Pro Patria

Memorial Day, here in the U.S. (and among expats just about everywhere else), is a day set aside to honor fellow Americans who have fought and died in defense of this country. Any family that's been here for as little as a single generation may well have someone who's worn a military uniform, and been buried in one.

My father was born in Germany on the eve of the "thirteen years of madness", as he called it, of World War II; his oldest son – my brother – retired from the USMC, having joined in 1986, seen action in Desert Storm and, twenty-some years later, served as well in Iraq.

He's still living (and regularly twisting my arm for the next 5K- and 10-K run), so we'll set him and his service aside to honor on Veterans' Day – his, and many, many other members of this family who live, have lived, in the United States.

On my mother's side of the family, her great-grandparents – her father's grandparents – came stateside from Ireland directly, and via Nova Scotia. This was the 1840s; they weren't fleeing the potato famine (County Leitrim didn't raise that crop… I think), but rather as Catholics rejecting the requirement they pay taxes to support the (Anglican) Church of Ireland.

They settled in quickly, joining with some French immigrants, sinking deep roots in the greater-Boston area of Massachusetts, and finding work in factories, stores, the clergy… and in military service. And some of these never came back home to Massachusetts, New Jersey, and further domestic homes-sweet-homes.

Today – long overdue – I salute them, family all, whose American blood, poured out around the world, has served this country. They gave up their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor – most especially their lives – in so doing, with eyes open: stepping up in the full spirit of that last sentence of the American Declaration of Independence.

• Emile Joseph Drach, 1844-1862: (His oldest sister was my grandfather's grandmother.) Right around his eighteenth birthday, Emile Drach enlisted in the Thirty-First Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, K Company, to serve and preserve the Union. By December he was on the front lines in Louisiana, where he was killed; as related at a blog put up to honor the regiment:

On December 10, a detachment led by 1st Lt. Nelson F. Bond of Ware was ordered to relieve part of a Maine company at Desert (pron. Des Sair) Station on the Jackson railroad. […] [A] much larger Confederate force appeared before the cooking fires were even blazing. Part of the unit took cover and fired at the rebels, but only half had serviceable guns, as the others had been soaked when a canoe overturned on the outward journey. After some of Bond’s men were wounded, it became apparent that the situation was hopeless, and he ordered the rest to scatter and try to make their way back to safety. […] Emil Drach (pron. Drake) was instantly killed, the first member of the 31st to die in combat. Three quite detailed narratives of this action survive, and each gives a noticeably different account of how Drach died.

In the hundred-fifty-five years since Emile's untimely death, at least a dozen members of the greater family have been named "Emile Joseph" in his honor, including my grandfather, his oldest son, and his oldest son in turn.

• Michael Leonard, ~1871-1898: (A daughter of one of his paternal aunts married my grandmother's youngest brother.) He was killed in the Spanish-American War; he was the son of Irish immigrants, and just seventeen years old.
• Joseph Simpson, 1884-1918~: (He was my grandmother's oldest brother.) He died in (or about) 1918 from the effects of poisonous gas in World War I… a notorious theater for chemical weaponry.
• Donald Vautrinot, 1919-1942: (His grandmother was Emile's oldest sister.) He joined the Army Air Corps in 1940, and was captured by the Japanese at Bataan in the Philippines. As a prisoner of war, he was one of sixty to eighty thousand captives forced to march/walk over sixty tortuous miles to a prison camp. Unlike over five hundred fellow Americans, he survived the march; he died in the prison camp. The forced march has been ruled a war crime.
• George F. Brandt, Jr., 1923-1944: (I'm still drawing out his line; he's a cousin in turn of one of my genealogist cousins – her great-grandmother and mine were sisters, and were nieces of Emile Joseph Drach.) He was a USAAF staff sergeant stationed in the Mediterranean; in a book on her/our extended family, my cousin records that he was "[l]ost when his plane (a B-25) went down in a lake in Italy". An Italian website adds that the plane "exploded in flight, and crashed into Lake Lesina, north of Foggia. None of the occupants survived." (esplose in volo e precipitò nel lago di Lesina a nord di Foggia. Nessuno degli occupanti sopravvisse)
• John August Breder, Jr., ~1924-1944: (His great-grandfather's brother married Emile's oldest sister.) He died  in the Philippines from wounds received at the Battle of Leyte; he was about age twenty – barely two years older than Emile.

My title here comes from one of the verses in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology… in counterpoint.

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.

When I felt the bullet enter my heart

I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail

For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,

Instead of running away and joining the army.

Rather a thousand times the county jail

Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,

And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria".

What do they mean, anyway?

I don't have the least suspicion that any of the half-dozen courageous men listed above (and there are plenty more) would rather have sat in the county jail than given their all for their home and families.

Treasuring – and Treasure IN – Your Family

Heh; one of the fringe benefits of a having a blog with no readers is that nobody notices when you're away for a while. If I had an ego worth noting, that plain fact would wound it. Yet, instead, for me it means… no pressure to crank out copy.

