Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

This composition has been a labor of love over the last twenty years or so. I eventually hope to create a larger work based on four poems by Walt Whitman — to my mind the supreme American bard — but it is a slow process if I am to do honor to the beauty of his words. Here is the first section of the first section of his powerful seascape, in which he begins to describe how he learned the art of poetry from the bird-muses and the wise refrain of the ocean on the Long Island shore, whispering the ultimate word.

(Updated 11/2021)

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

An Irish Interlude

It was a cool fall evening in the city that constantly grows in size — “because it’s always Dublin.” The light streaming from the pub windows created an island of warmth and welcome. Within, the usuals were in place. Connor the tale-teller stood leaning with his back to the bar, one arm resting on the rim, while the other held his pint aloft. A thin man in his mid-fifties, he had worn many hats in his industrious life — estate agent, salesman, amateur journalist — in all of which his ready wit and smooth tongue had served him well. As he began to speak, most eyes in the pub turned towards him.

“There was once an ancient people ruled by priests. And every year they would hold a great sacrifice out on the plain that spread before their chief city. The priests would select a calf, and slaughter it by slitting its throat, and then butcher it and roast it on a great fire. The people would then be served portions of it — a mout’ful or two at most for each of the lot of them.”

He paused to take a sip of his porter, licked his thin lips, and continued.

“But after many years, the priests grew lax in their duties, and as the population grew the people complained they were not being well served. They demanded a change, and the priests were only too happy to oblige — them havin’ grown weary of the task. And so they devised a way to accomplish the sacrifice with minimal burden to themselves.”

He paused again, this time to take a last long draught from the pint. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his skinny throat at each swallow. He then set the emptied pint on the bar, and with a demure gesture declined another. The denizens of the pub leaned expectantly closer.
“Now listen what I’m tellin’ you,” he continued. “The priests would sprinkle the calf with spirits, and set it alight with a torch, and shoo it off into the crowd of worshippers. And they’d each have a knife or a blade of some sort, and as the poor beast ran wild, they would poke and hack at it until it was dead, and then they’d cut off a bit and have their mout’ful of the sacrifice.”

“The sons of bitches,” a loud voice boomed from the far end of the pub. The crowd turned their attention from Connor to the large, stooped man seated at a table by himself. Before him were a handful of dead soldiers: five empty whiskey glasses. “The sons of bitches,” he intoned again. Suddenly aware that he had drawn the attention of the crowded pub, he raised his reddened eyes to gaze on them with a mixture of accusation and appeal.

“The priests and brothers — what they did to those children in their care. Hophni and Phinehas, I tell you, Hophni and Phinehas. And the bishops are as bad if not worse. An Eli every one of ’em, turnin’ a blind eye, and coverin’ up when they oughta’d rooted out the evil from their midst. There’ll be hell to pay, I tell you.”

The crowd shifted uneasily in the silence. Connor began slowly to make his way toward the door.

“It used to be said that Ireland was the old sow that ate her farrow,” the burly man continued. He clenched the edge of the table with his outstretched arms. “But it was never Ireland. It was the church; it was always the church. Damn them to hell. Damn them all to hell.”

Connor, by this time, was at the door and soon out on the quiet street. A light rain, more a mist than rain, was falling. The street-lamp opposite, with its rain-born halo, seemed to him to be held out in benediction. “Damn them all to hell,” he said, as he turned to walk into the darkness.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
November 27, 2009

with thanks to the spirit of James Joyce, who appears to have paid a call in the wee hours of this morning

Thought for 11.23.09

The Manhattan Declaration* gives me one more reason to be glad I live in the Bronx.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

* to which I will not link as I have no wish to give it any more notice than it deserves, which is to say, none.

She woke one morning

For all women diminished and debased
by culture, cult or clan

She woke one morning only to find
that her mouth had disappeared.
She could no longer eat,
but wasn't feeling very hungry.
She could no longer speak,
but then, no one had ever listened
when she spoke.
And so she lived a little while
much as she had lived before:
starving,
silent and
ignored.

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
November 21, 2009

More on the DC situation

Perhaps the saddest thing in all this is the failure of the Archdiocesan leadership to make use of a commonplace of Roman Catholic ethics (the so-called Principle of Double Effect) to free themselves of the concerns that they are "supporting gay marriage" if they have to provide health-care benefits to same-sex spouses. If the intent is simply to provide employee benefits neutrally to all employees (as the civil law requires) any alleged "support" for gay marriage is incidental and it becomes an ethical non-issue.

