forces Against the Great Euro Take-over”
Copyright © 2011.

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On The Theology of Capitalism

paperlessworld — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:42:43 +0000

A banking system is an act of faith: the system survives only for as long as people believe. In each other. With a face mottled by broken capillaries from working there, a Bank & Trust is an every day act of faith.

The BOND MARKET. The world is in unbelievable bad shape. And I do not hear many church people praying for a financial system on the brink of disaster.

In Russia, people who believed in the theology of communism saw their system collapse twenty years ago. The life of the ruble over ten years was a daily roller coaster ride, especially for people on pensions. In August 1998, when the U S Congress was voting to impeach Bill Clinton, the government of Russia defaulted on forty billion dollars of government bonds.

Credit is the air that business breathe. Bonds. That you should have what I have. When you wanted everyone to have what I had. And your job involved sharing bonds.

On February 11, 2009, I wrote a piece about the financial system crisis, more and more the DEFINING INSTRUMENT OF THE culture. Then and now this was a financial system crisis, not a sub prime mortgage crisis. It was not just the derivative market. It was the entire system. It was everybody. Here.

I understood that foreign governments were required to keep capital reserves for international trade, in US dollars. And it is my understanding that the United States went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, without ever raising taxes. The wars, even before the United States escalated things in Afghanistan, were projected to have a total economic impacted cost $3 trillion, according to Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes in “The Three Trillion War” — or maybe $4 trillion. And every country in the world had no voice in the pursuit of these wars which was shared by all those who relied on the U S Dollar.

This now is a financial system crisis, not a sub prime mortgage crisis. It was not just the derivative market. It was the entire system. It was everybody. It was war and cheap money. Willem H. Buiter wrote on January 25, 2009, the impact of the bailout has been virtually nil in the market, which has continued to punish the banks in the stock market, and among the public, which has failed to find a clear message.

There was a lot of illusion in life today. The illusion was about who we thought we were. Money helps create the illusions of grandeur in this life. We fool ourselves. With theologies based upon systems. Systems like capitalism and nationalism. Or systems based upon communism.

While living through the crisis in the financial system in 2008, I had lunch with a priest with part of a job description overseeing an endowment fund that would determine the future education of a lot of young people in college. After a touching on a lot of the fiscal concerns in the world, as to how much they might affect his job in fund-raising, at the end of lunch he asked me how much my identity was based upon money.

Money was a DEFINING INSTRUMENT OF THE culture. It was a language that we all communicated in. It was how we exchanged things, beyond words. It was a way of understanding. Money reflected values of a community. And values were always debated.

The perils are all around us in America, especially today in Europe, as the banking system is again on the brink, with the value of all currency, of the things that help sustain illusion. Unetaneh Tokef is a prayer that the Jews recite during the High Holy Days about the perils of the year to come:

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die…
Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued,
Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low…

Those stocks in banks in Europe have been worthless for the past three years. “If drugs continue to be injected which mask symptoms rather than address the disease (medicine in the form of debt destruction), the likelihood of a seismic readjustment increases in kind,” writes Todd Harrison, about the dollar. “As governments take on more risk” as they price assets on behalf of the market and transfer debt from private to public, “the common denominator, or release valve, becomes the currency.”

And it has been. As the euro dies. Maybe because the Chinese did not want to adjust the value of their currency. In the game of liar’s poker, in the markets.

“In the UK, no bank is solvent. And if there is, I do not know,” said Jim Rogers in January 2009. The crisis in the banking system has been accompanied by the collapse of the pound sterling. “Interest rates are on the floor and is expected to fall further, the housing market remains in crisis, the current account deficit is through the roof, economic prospects are very bad, it was have triggered the red in the public accounts and banking turmoil of recent days have come to weaken the currency.”

“I want them poor and they deserve to be poor. You can’t have capitalism without punishment.”
–Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960–), NYY economics professor, former derivatives trader, at the World Economic Forum, January 2009, concerning the bailout.

“There is an angry mob out there. Its shape is dimly perceived, but the terrifying shadows cast by its flaming torches are clear enough. This is the bond market in full cry. Its most aggressive participants even call themselves the “bond vigilantes.”” – Stephen Foley, British journalist

“The US Federal government has taken on massive additional contingent liabilities through its bail out/underwriting of the US financial system (and possibly other bits of the US economic system that are too politically connected to fail). Together will the foreseeable increase in actual Federal government liabilities because of vastly increased future Federal deficits, this implies the need for a future private to public sector resource transfer that is most unlikely to be politically feasible without recourse to inflation. The only alternative is default on the Federal debt. There is little doubt, in my view, that the Federal authorities will choose the inflation and currency depreciation route over the default route,” Willem H. Buiter of the European Institute, then Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science, wrote at the time.

“Although the US dollar and US Treasury Bills and Bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many, there will, before long (my best guess is between 2 and 5 years from now) be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. Old habits die hard.” -Willem H. Buiter from his the naked capitalism blog, from three years ago.

We had lived through times when banks quit playing for the community. When Citibank arrived. And put that local banker out of business. The last twenty-five years have seen leveraged buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, as regulators ceased regulating. Because a lot of people got drunk on wealth.

Capitalism was on trial. Capitalism was in the news each day, with this world-wide Occupy Wall Street movement. After Communism had been tried and found guilty a generation ago. What now the system here? These were the days. When all those bankrupt banks were going to end up owning even more homes of financially bankrupt people. And there was anger at governments which bailed out bankrupt banks, on the back of taxpayers. If not for taxpayers, it would be the banks which were foreclosed.

There were saved banks….but banks still not fixed. As a result of big banks in too many businesses, backed by worthless sovereign debt, this republic is threatened, as was the world. The scale of the problem – Bloomberg has reported the total bailout and loan guarantees, the stimulus, total $9.7 trillion now – would have been enough to pay 90% of all US home mortgages. And so the anger, over the choices, over the income of CEOs of banks and on Wall Street. The public concern over economic decay, not unlike the concern over cultural decay, as a political issue, with government over-reach, with the help of a military in international missions, at an economic and political price. On issues of power and might. On these weapons of mass destruction that so few people understood –called currency and bonds.

A calamity, when there was movement in the stories. Or not. When people were stuck. A calamity was a lot like fire. A raging fire, as people cannot buy homes and cars from a banking system where half of the banks are on the brink. And the rest of us cannot sell. And there was the anger and disappointment. At the system.

