Salvation is from the Jews

I am still slowly, slowly reading The Light of Christ by Thomas Joseph White, OP.  Many mornings I don't get to it.  Between the dog, little D who I often watch in the morning while V is driving, trying to make breakfast and lunch for R, my own often broken sleep at night that means I am often waking up later than I usually do, and the fact that I am always struggling with discipline to keep myself on track, I can go days without remembering to read.  But this week I did read the sub-chapter, at the end of Chapter 3, entitled Salvation is from the Jews; Prophecy and Judaism. 

This chapter really hit home because I've just finished reading The Ancient History of the World which really had a huge impact on my thinking.  It opened my eyes to how chaos and brutality are the default in human society and any step out of that gutter is a great accomplishment that needs to be guarded most diligently against falling back into the mire.  I think the western world doesn't appreciate enough how far we've come and how delicate our situation is.  We are pretty much spoiled brats demanding life be perfect, often.  Which is so unjust to those who are truly suffering.

Anyway, another thing that the History of the Ancient World opened my eyes to is the fact that the Jews really were different from the rest of the world.  At core, they really had a different moral sense and a different idea of what truth is.  They were always battling the influence of the other cultures who practiced really brutal customs.  Often those influences won out for a while and caused a lot of treachery and tragedy.  But underlying all this is a beautiful story of real love, of wisdom, of an overarching understanding of our reason for existence. It is really remarkable.  As a Christian, I came to believe even more that the Old Testament is revelation from a personal God.

So when I got to this section of The Light of Christ, White's analysis really stood out to me.  He is an excellent, clear, profound, thorough writer.  He says getting past all the complexities of the OT, there are 5 themes that come through:

1)  Monotheism - a belief in one God who made the world.  And this God made human beings in his own image and likeness.  This idea is what allowed the sciences to develop eventually!  Because as humans we see creation as being governed by discernible laws and humans are at the top of hierarchical primacy in the world.

2)  The Elevated Morality of the Ten Commandments - according to Christian tradition this embodies the natural law that is written on the human heart.

3)  Expectant Universalism - while Judaism seems largely to be about a tribe trying to find it's promised land, the language used is universal and meant for all men.  The prophets talk about 'all nations of the earth."

4)  Messianism and the Notion of Historical Progress - most ancient religions assumed a cyclical dynamic to the universe, but the OT talks in terms of history where God interacts in time.  Also through out the OT is the idea of a Messiah.

5)  Eschatological Hope in the Face of Injustice, Human Suffering and Death.  This is the idea that life is not meaningless suffering but there is hope that justice will be done, that God will have mercy on those who deserve it and will vindicate those who have been wronged. 

I wish I go into more depth about this book, but my thoughts are too scattered.  I wish I could take a class on it or was in a theological book club or something to discuss it.  I feel like I could read it in a loop fashion.  Just start over again once I've read the last page.  In this time of trial for the Church because of all the corruption, it is so good to have such a beautiful mind as Father White give a profound and clear summary of the Church's teachings.  This is what the Church is, and all the institutional evil will pass away.

Abortion as an option

My daughter's pregnancy is going along well.  Her baby (a boy!) seems to be developing healthily.  They do a bunch of genetic testing now, far more than 18 years ago when I was last pregnant.  One of the tests came back showing my daughter as a carrier for Gaucher's disease.  This, apparently, is a common genetic disorder with Ashkenazi Jews.  My husband is also a carrier.  So the OB/GYN wanted my son in law to come in for testing.  There is a 1 in 112 chance that he might be a carrier too.  We really doubt this as he has no Ashkenazi background at all.  And outside those circles your chances of carrying it are very remote.  I read up a tiny bit on Gaucher's.  I honestly don't understand exactly what it is, but there are different types and Type 1, the one most Ashkenazis carry is very mild.  Not debilitating or fatal or anything.  So in the slight chance that the baby does have it, the type he is mostly likely to have is a very mild condition.

