What DuoLingo Says

 

Today was kind of rainy, but one small thing made me happy: I have a black calla lily that was very happy last summer but did not seem to be coming back this year. But when I decided to take it outside to see if that would rouse it from its slumber, I saw it had two shoots coming up. Yay! I had an orange one and a white one that stopped coming up, but in that case they both seemed to be struggling the summer before they didn't come back. This calla lily had lots of leaves and flowers last year, so I was surprised when it was so slow to come back. This one is special, because it's from our wedding. The others I got later.

Once I had a dream that I met a little black boy and somehow knew that he knew everything about me. I was very ashamed, thinking of all the bad stuff he knew, but then I realized he loved me anyway. I was amazed that someone could know me perfectly and yet love me completely, and then I woke up and realized he was Jesus. Wow! How can you not feel joy knowing that a perfect being loves you completely?

Here are some crazy things DuoLingo tells me after I finish a lesson.

You can see why I'm so addicted to this crazy app - I never know what it will do next!

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God Only Knows

 

Today was a bad day to work at home, because they are redoing the siding on our condo, and it was very loud. Also, the workers were listening to loud ranchero music, and while I don't hate ranchero music, having to listen to it for hours is not conducive to concentrating. At least in the morning I got quite a bit done, before things got so loud. I need to do some training videos, but not with all that noise!

In the evening Travalon and I went with our neighbor to Mariner's for fish. This time I had the walleye, which is a bit more expensive but so worth it. Plus the portion is so generous that I will get to have more tomorrow. Our neighbor loves the dinner rolls there and says that is what she will miss most when she goes to Florida for the winter. On the other hand, we were talking about conch fritters, and you can get those in Florida but not up here. I said I felt bad because this morning I took down the hummingbird feeder so the workers wouldn't wreck it, thinking it wouldn't be a problem because I hadn't seen a hummingbird in over a week. Then, wouldn't you know a few minutes later one flew by looking for the feeder? So I put it out again, but the hummingbird never came back, and I took it down once the workers started pounding right around the porch. Our waitress said she has a plant that the hummingbirds love, and from her description we thought it might be a fuchsia. I said those have edible fruits, and that reminded me that on Wednesday I went around eating crabapples from the trees in our neighborhood. The one that had such wonderful fruit last year seems to have four very pale fruit, high up in the tree, and that's it. Makes sense, since it had hardly any blossoms on it this spring. But to my surprise, some of the other trees have the larger, delicious fruit. How did I not notice this before? I told our neighbor I'll eat practically anything, like one year we had a decorative sweet potato vine growing in a pot at the entrance to our condo association, and the president at the time told me to take it out in the fall. There were sweet potatoes in the roots, so Travalon fried them up, and we ate them. Delicious! And of course there was the spring when my neighbor and I found all those morel mushrooms in our neighborhood. They haven't come back.

Yesterday I didn't blog because the Packer game made me too grumpy. They didn't show it on TV, only on Amazon Prime, but Travalon has that so we were able to watch it. I'm kind of jealous of people who couldn't watch it - it was so bad! The first half they were very balanced: the offense stunk, the defense stunk, and special teams stunk too. Finally in the second half they started to play, but it was too late - the Lions were too far ahead. So they lost at home. 

The other day someone posted about people who say there must not be a god because bad things happen, and he argued about why this wasn't true. I said I think of it like taking a dog to the vet; the dog isn't able to understand why you are torturing it. Some guy responded to my comment by saying it was a bad analogy because dogs don't wonder, and because God could explain it to us if He chose. I found his arguments problematic because first of all he must never have been close to an animal, and secondly it's sheer hubris to think that we can understand at the same level as God. Just like I could have told Rodney that he needed a shot, but he wouldn't know what I was saying, God could try to explain His plan to us, but we don't have the capacity to understand it. I just loved that this guy really thought he was equal to God in understanding, and the problem is just that God isn't talking to him. Whatever, dude. You sit down with God and have that conversation, and let me know how it goes. I know from personal experience that it's better to just trust God to have a plan even when I don't know what He's up to. Could He explain it to me if He used small enough words? I doubt it. I'm not omniscient. What really kills me is that some of these same people think space aliens would be at a much higher level of understanding than we are, but then they think God would be equal to us. So do they really think space aliens know more than God? It boggles the mind.

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The Demisemiseptcentennial

 

Yesterday was such a good day. The grad student who plays in the protest band came in to defend her thesis, and look how she did!

These speech bubbles were painted by grad students last summer, and we were supposed to write things in them, like where we would visit that summer. I put Peoria and Goofy Ridge. When we had our cleaning day some weeks ago, my coworker tried to clean these speech bubbles, but the only one she got clean was the one with terrible puns my easygoing coworker and I had written. Bummer! My visit to Goofy Ridge is eternally enshrined on the wall.