Europe has as little as days or weeks to act to avoid a default by a euro-region country, Willem Buiter who is now the Chief Economist with CitiGroup, Inc, said today. In a banking system always an act of faith, on a continent where more and more, there is no there THERE, the system survives only for as long as people believe. Capitalism, as capital is lost, in an old society which cannot replicate itself. With falling birth rates, and independent contractors.

As the invisible becomes visible, over time. In the old stories where the fear and anger was not understood when invisible. It might be a good time to stop and pray — ironically on the last Sunday where the English-speaking Roman Catholic world can use the native language at Mass in rooted words which I have come to understand, before the language of English prayer is devalued — to pray like those in flight. In the way Passover was once commemorated, as the world once again looks at the old prayers, which have come down in the Jewish tradition, passing on, in relationship, in the DEFINING INSTRUMENT OF THE culture, the power in bonds which were believed in:

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die…
Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued,
Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low…

Copyright © 2011.

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How the Change in the Mass in English Came to Be

paperlessworld — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:12:42 +0000

AFTER a time, some of us learn that life comes down to some simple things – how we love, how alert we are, how curious we are. In ways mysterious and comforting comes the profundity of style, of stories, in language, by others more articulate than I. Layer by layer, we discover and peel away superstition, fantasies, ideas of grandeur, levels of confusion, of anger, of hate, in order to experience the people and the world around us – and our life in the world – as directly and clearly as possible. To have learned firsthand, through, with, in prayer.

When they come to take you away. The fear, the unsettling fear associated with power, like getting a letter from the IRS. The fear, like on Holy Thursday. There was a certain vintage of fear which came alive, not at all unlike if you had lived in Eastern Europe forty years ago. Over issues of trust. Of people with legal power. When you felt so powerless, as “they” took away my prayers.

In third grade geography, the teacher had discussed the things which made up a regional character. The mountain people seemed different, from the people of the plains. At least in the times when there was a lot less movement, and those people mostly looked alike. With a language which defined them, until the movement in the story changed the people. Language is the reference point for the subtleness of all relationships. Language was just a measure of what people think about worth. When valuation was so much only what was in a person’s mind, we all are just extrapolating and thinking – and that is perhaps what everyone thinks language is worth. A developed self-worth, when you were touched by the language.

Mindful of the subtleness, day in and day out, of language — the reference point for all human relationships was language. The significance was when people gathered to say together words which to people somehow connected had recognized meaning. Here! With a living language which defined us to each other, if not to God.

Poetry was a medium connecting the unconnected. And the language of the Mass was what connected us: not only to God but to each other – those graduates of the parochial school. Prayer best described as “when you reallly looked deeply at something, it becomes part of you.”

How alert we are about Divine worship – over power and might? Under John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger had been the Prefecct of the the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Get your programs and scorecards ready, concerning issues of power and might. Concerning who he had been surrounded by. Had there been plots about worldly power, concerning Divine worship? This was like watching the same plot found in The Caine Mutiny?

George Pell was a a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and president of the Vox Clara Committee, which supervises for the Vatican on English translations of liturgical texts used at Mass. George Cardinal Pell had been a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge. The son of a professional fighter, his infamous remark was that he did not “think a Christian can say ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter’”.

William Joseph Levada, the current Prefecct of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , had been a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. He is an American from Southern California.

The current Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments is Antonio Cañizares Llovera. Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera had formerly been a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge, since 10 November 1996, and was named Archbishop of Granada on 10 December 1996.

The men from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had long focused upon punishment with those who disagreed with their perspective about shared belief. And now the men were scattered thoughout the Curia to implement their vision of a universal church throughout the world. IN ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, one more blow to episcopal collegiality.

In an all too politicized church over what groups can legitimately call themselves Catholic, today it is reported the Vatican was “extremely irritated” by the wording as the Irish foreign ministry was closing it Vatican embassy because “it yields no economic return”, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values. Maybe like in days of old, in the reign of monarchs, as in the Sport of Kings, in the breeding, not always noticeable or understandable by the unwashed, or those who are being pruned away who also are “extremely irritated” by the wording, in the revised English Order the Mass, affecting the intimate ability to pray with fervor. In our native tongue.

There was a noted difference between translators and interpretors. When all along the goal of a good translator, on a dead language, should be to promote quality services of its people – in union. And there was a lot more power and might in having a good interpreter, when you sent missionaries out to the savage world.

So why do languages die? Like Latin, or Irish? In Ireland, when your people had lived under a dominant culture….because English was a language forced upon the Irish… and you were supposed to reflect THEIR culture. To convey how you overcame anger, through stories of power and might. In song. There the people had come to know how to convey knowledge or understanding. “To be loyal to the church is to expose evil for the good of the church,” Paddy McCafferty said about Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests who were complaining about the new translation, among other things, where the sentences were so long they could be seen from outer space. Yes, there was a storm in Ireland about the new translation, among other things. Where historically the people mindful of the subtleness, day in and day out, of language — the reference point for all human relationships — knew something about a dying language.

So why do languages die? Like Latin, or Irish. The significance was when people gathered to say together words with a living language which defined us to God. Words which to people somehow connected had recognized meaning. Here! When all along the goal of a good translator, on a dead language, should be to promote quality services of its people – in union.

The fallacy behind the call for language change in an English — which has NOT changed — is that you lose something when things change through the life of a living language. Simply what would be lost is union, layer by layer.

Language was just a measure of what leaders think about worth, and apparently the one-time members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith do not think much about the English speaking world and the manner of our prayers or the strength of the faith within the congregation, as expressed in the measure in language, since 1965.

It was if the chosen English words have not been valued by the English-speaking people in my country. The fallacy, as if these were just words. When the North American bishops who fought the change understood, until the command came down from Rome to “Just do it”. As if this just was the Nike Corporation.

This pope who as theologian had discussed the need to prune back in the universal Catholic Church — perhaps with his German obsession over clean exterior-dirty interior, or clean form and dirty content while losing sight though the human discussion, in a human perspective, over what would result in, who at the end of the story, exactly would be saved — over who exactly was Catholic? On the question of union, and human relationships, this everyday question was about union, where translations did have to be interpreted into every day life.

So why did people quit using or studying language? Was the death of a language just a result of, the victim of, a dominant culture, on issues of power and might? And when a dead language was revived, how could modern people pretend to explain how to translate for the world? When the real issue was the English words – ones like ‘ineffable,’ ‘consubstantial,’ ‘incarnate,’ ‘inviolate,’ ‘oblation,’ ‘ignominy,’ ‘precursor,’ ‘suffused’ and ‘unvanquished.’.

