RIP Monicomputer

I'm sure everyone's been wondering, "Where, oh where has my Monica gone?" Well, I'll tell you: nowhere! But my computer died this weekend, and I cannot say I am at all sorry. The fact of the matter is, I struggle with sloth, and having a computer at home and being plugged into the internet was more often a feather bed than a lash, which is what I really need. I'm not particularly interested in getting another one, either. I see this as providential.

I'm going to try to find a way to continue on with writing on the ol' blog, but I don't know how I'll manage that as yet. In the meantime, I can offer the occasional workplace adventure. Ran into another "Catholic" customer today. Here's what happened.

He writes a check. I check the check. I check the license. He has a Polish last name, and I say, "Is that a Polish last name?" He says, "Yes, Polish." I said, "Catholic?" "What?" "Catholic, are you Catholic?" "Yes...well..." and I know what's coming, "I go to a Presbyterian church, because my wife was Baptist..." And then I assume my nicest the-customer-is-always-right tone (and I'm not good at that, because they aren't): "Oh, I see. You married a Baptist. Mmmmm..." He asked, "Why, are you Catholic?" "Yes." Dude couldn't run out of there fast enough. I'm sure I warped before his eyes into some hardened old Polish relative of his. I hope I did. I came that close to saying, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself...or someone should be ashamed of themselves." But I didn't.

Fresh oranges

Where I work there's one of those sorts of people that talks just to say something. I used to open the store every day, so in the mornings it would be just the two of us, and even though I clearly didn't care, he would always run through the latest new bytes, both local and national. He will be talking. Just now someone was eating an orange, which led to a conversation about oranges, and I said, "My great-uncle has an orange grove in Florida..." and was about to continue when our friend chimed in with, "Are they fresh oranges?" There was a pause. He was waiting for me. I was waiting for me. I said, "Uh...yeah...fresh, fresh off the, you know...tree." Laughter ensued, and our conversation was at an end, because where can you go after that?

Happy Birthday, George!

That's right, George Lucas is 66 years old today. And no, I didn't just "know that." I promise. One of the greatest things on IMDB is the little birthday ticker thing. Today is also Cate Blanchett's birthday, along with Sofia Coppola, Tim Roth...and others.

Probably some people will think, "I can't believe he's that old," but I honestly thought he was older, if not dead. Star Wars, to me, is something that was made in the very distant past, and by the time I saw the movies, everyone already knew the lines and I found myself understanding past statements or actions as allusions. "Oh, that's why my dad said 'I am your father' in that weird voice. It's all clear to me now." So, it was already there as a cultural assumption, which made it feel venerable. I don't remember how old I was (less than ten, I would say), but I can remember that even at that age, everyone in my family was surprised I hadn't seen it yet, which is weird. It's not like my parents didn't know what movies I'd seen, but it still came as a (probably mild) shock that I hadn't seen Star Wars...I mean, everyone's seen it, right? It was also a cause of excitement--"Well, we're gonna watch 'em all!" And we did. The whole family--parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles--was on vacation in Arkansas, but one day we stock-piled all the best junk you can dump into your belly, and my elders wound me up all morning and early afternoon. Smelling my mom's and grandmother's cooking, looking at shiny junk food wrappers and hearing them crinkle impatiently at the hands of my sweets-loving grandfather, surrounded by loved ones and feeling a general air of carefree excitement and initiation--I can't think of a better way to prepare for a boy's first trip to Tatooine.

So thanks, George! Your philosophy might be crumby, but I didn't know it, and you still told a great story! And swords that are also lasers? Pff. I was in heaven.

Are you a Christian hipster?

Apparently there's some book coming out called "Hipster Christianity: When Church + Cool Collide." (Pre-order now!) See the website. I can't quite figure out what the point of it is...it seems to me like the kind of book a Christian hipster would write (and read), so all the clever barbs (and they are) seem a bit boomerang-ish. I was interested in the four "types" of Christian hipster, mostly because the props in some of the pictures are of Catholic imagery--mostly of the Sacred Heart--liturgical calendars and books by Catholics. Cherry-picking through Christian traditions and molding them around oneself, which totally misses the point. Growing up Protestant Evangelical and working at L'Abri exposes one to a lot of this kind of thing: rhetoric about "relevance" (ugh), concentration on matters really peripheral to the faith (like homosexuality, women in ministry, etc.), an almost obsessive focus on the church's "failures," especially in matters of "justice," that translates into long confessions and postures of welcome to and "engagement" with the rest of the world. Often I've found that the anti-establishment posture was against churches, because it was all the cradle Protestants knew, and stuff like NPR and voting Democrat was exciting, relevant, and edgy. In their world, they were going against the flow (just like Jesus, right?). Which is hilarious. I could go on. There really are types, and it's pretty funny to see how this author depicts them. Still, like I said...the whole exercise is one which would require one to be a Christian hipster to engage in with any amount of seriousness. (Note: not everyone who showed up at L'Abri was like that, but they were definitely around.)

