Autographs for Curtis

Said my kind-hearted father as he took my hand:
“As you go in defense of our dear native land,
“Son, be brave but show mercy whenever you can.
“Our hearts will be with you, 'til you 'turn again.”

-- Bright Sunny South – Alison Krauss & Union Station

Colton is a nine-year old boy who plays on the little league team of mostly 10-year olds that I’m coaching this summer. I suspect that when he was born he entered this world with a baseball in one hand and a catcher’s mitt on the other. He seems to me to have been born a catcher. He also possesses a very strong arm and will pitch for us now and then. Colton was also born with a competitive spirit, a can-do attitude, and a great smile. However, on Saturday I saw none of those usual attributes.

Colton started on the mound for us that day and was scheduled to pitch the first two innings. In our league a pitcher can only throw a minimum of three and it wasn’t until just this week that I began letting our pitchers throw the full amount. During warm-ups I could tell that he was distracted, and in the top of the first he walked all eight batters he faced and they scored the maximum five runs allowed per inning. Throwing down the ball on the mound, Colton walked off the field in tears and towards me on the third-base dugout side. I gently pulled him away from the team and we walked down the left field foul line together and had a little talk. The poor guy was really upset and after settling him down I asked him if he wanted to give it another shot. He told me no. Right there I knew that more was bothering him than what had just happened. Colton has never said no to anything after meeting some initial failure or challenge, but today he had had enough. He went on to catch the last half of the game, got a hit, and the first inning was soon forgotten as the boys won the game.

What I knew that day that you have yet to learn is the reason for Colton’s distraction. On Wednesday Colton, his mom and his little brother said goodbye to his father, Curtis. Curtis left for Iraq yesterday and will be gone for fifteen months. He will miss the rest of this season as well as the next. Of course Curtis is going to miss much more than just baseball.

Curtis is not just Colton’s biggest fan, but perhaps our team’s as well. You can always hear his voice from the stands cheering on the boys when they make a good play, and offering words of encouragement to them if struggling. Monday night was no different. It was to be the last game he would be able to watch us and we wanted to make it special for him.

Before the game I brought a game ball and a pen into the team huddle and told them they were now going to practice another part of baseball: autographing one. Each boy wrote his name and uniform number on the ball, not knowing what I was going to do with it. They played a great game and afterwards we met as we always do down the left field line in a circle with the parents gathered around as I give my post-game speech. It’s usually not much of a speech as they are more interested in eating the treat and slurping down the sport drink provided by a different set of parents after the game than listening to me.

I kept the game notes short, and then asked Colton to come stand next to me. I gave him the ball and asked him to give it to his father. He did, along with a big hug as the parents clapped. Both he and his father were in tears, and from what I’ve heard a lot of others were as well. Curtis thanked the boys for the ball, told them he was proud of them and would be rooting for them while he was away. I have his military email address and will be sending him updates on our games as well as any pictures that are taken.

On Tuesday night, just past midnight on the day he was to leave I received an email from him thanking me for the ball, for coaching the boys, and for a memory that neither “I nor my family will forget.” I wrote him back: “Thank you for the next fifteen months, for the sacrifice that you and your family are making, and for being our biggest fan. We’ll see you when you return safely home.”

Summer officially began yesterday, but it has already been one we won’t soon forget.

Northern Magic

Yet another sad case of why we need to be vigilant and aware of what our kids are posting online. This issue first came to light with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris posting things prior to the attack they launched at Columbine, and clues are still being left by kids. The article linked above references Jonathan's struggles with adapting to life back on the mainland after his family spent four years sailing around the world, and in the Christmas 2001 photo one can't help but notice he is the only family member not smiling. Of course hindsight is always 20/20, but still...

 

Tragically, Diane's (Jonathan's mother) life was cut short from cancer just months after arriving back home from their journey. She was a terrific writer, and one paragraph in particular struck me from her entry for Christmas 2001:

The world has seemed a more hostile and frightening place in the months since September 11. But that is not the world we came to know. Because no matter how misguided various governments, religious leaders and extremists may be, the truth is that ordinary people everywhere are overwhelmingly kind and peace-loving. If there’s one thing we learned in our trip around the world, it’s that there is no "them" and "us"; there is only "us".

Amen.

 

For more information on this family's amazing journey, visit northernmagic.com.