These last few weeks have seen me happily busy at copying and translating information on my family's history… making me, essentially, your average, armchair, genial genealogist, I suppose. Till just the last couple days, my attention's been entirely on my father's side of the tree, scaling the huge 400-plus-page resource of a volume Dad's cousin – a real, lifelong genealogist – printed privately in Germany in 1989.

There aren't too many skeletons in the closet (I might tell you sometime, though, about an ancestor whose brother murdered their sister and widowed mother… on Hallowe'en, 1601). There aren't any blindingly great saints, either – mostly just plain folks, as plain folks say… but there are still touching stories.

For instance, there's the sad note that in 1784, one young Johanna was killed when the carriage she was riding in overturned. She was not quite twenty-four, and engaged to be married. There are mothers dying young, babies buried, sons gone off to war and never returning.

One sweet story recounts how in 1684, her hometown burning down, teenaged Sophie was robbed of a treasured little prayer-book by a soldier (hired to guard, not plunder?). Unsurprisingly, the soldier had no use for it, so he gave the book to his commanding officer. The officer, in turn, gave it to his brother, a (Lutheran) seminary-student. Shortly after his appointment as pastor, he was visiting a more-veteran minister, whose widowed daughter was there with her two children. The daughter was astonished to recognize the book – she was Sophie, of course, some years older now. And the next June, she and the new pastor married… and she got her book back, too.

There are lighter-hearted moments as well, of course. The genealogist's German is very dry, strictly factual, delineates basic details and moves on. He almost never steps in with a personal note, other than in two or three instances when he's sharing his recollection of his grandmother and grandfather.

I mentioned here, years ago, his moan over a church official who'd used the church's seventeenth-century registry book's pages (with their irreplaceable information on births and baptisms and weddings and so on)… to light his pipe.

He – the genealogist, not the smoker – also grumbled of another pastor (1740s-70s) whose handwriting in his church's registry-book was "the most terrible of all pastors'". Have you seen eighteenth-century German handwriting? Here's a sample:

 

…and that's fairly clearly written. Classic German script quickly begins to look like so much Pitman or Cyrillic… brother! My father's papers include a good number of pages just as indecipherable… so my heart's with our late genealogist – badly-written German has got be keeping a lot of Augenärzte in business.

Anyway, I wanted to get back to the topic of rationalism here, after a look also at neoliberal capitalism… so let me wrap up this detour (arguably, not too tightly).

Right in time for St. Patrick's Day Friday, I began at last to dig into and outline information from my mother's side of the family, based on info sent her by her cousin some years ago. And, begorrah, there are the Irish she's always been understandably proud of. They came over to the U.S. in the 1840s (and some several decades earlier), one group tarrying awhile in Nova Scotia, and others landing directly in New York and Massachusetts.

What a find!

So I spent two days writing up a 20-plus-page document, summarizing about seven generations of that Irish / French / Scottish side, and drawing up a nicely colored Excel-based family tree for us more visual folks, and sent them over to sister Alicia, who – years ago – had herself drafted a tree, with Mother's help, as a school project. She'd asked me to look for it, and I saw it once in Mother's papers a while back, but lost it; it's still there, but till it rises to the top again… these two documents will tide her over nicely.

I'd gotten into Mother's papers in the first place, just a few weeks ago, when our (other) sister Mew asked me to track down her baby photos from mumble years ago. It was in the two-week process of going through (and organizing) Mother's letters and photos and articles, that I found her cousin's genealogical work – and baby Mew's photo.

That had become important, because – as of less than a month ago – Mew is now a grandmother, and our mother a great-grandmother… and, yep, baby Leila at a few days old looks just like her grandmother did.

I first got to translating my dad's family-history book because no one else in this family, on this side of the Atlantic, can read and understand German (American-born Mother being the other exception) – and there was stuff in that book that deserved not to be bound up (pardon the pun) in that book, but released and shared with the rest of the family; be treasured.

Well, the same is true of my mother's own trove. Here's Hubert Humphrey photographed from maybe a dozen feet away; there's grinning WWII Pacific-Theater ace Joe Foss (probably) in leather cap and flight jacket. There's Eleanor Roosevelt at a local DuPont wedding…

Mother had taken the Humphrey photo in the sixties, and years earlier interviewed then-young senator JFK, among many paths boldly crossed in her long journalism career. Her oldest of three brothers (all since deceased), flyboy colleague of airman Joe, took the Foss and Roosevelt pictures. Much, much later, their brother, Xavier, wrote up a fun recollection of that event… and, with at least two different takes of the then- First Lady, that writeup's in Mother's papers.

So I pulled a copy out of her files, and brought it to her this evening to read before bedtime; she was totally engrossed in the recollection when I left.

It's never too late, and never too soon, to take the treasure out of the dusty chests, bring it into the light of day and cool of evening, and enjoy it. Blow off the dust; share the wealth – that's the real reason it's there.

Another Look: There Has Been None Greater

As I sometimes do, I'm repeating a blog from a few years back, owing to what today represents in the Church Calendar. Though initially somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the meditation does take a deeper look into a humble, yet fiery, man we could do quite well to emulate, yet never hope to equal... let alone surpass.