There's even a quiz to see where you fit in the ranks! I took it, I admit. Most of the questions were completely irrelevant to me (so, joke's on them!), but I answered them as best I could.

Take the quiz here. I myself scored at 61/120, so apparently I have a...

"Low CHQ [Christian Hipster Quotient]. You probably belong to the purpose-driven, seeker-sensitive, Hawaiian shirt-wearing Christian establishment, even though you are open to some of the "rethinking Christianity" stuff. You seem to like edginess in some measure but become uneasy when your idea of Christian orthodoxy is challenged by some renegade young visionary who claims the virgin birth isn't necessary."

I can't decide how much the phrase "renegade young visionary who claims the virgin birth isn't necessary" is supposed to be a joke. How long has that been around? I think the old word for this kind of "visionary" was "heretic," but hey. I guess I'm just "uneasy." You know, easily shaken...and apparently "Hawaiian shirt-wearing."

Where do you fit in?

Shout out!

This one goes out to easily the loveliest Nashvillain in our state capital. ELV, this one's for you...especially the "Woo!" at the end.

"I just...DO things..."

This is a scene from the movie The Dark Knight. I don't think it's a great movie, but the Joker is a compelling character. The background for this scene is: the Joker had arranged for Harvey Dent (the guy in the hospital bed, now Two-Face) and his fiance, Rachel, to be trapped in two different buildings rigged to explode. While incarcerated, Joker tells Batman where each of them is, but with only enough time to save one of them. Though Bruce Wayne also loves Rachel, Batman chooses to save Dent, because he believes that Dent (a public figure) is capable of bringing order and justice into Gotham City, thus making his (Batman's) role unneccessary. Well, Rachel dies, and Batman does save Dent's life, but unfortunately not without horrible disfiguration to his face--as well as, it turns out, to his soul. Joker escapes and finds Dent, ultimately recruiting him as a fellow "agent of chaos."

In some ways, Joker reminds me of Gregory, the red-headed anarchist poet in The Man Who Was Thursday. When asked what his ultimate goal is, Gregory answers, "To destroy God!" or something like that. Joker has this difference with Gregory: he does not wish to kill Batman, who is supposed to represent an incorruptible goodness, or at least an immovable code. If Batman were dead, what would Joker have to do? Those of us who follow St. Augustine know that evil is a privation, and not a entity in itself, and it cannot exist without Good. Those of us who have read Milton know also that there's nothing to do in hell, nothing to destroy, nothing onto which a thoroughly corrupted thing may latch itself and tear. So Satan finds Paradise.

Joker is disarming. He says that all the order one may conceive is just a conception by someone or other that happens to be more powerful than you, and by rejecting that order, you may be as powerful, at least in thought, as God. "Better to reign in hell..." and so on. But Joker, I think, is even more depraved than Milton's Satan. In Milton, Satan is a prince. But the Joker does not care for reigning anywhere at all. You might say he is an egalitarian. He doesn't even care if he lives or dies--in this movie, he stares death straight in the face at least three times and is energized by it, by his own defiance of it. Because death is also, "part of the plan." There is no prize to win or lose for him; there is only doing things. And when one believes in nothing, the only thing to do is find people who do believe, and figure them out, and latch on, and destroy their faith. That's the thing. Joker doesn't care if people survive any more than he cares if he survives. Like he says to Dent, "It's nothing personal." And it isn't. The Joker does not hate Dent, nor did he hate Rachel. I wouldn't even call him bloodthirsty--he just despises their faith.

His effect on Harvey Dent is tragic. In Dent's adherence to Joker's creedlessness, he loses the ability to make assessments of good or evil, and justice is doled out at the flip of a coin, because it's the only thing that's "fair." Neither actions nor motivations have any meaning for him any longer, and whether you see the handsome side of his face or the rotting side is simply a matter of chance. Of course, he's ugly either way now.

The movie itself falls victim to this. In the end, it is decided that Dent's misdeeds should be pinned on Batman, because it gives people an ordered illusion--a "beneficent deception" I've heard it called--that makes it easier to get along in the world. The Joker's response to this would be, "See! It's just another scheme," and he would probably try to get the truth out.

