Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in apdraper2000's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
7:32 pm	Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty . Evidently over 9,000 blogs will post about poverty today as part of an effort (supported by, among other folks, the U.S. association of Catholic charities, from whom I heard about it) to raise awareness and stimulate people to think about poverty as a soluble problem. I'm not sure what I think about this idea of ending poverty - when goal fatigue is a problem, a goal with such an exceeding grasp can be worse than nothing. Within a Christian context, leaning on Jesus and (em/pathetically) looking forward to the Day of the Lord when poverty will truly be ended, the goal of ending poverty might make some kind of sense. What Peter calls "speeding the coming" of the Day of the Lord (2 Peter 3). By the grace of God, we might be able to pull together a preview of coming attractions, even if the feature presentation is unimaginable. ( Read more... ) Trying to get your mind around the idea of changing your life to address some of the suffering around you is ass-backward. Cling to God, and let God be the lever that from a small initial motion ends up bringing you places you never expected to find yourself. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 5th, 2008
11:43 am	discouragement . I get discouraged fairly frequently. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
2:29 am	Mother Antonia and the kingdom . So I read The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail. The authors, Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, are a married couple who work together as journalists. They won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their coverage of Mexico's criminal justice system. While doing some of that reporting, they happened to interview a young inmate who was a transfer from La Mesa prison in Tijuana. "The only good thing about that place," she said, "was that Irish nun. I miss talking to her." That odd comment prompted Jordan and Sullivan to seek out the story of Mother Antonia, nee Mary Clarke. ( Read more... ) If you're curious, there's an excerpt from the book here: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/173/story_17354_1.html (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
8:00 pm	Happy George Herbert Day Today is George Herbert day: the Church of England selected this day to be a "lesser feast" in honor of a favorite son. Yes, he was yet another rich white guy, born into the cultural elite (his mom was buddies with John Donne), but for the last three years of his life this former member of Parliament worked as a country priest, giving communion and burying people and feeding the hungry. The Evangelical Lutherans also celebrate him. (They do it, more sensibly, on the date of his death, March 1st. I don't know whether 2/27 has a special significance for the Anglicans, or if they just had an open slot there.) The Book of Common Prayer prescribes a special prayer for George Herbert Day, which I have included at the very end. It was hard choosing one poem to share. It's amazing that someone who wrote so long ago can still be so readily understood, and even possess something a post-modern reader would recognize as "edge." And it's pleasing to find someone for whom the quality of the literature and the depth of the theology are inextricable. Virtue Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky; The dew shall weep thy fall to-night, For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye; Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie; My music shows ye have your closes, And all must die. Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like season'd timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives. *** King of glory, king of peace, who called your servant George Herbert from the pursuit of worldly honours to be a priest in the temple of his God and king: grant us also the grace to offer ourselves with singleness of heart in humble obedience to your service; through Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
12:17 am	a sign of the Kingdom . Two journalists from the Washington Post dug up the story referenced below, and published it in a book called The Prison Angel. (More on the book later.) The difference between fairy tales and true stories is that true stories have no natural starting point. You have to impose a beginning on a web of cause and effect that branches out in every direction. We could start, for instance, with an intensive care nurse in San Diego named Robert Cass. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
1:08 am	science and truth . Philosophers of science have discovered that it is difficult, and may prove impossible, to provide an understanding of science that meets the following criteria: 1. It allows us to include all the theories currently embraced by the scientific community. 2. It allows to exclude the superstitions that mimic science, like astrology. 3. It tells a true story about how scientists do their work.( Read more... ) (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