Want to have a little fun with someone who fancies that they know their Christianity, Christian history, theology, Bible, and so on?

Just ask them who the greatest man in the Bible was.

Jesus?

Wrong.

Really! Jesus was a man, yes, and all man, and human – or he could not have died. But he was also divine, or he could not have risen again. Unique to all of creation and beyond, Jesus has two natures: the divine and the human. This was clarified in the fifth century. I'll spare you the heavy theology on the hypostatic union, the Council of Chalcedon (and the first Nicean Council), monophysitism, arianism, modalism, and other issues – suffice it to say that this was settled over 1,500 years ago. You and I are humans, the dog over there's a dog, a planet's a planet (unless it's Pluto): each has its own, single, defining nature. But Jesus has two.

So, no, Jesus was not the greatest man in the Bible because he wasn't only a man.

Moses? Good try; no. Elijah? Jeremiah? Jonah? Adam??

Heh-heh. Nope.

If you trust the authority of Jesus as a teacher (as he was addressed in his own time; the word in Hebrew is "rabbi", or even "rabboni"; I believe the Aramaic word is the same), you have the answer. Look up Matthew 11:11 – if you're a Protestant, you've got the page marked and the words underlined. If you're a Catholic, just look over that Protestant's shoulder, since you probably aren't sure where to find Matthew.

Right there it is. Jesus says, "Among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist." As I said in my previous posting, you wanna call him a liar?

Today the Church celebrates the birth of John the Baptist (officially, "The Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist"): half a year before Christmas. What does that have to do with it? Well, this is because Jesus was conceived when Elizabeth, John's mother, was six months pregnant with John.

So for this week (and maybe a bit longer), the header for this blog is a detail from Fra Angelico's fifteenth-century painting, "The Naming of John the Baptist". (Likely when you read this, though, I'll have changed the header image again.)

Anyway, I propounded on Elizabeth's pregnancy (among the usual array of other topics) back on Mothers' Day, so I won't repeat it here. This painting, now, corresponds to the scene that followed after John's birth (you can find in Luke 1:57-80), where Zechariah (Elizabeth's husband) has wised up after nine months of being struck deaf-mute. He'd literally had the fear of God thrust on him by scoffing at an angel's announcement of Elizabeth's unexpected pregnancy, so now quite obediently he does exactly as that angel had commanded, and writes down that his son must be called John.

With his tongue loosened back up and ego refreshingly long-since humbled, he breaks into a sweet, inspired prayer that beautifully parallels Mary's own canticle, the Magnificat. My guess is that he never lived to see his son's ministry as a preacher in the desert, but there can be no doubt that he drew great comfort in knowing there was a clear and beautiful destiny that would unfold for his son… who, in growing up under God's "tender mercy" (I like that phrase), would "guide our feet into the path of peace" as the greatest man ever born.

Absolute Awe... and a Giddy Giggle

I watched President Obama's (and Vice-President Biden's) swearing-in and inauguration today with my mother, from the dining hall of her rehabilitation-center, where her recovery from last summer's strokes continues. I don't know when I've ever before had tears in my eyes at a world-historic event — at personal-historic, sure (weddings, funerals, and so on)… but not something like this. Man! There is a heady, giddy, numbing, eye-blinking thrill and anticipation about this, a goosebumps of witness to the stupendous transition this step into a new administration and era it is. 

But I'll leave the commentary to the professionals; it's been all over all your media, folks, and will be for a long, long time. Let me, instead, hang onto the lighter-hearted giddiness of it all, and turn to one of these professionals. Gene Weingarten's weekly column in the Washington (DC) Post magazine has the great header of "Below the Beltway"; this past Sunday's commentary carried the title of "The Wrong Address: An Inaugural for the Speech-Impaired". Let me stick my neck out and quote it in full, adding of course © 2009 The Washington Post Company. I'd link to it here… but the Post will want you to sign up for free membership to view the content; the link above is to Weingarten's appearance in the St. Petersburg (FL) Times instead:  

WASHINGTON — Some people were unnerved to learn that Barack Obama has chosen a 27-year-old speechwriter for his inaugural address. I'm not. Obama could have made a much worse choice. He could have chosen me. 

My fellow Americans: 

Four score and seven years ago, Wilhelm Furtwängler became conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I realize that's a boring fact, but I wanted to start this speech with the "four score and seven" thing, and it turns out that 1922 was a really uneventful year. Sorry. 

Some of you may be wondering why I stand here today in a floral dashiki, the traditional ceremonial garb of the tribesmen of Western Africa. Well, you can relax. I am just messing with your heads. 

A better question might be why I have just taken the oath of office with my hand not on a Bible but on what appears to be, and in fact is, a banana cream pie. 

The answer: Change. I promised it, and I am going to deliver it — change in all facets of American life, including the humorless solemnity of our governmental and financial leaders. These are the same leaders who, while wearing somber suits and grave countenances and comporting themselves with utmost dignity, have, for the past many years, held all our heads in the toilet and flushed. 

So, change is good. Besides [sticking finger in pie, tasting it], I like banana cream pie. 