Words meant things, redux

As readers of this blog know, I've said time and time again that "words mean things". Dennis Prager does an excellent job in his column today describing precisely that, and how some have waged war on the words that should horrify us all, and by doing so have rendered them impotent and removed the stigma and ability to move us as they once did.

It undermined the war against torture to characterize what some Americans did to some Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison -- actions that were indeed sick, un-American and shameful to our military -- as "torture." Labeling abuses as "torture" filled me with pity for all the people around the world who had experienced real torture.

I kept thinking about those whose bodies were burned, whose fingernails were torn out, who were hung by their arms in a way that broke their shoulders (a common Chinese communist torture), who were put into human shredders (in Saddam's Iraq) or who had burning hot steel rods shoved into their rectums. How did these poor souls react to seeing the Western media routinely describe humiliating and frightening naked men for the sadistic amusement of guards as "torture"?

A second example is "rape." In the past, when I heard that a woman had been raped, I recoiled in horror. Not any more. Now, my first reaction is, "What happened to her?"

One has to ask that question because the feminist left has redefined the word "rape" to the point where, unless you know the specifics, you don't know if a woman was violently forced into sexual intercourse or had engaged in sex that she regretted the following morning.

Prayers for the Assassin

What would life be like in Islamic America? Read this book to get an idea.

Temper temper

Quite simply the most bizarre antics I've seen by a baseball manager in long time. In the vein of Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, Lou Pinella, etc. I saw it on ESPN last night. I don't know what I liked more, the headfirst slide into 2nd (never seen that one before), tossing the base into the outfield (nah...Lou Pinella did that), covering home plate with dirt (Billy Martin already did that), or sweeping the dirt off and then pouring a bottle of water on the plate, cleaning it, and spiking the empty water bottle down on the plate like a football. What a rube. And judging from his unfortunate use of certain words to describe his feelings towards umpires, and lack of remorse, he seems to fit quite well into the Ozzie Guillen style of baseball managers.

Letter of St. Thomas More to his daughter

Saint Thomas More was born in 1477 and was educated at Oxford. He married and had one son and three daughters. While Chancellor in the ming's Court, he wrote works on politics, culture, and in defense of the Catholic faith. At one time one of King Henry VIII's most trusted ministers, More was beheaded on July 6, 1535 by order of the King whom he and St. John Fisher had resisted in the matter of the King's divorce from Catherine of Arragon and remarriage to Ann Bolyn. His memorial is celebrated on June 22 together with that of St. John Fisher who was beheaded on this date. The following is an excerpt from a letter to his daughter Margaret written in prison by St. Thomas More.

Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God.

By the merits of his bitter passion joined to mine and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, his bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides.

I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.

And finally, Margaret, I know this well: that without my fault he will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with good hope commit myself wholly to him. And if he permits me to perish for my faults, then I shall serve as praise for his justice. But in good faith, Meg, I trust that his tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe and make me commend his mercy.

And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let you mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.

Follow the money

Kathleen Parker today writes about one of the most truly twisted forms of legal logic I've come across. Have we really gone this far, and can we ever go back?

Banzhaf likes to sue people, in other words, and he’s been enormously successful. Which is to say, pregnant smokers, beware.

Already Banzhaf is setting his sights on fetal rights related to their smoking mums. While it is legally defensible to abort a fetus up until moments before birth, it is apparently inconceivable that a woman would expose her unborn child to the harmful effects of smoking.

While you’re struggling to wrap your mind around that nonsensical nugget, Banzhaf is already issuing press releases. In a recent one from the organization he heads, Action on Smoking and Health, Banzhaf predicts that prohibiting smoking by pregnant women would pass constitutional muster.

“Since court after court has held that smoking is not a fundamental right like voting, and that smokers are not a protected class like African-Americans or women, the government has wide leeway in fashioning a remedy for whatever it concludes is a problem requiring corrective action.”

Please do not read my disgust as anything akin to endorsing smoking by pregnant women. Far from it. What I find disgusting about the whole affair is that on one hand we listen to the screeching of "keep your laws off my body" by the pro-abort crowd, and here's an example of where the law is trying to do precisely that. The same lawyers who defend a woman's right to kill her own child in her womb are now going to sue to protect the health of the unborn.

Why?

Simple. Follow the money.

