Words, Hot Plate & Capernaum

1/31/2021

Ye Olde Drippe w/ Hotplate
aka "Home Sweet Home"

200w/d for 100d 30m/d:

I think thirty minutes is a nice, round-sounding amount of time to give myself to accomplish this writing exercise. If I let it sprawl to 40 or 45, it starts really to run into the rest of the morning’s goals.

I also, initially gave myself about that long, that is 40-45 minutes for this wondering if it would be enough.  Early returns—that is after being at this now for all of six going on seven mornings, I’ve found that I can usually almost double that output.   That is, in 45 minutes I can, right off the bat, hit about 500 words.  But can I hit 500 in 30 minutes?  We shall see.

Coffee:

I preheated the coffee cup differently this morning.  Filled it to the brim with just-off-the-boil water.  Not sure it’s making much difference.

I wonder how much the hot-plate heating the carafe of drip coffee changes the flavor.  This is a unique feature of the conventional drip that every other method does not have—not espresso, not pour-over, not french press, etc.  The newly-brewed coffee sits on a hot plate for at least the entire time it takes to brew the pot. Frequently it sits longer—even much longer—depending on how quickly the brewer gets it off that plate and into the cup or a thermos. I’m thinking that time on the hot plate has to affect the taste. The effect should not at all be necessarily understood as something for the worse unless it flat out burns the pot, which can certainly happen.  Rather, this means that the ol’ drip will always have the unique flavor that only comes from ongoing heat applied directly to the pot for a prolonged time.

That’s what makes the ol’ drip always taste special.  And since it’s such a popular method—likely one we’ve all had since our earliest coffee-drinking days—returning to it, after our fru-fru explorations into the world of alternative methods, will always feel like coming home.

At Capernaum:

The accessibility of the Master.

“Quiet. Come out of him.”

“I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin.”

He taught in their synagogue—They didn’t have to approach a burning mountain.

He rebuked and commanded the unclean spirits with what he said—he didn’t have to smite them with plagues.

He knew how easily fame could be over-valued—He would ask the Twelve after others of his own disciples began immediately no longer to accompany him, “Do you also want to leave?”

We’re not in Kansas anymore

1/30/2021

Confrontation between Good and Evil

John’s done his thing and consequently been arrested for it.

In the meantime he did manage to baptize the Lord—so, yes, John successfully has done his thing.  The Lord fasted forty days in the desert, being tempted along the way by the evil one.  Then, with John now locked up, JC takes center-stage in the public awareness of the Jews at that time.  He picks up where John had left off, with the same message, “Time’s up!”  He starts putting his team together—of, at first, fishermen.  And, here we are, all caught up with the beginning of Mark’s rendering.

Jesus comes to Caparnaum.  He starts teaching them on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  He floors them with the authority of his teaching.  He commands obedience, even of the evil spirits.  He immediately starts to become famous.

Contrasting surroundings and confrontation. Juxtaposition of good and evil. Desert, Caparnaum. Land, sea. Christ, the devil.  John arrested.  Jesus tempted. Man possessed.  People astonished.  

We’re not in Kansas anymore.

Mark—a disciple of Peter, writes to the Roman Church already beginning to suffer its hardships for the sake of the Gospel—makes this demarcation. Things as we know them, are not all of a piece.  We’re not in Kansas anymore.  Pick a side.  Or, know whose side you’re on.

Switching coffee cups.

1/30/2021

Switching coffee cups.

I’ve noticed, here in the middle of winter, that it’s hard for my “big red” coffee cup to hold its heat for very long.  Coffee gets cold, no matter how hot I pre-heat the cup.

I’m switching, therefore, as an experiment,
to the simple white slightly-taller-than-a-teacup coffee cup.  It has a smaller radius.  It’s a smaller cup.  But its height, I think may be an advantage, helping it to keep the coffee hot.

We’ll see.  I may or may not report back on this one.  Although, I have a feeling I will.

Another solution may likely be to go the route of the ole thermos.  Again, the main goal being to keep this coffee hot.  It seems to get too cold too quickly.  If I go with the thermos—it doesn’t have to be a huge one, it can be a smaller one—I’ll also be able to go with the smaller coffee/teacups.  Why does this matter?  By going with the smallest size cups, I maximize the ratio of hot sips to total sips.  Even if I have to refill the little cup several—three, four times, those sips’ll be as hot as I can conceivably hope for.  [takes last sip of coffee] Instead of this forlorn, lukewarm, waning memory of warmer times.

1/29/2021

My Dear Parish,

Have you ever wondered why we speak of the forty days of Lent on the one hand, but when we look at the calendar it never quite adds up to forty? Maybe you haven’t, but I have. These, I guess are some of the minor things pastors ponder to themselves.

