Monday, January 01, 2007
I'm moving! For those whom I tell, it'll be easy. For the rest, should this all be quite so interesting to you, you can have some fun looking :)
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Balaam's donkey
Late last night, whilst battling against the Insomnia Monster, I came across a piece of Scripture that just blew my mind away, although perhaps not for a reason most might expect. Instead of reproducing it here, go grab your Bibles and look it up yourself:
Numbers 22:22-35.
You've got to love that donkey; I certainly do. I'm going to be much nicer to all the donkeys I come across from now on.
If only I could resolve to be nicer to all the people I come across from now on as easily!
Numbers 22:22-35.
You've got to love that donkey; I certainly do. I'm going to be much nicer to all the donkeys I come across from now on.
If only I could resolve to be nicer to all the people I come across from now on as easily!
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Beginnings and endings.
Something like four years ago, I sat in a bedroom in a nursing home not far from here. My grandmother lay there, her body attacked by cancer, pneumonia, and the basic fact that a human being is not built to last forever. Holding her left hand - she outlived her husband by more than ten years - after a while I noticed that her pulse had stopped.
My grandmother was the first person I had seen die (my childhood pet, a golden Labrador, being put down doesn't count), and in that moment I learnt something about the moment of death.
Human mortality doesn't really hold any demons for me; the first funeral I recall was that of my grandfather, a long way from here, when I was about four or five. As is customary in that place, the corpse is laid out in an open casket in the family's home, and people come and visit. My uncles reassured me that he was "only sleeping", an explanation I found deeply unsatisfactory (and said so). It made - and makes - no sense to overly conflate the concepts of "sleep" and "death".
Since then I have lost count - I'm quite serious - of how many funerals I've been to. The Winter is a popular time for deaths, with dropping temperatures and our penchant for not looking after our elderly enough, and consequently daily Mass in the parish takes on a distinctly eschatologial feel.
Being used to being around corpses is one thing, but being present when a soul steps from here into there is quite another. I think that moment is sacred, and I will say so unashamedly.
The unease I feel about deaths being televised, photographed or the like stems from this.
It's not just death, either. Way back when (!) I was dating, $boyfriend and I would have recurring "discussions" about the births of our children; I was (and continue to be, in a hypothetical way) adamant that my husband should not be present in the same room, and would jokingly say "It's my job to lie there in pain and push, and yours to pace up and down outside in agonising worry." $boyfriend inevitably found this unacceptable.
On a slightly more serious note, I remember being in a PSME lesson at high school, where we were shown a video of a live birth. Whilst the boys in the class were busy being sick, we puellae were busy coo-ing (yes, even over the blood and gore and very purply umbilical cord). Now I look back on that and wonder why it was necessary to see a video like that.
Without wishing to romanticise the actual process of giving birth, which can be rottenly difficult (understatement), I strongly feel that it's something that too should not be recorded or taped or the like. Gestation, which has begun in the depths of mother's body several months ago, comes to its natural and perfect completion. It's an incarnation-with-a-little-i; somehow in our society that seems obsessed with the self-sufficiency of the individual, with optional add-ons it is quite mind-blowing that one should be so completely dependent on the other(s) in his very genesis. So many of my friends (all male :)) have told me of how they found being present at the birth of their children simply astounding. And so it should be.
"You cannot imagine what we have been living through."
The matter of whether the death penalty is A Good Thing is not what I'm on about; not that I don't care about it, because I do. But this is about something else. Whilst the video of Mr. Hussein's execution doesn't (as far as I'm aware) include the moment of release, I question what good the rest of the footage does for our souls. The BBC said on the news that the Iraqi parliament did so because it wanted to prove to the world that Mr. Hussein was indeed dead; I believe that there are better ways in which to do so.
I do not wish to deny that Mr. Hussein authorised atrocities to be carried out against those who did not deserve it; it is well without my knowledge to comment on the validity or otherwise of his trial, or even on that of the various wars that took place during his regime. It seems clear that he carried (carries?) the blood of many on his hands, and that he is guilty of some truly horrible things.
"[...]Daarvoor is het nodig ons voor al het geschapen onverschillig te maken, in al wat aan de vrijheid van onze vrije wil toegestaan en niet verboden is. Zozeer dat wij van onze kant gezondigheid niet meer willen dan ziekte, rijkdom niet meer dan armoede, eer niet meer dan oneer, een lang leven niet meer dan een kort, en zo in al het overige, en alleen verlangen en kiezen wat ons meer brengt naar het doel waarvoor wij geschapen zijn." (Geestelijke Oefeningen, Spiritual Exercises, 23)
The above quote (I'll try to find a good English translation at some point, but hopefully the reference is enough for people to find should they wish to) is perhaps only tangential to the point I wish to make, which goes like this:
No matter what Mr. Hussein has done, no matter how many he has tortured, persecuted or murdered - and yet in no way wishing to diminish the horror of those acts - he is a human being, and as such is in possession of an immortal soul, and deserves to pass from here to there (under whatever cloud) with the dignity that must be afforded to a human being at that moment.
My grandmother was far from the nicest of people. My grandfather possibly bored on the way-too-strict side of things. My uncle possibly wasn't the best father to his family. But when it comes to the crunch, when it comes to their time to die, none of that matters.