12:45 am	sign of the Kingdom . Jesus promised, one way or another, to stick around and continue his ministry through his followers for the rest of human history. Did he keep his word? Philip Hallie, in his book Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm, relates the story of Dr. Roger Le Forestier. I would like to repeat it in detail, but the most spectacular chapter of his story - his involvement in the heroism of the village of Chambon in occupied France - is tangential to the part I'm interested in. Le Forestier was arrested for having firearms in his ambulance, of which he had been unaware. His two hitchhikers, maquisards, had hidden them in his vehicle without his knowledge, and as he would not reveal their existence, he faced summary execution. The subject of his work in Chambon came up. As Hallie writes: Le Forestier summarized his testimony by saying that the people of Le Chambon "resist unjust laws, we hide Jews, we disobey your orders, but we do these things in the name of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Hmm. Jesus is not only a clumsy criminal, leaving his fingerprints all over the scene of the crime, but a vain artist, making sure to sign his name with a flourish. The case of Jorge Munoz of Woodhaven, New York, is less ostentatious. As presented in Adam Ellick's feature, "The Chicken and Rice Man," in the City section of Sunday's Times, Mr. Munoz is an unusual individual who does what he does for somewhat inscrutable reasons. While wanting to leave Mr. Munoz a dimension of mystery, I respectfully suggest there is some scrutability here. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
12:25 am	Heaven . Recently I had an interesting encounter when Marlene wanted to tell our daughter that we have souls that go to heaven when we die. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Friday, October 19th, 2007
12:33 am	safety catch . Reorienting myself: it's October, Georgia has been in pre-K for a month, I've had enough time to know that settling into a routine now that the kids are partly occupied elsewhere for x hours a week will remain a fantasy without some unprecedented act of the will. Marlene is perplexed by heaven, and I find I don't understand it all that well myself. I really really want to understand monoreality and transgender, and probably have no hope of doing so in this lifetime. Steve Martin: ...the thing you have to learn, in having a goal, is not to set an impossible goal, something too high you can never reach. You gotta have a series of smaller goals, that you can accomplish, and slowly work your way up. And this is what I have done. That's why I'm so happy. My goal: right now, I want to be the All-Being, master of time, space and dimension. Then, I want to go to Europe. I'd like the world to be safe for everybody, but I don't really want that either. There's a beautiful bit in a Vonda McIntyre novel where the scientists who have developed a synthetic planet have a map of the territory, and on the map, in an uncharted corner, is written: "Here there be dragons." Someone comments that one of their party may very well have programmed dragons into the synthesized world. "He said that there was no point in making something so safe that it would be insipid." It's a basic principle about Aslan: he's not tame. He's not safe. He's good. Maybe when you stop trying to make the world safe for everybody, that can be the beginning of some wise choices. Especially when the first part of "everybody" you stop trying to keep safe at all costs is your own body. I'd like the world to be safe for people who don't know where they fit in and wonder constantly if they have to wage war against the entire world of "fitness" in order to survive. I'd like the world to be safe for people who DO know where they fit in and are hated for so knowing by a world that has learned to mistrust such people. I'd like the world to be safe for the people who are political prisoners at the mercy of my country's current ambiguity and equivocation on the matter of torture. I'd like the world to be safe for the people in the path of destructive forces set in motion by religious convictions, while still being safe for the people who can't imagine a life of savor and joy without those same convictions. Then, I want to go to Europe. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
4:07 pm	my finger hurts . I cut it opening a can of cat food for my upstairs neighbor and Christian sister Laurie, a deed which was doubly useless - my wife, who was watering plants for another neighbor, could have done it within a few minutes, and Laurie herself would have been home within an hour and could have fed her cats herself. But I was embarrassed at the idea that Laurie would get home and find her cats unfed, and not sure how long my wife would take to water the plants, and stressed in general because it was the night before the big day when Georgia would go to pre-K for the first time. I thought that feeding the cats was one thing I could do and it would be done, and seeking closure of some kind - went out of my way to have an accident. There I was, looking with exasperation at the pale flap of skin hanging from the tip of my ring finger and the blood which it formerly had kept confined to my body spilling out into Laurie's sink next to a hastily dropped can of cat food. I called my friend from high school, Alex, who is an e.r. surgeon, and somehow managed to get the finger bandaged (always a stunt when it's your primary hand that's injured), motivated powerfully by the thought of not subjecting Georgia (not twice, anyway) to the sight of a blood-spattered sink. Then I went to visit my upstairs neighbor, who is a doctor and has put in his share of e.r. time - somewhat sheepishly, because of course I have turned to this kind and gentle man a number of times - when Georgia got her hand caught in the elevator door, for example - and I feel bad for him because as a doctor he really doesn't have the option to say, "Leave me alone, I'm off duty," and so I have this power over him which I exercise with some reluctance. I'm thankful Marlene nudged me to