Jay & James

In my opinion, it just doesn't get any better than reading Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus column. His latest is a fine example of wit and style and for me is never long enough.

Another favorite when I find time to read him is James Lileks, whom Jay mentions today. His website is a source of the wonderfully bizarre (check out his section on a 1977 Frederick's catalog). Lileks writes a column for the Newhouse News Service, which stores archives of past columns so you can catch up if you like.

Library Thing

I've recently discovered and began using a very cool tool called Library Thing. Those who know me best know what a complete and total bookworm/nerd I am and that one thing I take pride in is the library I am building, collecting and eventually bequeathing to my children. I am just beginning to add what I can from memory, but will eventually get as many as I can up and online. You can see my as yet incomplete profile here, and my currently-being-constructed bookshelves here. It's really only a small part of what I'll eventually have here, but it's a start.

I encourage you to build your own, should you feel so moved. And if you have any recommendations, let me know. I'm always looking for something interesting to read.

Splinters and Beams

I'm so tired of our country being criticized by the so-called "enlightened" continent of Europe on the matters of human rights. Matthew 7:1-5 still applies today. Hey Europe, take a look in your own backyard. While admittedly we have a lot of things we need to clean up here, this one of yours is a sad state of affairs indeed, and should serve as a reminder that we all have a lot of work to do, and as is often the case, we have to begin in our own backyard.

German police had two opportunities to identify Masha as a victim of trafficking and failed both times. Since the legalization of prostitution, police have fewer reasons to investigate brothels, and victims have fewer opportunities to receive assistance.

After being sold twice, Masha’s mental health deteriorated. She stopped eating and threatened to commit suicide by jumping from a fourth-floor window. The pimp, fearing that such an incident would draw attention to his operation, and probably realizing that her usefulness to him was over, sent her back to Russia.

Irina was trafficked to Germany after prostitution was legalized, and she was placed in a legal brothel in Breman. Irina said that women in the legal brothel were trafficked and did not have access to their documents — either the original ones or the fake ones the mafia charged them for. The pimps regularly reminded the women that they knew where their families lived and would kill their children if they tried to escape.

In the club where Irina was held, she observed women being sold to different pimps destined for Belgium and the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal. Eventually, she was sent to a club called “Diplomat” in the Netherlands. While there she observed the pimps working with the Russian mafia regularly to supply women to the brothels. During the move, 2,000 euros were added to her debt for a fake Lithuanian passport. She said, “I saw right away that no matter how many men there were, I could never repay the debts.”

Irina decided to escape. Another Russian woman, Tatiana, who was being held captive by threat of harm to her two-year-old son back in Russia, helped her by stealing her fake passport from the pimps. Irina fled. She later learned that Tatiana was murdered for helping her escape.

The Mystery of the Trinity

On NRO today, Michael Novak discusses the Catholic as dinner guest.

Then I came to my final point. “Well, Christians hold that the most divine aspect of human life—the best thing—is the love of friendship. And we think of God accordingly. Although we cannot imagine how this can be—our imaginations fail here—we think of God as more like a Community of Friends than as a Solitary Being.” Very high above us the fantail of a tiny silver jet left a high chalk line across the cobalt sky.

“The only reason we dare to think this way, really, is because that is how Jesus talked of His Father, and of the Spirit whom the Father would send, after the death of Jesus. Jesus spoke of all Three as One. ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in me.’ In other places Jesus spoke of all three as one divinity. He said that Christians should be baptized ‘in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ Three in one.”

Honestly, I said to my inquiring friend: “I don’t pretend to understand this. But when I say ‘Trinity,’ I remind myself to think of God as a Communion of Three Friends. Although that is not quite strong enough, for one must somehow hold that this Communion of Persons constitutes only One God. But this God is more like communion than solitude.”

Random Thoughts...

...from Amy.

Michael told me the other night of a news story he'd read indicating that the more plugged in a young person is, the more anxious and depressed they are. Now, there could be an inverse relationship as well - that the more depressed a kid is, the more they plug in. But as we were talking about it, we decided that the reason might be this - because of computers, text-messaging, cel-phones and God knows what else, young people are never, ever disconnected from their peers. Peers are the center of most kids' lives - they give them the most joy and fitting into that group is the cause of the most anxiety.

