So, I just finished an excellent essay by my good friend Paul on Personalist Thomism, a movement that I see as solving in a great part many of the abuses against the human person that the 20th Century has spawned. Maybe I'll upload his essay once/if I obtain his permission. In the meanwhile I highly recommend anything by Fr. Norris Clarke of Fordham University or JPII of the World ;-)
Anyway, the main drive of the paper as I see it is the irreducibility of the person to an object. Persons are ALWAYS inherently subjects. Now, by subject is meant someone who does the same kinds of things you do: think, will, participate in an interior life, love, dream. Everyone you meet is like this, whether you take the time to notice it or not.
I have a thought though... see, when we interact with other human beings, unless we can really befriend them they tend to just interact on the level of objects in our world... not in a necessarily dehumanizing way, just in a friendship of utility way. I find that when I "people watch" in some place like a bus or coffee shop (not anything like Hitchcock's Rear Window, that is just weird, thanks Paul), it is very easy to see them as subjects. Why? Because of the silence. They are participating in their interior life, a life that I will never participate in, a life that, if I am lucky, I will be able to catch glimpses of by spending my entire life getting to know one person.
There is a phrase I can't recall the origin of but speaks to this in a very Lewisian sense, "The only response to the presence/face of the infinite is silence." Here you are sitting in a group of strangers (it happens a lot) and it overwhelms you... all these little infinities off in their own - not little, never little - vast worlds. Can't you just sit back and glory in the wonders all around you?
That, my friends, is why I like riding the bus.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Random Memories
You know how you're wandering around listening to music and all of a sudden you're taken back? Your history washes over you like a wave, the good, the bad, and mostly the absurd.
Here are a few memories that I recalled recently:
When we lived on our five-acre property out in May Valley we used to have huge gatherings for Mother's Day, Birthday Parties, and a lot of different events. E, A, G and I used to hide in the thorn bushes at the end of our driveway and attack the cars that came with bows, arrows, and spears... just to make sure they knew what driveway was ours.
There was this huge, 200 foot cedar tree in our big field that I used to climb during windstorms and be tossed about like a doll... it was wild. Rain, wind, thunder... ahh.
One Sunday School our teacher gave us little cherry tomato plants to take home for Mother's Day. I planted mine on a little hillock and Dad mowed it over. I cried. I think it was dead already but... mowing is a hard way to go. :-)
Oh, speaking of mowing... I did most of the mowing because E and Dad have allergies. Our big field took exactly 2 hours (a lot of rosaries) to mow on our riding mower. I could do it with my eyes closed. We used to soup up our mower and drive around like wild banshees with a huge trail of smoke behind us. We also used to take it off jumps and drag stumps out and go though alder groves with it. It was an amazing mower. They don't make them like they used to.
We used to jump the fence running around the landfill and play in the mile buffer zone between us and the landfill. There was this creek that we would build boats for and sail them... with our GI Joes and Legos. A lot of our games involved those. We would run fishing line from treetops to our bedroom window and use those little green berry baskets to carry messages back and forth.
I used to save a lot of my money for Radio Shack and I'd pick up wire and buzzers and motors and lights. I made this contraption out of foil, and wire and put it under the front doormat so that it would make a buzzer go off in my room when someone stepped on it (completing the circuit). I always wanted to make something with this used washer machine motor I found but I couldn't come up with sufficient electricity to power it. I stayed away from wall sockets because I had shocked myself so often. I made an anti-burgle device for my upper bunk by running wires from the socket to various wires on my ladder. It didn't work.
I remember we had this huge cathedral ceiling and we put a crucifix up in the middle above the alcove and had lamps on either side that made it look like the crucifix had wings when we had both of them on. It was cool.
I had a teddy bear named berry and made him clothes... usually out of felt and staples because while I could sew it took too long. He had a bed right by mine in the very corner of the ceiling sloping down.
I had this "study" underneath the house in the dirt 4 foot ceiling basement. I had a desk, ran electricty, had an olllllldd computer and a little lamp.
E and I used to climb these huge trees by taking pieces of 2X4 and 2X2 and nailing them all the way up the tree. We would get 50 feet up no problem and then build a fort. We made the first 2-3 steps pivot on one nail so the little kids couldn't climb up. We would fall out of our forts on occasion. But mostly we shot arrows from them and read books.
I remember I fell in love with Huckleberry Finn and went without shoes whenever i could and jumped out of windows and made a hut like his raft. We had this amazing tree formation that we called Jumping fort because these trees had bent over and were covered in moss and we could climb and jump and hide underneath and use them as elevators going maybe 5-6 feet up. It was sweet.
We used to pretend we were Barsarks too where we would run through the forest with our shirts off and not feel the thorns and branches cutting us. AH Vikings!