Today our nation is mired in a dreadful financial crisis. What I want to tell you is that we're in this together. I want to tell you that but cannot do so in good conscience, because, let's face it, I've just landed a four-year, $400,000 job with an awesome retirement plan. Plus, I've got two runaway bestsellers that earn more royalties in one month than the equity in your mortgage. In short, we're not exactly on equal footing: I'm on a putting green, and you are on a carpet of marbles, ball bearings and lard. Good luck with all that. 

Rest assured, however, that I do empathize with your plight, despite what you may have been led to believe. During the presidential election campaign, some people got the unfortunate impression that I am an icy, aloof, emotionless intellectual who has difficulty connecting with the concerns of everyday people. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Ovid observed two millennia ago, "Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim," words that still have great meaning to those of us with proper educations. 

During a similar financial crisis in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously told Americans that we all had nothing to fear but fear itself. These were wonderful, inspiring words that no one thought too hard about, which was a good thing, because when you get right down to it, they were idiotic. Roosevelt was addressing people facing imminent personal financial ruin, yet his consoling mantra was basically the same as Alfred E. Neuman's: What, me worry? 

I will not condescend to you that way. Me worry, and you should, too. Mostly, we all need to worry about the insanely unreasonable hopes that you have invested in me. You seem to expect me to reinvigorate the economy; repair America's reputation at home and abroad; institute universal health care; lower taxes; save the polar bears; heal the sick; reanimate the dead; end the madness of robo-calls; restore the taste of the American tomato; eradicate the use of hand dryers in all public washrooms; find a cosmetic solution to the tragedy of teeth that look like Fig Newtons; impose enormous fines on the owners of trembly little dogs; outlaw the wearing of Crocs; publicly denounce Ben Stein for the objectionable, talentless, desiccated old fart he is; incarcerate persons who use the world as their ashtray; and introduce a constitutional amendment prohibiting, forever, the marketing of Windows Vista to the unsuspecting. 

I cannot promise you any of that. But I can promise you this: 

[presses the pie into the face of the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ] 

We're going to have us some fun.

 

Christmas Present, and Restoring the Past

I've been silent and absent from my blog, these past many weeks, owing simply to concentration on getting myself back into the workforce, and juggling too many bills with too little money. I've had several job interviews, including three or four I'm still waiting to hear back about, and will have to politely nudge the firms back on. 

Getting through this on a daily basis has been at times, I admit, all along the gamut from annoying to depressing to downright frightening. This leaves little creative energy to muse online, I'm afraid… and even that little, particular awareness is one more source of (slight) stress. Still, I'm itching to put up a couple essays here – neither one mine… and so, come to think of it, all the more worth the read – between now and Christmas. 

First, as a little bit of what-I've-been-up-to, here's a pair of emails to and from me. The sender, Augusta, is a writer and amateur genealogist I met online through trying to restore an old book to its owners' descendant(s). At an antique store early this year when I had the money, I bought a stamp-album almost a century old, with several hundred very old stamps in it, to augment my and my family's collection. The album had a handwritten inscription identifying its original owner by full name (and his gift-giver), including his somewhat unusual last name; indicators were that it had been given around 1907 or 1908, and used for just a couple years before being set aside for still-unknown reasons. 

…with some great stamps in it! These I removed carefully (though in two instances damaging a page), and then proceeded to track down the owner's family to send it back to them, given its great overall condition, and the name and personal inscription in it. Augusta responded to my inquiry, and I sent her the album; she was later able to nail the original owner down precisely – a brother of her great-grandfather, I believe. We also keep each other updated on some goings-on in our families. 

Yes, yes; this is pretty far afield from Christmas. Bear with me. 

I kept the stamps, of course… but ultimately decided to hang onto only those that were not duplicates of ones I already own. (I've still more than recouped the purchase price – several times over – in terms of market-prices on the stamps I kept.) All the rest I sent back to Augusta over the course of the year, a couple countries' worth at a time, after researching and identifying them for her so she could put them back in her ancestor's album and so restore it (as much as possible) to its condition when he'd owned it. I held back only the stamps of Germany and the pre-unification (1871, not 1990) German states, since the jewel and hub of my and my family's collection is what remains of my German grandfather's own collection, and these needed exhaustive looking-over before returning. 

Starting next year, other duties permitting, I'll send Augusta one each of all my non-Grandfather pre-WWI duplicates so she can actually augment her ancestor's album to perhaps what it could have been like had he kept at it, and as a kind of thank-you (or maybe apology) for keeping some of her great-grand-uncle's things. 

Christmas is a time of giving… and giving is not just a December-thing. Thank you. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Augusta Lovelace [mailto: AgustaLovelace@CondeNast.net]
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 8:17 PM
To: 'Aging Child'
Subject: Hi A. Gene 

Hi Gene, 

I am finally finished and can take a break for the day!  How are you? How is your Mother? 

I did receive your last batch of stamps.  I have them tucked away for the week after Christmas when everything dies down to a dull roar and I can have time to myself.  A snowy, cold day would be an ideal day to work on them.  I do appreciate you sending all of them to me.  It will be such a nice album when I have finished it. 