The OB/GYN, however, took this opportunity to tell my daughter, that she has the option to abort the baby if my son in law's testing does come back as a carrier.

Abortion for what is most likely a mild condition.

This mindset is eugenics through the back door.  This is what happens when you make your pro-choice mantra that every baby should be 'wanted.'  As if they were merchandise one was ordering.  Of course we don't want unhealthy babies, that's too hard.  We want perfect babies!  And babies aren't people until they exit the womb, so it is ok to abort a baby if it might not be perfect.

This is the abortion mindset most of the medical community here in the U.S has.  This scares the hell out of me and is my main reason for being frightened of universal healthcare.  If the folks pushing it weren't also pushing late term abortions and forcing nuns to pay for contraceptives and pushing children to take gender bending drugs and teens to get mastectomies so they 'transition', and surrogacy, and assisted suicide, etc I might think differently.  But the truth is I think the medical community and the scientific community are really short on ethics.  I don't want them to have control.   I do not trust their motives or their reasoning. I do want the poor to get healthcare, but I don't want to give control to the government.

This is why Northam could say what he said when asked about a baby delivered alive from a late term abortion.  Because the doctors themselves don't see the babies as human.  They are taught and they embrace an ideology that leaves them cold-blooded and blind.  You can see this mentality in ex-abortion workers.  Abbey Johnson' s ministry is to people who work in the industry and for some reason or another they see the light one day and realize the deeply evil thing they are complicit in.  It's a whole paradigm shift for them.  A painful, life altering one.  It takes that much.  It's a Road to Damascus kind of thing to break out of the diabolic mindset a la Hillary Clinton and see that babies in utero are human too.

Lately, I've really become convicted, even more than I already was, just how evil abortion is.  It truly eats away at our society's morality.  It's repercussions spread throughout our culture.  The sexual revolution, spurred on by legalizing abortion has done untold damage.  It may bring us down in the end.  It may be a fatal blow to us.

Luckily my daughter works with special ed kids every day and isn't frightened by the idea of an imperfect son.  Or maybe she is frightened but not enough to kill him for it.  She thinks everyone has intrinsic worth not dependent on being wanted or being perfect.  Just being is enough to warrant one's right to life.

Cousin Kate - Book 5

Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer is one of the few Heyer novels I hadn't read yet.  People seemed to have mixed feelings about it and I can see why.

Kate is a penniless young lady, vivacious and pretty.  She grew up following her father's regiment on the Peninsula (during Napoleon's war in Spain).  Her parents' marriage was not approved of by their families, but they loved each other, though neither seemed to have a lot of common sense.  When Kate is left a penniless orphan after her father's death, she winds up hiring herself out as a governess.  But she's too pretty for that job and eventually has to leave due to unpleasant offers of marriage.  She must depend on her old nurse, who is brimming with character and good sense.  The nurse has married and is now Mrs. Nidd and she helps run a carrier service with her husband and father in law.  With Kate really not knowing which way to turn, her nurse writes a letter to a long alienated half sister of Kate's father.  In response the aunt turns up suddenly and is all generosity and kindness and sweeps Kate back to her estate at Staplewood. 

At first Kate is overwhelmed with her aunt's generosity but soon things start to feel rather creepy and claustrophobic.  Her aunt's son, Torquil, is very odd.  Aunt Minerva's control over every one at Staplewood, her sickly, elderly husband, their resident doctor, the staff, all seems to be ways of hiding something dreadful.

The first half of the novel really builds the characters and the tension, so that the reader is starting to set on edge in true Gothic horror fashion.  But then the pacing of the story changed and Heyer spends page after page in expository conversations that just repeat the same things over and over again.  After a while, I was saying to myself, okay I've got it already!  So by the time the awful climax happens, it felt rather ho hum because I could see it from a million miles away.

It isn't a terrible book at all, but it isn't of the same caliber as many of Heyer's other books.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Is Everyone Racist?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  My own oldest daughter told me I was a racist.  Not that I said or did anything to demonstrate this, but she thinks everyone is on some level a racist, if you've grown up in a society with racial tension.

