![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arisbeHaven't posted in a while. Sorry. Not feeling all that communicative. Number of reasons.
Something I wrote and really sweated blood over I sent to a fellow I respect who is more than interested in the subject. He suggested I send it to a publication, the readership of which he particularly despises.
A face to face community I had relied on for some kind of human support on a weekly basis has manifested a real lack of appreciation for the only kind of contribution I have been able to afford to give it.
We are having the same consultations over brain surgery for our daughter that we had when she was six, with the same conclusion, which is no real resolution -- that she is better off living with a slight weakness and weird feeling on her left side than with the consequences of intervention. Now that she is twice the age I was told not to expect her to live beyond, there is no further talk of such matters, which is just as well...
I have attended a second session of something called School of Community run by the local Communion and Liberation folks. They seem like good peeps, spiritual, but well, Catholic, and even devout, though I hope not in the bad sense of the term... Time will tell. Not that I feel that I have all that much time, not for a full scale midlife crisis. The movement seems to have the same presence in the present papacy that the Legionaries and the Opie Dopies had in the last, and that is surely a change for the better. The founder spent a year in the States writing a thesis on Prot. Theol., and I can't help detecting a hint of Richard Niebuhr and even Paul Tillich in those of his writings avidly studied by his followers. The thesis hasn't been translated, and there isn't even a copy in the NYPL. (Even without knowing Italian, I could probably get a sense of who the important influences were.) Richard Niebuhr is a man I keep coming back to, though I may have to write something about his Big Brother Reinhold as the evil spirit of the now notorious Theocons.
I trust those of you who followed my political links have found them elsewhere. The Woodward book and the Foley scandal may have a salutary effect on the elections, though the Dems may be as in love with perpetual war for perpetual peace as the Repubs, and as tightly tied to the Jewish lobby, though not to big oil and the theocrats. They don't seem to give a ripe fart about our civil liberties either. The situation on the ground in Iraq continues to deteriorate, to the point that Fred Reed anticipates a mutiny, which would be ugly, especially if a first strike against Iran energizes the Shias. It might also trigger events in Pakistan that put atomic weapons within range of Israel in the hands of Islamicists. Would Bush then call upon the Hindu nationalists to use their own nukes to take them out?
I warned you that I'm not so cheerful. Sorry.
Something I wrote and really sweated blood over I sent to a fellow I respect who is more than interested in the subject. He suggested I send it to a publication, the readership of which he particularly despises.
A face to face community I had relied on for some kind of human support on a weekly basis has manifested a real lack of appreciation for the only kind of contribution I have been able to afford to give it.
We are having the same consultations over brain surgery for our daughter that we had when she was six, with the same conclusion, which is no real resolution -- that she is better off living with a slight weakness and weird feeling on her left side than with the consequences of intervention. Now that she is twice the age I was told not to expect her to live beyond, there is no further talk of such matters, which is just as well...
I have attended a second session of something called School of Community run by the local Communion and Liberation folks. They seem like good peeps, spiritual, but well, Catholic, and even devout, though I hope not in the bad sense of the term... Time will tell. Not that I feel that I have all that much time, not for a full scale midlife crisis. The movement seems to have the same presence in the present papacy that the Legionaries and the Opie Dopies had in the last, and that is surely a change for the better. The founder spent a year in the States writing a thesis on Prot. Theol., and I can't help detecting a hint of Richard Niebuhr and even Paul Tillich in those of his writings avidly studied by his followers. The thesis hasn't been translated, and there isn't even a copy in the NYPL. (Even without knowing Italian, I could probably get a sense of who the important influences were.) Richard Niebuhr is a man I keep coming back to, though I may have to write something about his Big Brother Reinhold as the evil spirit of the now notorious Theocons.
I trust those of you who followed my political links have found them elsewhere. The Woodward book and the Foley scandal may have a salutary effect on the elections, though the Dems may be as in love with perpetual war for perpetual peace as the Repubs, and as tightly tied to the Jewish lobby, though not to big oil and the theocrats. They don't seem to give a ripe fart about our civil liberties either. The situation on the ground in Iraq continues to deteriorate, to the point that Fred Reed anticipates a mutiny, which would be ugly, especially if a first strike against Iran energizes the Shias. It might also trigger events in Pakistan that put atomic weapons within range of Israel in the hands of Islamicists. Would Bush then call upon the Hindu nationalists to use their own nukes to take them out?
I warned you that I'm not so cheerful. Sorry.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 03:40 pm (UTC)My god....what a horrible thing for a parent to have to live with hanging over her head. Talk about the Sword of Damocles. I'm thrilled she proved them wrong.
though the Dems may be as in love with perpetual war for perpetual peace as the Repubs, and as tightly tied to the Jewish lobby, though not to big oil and the theocrats. They don't seem to give a ripe fart about our civil liberties either.
Yes, I fear this, too. The people on both sides don't look very different to me these days, they all have their narrow agendas....narrow being the operative word.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 04:43 pm (UTC)And how about dem Dems, ha? Maybe Bush won't be the next Hitler. Maybe Hillary will. Don't get me started.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 04:44 pm (UTC)Not Cheerful
Date: 2006-10-05 04:13 pm (UTC)your posts. It seems that all our peace and
justice efforts in this neck of the woods
are not even a drop in the bucket. We're
headed for the big one.
