ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS: SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH EDITION.

Aelred: Well, so I'm a moron. For some reason I thought, on first reading, that St. Aelred didn't grasp or address the sacrifices necessary for friendship. In fact, he says that friends should endure "crucifixion" for one another (with all that implies).

One, I'm an idiot, and two, you absolutely should read Spiritual Friendship, which I think is the most amazing neo-Platonist document I've read barring The Confessions which is kind of an unfair comparison. Aelred understands Plato's method as well as his conclusions; so if it's the Platonic method you love--which you should, since that's the point--you should read Spiritual Friendship immediately after The Symposium. It's actually more neo-Platonist than The Confessions.

St. Therese: So I had a conversation with the friend who had recommended Maurice and Therese, after I dissed it on the blog. And I figured out that there are different kinds of friendship. The M & T one is... based on mutual love of Christ and trust of one another, without face-to-face contact--almost like internet friendships.

I'd promoted Aelred over M & T, but that misses the point. Aelred lives out a model of philosophical friendship, where mutual pursuit of truth binds people together over distance and time. I think Aelred has a lot of insights that are especially applicable to people whose closest friends aren't Christian. He talks about friendship that isn't explicitly, necessarily, centered on Christ, whereas Maurice and Therese are entirely about their common purpose in Christ.

Morrissey: So yeah, I dissed You Are the Quarry, and I was right. It's frequently awful.

But I didn't realize that some parts of it are addictive. I'd say tracks 2 through 10 or 11 are... the kind of thing I end up listening to a lot, whether or not I like it. It isn't anywhere near the artistic achievement of Ringleader of the Tormentors, much more like the pop interest of Viva Hate and Your Arsenal. But I was wrong to suggest that Southpaw Grammar was better--it's desperately boring, and I can't imagine listening to it for fun--and I'll also say that Vauxhall and I is good enough, though not great. I really like it. The only truly great Morrissey album is Ringleader, though the early ones come close.

I think I will go back to listening to "You Have Killed Me" now.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS: Arden Forest has a very awesome list of 10 favorite non-Psalms Bible passages, here.

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: BUTTER MAKES IT BETTER. I learned to cook brussels sprouts! It only took two tries.

#1: Trimmed sprouts (=cut off the top and bottom, and discarded whichever leaves came away when I did that) and roasted them at 400 with french-fry sliced small yellow potatoes tossed in olive oil. Stirred after ten minutes and added a sweet onion chopped into quarters. The result: delicious roasted onion, okayish fries, and unhelpful sprouts--blackened and unpleasantly crispy on one side, not cooked enough on the other. It's possible that other people's ovens would do this dish better.

#2: Trimmed sprouts. Boiled salted water, then added sprouts and cooked 10 minutes. Let sprouts cool and halved them. Cooked sprouts in saucepan with a startling amount of butter, some whole milk, Parrano cheese, and (in this order) black pepper, cayenne, and dried basil. (I think they cooked about six minutes, but I could be wrong--basically, cook until pliant and tasty.) Eaten on top of thick, buttered oatmeal toast.

This was delicious. Scarily yummy. A thinner bread wouldn't work; but then, neither would a thick roll.

Parrano is a thickish, melty cheese, dark yellow, with a grainy sharp quality that distinguishes it from various yummy cheddars but puts it roughly in that category. You'd use Parrano for a macaroni and cheese. It's tangy and "cheesy," doesn't disappear into a dish, but doesn't continue to assert itself the way goat cheeses do. Basically, if you eat a sharp white cheddar and think, "Yeah, but it could be deeper, or darker," then this might work for you. So that's the kind of cheese I used--I think a lighter or more obvious cheese would totally work, though. You could probably use my old standby, Sargento's shredded Mexican cheese blend, with no harm done.

#3: Same as above, except that I chopped the boiled sprouts instead of halving them, used just melty cheese (I forget what kind) instead of milk and cheese, and had them with buttered pasta. This wasn't quite as good as the above, but I think that's mostly because brussels sprouts in butter want to be eaten with toast, not spaghetti. They need something they can stand up to. This was still a wonderful dish, but I did think toast would have been a better match for the delectable creamy vegetables.

That a passion for freedom--chiefly from the bondage of a heartbreaking past--plunges Lucy Nelson into a bondage more gruesome and ultimately insupportable is the pathetic and ugly irony on which the novel turns. I wonder if that might not also describe what befalls the protagonist of Portnoy's Complaint.
--Philip Roth, "Document Dated July 27, 1969," in Reading Myself and Others. I don't think this is the only or best possible reading of either novel (and I suspect Roth would agree), but it's really interesting. My super short post about When She Was Good.

