BOOKs

Yet another prototypical optical reading device is about to hit the market. And, don't you know, we do (of course) need one. I will let you read about it from the sales manifesto below:

Device to Replace Electronic Media

Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade named BOOK. BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use, even a child can operate it. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere - even sitting in an armchair by the fire - yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disc.

Here's how it works: BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. The pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs. Experts are divided on the prospects for further increases in information density; for now, BOOKs with more information simply use more pages. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet.

BOOK may be taken up at any time and used merely by opening it. BOOK never crashes or requires rebooting, though like other display devices, it can become unusable if exposed to high ambient temperatures. The "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.

BOOK can be stored for an almost unlimited amount of time without connecting any outside power source. Many BOOK units may be stored together as they cause no interference with one another, even when placed in close proximity. An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session - even if the BOOK has been closed.

BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers. Conversely, numerous BOOK markers can be used in a single BOOK if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number of pages in the BOOK.

You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an optional programming tool, the Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus (PENCILS). Portable, durable, and affordable,

BOOK is being hailed as a precursor of a new entertainment wave. Also, BOOK's appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportedly flocking. Look for a flood of new titles soon. Try it! You'll like it!

***

Okay, okay. Enough tongue-in-cheek. If you happen to need the tactile experience of not merely seeing a mock-page turn as one does on iPad; if you happen to love the smell of old (but not mildewy ) books; if you can't stand to see a shelf standing without being filled with books, BOOK is obviously the "device" of choice for you! I strongly suggest Alibris if you know the author and/or title for which you are looking, though Amazon will do in a pinch.

I completed my Ronald Arbuthnott Knox collection, picking and choosing very carefully (there are bargains to be found; another joy of BOOK buying). Go, thou; and choose wisely.

Resentment is a real danger - A Little Guide for Your Last Days

From our friend:
Excerpt from Chapter Eight

Resentment is a real danger here. It can interfere with getting what you really and truly want... And, if you are not careful, it will blind you to those graces and friendships that the Holy Spirit does send your way. So let me offer a strategy, a technique, that you may accept or reject.

A prayer that I have found as a spiritual "tool" of immense help is what the Eastern Church calls the Jesus Prayer. Its origin is in the words of a man in Our Lord's parable in Luke 18:13: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" The actual Jesus Prayer is:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Short, easy to memorize... Now here is my recommendation... begin by praying the Jesus Prayer with you in the "me" place of the prayer. Then, insert each of your loved ones in turn. ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on (name), a sinner.") Then and only then, insert the name of the one who you feel has wronged you, hurt you, done damage to you, neglected you. Whatever.

You are thus fulfilling Our Lord's injunction to forgive your "enemy" and, at the same time, shielding yourself from the bitter residue of resentment that can rot your heart and soul.

I'm not joking about this. I know persons who have held grudges, literally, for decades. "Oh I can forgive him/her. But I will never forget." Haven't you heard it before? But that is precisely why Jesus gave us this spiritual "tool" extraordinaire: because we cannot forget! That is why we are to forgive "seventy times seven" (Mt 18:22). Forget this at your peril. Just pray, even when the old pain wakes you up in the middle of the night; pray for your friends, your enemies. Anyone who the Lord brings to your heart and mind.

God’s Repeated Calling and the Soul’s Continued Wariness in Response

Das Herz der Welt (Heart of the World) – Hans Urs von Balthasar 

Soft it approaches, almost inaudible and yet quite unavoidable: a ray of light, an offer of power, a command that is more and less than a command – a wish, a request, an invitation, an enticement: brief as an instant, simple to grasp as the glance of two eyes. It contains a promise: love, delight and a vision extending over an immense and vertiginous distance. Liberation from the unbearable dungeon of my ego. The adventure I had always longed for. The perfect feat of daring in which I am sure to win all only by losing all. The source of life opening up inexhaustibly to me, who am dying of thirst! The gaze is perfectly tranquil, having nothing of magical power or of hypnotic compulsion: a questioning gaze which allows me my freedom. At the bottom of it, the shadows of affliction and of hope alternate. I lower my eyes; I look to one side. I don’t want to say "no" in the face of those eyes. I give them time to turn away.… These “ghostly hours” recur more and more seldom, and the enveloping layers of everyday life grow stronger and thicker around me…. I seal myself off from God and this becomes my usual state – my second nature. Maybe this is the habit of sin, the habit of evil.