see him, though, because he took a look at the cut, recommended I get stitches, explained why it was important to do it that night, and recommended where I should go to get it done. This was very important because yesterday the Carribbean Day parade passed through my neighborhood and all the hospitals in the area, my neighbor assured me, were expecting a very busy night in their emergency rooms. Ultimately, I took the subway into Manhattan to visit the Beth Israel e.r. and while my wait was long enough to read the better part of a Greg Bear sf novel, Psychlone (which I'd been holding on to for just such an occasion!), I'm sure it would have been a nightmare trying to get stitched up at a local hospital. And my first-year resident who stitched me up was very personable, and tolerated my yakkity-yak about religion and other topics, and even engaged me with a few comments. I'm slowly, slowly starting to think that maybe my disinclination to witness (in simple forms, such as saying, "You know, God is really there..." or asking, "What do you believe?") is something I should get over. A separate issue. It's remarkable how much one finger can derail your entire body when it hurts. And oooh boy, does it hurt. I don't blame it - it was a nasty cut, and then the suturing was quite a violent process. That said, it's been a pretty good day. Marlene nudged me to ask Laurie for help, another great suggestion, because it turned out Laurie was able to take Elijah to his day care center for his first ever day of Little Mushrooms. So a huge logistical problem - how to carry and push and cart around Elijah (with my better hand complaining throughout) while doing first-day-of-school things with Georgia - just disappeared, and Elijah had a great time of course. Georgia had been placed with the teacher we preferred - Miss J, whom we had met last spring - in fact, we spent the better part of two days in her classroom. I feel completely comfortable with Georgia being in her care, as much as I'm reluctant to really absorb the fact that almost half of the waking hours I used to spend with Georgia is about to disappear into the darkness of the NYC Department of Education. My sympathy with homeschoolers is peaking right now. Anyway, the first day of my kid's school was kind of fun in the way the first day of school was fun when I was a kid. There's a kind of informal reunion where you see all these parents who look familiar because you've been seeing them around the neighborhood for nearly four years, and some of them you've gotten to know, and you might like them, or even have a modest crush on them, and it's like the beginning of a whole new collective life where you will all be parents of classmates and have this shared set of concerns and responsibilities. The only thing now is what I really want to do now is clean the kitchen but I really want to keep my hand dry. This is also a problem because what I like to do as soon as possible after wiping my kid's ass is wash my hands thoroughly in hot water - dunno, just a quirk I have. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 9th, 2007
10:59 pm	interview with Dawkins ( Read more... ) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 2nd, 2007
7:38 pm	neuroscience and ethics . I've been meaning to write something about an extended dialogue I've been having online about naturalism and monism and/or religion. My interlocutor, alias the Bugmaster, just sent me an article that does a great job of summing up some research that seems pertinent to a discussion about what it means to be a human being. I'm posting it below, in full, because I expect I'll want to refer back to it. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
10:07 am	The passing of Bruce Ritter . When I was in college, there were a few books I had acquired that I found comforting, somehow, in my turmoil over Xianity. One was a book about this woman named Peace Pilgrim, who basically carried out the mission on which Jesus had once sent out his disciples - namely, to live without resources of any kind, relying on the hospitality of other people and of God. I'll have to catch up with her later. The other was a book called Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face by a priest named Bruce Ritter. It was a collection of shamelessly manipulative letters Ritter had composed over a period of years to raise money for a charity he started called Covenant House - which still exists - ministering to homeless kids in New York City. I read that book over and over again for some reason. Like Peace Pilgrim, Fr. Ritter was someone who had given up his entire life in a kind of service to God. And he lived out, vividly, the conviction which Jesus tried to instill in us: that in the most miserable and apparently useless people, the Spirit of God is present, and to love such people is to show love to God. At some point in college I found out something that struck me powerfully. I don't recall the news astonishing me, but rather that I resounded when I heard it, like a bell. Fr. Ritter had resigned in disgrace under accusations of sexual improprieties with young men. This is not as striking without an acquaintance with Ritter's writings, which are filled with a kind of morbid awareness of the depravities children who were on the street in NYC would encounter. If the accusations were true, it meant that Ritter had come to embody the kind of sin with which he had been in direct combat for many years. It was also apparent from his writing that Ritter's stance towards the kids who came to him for shelter was emotional and intimate. He didn't just offer services dispassionately to those kids; he