It was raining, so I walked on the third floor under the overhang, just like a few Wednesdays ago when I had that mystical experience, but I just saw this... French dog?

I heard some emergency vehicles, and they pulled up in front of the Killer Building, and the cops, firemen, and EMTs went inside. I never heard anything more about it.

There was a big party on the Union Terrace for the Demisemiseptcentennial, or 175th birthday of the University. My colleague asked if I wanted to go, then Hardingfele asked if I wanted to go, and my colleague said sure, she could come. We went to the ice cream truck, and the Chancellor handed us free ice cream, then we sat on the Union Terrace, and Hardingfele and my colleague were instant friends. They knew people in common and have kids the same age. They headed back to their offices together while I went to meet the Chair of the Central Committee (I'm the Vice-Chair). As I waited for him, I saw our department's newest Ph.D. partying with some faculty, and the Vice President of the Union (I'm the Secretary), and a guy from two jobs ago who went to our wedding but I haven't seen much since. I saw him last year at the free ice cream day, and he said he was moving back to France. When I saw him yesterday, he confirmed that he had, in fact, moved back to France, but they were in town to visit his mother-in-law, so he was meeting former coworkers at the Union. I kind of felt like, if I stood there long enough, I'd see everyone I'd ever known!

The Chair and I went to the exclusive, swanky soiree in the Great Hall of the Union. People kept bringing around delicious hors d'oeuvres like smoked salmon tarts and warm peach tarts, and the free signature cocktail was basically a fancy cranberry juice with vodka. We mingled a bit, then there was a presentation with the President of the Ho-Chunk Nation, the Lieutenant Governor, and the Chancellor. Another woman joined us, and the three of us were having a lively discussion about ageism on campus when Travalon arrived. He and I went down to the Terrace and caught a bit of the Fifth Quarter with the band playing, then we found a table and had pizza and refreshments; Travalon accidentally got a one-person pizza instead of the big one we'd gotten last week, but I was pretty full of hors d'oeuvres and didn't eat that much. There was also free popcorn. Wednesday is always Open Mic Night down at the Terrace in the summers, and some of the singers were really good! Some... not so much. The US women's soccer team was playing the Netherlands, and the game was on in the Rathskeller, so every time I had to powder my nose, I checked out the game. Tons of people were watching, which I like to see. The fireworks for the party were supposed to start at 9:30, so at 9:15 I went in to use the bathroom, and as I was heading back out, I saw the soccer team score a goal to tie the game up! But the fireworks had already started! So was my timing good or bad?? I did see most of the fireworks show, and it was very cool. Here are a couple of pictures of the parties. First, the balloon 175 at the swanky soiree.

They projected 175 onto the Union at the Terrace.

By the time we got home, it was too late to blog. Then I thought about how, even though God is infinitely greater than I am, we are co-conspirators in Operation Illumination, and I pictured us like two little children giggling as we put a May Day basket on a neighbor's front porch. Is this a weird way to picture God? It just seemed so delightful. He may be incomprehensibly great, but He stoops down to love us.

Today I was looking forward to a quiet day, but I had to take a check across campus in this hot weather. I tried to walk at a relaxed pace, and I caught the free campus bus on part of the trip both ways, but maybe the heat did get to me. I started to feel worse and worse as the day wore on. By the time we got home, I was freezing despite the excessively hot weather, and sure enough, I had a temperature over 100. After Night Prayer I suddenly threw off my blanket and felt better, and sure enough, my fever had gone down. Did my fellow Night Prayer attendees' prayers work that quickly?? I'm relieved, because I really didn't want to go to the emergency room tonight, but earlier it seemed pretty grim. Maybe I did just get overheated or dehydrated on that walk. I also visited Hardingfele to see how she uses a new program I am learning, which is different than how we plan to use it, but might also be valuable for us. Learning this program is honestly a lot more interesting than my regular work. I love to make pretty graphs to show what faculty funds look like.

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More Blog Monsters

 

We have more blog monsters! A couple of tween girls drew these. I really like this colorful one, which is actually a "bloog" monster.

This one looks like a scary pizzacorn.

Speaking of pizza... Behold my entry into the Blog Monster gallery, the Pizzasaurus that I bought at Meep Meepleton's during Street Fest and just painted tonight.

It is a squishy Pizzasaurus so perfect for squeezing whenever blogging gets too stressful.