If Ash Wednesday is supposed to be the start of Lent, and Lent goes until Easter Sunday, then how come, when you count it always adds up to 46 or 47 depending on whether you count easter Sunday itself. But if it’s always 46 or 47, then why do we always speak of the forty days of Lent?

There are a few ways out of this conundrum.

1) You could exclude counting Sundays and you’d end up with forty. Then you’d be left wondering whether there is any penance still required on those Sundays which have been excluded from the count.

2) You could begin the count on the Sunday after Ash Wednesday and end it on Holy Thursday.  To do this would require grandfathering the three days after Ash Wednesday into the forty-day count as well as ending Lent on Holy Thursday, which is the beginning of the Paschal Triduum, that is, the three holiest Days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Still, here Lent would end during Holy Week and we’d be left to wonder about the penitential nature those remaining three days.

3) Or, you could understand the forty days to have meaning that is more spiritually symbolic than chronologically exact.  The forty days are intended to unite is with the penance Jesus did while enduring the temptations of the devil.  His forty days also recalled the forty years the Chosen People suffered for their sins, wandering in the dessert.  This way the exact number of days becomes less important than the reality of the need to do penance.

You can count the days how you like—it’s not a sin to do it one way and not another.  I prefer to count the days this third way.  Counting the days and weeks in this more symbolic manner leads me to point out the significance of this coming Sunday.

This Sunday used to be called “Septuagesima Sunday,” from the Latin word meaning seventy (Lent, in Latin is Quadragesima, the word for forty). If you count seventy days from this Sunday you end up on the Octave Day of Easter.  All this counting is making me dizzy.

The point is, it’s time to start to get ready for Lent.  I’ll be speaking more about this in the coming weeks.  But in the meantime one thing you can do, for sure, is get to confession.  That’s always the best way to prepare.

With paternal affection,

Fr. Drew

A word, please, with you, in private.

1/29/2021

“Everything in private”

If you’re not praying, then forget about it.

I’ll mention a few other names for what I mean by praying—these names are not my own, they’re borrowed from the patrimony of the church—in other words they’re yours. They consist of the distilled wisdom of centuries of saints and of masters of the spiritual life and of regular folks, like you and me, who have tried and failed and tried again to pray.

“Praying” or prayer is referred to as the “life of prayer,” or one’s “prayer life.”

For starters, it’s an action that is constitutively relational.  That is, we only “do it,” we only pray in relation with another other than ourselves.  It’s not “mindfulness” or the mere silencing of our minds and hearts in order to get in touch with ourselves.  If our prayer is primarily about ourselves—we’re not praying.  Prayer only exists in relation to God.

The reality of God is essential to prayer.  If God is not real then man cannot pray.  If man can pray then God is real.

Here we hear, as Jesus began to use his parables, that he also explained all that meant by them to his own “in private.”  What is excluded by this preference for privacy?  Man’s disordered affection for himself and his own kind.  This disordered affection leads man to make a poor rendering to God of what he rightly deserves, replacing it instead with a disgusting mockery.  Not good.

Think of it—God wants private time with us.  God wants to pray with us.

Misc.

1/29/2021

More concerning this exercise of writing.

A considerable part of this has to do with the usefulness of the process of writing itself,

particularly as it relates to the exercise of certain powers of the intellect.  There’s no way

I can recall here and now much of the brain-science of writing, but it’s easy to hypothesize

that there is enough complexity in the action of producing complete sentences and articulating

them in such a way that they are objectively intelligible that it makes for quite a workout

for the brain, after all. In this regard, content is important insofar as it provides sufficiently specific material for the brain to produce sufficiently intelligible and articulable ideas.

A word concerning the purpose of this exercise.

It’s not, then, primarily for producing ready-to-use content for public consumption.  I’m not drafting the texts of my homilies or writing my bulletin articles.  Rather, it’s an exercise whereby I’m strengthening my ability subsequently to sit down and write them.

Peterson’s self-authoring.

I’m interested, somewhat, in the Self-Authoring program. But I wonder how much of its benefits I can already be accomplish on my own by this discipline.  No doubt, his program is battle-tested and mine is, at this point, little more than idea that’s existed for about two minutes.  Still, before I cough up the twenty or thirty bucks, I think I might try to see what good it’ll do me to persist a while at this exercise.

When Tom met Ceci...

More details, please, of that fateful first evening.

