First Published: 2022 October 18
Wow! Two months ago today I talked about when I shared a song I wrote. It’s so weird to me how in those two months I went from terrified of playing a song in front of a single friend to willing to just play a half-finished song at an open mic.
However, it was generally well received, and it was fun to have the band back together.1
mostly↩︎
First Published: 2022 October 16
2 Timothy 4:2 “proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching”
Today’s readings remind us of the Gospel admonition to pray ceaselessly. More than that, though, we are reminded of how our faith lives do not affect us alone.
When Moses lowers his hands from exhaustion, it is not only he who suffers. All of Israel is pushed back. And yet, we do not have to fight alone. When he grows weary, Aaron and Hur support his arms.
We are also reminded of how, if we truly are living solely for Christ, our actions would be. How often in our day to day lives do we stand obstinately in the face of some inconvenience to us? How much worse is an eternity without the Lord, either for us or for those around?
First Published: 2022 October 14
Well, I have once again fallen behind on both poems and writing blog posts.1 There’s a Tumblr page that posts weekly prompts for short writings, and last Friday I responded to it with a poem. I kind of like the idea of continuing to do that, and sonnet form is starting to get boring to me.
So, it feels like a good time to break back out villanelles. I’ve written about them before, but they remain a fascinating poetic form to me, for all that they’re significantly harder to write.
also stretching, but that’s not relevant here.↩︎
First Published: 2022 October 12
Yesterday I gave the talk that I’ve been talking about for a while. I think it went well, and I got mostly positive feedback. It’s very weird to be over it though, I feel like I didn’t do anywhere as good of a job as I wanted, and I only read like half of what I was planning to read.
Still, it happened!
First Published: 2022 October 5
Currently I’m struggling with a theology question. Apparently animals don’t have immortal souls. So far as I can tell, we know this to be true that because:
St. Thomas Aquinas said so
The Church has generally agreed about it
Neither of those is sufficient in my mind to require my submission.
My logic for why I would believe animals have souls which go to heaven is1 a relatively straightforward logical chain.2
Prior to Original Sin there was no death
We die because our ancestors, Adam and Eve, committed the sin, and we inherit it as their children. This has been stated by a Pope as necessary to belief, though in the context of whether we can believe humanity sprang from multiple sources.
There were animals in the Garden
There are only a few conclusions I can draw from this chain. Either:3
There was death before Original Sin, and that Bible verse means something different in context/doesn’t exist.4
We have dominion over other animals, so when we became mortal, so did they. Lacking anything else immortal, they were then condemned to destruction
The Lord chose to create beings that would die in the Garden
When we were forced out of the Garden, the Lord created new animals which were mortal and lacked souls
Anyways, fixing my router just now took out most of my interest in solving my theological quandry, so off it goes into the ether of thoughts I sometimes have. I may revisit this some other time.
First Published: 2022 October 3
I mentioned recently that I learned how to repair an accordion. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned here yet that I own an accordion, but I do.
More or less, one row of the bass reeds had fallen into the bellows of my instrument.1 Now that I know how to, fixing it is as simple as opening the bass side up by removing six pins and slotting the row back into place. However, I did not know that at the time, and ended up spending around two hours to get to that point of knowledge. I’m glad for the mistakes I made, because they’ll help me do better in the future!
no I don’t know how↩︎
First Published: 2022 October 2
Habakkuk 1:2a “How long, O LORD, must I cry for help and you do not listen?”
Today’s readings call us to remember the cost of discipleship. These are not the costs that have been coming up in prior weeks: temporal pain and hatred, loss of material wealth, and so on. Instead, these readings remind us that the Lord’s ways are mysterious, and we are called to remain steadfast in spite of, and perhaps due to the trials of faith.
Habakkuk asks the same question that has plagued non-believers for ages: if the Lord is all-good and all-powerful, why is there suffering in the world? More to the point, why is there suffering among the faithful. I’m sure we can all understand how the Lord, especially as seen in the Old Covenant, would allow suffering for the faithless, but why the faithful.