It is all well and good to point out others' faults when they are still very much alive (doing so in charity, with clarity, and bearing in mind that we don't know our hour of death) - then the individual has time to reflect on his faults and amend them. But when we come to that cusp between now and eternity there is little to do on that front, because a mind cannot be changed after death. At this crucial turning-point, what matters is the dignity of the one departing, and our prayers for his soul.
And distasteful as it might seem, I'm convinced that we should beg God to show mercy to Mr. Hussein's soul, not despite the latter's lack of mercy to others, but precisely because of it. Christ died the most disgusting and shameful death, yet was the One who brought us salvation. Similarly, those who have done nothing in the way of showing mercy to others should be afforded a composed passing*.
*If A => B, then ¬B => ¬A It's not quite what's going on here; more of a model of the sentence structure rather than of the actual reasoning involved.
My grandmother was the first person I had seen die (my childhood pet, a golden Labrador, being put down doesn't count), and in that moment I learnt something about the moment of death.
Human mortality doesn't really hold any demons for me; the first funeral I recall was that of my grandfather, a long way from here, when I was about four or five. As is customary in that place, the corpse is laid out in an open casket in the family's home, and people come and visit. My uncles reassured me that he was "only sleeping", an explanation I found deeply unsatisfactory (and said so). It made - and makes - no sense to overly conflate the concepts of "sleep" and "death".
Since then I have lost count - I'm quite serious - of how many funerals I've been to. The Winter is a popular time for deaths, with dropping temperatures and our penchant for not looking after our elderly enough, and consequently daily Mass in the parish takes on a distinctly eschatologial feel.
Being used to being around corpses is one thing, but being present when a soul steps from here into there is quite another. I think that moment is sacred, and I will say so unashamedly.
The unease I feel about deaths being televised, photographed or the like stems from this.
It's not just death, either. Way back when (!) I was dating, $boyfriend and I would have recurring "discussions" about the births of our children; I was (and continue to be, in a hypothetical way) adamant that my husband should not be present in the same room, and would jokingly say "It's my job to lie there in pain and push, and yours to pace up and down outside in agonising worry." $boyfriend inevitably found this unacceptable.
On a slightly more serious note, I remember being in a PSME lesson at high school, where we were shown a video of a live birth. Whilst the boys in the class were busy being sick, we puellae were busy coo-ing (yes, even over the blood and gore and very purply umbilical cord). Now I look back on that and wonder why it was necessary to see a video like that.
Without wishing to romanticise the actual process of giving birth, which can be rottenly difficult (understatement), I strongly feel that it's something that too should not be recorded or taped or the like. Gestation, which has begun in the depths of mother's body several months ago, comes to its natural and perfect completion. It's an incarnation-with-a-little-i; somehow in our society that seems obsessed with the self-sufficiency of the individual, with optional add-ons it is quite mind-blowing that one should be so completely dependent on the other(s) in his very genesis. So many of my friends (all male :)) have told me of how they found being present at the birth of their children simply astounding. And so it should be.
"You cannot imagine what we have been living through."
The matter of whether the death penalty is A Good Thing is not what I'm on about; not that I don't care about it, because I do. But this is about something else. Whilst the video of Mr. Hussein's execution doesn't (as far as I'm aware) include the moment of release, I question what good the rest of the footage does for our souls. The BBC said on the news that the Iraqi parliament did so because it wanted to prove to the world that Mr. Hussein was indeed dead; I believe that there are better ways in which to do so.
I do not wish to deny that Mr. Hussein authorised atrocities to be carried out against those who did not deserve it; it is well without my knowledge to comment on the validity or otherwise of his trial, or even on that of the various wars that took place during his regime. It seems clear that he carried (carries?) the blood of many on his hands, and that he is guilty of some truly horrible things.
"[...]Daarvoor is het nodig ons voor al het geschapen onverschillig te maken, in al wat aan de vrijheid van onze vrije wil toegestaan en niet verboden is. Zozeer dat wij van onze kant gezondigheid niet meer willen dan ziekte, rijkdom niet meer dan armoede, eer niet meer dan oneer, een lang leven niet meer dan een kort, en zo in al het overige, en alleen verlangen en kiezen wat ons meer brengt naar het doel waarvoor wij geschapen zijn." (Geestelijke Oefeningen, Spiritual Exercises, 23)
The above quote (I'll try to find a good English translation at some point, but hopefully the reference is enough for people to find should they wish to) is perhaps only tangential to the point I wish to make, which goes like this:
No matter what Mr. Hussein has done, no matter how many he has tortured, persecuted or murdered - and yet in no way wishing to diminish the horror of those acts - he is a human being, and as such is in possession of an immortal soul, and deserves to pass from here to there (under whatever cloud) with the dignity that must be afforded to a human being at that moment.
My grandmother was far from the nicest of people. My grandfather possibly bored on the way-too-strict side of things. My uncle possibly wasn't the best father to his family. But when it comes to the crunch, when it comes to their time to die, none of that matters.
It is all well and good to point out others' faults when they are still very much alive (doing so in charity, with clarity, and bearing in mind that we don't know our hour of death) - then the individual has time to reflect on his faults and amend them. But when we come to that cusp between now and eternity there is little to do on that front, because a mind cannot be changed after death. At this crucial turning-point, what matters is the dignity of the one departing, and our prayers for his soul.