I have my projects lined up for after the holidays.  The stamp album, painting, getting back to my novel (practicing with my dragon naturally speaking).  I have tried using it before but it takes a while to speak clearly and slowly so that the computer types what you are saying and not some other words.  It is great for writing once you learn the ins and outs of it. 

Our daughter had a Christmas party at her place last night.  We didn't stay too late as I was tired after going all day.  She had about 25 people at the party.  It was nice thought to be able to sit, have a drink and have absolutely nothing to do but that. 

I received a Christmas card and a letter from a distant cousin who had sent me all his Lovelace genealogy.  He said that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.  He and his wife are such energetic people and great travelers.  I felt so bad for him as in time he knows that he will not be able to do all that he loved to do in the past.  Sometimes life can seem like a cruel joke. 

Our tree is up and decorated, the house is done, the lights are up outside, the house is cleaned, the gifts are wrapped and tomorrow the cookies will be baked and then I will do absolutely nothing for two days. 

Hope that you have a Merry Christmas and the very best in the New Year! 

Talk to you soon, 

Augusta 

-----Original Message-----
From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 12:47 PM
To: 'Augusta'
Subject: RE: Hi, Augusta 

Good afternoon, Augusta, and Merry Christmas! 

My mother's health continues to get much better – for example, she filled out her own Christmas cards… then I'd add a note from me to the recipient, translating my mother's scrawl (it's definitely improving) and updating them on her progress, before sealing, stamping, and sending off. I think she and my sister are actually shopping right now, something wonderful for my mother's morale (and the morale of the rest of us, too). 

For myself… well, the job hunt goes on unabated – if I even just slowed down at it, or gave up, the panic/desperation at the fringes would creep in, with money and resources just about entirely drained, and only very spotty work at best (filling in two days this coming week, and four the week after). On better days I feel very confident and determined and undeterred; bad days… well, it's almost as though I'm walking along a cliff's edge in a hurricane, and earthquake. But I go on… I have to. 

Though perhaps I could easily find reasons to justify it to myself, I can't buy into (not for very long) a view on life as a cruel joke. After a long busy life, your distant cousin now still has a good stretch of time to pull back in and reflect on the joys his life has been enriched with, and an opportunity to turn now to something even more internal and spiritual, with the love of his life to help carry him through. We have to look on the difficulties and hurdles coming our way as further avenues for God to reach us and vice-versa, opportunities of grace, not of cold blows. (This is something I really need to keep in mind!) 

With the support of his family, your cousin has it within and about him to deal very well, all things considered, with Parkinson's. The toughest thing isn't to bear up under the difficulties of that disease (as my mother and our family are bearing up under her strokes), so much as trusting in God, and allowing our lives and future to rest in His hands, in His control, while doing what we still very much can do. Yet I know this may provide little-at-all consolation, and might just come across as trivializing a very sobering diagnosis and prospect. So please pardon the preachiness; I suspect rather uncomfortably that your cousin would no doubt prefer my unemployment to his prognosis. I wish I could do more than add him and his wife to my prayers, but I do just that. 

And speaking of family, with a profound apology for the poor segue: 

I went through my German stamps and [your great-granduncle]'s, and am ready to catalog that last batch of [his] and send them back your way… though I'll wait for the postal system to wind down a bit, plus final Christmas preparations here – seems I spend all Advent, once I get started, always adding one more thing to the tree, and just one other decoration indoors and out. With Mother away and the economy and prospects extremely troubling, it's that much more important to embrace and engage in the traditions that are part of what make this time of year so special, magical, and holy. 

And so I wish you, your family, and especially your cousin and his wife and his own family, my warmest wishes and prayers for a good, lovely, Merry Christmas, and a sweet, happy new year. Till then! 

A. Gene Childe

There Has Been None Greater

As I sometimes do, I'm repeating a blog from last year, owing to what today represents in the Church Calendar. Though initially somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the meditation does take a deeper look into a humble, yet fiery, man we could do quite well to emulate, yet never hope to equal... let alone surpass.

Want to have a little fun with someone who fancies that they know their Christianity, Christian history, theology, Bible, and so on?

Just ask them who the greatest man in the Bible was.

Jesus?

Wrong.

Really! Jesus was a man, yes, and all man, and human – or he could not have died. But he was also divine, or he could not have risen again. Unique to all of creation and beyond, Jesus has two natures: the divine and the human. This was clarified in the fifth century. I'll spare you the heavy theology on the hypostatic union, the Council of Chalcedon (and the first Nicean Council), monophysitism, arianism, modalism, and other issues – suffice it to say that this was settled over 1,500 years ago. You and I are humans, the dog over there's a dog, a planet's a planet (unless it's Pluto): each has its own, single, defining nature. But Jesus has two.

So, no, Jesus was not the greatest man in the Bible because he wasn't only a man.

Moses? Good try; no. Elijah? Jeremiah? Jonah? Adam??

Heh-heh. Nope.

If you trust the authority of Jesus as a teacher (as he was addressed in his own time; the word in Hebrew is "rabbi", or even "rabboni"; I believe the Aramaic word is the same), you have the answer. Look up Matthew 11:11 – if you're a Protestant, you've got the page marked and the words underlined. If you're a Catholic, just look over that Protestant's shoulder, since you probably aren't sure where to find Matthew.