Read the following edited NCR column by Jamie L. Manson (with a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics), which recently appeared in the National Catholic Reporter.

”Anthony Ruff, OSB, is a monk of St. John’s Abbey and professor of liturgy, liturgical music and Gregorian chant atSt. John’s University in Minnesota. In 2005, Ruff accepted an invitation to join the team of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). Ruff joined ICEL for reasons similar to those that led him to associate with the editors of First Things. He was committed to guarding and promoting faithfulness to church tradition. Back then, he believed that the current Missal used in the United States “was a symptom of a mistake: that VaticanII had implemented these texts in a way that was too liberal and too much a sell-out to the secular world.”

“ICEL is a translating agency formed in 1963 by English-speaking bishops at the Second Vatican Council in response to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’s decree calling for translations of the Missal into the vernacular. Article 22 of the constitution stated that these translations were to be “prepared and approved by territorial bodies of bishops,” such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

”But six weeks after the bishops approved the constitution, the Vatican sent out its first instruction stipulating that these translations would have to be sent to Rome and be approved by the Holy See. The bishops’ memories were long enough to recall that they did not agree to this arrangement.
”Assuming goodwill on the part of the Holy See, the bishops acquiesced.

“Ruff took pains to chronicle the history of the translation of the Missal beginning in 1963, and was careful to ensure that his portrait of its development was accurate and balanced. He read directly from a number of church documents and explained the theological implications of liturgical language.

“Ruff pointed out that Rome gave ICEL a remarkable amount of freedom as it embarked on translating the Latin into English. In a 1969 document, the Vatican reminded ICEL that it was ‘necessary to take into account not only the message to be conveyed, but also the speaker, the audience and the style.’ By providing this guideline, the hierarchy was working from their own theory of how Christianity ought to relate to local cultures.

“In 1969, the Vatican recognized that these translations would be somewhat loose, and that eventually translations from Latin would not be adequate. The ultimate goal was that all the texts of the Missal would be created in the original language rather than translated from the Latin.

“But history did not pan out that way. The bishops ‘did not know that in future years, further instructions would give more and more power to the center,’ Ruff said.

“By 2001, Rome’s primary emphasis had shifted from respect for receiving cultures to respect for, if not idolization of, the original Latin language of the Missal. This shift was made evident by the Vatican’s 2001 establishment of an advisory committee, known as Vox Clara, to oversee ICEL. Previously, ICEL was directly supervised by Rome. Under this new arrangement, Vox Clara’s power was upgraded, and ICEL’s authority was significantly downgraded.

“Vox Clara was a committee that met several times a year for three days at a time. ICEL was a high-functioning office staffed with full-time employees, consultants and translators. And yet, Vox Clara was suddenly entrusted with the power to override any of ICEL’s work.

“More than 7,000 consultants worked on various aspects of ICEL’s translation of the new Missal. Every translator was appointed by invitation only — and he was appointed by someone to whom he was ultimately obedient. Ruff himself was not appointed since, as a musician, his task was to set the new translations to melodies.

“The process was highly secretive. No progress reports were ever published, and no drafts were made available to those who requested them. This was a marked departure from the protocol followed by ICEL in the 1980s and 1990s. Apparently, the Holy See tired — as older people often do — of the long struggle into twilight with first the International Committee on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). This had been the main English liturgical translation body. The Holy See ordered the then body of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) restructured, with its bylaws changed, and then mandating a new philosophy concerning translations for the new edition of the Roman Missal.

“ICEL completed its translation of the new Missal in 2008, and the text was handed over to Vox Clara and the Vatican. Rome made more than 10,000 changes to ICEL’s text, many of them unexplainable. The resulting translations from the Latin were so literal that some of the renderings in English sounded convoluted, if not confusing.

“Worst of all, the Vatican’s version wasn’t based on the final draft submitted by ICEL.

“‘It was as if they pulled up the wrong file to work on. The last three years of consultation felt as if it was all for nothing,’ Ruff said. Even though more than 100 bishops approved ICEL’s work, Rome trumped them all.

“’The bishops would be critical of Rome’s translations over drinks at night, but the next day we would read that they were publicly defending the new Missal as a great moment of renewal. Our problem is that our structure doesn’t allow people to say what they believe for the good of the church.’

“Ruff said he doesn’t think all of the changes in the new Missal are bad. But because the process was so cloaked in secrecy, it necessarily became tainted.

“‘If there had been more collaboration at the table, those who are upset or confused by the new translations might have had the opportunity to see the reasons for the changes,’ Ruff said. ‘This lack of transparency leads us to automatically assume the worst of church leadership.’

“Beyond his objections as a liturgist, on a pastoral level this cumbersome wording worries Ruff. These are large problems that pervade the church, though in a church that Ruff intends to engage in and be a part of for the rest of his life. ‘Our system is not set up to tell the truth. It is not possible for those doing the work to say to those in charge “this isn’t working.” This,’ he said, ‘is not exactly a hot-button issue in the way issues of sexuality are. I would hope that we could at least have a variety of opinions about translation.’

“He has learned, however, that this new translation ‘reflects deeply problematic views of the relationship between the See of Peter and local church, the relationship between the church and culture, and the relationship between tradition and the ongoing need for renewal,’ he said.

“His own disillusionment with the institutional church has sparked a new kind of creative vision. He now dreams of a renewed church that honors the prophetic tradition while also celebrating the beauty of tradition. ‘I would love to belong to a community that was working for the transformation of unjust structures in church and society as well as offering direct outreach to the victims of oppression,’ he said.”

Forty-five years after the groundbreaking and liberating document on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium – that great Magna Carta which transcended ecclesiastical politics in an overwhelming consensus of the bishops of the world which had passed 2,147 to 4 – now comes this obscure 1960s-era strategy known as Operation Twist. Like in the strategy employed by the Federal Reserve Bank, in August 2011.

From the Latin, tyrannus

Officials of The Federal Reserve Bank want to know how investors might respond to changes in monetary policy and to avoid surprising markets. According to interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Nancy Lazar, an economist with International Strategy & Investment Group Inc., is among a group of well-connected investors and analysts “with access to top Federal Reserve officials who give them a chance at early clues to the central bank’s next policy moves. The access is part of a push by hedge funds and other traders to get more information about the inner workings of government. Developments in Washington have become more important, after the financial crisis in 2008 spawned new regulations and a stronger hand by lawmakers in businesses. … Conversations are important to both sides, making it difficult for the Fed to completely close its doors to traders and analysts,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

In ways mysterious and discomforting comes this change involving the foundation of the profundity of style, of stories, in language of the WORD ethic. Mindful of the subtleness of human language and its power, the subtleness of language is one reference point for what divides me and my community from outsiders. Those temporal rulers from far away had what interest to preserve our local language, when language was the outward sign, about things working deep within? Language was the communal means, before Geiger counters and seismographs, to find the Truth before upheaval. It was a relationship thing. Here.

