Monthly Archives: September 2012

A College of Magics

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A College of Magics (A College of Magics, #1)
Faris Nallaneen is young, gawky, not particularly well dressed, and the Duchess of Galazon, a small country somewhere in the vicinity of Ruritania. Her wicked uncle, her guardian until she comes of age, is running Galazon into the ground, and has shipped her to Greenlaw College to keep her out of the way.

Greenlaw is something of a finishing school for young women; but it is also one of the two premiere colleges of magic in Europe, for those who show they have the talent to learn it. Faris has the opportunity, and a really bad attitude, and her heart is back home in Galazon rather than on her studies.

Then there’s that strange man who follows her about when she leaves the college grounds, and her fellow student who has a penchant for getting other people into trouble in truly nasty ways.

I read A College of Magics, by Caroline Stevermer, on the trip home from Dallas last week, and enjoyed it considerably. I picked it up because I had enjoyed the Regency era fantasy novels Stevermer co-wrote with Patricia Wrede (notably Sorcery and Cecily, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot) and wanted to see what she could do on her own; and I was not disappointed.

I’d particularly like to point out that Greenlaw is not in any way like Hogwarts; I’ve nothing against Harry Potter, but one Harry Potter series is enough. Clones are unnecessary.

Anyway, give it a try.

Bootstrapping the Interior Life: Grace

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Pursuing the interior life—a life of holiness—is not easy, but fortunately God doesn’t leave us to our own resources. As I noted a couple of days ago, when we think of God that means that God’s calling us. More than that, He gives us the help we need in the form of grace…which term basically means “the help that we need that God gives us.”

To put it another way, you can’t get to know God on your own; He’s got to be part of the process.

God is free to give grace to anyone He pleases, and He does; if he didn’t, no unbelievers would ever come to Him. But for those of us in the Church He provides special means of grace that we should be eager to take advantage of: the sacraments. It’s not that we can force Him to give us grace; it’s that He has promised that if we make use of the sacraments, He will always give it to us. And not only will He give it to us, because of His promise we can know for sure that we’re getting it.

There’s a small catch. I gather (I am not a professional theologian) that to receive the full benefit you need to expect to receive His grace, and to make use of it. Cooperation is key. (But that’s a post for another day.) So be eager to attend mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist; and be just as eager to go to confession on a regular basis; and expect it to make a difference.

More about the CNMC

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I’d been meaning to say a few more words about the Catholic New Media Conference and what I heard and learned there, but Julie has posted her summary of the CNMC and I find that I’ve not much more to say. The one thing she left out is the wonderful talk the last speaker presented, and fortunately she’s posted the text so you can read it for yourself. Which you should go do.

A major theme of the week was civility and taking the high road; the need for this was highlighted by a violent Facebook argument taking place at the same time involving a prominent Catholic blogger and a prominent Catholic priest. (As I only followed the fireworks from a distance I won’t go into details; those who saw what happened know what happened, and those who don’t can use their imaginations. Moreover, I don’t want to fan the flames.) (However, my sympathies were with the blogger.)

The fact is, we folks on-line can be amazingly, appallingly nasty to one another. It isn’t attractive, it doesn’t win friends, and it only influences people to distaste, disgust, and dislike. It doesn’t win anyone to Christ, but rather drives people away. We’ve got to stop doing it. See Thomas McDonald’s outstanding post on the “Inter-Nicene Creed” for more.

Bootstrapping the Interior Life: Hunger

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I do not often resemble the following scriptures:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
—Matt 5:6

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee,
my soul thirsts for thee;
my flesh faints for thee,
as in a dry and weary land where no water is.
—Ps 63:1

And this is a problem for the interior life, because the interior life is a life of learning to love God more than anything else, to put God before all else. And since we cannot really achieve that in this life (which is why “hope” is one of the theological virtues), the interior life is precisely a life of hungering and thirsting for God.

It’s kind of a double-bind. If you aren’t hungry and thirsty for God, you won’t seek him; so how can you seek him if you aren’t hungry and thirsty for Him? How can you get the interior life moving?

It reminds me of something my eldest said when he was quite young, and was asked why he hadn’t done something or other:

I can’t want to.