Why More Are Not Involved With Contemplation

It is all about choice and this is why more are not involved with contemplation.

Theological reflection (contemplation) on the word without the accompanying readiness for repentance is bound to lead to a heightening of the existenial contradiction; many Christians are aware of this and consequently, if they have decided that they are not going to make any decisive changes for the better in their lives, they are honest (in a way) in leaving contemplation alone.

 - Hans Urs von Balthasar from his book Prayer

Making Room In Ourselves, and the World, For Its Energies To Work

We do not build the kingdom of God on earth by our own efforts (however assisted by grace); the most we can do, through genuine prayer, is to make as much room as possible, in ourselves and in the world, for the kingdom of God, so that its energies can go to work. All that we can show our contemporaries of the reality of God springs from contemplation: Jesus Christ, the Church, our own selves. But it is impossible to put forward the contemplation of Jesus Christ and the Church in a convincing manner unless we ourselves participate in it.

 - Hans Urs von Balthasar from his book Prayer

Scapegoating the Roma (Gypsies)

ZENIT covers an important story of scapegoating in France here. One may recall that the protagonist of the book, The Dionysus Mandate, Aly, goes and hides among the Roma when being hunted down by the Consortium for World Peace ...

"Who is my Mother?"

She hears and understands what the Father tells the Son in heaven, and its echo lies in the heart of the Son. 
She does not simply understand; she incarnates; she elaborates an image; she is the mother of God. 

Through the action of the Holy Spirit, it is she who produces God, who makes him accessible, who transforms him and presents him whole to our flesh and our eyes. It is she who provides us with Christ as a complete man. It is she who embraces the Father in all the force of his generative power so that he begets Christ not just once, but endlessly, in the heart of each Christian…

It is Mary who, in the name of humanity, fully answers God’s call, that “Where are you?” which reverberated through the Garden of Eden after the fall of man. “where are you?” asks the grief-stricken Father. As for the blind creature who is victim of that pride to which he yielded with passionate reluctance—he poor creature, cannot check the desperate query that comes to his lips: “You, Father, where are you?”

If someone will only show us the father, it will be enough!

And lo, a great cry rings out; it is the voice of a woman, a Virgin: “I found him whom my soul loves...and would not let him go” (Sg 3:4). I have found him so utterly that never again will he succeed in ridding himself of me. I hold him; I withhold him; I contain him—how shall I say it?—it is he who contains me. I am the stem from whom, before the eyes of nations, he borrows root, stature, life, personality, and speech!

- I Believe in God: A Meditation on the Apostles' Creed by Paul Claudel (1955) was a French poet, a playwright, a diplomat, and a member of the French Academy.

—Magnificat Vol 12, No.5. July 2010

Little Guide - Update & Review

A new review of A Little Guide for Your Last Days came out recently in the Saint Austin Review (StAR) here.

The reviewer, note well, read it during her grandmother's final struggles. I am glad it was helpful to her.

Eberstadt, Doino, Hendrix

Mary Eberstadt has a great piece in The Weekly Standard on the The Convert Conundrum - The long parade of worldly believers. [h/t: Francis Beckwith]

By the way, William Doino, Jr. currently reviews my book, A Little Guide for Your Last Days there, too, in Exit Strategy.

Escalation to the Extremes

As René Girard recently writes in Battling to the End, when one member of a model/rival warring relationship is settling into a defensive posture (the dominant 'model'), that partner sets the terms of the battle and "escalation to extremes." The lesser partner (the 'rival') is forced to move against its foe-partner in terms dictated by the former's defenses.