I don't deny that there is racism and it is a recurring evil that never seems to get entirely stamped out.  I know there are racists, both deliberate and active, and those maybe more passive, but who like to mock or make snide 'insider' jokes that are racist. (Ralph Northam seems to have been of that variety).  It's a terrible, terrible problem.  I don't want to seem to discount its profound depravity.  But I don't think I am a racist at all.  I don't think I am because I have never thought of myself or the white race I happen by birth to be part of, as better.  I have never seen anyone who looked different from me as somehow lesser.  I search myself and nope, that's one sin I have not committed.  Praise the Lord!  I have plenty of other sins to worry about but that particular one?  It's just not there.  And I can say that I have lived my life, all my life from childhood up, not being racist.  My parents were not racists.  My schools were not racist.  My neighborhood was not racist.  Both my neighborhood and all the schools I attended were integrated.  And maybe I was blind and naive (and those two things I can definitely be guilty of) but I never noticed anything being a big deal!  I don't remember anybody ever mentioning anything.  I did have one friend whose father was strange.  We were all afraid of him. And then one time my friend discovered a lot of racist material her father had.  It really alienated her from him.  She was deeply troubled by it.  She knew, even in 7th grade, he was wrong.  She wound up marrying a Muslim guy.  Somebody her father would call a 'sand n****r.'  We were disgusted with him.  So that's the earliest racist I ever had oblique contact with.  I avoided him too.  Honestly, I was friends with her for years, visiting her house often and I think I said maybe three words the whole time to her father.  He was a weird guy.

Another encounter with racism was my prom date.  My prom was a horrible experience.  I was talked into going with a guy who was a friend of another friend.  This person though I didn't really care for. She was very coarse and slept around.  She was actually sleeping with an older married man!  Anyway, I was a socially inept, shy, longing to fit in teen and forced to go to the prom with this guy.  And one of the first things he said on our date was a remark about someone else: 'that was very white of him.'  I had never heard that expression before and I was horrified.  I was so repulsed by this guy and had to fake being excited about the prom.  He gave me my first kiss (which I did not want! But by that point in the evening I was so cowed and miserable I think I was disassociating psychologically) and I actually ran up to my bathroom and vomited.  This guy and his sister, who was the friend of my friend, were from Boston.  They had heavy Boston accents and were the most racist people I'd encountered in a social way.  Ugh.

The scenario my daughter used to show I was bigoted was: what I would think or feel if I was walking down a dark street and saw a black man coming towards me.  If I was fearful then that means I'm racist.  Honestly this is really unfair.  For one thing, walking down any street in the dark, I'm already going to be a bit fearful.  When you are in a flight or fight situation you do operate off of too little knowledge and thus resort to instinct or stereotypes in those few moments.  But I can say that clothing would probably have the most influence on me.  If a black man was walking toward me on a dark street and he was wearing a suit and tie or even a polo shirt and khakis, I probably wouldn't be as fearful.  So maybe I am more of a classist.  Because it would be the same with a white guy.  If it was a white guy who looked especially tough or punky, or like he was a heroin addict or something, I'd be afraid of him too.  Also age would factor in.  If it was an elderly guy I might not feel so menaced.

I just don't think that scenario equates to actually being racist.  It's like saying to a mom who is tired and worn out and shouts at her kids occasionally because of that, you are a terrible mother!  Or catching anyone in a moment of weakness and using that to define the rest of their life.

And I think it is really unhelpful to use the same term for that kind of response, (you're a racist) when dealing with truly blatant evil, like Jim Crow or slavery.  That was systemic racism.  That was institutional racism that was written into our laws.  That's a whole other ball of wax and to conflate the two is to make it hard for people to actually relate to each other in a positive way.  People get anxious that they will accidentally misstep and commit a faux pas that will have them labeled a racist.  There really is a difference between being clumsy but good willed and being deliberately racist.  Ralph Northam looks like he was deliberately racist.  He wants to say he was just clumsily insensitive.  I was almost the same age as him in 1984 and believe me, society at large knew that doing what he did was wrong, wrong, wrong!  But maybe in his little bubble of Southern Christian, wealthy white folks, that wasn't the case.  (Seems to me he is a person with really bad judgment.)  I would never, ever have dreamed of dressing in blackface or donning a KKK outfit under any situation.  Never in a million years!  Unthinkable!