When it comes to loving God, sometimes I can’t want to, either.

And yet, I find, when I think about it, that I want to want to. And that’s all that’s necessary. As C.S. Lewis had George MacDonald say in The Great Divorce,

If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear.

Just pray: “Lord Jesus, I want to hunger and thirst for you as I ought.” Pray it whenever you happen to think about, because it’s a prayer that I believe Jesus will always answer. It might take awhile. In my case, I think it took years before I noticed that the prayer was being answered.

(Years? Really? Years? Well, yeah. The interior life is a long-term thing.)

Perhaps you can’t want to. But if you can want to want to, you’ll get there in the end.

Bootstrapping the Interior Life: Respond

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The first thing to do in pursuing the interior life might also be the easiest, and that is simply to respond. If you find yourself thinking about God, for any reason, that’s a sign that God’s calling you to attend to Him. So do that.

I’m not suggesting that every time you think about God, you drop everything and rush off to some private place to pray. St. Paul tells us to pray constantly (1 Thess 5:17), but one has to eat and work and so forth. If we are to pray constantly, then, we need to be able to pray while doing these other things.

So if you happen to think about God, pray something simple. It can be something as simple as “Thank you for being with me.” It can be something more formal, like the Jesus prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Whatever you want to say is fine. The point is that you’re responding to God’s call….and over time, you’re building up the habit of responding to God’s call wherever you are and whatever you are doing. You’re also learning to recognize His presence in your day-to-day activities. It’s all good.

House of Shadows

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House of ShadowsRachel Neumeier’s latest book is House of Shadows. I pre-ordered it at Amazon when I saw that it was forthcoming, as Rachel’s books have been consistently entertaining.

It’s a fantasy novel, of course, and it concerns two sisters, two sisters of seven, in fact. As the book begins, their father, a successful stone merchant, has just died, joining their mother in death. None of the sisters, being female, can legally own the business. War is on the horizon, credit is scarce, and former business partners are liable to be wary. If the eldest can marry her betrothed, all will be well; he can own the business, and the third sister understands it well enough to run it. But her betrothed’s family won’t let him marry into a business going into ruin; they need money for a dowry.

And so we come back to the two sisters of our story. The older of the pair, Karah, is beautiful and loving; the younger, Nemienne, has, in Terry Pratchett’s terms, “first sight and second thoughts”. To save the family, some of the sisters must be sold into service, and these are the two who make the most sense, Karah for her beauty and Nemienne because the family can get on quite well without her, as she is the first to point out.

Karah is sold to Cloisonné House, there to learn to be a keiso: more or less a geisha, but with even higher social standing. Keiso are entertainers and conversationalists; if a patron wants more than that, he must wed the keiso as his “flower wife”. The children of his flower wife are called his “left-hand children”, and must be acknowledged and cared for.

Nemienne is not attractive enough to be a keiso, but the Mother of Cloisonné house sees something in her eyes, and sends her to the door of Ankennes the mage, who is looking for an apprentice.

Meanwhile, a young man named Taudde, a citizen of neighboring Kalches, has gotten himself in trouble. He is a Kalchesene bardic mage, and is in Lirionne incognito, in defiance of the ban. (It is Kalches that Lirionne is likely to be at war with in the near future.) Two powerful men, one of them Ankennes, have determined what he is, and are determined to use him in some scheme of their own.

Will there be war? Will Taudde end in prison? Will Nemienne make a mage? Will Karah make a keiso, and become the flower wife of a powerful noble of Lirionne? I think you can guess the answers to all of those questions, but therein hangs the tale.

Me, I enjoyed it. I read it at the airport and on the plane to Dallas this last week, and it kept me quite thoroughly occupied. I liked the characters, and how they grew; I liked the descriptions; and the magical elements were sufficiently original. Good fun.

Bootstrapping the Interior Life

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A few days ago I mentioned the interior life, and I find that I’ve got a few things to say about the interior life and how to embark upon it. I hasten to add that I’m no expert. I don’t intend to be in any way exhaustive; I simply intend to talk about things I’ve learned and things that have worked for me. Your mileage, as they say, may vary; and if something that worked for me doesn’t work for you, so be it. If everyone was exactly like me, the world would be a very strange place.

