1. Investigation report on killings in Afghanistan.
2. On enfranchisement of felons.
3. Considering a life well ended.
4. Africa and climate.
5. Vaccine lines, politics, and Gitmo.
6. Truth to power … for real.
7. Ditto.
8. One, one year review.
9. Who “owns” the Zeitgeist.
10. Signing petitions should not be a private act.
11. Corruption and the GM buyout.
12. Pensions and GM. It was a Soviet (Marxist?) conceit that manual labor was to be esteemed more highly than white collar labor. It seems that persists here too.
13. GM here too.
14. Heh.
15. Cash for clunkers … almost worse than you can imagine.
16. On marriage, east and west.
17. Holodomor.

In the In the First Circle: The First Uncensored Edition, there is a striking scene that I’d like to highlight. Most of the characters in the book inhabit one of the Moscow Sharaskas in the early 50s. A Sharaska was a special prison camp, unlike the work camps, the conditions of these camps were not so lethal. The conditions, while far far better than in the work camps, was liveable. These camps were primarily for those individuals who had skills, glass-blowing, engineering, electronics, mathematics, and so on that the regime decided to put them to forced work conditions in their speciality in order to further the regime. One of the major projects ongoing in the book was developing a working scrambler/descrambler system for their analog phones.

In the sharaska, the hours were long each day … and the work has very closely supervised by non-prison workers because the prisoners could not be trusted. Yet, apparently the guards and watchers could not be compelled to work the long hours every day and Sunday evening at 6pm until early in the morning Monday the prisoners were locked in and left to their own devices.

For the prisoners a day off meant that the heavy iron doors were locked from the outside, after which no one came in to summon a prisoner or haul him out. For those few short hours not a sound, not a word, not an image could filter through from the outside world to trouble a man’s mind. That was what their day of rest meant — the whole world outside, the universe with all its stars, the planet with its continents, capital cities with their blazing lights, the whole state with some at their banquets and others working voluntary extra shifts, sank into oblivion, turned into an ocean of darkness barely discernible through the barred windows by the dead yellow half-light from the lights on the prison grounds.
[…]
Those who sailed on in the ark were weightless and had only weightless thoughts. They were neither hungry nor full. They knew no happiness and so felt no anxiety about losing it. Their heads were not busy with trivial professional concerns, intrigues, the struggle for promotion; their shoulders were not burdened with worries about places to live, fuel, bread, and clothing for their children. Love, which has brought man delight and torment from the beginning of time, could neither thrill nor distress them. Their sentences were so long that not one of them as yet gave any thought to the years after his release. Men of remarkable intelligence, education, and experience of life, they had nonetheless been too devoted to their families to leave much of themselves for their friends, but here they belonged only to their friends.
[…]
During those Sunday evening hours, matter and body could be forgotten. The spirit of masculine friendship and philosophy hovvered beneath the canvas vault of the ceiling.
Perhaps this was the bliss all the philosophers of antiquity had striven in vain to identify.

It seems that the prison experience of Solzhenitsyn (not accidentally) reinforces that learned from early Christian experience that ascetic suffering has its own particular rewards.

One final thought to add, from another section. “You have but one life to live” spurred some of the characters (not in the prisons) to seek pleasures, riches, and to enjoy life to the fullest.

We are people who behave naturally,” Dotnara used to say. “We don’t pretend; we wear no disguise. Whatever we want we go all out for!” As they saw it, “We are given only one life” — and so must take from life all that it has to offer.

This is countered …

The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life.
Now, with the new feeling that had ripened in him, he became aware of another law; that we are given only one conscience too.

1. Voting advice.
2. On women’s ordination.
3. Heh.
4. Reformation day, here too.
5. Criticism of IPCC by IPCC.
6. Sharia law in the Maldives.
7. Twitter and the government.
8. Power and threat.
9. Anger and the tongue.
10. Comparisons made.
11. On reading Scripture.
12. Call for a recall.
13. A Jew lauding Christians.
14. On the broken elite.

1. Advertising humor.
2. On judging others.
3. Something I need to read … but haven’t had time.
4. Wooonderful climate news.
5. Is the White House innumerate … or are they just hoping we are?  (and related from the same source … good stimulus ideas NOT!).
6. The right applauds Mr Obama here and here.
7. A false distinction on presidential fibbery.
8. Strauss and Toqueville.
9. On domestic violence.
10. More on Ms Dunn’s Mao kerfuffle.
11. The UK continues to not get the whole parent thing.
12. Today’s economy and theory.
13. Psychopath and fear.
14. The next big (stupid) health care bill noted. Here too. And here.
15. Now there’s a stupid cricket race. How many people outside the beltway have any clue about the lobby in question?
16. Scuttling Mr Obama.