Right there it is. Jesus says, "Among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist." As I said in my previous posting, you wanna call him a liar?

Today the Church celebrates the birth of John the Baptist (officially, "The Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist"): half a year before Christmas. What does that have to do with it? Well, this is because Jesus was conceived when Elizabeth, John's mother, was six months pregnant with John.

So for this week (and maybe a bit longer), the header for this blog is a detail from Fra Angelico's fifteenth-century painting, "The Naming of John the Baptist". (Likely when you read this, though, I'll have changed the header image again.)

Anyway, I propounded on Elizabeth's pregnancy (among the usual array of other topics) back on Mothers' Day, so I won't repeat it here. This painting, now, corresponds to the scene that followed after John's birth (you can find in Luke 1:57-80), where Zechariah (Elizabeth's husband) has wised up after nine months of being struck deaf-mute. He'd literally had the fear of God thrust on him by scoffing at an angel's announcement of Elizabeth's unexpected pregnancy, so now quite obediently he does exactly as that angel had commanded, and writes down that his son must be called John.

With his tongue loosened back up and ego refreshingly long-since humbled, he breaks into a sweet, inspired prayer that beautifully parallels Mary's own canticle, the Magnificat. My guess is that he never lived to see his son's ministry as a preacher in the desert, but there can be no doubt that he drew great comfort in knowing there was a clear and beautiful destiny that would unfold for his son… who, in growing up under God's "tender mercy" (I like that phrase), would "guide our feet into the path of peace" as the greatest man ever born.

 

Shirk the Truth

Yesterday's posting garnered me a fairly rapid response from someone out... well, a quick WhoIs identified their city (out thataway), and a search online narrowed it further. I dug into this person not as a snoop or as a stalker, but because in the year-plus I've been whispering into the blogosphere's collective hubbub, I've picked up well over five thousand spams, masked (rather poorly) as comments/responses.

No, this person seemed legit; here's what they had to say (details obscured):

Author: croixian1 (IP: ...comcast.net)
E-mail: yeehaa@yahoo.com
URL: http://
Whois: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=br.549
Comment:
Apparently you are a Christian who strongly believes in religious oppression by wishing the elimination of the First Amendment.

I gave a startled yee-hah of my own, shuddered, and scratched my head: I'm about as far from the stereotypical Bible-thumping, conservative, one-restricted-nation-under-Gawd type as you can get... and still be found in the pew Sunday morning. Heck; my Bible(s) have more dust on them than fist-dents.

Well, YH had been kind enough to give me her/his opinion, so I responded:

Good evening, Yee/Haa!

I'm sure my blog leaves it quite apparent that I'm Christian – more precisely, Catholic. I appreciate your at least skimming my blog, and this evening's entry, and taking the time to weigh in.

However, you seem to have badly misread the man behind the rant: I'm in fact politically quite to the left, voting the Democratic ticket (have also voted Green when possible), and I strongly support the US constitution as it was written, long before the heavy watering down we've seen over the last two to three decades. More in a moment.

First: Merriam-Webster defines oppression as "unjust or cruel exercise of power or authority", so let me state quite clearly that I most strongly, in fact, oppose all forms of oppression, whatever the source: "wholesale", as in governmental, cultural, religious… any form of established authority (even prima-facie legitimate); or "retail" – i.e., one individual controlling the minds and activities and expressions of another individual (e.g., seen in abusive domestic relationships, wage slavery, and so on).

Now; the First Amendment – "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" – is an extremely crucial linchpin, in fact, in our structure of government and its protection (which George Duh is steadily whittling away) of civil liberties and personal rights and freedoms... and especially in ensuring peace from sea to shining sea. I unequivocally share Thomas Jefferson's rock-steady declaration that "I have sworn… Hostility against every form of Tyranny over the mind of man" (and woman, of course).

I take it that my blog-posting this evening rubbed a raw nerve; that wasn't quite my aim, though I don't apologize. My objective was to point out how inaccurate, false, and agenda-driven Dan Brown's ludicrous assertion on Jesus and the Church is. It doesn't stand up to the historical record, it doesn't stand up to anyone who can research in a library, or on the net, for as little as five minutes. Shoot; his book (let alone his movie) doesn't even stand up as good reading.

For some bizarre reason that at times troubles and amuses me, people are becoming increasingly more dependent on other people to tell them what to think. The louder the voice, the more scandalous the assertion, the more likely it is to be true. Right? Oh, please. A very-left friend of mine is somehow married to a conservative Republican woman (and how a woman can kowtow to conservatism baffles me); one election-year he put a bumper-sticker on her car: "Vote Republican – it's easier than thinking!"

(Look, I'll say it again: I'm liberal, left, feminist – and a devoted Catholic. These are not mutually contradictory, and I find much peace (and no oppression) in my faith, and I am deeply thankful that my country allows me to express my faith – both in worship/meditation, and through the written word. I support each person's freedom to do this, be it in mosque, synagogue, meeting-house, ashram, wherever – so long as hatred, intolerance, and other social ills are not crammed in with the prayers.)