And distasteful as it might seem, I'm convinced that we should beg God to show mercy to Mr. Hussein's soul, not despite the latter's lack of mercy to others, but precisely because of it. Christ died the most disgusting and shameful death, yet was the One who brought us salvation. Similarly, those who have done nothing in the way of showing mercy to others should be afforded a composed passing*.
*If A => B, then ¬B => ¬A It's not quite what's going on here; more of a model of the sentence structure rather than of the actual reasoning involved.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Books!
Today (perhaps the wettest day imaginable for such a trip) I went down to Buckfast to touch base (Canadianism there) and be A Good Little Oblate ;) Of course, apart from Midday Prayers and lunch - the two most important things in life - I hit the bookshop. And here's the loot I came away with (after having paid, of course):
*
The Jerusalem Bible, Popular Edition. I need another one because I seem to be quite talented in "lending" my bibles to people (just like my Rosaries, ha ha ha!). I have a standard version of the NJB, so I plumped for the slightly older translation here. Of course it'd be really super to have a Latin Vulgate and a Douai-Rhiems...but hey, you can't have everything!
*
Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina. A friend of mine has read it and written a short review, and a monk friend of mine recommended it. Lord only knows (yes, He does indeed) how bad my lectio is these days.
*
Ecclesia de Eucharistia, John Paul the Great (the cover is slightly different to the one shown here, although it's also published by the CTS - a version of which I need to discover in Dutch, if it exists). Because learning about the Eucharist and the Church together from someone like JPtG can never be a bad thing!
*A copy of the EBC's Ordo for 2007, which I can't find an image for. Mind you, it's not something that you'd expect an image of to be floating around on the internet, right?
Now if that last point doesn't get the Thou-Shalt-Not-Leave-Prepositions-Dangling instinct in you roaring in agony, I'm not sure what will!
In all honesty I can't say that my booklust has been satiated, because there were at least three other books there that I had my eye on - Story of a Soul (which, to my shame, I haven't read - partly because it's just so popular and there's a part of me that doesn't like following the crowd), Letter to my Sister (by St. Aeldred, who is just wicked cool anyway), and a linguistic commentary on the Latin translation of the Septuagint Psalms. Oooooh, that last was difficult to resist, especially as I'm sure I could have "justified" it by worming it into my thesis somehow. But in the end some sort of common sense prevailed and I just bought those four.
*
The Jerusalem Bible, Popular Edition. I need another one because I seem to be quite talented in "lending" my bibles to people (just like my Rosaries, ha ha ha!). I have a standard version of the NJB, so I plumped for the slightly older translation here. Of course it'd be really super to have a Latin Vulgate and a Douai-Rhiems...but hey, you can't have everything!*
Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina. A friend of mine has read it and written a short review, and a monk friend of mine recommended it. Lord only knows (yes, He does indeed) how bad my lectio is these days.*
Ecclesia de Eucharistia, John Paul the Great (the cover is slightly different to the one shown here, although it's also published by the CTS - a version of which I need to discover in Dutch, if it exists). Because learning about the Eucharist and the Church together from someone like JPtG can never be a bad thing!*A copy of the EBC's Ordo for 2007, which I can't find an image for. Mind you, it's not something that you'd expect an image of to be floating around on the internet, right?
Now if that last point doesn't get the Thou-Shalt-Not-Leave-Prepositions-Dangling instinct in you roaring in agony, I'm not sure what will!
In all honesty I can't say that my booklust has been satiated, because there were at least three other books there that I had my eye on - Story of a Soul (which, to my shame, I haven't read - partly because it's just so popular and there's a part of me that doesn't like following the crowd), Letter to my Sister (by St. Aeldred, who is just wicked cool anyway), and a linguistic commentary on the Latin translation of the Septuagint Psalms. Oooooh, that last was difficult to resist, especially as I'm sure I could have "justified" it by worming it into my thesis somehow. But in the end some sort of common sense prevailed and I just bought those four.
*nix woes, Part the Second
I now have a couple of new maxims:
1. Linux is a temperamental beast that is in no position to take over from Windows in terms of user-friendliness, especially when it comes to installation;
2. The race of humanity known as mannelijk Nederlandse computer geeks (mncg's) are a curse upon the face of the Earth, akin to the Tempting Serpent (especially as they get on the nerves of women like me and Eve). They deserve to be struck down with the power of the Ten Plagues (only worse), despised by humanity and left for all kinds of dead known to man.
And to think that I'm on holiday.
On the brighter side of things, today (Holy Innocents) is my Baptism day. I'm going to ponder that some more tomorrow, as today has been filled with much too much stress to give it adequate thought.
mncg's--;
1. Linux is a temperamental beast that is in no position to take over from Windows in terms of user-friendliness, especially when it comes to installation;
2. The race of humanity known as mannelijk Nederlandse computer geeks (mncg's) are a curse upon the face of the Earth, akin to the Tempting Serpent (especially as they get on the nerves of women like me and Eve). They deserve to be struck down with the power of the Ten Plagues (only worse), despised by humanity and left for all kinds of dead known to man.
And to think that I'm on holiday.