opened his heart to them, at the risk of his own emotional stability. I felt intuitively that I had something to learn from Fr. Bruce Ritter, from the intersection of extraordinary love and extraordinary transgression in one man. I always thought it would be great to find out what had happened to Ritter and try to reflect on his story more systematically. For some reason - and it would be interesting to know why this was - I got rid of my Peace Pilgrim book and my Covenant House book after holding on to them for many years. And that was the end of it - until shortly before Elijah's first birthday. Out of nowhere, I had the impulse to look him up online; and sure enough, in less than a minute I had an obituary from the NYT that filled in a great deal of what I wanted to know about Ritter. Here it is. I don't have much comment to add to it, except to say that I still think I could learn from him. In Quiet Fields, Father Ritter Found His Exile; By TINA KELLEY ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, February 12th, 2007
1:19 am	to laugh or to cry? . I was guilty of commenting while under the influence of atheism over at my favorite progressive Christian blog, Slacktivist. I began with the mistake of watching the clip of Chris Hedges interviewed on the Colbert Report about the fascism he sees breeding in certain subcultures of American Christianity. Then, my cri de coeur at Slacktivist deteriorated thusly:( Read more... )What am I thinking at this point? I sympathize with the atheists, who see right away that interpretation is an art and not a science, and so wonder why so many Christians refer to Scripture as their touchstone of rationality for their beliefs - as though it was the Bible which keeps us from flying off into sheer fantasy or heresy or Koresh-style cult doctrines. I also sympathize with the liberal or moderate Christians, who feel the atheists are being a bit obtuse or a bit disengenous. Frankly, though, I think it's the position of my own folk - the liberal or moderate Christians - I find most exhausting. Harris has a great discussion of the passage in Deuteronomy that legislates the stoning of apostates or idolaters. I can hear arguments until the cows come home as to why this particular rule has been superseded by the coming of Jesus, but doesn't it bother anyone that this is the God we worship? If we want to praise God and learn the ways of justice at his feet because of the Jubilee laws, then why aren't we turning away from him in distress at his idea of making religious plurality a capital offense? (20 Comments |Comment on this)
12:48 am	nagel on dawkins . I found the following review of The God Delusion by Thomas Nagel very helpful in thinking critically about the book. Excerpts follow - italics mine. "The Fear of Religion" by Thomas Nagel Richard Dawkins, the most prominent and accomplished scientific writer of our time, is convinced that religion is the enemy of science. Not just fundamentalist or fanatical or extremist religion, but all religion that admits faith as a ground of belief and asserts the existence of God. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, February 5th, 2007
12:17 pm	The Pope at Regensburg . [x-posted to challenging_god] At the University of Regensburg (12 September 2006) Pope Benedict, the artist formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger, gave a talk called "Faith, Reason and the University." I've been thinking about it a lot in relation to this question: if theology isn't utter bullshit - the equivalent of Trekkies discussing the ins and out of the Klingon language - what is it? If it's supposed to bear some relation to reality, if we're supposed to give it credit as being potentially reasonable, how is that supposed to work? ( Read more... ) [I'm hoping that people will respond to this piecemeal - I think that's appropriate, because you don't get a good sense of JR's flow from my Cuisinart job. If you referred to items by number, that would be helpful. I'm particularly eager to hear from anyone who knows more about Aristotle than I do.] (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 4th, 2007
10:38 pm	The End of Faith, two . I have found something very useful; Harris is having an online debate with the conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan on beliefnet.com. Here is the link. Below I have cut and pasted part of one of Harris' statements, in which he clarifies his objections to religious moderation.( Read more... ) So we do not use Scripture as our moral touchstone. And if something else is serving as our moral touchstone, then why the hell aren't we focusing on that instead of the Bible? I sincerely want to hear an answer to that question, or to hear a good challenge to its assumptions. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
11:46 pm	The End of Faith, one . Having been immersed in The God Delusion for weeks, I turned back to The End of Faith by Sam Harris - which I started reading a year ago - with relief. ( Read more... ) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
11:31 pm	a case of mono Either reality is one, or its more. Either mono or poly. ( Read more... )Yet monists continue to talk as if they were rational beings. Is it just a metaphor? A metaphor they're aware is a metaphor? Or is there something I'm missing? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
1:01 pm	letters on evolution and/or xian faith What follows are edited highlights from letters Michael Shermer received in response to a piece he wrote for Scientific American. Can a Conservative Christian Accept Evolution? ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)