Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
May you have many "Oh wow!" days...
Peggy Noonan writes:
'I thought of a story told by a friend, whose grown son had died, at home, in a hospice. The family was ringed around his bed. As Robert breathed his last an infant in the room let out a great baby laugh as if he saw something joyous, wonderful, and gestured toward the area above Robert's head. The infant's mother, startled, moved to shush him but my friend, her mother, said no, maybe he's just reacting to . . . something only babies see.'
What did the baby see? We don't know. But we do know that babies are amazing. The Feast of the Incarnation is upon us.
'I thought of a story told by a friend, whose grown son had died, at home, in a hospice. The family was ringed around his bed. As Robert breathed his last an infant in the room let out a great baby laugh as if he saw something joyous, wonderful, and gestured toward the area above Robert's head. The infant's mother, startled, moved to shush him but my friend, her mother, said no, maybe he's just reacting to . . . something only babies see.'
What did the baby see? We don't know. But we do know that babies are amazing. The Feast of the Incarnation is upon us.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Merry Christmas Everyone!
2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Isaiah 60:2-3.
Isaiah got to see things rarely revealed and to write them down for us. G.F. Handel was given the gift of putting Isaiah and other biblical writers to music in his Sacred Oratorio. I once sang in a community chorus that performed The Messiah every year. This performance reminds me of those good days of volunteer musicians and singers working overtime during the holidays to make something beautiful for God.
Jesus, like His saints, comes to us when we have almost come to the conclusion that He does not exist or does not care. This year I celebrate the Feast of the Nativity without the woman who gave me my own. She is not here to sing, so here is Kathleen Battle and Christopher Parkening singing the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria."
Merry Christmas to everyone!
3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Isaiah 60:2-3.
Isaiah got to see things rarely revealed and to write them down for us. G.F. Handel was given the gift of putting Isaiah and other biblical writers to music in his Sacred Oratorio. I once sang in a community chorus that performed The Messiah every year. This performance reminds me of those good days of volunteer musicians and singers working overtime during the holidays to make something beautiful for God.
Jesus, like His saints, comes to us when we have almost come to the conclusion that He does not exist or does not care. This year I celebrate the Feast of the Nativity without the woman who gave me my own. She is not here to sing, so here is Kathleen Battle and Christopher Parkening singing the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria."
Merry Christmas to everyone!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Why was Freddie Mac assigned my new mortgage?
This year, to say the least, has been difficult, and during September I learned that in order to obtain a home loan I would have to prove that I didn't need the money. I paid off most of my debts. I liquidated assets in order in order to make a 30% down payment. The loan originator was Superior Bank. Superior Bank, after questioning every jot and tittle of my financial statements, assigned my mortgage to Wells Fargo, a total foreigner in these parts which bought out Wachovia in 2007, which had bought out SouthTrust earlier in the decade. I just received notice that Wells Fargo assigned my mortgage to Freddie Mac, which will retain Wells Fargo as its servicing agent. My payments go to Wells Fargo, but Freddie Mac owns the payments.
What is going on here? A bank recently seized by the FDIC originated my loan. Its people are aggressively trying to build business in Alabama. Superior Bank sells the mortage to a conglomerate which bought what was once an aggressive bank. Wells Fargo sells a perfectly good mortgage to a private corporation which pretends to be a government agency that regulates and enhances the mortgage industry. In reality, Freddie Mac was a very profitable corporation enjoying vast financial guarantees from its many friends in Washington, most notably, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Newt Gingrich.
Why should you taxpayers be perhaps on the hook for my mortgage? Why should my mortgage be serviced by a conglomerate which gladly assigned it to Freddie Mac? Why would Freddie Mac want my mortgage except to appeal to Congress that its portfolio contains at least a few loans in which the borrower has more than a reasonable chance of paying it back? What does Wells Fargo get out of it? What does Freddie Mac get out of it?
I myself would like to think I am not enabling crony capitalists, but it seems that the mortgage industry has been taken over by the biggest players. I say: (1) abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; (2) prohibit the FDIC from insuring the deposits of any bank which has more than $100 billion in assets. "Too big to fail" means "to big not to be a nest of crony capitalists."