This perspective of the institution – its connection of this community to the outside world as well as its own connection to communal sins – when inheritance and fertility seemed so personal. When a church attempted to address the issues but in a vernacular that was not readily understood here. When a church now wanted me to now pray if not live unquestioning. When a church was tring to pass on the old robes of authority, not recognized by my generation because of a recognition of what this approach had caused a prior generation.

When the decision to change the manner of prayer was about communal sins, like in Germany. Post-war, when there had once been the shame in such a nation. When the seat of Saint Peter now wanted me to now pray unquestioning, based upon the same mysterious foundation which had led to cover-ups and misunderstandings exposed throughout the world. When you obeyed rules based upon a relationship you were born into. When a child obeyed authority, without a developed interpreted perspective into every day life of power. When the best part of my prayer life was in the questioning of Creation.

About the continual movement in the story of communal sins. There was the affect on each and every relationship of the invisible communal sin. Whether just living unquestioning, or trying to figure the world outside. About acceptance, within a relationship, over past inheritance, and then over presenting that inheritance to the next generation. Why did I have all of this, and what was happening here in comparison to what once had happened here, to this community?

Did we have communal sin here? And the expiation? What were the causes? Language, nationality, ways of thinking?
There was just a banality of goodness and/or evil, or there were causes? To live unquestioning on issues of authority? What were we doing to change? About communal sins, like in Germany. Post-war, the shame of a nation. Did Israel now have some kind of communal sins of their own these days?

Yes, as the Seat of Saint Peter forces the biggest ‘stress test’ on the English speaking world, English sentences heard at the preface will be more than eighty words long. The fear, the unsettling fear associated with power on issues of infallibility over matters of faith if not morals – in the Church Too Big To Fail – on issues of unity, in the decade when there has been epic challenge to unity in the apostolic visits to nunneries, to the reality of those child abuse cases.

George Cardinal Kell, was the Australian bishop believed to have been a “campaign manager” behind Joseph Ratinzger’s 2005 election to the papal chair. This one time jock, educated abroad in Rome, was a force behind the scenes changing the rules of engagement. George Cardinal Pell had been chairman of the blue-ribbon Vox Clara Committee – think of it as some kind of supercommittee in Washington – which “consulted” the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments overseeing the text’s preparation, on the wholesale new translation of the Mass-book, soon to become the first vernacular text employed across the whole English-speaking world. When the enforcement of the existing rules seemed totally out of control, due to the existing apparatus, and the language of the Mass is now being used as a tool – some would even say as a weapon — to advance specific agendae with promises of unachievable historic fixes which could be approved by only paid staffers and blood relatives. Because we were such imperfect beings.

The continual movement in the story, when they come to take you away. Like within the Mount of Olives.

Giving Me Artistically the ‘Once Over’

paperlessworld — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:29:58 +0000

The landscape of dating. Over the past 20 years or so, as town centers completely destroyed by bombs in World War II in Eastern Europe have been, over time, stone by stone, restored. In my lifetime, and in the lifetime like the contemporary artist I met, who was three years younger. Her family had left and had spent their time elsewhere during the Reconstruction.

In the sign of the times, the woman still looks like a a cheerful hippie, with a restlessness on display, over time perhaps becoming more visible. Getting perspective from an artist who liked to paint landscapes of the far off, and generally avoided the things up close. The divorced mother, now at war with her son, looking for a lasting relationship, talking with great honesty about her life on Yom Kippur. To me.

After being banished from the territories in the 1980s, with an art degree from the Universoty of illinois in Champagne, she had gone to San Francisco. She landed in Minnesota in 1982, where she remains. When she married in 1991, she knew she had made the wrong decision. Her marriage lasted until 1997, with six years of marriage counseling. Her husband, she said, was shocked when she asked for a divorce. At the time she had two kids, the youngest having been born in 1994.

Unsettled. To tackle the deeper problems, with perspective, after a deep sleep, of the daughter of Ukranian Jews who had never returned home to Chicago. The woman who seemed on Yom Kippur to want to come to grips with her sins. The main one concerning that she never really had loved the father of her kids. All the restlessness, in her story of detachment. At a time when clearly, with perspective of time, she had not really known herself.

People do not really say, to strangers, what is most true, like this. Living day to day, struggling economically ever since her divorce, making a living as a sign painter. Then the remark of a stranger recognizing her for her modeling for his art class, naked. This was, most likely, no big deal for an art major, though the stranger hovered over our table way too long.

The landscape artist who bared her soul to me in an Irish bar, owned by a Brit, about what she hopes to be building upon. Six years ago she had become Christian, with no mention on how that affected her relationship with her kids. Having gone to Guatamuela, building homes, the divorced mother with one daughter away at college, in her restlessness, with her church group. But now at war with her high school age son who lives with her – perhaps playing the game by something other than the official rules – but he would be ask to leave when he turns eighteen.

The divorced mother, hoping to build on a lasting relationship, talking with so much honesty about her life on Yom Kippur. Giving me the once over. Just once, in this Irish bar that was not really Irish, with bagpipe music airing. Despite her claim of being an artist, who now liked to take commercial jobs closer to home but with her free time she likes to paint landscapes of the far off, generally avoiding the things up close. Expecting pain in any relationship, expecting such little joy.

Life in Minnesota. People want to live here; they don’t want to leave. We don’t have high turnover.

After a provided quote from me by anoher landscape artist –“I have always worked and pulled my hair out simultaneously, but the higher motivation is the sheer pleasure and joy found in the depths of perceptual engagement.” — she then said she did not want to see me again. Perhaps coming to learn, in her continuing education that that you could not love others, until you settled first upon really a known self, before moving on. After giving me the once over, moving to the the art of loving yourself.