These readings don’t seek to answer that question. We are given pieces of it, certainly, as in the Psalm, where the response calls us to keep from hardening our heart when the Lord speaks. We are directly compared to the Israelites at Meribah, where they questioned the Lord’s goodness even as he brought water from stone. As ridiculous as it seems to be dubious in the face of such an obvious miracle, how often does that happen to us?
White light sent through a lens diffracts into a rainbow of colors because each wavelength moves slightly differently through a medium. How wonderful is it that we were given such a world to work in, where we can see what colors everything shining are made of? How often do we forget the beauty in the natural world because it’s been buried under layers of dry material?
Christ himself tells us in the Gospel that even when we do all that we are commanded, that is no cause for reward. Instead, we have merely done what is expected of us. In what we are expected to do is see the Lord’s Creation without a hardness of heart. Seeing the beauty of the world He created is certainly something that I need to work on.
First Published: 2022 October 1
Hooray! We made it another month.
My goals were:
Blog daily
Stretch daily
Manage to run the entire doctoral dash
Continue keeping up with my BiaY buddy
Write a poem every day
Journal every day
Lets see how we did:
Nope! I wrote 12 blog posts. Oof.
Again, I stretched maybe once.
I did it! Woo! It was kind of fun in retrospect.
I’m now something like 60 days behind oof.
I wrote 10 sonnets, and started another song. Let’s call that an even dozen.
I didn’t journal even once. Whoops.
Moving forward into next month:
Blog daily. Eventually this goal will happen.
Stretch daily. I’m going to stretch right after this, just so I make sure to do it.
Figure out how to repair/improve my accordion case. I made some notes today, and I think I should be able to get some of it done by the end of the month.
Write a poem every day. I did feel like the poems I wrote helped me ease into sleep, and they certainly help me write songs better.
Finish the newest song I’m working on.
Make progress on catching up for BiaY.
Fill in at least 3 more items on my 24 for 24.
That seems like a nice set of goals. Let’s see how it goes!
First Published: 2022 September 26
As I mentioned about a month ago, I wrote and shared a song with some friends. Last Monday, I performed the song for the first time in public. It was a good time, even though it didn’t go exactly how I’d hoped.
That is, the tempo got a little messed up between me and the other band members, and the mic placement wasn’t quite right. Still it was very rewarding to share something I wrote, as terrifying as it is. After the show, I realized that the concern I had about being booed was completely unrealistic. Even if the song had been horrible1, the vibes at the open mic are very supportive generally.
The song was reviewed as incredibly sad, which is a little funny to me as I think about it more. Certainly the lyrics are sad, and I performed it in a sad way2, but when played, even at tempo, on an accordion or piano, it’s very clear that the piece is just in a standard major key. My friends told me it was enjoyable, and that’s nice.
One of them sent me a message after the show saying that it was brave of me to play the song, which was nice. Anyways, I’m excited to keep playing with this band in the future.3
First Published: 2022 September 25
Luke 16:25 “Abraham replied, “My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.””
Every so often as I read the Bible, I somewhat understand where the prosperity gospel comes from. Then you get readings like today. It’s hard to think of a harsher condemnation of that heresy, even coming more than a thousand years earlier. This Gospel tells the tale of Lazarus, a poor man, and a rich man.
We know nothing about why Lazarus was poor, or why the rich man was rich. It’s possible that the rich man made all his wealth only in the most noble of ways. The rich man never chides Lazarus in the parable. He never says a single thing ill to him. It’s not even clear in the parable if Lazarus ever even asked for aid from the rich man.
At the end of the day, however, all that only leads to further the message of the parable: it is not enough to give when you are asked. If there is a hungry person at your door you are to feed them. When you see the sick, you are to care for them. It’s both an incredibly simple and incredibly difficult command from the Gospel today.
And yet, for as radical as that command seems, we see that it is not a new command from Christ. The First Reading today is from the Prophet Amos, who speaks similarly about the rich in Zion.
To tie this back to the beginning of my post, the prosperity gospel tells us that the rich are beloved by the Lord and the poor deserve their lot. Richness is an implication of holiness, and poverty of wealth is a sign of poverty of Grace. Yet, this reading tells us in no uncertain terms that this claim is utterly contrary to the Lord’s Will.