Before the day of constant communication, there was space to be free of that. Oh, it might still be in your head as you worried about it, but you couldn't constantly be IM'ing or texting about who went where with who and who wasn't included, or worrying about the image that you're presenting.

For a lot of young people, that space - the space to really be free and consider yourself apart from anyone else's eyes or ears - has disappeared.

No wonder they're tense.

One for your shelves

The following is an excerpt from chapter five of Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. I've been wanting to pick it up, and after reading this and a few other excepts think that one day soon it will find it's way into my hands.

Anyone thinking about becoming Catholic is forewarned. Must reading is a little book by Thomas Day, a modern classic, Why Catholics Can't Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste. It is both comic and sad. Cradle Catholics read it laughing through their tears. Converts brace themselves. Day sends up chatty priests who emcee the Mass as though it were their own live talk show, song leaders who challenge anyone else to sing, and happy-clappy ditties that might embarrass preschoolers. There is, to cite but one of hundreds, "To Be Alive":

To be alive and feeling free
And to have everyone in your family
To be alive in every way
Oh how great it is
To be alive.

Be forewarned. "Convert stories" have been a major genre in Catholic popular literature. That has been less so in recent years because, as we have seen, some Catholics assume there is a tension, even a contradiction, between ecumenism and conversion. "Why," it is asked, "would you want to become a Catholic when we Catholics have only now learned how wonderful Lutheranism is?" There are compelling theological reasons for becoming Catholic. Not so long ago, convert stories typically stressed the compelling aesthetic attractions of Catholicism. People such as Thomas Merton were drawn to the Church by the beauty, the solemnity, the ceremony, the dignity of the worship. The word commonly used was "mystery."

Merton, writing a long while ago, described the genius of Gregorian chant:

It is an austere warmth, the warmth of Gregorian chant. It is deep beyond ordinary emotion, and that is one reason why you never get tired of it. It never wears you out by making a lot of cheap demands on your sensibilities. Instead of drawing you out into the open field of feelings where your enemies, the devil and your own imagination and the inherent vulgarity of your own corrupted nature, can get at you with their blades and cut you to pieces, it draws you within, where you are lulled in peace and recollection and where you find God.

Read more, especially the last paragraph.

Words

"Words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think."

- Lord Byron (1788-1824), from "Don Juan"

Remembering days gone by

I'm heading to KC on June 23 to play in Rob's Memorial Golf tourney again this year. I made it the first year but the last two years we have been on vacation during the same weekend. So this year I'm heading down by myself to meet up with some of the good friends of my past to help the wife and the children of one of my best friends...Rob. I'll probably drive back on Saturday night of the 24th instead of staying for two nights as Sunday is Little League Day at the Lincoln Saltdogs game and I promised I'd take a big bunch of kids. The 23rd is Rob's parent's 40th anniversary and they are throwing a shindig for everyone who makes it. They are fantastic people who were "adoptive" parents of so many of us in college and beyond.

If you look through the site you'll see two pics of me from that first golf outing. I'm in the huge group picture at the golf course in the front row, and I'm pictured in one of the auction group photos. I am the one that took the pics of the gang at the bar afterwards so I'm not in those. You'll also see one of me from Homecoming 1989...after a night of too many beers and too little sleep....hehehe.

I miss Rob. Four years ago this summer....still hard to believe. That was a 48 hour period that saw the loss of Rob, and of our unborn son. I just reread his widow's letter to him on this website and it still affects me deeply. Cindy is/was a good friend of ours too, and from the moment they started dating, you knew it was something special. Even when they fought (like cats and dogs), you knew it was no biggie. Tyler is the same age as my oldest son Nolan, 10, and little Emily will be 4 soon. She was just two weeks old when her daddy was killed...and judging from the photos, both of them still very much have Rob's eyes, and I'm sure much more, alive inside of them.

Another time and place

I'll be honest...sometimes I wish this was still going on in our church. I've never been able to attend a Latin Mass, but know of one parish in Lincoln that celebrates it...I just have never been able to attend. This Washington Post article does a succinct job in summing up what some would consider a "loss" in Catholicism, sacrificed to the god of modernism.