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Jesuit Inaugurations

paperlessworld — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 03:37:06 +0000

September 30, 2011 speech of Christine M. Wiseman, J.D., president of Xavier University of Chicago, at the inauguration of the president of Creighton University: “It is a privilege to offer these greeting at this moment in time to a man who long ago captured my intellect, at an institution which long ago captured my heart. At an institution where scholars can gather to challenge the norms in science of the past; where students are free to challenge those who declare that Truth exists only in what has been and leads no room for what might be; at a place whose students are free to challenge the world over what is unjust. At an institution where the church does Her best thinking, where theologians continue to explore the meaning of Truth, but their theories and ideas are contextualized by a people of faith, unlike in the marketplace of ideas. At a place with an identity being Catholic whose people can challenge the Truth about what exists — in what has been — for what might be. At an institution whose identity is both Catholic and Jesuit, of greater complexity than any other Jesuit university in this country, in disciplines and majors where students will understand that learning must encounter human suffering. Where learning about human success involves learning about human pain. Where learning about conquerors must involve learning about the conquered, where learning about rule-makers must involve learning about the exploited, where learning about leaders and their ideas must involve learning about the marginalized and the poor. For this is the obligation of mercy and it will forever be necessary for students who must respond creatively with some idea to a world in need of healing. Just as it will be necessary to a world which must respond with the hopefulness described by Flannery O’Connnor as characterized through Jesus as one who looked at the world and saw it as a place worth dying for. In a catholic institution whose reach is global. Welcome to the challenge at this place, in these times. In this place it is one thing to educate women and men of all races and ethnicities and to lead each other, and it is another to afford them the opportunity. We who are here with you today come to offer our support.”

With a Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctorate from Marquette University, upon graduation Christine M. Wiseman went into the field of law, serving as a law clerk for the United States District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin, an Assistant Wisconsin Attorney General with the Criminal Appeals Division, prior to her academic career. Wiseman, in nearly 30 years in Catholic higher education, has served as a law professor and administrator at Marquette University, professor of law at Creighton University and then vice-president for Academic Affairs at the Jesuit University. Most recently she was Professor of Law and then the provost at Loyola University of Chicago before becoming the 19th president of Saint Xavier University.

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Days of Awe

paperlessworld — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:54:15 +0000

An old scout born in Minnesota (Wes Westrum), on worship and baseball, once said: Many go, few understand. It was two years ago when I read a piece in America magazine about the Akedah, the strange story read on Rosh Hashanah about how to somehow keep this God alive, what has been haunting me ever since?

Rosh Hashanah. As Jews hear once again with the start of the High Holy Days, the account of the binding of Isaac. When it has always been tough to be in such an alliance, with the true believers. When the story, like all good stories, was about the future. At what point do you relinquish whatever identity you have inherited or seemed to have helped build yourself – with Abraham, prepared to give everything that was important away. In a sacrifice.

In the story about the interior system of belief, creating something out of nothing, for sons who followed fathers, generation after generation. Abraham, Isaac, and later Jacob, with their torturous relationships, in an under-populated world populated by mostly people living in denial, if not fear, of God. In the approach of fathers to sons, the comparative approach to the real God by fathers to sons, in themes of birthrights, of power and might, on life and death, with that identity commandment. Which started with the knife, at birth, as Abraham had used a knife on Isaac when he was born. And the conflict in this story was over the method that Abraham in the story used for “evangelization.” So again the knife in this story, like he had used on Ishmael when he was twelve or thirteen. And Ishmael could ever forget what his father had done? As somekind of punishment, for what he had done?

Crazy people, having to start all over, with God or without Him. Sons, when this was all over, wrestling with the unrecognized birthright question…and passing it on, with such emotion. To keep something alive with passion, on another Rosh Hashanah. This Abraham with a split family who wanted others to have the same powerful experience, as he had had. Except maybe not like between Hagar and Sarah. Abraham who had shown up at the same place at least a generation earlier with Ishmael, if you believed the Qoran, in the reading at the end of Ramadan, of Eid Al Fitr with the same scene played out, only between Abraham and Ishmael. And when it was tough to be in such an alliance, with the true believers over the truth…and what it was you were you going do with it, once you discovered how to pray? In these relationships arranged by your family, the torturous ones over fertility, for the father of faith to his sons and to his God – over God and the inheritance of God. Maybe with a craziness not unlike all the things that happened on September 11th, if you lost the proper perspective — considering how to communicate the ideas all about identity and who Abraham was – if not outright crazy, after circumcising sons and slaves with some kind of fertility vow, as part of the identity commandment which involved power and fertility? How so different than other men, in their day. No wonder the stories of Sarah’s laughter, when she recognized all of Abraham’s craziness.

Born with a pre-existing condition. This story was all about of Isaac as a son of Abraham who must have seemed so crazy. With an overall theme directed at intimations of attachment, like the attachment that I got at home from my parents and grandparents. To share that holiness that often was directed to a home. Or a neighborhood. Or a city. From a distinct sense of place in my life which had always been asserting itself, enfolding over time, staking a claim on a people. Before it was lost or overtaken. Or just taken anyway? When you had come to know something about a place.

That a nomad was supposed to resolve the crisis over belief, oy vey! Over shared belief. In a foreign land, outside the garden. When you wanted to share a heritage or a culture. In a quest to redeem society, and not just himself, to somehow – even when you seemed so old – confer a spirit about the past, in keeping this God alive. How can it be helped if a seed grows where it lands, once it’s been scattered, no matter from where your ancestors came.

Abraham dealing with inheritance, later to be spun as issues of birthright. No matter where you lived, the struggle, the anguish, in the comparative approach of fathers to sons. Sons who followed fathers, generation after generation.

The deepest part of Rosh Hashanah which came from stories about not just transporting a culture to a new place, but then somehow planting the culture. In a new place. People dealing with independence and multiculturalism, along with the changing roles of power.

When you came credentialed by the proper authorities, and you knew something about unrecognized painful sacrifices, and you desired to give your son up, for a brand new institution. Because you had fear over lost belief? Over your realization how much Hagar and Ishmael hated you — or about Sarah, who you had almost an incestral relationship as your wife— passing on everything that she had planned about your family. And what was the risk that her kid would be crazy? Or already was crazy, as Abraham. Was crazy Abraham, at the end, acting for Sarah, as he considers a honor killing, wondering if a sacrifice would ever be recognized.
To be blessed in the name of God, when your prayers were so alive, and you wanted others to have the same bigger than life experience. When the French “blesser,” means to wound. So was it Abraham or Isaac, wondering if he had even mattered, begging to have had mattered, begging to be blessed, so that God would never forget, NEVER forget Abraham, just like THE Holocaust. Somehow the movement in the common stories, like the physics in the Akedah, or Eid Al Fitr, creating something out of nothing — like in the beginning. So why not just end it all on Mount Moriah, Noah-like, without the ark? And God, if He let him kill Isaac, then surely understood.