Read Sandra Miesel's article that I hyperlinked to, and at least skim the reviews of the books I mention at the very end. It is crucial in this country, and in this slacker-age, to keep an open mind, to question, to seek answers. If you find someone shaking the foundations, don't join in right away because it seems (on the face of it) to benefit the little guy. What is this person really saying? How true can it be? Is it true? Does s/he have an agenda? And so on.

If you don't do this – take the time and look into it and understand it – every time some big whopper comes down the pike, you may as well just hang it up the rest of the way and vote Republican, and let the oppressors do the thinking for you. It really is easy, it's more secure, and you have (initially) far fewer problems if you do as Pink Floyd said years ago, and "follow the worms".

No thanks. I'd rather be the gadfly.

Take care!
Aging Child

No answer yet from out thataway, folks; I'll let you know if anything further comes of this. In the meantime, I need to get back with our friend John Wojnowski and address something far more important than which lever this aging child pulls ever November: defense of the Church a) against someone much more poisonous than your average gadfly; and b) against some of its own clergy.

 

Seek the Truth

Two years ago today – I mean, yesterday –, Thursday, May 18, 2006, I hit alt/S on my work keyboard, then shut down and went home. And over fifty friends and family-members received an email from me that was as hot and angry as any APB I'd ever sent.

The next week, my boss at the time – a corporate director for an international, world-spanning firm – asked me about the email. He looks like a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and Julius C. Dithers, with a disposition somewhere halfway along as well. He had not been on my mailing-list.

I looked him in the eye and acknowledged I'd sent it, and from my work-computer – i.e., using a piece of corporate property for a very non-corporate purpose… potentially a career-wrecker, if he wanted to pull a technicality; fortunately that's not his style.

Rationale, detail, and unapologetic rant lie in the message-body itself, which follows. I still don't regret it… although I should at least have waited till I got home that evening, and thus have left one fewer burr under the boss's saddle.

I don't regret, or take back, a word of it.

I realized yesterday that this letter fits in very well with the theme that's engaged this blog for over a week (except Wednesdays, when I turn my keyboard over to a guest-writer), and for much the same reason: something literally stinks to high Heaven, and yours truly is pinching his nose and disposing of it himself.

From: Child, Aging
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 4:44 PM
Subject: Seeking the Truth
Importance: High
Attachments: Cracking the 'Code'.rtf

My Dear Friends and Family:

First off, please excuse my sending this from my work email address; this subject has nothing directly to do with my job, but its urgency impels me to send from my desk, now, after much time over the last several days composing at home and en route. I don't very often go online at home anymore, and I simply do not want to wait any longer before getting this out. So perhaps I'm sticking my neck out here; I accept that, yet recognize that this cannot wait any longer.

Even those of you who've been living under a rock are aware that Friday sees the much-anticipated release of the film version of the heavily ballyhooed "The da Vinci Code". I would love to ask you each not to waste your money on the movie, on the basis of the fact that it is an utter, bigoted and offensive insult to all that is held dear by me, and – far more importantly – by perhaps as much as a third of this globe.

But I will not ask this; rather I choose to appeal to your curiosity, and your sense of fair-mindedness to look at, and into, what is behind the ludicrous, slanderous calumny Dan Brown has laid before the world in his book, and film. Do not take his word for it; question what he says – so great a claim and so heinous a charge he levels, that both a direct answer and an honest investigation are called for. And this malodorous piece of third-rate pulp has been receiving just that… although the call for truth and response may be drowned a bit in the media-driven hype.

A pair of close friends I cautioned snorted and said "It's just a book." Certainly it is. But so were Mein Kampf and Das Kapital; and "Birth of a Nation" was a quaint and illuminating early film, right? Right? The written word has great power, and even the pieces we read for entertainment stick with us, as do the films and television programming we spend time with. Have thorough studies not already demonstrated for us, more than once, that the media content an individual surrounds and saturates her/himself with will affect his/her outlook, beliefs, and values? Or if, say, the Kama Sutra is also "just a book", shouldn't it be okay for elementary-grade children to read, too?

The slogan on this despicable film's posters reads "seek the truth" – and the irony of those three simple words is beyond laughable. It is easily demonstrated, even through simple online research that Brown so obviously did not himself conduct, that his claims are totally without merit, or indeed truth. So I'm charging you to do exactly as these posters urge: seek the truth.

I'm attaching at bottom a copy of a thoroughly researched article originally penned a couple years ago for an online Catholic journal. Though this article is largely Catholic in focus and scope, the vicious and groundless assertions made by Brown strike directly at the core of the entirety of Christianity itself, beyond just Catholic concerns. As the author of the article states, "It is irresponsible and offensive for Brown to impugn the faith of countless Catholics in this fashion." Indeed, of all of Christianity. The author continues, "[Dan Brown] has no solid evidence to support these contentions, and in the absence of such evidence it is unacceptable to smear the faith of millions with these charges."