Well, one benefit of excess time in airports and planes … is I’m getting some sleeping and a lot of reading done. I’ve finished the new uncensored In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and  The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century by Chantal Delsol. The latter of these books pointedly demonstrates that the political and moral philosophies which led to the great human tragedies of the 20th century have not been abandoned. The former highlights life in the maw of one of those tragedies, that being life the “first circle” in Stalin’s gulag hell. Ms Delsol writes (pg 165-6):

The equality of collectivism was a fetish, and now hman rights have been reinvented as a fetish. The twenty-first century wil have to destroy idolized images of the Good just as the ancient iconoclasts destroyed images of God — not that they stopped believing, but they rightly saw these descriptions of God as diminishments that threatened his transcendence. The idolaters in the book of Exodus (20:4-5) prefigure the modern ideologies in the sacralization of the immanent. The texts in the Old Testament on the prohibition of idols, and Kant’s writings on the human ignorance of the Good, stigmatize certain permanent temptations of human thinking, ones that returned in full force in the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century. We have yet to call them into question.

[…]

It is, however, difficult to see how the destruction of idols could be accomplished without openness toward the spiritual. The suppression of spiritual referents is precisely what conferred on secular referents their abusive status as absolutes. The return of spiritual referents alone would make possible the destruction of idols: idolatry cannot be avoided except through the recognition of transcendence.

It might be noted, that while Ms Delsol’s essay certainly indicates she is friendly to and appreciative of the Christian religious tradition, to my reading she does not present herself as a member of it. It is also interesting that I flagged this page to note … and with myself being an iconodule.

Good morning. Well, I missed a links post … due to spending an inordinate amount of time in transit. Anyhow, here we go.

1. Gender, the president and exercise … as much ado about very little.
2. History and repetition.
3. Being reviled for His name’s sake … is not exactly a bad thing, no?
4. Monasticism and Pharisaism (that is legalism). 
5. For that discussion of virtual church … liturgy and cell phones.
6. The forgotten people.
7. Brides doing weird things.
8. The climate media machine not working so well.
9. Incentives and working.
10. Morals and the olfactory senses … I wonder how Lubyanka smelled.
11. Accountability and US jurisprudence … a question.
12. Terror networking.
13. The administration and education.
14. Asian super-powers.
15. Money for the walking dead.
16. Work and faith.
17. Home and heart.
18. On elections.
19. Hmm … it seems to me Mr Biden’s popularity fades in proportion to how much he is noticed.

A number of posts at Evangel have been touching on the subject of e-Church or having a virtual parish community.

Virtual worship services lack the following features:

• Sacrifice —  A the fundamental aspect of liturgy is sacrifice. The service is our offering to God and part of that sacrifice to God is of our time and our presence. Reducing that sacrifice to sitting before your computer screen in your proverbial pajamas certainly severely diminishes if not eliminates the sacrifice involved. There is also an aspect of “standing to be counted” especially in an increasingly secular world to worship … which when done anonymously and virtually causes that aspect to be eliminates as well. Moses travelled up the mountain to write the tablets. He did not have God “wire” him his message because he could not be bothered to go to God himself.
• Holiness — “Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Liturgy is (or should be) a participation in the Holy. For myself, I fail to see how participation and contact with the Holy can be done by wire.
• Contact with the liturgy and with the community. We have 5 senses. A virtual service may serve, poorly, two (hearing and sight). Touch, taste and smell are sensory channels missing in form the virtual sensory pallet. Humans remain more primitive and essential in our connection with these other senses. Hugging, kissing, touching, even smelling the presence of our neighbour remain an essential part of the human community experience. If the human essence could be reduced to a purely rational floating intellect then virtual community and church might work. Yet man, created in the image of God is not purely rational and the organism and the meat of us is part of that image.
• Isolation in modernity is exacerbated by virtual contact. It is a bug not a feature of the modern world. Moving church to the virtual realm does nothing to reverse this.

How does the concept of virtual church confront these aspects of worship? Why or how do these aspects become inessential?

Good morning.