The dominant partner may enact a faux ignorance of its rival's actions and even a feigned ignorance of the rivalry altogether. Its rival is, thus, forced to enact any and all measures not only to be noticed, but, in the words of Robert Hamerton-Kelly,

It wishes not only to imitate the other, nor merely to possess itself in the other, but to destroy the other as the place where the self is alienated to itself.

In this quest, the rival will change the terms of discourse (don't forget; the Scimitar was founded on this model/rival template). But the model will act remarkably stupid and seemingly blind to the obvious. Even when the "escalation to extremes" reaches the level of sacrificial denouement.

WILL the escalation continue? Girard is convinced of it, and fears for the world of humanity. And apparently, the dominant model partner is beginning to think so, too.

But under current leadership from the Last Self-Help Administration, it is unlikely that any actions other than functional dhimmitude, academical indifference, and puer-senex tendencies will be seen for the foreseeable future.

Brown's Banal Blather

I'm with her about Dan Brown

From one who has been known to write staggeringly bad prose (and howlingly inconsequential poetry), I choose to throw a stone of disdain in the direction of an author destined to make millions more from his bad writing. I present to you, Dan Brown’s worst sentences.

I prefer Providence to destiny, you see.

Little Guide - Reviews

Amy Welborn reviews A Little Guide for Your Last Days here. Jeff Miller (Curt Jester) weighs in too.

Mary - Mother of the Son

While recovering sight in my left eye with its recently reattached retina, I am reading Mark Shea's first volume in his Marian trilogy, Mary – Mother of the Son. I cannot speak highly enough about it.

Shea deals with the usual criticisms and misunderstandings between Catholics and Protestants regarding Our Lady (from the uber-Catholic haters like Jack Chick to the mildly disdainful Evangelicals). Then he really goes to work on the "pseudo-knowledge" sorts like Dan Brown who see all Christian faith as a derivative of pagan religions and conspiracies keeping this Gnosis from us by the "evil" Catholic Church.

Shea does all of the above not with a caustic defensiveness, but with a Chestertonian wit and brimming faith which, by definition, has sought understanding and found it in Mother Church's patrimony.

So Mary, Mother of the Son is not merely a defense of Marian devotion. It is an excellent little book that helps move converts and wannabee converts from the road-map learning of catechesis to the more mature, Spirit-led faith seeking understanding realms of mystagogy.

Thumbs up!

Dawn Patrol does Little Guide

Lady Dawn does a kind celebrity endorsement for crusty old Athos. Our latter-day St Joan of Arc champions a memento mori. Deo gratias. +

A Little Guide for Your Last Days

READ D'artagnan post HERE on Athos' new book that has just been released, A Little Guide for Your Last Days.

We will maintain the link to Athos' book on the right side bar of our blog for easy reference.

Called to Communion remedies

Called to Communion remedies the dis-ease Atho speaks about in his post on the popular Shacking up book.

He who loves desires to know. Therefore true love of Christ also expresses itself in the wish to know him ever better and to know everything that pertains to him. If love of Christ necessarily becomes love of man, it follows that education in Christ must include education in the natural virtues of humanity. If loving Christ implies getting to know him, it follows that the willingness to undertake committed and careful study is a sign of the seriousness of one's vocation and the earnest inward search for intimacy with him. Training in faith is training in true humanity. It is also to learn the reason of faith. Because Christ is never alone but came in order to unite the world in his Body, love for the Church becomes an additional component:

we do not seek a Christ whom we have invented, for only in the real communion of the Church do we encounter the real Christ.

And once again the depth and seriousness of one's relation to the Lord himself is revealed in the ready willingness to love the Church, to live together with her to serve Christ in her. - p 130

Pray Unceasingly

This past weekend my wife and I along with 10 other Cursillistas went on a short retreat. The retreat was on St Paul and was very good. During one of our sharing sessions the facilitator had us looking at Paul's insistence of praying unceasingly and I brought up Brother Lawrence.

Well is this a God thing or what, but when strolling through my blog list I happened upon D'artagnan's blog and lookie what I find, this little quote from Brother Lawrence:

"[He said:] that our sanctification did not depend upon our changing our works, but upon our doing that for God's sake which commonly we do for our own; that it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works, which they performed very imperfectly, by reason of their human or selfish regards."