Isn't it strange that at this point I am comforted by one of St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs for God's existence? It's the one about possible and necessary existence. Nothing we have experienced or known in creation is necessary. It might have been, and it might not have been. This is where Joker stops. He is obsessed and intoxicated by the might-not-have-been-ness of everything, which is why he loves "dynamite, and gun powder, and gasoline." Fire and ruin. But though it may have existed in a form other than it does, stuff does exist, and it cannot be accounted for by a series of infinite causes. At some point, causation itself is caused by something that necessarily is. I suspect that even were he to meet the Must Be, the Joker would be unable to see it as such. So he would go where Satan goes--to the fire that he loves best.

Dick Keyes: my old mentor

Doesn't seem like I've had a lot of time to write for the past few days, though really I think that's a good thing. Tonight after work I went to meet with a priest for spiritual direction--not that he is my spiritual director. I've been trying to get me one o' those for almost a year now, but I keep bouncing around and getting responses like, "Hmmmmm...I don't know..." When I made the appointment with this one, he said, "Hmmm. Yes, well I think I can tide you over till you find the real thing." So funny. Am I that difficult?

Anyway, it was a good meeting overall, with one of the greatest endings ever: "I hate to cut this short, but I've got a potato in the oven." Nothing so good for deflating pride as watching the balance of a man's interest tip in favor of a baking root. The meeting left me drained (in a good way), and now I find myself feeling encouraged but intellectually a bit blank. And nostalgic.

I often miss my old "spiritual director." He wouldn't have used that term. At the L'Abri in Southborough, if you stay there more than a week, you're given a "tutor," someone who meets with you around once a week and talks with you about whatever you're working on, and he assigns a study regimine for use until the next time you meet. This regimine is not always...uh...strictly adhered to. My tutor was the guy who ran the place. That's right, the head honcho. His name is Dick Keyes, almost certainly the most intelligent and articulate man I've ever known, as well as one of the kindest and most solicitous for one's spiritual well-being. And quick. I remember once, after one of his lectures (we had open lectures on Friday nights), a man with a grudge against the church (this is not the Catholic Church; Dick is an evangelical Protestant) stood up and ranted about how he thought the church was bogus. Dick sat there and listened to everything--aggressive and passive-agressive--with a look of such calm and yet such serious concentration and concern that I am amazed the man was not disarmed simply by that. When the man got finished and sat down, heaving, Dick thanked him and literally organized the man's tirade into points for him and answered every single objection, without a single note of triumph or superiority in his voice. I've never seen anything like it.

I could go on all day with stories about Dick Keyes. I also do a mean Dick Keyes impersonation--I mean, I met with the man once a week for at least an hour, and I worked with him every day. We got to be very good friends. I was in his son's wedding as a groomsman (I'm also friends with his son), and the night after the wedding, he invited me up to his house to talk about my becoming Catholic--I wasn't Catholic yet, but I was heading in that direction. Needless to say, I was very nervous. It wasn't like we hadn't disagreed before. He is Yankee through and through, and my very first conversation with the man was about the (so called) Civil War, about which we have a very marked difference of opinion. But this was different. This was a conversation with a man that I revered, and I was about to tell him that much of what he teaches and believes is fundamentally wrong. Not that I planned on arguing. It was just inevitably implied with the direction I was taking. The first thing he said to me was, "What's this I hear about you becoming Catholic?" Gulp. It looks threatening on the screen, but Dick is not hostile; he really wanted to know. The response I made was easily the most difficult of my life, and I nearly broke down a couple of times. L'Abri had become a second home to me, and this was my formal break--it was, in fact, the last real conversation I had with my mentor as a mentee. It was like the moment I realized I could beat up my dad. Not that Dick couldn't have debated me and won. Probably could have. I am no debator. But there he was, looking at me like he looked at the man going on a tirade (I was not tirading, though), except when I was done, he didn't have anything to say. Ah! Dick always had something to say to me! In our talks: some advice to give, some direction, some encouragement--and it was never cheap or mushy--and I realized he wouldn't do that ever again. It was very painful. We talked about other things after that, small things, plans and so on, but I didn't have my mentor any more. Haven't had one since, really. I'm trying, but it's difficult not to think of my first and best master. It's like going on a date after a spouse has died--you feel unfaithful. I guess it's good, then, that the goal is God, and not "relationships," though God is good enough to give us those as well. It's just...sometimes He takes them back. "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord."

P.S. For more pictures of Dick Keyes and the Southborough L'Abri (and some of me), go here.