UH... AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING, AND STUFF: Pretty Bird Woman House, a shelter for Native American victims of domestic violence, was vandalized and burnt, and could really use some help. Via Minisinoo, who adds: "This is legit; there's been plenty of talk about it on the native Listservs, and our NAS department is gathering funds. Both the above links tell you how you can donate. If you happen to be in college and it has a Native American Studies department and/or an Inter-Tribal Student Council (ITSC), they may be collecting funds as well. Due to the rural nature of many reservations, assistance for abused native women is hard to come by. Even if you have no money to give, at least go and read the articles, as many people are unaware of the abuse situation facing so many native women."

Thank you very much for the Blogwatch Times,
Thank you very much, thank you very very much...

Dark October 618: More Bible verses!

Hit & Run: A case of conscience?

The Horror Blog: Great horror movie taglines. My favorite is from a postcard advertising 28 Days Later, and turns out to be well-timed: BE GRATEFUL FOR EVERYTHING, FOR SOON THERE WILL BE NOTHING.

Via Sean Collins, who adds more here.

The artists of the Middle Ages painted allegories, we say. What really happened was that they saw more clearly than we do, and painted what they saw--angels and devils, beasts, and half-human monsters like me.
--Gene Wolfe, Pirate Freedom, via Claw of the Conciliator; reminds me of my post about genre as realism.

IRONY AND AGONY, SIDE BY SIDE ON MY PIANO KEYS: Gravity & Waggery (aka Claw of the Conciliator--admit it, the man can pick blog titles!) brings a fun challenge: Pick ten passages from the Bible which are especially meaningful or striking to you. I did this more or less off the top of my head--ask me tomorrow, and the answers might be somewhat different--and included a bonus at the end, plus the post below this one, because the Bible doesn't say I have to work in base 10. If you guys do this, link back to me so I can find you!--I'd love to see other people's.

10. Matthew 1:1-6: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah....
-----------
Because all the women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy are foreigners or adulteresses. Women are brought in specifically to link Jesus to the "other." Hegel's "woman as the irony of the community" again....

9. Psalms 22:14: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is wax, it is melted within my breast....

8. John 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

7. Romans 6:4: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from death by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
--------------------
For whatever reason, almost every short story I write (not the novels) turns out to be about death--whether death as an object for philosophy, death as an occasion for guilt-stricken grief, death as an obstacle or death as a doorway. I honestly have no idea why this obsesses me so much. But I know one reason baptism makes sense to me is that it is baptism into the Crucifixion in order to be baptism into the Resurrection.

6. Genesis 8:21: And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done."
----------------------
Because I think about this a lot. (This is the political entry.)

5. Song of Songs 2:4: He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love.
[and also 3:1-3: Upon my bed by night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
"I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves."
I sought him, but found him not.
The watchmen found me,
as they went about in the city.
"Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"]

4. Luke 24:35: Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
-----------------
One of the epigraphs for the next novel. (The other one is from Audre Lorde's autobiography--from memory, it's something like, "It is the final dream of children to remain forever untouched.")

3. Psalms 42:1-2: As a hart longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?

2. Psalms 85:10: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
-----------------
Shorter Cur Deus Homo.

1. Revelation 2:17: To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving him that receiveth it.
----------
The only passage I'm not quoting from the RSV, because the version which first struck me is the version I need in order to make you see what I see here. I found this in CS Lewis's Problem of Pain. It needs the Nietzschean "overcometh" as well as the new name written.

bonus (11): Matthew 5:13: "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men."
For itself; but also because I'm slowly working on a thing about zombies.

For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
--Luke 14:11

IN THE AFTERMATH OF A KIDNAPPING. Via the Christian Persecution blog.

"With these on your feets, every day is the fox hunt, with you as the quarry!"

"COP TALK": I'm at Reason Online, talking about cops who spew e-vitriol.... "Many police departments across the country have experienced similar bulletin board crises over the last few years, putting police officers' freedom of speech in conflict with the public's need to be protected from, well, cops who get off on using Tasers."