On the brighter side of things, today (Holy Innocents) is my Baptism day. I'm going to ponder that some more tomorrow, as today has been filled with much too much stress to give it adequate thought.
mncg's--;
Sunday, December 24, 2006
St. Ignatius in Dutch
Neem, Heer, en aanvaard heel mijn vrijheid,
mijn geheugen, mijn verstand en heel mijn wil,
al wat ik bezit
U hebt het mij gegeven;
U, Heer, geef ik het terug.
Alles is van U;
beschik erover geheel volgens uw wil.
Geef mij uw liefde en genade,
dat is mij genoeg.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Air travel is not a God-given right
It's a God-given privilege!
Which is what I keep telling myself when I get too worrysome about the weather. This past week thick fog has been playing silly buzzards with airports in the UK, leading to frustrated passengers, frazzled airline workers and some interesting news items. I have to sympathise with airline employees - it's almost Christmas, the weather's awful and you've got loads of stressed out travellers on your back about a problem that you have no control over! But hey. Everyone just wants to get home, right.
Partly due to me watching too much NG (although I'm sure there are other sources*) I'm now hyper aware of how delicate air travel is - especially as I tend to fly a lot. I mean, seriously, if God had seriously wanted us to fly, would He not have given us wings?
Well I don't think it's as simple as that. He gave us brains which are certainly a better option. But we should never take this for granted, surely; flying boggles the mind if you think about what's really going on.
Which is why I'll be clutching my rosary all the way til my plane lands safely. Hopefully I won't be muttering too much, because that's when fellow passengers might start thinking that I'm a radical extremist. Wearing a kerchief probably wouldn't help, but I think it'll all be ok if I'm just sensible about it.
Meanwhile, the fog seems to be clearing up. Thankfully I'm not flying to Heathrow so it's not going to be as bad. Flights seem to be delayed, but delays I can handle. And, should the weather turn for the worst and I stay here for all of the holidays, well, I'm sure I can find some mischief to keep me occupied until everything starts up again.
*The middle of May found me rather unexpectedly on a Virgin flight between London and Hong Kong. Apart from the uncomfortable seats one abiding memory of that flight was the overly-cheerful head steward telling us that should we ever feel the need to propel ourselves through the air in a pressurised tin can, Virgin'd be glad to fly them. Everyone else laughed, and I made a private almost-vow never to fly with Virgin again.
Which is what I keep telling myself when I get too worrysome about the weather. This past week thick fog has been playing silly buzzards with airports in the UK, leading to frustrated passengers, frazzled airline workers and some interesting news items. I have to sympathise with airline employees - it's almost Christmas, the weather's awful and you've got loads of stressed out travellers on your back about a problem that you have no control over! But hey. Everyone just wants to get home, right.
Partly due to me watching too much NG (although I'm sure there are other sources*) I'm now hyper aware of how delicate air travel is - especially as I tend to fly a lot. I mean, seriously, if God had seriously wanted us to fly, would He not have given us wings?
Well I don't think it's as simple as that. He gave us brains which are certainly a better option. But we should never take this for granted, surely; flying boggles the mind if you think about what's really going on.
Which is why I'll be clutching my rosary all the way til my plane lands safely. Hopefully I won't be muttering too much, because that's when fellow passengers might start thinking that I'm a radical extremist. Wearing a kerchief probably wouldn't help, but I think it'll all be ok if I'm just sensible about it.
Meanwhile, the fog seems to be clearing up. Thankfully I'm not flying to Heathrow so it's not going to be as bad. Flights seem to be delayed, but delays I can handle. And, should the weather turn for the worst and I stay here for all of the holidays, well, I'm sure I can find some mischief to keep me occupied until everything starts up again.
*The middle of May found me rather unexpectedly on a Virgin flight between London and Hong Kong. Apart from the uncomfortable seats one abiding memory of that flight was the overly-cheerful head steward telling us that should we ever feel the need to propel ourselves through the air in a pressurised tin can, Virgin'd be glad to fly them. Everyone else laughed, and I made a private almost-vow never to fly with Virgin again.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
On Windows vs. The Sensible World
I'm generally of the "Windows Boo" and "Other Stuff Yay" crowd - apart from any philosophical matters about closed and open source software, Mr. Gates is stupidly rich, much too rich for his own good, and the money he does give away tends to end up in pro-death pockets.
But there are times when I get sick and tired of attitudes in the OSS camp, particularly if one's running a non-Windows OS. If something's wrong with one's firefox and one is running Windows, the ff help pages will virtually hold one's hand and place one's fingers on the keys one needs to press in order to sort it out. If, however, one runs anything else (*cough*OpenSuse*cough*) and one has a problem with one's ff, then one gets a "Use ps and kill. RTFM if you're stupid."
Which might work with your average socially-inept nocturnal computer geek (complete with broken NHS-era glasses frames), but for someone who's - dare I say it? - halfway normal, not terribly helpful. If Mozilla et. al. wishes to make OSS somewhat more accessible to people who aren't afraid of daylight, it might be an idea to meet them halfway.
This is before you express something of your frustrations on irc and are promptly denounced as a luser (strictly speaking, a local user, but yes, it means loser too) by another one of the Dysfunctional Geek Race.
So on the one hand you have software made by a pro-abortionist (whose children have been baptised, incidentally - muahaha), and on the other you have software made by downright rude (probable) pro-abortionists*. Sigh.
