5 January 04
Vatican II and the Equalization of the Liturgy
Back in the days when I still attended Mass more or less regularly I always sought out the ones with no music. Not because I have no musical ear and hate singing-quite the contrary, actually-but because the music we are now forced to endure is so saccharine as to render the whole ceremony vacuous (or worse). This is a purely personal position, you understand. But Vatican II, with its well-meaning (and no doubt long overdue) proletarianization of the Mass, happened at a time when the worst excesses of pop culture could (and did) destroy Catholic liturgical music. When they aren’t trying to sound like Hollywood scores, contemporary American Catholic hymns sing about love and peace and soaring like eagles and guitars (which should never be brought within 100 yards of any sacred place, in my humble opinion).
This is not the Catholicism I left the Anglican church for so long ago: I wanted the beauty, the guts, the blood, the tangible fusing with the ineffable. It was a strange journey and has marked me, probably more than I’ll ever know. But if they keep making us sing that stuff, I’ll keep staying away. (Signs are that it is indeed compulsory: musicless Sunday masses are no longer permitted by the California bishops.)
Mel Gibson is now famous for his adherence to a Tridentine sect for whom the Latin Mass is the only acceptable medium for approaching the divine. I would never go to one of these ceremonies, but more for political than religious reasons. I have no argument with these people when they say that the Mass as currently served up in parishes across the continent, two, three, four times a Sunday is like eating porridge with treacle. (I don’t know if they DO say this, but someone should.)
Going back to St. George’s in Madrid in December with the beautiful singing of old, beautiful hymns, took me by surprise. I’d forgotten about the pleasure of beauty mixed with the divine. I would love to hear what Beth’s choir sounds like. And I wish someone could write contemporary holy music that didn’t sound like John Denver overdosing on aspartame.
3 January 04
Buying a Goat
Since I mentioned it on our Christmas card this year, several people have asked about the goat I said we bought. We did buy a goat, but it will go to people we’ve never met. This is done through Heifer International, a charitable organization for sustainable development. The goat we paid for is given to a family in a developing country; if it bears any offspring, that family’s obligation is to give the kid to another family in need, and so on. So there’s milk all round. You can also buy a cow, a sheep, a pair of chickens, rabbits, and even a hive of bees, but we like the sassiness of goats. See Numenius’ sketch of one we met last March up in the Capay Valley.
Other organizations I think are worth supporting: Doctors Without Borders, an excellent French organization specializing in critical medical relief; Oxfam; Planned Parenthood; and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory.
2 January 04
Hermione Gets A New Cat
Several days ago I installed Mac OS 10.3 (“Panther”) on our iBook laptop named Hermione. We’re quite pleased with this update of the operating system. Our favorite features include the fast user switching (Pica doesn’t have to log out completely if Numenius want to switch to his desktop for a bit), the more tightly integrated look and feel, and the already quite good email application, complete with a trainable spam filter and a nice interface for sorting mail into different mailboxes according to rules that one defines. A little clunkier than we hoped is the new font manager: I doubt it’s up to handling thousands of fonts, but that’s hardly needed for what we do with the laptop. Now it’s the time to reinstall software: I just put on software for connecting to our GPS unit—what every geographer needs!
18 December 03
Becoming a Godparent
The reason for our trip to Spain was so that I could become the godmother to the adopted Chinese daughter of my oldest childhood friend. I wasn’t quite sure what this would involve, but whatever it was, I was up for it. I enjoy my niece and nephew immensely-in fact I’m sure they’re both responsible in part for my decision to accept this honor-so we booked our tickets and showed up.
There she was, waiting for us at the airport. She’s the most beautiful baby. (Well, toddler, now; 18 months old.) Looking slightly dazed (we were the latest arrivals in a sea of new faces), Linda beheld these dishevelled Americans and beheld. She did a lot of that.
Her mother, Jennifer, showed the unmistakable sign of motherhood, that is, she produced a Kleenex from her pocket at the required moment.
The ceremony was three days later, in the church in which I was confirmed in 1971. The British Embassy Church of St. George in downtown Madrid, built in the late 1920s, surviving the Spanish Civil War, the decades of Franco’s isolationism, the turbulent 60s, and the tendency to apostasy. Many of the faces in the church were familiar to me; ALL the stained glass windows were.
The time came to go to the back of the church… Linda Katherine Yun was named and cried at all the water poured on her face and looked as adorable as the cherubs in the windows and then managed to get herself locked in with her new parents as the front patio was closed off.
I have a card that tells me of my duties with regard to this new person in my life. To be her spiritual guardian. I hope I am up to the task. It will involve lots of birds. Hope the Anglicans don’t have a problem with that.