1. In the catalogue of 20th century horror, “the” 1971 genocide is one I missed.
2. Bloggers hoping for release (from prison).
3. Climate change … some time ago (of course caused by early medieval industrial gases).
4. Monetary conflict.
5. A question (or a remark about) the left.
6. faith and knowledge.
7. Of democracy and the world.
8. Looking at cricket races. That particular “race” noted here too. (for those coming late to the party, cricket race is my term for an opinion poll).
9. The end of the (dead tree) press.
10. Mr Chavez.
11. Healthcare and a key question.
12. On All Hallow’s eve.
13. Joe Carter has a question.

Good morning.

1. Being old fashioned and all.
2. Art.
3. Another prize awarded for freedom of thought.
4. Of Children in the world.
5. The “public’s opinion is irrelevant” … somebody is forgetting the election process.
6. If anybody has links to argument defending the White House on this, I’d be interested.
7. Linked without comment. 😀
8. On TARP, will there be an apology?
9. On Heidigger.
10. Change is hard to do.
11. The canon.
12. Mohler on the ELCA.
13. Connecting contraception and abortion.
14. Logic and abortion.

1. Hmm, the last two frames makes me wonder how often God feels this way about us, “I’m going to save you … and then kill you!” (out of frustration over our stupidity).
2. Stalin, Russia and memory.
3. Sin and Scripture.
4. Speaking of sin …
5. Iran and fission.
6. Succinct.
7. Cause or effect?
8. WSD or WOT?
9. Paternalism in government.
10. Small states.
11. Reality and video.
12. Of Mr Mailer tweaking a crowd.
13. Afghanistan and Mr Emmanuel … more criticism here too.
14. Tax revenue.
15. Don’t hold your breath waiting.

Last weekend our parish celebrated an ecclesiastical birthday of sorts^* and I’d like to share some thoughts in the wake of that event. How did we commemorate this event, that is besides the obligatory brunch? Read the rest of this entry

1. Meta-links, Ben Myers has a bunch of links to good reading.
2. Jews in uniform … outside Israel.
3. A warning to the West.
4. Georgia on Russia and the Ukraine.
5. On fasting and the spiritual life.
6. On Ms Dunn and the Mao thing.
7. A physicist on the brain.
8. The story behind a song.
9. Finding evil in gender, heh.
10. Our hypocrite in the White House.
11. In Pakistan … unrest.
12. On the dollar, here and here.
13. David and the sheep.

John Mark Reynolds in a comment to my (first!) post at Evangel offered:

A child would view Favre well . . . but a real man would see him better. He would glory in his manly exploits as an image of excellence and be provoked to go and do likewise in his own chosen profession.

This is in short hoping a hope (or a recognition) that Favre (or pick your favorite athlete) and his exploits might do good in us by inspiring the Greek virtue arete in us. However that leads to the question … can one find support for the type of excellence of the sort Mr Favre would inspire … as being good (or Good) in Scripture (or enlarge that to church tradition for the non-sola-scriptura crowd). I think the answer is … no … but I might like to be convinced otherwise. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. A book noted … (and purchased … at least by me).
2. It’s the getting from there to here that might be problematic, seeing as we aren’t simply sulphur-based sophonts.
3. Development.
4. Watching water drip … and being close to God.
5. Too big to fail … and some of the complexity involved in finding what that means.
6. Noting a little ODS on the right.
7. Wrangling with Pascal’s wager.
8. Witches and the media.
9. More than a little weird.
10. Christ and culture.
11. Evolutionarily speaking the trick is to convince the other guy not to have kids.
12. Corruption going whole hog.

These culture wars aren’t new. Via the magic of RSS and Google Reader … a reply to Jared comes apropos post from the Desert (and I quote in full, because that’s sort of the point):

It was said concerning Abba Agathon …that some monks came to find him, having heard tell of his great discernment. Wanting to see if he would lose his temper, they said to him, “Aren’t you that Agathon who is said to be a fornicator and a proud man?” “Yes, it is very true,” he answered. They resumed, “Aren’t you that Agathon who is always talking nonsense?” “I am.” Again they said, “Aren’t you Agathon the heretic?” But at that, he replied, “I am not a heretic.” So they asked him, “Tell us why you accepted everything we cast you, but repudiated this last insult.” He replied, “The first accusations I take to myself, for that is good for my soul. But heresy is separation from God. Now I have no wish to be separated from God.” At this saying they were astonished at his discernment and returned, edified.

Aren’t you one of those right winger Christians who [hates gays, is a hypocrite, hates women … does or says or thinks X, Y and Z] ?? Well, we might say  … yes, unless they accuse of separation from God.

[Update]: I should add the reason we might say yes is not because it is true (which is usually not the case) but because it is good for our souls to bear the burden of false accusation.