What time was it? How long had dad already been at the Topaz House that afternoon? If St. John’s got out around three o’clock, were Tom and Mary Ellen back in Bethesda by 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM?  What time did Ceci get out from her paralegal job in Foggy Bottom?  When would she have walked into her apartment? 6:00 PM? Was traffic getting out of downtown as bad 44 years ago as it is now?

Where was Dad headed to that evening? Was he living at Kayson? Or was he already renting a place in Silver Spring?  Why, initially, not stay for dinner?  Did he eventually stay for dinner after they had met? How much longer did he stay?

Who else was in the apartment that evening? Mechis? Jimmy?  What was the weather like? (We can look that up.)

Any recalling what the conversation was that mom overheard as she entered? Without any expectation of meeting the man who would become her husband at that moment, what struck you about him?

What was it, Dad, that struck you about mom?  Had you already gotten up to go?  Had she already entered the room?

We know the rest of the story. We’re just looking for some details to help fill it in. You can remember them.  It may take a minute to recall—I understand the guardian angels are very helpful with recall of this sort, even if the smallest points don’t entirely agree, they’re still important. So take a minute or two—or, better yet reminisce together over a glass of wine and some liverwurst-on-saltines to help jog the memory—and get back to us.

We’re glad you met that day. Happy Anniversary!

Joining the Work

1/26/2021

Why did I join the work this day 14 years ago?

Let’s see if I can do better than just “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I have a clear recollection of sitting in the library at Tenley and paging through a small leaflet on the priestly society of the Holy Cross. I can ’t say how far along I already was in the seminary at that point. It could’ve been rather early. I remember noticing from that leaflet that it was possible for diocesan priests to join the Work. I noticed that the vocation to the Work for a diocesan priest was the same as if he was coming from any other honest walk of life—that the call consists in the pursuit of personal holiness by way of sanctifying oneself and one’s surroundings to the best of his ability for the love of God precisely in the  midst of those very surroundings.

I remember it occurring to me that, regarding joining the work or receiving the call to join the work, it didn’t really matter if I was a priest or not.

This detachment from the glory of the priestly ministry I found attractive and particularly affirming of a man’s individual freedom.

I’d find a louder echo of this same orientation of freedom when my mom would pray to God, some years later, on my ordination day, as I lie prostrate on the church floor, “Lord, if this be not for his sanctification, may he not get up off that floor.”

Personal holiness, the pursuit of the will of God.  That’s the name of the game.

There’s the ever-important, intrinsically-related integration of the personal with the communal. 

That’s for another time. 

Thomas & his vocabulary

Why shore up my Thomistic metaphysics? Let me compare inadequate metaphysics to a bout of IBS. Just as there follows a slew of symptoms when you’ve got a leaky gut, so too, when you’ve got a lousy metaphysics, it shows. A strong grasp is needed of what makes up the relation between cause and effect, or potency and actuality, or being and existence, or necessity and contingency, or what is meant by nature, or virtue, or habit, or motion, or faculties, or intelligence, or operations, or volition, etc. If there’s a good primer out there I’ve got to find it. I’ve tried the Summa Theologica. But, while elemental, so much of the metaphysics that it explains is also already presupposed. It’s baked-in to the language he uses in such a way that it requires a great effort to abstract and piece together how he’s using the most elementary of terms which he, no doubt, takes for granted. I know, in his introduction to the Summa he declare his purpose is to treat his subject in a manner that is accessible to beginners. That approach, that mode of teaching appeals to me as a parish priest. It’s exactly how I like to preach my homilies and to teach the catechism to my youngsters. But, to me, I wish I had a more solid grasp of the foundations of his vocabulary as I set out with him to tackle the greater and more important questions of theology.

Two hundred words a day for a hundred days

Why set out on this hundred day challenge of writing two hundred words a day? Because, for sure, my practice of writing has fallen off a great deal. It’s been now, going on eleven months since I had a regular weekly bulletin article. That got shot in the head when we discontinued masses open to the public last March. I was pleased to drop it, by the way, since it had become tedious to produce. It was a labor of love. On the rarest of occasions, two come to mind, did I ever receive any feedback about anything I ever wrote there. The feedback was positive, but, limited. Perhaps a lackluster response was due to lackluster writing? Well, I’m ready to start that bulletin letter up again and I’d like it not to be so painful to read or to write. So this, I guess, is one reason why I need to get back into writing shape. As a remedy for pain. Let’s riff on this for a minute. I know it’s not the noblest of motivations—the painkilling motivation, but I should also observe how this motivation has worked before. I’ll tell you about my journey losing sixty pounds that began with hearing someone relate their personal anecdote of relieving joint pain. Also a word on negative motivation—that is pursuing a negative goal, and is it even possible?