In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
A good, clean hit
During SuperBowl week, it seems appropriate to put this in football terms.
Often, you'll see a mediocre defensive player hit a ball carrier with a so-called cheap shot -- a needlessly violent collision with no fundamentals, no understanding of clean defensive technique, no real skill. Just an big, dumb impact with intent to injure.
But those aren't the players who ultimately succeed, the ones who earn the respect of both their teammates and their fair-minded opponents. The ones who go to the Pro Bowl, who get elected to the Hall of Fame.
We who fight against abortion-on-demand certainly saw one heck of a clean hit from a true champion, Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation, in this interview on MSNBC:
h/t LifeNews.com
Often, you'll see a mediocre defensive player hit a ball carrier with a so-called cheap shot -- a needlessly violent collision with no fundamentals, no understanding of clean defensive technique, no real skill. Just an big, dumb impact with intent to injure.
But those aren't the players who ultimately succeed, the ones who earn the respect of both their teammates and their fair-minded opponents. The ones who go to the Pro Bowl, who get elected to the Hall of Fame.
We who fight against abortion-on-demand certainly saw one heck of a clean hit from a true champion, Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation, in this interview on MSNBC:
h/t LifeNews.com
Monday, January 21, 2013
Deserved and undeserved
Real love is always heroic, because it doesn't count the cost. Its only focus is the good of the one whom we love.
On the other hand, our fallen world is very good at calculating the cost/benefit ratio of every transaction. And the better you get at it, the more the world rewards you with what it has to give: all the stuff that doesn't matter in the end.
Worldly love does the same: everything's fine as long as the other person produces the benefits we think we signed up for. But once those benefits start to decline, the calculations begin, and our hearts harden. We'd be happier with someone else, we think. It's easy to leave and start over. No one will criticize us. Why should we lose our chance of "happiness?" This kind of love is hardly more than the pleasure of an amiable acquaintance, and just as fragile.
In contrast, we can always tell when we're really loved just for ourselves, in the heroic way, when we find ourselves astonished by a lavish gift that we didn't deserve — or perhaps we even deserved the opposite. I'd say the gift of another person's entire life and love, in honor and faithfulness, is one of those gifts.
On the other hand, our fallen world is very good at calculating the cost/benefit ratio of every transaction. And the better you get at it, the more the world rewards you with what it has to give: all the stuff that doesn't matter in the end.
Worldly love does the same: everything's fine as long as the other person produces the benefits we think we signed up for. But once those benefits start to decline, the calculations begin, and our hearts harden. We'd be happier with someone else, we think. It's easy to leave and start over. No one will criticize us. Why should we lose our chance of "happiness?" This kind of love is hardly more than the pleasure of an amiable acquaintance, and just as fragile.
In contrast, we can always tell when we're really loved just for ourselves, in the heroic way, when we find ourselves astonished by a lavish gift that we didn't deserve — or perhaps we even deserved the opposite. I'd say the gift of another person's entire life and love, in honor and faithfulness, is one of those gifts.
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