The failure of the Archdiocese to make consistent use of this principle, which is long enshrined in official Roman Catholic teaching, is precisely what I mean by a disorder in thinking and application. The way around an ethical dilemma is there, ready to be put to use.

Moreover, the fair treatment of employees is, as a biblical and ethical principle, at least as foundational as the Roman Catholic reading of sexual morality, and thus an ideal candidate for the Double Effect principle, whereby an unintended evil can be accepted (if not ideal) in the interest of an intended good. The failure to make use of this principle is only exacerbated by the not-so-subtle threat from the Archdiocese to drop out of social service provision if it is forced to comply with the law.

It seems to me the Archbishop of Washington needs a good Jesuit lawyer.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 11.12.09

One of the tragic discontinuities in the Western Christian Tradition, since Augustine anyway, is the notion that the universe at hand (that is, as we know it) is simply not as it ought to be. This offers a neat way to avoid any data that might actually be at our disposal in favor of unrealized (and unrealizable) idealistic hopes and dreams. That this worldview is not one Jesus would have comprehended ('the kingdom is among you') is bypassed in the interests of privileging some of what is "natural" over and against other things equally "natural" (but deemed "fallen"). And the choice is sometimes quite arbitrary, depending on whose cow is sacred, and whose ox is gored.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Those were the days....

When will the Roman Church wake up to the fact that it exists, in this country at least, in a pluralistic society where, while it is free to teach whatever it chooses anywhere and everywhere, it is not free in the public sector to infringe the rights of others, and to the extent it enters that public sphere has certain responsibilities to the whole public? Henry IV at the gates of Canossa in 1077 was a long while ago — and expecting civil society to toe your line borders on the fantastic, and it isn't going to get any better. Meaner and leaner seems to be the forecast.

Thus the Archdiocese of Washington whines that due to what they regard as insufficient "protection" for religious institutions in the DC gay-marriage law:

...[R]eligious organizations and individuals are at risk of legal action for refusing to promote and support same-sex marriages in a host of settings where it would compromise their religious beliefs. This includes employee benefits, adoption services and even the use of a church hall for non-wedding events for same-sex married couples. Religious organizations such as Catholic Charities could be denied licenses or certification by the government, denied the right to offer adoption and foster care services, or no longer be able to partner with the city to provide social services for the needy.

The idea that employee benefits required by law represent the "promotion" of anything other than simple justice is ludicrous. Employees are, as the church teaches, all sinners in one way or another, and paying them a fair wage with benefits need not be seen as the promotion of their sins, whatever they may be. I'm not aware that the Romans require their secular employees to be Roman Catholic, or even Christian, let alone to be free from sin, or regularly to be shriven prior to payday — though I know in some cases (religious school teachers) they don't want them to be gay or divorced, and I believe may well continue to maintain such restrictions.

As to adoption, the Romans are already on record that they'd rather have children go unadopted than go to gay or lesbian parents, so there's nothing new there. How this squares with "true religion" as James described it is another matter.

As to renting the hall ("even"!) — well, yes, if you rent your hall as a public facility for secular use you might well be in trouble with the law if you refuse to rent to someone in violation of anti-discrimination laws. Still, renting the hall is hardly promotion of anything that takes place in the hall, or the beliefs of the renters, is it? The fact is that if you wish to dabble in the secular realm (as a landlord taking people's money for the use of your hall) you will have to get real and be welcome to the civil society. You are, of course, entirely free to reserve your church hall for religious uses — which the law fully protects.

Finally, the veiled threat to find itself unable any longer to reach out to the needy in collaboration with the secular realm is a particularly low ethical posture. Whatever happened to not letting your left hand know what the right is doing? Is there something immoral with feeding the hungry or clothing the naked if they are gay or lesbian?

The Roman Archdiocese seems to suggest so. Frankly, this tired and manipulative ploy is well past its sell-by date, when Rome used to be able to call the shots for the secular society. The leadership of the Roman Church continues to show itself not only to be behind the times, but to be morally and ethically disordered. Objectively disordered, at that, for it is one thing just to be unethical or immoral, but for a church to be so, as in this case, is at odds with its "object."