And so another Rosh Hashanah, as the Jewish world considers again how to keep something authentic alive about shared belief, about painful human sacrifice even after anesthesia had been invented. With an intensity of the stories, like the Akedah … to communicate the idea about what Abraham knew. About himself, about his life, and then the risk that God took with Abraham, with his kin and his wife– with his split family, with Ishmael, in his second chance with Isaac, and the quality of all of his relationships. Or not. The movement in this father of faith story, to confer a spirit in the name of God, in relationship– in the end, never feeling worthy through perfect human sacrifice. With an Irish intuitive sense of what was happening, what Germans call fingerspitzengefuhl – the fingertip feel that maybe your baseball coach understood — for me the story was all about the Abraham’s plan. He was never coming back, you know. Home. To Sarah. Not after he killed her son. When neither of them were ever coming back. Originally. These guys afterall were nomads, for God sake. Can you imagine the shock of Sarah when she heard the story? Or the neighbors? About Abraham, the allegedly just man of his generation, who with his ego had a concept about only marrying within the tribe, marrying his father’s—but not his mother’s —daughter. Who would ever belief or forget this story? With the shame in the story, until the part about God’s intervention, as the past and the future on Mount Moriah at odds was reflected upon.

Stories about points of view, in a creator’s desire for perfection, in themes of birthrights, of power and might, in comparative approaches to God by fathers to sons on life and death, with all the tension in the story between those who were not good enough with those who seemed to be too good, there is this indescribable pain which creates memory in a culture. To discover in the story somewhat unexpectedly, for sons who followed fathers, a Living God– power without domination – through the unforgettable pain of father and son trying to understand the manner to pray, in the story that transcends boundaries.

To confer a spirit about shared belief, in the name of God, with all the tension in the forgiveness story, with post traumatic stress on issues of trust, for the young, unknowingly dealing with a tragic hero — wondering first about the genetic affect and then about the environmental affect on Isaac, after a father was ready to take a knife to you. How did the wounded, like Isaac, still believe in his father of faith, the tragic hero who had married his father’s daughter? Would he ever accept authority again, or find his own recognized leadership role— in the dénouement of the story? In the age of multi-culturalism, as Isaac moved outside the enclave of Abraham’s home into his own, how did Isaac hold onto such crazy belief? When belief about Abraham’s God had to be so painful, in the remainder of his life. As he clearly needed some direction, after this experience, to find his own personal God.

How did the wounded, like Isaac, still believe afterward not only in the God of Abraham, but in his father of faith – this crazy nomad taking people from the ancient Semitic population, descendants of Noah’s eldest son, to places where they never had been? And now what would you do with the the God of Abraham?

Abraham, who discovered at the end of the story of his tremendous human longevity, was in the dénouement — in the release of tension in the dénouement —coming back home in his lameduck days, with his great sense of shame after wounding his own fertility. When the most serious of the deadly sins for Chosen People was pride, involving a desire for power, to be more important than others? As the plot becomes untied, dealing with loss of mostly power in old age, and starting over – to recognize the developments after the Akedah story, as Isaac, not Abraham, becomes the protagonist by the time of the dénouement of the story?

When the power of a culture is based upon a shared literature. In stories. “Mostly they are the same lives, the same stories, over and over,” wrote David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. We endow our lives with stories, if the power in the ideals of a father – the bonds, the identity, and all the belief – is gonna survive. If the identity in a name is going to survive at another level. When you were forced to somehow start over. In new years, hearing the old stories which came out of Abraham-like relationships, and with all the unforgettable stories, in relationship. From our father in faith –the warriar sheik who in battle freed his nephew Lot – comes the story of people shamed by what they had to endure. The physics of blood of Abraham, telling things which a son had no capacity to imagine, with the long after-affects of war, on a surrounding society that celebrated war. Creating a lax atmosphere, around an old way of life. Watching torture. Without knowing the details, or the affects on home lives afterwards. And with the need for revival.

To find in stories an identity —your own identity— that you would one day find you really could not escape. In new beginning, circumcision based upon unconditional love, with the continuing themes of fertility and the Truth. Stories of crazy people—Chosen People— having to start all over. To recognize the shift by the end of the story that is now all about of Isaac, on Rosh Hashanah, if compounded belief is to stay with the descendants of Issac. After all of Abrahaam’s chances in life passing on that power in bonds, finally, like for Isaac, the return to the same place where he had started out as a young man, to begin again.

To gain access, in stories of discovery climbing mountains like Isaac, with divine intervention at the top of Mount Moriah — in a story about receiving strength and power in a crazy belief in this God today for daughters and sons who followed fathers — connecting with other critical thinkers, passing on in new years the power in bonds which had come out of the collective memory of the journeys of nomads.

Like in a dénouement of the story, passing on the power in bonds between your own people, passing on the Spirit in some kind of Abraham-like Crazy Glue,in a collective memory of forgiveness of others in the name of a forgiving God, on issues of inheritance and birth right. Accepting, like Isaac finally accepted his identity, as the son of the father of faith, as the ethnic enclaves broke apart and he needed a family to carry on the tradition. In another new year leading up to the Day of Atonement, this day was to commemorate a power in passing on the bonds of forgiveness.

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Show Trials During Ramadan

paperlessworld — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:00:22 +0000

Citing unnamed sources in Iran’s judiciary, the website irinn.ir is reporting Shane Bauer and Josh Fattel, following closed-door court hearings on Feb. 6th and July 31st, were each sentenced to three years for illegal entry into Iran and five years for cooperating with American intelligence services and spying for the United States. Attorney Masoud Shafiee, representing in front of a branch of the country’s politically charged Iran’s Revolutionary Court both of these Americans, had yet to hear a verdict since the trial ended.

When you had been awaiting rulings on issues of power and might. On issues of life and death. Waiting and waiting in Iran, where the Revolutionary Court handles national security cases. And your case had become a bit of a Show Trial. In a place where you never had planned to be until a uniformed officer summoned you, in a place where you did not speak his language, to his side.

The place was Iran, overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There were branches of government with a judiciary and a president and a legislative branch, all under the power and might of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Did you believe in defendants’ rights, wherever they might have been born? When it comes to Show Trials. What did you believe in? In a part of the world where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was fighting against another branch of believers, in Saudi Arabia. Over who knew God best. On issues of power and might. On earth. These sons of Abraham who had shown up with Ishmael, if you believed the Qoran, in the reading at the end of Ramadan, of Eid Al Fitr. With the same scene played out between Abraham and Ishmael, that the Judeo-Christian world knows from when Abraham took Isaac to the mountain top. To sacrifice his son.