So here's how to avoid being racist in my mind:  don't tell racist jokes.  Don't flirt with racist ideas.  Don't romanticize the racist history of your particular culture (as Southerns are wont to do).  Don't be racist out of a longing for 'identity' as white supremacists do.  But, as for people who are more liberal, don't always see everybody first in terms of their race. This is the huge flaw in the trendy intersectionality world view.  Because always making that difference (race, sexuality, etc) the number one factor is also bigoted.  Anything that gets you painted as a part of a collective culture, seemingly monolithic, is judging others on externalities.   It's the opposite of being color blind.  I'm with Dr. MLK, Jr.  Content of character is better than color of skin in terms of how we relate one another.  The details of our external characteristics are ultimately not important.  We have vastly more in common than what distinguishes us.  Racism is shallow, vain and borne out of insecurity; the sinful impulse that has haunted us throughout ages to demean others for our own aggrandizement.  Men did and do it to women, women currently seem to be doing back at men, now that they've gained some power.  Pro-abortionists do it to the unborn, gentiles did it to Jews, the Tutsis did it to the Hutus in Rwanda and there are many, many other dismaying examples in almost every culture.  We live in a sinful world, always battling sin.

I like to watch certain intellectuals on bloggingTV.  My favorites are Glenn Loury and John McWhorter.  They have the best conversations about current events.  They are perceived as 'conservative' which is ridiculous because they are probably moderates, but because things keep shifting to the left more and more, they've been pushed to one side of the spectrum.  Anyway, one idea they've brought up is that racism isn't like small pox that you can vow to wipe out.  It is an evil more like murder.  No one vows to wipe out murder.  We certainly don't want it and try to make it so murder is hard to commit.  Socially, culturally, morally there is pressure to not do such an evil.  We have laws against it that we prosecute vigorously, but people talk about decreasing murder rates, rather than vowing to make it so murder never happens.  Because we know we'd have to go to such extremes to actually prevent murder it would undo other important elements of civil society. We'd have to give up all freedom.  And it's the same with racism.  There is always going to be some jerk who does some jerky thing or even violent thing somewhere in our population of 325+ million.  And it gets broadcast widely, but the vast majority of people are not doing jerky or violent things.

If we work on poverty issues in general, we'll help all impoverished people, including those who are African American.  If we work on trying to diminish tribal thinking and focus on promoting civility, that will decrease clashes.   But instead we seem to be promoting identity politics that feeds into zero sum games of competition over who is more victimized.  This leads to a heightened sense of all our differences.  I think intersectionality is perhaps well meaning but extremely short-sighted and misguided.

When I was in law school, I worked for the Public Defenders and the student law center.  I helped represent both black and white defendants.  When I was in Baltimore I lived in a majority black neighborhood.  When I worked as a program director for pre-law internships in Washington DC we would take students from places like Iowa and put them in situations, for the first time in their lives, where they had African American bosses and co-workers.  Where their neighborhood was majority black.  I remember one time the students hosted a Valentine's Day party for homeless kids in DC.  (We always tried to work in a service project).  I remember a little black girl sitting on the lap of a white college student, son of a farmer from Iowa, asking him what farms were really like?  She was so enchanted with hearing about cows and chickens and corn!  And as we left, the student said to me, that little girl gave to me more than I gave to her!  I raised my kids by reading to them about Ruby Bridges and listening to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech.  I am currently housing an asylum seeker from Africa and her son. They have been living with us for 2.5 years!  Yet my daughter told me I was racist.