Let me add that I have considerable respect for many individual Roman Catholics, including some in the leadership, but the recent antics many of the leaders, in many spheres, leads me to wonder how much longer this will go on. (I'm told that the Prophecy of Malachy provides for only one more pope after Benedict XVI, before the final fall of Rome.) I'd hate to see the lights go out with lean and mean as the watchwords — somehow just doesn't sound like what Jesus wants, does it?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Engagement

As you can see, I'm on the panel for this event next Sunday afternoon. I plan to speak a bit on the issue of the entanglement of church and state, which I see as a major part of the Fog (sometimes more like a Stephen King "Mist") that seems to descend on otherwise sane and sober minds when this topic comes up.

It seems evident to me that the independence of civil and religious marriage is simply a norm -- at least if one is speaking of any particular religion or state. Marriages exist in many forms in many cultures, some with religious overtones and some not, and in some cases they are mutually exclusive. That is, marriages that might be recognized in some civil societies aren't in others, and the same goes for religious marriages and religions. There is simply no "one size fits all" including perhaps most especially the "one man / one woman" model, which is just one of many forms of marriage.

The entanglement in the US is particularly troublesome, and I imagine it to be in part a by-product of our English colonial heritage. At the time of the Revolution, English Law (Lord Hardwicke's Act) required all couples to be married in the Church of England with the sole exceptions of Jews and Quakers. This law was on the books from 1753 through the middle of the 19th century, and was a scandal for Roman Catholics and Nonconformists alike, and many quite rightly said, "I'll be damned if I'm going to get married by an English Vicar!"

It is still something of a mystery to me why the US for the most part retained this vestige of the Establishment after the American Revolution, allowing clergy of whatever sect to function as civil officials. As to the French Revolution, I presume you know that that unfortunate movement led at length to a strict separation of these powers, and in many nations influenced by the Napoleonic Code one may marry in church but such marriage isn't recognized by the state unless one is also married through the civil authorities.

I am all for freedom of religion in this regard. But at this point I am increasingly irritated with the movements by Roman Catholics and Mormons in places like California and Maine to intrude their religious beliefs beyond their own membership and meddle in the lives of citizens who want nothing to do with their belief systems. Perhaps this is payback for Lord Hardwicke's Act after all. But I've had enough of this exercise of the libido dominandi -- the root of all evil in attempting to dominate others to ones own parochial views.

Opposition to same-sex marriage on any grounds is heterosexist by definition, just as opposition to mixed-race marriage on any grounds is racist. Both are irrational, and within the next quarter century, I believe more will have come to see heterosexism's intellectual impoverishment and moral bankruptcy, as we have with racism.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

An Honor to Be Here

This has been a busy weekend. I'd heard in the late summer that I had been promoted to the rank of Officer in the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (read more at the Saint John website). The investiture was yesterday, and the snap above (grabbed by Millard Cook) is just after the Prior "pinned" me and I stepped aside, assisted by Confrère Barbara Hayward). The Order is all terribly British (revived by Victoria, now led by Elizabeth II, active in England primarily in support of St John's Ambulance). We sang God Save the Queen as part of the celebration, which took place at the recently refurbished Cathedral Church of St John the Divine (not the John of the order, who is the Baptist.) The American Priory, which is growing in numbers (and invested not a few new members, officers, commanders, knights and dames yesterday) has taken the St John's Eye Hospital in Jerusalem (and its branches in the area) under its wing as a particular project, which gives us a strong connection to the original foundation of the Hospitallers. (And, as Americans, we sang The Star Spangled Banner, too, as well as Jerusalem, My Happy Home).

The Englishy bits give me something to look forward to when I am next in London, as the St John's Museum in Clerkenwell (at the site of the medieval foundation, dissolved by that other English monarch Henry VIII) should be open once more after some additional recent renovations. Meanwhile, the events of the weekend surrounding St John's were a treat, and it was a delight to see old friends and meet a few new ones.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Popular Religion: Risk and Opportunity

"Popular religion" is very much a part of our culture, and that includes our churches. I can guarantee that if you were to scratch the surface of many members of your congregations, and not a few clergy and bishops, you might find some rather astonishing theological opinions, especially concerning such things as the "life of the world to come."