It’s a big topic, though, and so I don’t plan to put it all in this one post. I feel a little presumptuous at starting another series of posts, as most of my “series of posts” seem to terminate after the second, or sometimes even the first. But I was successful at continuing my series of posts about marriage (God is good!) and I’ve already got a notion for several subsequent posts, so we’ll give it a try. Feel free to poke me if I falter.

So what is the “interior life”? The Wikipedia page on the interior life defines it as follows:

Interior life is a life which seeks God in everything, a life of prayer and the practice of living in the presence of God. It connotes intimate, friendly conversation with Him, and a determined focus on internal prayer versus external actions, while these latter are transformed into means of prayer.

I wouldn’t have put it quite that way (or nearly so well); I’d simply say that my interior life is my life with Jesus. Being a Christian isn’t simply a way to live or a set of things to believe; it’s learning to live with Jesus. And by the nature of things much of that is inside, where it can’t be seen.

The interior life is something we are all called to; it’s part of the “universal call to holiness” described in Lumen Gentium. But until you’ve begun to experience it, it’s hard to know just what it means, or how to get started with it. Hence this series of posts.

I don’t claim to be more than a beginner. But according to St. Jose Maria Escriva, the interior life consists in beginning and beginning again. So let’s begin.

On Why I Oppose Same Sex Marriage

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This post continues a series of reflections that I began here.

Note to anyone who comes to this page looking for a fight: please read the post carefully. If you’re a supporter of same-sex marriage, you probably won’t like my reasons for opposing it. But please take the time to discover what they are, and what my notion of “opposition” is before you start cussing me out.

Previously I’ve written of my responsibility to others as a Christian, and in particular that I must not lie to them. I’ve written of my rejection of coercion in most spiritual and moral matters (including this one). I’ve written on the moral necessity of knowing and loving what is good. I’ve talked about the many benefits, both physical and spiritual, of communal living, and particularly of married and family life. And I’ve talked about what I call “foundational sin“, sin that lies at the center of your self-image and is consequently the hardest to repent of.

And here’s where we come to the nub.

It should come as no surprise, given that I profess to believe what the Catholic Church teaches, that I think that certain specific acts are morally wrong. These include having sex with another person outside of traditional, heterosexual marriage.

A same-sex couple who seek out a same-sex marriage are presumably planning to have sex of some sort together. And by getting married, the couple have embedded this sin of sex outside of traditional marriage at the heart of their lives, where it will be difficult if not impossible to repent of. It’s hard enough to root out a foundational sin in your life when it’s just you. When rooting out that sin would involve the betrayal of a loved partner, it’s much harder.

Please note what I’m not saying.

I’m not saying that gays and lesbians are abominations. God loves us all.

I’m not saying that gays and lesbians are more sinful than straight people. It should be clear from what I’ve said that I regard cohabitation of straight people and re-marriage after divorce to be equally problematic, and there are six other deadly sins to think about.

I’m not saying that same-sex attraction is sinful. Me, I’ve got many attractions to things that I ought not do. So does everybody.

I’m not saying that devoting your life to the good of your loved ones is wrong; in fact, I’ve said the opposite.

But for me to vote in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage would be to say, “Go ahead; build your lives on this sin. It’s OK. It will do you no harm.” Or worse, it would be say, “Yeah, I think it will hurt you, but I don’t care.”

I cannot coerce anyone to open their lives to God’s grace. It doesn’t work, and attempting to do so is deeply sinful. But I mustn’t lie to them either. I mustn’t pretend that it doesn’t matter.

Back from CNMC

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So I’m fresh back home from the Catholic New Media Conference, where I had great time meeting folks I’m feeling too tired to list for fear I’ll leave someone out. I got to see Tom and Julie Davis, of course, and was lucky enough to share meals with Rebecca Frech (one of Jane’s favorite bloggers), Sarah Reinhard, Jennifer Fitz, and of course Tom and Julie. I look forward to seeing all of them again some time.

I’ll probably post a few more specifics about the conference…but not just at the moment.

Update: Fixed the link to Sarah’s blog.