In D'artagnan's post he links to an online source where you can find The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. If you have not had the pleasure of reading Brother Lawrence you have no excuse now.

I found this quote toward the end:

"Let all our efforts be to know God. The more one knows Him, the greater one desires to know Him. Knowledge is commonly the measure of love. The deeper and more extensive our knowledge, the greater is our love. If our love of God were great we would love Him equally in pain and pleasure."

On a website I browsed during a search on Brother Lawrence I found the following: "Brother Lawrence 1605-1691, was a monk in the early 1600's. It is said that he could have been one of the most humble men to ever walk the earth. He worked as a cook in the monastery and found delight in this occupation. His entire life revolved around walking with God each day. Letters were found after his death where he explained this process. The words drip like honey. quote: 'Leave Him not alone. You would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you. Why, then, must God be neglected?' - Brother Lawrence"

On another site I found: "Brother Lawrence says that secret conversations with God must be 'repeat[ed] often in the day,' and 'for the right practice of it, the heart must be empty of all other things.' He speaks of the trouble of wandering thoughts and says that the habit of practicing the presence of God is the 'one remedy' and the 'best and easiest method' he knows to dissolve distractions."

There is something very real about this simplicity of focus - an identification with God through Jesus praying unceasingly.

Our being laid claim to and taken seriously as a PERSON

...Christianity has shed the light of love over humanity and in this light the unique worth of every individual person is made manifest. Without this light the general principles of human rights could not have been formulated, principles that are normative indeed for us, even though in practice they are frequently trodden underfoot... In vain we shall search the world before Christ for this kind of outlook of man on his fellow man... In none of these will we find the kind of respect for the person of one's neighbor that can only be established as a principle for the first time by the Christian revelation. For God, in his boundless involvement, has indeed always the individual in mind (though all in community are just as much his preoccupation); and as he moves toward the individual, so he lights up his unique dignity as a person. But should the source of God's gracious involvement fall into oblivion, then sooner or later the face of the person will become indistinct, and he will sink back once more into mere anonymity.

Because, however, the most significant thing in life that can happen to our neighbor is his being laid claim to and taken seriously as a person, an event that leaves on him the most lasting impression, a state that constitutes for him the source of the greatest happiness he can know on earth, in this above all lies the credibility of the Church, and the success of the mission of Christianity.
-- Hans Urs von Balthasar, pg 54-55.

A Sign of Joy in the Universal Darkness -- Balthasar

The best thing a Christian can do, therefore, is in no way to wish to be the master of his own moods, but simply to allow himself to be led by his living faith into whatever is presented to him in the course of time. Again to be led by faith means to remain in perpetual contact with the source and to have no desire to seek one's own adventure. The greatest adventure after all is God's redeeming action for the world in his Son, and if we follow the Son's course we shall not run the risk of losing ourselves on the slippery paths of self-inverted love. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins." (1 Jn 4:10).

p 102 Engagement with God

The Tradition of Faith Becomes a Womb of Life

Another quote from The Resurrection Effect by Anthony J Kelly

When, and to the degree, this witnessing to the resurrection is part of the fabric of the tradition, that tradition retains its inexhaustible novelty. It lives with the assurance of its capacities to mediate to all believers the manner in which God has entered into our world and met it at the sharpest edges of the problem of evil, typified in suffering, death, guilt and meaninglessness. The tradition of faith becomes a womb of life, forming the followers of Christ into agents of a new humanity through the power of his Spirit. After the resurrection of the crucified One, the world can never be the same. It is always timely, then, for theology to re-immerse itself in the phenomenon of the resurrection, and to focus its energies on the most radical and transforming moment of Christian faith. - pp 63-64 (my emphasis)

I found this sentence: The tradition of faith becomes a womb of life, forming the followers of Christ into agents of a new humanity through the power of his Spirit. to be very appropriate as we look through an anthropological and mimetic lense.