The wind-chime porch faces ocean; it stirs. The back-door cellar shivers.
Oh, don't know: it must be far past compline even, the moon slipping,
And somewhere down the evening slope the heavy conch is climbing
From retreating waves; the cellar winces, whispers,

Muffled by His own thick mould-ridden door, beside the coastal grass,
Beneath, behind the rustling shadow of the home
In which all gave of each in marriage, now asleep; the groan,
Unheard, murmurs with the conch shell's groping path

-Though, even so, the chimes of hurricanes in motion,
Men, drunken, sleep, begin to murmur in the house beside the ocean,
Conch unobserved this evening, no share of cellar-door's care spoken.


-r

Last Things, First Things, and a Monastery

A. Last Things

Allegedly, we had a tornado blow through town to-day, despite my need to write a research paper. Human energy vibrated everywhere; all the persons in the apartment building lined the hall and made noise, and some of us congregated at my patio door to watch it blow in. The sirens went off, places and things became slightly violent for awhile, we retreated indoors, and eventually the other side of the storm blew in. We humans came out all right on the other side.

It's about time for things to be finished here. Despite almost losing my mind (literally) on a few occasions as well as wondering if I could keep on 'keeping on' in these nominally helpful studies, praise God our Father, the other side has finally blown in. There are still assignments to be finished - and there is always room for practise in the virtues of patience, courage, and humility - but I can already feel the gentler side of the storm easing this way. It will be good to complete this chapter.


B. First Things

Besides being an interesting periodical, it's about time for healthy daily rubrics. My mental processes have gradually unravelled, on and off again, in each semester, in the last three-and-a-half years. Part of the relief of the end of this chapter is the ability to have time to evaluate and affix a daily routine - prayer, work, writing, etc.; this will be a respite and a chance to refocus my energies. In this next chapter of life, hopefully, I can begin the practise of living in ritual health so as to be able to live healthily even in the stressful times.

I'm also becoming aware of the need to be faithful and finish work that is started. After finishing up this graduate work and taking a well-earned sabbatical (that is, with a hopeful restoration of healthy mental processes), I'm probably going to try to finish up the 'Reasons to Not Become Catholic' entry series, as well as the 'Masculine Principle' series, the 'Orthodox Economics' series, etc. This may or may not be done on Xanga, and it may or may not be a quick or efficient process. In any case, I'm not good at apologetics and really don't have a lot of interest in apologetic material, but with a few more considerations and a lot of editing, I've just about written an apologetic book with the 'Reasons to Not Become Catholic' entry series - and might as well finish it up. It would be good to bring things to completion.


C. and a Monastery

It's difficult to describe the mystical ways in which things sometimes mesh - the texture of a person's very existence meshing with a certain lifestyle, the simultaneous and subconscious offering and accepting of certain kinds of relationship, and so forth. I met up with friends last weekend at a vocational retreat at St. Bernard Abbey, having no idea what to expect. As it turns out, we lived with the monks as the monks do: we slept in our cells, woke up early to sing the Office, had meals with them, etc. I had the mystical experience of 'meshing' - noticing elements (previously unrecognised and/or unappreciated) that the lifestyle evoked in my person, and noticing in bold new ways how I could serve Christ and His Church in this capacity. Brother Jacob (one of the monks) pulled me aside from the group to talk to me, and he said that he was profoundly convinced (from his observing me that weekend) that I have a vocation to the monastic life. Very strange things.

This is not to say that I've made the decision to be a monk at St. Bernard, or even to be a monk at all. I presently have several debts upon which to make restitution, and it will be at least another year before I can join any monastery. Perhaps a saint or true disciple or whatever would 'let the dead bury their own dead', but I would rather be faithful to previous obligations before making new ones on such short notice. However, this whole event has intrigued me, to say the least; if I should prayerfully consider marriage or the priesthood as a vocation in the service of God (and I should), all the more I should prayerfully investigate a vocation that I have found initially appealing and within which I have been given a testimony of sorts.


-r

Free-time, Watchmen Morality, and Catholic Converts

A:
In a conversation with a friend this past Sunday, it occurred to me how much I'm going to enjoy being post-Treveccan. There are so many essays/articles I want to cook up, so many aspects of history and theology upon which I want to reflect, and I'll have time this summer (and this fall!) to write and read and think about them. It's difficult to explain how odd my situation is, and I haven't even been aware of it as a 'situation' until this last Sunday. Most of my friends go home after work and read, or do laundry, or work on their house, or write essays/articles that they find interesting. This whole concept is unimaginable to me, since I've spent my entire adult life at the university and typically working a job to at least strive to pay the university bills. Laundry is something that somehow miraculously gets done between schoolwork and work. The notion of coming home from work at 3:30 and having nothing 'due' is incomprehensible. And the notion of working as an academic, working in a field that I enjoy studying and teaching, is an idea too good to be true (. . . you mean to say that *most* people don't work two full-time jobs??)


B:
Quick clarification: Watchmen is good as far as the story, faithfulness to the book, etc. That's all I was trying to say. I did not necessarily mean it is a 'good' movie, because it isn't. I wouldn't recommend anyone see Watchmen at the movie theatre, and I'm almost ready to say that there is very little good to be had in it altogether. Basically, read the book; the book has the real meat and element of beauty that adequately engages the frank inadequacies, human fumblings, and hard questions of [post-]modern characters in a [post-]modern world (it primarily engages this reality through its deconstructing the superhero mythos). The graphic novel is dark and, well, graphic, but the movie is just about the closest thing to a visceral orgy that you can have (literally and figuratively). Whereas in the book Rorschach chains up a criminal to a stove and then sets the building on fire - dark and horrifying, but nothing is shown of the criminal's death - the movie zooms in upon Rorschach planting a meat-cleaver in the criminal's head over and over. And there are two fairly graphic sex scenes, three (I think) in total. Connect this to a general 'condensation' of the powerful message of the book and the already intrinsically dark, violent, and disturbing themes of the material in question, and my advice would be: read the book.