The trouble I see, with being so 'woke' is that a daughter can tell her own mother that she is a racist because it is a given that everyone guilty of this evil.  That is so problematic.  How do you even start a conversation when everyone is automatically labelled with that offensive moniker?   It shuts down any discourse!  I wanted to say, methinks thou doth protest too much!  Speak for yourself, dearie!  But of course that would be so hurtful!   That my own daughter who knows me can say such a thing shows such a disconnect from reality!  And this is a sharp, smart, perceptive woman.  But she's been so influenced by the internet tribal wars, she's swallowed the assumptions hook, line and sinker.  Wow.

I do blame the political milieu right now, especially in Catholic circles.  Most Catholics aren't very good at being Catholic.  We are way too influenced by the political tribalism going on, due to the liberals' rejection of protecting the unborn and their tendency to push post modern sexual mores on everyone.  That meant that if you actually wanted to follow Church teaching on those matters you either got pushed into the conservatives' arms or you had to discount or ignore the importance of those matters.  And then Trump came along and riled up or re-awakened a lot of racial tension.  Depressingly, most pro-lifers see him as the most loyal president ever in terms of their fight to protect the unborn.  And they are quite blind to his other faults.  They twist themselves into apologists for him.  Honestly, they are searching for a hero and pathetically they have chosen him.  Absurd!  I have never in my life expected any politician to not have major flaws.  I have never agreed with anyone 100%  Just because you are critical of one thing doesn't mean you are critical of everything.  I can agree and even be grateful for Trump's support of the pro-life movement and yet think his immigration policies are horrid.  I think in the end he'll do more damage than good, frankly.  I think his ascent right now is a Pyrrhic victory.

Anyway, it has taken me several days to write this.  And the politics in Virginia is so messed up right now.  I'm disgusted. 

Starting Seeds

Last year I tried to start seeds for a garden I didn't yet have.  The garden guys didn't actually get working until late, late fall.  But even so, not one of my seeds sprouted!  I was terribly discouraged by that and vowed that now that I really do have raised beds this year, I would just buy seedling already started at some nursery.  I think that my failure last year really damped any little bit of confidence I had.

But, now I've been reading and watching youtube videos on it all, and I think I will try to do my own seed sprouting, at least for some of the garden.  I might buy some seedlings and do some direct sowing as well.  Why not try all three options?

But for the seedlings this is my plan:

Take the seeds I got last year and use them up!  Hopefully the seeds are fine and not the cause of the problem I had last year.  I doubt it.  I bought from a reputable seed company.

It looks like this soil blocker is the most used size so I am starting with this one.

I am going to get a soil blocker and buy some organic seedling mix.  Last year I tried to use cardboard egg cartons and compost from our local compost service.

I am also going to buy some seedling trays as well as the plastic dome tops that go with them.  This is plastic that will be reused over and over again I hope!  I don't know how people grew seedlings before plastic, but nowadays clear plastic dominates.  But it is re-usable.  These domes keep the soil mix moist.  I think that might have been my flaw last time.  I did water but I don't think enough. Also, I am not going to use tap water to water them with.  I know at Mom's organic I can bring in refillable jugs and get filtered water.

Then I am going to ensure that the seeds are warm.  So I am going to take the old shelf of my aunt's (that is currently rusting on our porch) clean it up and bring into our study in front of the window.  That room is the warmest room on the main floor.

I found this neat seedling starting chart on line from the local master gardeners' group.

Hittite Warrior - Book 4

Hittite Warrior by Joanne Williamson is a young adult novel published back in 1960 (my birth year).  It is set in the ancient world of tribes battling things out in the Western Semitic lands that stretch between Egypt and what is now Turkey.  That whole western half of the Mediterranean, and east towards Persia, was teaming with tribal warfare.  Many of these tribes are mentioned in the Old Testament.  We not only meet Hittites and Egyptians but Philistines, Canaanites and Hebrews as well as others who are mentioned, those from the kingdom of Cush, etc.