Ramadan being the month in which the first verses of the Qoran were written, denoting intense heat, scorched ground and shortness of rations. The Revolutionary Court, working in an auspicious month of Ramadan when the revelations of God to humankind first came down. With bigger than life people, in bigger than life moments, on mountaintops. Like in the strange story of covenant on Eid Al Fitr, as Mohammed began to record stories of power and might. The stories shared by Persian people led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as Arabs in various tribes and nations.

All the things done in the name of God, over who knew best…crazy thing like a father thinking of killing his son, to confer a spirit, to somehow pass on a tradition, a point of view. About belief. Not much different than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who approves the Minister of Intelligence and the Minister of Defense. Or other crazy secular things done by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with his own Quds Force which reports directly to him, like some kind of Papal Guard.

Ramadan, as a name for the month, of Islamic origin. With an imagination connecting the real world of fear to sacrifice. Amidst all the dysfunction in the world, belief. When dysfunction was related to the depth of communication, in a relationship, and there was Muslim people showing God reverence. Especially during Ramadan. It was why there was still hope at the end of Ramadan that clemency might be given. Like God seemed to give clemency to Ishmael. As well as to Abraham. Because when it was all over, Abraham had to return to home.

Crazy people, with God or without Him. Abraham was never welcomed back. To Hagar. Not after he tried to kill her son. Or, as the prosecutors might have pointed out, just in trying to act upon his crazy belief. When neither of them were ever coming back. Originally. These guys after all were nomads, for God sake. Can you imagine the shock of Hagar when she heard the story? Or the neighbors?

It probably was not much different than the shock those of us in the West who heard the verdict from Iran’s Revolutionary Court had, whenever they got up enough courage to announce this verdict to the world, as well as the attorney for the defendant. And imagine the shock of that third hiker as she sat down today listening to the songs of Cat Stevens. Or depending on when you came to hear him,
Yusuf Islam. Or imagine the shock when you learned the verdict from your bare-faced prison guards, instead of your own lawyer.

Seeing a mirage. When you were caught on a sandbar, in some kind of never-ending sandstorm, and you lost any conception of recognized measure of depth which surrounded you. As the Arab Spring turned to desert heat in the neighboring countries, and you felt as suffocated as the Persian women who you saw only on occasion outside, mostly crying sometimes laughing inside their buqas. To hear the news today, when the air seemed as hard to breathe as the sand, was a lot like reading an obit. Too much like your own obituary, which addressed eight years of your young life. In a country that you never wanted to visit.

“Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Be”

paperlessworld — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:02:38 +0000

If you had never read Shakespeare, you might have missed his practical advice. About money. When a father tells his son, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Or the Great Dictum, so your life does not become one big lie. “This above all: to thine own self be true /And it must follow, as the night the day /Thou canst not be false to any man. ”

A female marriage counselor writes today an article about women, wondering why thirty percent of women in a relationship with the wrong guy, would come before God and knowingly exchange vows. In sharing the bonds of fidelity, these women were already being unfaithful to themselves. And their rationale for the hoodwinking:

- Because it was “the next logical step.” And no one else is coming. It’s my last chance.
- The ticks of the internal clock, the self-imposed movement of the biological clock, is ticking louder. If a woman desired kids.
- Because I have “invested too much time in the relationship.” And marriage might instantly make the relationship better. Like some kind of prayer.
- If it does not work out, I can always obtain a divorce. (Already seeking an escape route, as if divorce could be used without consequence.)

Tonight I was going to sit next to a relative at the Red Sox game, whose life had become a lie. Someone who has been wrestling with herself for too many months. And who was difficult to be around. And like a hitting coach, I waited for someone to come to me, before handing out advice.

In the way of full disclosure, I was another B student still trying to just get by, and not super achieve. Before grade inflation hit. Who used a library, despite the dictum, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” And I happen to be sitting next to a beautiful blonde in a bar who was a an out-of town friend of a woman I had met. And I then took in her life story. About a prevailing theme, her prevailing belief, that I am not lovable. Her every day belief which drives her. A woman who could not look you in the eyes.

Watching her wandering eyes, she told me that she had slept with 190 men in her life. And in hearing her life story, that she did not want to ever marry. But she loved sex. With an overall theme if I was listening, about a prevailing belief In relationships that “I am not worthy.” And where there was first no belief, and then no trust. In herself.

She had tried cocaine. And she could assure me that she could stop at any time. But she had to return to the restaurant where I had dinner, because she was going to return a phone to a couple who she had spent last Saturday night with. Though she did not know their names. But the guy was going to be there. And I heard second hand that she had done a line of cocaine with the couple last Saturday. And she was a single mom who lived with her three-year old son three hours from my city. And her son was teaching her a lot about life. I began to connect the dots, which were that she had been in the mortgage business which seemingly collapsed. And she had worked in New York and San Diego. And i somehow saw a line that suggested her statistics were related to what she was doing now.

In aiming for an acceptable relationship. Those women being unfaithful to themselves in bonds of fidelity, in that story in the Huntington Post, were at least trying at something. Another woman my age had witnessed my conversation. She told me the next night, before taking a call to give her own adult daughter some relationship advice, that the male bartender had told her I had been talking to a woman who seemed to sell out for a job in the escort business, and not for joy of regular sex.

There was a sense of guilt of having lost something having so many sex partners when you were young. So whatever was supposed to be communicated in union with someone was lost. When sex if used right was like a prayer.

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Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and London

paperlessworld — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:34:22 +0000

Riot and civil commotion in the age of technology were referred to as the peril of Flash Mobs of marauding teenagers. The disturbances, the surprise disturbances, when warning signs long have been there. It was the story of the weekend in London, Philadelphia and Milwaukee.

From Chicago to St. Louis, in Cleveland, in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia, in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, numerous metropolitan areas have been confronted in the summer of 2011 by violent flash mobs. The mayor of Philadelphia addressed the issue from the pulpit where he worships. After the July 29th random beatings in Center City, Mayor Michael Nutter said, “When [people] see that kind of behavior and activity, it is in fact damaging to all African Americans and all Philadelphians. That’s why I said what I said.”