*Almost all of the people I know who are advocates of and/or involved in OSS are extreme atheists and relativists
Monday, December 18, 2006
Interesting piece of information
Did you know that in the northern part of the Netherlands, "Anne" is (also) a male name?
Did you?
Neither did I.
Did you?
Neither did I.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Die 17 Decembris
O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti,(I tried but failed to find a decent Dutch translation; clearly I need to get ahold of a Dutch breviary!)
attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviter disponensque omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.
O wisdom, you come forth from the mouth of the Most High.
You fill the universe and hold all things together in a strong yet gentle manner.
O come to teach us the way of truth.
Yesterday evening a friend of mine celebrated her birthday, and something rather unusual happened - I drank wine. Normally I don't drink, but the combination of the celebration and the fact that this wine was one I actually found potable (I have a sweet tooth) persuaded me. I'm left wondering why it seems to be at things like parties when there's alcohol involved and people are slightly merry that all the questions and deep discussions about my religion come up. It's quite difficult to reconstruct the reasoning behind Why We Go To Confession when your head's swimming a bit.
Once again I met someone who was brought up Catholic, was Baptised, received Communion, and was Confirmed...and yet has never been to Confession in his entire life. This, then, is one of the consequences of What Went On In The Netherlands: a shocking lack of understanding and catechesis that has done nothing but plunge generations of the faithful into a spiritual poverty. And it is indeed a real poverty, one (if I might dare to say so) is much, much worse than the worst failure of the crops. Dying of starvation is one thing - a very bad thing. But eternal death is worse to such an extent that it boggles the mind.
You can't really hold the people affected responsible for this. Well, maybe you can a little, but not for the whole thing. But I have to worry about the clergy who led their flock into this situation: bishops who didn't teach, priests who didn't obey. Good Lord, what will You do with those consecrated to you who didn't protect these little ones?
But I suppose it's not my job to worry about that last question, seeing as I'm neither Our Blessed Lord nor one of the clergy involved. Having said that, I think I still have something approaching a responsibility to try and heal the wounds of The Last Forty-Odd Years* - Confession is how we heal our wounds against God, but if we all form one Body (and we do) then we have to do something to heal older wounds against each other, maybe even those committed against us, and those inflicted by others.
Mass this morning was superb!
Afterwards a lady started asking me about my head covering (I wear a kerchief on my head, and at Sunday Mass I swap this for a white mantilla), mainly why I wear it anyway. You can appreciate that it's considered Rather Odd here. Today was the second time that someone's asked me about this since I decided to wear my mantilla to Sunday Mass in place of the kerchief (in some ways it's like a sword to fight with - I get so narked at some stuff that others get up to during Mass that it's a way of being both counter-cultural and not letting myself be distracted). Talking about it is terrifying; I hope I do a good job of it. Oh boy do I hope I do a good job.
Happily I think my understanding of why I wear it grows the longer I do so and the more I pray about it.
I think my general upbeatness of today is in no small part due to going to Confession yesterday. Did I mention that Confession rocks?
A few weeks ago I was at a friend's house. When we were saying goodbye and thinking about when we'd see each other next, I said I'd be in church on Saturday for Confession, so if she went to Confession too (hint hint hint hint hint) I'd see her then.
She replied with a kind of embarrassed grimace (that wasn't well-described, sorry) and said that as there'd be an organised Confession Service Thingy nearer Christmas, she'd go to that instead.
Now I just don't understand how people can go for months without Confession. I mean, I've done it myself, and it drove me crazy. What kind of twisted mind do you need to have to see Confession as some kind of hassle that you do as seldom as possible? What kind of ignorant do you have to be not to be aware of just how essential it is?
In general, what kind of freakin' stupid are you to look at the bare minimum stipulated by the Church (once a year, if anyone's interested...but that can hardly be healthy!) and think that that's going to be enough? How can Confession and Communion once a year be enough? Where is the striving to be better than we are now, to be the best we possibly can? People expend so much energy on their professional development (and rightly so), in making sure of their health and that of their family (and rightly so), but don't seem to realise that not only is there enormous spiritual potential to be matured, but that this potential must be matured.
Aaaahh, this has turned into a rant and it wasn't meant to :)
I came across this piece and through it the website of this church in the USA. Now whilst I'm a gothic arches girl myself...drool...!
*I have some books here about the recent history of the Dutch church. I really need to sit down and read them. It feels like there's a great big black hole in my knowledge, and it's not pretty.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Into the shadowlands
It's official. I've entered into that weird plane of semi-existence that is "writing one's thesis". There are a few symptoms I've observed in myself:
St. Thomas Aquinas, ora pro me!
- Hypernormal consumption of tea
- An eerie set of experiences approximated by this - just keep clicking "next" for a bit
- Inability to sleep
- Entire nights spent typing feverishly away, seeking that elusive third constraint
- People? What people?
- I've found The Song that is (probably) going to be playing in the background for the entirety of this process. In years to come, whenever I hear The Song, all the memories of this thesis (and any other that it accompanies) will come flooding back. I may need therapy, although I hope not, because I like the song and - contrary to appearances - I like the thesis too.
St. Thomas Aquinas, ora pro me!