MORE OF OTHER PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT AELRED (come to the spiritual-friendship discussion this Sunday!)--this time from the best chapter in the best thing Andrew Sullivan's written, "If Love Were All" from Love Undetectable: Reflections on friendship, sex and survival:

Such a conviction about the essential congruity between virtue and friendship was central to the work of Aelred of Rievaulx. For Aelred, true friendship seems at times a kind of mystical delirium, an essential step toward knowledge of and acquiescence to God's love. For Aelred, "nothing more sacred is
striven for, nothing more useful is sought after, nothing more difficult is discovered, nothing more sweet experienced, and nothing more profitable possessed." Reading him is to be aware of a world where asexual and unromantic friendship nevertheless reaches an intensity that can only be called ecstatic. He describes the union of friendship as a kind of "spiritual kiss"....

It would be easy to see this as a form of erotic sublimation--from a celibate monk at that. But that, I think, would be to condescend to Aelred's spiritual sincerity. For Aelred, the spiritual union is, indeed, like an erotic union in its bliss, but not sexual in the corporeal sense. He expresses the old truth about spiritual ecstasy--that such ecstasy is not a sublimation of sex,
but rather than sex is an intimation of such ecstasy. And such ecstasy, by definition, cannot obliterate the demands of virtue, since it is impossible without it: "For what more sublime can be said of friendship, what more true, what more profitable, than that it ought to, and is proved to, begin in Christ, continue in Christ, and be perfected in Christ?"...

This, of course, is a demanding standard, perhaps too demanding. Most friendships, after all, do not rise to the level of complete virtue. They require a constant capacity for forgiveness and flexibility, and the complicity of friends in each other's faults need not amount to a capitulation to evil. Both Aelred and Cicero concede this at other times. They understand that, even
in the best of friends, there will be many moments of failure, even vice, and although a good friend will not want to encourage a friend in such weakness, he will inevitably tolerate it at times, listen to it, even provide a form of human solidarity with it....

But this leads to a paradox. How can one completely trust another imperfect human being, whose faults are all too obvious and who could therefore betray you at any time?

TWO COMICS LINKS via Journalista: Ooooohhh, gangsterous.

And I'm going to try to make it to this

November 9 (Washington DC): Join Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware for a discussion on the graphic novel moderated by Daniel Raeburn, at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center’s Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater at 16th and Q, beginning at 8PM.

so let me know if you think of anything for me to ask esp. Alison Bechdel!

WATERBOARDING IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Via Balkinization.

PUTTING THE "MORE" IN MEMENTO MORI: November is the month Catholics dedicate to remembrance and prayer for the dead. Daniel Mitsui honors it in his inimitable way--scroll, O man, while your time remains!

TO WHET YOUR APPETITE FOR THIS SUNDAY'S AWESOME AELRED DISCUSSION: New Haven correspondent Helen Rittelmeyer writes:

You know who was nuts about Aelred?

Cardinal Newman.

The best secondary source book I've found in The Great Senior Essay Hunt has been "Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture" by Frederick Roden. (What a title! Available on Googlebooks!) He has a ten page discussion of Aelred & Newman that struck me in two ways.

1. I LOST MY METAPHOR -- CAN I HAVE YOURS? Aelred of Simon: "The rule of the order forbade our speaking, but his countenance spoke to me, his gait spoke, his very silence spoke." Are certain kinds of self-denial also like silence speaking?

2. These two quotes get filed together in my mind: John Dalgairns, talking about Aelred: "The very object of Monasticism is to give a proper outlet to devotional feelings, which are stifled in the world, because it would be fanatical to indulge them; it must therefore be made up to a great extent of
external actions. To throw oneself at the feet of another, and call oneself a miserable sinner, in a convent is part of the rule."

No prizes for guessing which one comes next... "For my part, I think the only difference between them is that if you are a Catholic and have this intensity of belief you join the convent and are heard from no more; whereas if you are a Protestant and have it, there is no convent for you to join and you go about in the world getting into all sorts of trouble and drawing the wrath of people who don't believe anything much at all down on your head." (Flannery O'Connor)

Good luck with your talk!

REMEMBER HOW I SAID THE RAT IS SMARTER THAN YOU?

Guess who passed her generals exam, and is now ABD? *throws confetti*

Go congratulate her!

TWO LINKS: Via Ratty, Gangsters Anonymous (with interesting stuff about "weakness"); and, via E-Pression, Johnny Marr is a visiting music professor at Salford University.

Most nothing is not nothing at all: it is usually a determined nothing, as Hegel says--nothing in relation to something that it is not but that delimits it, fixes its terms, gives it a margin.
--Cigarettes Are Sublime