Gurgle and babble like a brook, sweet Linda, while the snow of the Swedish forest swirls around your red house; listen for the holy in the wind; be surrounded in love.
(Spring migration starts in March.)
2 December 03
Off On A Journey
We’re headed to Spain tomorrow for a little vacation, and will be back home later in the month. Posting will be sporadic but we’ll try to update the blog when we can.
28 November 03
Mud, Glorious Mud
I went with DocRock of Write Out Loud today to Calistoga for a mud bath. It’s not strictly mud: it’s volcanic ash mixed with peat. Spas are ten a penny in Calistoga, whose name is a combination of Saratoga and California. We chose Dr. Wilkinson’s, where we had both been before.
We got shunted from shower to mud bath to shower to mineral bath to steam room to blanket wrap to massage, where I got my lower left leg worked on for 20 minutes. My achilles tendon is healing well but is still at least twice as wide as the right one.
I wonder how the attendants in these places—almost uniformly Mexican Americans—feel about their mostly Anglo patrons. I wonder whether they ever sneak into the mud themselves (I doubt it). What I don’t wonder, though, is why Degas and Balthus and all the others felt compelled to paint women at the baths: it’s a sumptuous sight, all those glorious bods in complete relaxation. Women focused inward.
19 November 03
SUV Taphonomy
Yesterday Pica’s family nearly witnessed the fossilization of an SUV. Pica’s sister and family have been visiting Pica’s mother in Bodega Bay, and yesterday they went on an outing to Goat Rock at the mouth of the Russian River to look for sea glass. On the beach there was a film crew making an ad for the latest model of the Lincoln Navigator. But that metal carnosaur of a vehicle had gotten stuck in the sand! There was a huge hullabaloo under way to free the trapped SUV, so alas its fate wasn’t to end up being buried by sediment from the next Russian River flood (a pretty much annual winter event). For some reason I don’t think the final released version of the ad will feature the rescue operation.
10 November 03
Cocoa Weather
It’s quite chilly here, at least in comparison to a couple of weeks ago. An article on the antioxidant benefits of cocoa prompted us to get out the Droste and have a cup. It will become a winter ritual, I think.
Droste-Dutch cocoa-is quite different than English, American, Spanish, or Mexican hot chocolate, all of which I’ve made. The Spanish version contains rice flour and is very, very thick (and rich); it’s sipped in demitasses and is good for dipping churros (fried dough) into. We may pick some up when we go to Spain in early December. It will certainly be the right time of year!
Numenius reminds me of the Droste effect—the package design which features a picture of the package inside a picture of the package inside a picture of the package. Unfortunately the package sold in the United States has a different design.
4 November 03
Sophia: Living Wisdom
I spent Saturday at a women’s retreat exploring Sophia, the embodiment of wisdom in the Hebrew bible and New Testament (and well suppressed over the centuries) but also present in similar form in many traditions. Or so I’m told: this was all very new to me. The speaker was Ann Denham, who explained how Sophia is being reclaimed by feminist theologians and thinkers, both Christian and Jewish.
Attributes of Sophia include the cosmic divine wisdom, spoken of by the mystic Hildegard of Bingen; the shekhinah, the spirit of god present among us, a sister, a midwife, and a prophet; and as Lover, eros, the mother, bride, and queen, the source of creativity and erotic energy.
A divine feminine image like this is definitely more interesting for me, at least, than some others we might be asked to swallow, and we spent the afternoon session working on soul collages of wisdom—of Sophia. Mine, pictured at left (click for a larger version), revolves around she-coyotes, wily and nurturing, full of power and stealth; it reclaims the apple and exalts it; it delights in the pair as well as in solitary power. It swims through the cosmos, providing the life force and creative drive.
31 October 03
Halloween Costumes
I decided not to go into work today with two black boots pretending I was Frankenstein’s monster, not because they wouldn’t have been great for the purpose, but because I couldn’t figure out how to handle the head. Plus I had physical therapy during the day: difficult to do floorwork with two bolts sticking out of your neck.
Lots of my coworkers dressed up, though, and much jollity ensued.
The best costume I’ve seen for many years was on a person standing outside the front of Mrak Hall where I work. It was dark. The figure was hooded and caped and stood motionless outside the front door. A scythe emerged from behind the black cloth. Tall: Darth Vader plus scythe.
When we got round the front of this sinister figure, a full human skeleton started talking to us, explaining that his wife was a forensic anthropologist, and he wasn’t trying to scare people, and he was waiting for his ride. For a second, though, it appeared as though the angel of death were delivering a particularly interesting message to the administration of the University.