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Language stuff
Found on this site about funny things heard on trains (and some are really very funny):
Ook een mooie, gehoord in een inderhaast ingezette extra trein Utrecht-A'dam, met een inderhaast opgeroepen machinist (en voor het portofoontijdperk).I'm not sure if that's going to be comprehendable to anyone who doesn't read Dutch, but whatever, it made me laugh.
"HC, kunt u even naar me toekomen?"
"Nee Meester, ik zit in de achtste bak."
"Oh... Eh... HC, mag ik wat vragen...?"
"Vraagt u maar Meester!"
"HC, zijn wij een stoptrein of een Intercity?"
"Een stoptrein, Meester!"
******* Skkkrriieeeeeeeek *******
Tja... En toen stonden we dus nog net op tijd stil ;-)
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Smackdown! Only...up.
Het is bijna een kenmerk van mij geworden dat ik me altijd onderschat. Waar dit onderschatting precies over gaat maakt nou niet zo veel uit; men merkt gewoon dat er wel een verschil bestaat tussen mijn waarnemingen over mijn bekwaamheden en hoe diezelfde bekwaamheden door anderen gezien worden. Dit geldt vooral over mijn Nederlands; als men in het algemeen een probleem heeft over zijn zelfvertrouw (beetje ironisch hoe het woord "men" mannelijk is, gezien dat dit soort probleem - zo ver dat ik weet, tenminste - vaker bij vrouwen voorkomt), dan is het al bijna gegarandeerd dat men dit negatieve beeld ook over zijn tweede taal zal hebben.
Dus. Lijdend onder deze "ziekte" denk ik altijd dat mijn Nederlands gewoon rot is. Ik begon er te laat mee (volwassenen pikken een taal nooit zo goed op als kinderen), ik ben lui, ik ben dom, jaadi jaadi jaadi. Maar af en toe hoor ik wat de meeste mensen rond me zeggen: dat mijn tweede taalverwerving best goed gaat/is gegaan.
Zoiets is net gebeurd op irc, in een gesprek met een vriend:
wegaantochnikszeggenoverhoeveelfouteniknogsteedsmaakhoordankjewelmoi
Dus. Lijdend onder deze "ziekte" denk ik altijd dat mijn Nederlands gewoon rot is. Ik begon er te laat mee (volwassenen pikken een taal nooit zo goed op als kinderen), ik ben lui, ik ben dom, jaadi jaadi jaadi. Maar af en toe hoor ik wat de meeste mensen rond me zeggen: dat mijn tweede taalverwerving best goed gaat/is gegaan.
Zoiets is net gebeurd op irc, in een gesprek met een vriend:
01:28:06 <hij> ik maakte irl tegen $irc_genoot de opmerking dat jij best goed engels spreektBen nog geschokt.
01:28:35 <hij> toen verbeterde de hij mij dat je eigenlijk heel erg goed nederlands spreekt :D
...
01:32:33 <ik> wrom zei je dan dat ik goed engels praat? wist je niet dat het m'n moedertaal is?
01:32:43 <hij> nee
01:32:48 <hij> dat wist ik inderdaad niet
01:32:52 <ik> oew
01:32:54 <hij> ik dacht dat je gewoon nederlands was
01:33:00 <ik> wauw :)
01:33:12 <ik> da's een enorme compliment, dank je wel :)
wegaantochnikszeggenoverhoeveelfouteniknogsteedsmaakhoordankjewelmoi
Monday, December 11, 2006
Second-language spookiness
National Geographic can sometimes be pretty interesting to watch. My father has taken the magazine for years, a good friend of mine reads the website daily, and I watch the tv channel every now and then. This evening it was Seconds from disaster, which, despite the commentator using a voice intoned so dramatically one occasionally thinks one is watching a trumped-up soap opera, is quite compelling.
This evening it was about United Airlines flight 232, which had an emergency landing at Sioux City in the USA in 1989. After some Wikipedia browsing (which is freakin' addictive) I came across the story of the Tenerife disaster, in which a KLM plane taking off collided with a taxiing PanAm.
The Wikipedia article shows the following excerpt from the final radio transmission log:
May Almighty God have mercy on us, and may the + souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
This evening it was about United Airlines flight 232, which had an emergency landing at Sioux City in the USA in 1989. After some Wikipedia browsing (which is freakin' addictive) I came across the story of the Tenerife disaster, in which a KLM plane taking off collided with a taxiing PanAm.
The Wikipedia article shows the following excerpt from the final radio transmission log:
1706:20.08For some reason, the lines spoken in Dutch send a shiver up and down my spine. Maybe I'm more "sensitive" (although how I can be sensitive to the records of a tragedy that took place before I was born escapes me) to the language I work harder at, or perhaps reading my daily language in a written context where I normally only ever come across English...but it spooks me a bit.
TENERIFE TOWER Stand by for take-off, I will call you.
1706:20.3
Pan Am Radio (c/p) And we're still taxiing down the runway, the clipper one seven three six.
1706:19.39- 1706:23.19
RDO and TENERIFE TOWER communications caused a shrill noise in KLM cockpit - messages not heard by KLM crew .
1706:25.6
TENERIFE TOWER Roger alpha one seven three six report when runway clear
1706:29.6
Pan Am Radio (c/p) OK, we'll report when we're clear.