More on Mr. Gingrich and his $1.6 million in compensation from Freddie Mac here. I hope that Mr. Gingrich and Mitt Romney beat each other to a pulp in the next thirty days in order to make room for a candidate that is truly conservative, not a flip-flopper, and can control the right without being controlled by the right. I pray that the Republicans nominate a candidate who has the respect of conservatives yet can impress independents as a viable alternative to the Chicago way.
What is going on here? A bank recently seized by the FDIC originated my loan. Its people are aggressively trying to build business in Alabama. Superior Bank sells the mortage to a conglomerate which bought what was once an aggressive bank. Wells Fargo sells a perfectly good mortgage to a private corporation which pretends to be a government agency that regulates and enhances the mortgage industry. In reality, Freddie Mac was a very profitable corporation enjoying vast financial guarantees from its many friends in Washington, most notably, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Newt Gingrich.
Why should you taxpayers be perhaps on the hook for my mortgage? Why should my mortgage be serviced by a conglomerate which gladly assigned it to Freddie Mac? Why would Freddie Mac want my mortgage except to appeal to Congress that its portfolio contains at least a few loans in which the borrower has more than a reasonable chance of paying it back? What does Wells Fargo get out of it? What does Freddie Mac get out of it?
I myself would like to think I am not enabling crony capitalists, but it seems that the mortgage industry has been taken over by the biggest players. I say: (1) abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; (2) prohibit the FDIC from insuring the deposits of any bank which has more than $100 billion in assets. "Too big to fail" means "to big not to be a nest of crony capitalists."
More on Mr. Gingrich and his $1.6 million in compensation from Freddie Mac here. I hope that Mr. Gingrich and Mitt Romney beat each other to a pulp in the next thirty days in order to make room for a candidate that is truly conservative, not a flip-flopper, and can control the right without being controlled by the right. I pray that the Republicans nominate a candidate who has the respect of conservatives yet can impress independents as a viable alternative to the Chicago way.
Friday, December 09, 2011
Christopher Hitchens is dying...
I have always loved Hitchens for his candor and wit. Because he has been a very outspoken atheist, I have long suspected that he both feared and hoped God might actually care about this vale of tears. Interesting thoughts by Mark Judge:
'Ironically, there is a kind of symmetry between Hitchens and his declared enemy, Mother Teresa, whom Hitchens wrote a nasty book about and called a fanatic and a fraud (yawn). In her 2009 book Come Be My Light, published posthumously... Mother Teresa writes of long periods, indeed years, of “darkness” and suffering, during which she felt that God wasn’t there. After the book was published, Hitchens went on TV to gloat. Even Mother Teresa didn’t believe it! In fact, Mother Teresa was going through what many saints do, a dark night of the soul. Such things can make us doubt God, and that is anything but an unholy thing. As Chesterton noted, Christianity is the only religion that allows God to be an atheist (“Why have you forsaken me?”).'
'Ironically, there is a kind of symmetry between Hitchens and his declared enemy, Mother Teresa, whom Hitchens wrote a nasty book about and called a fanatic and a fraud (yawn). In her 2009 book Come Be My Light, published posthumously... Mother Teresa writes of long periods, indeed years, of “darkness” and suffering, during which she felt that God wasn’t there. After the book was published, Hitchens went on TV to gloat. Even Mother Teresa didn’t believe it! In fact, Mother Teresa was going through what many saints do, a dark night of the soul. Such things can make us doubt God, and that is anything but an unholy thing. As Chesterton noted, Christianity is the only religion that allows God to be an atheist (“Why have you forsaken me?”).'
Thursday, December 08, 2011
"But this is a walk on the wild side."
This is Peggy Noonan's last line in her column about Newt Gingrich. Here is the paragraph tailor-made for this blog:
'Do you want evidence he's a Burkean conservative? Start with welfare reform in 1996. A sober, standard Republican? Go to the balanced budgets of the Clinton era. Is he a Tea Partier? Sure, he speaks the slashing lingo with relish. Is he moderate? Yes, that can be proved. Michele Bachmann this week called him a "frugal socialist," and there's plenty of evidence of that, too.'