Today I read an article about the use of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of psychiatric problems, and the woman writing the article had a bad trip and was frustrated at how little is known about what causes them. Not long after that she went on a hardcore meditation retreat, and that just messed her up more. She said Buddhist monks have long known that some people have bad experiences with meditation, and that it's considered a high-reward, high-risk activity. She did concede that psychiatrists using ayahuasca and peyote and other things that were traditionally used in religious rituals have divorced them from their ancient spiritual origins, but she said there's nothing to predict who will have a bad trip, such as preexisting psychiatric conditions, family background, etc. I wondered if people having bad trips were upset to experience the Divine and realize there is something more powerful than themselves. I thought of a guy I met years ago who said he hated going into Gothic cathedrals because "it makes me feel so much smaller than God, and I hate that! I like to think of him being my size." Uh, what?? So if he is weirded out by going into a building, imagine how shattered a person might be who goes on this spiritual quest and finds out that they are not the ultimate answer to everything.

At Adoration I pondered this idea, and I thought of myself. I'm not the humblest person (and it would hardly be humble of me to say I am!), but I've always had a healthy respect for the Divine as Other than myself and obviously far more powerful, intelligent, and kind. When God spoke directly to me the other day, I was in a very safe mindset to encounter Divine Greatness, because I was extremely contrite about hurting someone and crying about people feeling unloved. So I was a) thinking I sucked, and b) focused on the needs of others. Maybe it is downright dangerous to try to pursue contact with the Divine when you are not in a good state to do so. A good state might be, for example, right after Confession, when you've just gotten done thinking about how much you suck and you're also extremely grateful for the mercy God has shown you. I hadn't thought about it, partly because most of the people I know also understand God is incomprehensibly greater than they are, but some rando who wants to "see the face of God" and does some drug or meditation to facilitate that might be so deeply shaken by how much greater God is than he is that he just can't get over it. This is probably why in all religious traditions you have to work and pray and get spiritually fit for years before you start messing around with this stuff. Also, I wasn't looking for a direct encounter with God when it happened; yes, I was praying very hard for people who feel unloved to know they are loved, but I wasn't expecting a direct answer. And - this might be the most important part - I didn't just moon around over God talking to me; I went out and did something about what He said to me. That's the part so many of these people who want instant enlightenment are missing - the holy is most present in quotidian existence. To work is to pray.

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Mr. Why Gone a Decade

Today is a very sad anniversary: the tenth anniversary of Mr. Why’s death. At his funeral, people came whom we hadn’t seen in ten years, and we all said, “We need to get together before another ten years go by!” Well, guess what? They have, and we still haven’t gotten together. The usual suspects will converge upon his grave at some point, but of course we all have a very busy weekend coming up, and the weather is not going to be cooperative either. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Mr. Why, since you chose your own date of demise, why couldn’t you have picked a warmer month??

There is another building on campus that I often have to go to for business reasons, and earlier this week when I was there, I saw they had a magic banner. You could write something on a piece of paper, stick it to this banner, and it would just stay there somehow. The topic was supposed to be “What makes your heart sing?” and people had written things like puppies, snorkeling, and brunch. All wonderful things, but when I thought about what makes my heart truly sing, the obvious answer was God. You wouldn’t think that would be a controversial answer, but this is a college campus, so I thought for a minute before deciding why not – I  wrote “GOD” on a piece of paper and stuck it to the magic banner. Today I had to go back to this building again for another errand, and at least nobody had removed my piece of paper, but someone had stuck another one right next to it that said: “The Atonement.” I am sure that is a sarcastic comment on my piece of paper, because who would feel joyous about the Atonement? But if you really can’t see why God would make a person feel joyous, then I sure do feel sorry for you.

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The Moral Atheist

For today's Lenten reflection, I want to talk about our motivation for obeying God. Believers are like children in their motivations. The earliest motivation a small child has for not disobeying is fear: "If I am bad, the Big People will hit me." A reasonable motivation, but hopefully the child develops beyond this stage. If not, he will think the only reason to obey is out of fear, so that if he has no fear of being caught, he will not obey. The believer stuck in this stage avoids evil because of his fear of Hell. An extreme example is Martin Luther, who was a brilliant theologian but somewhat stunted in his spiritual growth; despite the assurances of his superiors, he went to Confession for hours every day, thinking his sins were beyond forgiveness. Then he stumbled upon a deep spiritual insight: God's love is what transforms us to be able to love like He does, if we accept His love. (Unfortunately, there are some schools of thought that have twisted this into: "God loves me, and I accept His love, so that's it - I'm saved!" Which is like a child who believes he can be as naughty as he wants because his mother will still love him.) Accepting God's love is not as simple as saying, "I know I'M saved!" It means we understand that Jesus died for our sins, meaning we have to face our own sinfulness and learn to love others despite their sinfulness, two things that are impossible for us to do without God's help.