I've double-checked and updated all the URLs in this article, and added several more to help you check on the evidence for yourselves. Still, I know that many of you won't take the time to read the article's handful of pages, even weighed against the book's 496-odd pages, nor on the strength of the harsh words I give "The da Vinci Code" here. Nor indeed even for the sake of our friendship, and/or blood-relationship; and instead you will still pass it over, and obliviously swallow the word of this one shallow, sensationalist author. Pardon this if it comes across as insult to you; that is not my intent – and if my words read that way to you, I do apologize.

I have long been personally frustrated at, and ashamed of, the deplorable state of education in the present-day United States, and in the average intelligence of the (wo)man on the street. Over time we have grown more and more superficial, and so shallow that it's easier for us to "learn" our history from a poorly written novel, and from demonstrably inaccurate films like "JFK" and "Pearl Harbor".

And don't get me started on how shallow present-day religious education (in all denominations) is. How many of you can find Habakkuk in your Bible, or Jewish scriptures? Or az-Zukhruf in your Koran?

Buying ever more deeply into the deceptive philosophy of relativism – where every voice is equal, and every idea valid (be they Albert Schweitzer's, or Jeffrey Dahmer's) – we are losing the will to doubt, to question, to wonder, to find out. We no longer "seek the truth", but instead out of intellectual laziness allow someone else to tell us what is "true", and thus count ourselves "wise" and "educated".

Dan Brown states on his "facts" page, preceding the book's prolog, to the effect that while the book is fiction, all details of art, architecture, secret societies, etc., are true. But in fact, this is the first page of fiction, and it goes on from there. Let me cite just a few examples:

·  Early on in the novel, we have a drive through the streets of Paris. Brown details various turns, intersections, names of streets, and so on. And these details were so wrong, so incorrect, that when he sought to publish the book in France, the publisher insisted Brown correct these mistakes. He refused, so the publishers had to fix the errors themselves.

·  Dan Brown insists there are twelve chalices (drinking-cups) in da Vinci's "The Last Supper Painting". There are thirteen – go Google up a picture and count them, or take a magnifying glass to your nearest library or encyclopedia.

·  He says that da Vinci hid a code in the very name of the famous "Mona Lisa" painting. Trouble is, da Vinci called it "la Gioconda"; it didn't take the name "Mona Lisa" until sometime later.

And the New York Times blurbs about the book's "impeccable research". Hogwash. Bluntly: if Dan Brown cannot get these simple facts right, how could he possibly be correct and spot-on about a two-thousand-year -old, involved and elaborate conspiracy? He has been quoted as saying something to the effect of "how historic is history, anyway?" And then he goes on and tells the reader exactly what "history" is. He is either willfully ignorant, or maliciously driven. Do not trust him. Seek. The. Truth.

I'm not going to delve into the occultist streak of this book and movie, nor its deceptive lip-service to feminism – beyond saying for the record that I am a feminist… and all feminists should be outraged that the lead female character in "The da Vinci Code" spends most of her time letting a man figure out all the "truth", and goes about looking fearful and anxious. Even the other female lead, a nun, is at best third-fiddle to the men around her.

I am personally offended and heavily insulted by the book and movie. I promised a dear loved one last year that I would read "The da Vinci Code", but I've decided without shame (but not without guilt) to break that promise, and I apologize to this person directly. I will not dirty my mind, I will not sully my eyes, with this awful work. Does that disqualify me from criticizing it? Absolutely not. I also won't read the above-mentioned "Mein Kampf", and I don't need to, either, to assure you with confidence that it is a piece of trash also.

If someone tells me that those berries on that bush over there are poison, do I taste them to make sure? I trust the sources I've dug into about this book; they stand up to the research. And I don't mind if you turn my preceding sentence of "If someone tells me that those berries…" against me – in fact, I tell you here: don't take my word for it, either, on all this. Look up the facts for yourself.

What else am I going to do, besides clamoring from my soapbox? Scrawl on a sign and start marching in protest in front of a theater? Of course not. I would advise against a media-circus response by people equally offended. I advise instead the simplest response, to go see a different movie this weekend (e.g., "Over the Hedge", or "United 93"). Bonus: it'll cut into the Brown movie's revenue.

One thing good that seems to be coming out of this dreckful book and movie, and the hyperbole on both (yes, including my own) sides, is the prospect of dialog about this topic. If you have to blow your money on this utter waste of good popcorn, at least don't swallow Dan Brown's claims along with your butter and Coke. Read the article below – print a copy, and/or send it home; share it; pass it along – and look up the facts. I'll dialog with you all you want, as will your clergy(wo)man, rabbi, priest, imam.

Seek the truth. There are good, solid books out there that address this topic levelly and with thorough research. Try "The da Vinci Hoax" (I can loan you my copy… shoot, I might even buy you one), "The da Vinci Deception", "Cracking da Vinci's Code" (and the best title to come out of this sorry tempest: "The Duh Vinci Code"), and so on.

Be smarter than Dan Brown credits you. Or than Dan Brown himself.

In love,

A. Gene Childe

Followup: a comment came in pretty quickly:

croixian1 May 19, 2008

Apparently you are a Christian who strongly believes in religious oppression by wishing the elimination of the First Amendment.