The column is worth the read. I'll just say having lived in Georgia during a major part of his elected political career that I have known of only two people who exceeded Newt as political animals: George Wallace and Bill Clinton.
'Do you want evidence he's a Burkean conservative? Start with welfare reform in 1996. A sober, standard Republican? Go to the balanced budgets of the Clinton era. Is he a Tea Partier? Sure, he speaks the slashing lingo with relish. Is he moderate? Yes, that can be proved. Michele Bachmann this week called him a "frugal socialist," and there's plenty of evidence of that, too.'
The column is worth the read. I'll just say having lived in Georgia during a major part of his elected political career that I have known of only two people who exceeded Newt as political animals: George Wallace and Bill Clinton.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
The City of God
Pentimento, if you read her blog, is a city girl through and through. Her writing can no more be divorced from NYC than Eudora Welty's could be extracted from Jackson, Mississippi.
When I read her many posts on NYC, I realize she has something I lack utterly: a vision of a City of God. My vision of God is pastoral, quaint, and intimate- more like Psalm 23. I admit that I can scarcely imagine God ruling over a huge urban area with justice, order, and liberty, where millions of people enjoy city amenities without poverty, homelessness, cynical bureacrats, and even more cynical political machines and crony capitalists. But the "New Jerusalem" is prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, Jesus himself, and St. John the Apostle, and it is not a village or farm; it is a city. It is my lack of faith that I could never imagine a city of God. Saint Augustine, pray for us.
The Tiber River- What's on the other side?
This week I was trying to check on the Latin spelling of St. Matthew, so I searched for a parallel Vulgate/English Bible and found this lovely site. As I read the parallel texts, I switched over to the Gospel of St. Mark because I wanted to see the Latin text of: "Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief," which is credo adiuva incredulitatem meam. What is missing in the Latin is any word for Lord such as Domini. Curious, I pasted credo adiuva incredulitatem meam into my search engine and got several hits, including this blog post at Bedlam or Parnassus. The post was so interesting I stopped at work to post a comment. I received this nice response:
Dear TQ...thank you so much for posting on my blog. I have just read your story of crossing the Tiber as well as your profile. It seems we have much in common! Anyone who can list Spinal Tap alongside Casablanca, Shawshank, the Iliad, and especially the Aeneid is my kind of guy! I think it no coincidence that our paths have crossed. In Part VII of your story, I saw the same picture of St. Augustine that the lock screen on my iPad. If you would like to chat further, drop me an email. I will list it here, but would prefer you delete this comment so it is not out there too long. You may email me at ____@_____. For a quick rundown, my wife and I celebrated 20 years of marriage this summer. We have two children, and I have been a Latin teacher at middle school, high school, community college, and undergraduate levels for 20 years. A lifelong evangelical, I have been prayerfully considering the Tiber swim for several years.
Magister Christianus
This is the extent of our correspondence so far, but it is just the type of exchange I hoped to have when we first connected to the internet in 1997. Two men who blog anonymously, who love to read and appreciate ancient books and sacramental mysteries somehow connect electronically. Please pray for my new friend Magister Christianus.
Dear TQ...thank you so much for posting on my blog. I have just read your story of crossing the Tiber as well as your profile. It seems we have much in common! Anyone who can list Spinal Tap alongside Casablanca, Shawshank, the Iliad, and especially the Aeneid is my kind of guy! I think it no coincidence that our paths have crossed. In Part VII of your story, I saw the same picture of St. Augustine that the lock screen on my iPad. If you would like to chat further, drop me an email. I will list it here, but would prefer you delete this comment so it is not out there too long. You may email me at ____@_____. For a quick rundown, my wife and I celebrated 20 years of marriage this summer. We have two children, and I have been a Latin teacher at middle school, high school, community college, and undergraduate levels for 20 years. A lifelong evangelical, I have been prayerfully considering the Tiber swim for several years.
Magister Christianus
This is the extent of our correspondence so far, but it is just the type of exchange I hoped to have when we first connected to the internet in 1997. Two men who blog anonymously, who love to read and appreciate ancient books and sacramental mysteries somehow connect electronically. Please pray for my new friend Magister Christianus.
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