TENERIFE TOWER Thank you
1706:32.43
KLM FLT ENGR Is hij er niet af dan? {Is he not clear then?}
1706:34.1
KLM CAPTAIN Wat zeg je? {What do you say?}
1706:34.15
KLM-? Yup.
1706:34.7
KLM FLT ENGR Is hij er niet af, die Pan American? {Is he not clear that Pan American?}
1706:35.7
KLM CAPTAIN Jawel. {Oh yes. - emphatic}
1706:40.0
Pan Am captain sees landing lights of KLM Boeing at approx. 700m
1706:44.0
PH-BUF started rotation
May Almighty God have mercy on us, and may the + souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
It begins at home
I've just been watching this program. For those who don't read Dutch, the program makers go undercover with a hidden camera in each episode, and this one was about how easy it is to go on holiday to Thailand with the express purpose of finding and patronizing child prostitution. Not only was this trip possible, it was plannable via an industry-approved travel agent based in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the red-light districts in the two cities visited in Thailand, Bangkok and Pattaya, boast "pubs" (the word used was kroeg, which could equally be a bar) run by Dutch people, and where Dutch snacks are available - presumably suggesting that the reporter for this program was by no means the first Dutchman to "visit".
Child prostitution is disgusting. Representatives of the industry who were interviewed for the program used the word walgelijk, which translates variously into English as "loathsome, revolting, nauseating, sickening, nauseous, disgusting." You get the idea.
But one thing that the travel agent said got me thinking. He was referring to having sex with child prostitutes when he said "...het is natuurlijk, het is normaal" (it's natural, it's normal). And I began to wonder to myself: what makes child prostitution so repulsive, but "ordinary prostitution" a perfectly acceptable occupation should one choose it?
The CCC doesn't talk about child prostitution specifically. It's certainly mentioned in the paragraph about it, saying that in addition to the desecration of the bodies involved, paid sex with children and adolescents (legal children, thus) also involves scandal.
However, I wonder to myself if this man's attitude (and the attitude of the other Dutch sex tourists in Thailand) is made more possible and/or likely by the general attitude to prostitution in this country (there are lots of qualifications to be made to this which I'll get to soon, I promise). Perhaps ironically, the vast majority of Dutch people I know don't like prostitution and have never visited one. The tiny minority left over probably also share this view, only I don't know them well enough to actually hazard a guess as to their opinions (and what a guy says in a conversation with you is often not an accurate portrayal of what he actually thinks). However, there does seem to be prevalent attitude similar to the Three Monkeys; if it's what you want to do, if you're sensible about it (and pay your taxes like every other working person), then that's up to you.
There is a very real and tragic loss of the appreciation of how the human body is not just sacred (for those who are adherents to a faith system that actually places some value on physical things) but also simply valuable and deserving of special treatment. Gone, it seems, is the sense that a human being is bestowed with something quite unique which animals, plants and inanimate objects just do not posses, and that this something must be treasured rather than traded in a red-light stock market regardless of whether the person himself thinks it's acceptable or not.
So I sit here and wonder. Grown women can sell their bodies; grown women can dress in a way that exposes what should be covered, reserved for their husbands. Married women will dress in such a way, regardless of whether such a style actually suits their body or not. Their younger sisters, daughters, cousins and so on see this happening, and think "Well, why not me too?" Then you get teenage girls dressing in such a way, and we say it's ok, because they're "in that phase", they're "growing up", they're "turning into women" - because we now equate "being a woman" with "having the sufficient curves to show them off to everyone who passes by". Then the young girls will dress in imitation of the Pussycat Dolls, as we say it's ok, because we see it as them bonding with their elder sisters.
And then men, both the ones who are truly sick in the head, but also a fair few who are just normal men, see all this and...well, they go on holidays to Thailand. Supply meets demand, and the sickness of a permissive Western culture erodes away at the youth of a country far away.
Yet we sit here and have the nerve to say, on the one hand, "oh, child prostitution is a terrible thing" and on the other, "a woman has sovereign rights over her own body", taking the latter to unreasonable extremes.
Charity begins at home, so they say. But it's oh so easy to give money to Giro 555 (the Dutch aid fund set up to help the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami): a bunch of artists get together, sing a little ditty, we dig into our pockets. But the world's problems are not so easily solved. They might be, if the world's problems were financial. But they're not; they have, fundamentally, a much deeper cause, and until we are willing to dig much, much deeper than our bank accounts (and as a student I do know about how tough it is), I'm not sure we can say we are sufficiently helping to prevent the world going to hell in a handbasket.
I'm sitting here writing this from the perspective of someone living in one of the most liberal, permissive, relativistic and thus alarming societies in the world. However, the attitudes here are by no means confined to the borders with Germany and Belgium. They're simply more concentrated here because it's in this country that one has a shockingly overwhelming sense that we are indeed so open-minded that all our brains have fallen out.
Getting back on the explicitly God-side of things...imagine, as inspired by various saints and popes, what you, as an individual, could do, should you open yourself to God and sanctified your entire life. And then look at every single person you see, and imagine what the world would be like if everyone should do that. Imagine the real tsunami, not of "love" (which here sounds frightfully hippy in all the bad senses of the word), but of grace.
It begins at home. We're almost like the much-talked-about butterflies doing something seemingly inconsequential, in order to cause a tornado miles away. We should make it a good one.