I know this tension between popular religion and dogmatic orthodoxy also exists in the Roman Catholic Church -- alongside the dogma a very rich personal and popular devotional life thrives, and it is not always "orthodox" in its underpinnings. (I can remember the nun who told our Catechism Class about the salvific value of a mother's tears, carried by an angel to the Virgin Mary who put it in the scale to weigh it against the wicked heart of the distraught mother's son! Talk about unconscious syncretism — that even resonates with the Egyptian Book of the Dead!)

Perhaps this is in part a result of being heirs of an established church (whether legally or culturally — so that includes "big" churches like the Roman Catholic, and Lord knows that there is plenty of "popular religion" in countries where the Roman Catholic Church is dominant). I suspect as well this may happen in liturgical (rather than confessional) churches a bit more frequently. People become used to being part of the church's worship, its general atmosphere as opposed to official doctrines, and it may or may not touch their lives otherwise beyond The Three Sacred Elements of the Transitional Rites (you know, Water, Rice, and Earth in the Hatch, Match and Dispatch role the church has so long taken.)

In the long run I approach this in much the way C.S. Lewis did: which is to ask, How much worse off might such people be — even with their less than perfect grasp of the doctrinal rudiments of the faith — if they were not exposed to the church at all? And so we clergy keep on hatching, matching and dispatching — but I hope in as honest and rich and faith-filled a way as possible, not giving into the temptation to substitute popular pious platitudes for the sometimes hard doctrine. We are not, after all, a society of perfect people, but pilgrims. As long as the guides keep their heads on straight, not giving in to the sentiment that passes for faith, we will be moving in the right direction, under the shadow of our banner, the Cross of Christ.

But that takes perseverance — the "popular" course is popular for a reason —it's easier. A few weeks ago, Archbishop Barry Morgan delivered the Hobart Lecture here in the Diocese of New York. One of his themes was clerical honesty: especially in times of loss and tragedy resisting those pious platitudes that are so easy and attractive and tempting; and which reaffirm those troubling aspects of sentimental and popular religion. What does "He's gone to a better place..." have to do with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead? As Morgan challenged, is it really at all true that "God never gives us trouble without giving us the strength to bear it..." when we are surrounded by evidence to the contrary?

I commend the lecture to you -- it is good, bracing, reading and touches on this whole question of sentimental religion vs. a faith that can face the facts.

Peace and joy, and a Glorious All Saints Day upcoming! (I've got three rounds of Water to deal with three of the newly Hatched!)

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

An Aspect of the Nature of the Church

In Light of Approaching All Saints Day

There is continued discussion in some circles about the relationship between a church as a body and the various members who make it up — a discussion no doubt started by Saint Paul!

Richard Hooker once observed,

The Church is always a visible society of men; not an assembly, but a Society... Assemblies are properly rather things that belong to a Church. Men are assembled for performance of public actions; which actions being ended, the assembly dissolveth itself and is no longer in being, whereas the Church which was assembled doth no less continue afterwards than before. (Laws III.I.14)

That is, the structures of the society endure even as different individuals take part in the assembly of that society from time to time. Congress is still congress, regardless of the change in party majorities, and of the actual senators and representatives seated. And a parish is still a parish regardless of the fact that, for instance, none of the founding members of Saint James Church Fordham in 1853 are still active members!

Like the cells of ones own body, which die and are replaced, while each of us still is who we think we are as a continuing entity, a person with an identity that survives the change in our actual substance — the church goes on, living a life not entirely its own: With saints below and saints above, some having crossed the stream, some crossing now, and some with their feet unmoistened yet!

This is also why the notion of transforming our wonderful communion-in-diversity into a kind of patchwork of special-interest-chapters-in-affinity is such a terrible step backwards. The big tent is so much more, while still imperfect, a vision of what we are called to be, than the proliferation of franchise outlets (or ‘tiers’ or ‘tracks’) into which we might further devolve.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thoughts for 10.26.09

On the Global South Steersmen's View of Rome and Hopes for a Disciplinary Covenant

Continued bluffing after the cards have been played is an ineffective strategy. Les jeux sont faits.

i.e., had all y'all bided your time instead of launching your own forays contrary to the Covenant's intent, your urging the Covenant might persuade. You cannot pretend still to be playing chess after knocking the board over, or in this case, imagine White can win by purloining a few of Red's pieces before the game begins.