The sounds are few and particular. Latin is the language of prayer, and the only ones who speak it during the service are the nearly inaudible priest and the Gregorian Chant Choir that performs on the third Sunday of each month. Robed altar servers -- there are as many as 10 -- ring bells several times during the hour-long service. Pews creak and shoes shuffle as some 400 people kneel and stand, kneel and stand.

But mostly there is a powerful silence, a seriousness created by the absence of contemporary church: no responsive readings, no guitars, no congregants walking to a microphone to read from Scripture or to make bingo announcements. There is just a centuries-old script, which dictates the near-constant, intricate movements of the altar servers -- circling the altar, kneeling, pressing hands together, bowing -- as well as the position of the priest, whose back is to parishioners. Together, everyone faces East, acknowledging that Jesus is the true dawn.

This scene is rare in the United States, as only a small percentage of Catholic churches have permission from their bishops to celebrate a Mass that was essentially set aside in the 1960s. That's when the church council known as Vatican II decreed that Catholics pray in their local language rather than Latin. The decision opened the door to transforming a completely God-oriented rite that had been the standard since the mid-1500s to a modern service marked by audience participation and simpler choreography. To some, the shift symbolized the slide into liberalism and ambiguity.

[snip]

But in such a service, "there are no personalities," says Monsignor K. Bartholomew Smith, pastor at Saint Mary's. No chitchat, no spontaneity. The purpose is to be removed completely from the mundane. And indeed, when the service ends and you step outside, onto a run-down Chinatown street corner, it does seem that you have just been in another time and place. (emphasis mine)

Batwoman

Oh good grief.....

Pride of Place: Gregorian Chant

Catholic Exchange had the following article on the use of Gregorian Chant in the Church. I myself have bemoaned the lack of use of chant and really miss it. On the occasions that we do use it in our parish I never fail to feel uplifted and recapture that sense of the divine that quite frankly is missing in so many of the post-V2 tunes that pass for hymns these days. I've written before about Chant, and have researched for myself the writings of the Vatican II document Sacrosanctum Concilium (116) that states “the Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as especially suited to the Roman liturgy; therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” No where does V2 state that "Chant is out...it's boring...it's old...and we're new and hip now so we must use guitar/tambourine/banjo-riddled feel-good esteem-building ditties."

 

Would that we'd stop trying to be like the world, that is unceasingly flocking towards the "new" and the "modern", and keep our foot firmly placed on the strong foundations of our predecessors.

So now I was in the odd situation where I was hearing Gregorian chant at home, but not in church. That was until one Friday night during Lent at Stations of the Cross. I knelt before the tabernacle to pray before the start of Stations. And that is when I heard it. First it echoed through the church. Then it echoed through my heart and soothed my soul with songs so lovely and so joyous that that there might well have been choirs of angels singing and lifting me upon their wings for flight. This sacred music lifted my prayers to a higher plane.

 

But it did more than that. It rooted those in the church with a solid sense of spiritual unity and rich tradition. At one point, I glanced quickly around at fellow worshippers. With faces all aglow and sparkling eyes, they let me know with approving nods that their joy was equal to, if not surpassing mine. Because Gregorian chant is the traditional music of the Church, it unites us to the Church. This unity was there that night at Stations because an individual in church said yes to Rome, and in saying yes to Rome, thus said yes to Christ. Just as Our Lady surrendered all to God in her "fiat" (“let it be done to me according to thy word”) and Christ surrendered all to God at Gethsemane (“Father, not my will but Thy will be done”), so we are called to surrender everything to the Father — even the music that we play in church and at Mass.

 

[snip]

 

Gregorian chant opens the door between heaven and earth and rather than bringing the world into the church (which some pop Christian music can) it lifts us up toward heaven. Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI (then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) expounded on the problems with pop music in his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy: “Pop music...is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and...has to be described as a cult of the banal” (p. 148). And because it is banal, no matter the good intent, pop music can stifle our yearning for holiness and block our journey in spiritual depth.

 

Unlike popular music, Gregorian chant is not banal. It is holy. And because it is holy, it helps make us holy. Gregorian chant is named after Pope Gregory I, and is part of our rich Catholic heritage. The sacredness of this music has stuck to the church and helped to transform the souls of saints through the ages. Just as the sacredness of this music has stuck to the church, so it sticks to the soul.

The Restrainer

This meditation TRULY gives us pause...and something to pray and to think about. I've thought this often, especially over the past year, but this author really states it well.