The plot takes place when the formerly great Hittite kingdom is toppling.  Hundreds of years before the Hittites had won a great battle against an expansionist Egypt and had been mortal enemies ever since.  But now the Hittite kingdom has fallen to the sea people, and tribes are battling each other for a new balance of power.  Uriah-Tarhund is a Hittite who, after the death of his family, is seeking refuge with his father's friend, Sisera, a Canaanite general.  But he first gets taken in by a kind family from the city of Tyre.  Here he learns about the awful god Moloch who demands child sacrifice to mollify him.    He also meets Jotham, a Hebrew in exile, whose uncle has treacherously betrayed him.  Jotham winds up saving the next child to be sacrificed to Moloch and Uriah is unwillingly involved in the deed.  The three wind up seeking refuge in the hill country where they are taken in by a Hebrew tribe who happen to have the great Judge Deborah visiting them as they plot to overthrow their pagan oppressors. 

Lots of twists and turns and challenges for Uriah.  Lots of battles, of course.  He is a Hittite warrior.  The story is very well crafted, told and is steeped in history.  Even though the plot is complicated, it zips along.  Since I had just finished reading The History of the Ancient World, I recognized many of the historical events the author draws from. 

This was a reread for me.  I read it many years ago, I guess when we were covering Ancient history with my older kids, though I don't remember reading it out loud to them. 

Anyway, I highly recommend this book.  A very well written, historical novel probably for grades 6 and up.  I do think it would help in comprehension to have a little bit of background on what was going on during the time period before reading.

Two thumbs up!  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

The Warden - Book 3

I listened to a wonderful free recording of The Warden by Anthony Trollope via Librivox.  Unlike other books, like The Brothers Karamosov, where there are a number of different readers, this was read by one British man, Nick Whitley, and he did a marvelous job.  It was almost at a professional level.The actual recording sometimes varied a little in loudness but the reader himself did such a good job.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I find Anthony Trollope so charming, intelligent, wry and insightful.  He writes beautifully.  All the personalities leap from the book, fully blown, living characters that you recognize and chuckle at. Trollope has fun in this book satiring at Charles Dickens as Mr. Populist Sentiment.  He's got a stuffy, self-important attorney general named Abraham Haphazard.  He even has a very minor character, the father of 12, whose name is Mr. Quiverful.  He doesn't overdo that kind of satire but it is there for just a sprinkling of humor.

The plot gently pokes at overzealous reformers which may do more harm than the actual thing the zealot wants to reform.  And the main character is the lovely, kindly, meek and mild Mr. Harding.  He is the warden of the hospital, like an old age home for poor men who worked in the wool industry.  Mr. Harding lives in the comfortable cottage on the grounds and is in charge of the men living there.  Mr. Bold, a young, well off doctor in the town, who has known Mr. Harding since his childhood and who has fallen in love with Mr. Harding's younger daughter, Eleanor, can't control his reform-minded zeal when he discovers that Hiram's Will, which set up the home for the old men, is not really being followed as intended.  The Anglican Church has allowed, for many decades, the warden to be paid rather comfortably, while very little money goes to the actual old men themselves.  Mr. Harding though, loves being the warden.  He has befriended all the old men.  He treats them generously and with kindness.  By his loving care and sweet temper, he has made it a good home.  But Bold can't see this.  Or rather it is beside the point to him.  The will should be followed to the letter and it is just another example of the corruption in the Church.  He is talked into beginning a lawsuit.  This endangers his relationship with Eleanor and causes all sort of havoc and pain in Mr. Harding's life.  How poor, mild-mannered Mr. Harding handles the predicament he's in is the main plot.

I was listening to Trollope's tongue-in-cheek take down of the Victorian British press, exemplified in the newspaper called The Jupiter in the book, at the same time the whole Covington High School boys brouhaha was going on.  It was amazing how spot on Trollope's assessment of the misuse of power by the press was.  The more things change, the more they stay the same!

I really enjoyed this book.  On to Barchester Towers next!  The same reader, Nick Whitley reads this one too!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.