So how do you dress when you go out? Are you brave enough to recognise that you're a human being, not a museum exhibit? What do you think of prostitution? Are you courageous enough to see how every single individual, by the very fact of his humanity, demands that same recognition? How do you conduct yourselves in your friendships and relationships with other people? Are you gutsy enough to know where the boundaries are between decency and indecency, not only in your dress or your actions, but also in your thoughts?
It's surely time that we grasp what the heck we're dealing with here. Our immodesty could be exploiting fourteen-year-olds in Thailand. Do we want that on our conscience?
Child prostitution is disgusting. Representatives of the industry who were interviewed for the program used the word walgelijk, which translates variously into English as "loathsome, revolting, nauseating, sickening, nauseous, disgusting." You get the idea.
But one thing that the travel agent said got me thinking. He was referring to having sex with child prostitutes when he said "...het is natuurlijk, het is normaal" (it's natural, it's normal). And I began to wonder to myself: what makes child prostitution so repulsive, but "ordinary prostitution" a perfectly acceptable occupation should one choose it?
The CCC doesn't talk about child prostitution specifically. It's certainly mentioned in the paragraph about it, saying that in addition to the desecration of the bodies involved, paid sex with children and adolescents (legal children, thus) also involves scandal.
However, I wonder to myself if this man's attitude (and the attitude of the other Dutch sex tourists in Thailand) is made more possible and/or likely by the general attitude to prostitution in this country (there are lots of qualifications to be made to this which I'll get to soon, I promise). Perhaps ironically, the vast majority of Dutch people I know don't like prostitution and have never visited one. The tiny minority left over probably also share this view, only I don't know them well enough to actually hazard a guess as to their opinions (and what a guy says in a conversation with you is often not an accurate portrayal of what he actually thinks). However, there does seem to be prevalent attitude similar to the Three Monkeys; if it's what you want to do, if you're sensible about it (and pay your taxes like every other working person), then that's up to you.
There is a very real and tragic loss of the appreciation of how the human body is not just sacred (for those who are adherents to a faith system that actually places some value on physical things) but also simply valuable and deserving of special treatment. Gone, it seems, is the sense that a human being is bestowed with something quite unique which animals, plants and inanimate objects just do not posses, and that this something must be treasured rather than traded in a red-light stock market regardless of whether the person himself thinks it's acceptable or not.
So I sit here and wonder. Grown women can sell their bodies; grown women can dress in a way that exposes what should be covered, reserved for their husbands. Married women will dress in such a way, regardless of whether such a style actually suits their body or not. Their younger sisters, daughters, cousins and so on see this happening, and think "Well, why not me too?" Then you get teenage girls dressing in such a way, and we say it's ok, because they're "in that phase", they're "growing up", they're "turning into women" - because we now equate "being a woman" with "having the sufficient curves to show them off to everyone who passes by". Then the young girls will dress in imitation of the Pussycat Dolls, as we say it's ok, because we see it as them bonding with their elder sisters.
And then men, both the ones who are truly sick in the head, but also a fair few who are just normal men, see all this and...well, they go on holidays to Thailand. Supply meets demand, and the sickness of a permissive Western culture erodes away at the youth of a country far away.
Yet we sit here and have the nerve to say, on the one hand, "oh, child prostitution is a terrible thing" and on the other, "a woman has sovereign rights over her own body", taking the latter to unreasonable extremes.
Charity begins at home, so they say. But it's oh so easy to give money to Giro 555 (the Dutch aid fund set up to help the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami): a bunch of artists get together, sing a little ditty, we dig into our pockets. But the world's problems are not so easily solved. They might be, if the world's problems were financial. But they're not; they have, fundamentally, a much deeper cause, and until we are willing to dig much, much deeper than our bank accounts (and as a student I do know about how tough it is), I'm not sure we can say we are sufficiently helping to prevent the world going to hell in a handbasket.
I'm sitting here writing this from the perspective of someone living in one of the most liberal, permissive, relativistic and thus alarming societies in the world. However, the attitudes here are by no means confined to the borders with Germany and Belgium. They're simply more concentrated here because it's in this country that one has a shockingly overwhelming sense that we are indeed so open-minded that all our brains have fallen out.
Getting back on the explicitly God-side of things...imagine, as inspired by various saints and popes, what you, as an individual, could do, should you open yourself to God and sanctified your entire life. And then look at every single person you see, and imagine what the world would be like if everyone should do that. Imagine the real tsunami, not of "love" (which here sounds frightfully hippy in all the bad senses of the word), but of grace.
It begins at home. We're almost like the much-talked-about butterflies doing something seemingly inconsequential, in order to cause a tornado miles away. We should make it a good one.
So how do you dress when you go out? Are you brave enough to recognise that you're a human being, not a museum exhibit? What do you think of prostitution? Are you courageous enough to see how every single individual, by the very fact of his humanity, demands that same recognition? How do you conduct yourselves in your friendships and relationships with other people? Are you gutsy enough to know where the boundaries are between decency and indecency, not only in your dress or your actions, but also in your thoughts?
It's surely time that we grasp what the heck we're dealing with here. Our immodesty could be exploiting fourteen-year-olds in Thailand. Do we want that on our conscience?
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