I used to make maps all the time too... crosscut, aerial, topographical... it was fun.
"Ah me! Ah Life!"
Here are a few memories that I recalled recently:
When we lived on our five-acre property out in May Valley we used to have huge gatherings for Mother's Day, Birthday Parties, and a lot of different events. E, A, G and I used to hide in the thorn bushes at the end of our driveway and attack the cars that came with bows, arrows, and spears... just to make sure they knew what driveway was ours.
There was this huge, 200 foot cedar tree in our big field that I used to climb during windstorms and be tossed about like a doll... it was wild. Rain, wind, thunder... ahh.
One Sunday School our teacher gave us little cherry tomato plants to take home for Mother's Day. I planted mine on a little hillock and Dad mowed it over. I cried. I think it was dead already but... mowing is a hard way to go. :-)
Oh, speaking of mowing... I did most of the mowing because E and Dad have allergies. Our big field took exactly 2 hours (a lot of rosaries) to mow on our riding mower. I could do it with my eyes closed. We used to soup up our mower and drive around like wild banshees with a huge trail of smoke behind us. We also used to take it off jumps and drag stumps out and go though alder groves with it. It was an amazing mower. They don't make them like they used to.
We used to jump the fence running around the landfill and play in the mile buffer zone between us and the landfill. There was this creek that we would build boats for and sail them... with our GI Joes and Legos. A lot of our games involved those. We would run fishing line from treetops to our bedroom window and use those little green berry baskets to carry messages back and forth.
I used to save a lot of my money for Radio Shack and I'd pick up wire and buzzers and motors and lights. I made this contraption out of foil, and wire and put it under the front doormat so that it would make a buzzer go off in my room when someone stepped on it (completing the circuit). I always wanted to make something with this used washer machine motor I found but I couldn't come up with sufficient electricity to power it. I stayed away from wall sockets because I had shocked myself so often. I made an anti-burgle device for my upper bunk by running wires from the socket to various wires on my ladder. It didn't work.
I remember we had this huge cathedral ceiling and we put a crucifix up in the middle above the alcove and had lamps on either side that made it look like the crucifix had wings when we had both of them on. It was cool.
I had a teddy bear named berry and made him clothes... usually out of felt and staples because while I could sew it took too long. He had a bed right by mine in the very corner of the ceiling sloping down.
I had this "study" underneath the house in the dirt 4 foot ceiling basement. I had a desk, ran electricty, had an olllllldd computer and a little lamp.
E and I used to climb these huge trees by taking pieces of 2X4 and 2X2 and nailing them all the way up the tree. We would get 50 feet up no problem and then build a fort. We made the first 2-3 steps pivot on one nail so the little kids couldn't climb up. We would fall out of our forts on occasion. But mostly we shot arrows from them and read books.
I remember I fell in love with Huckleberry Finn and went without shoes whenever i could and jumped out of windows and made a hut like his raft. We had this amazing tree formation that we called Jumping fort because these trees had bent over and were covered in moss and we could climb and jump and hide underneath and use them as elevators going maybe 5-6 feet up. It was sweet.
We used to pretend we were Barsarks too where we would run through the forest with our shirts off and not feel the thorns and branches cutting us. AH Vikings!
I used to make maps all the time too... crosscut, aerial, topographical... it was fun.
"Ah me! Ah Life!"
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
A Meditation on Gift
I was pondering gift today... in a similar manner to an earlier post (circa 2005). And the idea of gift really is essential to getting through life in an worthwhile way. Realizing that your left hand, your nose, your pair of shoes, your hair, the food you eat, your taste buds, the fact that food tastes good in addition to keeping you alive, your eyes, your sight, the beautiful and ugly things you get to see, waking up, being able to dream, meeting friends, smiling at other people, that there are other people, that you can read, that you can understand what you read, that you can pray, that you can stub your toe, that you can burn your tongue... all is a gift from God and need not be that way at all.
If I can really appropriate that awareness and deep sense of gratitude that stems from such an awareness... I really cannot be unhappy ever again. I can be awed at the breath coming through my nose and the fact that there is a floor beneath my feet that I can walk on. I can wonder at the fact that I don't fall right through the earth and that I can communicate with other people. The radical givenness or conntingency of existence is a means for joy and hope... because it could be so many other worse ways... but it isn't. Yay for Puddleglum and Chesterton!
If I can really appropriate that awareness and deep sense of gratitude that stems from such an awareness... I really cannot be unhappy ever again. I can be awed at the breath coming through my nose and the fact that there is a floor beneath my feet that I can walk on. I can wonder at the fact that I don't fall right through the earth and that I can communicate with other people. The radical givenness or conntingency of existence is a means for joy and hope... because it could be so many other worse ways... but it isn't. Yay for Puddleglum and Chesterton!
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