Sorry for all the game analogies, but it really does seem to be a game, doesn't it? Played with human lives...

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Yorkshire Suite

This composition for small orchestra is based on a series of tunes I composed in the early 70s to serve as the incidental music for a production of D. H. Lawrence’s "The Daughter in Law" directed by John Pasquin at the McCarter Theater in Princeton. Then it was for solo bass recorder, here it is reimagined as perhaps an overture in two short movements. The tunes are original (as far as I know) and were written after some time immersing myself in North of England folk music. The play, a tragicomedy, was itself a composite of ups and downs, a world of morris dances and dirges. Enjoy.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

MP3 File

Teachers to Ones Liking

Perhaps the strangest response to the recent Roman Catholic offer of transition and incorporation for disaffected Anglicans is this from the group Reform. They alert us at the head of their site that they very rarely issue press releases, so this is a rarity. Perhaps a second draft might have been advised, to avoid the apparent disconnect between the two final paragraphs (emphasis mine):

“If priests really are out of sympathy with the C of E’s doctrine (as opposed to the battles we are having over women’s ministry and sexuality), then perhaps it is better they make a clean break and go to Rome. However, when they do, they will have to accommodate themselves to Rome’s top-down approach to church life, whereas the C of E has always stressed the importance of decision making at the level of the local church.”
“It is illusory to pretend that this development is an outcome of ecumenical dialogue. It illustrates the difficulties the C of E faces and the need for stronger leadership, rather than the ‘softly softly’ approach so far taken to those holding liberal views who are splitting the church.”

So, let me get this straight, or at least decently and in order: Top-down is that unpleasant Romish thing, and local discernment the English, but the problem with the C of E is that very lack of a top-down imposition of control from the leadership. Which leads me to suspect that if Rome actually enforced all that the Reform folk agreed with, they too would fly to her bosom.

Which is just another example of "I like strong leaders and tough enforcement when I agree with it" — the tautology of tyranny and the unassailable rule of private conscience writ large.

No thanks. I'll stick with subsidiarity, even when it's upside-down.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

There’s No Place Like Rome...

The news appears adequately to have been aired abroad, but in case you haven't heard, the Vatican has issued an Apostolic Constitution providing an expedited course for Anglicans who want to become Roman Catholic en masse and retain some of their distinctively Anglican liturgy — and clergy. There are scads of links to various reactions at Thinking Anglicans and Episcopal Café. I've not yet found a link to, and hence have not read, the actual document in question, so my comments at this point are provisional. But in the best spirit of modern journalism, I do have a few general observations, and the facts can always be dealt with retroactively.

In spite of the press coverage and the cries of alarm or celebration in some circles, this "hydrofoil across the Tiber" is not an entirely new thing. In the United States at least, congregations along with their priests have occasionally made a transition to being Anglican Use Roman Catholics. The present offer seems closer to a Uniate arrangement, rather more ordinary than exceptional, with a tad more polish than the usual slightly used congregation.

Although married male priests appear to be part of this proposal, it doesn't appear that married male bishops are going to be allowed. That, it seems to me, will thin the flow of the exodus somewhat, at least the purple end of the pond. It also seems very likely that reordination or at least conditional ordination will be required for the priests (and deacons).

Some have wondered at Rowan Williams’ apparent calm acceptance of this new phenomenon. It appears he was not aware it was in the offing. This is strange since the proposal from the "Traditional Anglican Communion" has been talked about for some years, and it appears that the Vatican’s response, although it may seem sudden to the unprepared, is really not all that startling if you've paid close attention to what they've been saying about Anglicans over the last decade or so. Which is to say, as always, “The light is still on and you are always welcome to come home.”

I think three things may factor into the Archbishop's relatively calm response: First, what's he supposed to do? Second, this may well thin the ranks of some of the more forceful and tiresome opponents of the ordination of women to the episcopate, and obviate the need for the dehumanizing (and rather “federated”) scheme currently on the table in the Church of England. Third, he may finally have experienced the sobering reality that dialogue with Rome always has been in truth a one-sided exercise.