Creation of gangs was a sign of major discontent, and I had lost track of how many generations that American urban areas were dealing with gang wars. Did not the movie “Westside Story” address the issue, in the 1960s? It was the second summer of flash mobs in Philadelphia. In Milwaukee, it was the second month of the same flash mob like incidents of race-related violence. Mob attacks occurred with the opening of the Wisconsin State Fair after a similar episode at Riverwest, with racially motivated beatings in July when seventy-five to one hundred black youths disturbed traffic crossed a bridge into the Riverwest neighborhood where two gas stations were robbed. And police were called to a disturbance at a Summerfest hip-hop show.

All of the signs perceived to be a black problem– black kids killing black kids, gang bangers– largely unheeded by wider society. About largely men who have given up all hope and possibly absolute belief. Young people with no stake any more in the neighborhood and, consequently, in the world. This disbelief is compounded when it becomes a reality over generations. With absolute belief in nothing. What was nihilism? Giving up all hope because of the injustice of money. This absolute nihilistic belief for those looting – born not only out of present day experiences but the experience of their parents’ too – is to behave in a manner these people have. Because the great truths we learn experientially…not cognitively.

So, if you cannot find justice, or get equality on your own, what should you do? All of these signs perceived to be about power, or feeling powerless. The discontent when you felt powerless, with no stake in the world. Alienated from the system that a society believed in. Though their mothers and sisters still loved them – unconditionally – what was the attitude of such men towards women? The ones who got a woman pregnant and left. Was it one of fear? Of being inadequate? Was it some kind of self-fear. There was a present day anger at Thomas Jefferson for having children out of wedlock with a slave. What would the present day feeling be if a white man got a black woman pregnant over and over and left?

When you cannot get equality and cannot expect justice, and it was unjust to loot? Without ever considering from whose past or whose present they were taking. And there were all these young people who asked not to be judged. Because for them there were no longer issues of right and wrong. When you never had had belief in institutions. Because when no one seemed to care about you, why should the young care about institutions?

The unrest. April in Venice. California that is. When hundreds of rival gang members congregated along the Los Angeles seafront. After some had posted on Twitter, shots rang out as police were strategizing a response to the crowd. People scattered, as pandemonium reigned.

Last week the National Retail Federation issued a report recommending how to prevent robberies in a flash attack, like the one last week at Water Tower Place in Chicago on Saturday night, as teens compete to knock out an unsuspecting victim with a single punch. Since February, student journalists at Loyola University’s Water Tower campus have been reporting on a rash of crimes committed by “flash mob offenders.” In April, the McDonald’s at Chicago Avenue and State Street, 70 youths descended and took over. The same scenes have occurred n Belleville, Missouri, mostly recently on July 9th.

In the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights up to one thousand teen youth at the July 4 fireworks display generated fights, general chaos, looting, and robberies. There was an unrest of the underemployed population, as 25 million people witness 2 percent of the population who are doing better than they ever have. When the world seemed so unfair.

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paperlessworld — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:05:32 +0000

To create something out of nothing,

There was an astonishment. To create something out of nothing. There was an astonishment to discover the universal feeling, to know how lost most twenty-somethings feel. In the invisible wrestling match of youth, in the search for meaning in all the world. In a world filled so much with ideology.

Ideology. Ideology was the wrestling match. Presidents and presidential candidates got caught up in it. Popes did too. It was a result of a focus on law and order. Orthodoxy. Rules. Until the Obama Administration, the conservatives have ruled the era in the United States, for those who have come of age. And youth for the most part eventually rebelled over too much rigidity. Perhaps like the youth in the Arab Spring.

My view of the generation in their twenties in the United States was that there was a palpable sense of rebellion. American kids had been walked to the bus stop all of their lives. Their parents had attended all of their soccer games. In “organized” sport. Life had never, in human history, been like that for kids before. There was some underlying desire for revenge, an expression of grievance over too much attention which was seen by adults as only a reflection of love. And the world had never seen so many voluntary body piercings, tattoos, markings, on so many people. To make some kind of statement about freedom.

There was in each life some kind of battle between alienation and unity. Maybe that was why people went on pilgrimage. Mostly, alone. To find a direction. A personal direction. In reading a couple of old issue of Company, from 2008, there is a story of pilgrimage. Every day you met people from all over the world in a quest, along the path of St. James, at el Camino de Santiago de Compostela. In A Vanished World, Chris Lowney questions as he travels across Spain why three religions that worship the same God and deeply respect human dignity have so often turned on each other. It was a book really about spiritual direction? I had read an article about this pilgrimage in Spain. In any life, we all had a spiritual direction, though few talk about it. It was a lot like that teen-age feeling when you got you first zit.

When you are in your late twenties. And you have these burning questions inside. With the battle over your fertility. To create something out of nothing. Something everlasting, like your children’s children. That astonishment. Over and over again, in each generation. So what are you gonna do when you learn how to pray? Beyond the petitions? In a relationship? When it was time to change the world, and amend your own life.

In the life of any 22-year old after completing their formal education, the challenge was coming to the understanding that the change would be through what looked to be some fairly mundane things in everyday life. I re-read another article about being moved on pilgrimage – not all that different than retreat, in a search for God in all things, in all lives, which never changed. Briana Colton wrote about her World Youth Day experience in Australia, in search of clarity and perspective in her life. Ms. Colton, a graduate from Marquette University three years before, writes of then struggle of all 25-year olds, of “becoming” after all this formation.

Ms. Colton described what I always thought of as the mundane things in a day. In the course of her days in Sydney, she walked, she listened, she sang. At the end of the trip, she reflected and she prayed. Ms. Colton did not figure out in a matter of days, or so she says, who she was or who God wanted her to be. But she did discover the importance of her Catholicism and experiencing the Eucharist (going to Mass) in the ongoing formation process of her life. In a sense she seems to still be moved by hunger, looking for her own passion about life, to experience more things Catholic.

What to do after “becoming”? To realize that today was sacred. And I was sacred. If I tried to live a more reverent life, tilted in the direction of God. If time is sacred is to see that part of the GLORY BE prayer…. ‘As it was in the beginning, NOW, and ever shall be.’ And if I was sacred, if my wife shared the ideal, and we pointed our kids in a certain direction, then maybe the people who believed, as I had believed, would help to form a better world.

What are you gonna do when you learn how to pray? Now! ONCE YOUR PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED, THEN WHAT? To realize that today was sacred. That I was in the presence of God. Now! After you land your first job out of college. After you are married? How often will you pray? As you create something out of nothing. What will you ask for? Or will you do nothing?

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