The second stage might be something like this: "If I give the Big People presents, they will love me." Not particularly evil, but certainly a bit of an ulterior motive, and one that is easily subject to manipulation: "If I give the Big People presents, they will love me more than the other Little People." Again, a stage the child hopefully passes through quickly! The believer in this stage does as many good works as possible thinking only of the Heavenly Tally Sheet, and in its ugliest manifestation, he looks smugly at the person who does not seem to be as "good" and assumes God loves him more. Think of the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple. Which one went away justified? Human parents may be manipulated into favoring one child over another, but God sees into our hearts, and He cannot be manipulated.

The final stage is this one: "I love the Big People so much! They give me food and clothes and they forgive me when I am naughty! I will draw a picture of them to show how much I love them." Then the parents post the drawing on the refrigerator, not because the colorful scribbles are a great work of art, but because of the intent behind them. In the same way that parents don't need silly pictures drawn by their offspring but count them among their greatest treasures, God does not need anything from us but He treasures our acts that are done for the purest of motives: love for Him.

I would argue that the truly moral atheist falls into this last category; like Luther, he has stumbled onto a deep insight via a circuitous route. Obviously the moral atheist is not in the earlier stages of obedience, since he doesn't fear Hell or desire Heaven. Today's Gospel relates how a scribe asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and Jesus replied that it is: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength," and then he added, "The second one is like unto it: Love your neighbor as yourself." If God is in our neighbors, and we treat them with agape love, the perfect love that asks nothing in return, then we are giving this same love to God. Although the moral atheist does not believe in God, he is already obeying the greatest commandment and loving others not because he fears punishment or hopes for reward but because he understands that they have inherent worth and deserve his love. The only insight he is missing is that they receive their inherent worth from God, in Whose image and likeness they are made, but I would argue that he is further along in his understanding than the believer stuck in the earlier stages.

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The Eye of the Beholder

Right now I am listening to "Laudate Pueri, Dominum" by Couperin and it is so incredibly beautiful, there are no words to describe it. On the cover of Magnificat this month is a painting of a Gothic cathedral, and it strikes me how those things created by the hand of man reflect the beholder. So many of us are deeply moved by the beauty of a majestic Medieval church or the intricacies of a sacred piece by Josquin de Prez, and this is perhaps not surprising when you realize that the primary beholder is God. Yes, they are meant to be seen or heard by humans and direct our thoughts heavenward, but in some sense they were created for God. Nonbelievers grasp this as well and react accordingly; I know one athiest who listens to Bach's "Mass in B Minor" over and over, saying how much it moves him. Once he wondered why music like that isn't written anymore, and he had no reply when I pointed out that Bach was writing for God but most music nowadays is written to appeal to the lowest common denominator. An even more extreme example is an acquaintance who actually said Gothic cathedrals made him uneasy because they made God seem so... "big!" "I like to think of God being my size!" he said. I found this an incredibly mind-boggling statement - how could God be 5'10"? - but at least he didn't miss the message that sacred space was built to convey.

The second level of art would be that aimed at human beholders. Most people find the portraits painted by the old Renaissance Dutch and Venetian masters very beautiful, and so they are, because they were created with the patron in mind. Music up until the time of Beethoven was very much this way as well. I would say Beethoven was the first composer who seemed more concerned with his own creative ideas than with the listeners' perceptions. This has become extreme in modern art and music, to the point that the upheld ideal is not something which is easy to relate to but something "challenging," meaning most people do not care for it. Personally, I would think art, like any other commodity, should be subject to market forces. When painters and composers had to please kings and dukes, look what beauty they created! When they get grants from the NEA, look what downright subversive and smutty things they create using our tax money! And then we, the people who paid for this trash, are at best browbeaten for our populist tastes and failure to embrace ugliness, and at worst are accused of censorship for protesting having to pay for things that offend our religious beliefs, not to mention our sense of beauty! Sorry, censorship means you are not allowed to create this garbage. Nobody is stopping you from doing so; we are merely protesting having to foot the bill.

This brings me to the third level. Who is the "beholder" of so much modern art? It would seem that it is the artist alone, but perhaps it is someone more sinister than that. If God is beauty, then what would ugliness be? And who would be trying to pass ugly off as the new beautiful if not that ancient deceiver, Satan? After all, when an artist creates something not to please God or even other people but only himself, is he not in some sense making the same choice Satan did, to recognize himself above God as the ultimate judge of good and evil? And would Satan not want us to reject the truly beautiful in favor of the pornographic and sacriligious? When a crucifix suspended in urine or a play depicting Jesus as homosexual is held up as great art while an artist like Thomas Kinkade who creates beautiful landscapes is derided for being both "too Christian" and "too accessible," you can easily figure out whose side the critics are on.

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