More can, and no doubt will, be said before long. I look forward to seeing the actual text of the official document. In the meantime, I imagine many of the most Romeward-looking Anglican clergy are now considering if they are willing to put their stipend where their mouth is, and do what they've so often said they would do if only they could. As Dorothy learned, of course, they always had the power to do so, as indeed many had, individually, before them. Just click the heels of the ruby slippers three times and say, "There's no place like Rome; there's no place like Rome; there's no place like..." And Anglicanism they will say, was just a colorful dream populated with familiar figures.

May they find peace in their new abode. I prefer this side of the Tiber Rainbow.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Engagements

I have two speaking engagements coming up in the near future, for anyone interested. Next Monday, October 19, 2009, at 7:00 pm I'll be at Saint Luke in the Fields in Manhattan kicking off a series of three sessions about General Convention. I'll be talking about the legislative process and the impact of D025 and C056. As well as General Convention in general.

Then in early December there's this:

“Getting the Word (of God) Out”
Speaking the Unspeakable

Meditations by Br. Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Join us for a quiet day of reflection and prayer
before the frenzy of the season has a chance to draw you
away from the true work of Advent!

Saturday, December 5, 2009
9:00am to 3:00pm
Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church
1625 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103-6388
www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org
(215) 735-1416

Sponsored by The Brotherhood of Saint Gregory-Province II
and St Mark’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, PA

Thoughts for 10.15.09

The Blogosphere as Schul
It seems to me that much of our discussion, on a number of topics, has taken on an almost Talmudic quality, in which any given thesis or concept is surrounded by a halo of commentary and commentary on commentary — much of it in the interlinked realm of the Internet rather than the printed page. In the midst of this sometimes polemical but always expanding web of conversation, what are we to make of those who want a simple black-and-white up-or-down answer to the underlying question? Perhaps the best answer to the unanswerable is to hedge it about with every possibility, in the hope that a pattern might emerge?

Actus Purus
Think of God not only as Being Itself or the Ground of Being, but also as Potentiality Itself; not as a Thing or even the Best Thing or even just the Source of all Things, but also the origin of even the Possibility of Thinginess. This gets us away from Nobodaddy and the God Rejected by Dawkins, but also and to an important extent even somewhat away from the God of Scholasticism. As with the former thought, this is also about hedging about the Unknown with the Merely Known.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Post 600: Some thoughts on Health Care

I'm going out on a limb to run a few thoughts up the proverbial flagpole on the whole Health Care issue. These are in no particular order -- just consider them theses for thought, rather than a list of credenda:

It isn't really about health care (the provision of medical services), it is about health insurance (handling the costs of health care), and who should manage it.

The best health care in the world is no good to you if you can't afford it.

There is no "joint ownership of the means of production" because health care isn't a product, but a service. Insurance is also a service, though it has been more efficiently monetized.

Health insurance, by its nature, is also "socialized" in that it is a cost-sharing mechanism in which people pool resources through "premiums" so that there is a spread of cost. Whether the money is going to the government or to an insurer is not really relevant, except to the extent that administrative costs or profit come into the picture. The difference between insurance premiums and taxes lies largely in their relative lack of proportionality to the capacity to pay.

Since almost everyone either gets sick or injured at some point in life, a system to share the cost of health care is logical.

In insurance, a portion of the "premium" is eaten up by the system -- in administration or profit (on top of any administrative costs or profit to those actually providing the service of health care). Money that could go to patient-care is actually going to insurer-care. This actually adds to the total cost of health-care, and the burden on all who are insured, rather than lessening it.

As I note, these are just some thoughts that have been rumbling about my mind for the last few days. Frankly I don't see what all the horror about socialized medical care is about, except as a kind of "religious" issue for those opposed to anything "pink."

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 10.12.09

Leaders are not always in the position to govern, and governors don't always lead.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, reflecting both on the phenomenon of bishops becoming prophetic in retirement, and the fact that the laity, the Holy People of God, sometimes (perhaps often) lead the church more effectively than the hierarchy

Night on the Town

Fellow-blogger Grandmère Mimi was in town for a brief visit and James and I went out for drinks and dinner to the famous Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. This is my first visit there in about forty years. It was a true treat, to visit with Mimi and enjoy a meal together. That's her at the left, me at the right, and James in the midst. And yes, the camera makes us all look fatter than we are, even after a hearty meal!