You make me smile when you mention Reinhold
Niebuhr. A friend who has gone to glory had
him as a professor. I, on the other hand,
know him from the 'drunks club' as he wrote
the Serenity Prayer.
P.S.
Date: 2006-10-05 04:28 pm (UTC)family are in my prayers. You have a
miracle kid!
Re: P.S.
Date: 2006-10-05 04:44 pm (UTC)Re: P.S.
Date: 2006-10-05 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-10 05:15 pm (UTC)dissertation
Date: 2006-10-05 06:14 pm (UTC)I asked a friend who has a copy of Fr. Giussani's dissertation to check to see how much Jonathan Edwards it has in it (he doesn't read a lick of Italian nor do I). He said that it has about 20 pages on Edwards. Some other articles on Fr. Giussani and Protestantism are collected here. (http://ressourcement.blogspot.com/2006/07/approaching-american-protestantism.html)
Fred
deepfurrows.blogspot.com
Re: dissertation
Date: 2006-10-05 07:50 pm (UTC)I have never read Edwards on The Religious Affections. It may be a key text for Fr G. Maybe The Nature of True Virtue as well. I had a copy around here somewhere. Brightman's Personalism may be important, too, and of course Tillich's analysis of our religious needs, though PT's take on the uniqueness of Christianity has its blind spots, to say the least.
Nothing to apologize for.
Date: 2006-10-05 10:14 pm (UTC)Now that you mention it, though....
My political friends on both sides of the border are going through a kind of 'electoral despair' these days. It all revolves around trying to figure out if we've reached the point where it genuinely no longer matter who one votes for. I've gone so far as to re-join the Libertarian Party after a sixteen-year hiatus. And Lew Rockwell has asked me to start writing the occasional column for his site.
These are all signs of the apocalypse.
You've reminded me of something that, if I dwell on it long enough, will no doubt bring about some melancholia.
My best friend in high school had a whole host of health problems caused by his mother's alcohol abuse during pregnancy. From an early age he was told (probably overheard it first, figured it out and then had it confirmed by doctors in what can only have been a long, horrible, drawn-out process lasting years) that he had a maximum life expectancy of about thirty. Four days ago was the eighteenth anniversary of his death, which occurred just nine days shy of his twenty-fourth birthday.
Not knowing what your daughter has had to live with, I shall limit myself to thanking God that the doctors got it wrong.
One last thought. I believe the Hindu nationalists would rather try to continue living in relative peace with their neighbors than do the nuclear bidding of the Bush regime and risk the wrath of every single one of their neighbors, especially China.
I happen to think that Western civilization exhibits suicidal tendencies. If the United States should attack Iran -- a possibility I genuinely fear, though I think it unlikely to happen anytime soon -- they will have started a chain of events that can only lead to trouble, to put it mildly.
Not a day goes by that I don't worry about the world we're bequeathing to our children and grand-children. And not in some insipid 'Al Gore way', either....
This is the sort of discussion best had in a bar, sipping scotch and staring at traffic.
Re: Nothing to apologize for.
Date: 2006-10-10 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-06 03:20 am (UTC)I have missed your posts---and, indeed, thought that I had missed, as in overlooked, some recently, but that appears not to have been the case.
You certainly owe none of us an apology for your absence or noncommunicativeness.
I will pray for your daughter, and hope that you and your family are well. My father has lived almost 14 years beyond the two year mark the doctors set for him, so I know very well the power of perseverance. May your daughter continue to persevere! God bless.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-10 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-07 01:30 am (UTC)Not knowing the specifics I'd tend to go with the
"no intervention" route. Brain stuff is like when you
try and delete .dll's in your windows32 folder. It
might make everything okay...or it may make you
have to reload.
And your daughter, being non-XP compatible would
have a hard time with it.
Like I said, my opine, I don't know the specifics.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-10 04:44 pm (UTC)I think that New Delhi will make its own choice about an Islamist Pakistan - which, when I see ol' Pervez hawking his book on The Daily Show, is probably just around the corner - and that choice will be the rapid issuance of Launch Codes.
RE your wee daughter, life is an odd thing, so fragile and yet so tenacious. None of us can know what her Lesson is here - we so rarely know our own. I realize that may be cold comfort to you and yours, but I suspect you believe in the Immortality of Spirit and are willing to let her be who she is supposed to be, as long as she is supposed to be, as much as that might possibly break your heart in the long run.
Forgive me if I overstepped my bounds with the above. Sometimes I feel compelled to share a 'truth' I 'see'. Sometimes, I'm wrong. Sometimes, it seems to make all the difference in the world. I'm never really sure which and so must simply plunge ahead.
Blessings to you, my friend.
~M~
no subject
Date: 2006-10-10 05:11 pm (UTC)I saw your post this morning, but haven't had a chance to repost it. Is the war going to start just before the election, or just after? I fear that our troops on the ground will be dead meat. Haifa and Tel Aviv will be history. Will Israel be able to nuke Rome and Paris in revenge? (That is the essence of the Samson threat, isn't it?) Will we nuke Cairo, Damascus, Teheran? Isn't that what bin Laden wants?