John C. Wright has written a neat post about the basics of metaphysics and the problems with modern philosophy—particularly the problems of discussing questions of morality, politics, or theology with folks who are ignorant of the basics of metaphysics, as most of us are these days. I’d come to much the same conclusions independently, but as usual Mr. Wright has thought about it more deeply and gone into it further than I have.
Author Archives: wjduquette
Now and Later
In my previous post, I mentioned St. Therese of Lisieux, and how she embraced the little irritations of life as part of picking up her cross and following Christ, and applied that to all of the little irritations one might encounter at church on Sunday.
One might well ask, “But why go to a mass/service/church where you find the liturgy irritating on a regular basis?” And one would be right to do so. I’m a software engineer by profession; and like any engineer I think problems are for solving. We shouldn’t put up with bad situations; rather, we should fix them. But there’s an important distinction to be drawn here, that of the present moment vs. the future, or, as I put it in the title, of Now and Later.
Christ tells us to live in the present moment, and so we must do. And it is precisely in the present moment that we must embrace and offer up the annoyances and irritations that come our way, while at the same time attending properly to the present duty. During mass, the present duty is the mass; it is manifestly not fixing the mass. After mass, it might be appropriate to take steps—to talk to the priest, to talk to the mother of the noisy child, to resolve to try a different service. (And then again, it might not be.) It’s in the moment that we must offer up our irritations. Future irritations, I think, may reasonably be avoided.
OK, that’s easy to say….
A Quiet Mass
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception was a couple of weeks ago. It’s a “Holy Day of Obligation”, which means that all Catholics are obligated to attend mass on that day, just as they are on Sundays. As usual, there were a variety of mass times to choose from. The most convenient for our family was at 7:30 PM—except for one little detail. We have four kids, and 7:30 PM is more or less bedtime for all of them. We thought that the older two could behave at that hour, but were concerned about the younger two, especially our three-year-old, and felt that bringing them would make the mass less pleasant for us, and certainly for those sitting near us.
This prompted a question: at what age does the obligation to attend mass kick in? Infants clearly aren’t obligated to attend; so when does it start? I consulted a variety of books I had at home, and did a Google search, and found nothing to the point. Finally I sent a query to Mark Shea. He didn’t know, but he graciously posted it on his blog for his readers’ comments. I got my answer—which, according to canon law, is seven years of age—but the ensuing comments thread became a general discussion of the plusses and minuses of bringing little ones to mass, and in particular the effect of said little ones on the others present.
Here’s a sampling of the points of view (I paraphrase): “We always bring our kids.” “We like to leave the little ones at home; it’s easier to worship that way.” “If you don’t bring them to mass, how will they learn to behave at mass?” “Too many parents don’t make their kids behave at mass.” “Crying babies make it hard to have a quiet, reverent mass.” “It used to be that nobody brought the little ones to mass, but only those who were old enough.” “It used to be that everybody brought the little ones to mass.” The most angry and vehement commenters were those complaining of noisy children and parents who didn’t discipline them properly, thus making it impossible for said commenters to enjoy mass properly. (“Enjoy” isn’t the word the commenters used; I use it for reasons that will be made clear below.)
Now, I have some sympathy with all of these points of view. I prefer to bring all of my kids to church every Sunday; I want them to have lived their Christian lives “from the cradle,” as it were. At the same time, I understand those who complain about crying babies and noisy ill-behaved children, as they can be a serious distraction. And that’s the key issue, really, isn’t it?
My job, as a participant at mass, is to participate fully in the prayers with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength—a tough challenge. As with any kind of prayer, I will be beset with distractions, both internal and external. And I will admit, it is much easier to deal with internal distractions when there are no external distractions. That’s really what the complainers are asking for: an experience of the mass in which there are no external distractions.
As I say, I can understand this. I can have a much more powerful experience of God’s presence when I attend mass on my own than when I go with my entire family, because I don’t need to devote any of my attention to anything but God. But upon reflection, I’ve come to think that seeking this experience above all else, as many of the complainers seem to, is short-sighted.
We aren’t at mass to enjoy it. We are there to find Christ, to worship him, if possible to receive him, to grow in his service. As C.S. Lewis notes in The Screwtape Letters, there are times in our Christian life when God seems very close and times when he seems very distant…and we tend to grow more when we continue to diligently seek him even though he seems far off. Simply put, having to work to seek God, in spite of our inner dryness, is good for us. It’s good exercise.
Second, Christ tells us that we must pick up our cross and follow him. Crosses need not be large. In The Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux tells of how she offered up to Christ all of the little irritations of life in the convent, indeed, how she embraced them as crosses to carry for her Lord. It seems to me that babies crying during mass can be viewed the same way. And as a father, I strongly believe that the essence of Christian parenting is to joyfully embrace the inconvenience of loving and properly raising my children. That includes bringing them to mass and teaching them how to behave there. It means frequently having a noise and a hubbub in my home at times when I’d much prefer that it be quiet. It means missed opportunities, because I must be available to my children. It is all undeniably worth it. But the sacrifice should not be discounted.
Do I embrace in this way the external distractions I encounter during mass? Well, no. No, I don’t. I get as irritated as anyone else, I’m sure. I love to attend mass on my own, on occasion. But I can see that I’m going to have to try to do so. And of course, that encompasses all of the other petty complaints: music I don’t like, lectors who read poorly, priests who don’t preach well, or who have thick accents.
I’ve a few other thoughts on this, but I think I’d better hold them back for future posts.
The Beauty Contest Method of Choosing Sides
From the sublime to the ridiculous: John C. Wright has written a lavishly illustrated post on The Beauty Contest Method of Choosing Sides.
That Sucks!