C:
Again yesterday, upon discovering my 'denominational affiliation,' someone at work asked me (with surprising alarm) why so many students at Trevecca - especially (he noted) history students, and theology students, and music students at Trevecca - become Catholic. Well, there are probably a number of reasons and responses; as Chesterton notes, the Church is a city with a thousand gates, and no single person enters Her from exactly the same angle. Some of the reasons may be considered 'good reasons,' while others may be impugned by those who witness the decision. However, one of the most obvious and general answers - especially as it pertains to history, theology, and music students - has seemed quite self-explanatory to me: if a person who is serious about the testimony of the Christian faith s/he has been handed actually studies the history of Christianity, or studies the Holy Scriptures, or studies the development of music in the history of oft-scoffed-at 'Christendom,' it is not surprising if s/he may in fact see how spontaneously-generated and insubstantial protestantism and its derivatives are.

At least when conceivably 'ignorant', for example, the protestant can look at the state of affairs and conclude that the Church really is merely the 'Roman Catholic denomination' alongside many other denominations; after all, all these groups presently coexist. However, it is exceedingly difficult to justify standing outside the Church and simultaneously calling oneself a Christian once one actually realises (historically and scripturally) that one's own historical inheritance of the faith is an incomplete and alternate rendition of that-which-always-came-before; it is difficult (as a Nazarene pastor) to off-handedly snub theology that is scripturally, doctrinally, and logically solid . . . and that 'somehow' has a Life to it that manages to solve many of the needless theological dilemmas the Nazarene denomination seems unable to address within itself. And when you are finally given the faith to believe that the Sacraments - particularly the Eucharist - are the definition for the quite historically verifiable terms 'sacrament' and 'sacramental,' it becomes clear that the protestant pieces are at best 'CatholicLite' and at worst something unrelated to the Catholic Church altogether. At this point there is no thought of grafting 'Roman Catholicism' into protestant faith; the suggestion becomes laughable. It becomes clear then, at least in the very definition, that all roads (and measures and definitions we have been handed) lead toward Rome.


-r

Brief Watchmen Review and 'Mediaevalism'

A.

Form and substance are not divorced; 'it isn't as important how you say it so long as you say it' only rings with the tiniest bit of the truth, and just about anyone with sense knows the full truth. I'm particularly aware of this in light of the historical Church - the grace of God conveyed in the Eucharist is never, ever divorced from the particular form it takes.

The same is true, in an extended sense, for movie renditions of books. In the past, I have been one of those persons (and hear these persons often) who complain about movies that aren't 'just like' the book upon which they are based. Of course they aren't, and they won't be; the sheer fact that one thing is a movie and the other thing a book implies two different ars with different ways of communicating. Now, there is such thing as using the movie medium to murder a good book, because there is a sacramental connexion between the book and the movie that embodies a 'pointing back toward' the book - and no lover of the written word desires to ever see this sort of tragic murder take place. However, the very media - film and print - embody messages very different, in their very form.

With all this said, Watchmen was an okay film. It was decently done, and it did reference the book satisfactorily. With this rendition of Watchmen (that is, a rendition of the book), I think Snyder did as good a job as anyone cramming in the book's vast 'essence' into a three-hour movie. As would be expected, sadly, there were a few foul-plays: characters were saying flat, corny things out of character; some of the condensed plot elements didn't make complete sense; and the end of the movie dragged. All in all, though, it's a captivating tale in film, and it may serve as a sort of 'sign' that drives a good many persons into the novel itself.


B.

Because I reminded myself of the poem in the last entry . . .


'Mediaevalism' by G.K. Chesterton

If men should rise and return to the noise and time of the tourney,

The name and fame of the tabard, the tangle of gules and gold.
Would these things stand and suffice for the bourne of a backward journey,
A light on our days returning, as it was in the days of old?
Nay, there is none rides back to pick up a glove or a feather,
Though the gauntlet rang with honour or the plume was more than a crown:
And hushed is the holy trumpet that called the nations together
And under the Horns of Hattin the hope of the world went down.

Ah, not in remembrance stored, but out of oblivion starting,
Because you have sought new homes and all that you sought is so,
Because you had trodden the fire and barred the door in departing,
Returns in your chosen exile the glory of long ago.
Not then when you barred the door, not then when you trod the embers,
But now, at your new road's end, you have seen the face of a fate,
That not as a child looks back, and not as a fool remembers,
All that men took too lightly and all that they love too late.

It is you that have made no rubric for saints, no raiment for lovers.
Your caps that cry for a feather, your roofs that sigh for a spire:
Is it a dream from the dead if your own decay discovers
Alive in your rotting graveyard the worm of the world's desire?
Therefore the old trees tower, that the green trees grow and are stunted:
Therefore these dead men mock you, that you the living are dead:
Since ever you battered the saints and the tools of your crafts were blunted,
Or shattered the glass in its glory and loaded yourselves with the lead.

When the usurer hunts the squire as the squire has hunted the peasant,
As sheep that are eaten of worms where men were eaten of sheep:
Now is the judgment of earth, and the weighing of past and present.
Who scorn to weep over ruins, behold your ruin and weep.
Have ye not known, ye fools, that have made the present a prison.
That thirst can remember water and hunger remember bread?
We went not gathering ghosts; but the shriek of your shame is arisen
Out of your own black Babel too loud; and it woke the dead.

-r