Jen’s been learning about trusting in God and seeking His will when stressed instead of going it alone. There’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is, when she’s done this she’s invariably gotten the direction she needs. The bad news is, well, she didn’t like what she was supposed to do:
My prayer to know God’s will was so quickly answered, the path forward so clear. And I thought: “That sucks!”
Alas, the way is narrow, etc. Easy to say, less easy to do what Jen’s doing.
At All Costs, by David Weber
This is the latest in Weber’s long-running Honor Harrington series, and about all I have to say is “Hmmmm.” I can’t honestly say I was disappointed, for my expectations were low, and in many ways it was better than I expected. Were there lots of scenes filled with talking heads? Yeah, there were. Were there lots of space battles with details about how many missiles were launched, and how many lost track, and how many were confused, and how many were destroyed, and how many actually hit? Yeah, quite of few of them, really. Were there Amazing! Technical! Innovations! that enabled Manticore to stand up to her enemies Yet Again, Against Overwhelming Odds? Of course! In short, in many ways it was just what I’d expect, and the amazing technical innovations actually seemed like a reasonable outgrowth of what was used in the previous book. And the climactic scene is pretty amazing.
In short, if you’ve liked the previous books in the series, you won’t be disappointed in this one, mostly.
OK, now for a long and extended “Hmmmm.” Warning: Here There Be Spoilers. If you don’t want to know how it comes out, don’t click through.
Continue reading
Sad News
Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimers. The whole thing is here, at least at the moment (by way of Captain Yips); since I can’t find a permalink to the news, here it is:
Folks,
I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.
We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet.
God bless, Terry!
Section Numbers
Another feature that’s probably been asked for, that I’d like myself, is auto-numbering of sections. In the style which I prefer, top-level sections are numbered “1.”, “2.”, “3.”, subsections are numbered “1.1”, “1.2”, “1.3”, and subsubsections are numbered “1.1.1”, “1.1.2”, “1.1.3”.
In Notebook markup, sections are created by adding first, second, and third-level headers, i.e.,
= Main Section = Random verbiage... == First Subsection == blah, blah, blah... == Second Subsection == yadda, yadda, yadda...
In classic Notebook, the section headers are just the strings that appear here: “Main Section”, “First Subsection”, and so forth. But now you can have them automatically numbered, i.e., “1. Main Section”, “1.1 First Subsection”, etc. All you need to do is add a “meta parameter” somewhere to the text of your page, like this:
#meta sectionNumbers
Meta parameters were added toward the end of Notebook 2.1 development, and were never really used for anything. This is the first documented meta parameter; its presence simply turns on section numbering.
Of course, this just whets my appetite for additional features. For example:
- How about a floating table-of-contents at the top right of the page? Click on a section and jump there!
- And then, clicking on a section header should probably take you back to the top of the page, where the table-of-contents is.
- And there should probably be a preferences item that turns on auto-section-numbering for all “nbm3” pages.
- And probably you should be able to choose your preferred style of section numbering
I don’t say that all of these are going to go in immediately, mind you…though the table-of-contents would be really slick.
At long last: Numbered Lists
One of things Notebook users have been asking for almost from the beginning is numbered list, like this:
- First
- Second
- Third
- Third, Part 1
- Third, Part 2
My latest development build supports this, using MediaWiki-like syntax:
# First # Second # Third ## Third, Part 1 ## Third, Part 2
It isn’t quite ready for prime time; there’s a bug in the HTML widget I use for rendering “nbm3” markup that’s preventing me from assigning the numbers properly, and working around it would require significant changes in how I render a page. The Tkhtml3 developer, Dan Kennedy, has fixed the problem; I just don’t have that version of the widget yet.
I might decide to revamp my rendering scheme anyway, as it would produce more typical HTML than my current scheme. But the bottom line is that the next release of Notebook will support numbered lists.
Alas, Poor Rudolph…
Out here in California, what many people have on their lawns this time of year is not snow, but Christmas decorations. And many of those decorations are reindeer. And these days, many of those reindeer are constructions of white wire studded with little white Christmas lights. The entire shopping district near our house is full of the things.
Now, we have boys. Two boys. Two young boys. As we drove through the business district last night, our boys—who have never seen a real gun fired—immediately decided that it was time to go hunting. BAM BAM! BAM BAM! There’s another deer over there! BAM BAM! From the sound, they weren’t firing rifles; they were firing small cannon. They don’t seem to understand that deer are not evil vicious monsters out to kill them, or that when you shoot one you want there to be something left that’s big enough to take home and cook.
Not that there’s anything worth eating on a white wire reindeer studded with Christmas lights.
Well, so then my three-year-old daughter got into it. BAM-BAM! she cried. In fact, she was more excited by the carnage (that’s what you get when you hunt deer from a car with bazookas, you know–carnage) than her brothers were.
So this is Monday, and every Monday we have my dad over for dinner, and after dinner Jane drives him back home. And little Mary went along, and as they drove along she looked eagerly for the next deer on the next lawn so that—BAM! BAM!—she could blow it to bits.
So what does my dad do?
Now, at this point there are a few facts you need to know. First, we live in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. These mountains are full of mule deer. And these mule deer come out of the mountains early in the morning, and eat the plants in my dad’s front yard. My dad has spent the last ten years in a running battle with the deer, and despite his watchfulness, care, and willingness to pursue, the deer are winning. He’s not tried actually shooting them; after all, this is a residential suburban neighborhood we’re talking about. You don’t do that.
But my word, was he ready to cheer little Mary’s foray into white wire deer demolition. In point of fact, he was spotting for her. There’s one! Over there! They’d have gladly gone through several more neighborhoods in pursuit of big game. (Next week, maybe, Jane will take them through that local shopping district I mentioned.)
So that’s the Christmas spirit at our house; how’s your Advent shaping up?
The View from the Foothills 