Bookworm strikes again

Military men are often more romantic, she says, than their peers who have not served in the profession of arms. She's right. Read her post all the way through for the top-shelf insight into vulnerability with which she finishes.

Both the military man and the romantic cheer for the underdog, and both ultimately succeed only if they're willing to engage at close quarters, which is why General Lewis "Chesty" Puller or one of his brothers-in-arms from WWII once encouraged men of the First Marine Division by roaring something like "We're surrounded. They can't get away from us now!" Even aphorisms with no known attribution back Bookworm's thesis: "Only the strong can be gentle," comes to mind, as does "All's fair in love and war."

Ignatius Loyola was a romantic and a soldier. Ditto Joan of Arc, and Robert E. Lee, even if there is some controversy as to whether he was the general who said "It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."

I know a little more about Lee than the other two worthies in the foregoing paragraph: You have to be a romantic to fight on principle for what Confederate survivors would remember as "the lost cause" -- and Lee turned down command of the Union armies to offer his services to the state of Virginia instead, even though his background as an engineer certainly gave him an appreciation for the Northern industrial might that he knew he would have to face in battle.

On the other side of the ledger in that conflict, Union hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was known both for his fighting prowess and his soft heart. You could also make an interesting case for Chamberlain's wartime boss, General Ulysses S. Grant, as being a closet romantic. Grant was stubborn and hard-drinking, to be sure, but he was also utterly loyal to anyone he respected, smitten by horses, and happily married to Julia Dent, the sister of his college roommate.

Durable wordsmithery

Neo-Neocon's close reading of lyrics in the Left Banke song "Walk Away Renee" is a treat to read.

Chesterton for Good Friday

Joseph of Arimathea did better than he knew, said G.K. Chesterton.

Chesterton's musing is of a piece with another startling reconsideration provoked by someone else's gift-wrapped insight.

Here's what I mean: The irony of "putting to death the author of life" is something I've heard priests expound on in Good Friday sermons over the years (Peter's poetic phrasing in Acts 3:15 is marvelous), but I don't remember anyone dragging Pontius Pilate into the parlor game of "who was the first evangelist for Jesus?"

That question is an occasional pastime among Christians who know just enough theology to mull it over with friends, because while Scripture identifies John the Baptist as Jesus's herald and two brothers as the first apostles whom Jesus himself called, Scripture also offers glimpses of other possible contenders for the "early evangelist" crown: John's mom is in the mix for having asked her much younger relative how she (Elizabeth) was so blessed as to receive a long visit, in that famous "Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Similarly, old man Simeon at the Temple realized he was in the presence of the Messiah before Jesus was old enough to walk, although we don't know whether Simeon lived long enough afterward to share his joy with anyone other than Mary and Joseph.

Some thirty-three years later, the centurion who grasps the significance of the Temple veil being mysteriously torn from top to bottom when Jesus dies can't help but exclaim, "Surely this man was the son of God!" -- and that insight makes him something of an unexpected evangelist, too.

But how does Pilate -- "cowardly lion" and career politician -- come within hailing distance of evangelization? The Church Fathers explained, but I can't quote them from memory, so I'll settle for this insight from Fr. Robert Barron:

"In an absolutely delicious bit of irony, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, places over the cross, the declaration, in the three major languages of the time, that Jesus is the King, effectively de-throning Caesar and becoming, despite himself, the first great evangelist."

Lucky Sevens

I was privileged to attend a talk by Fr. Robert Barron earlier tonight. He spoke to an appreciative audience about "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Lively Virtues." Down-to-earth scholar that he is, Fr. Barron used the seven-story mountain in Dante's Purgatorio as a touchstone throughout his talk, and even suggested that the seven deadly sins could be remembered with reference to the characters in Gilligan's Island:

• Pride -- Mr. Howell, basking in his wealth
• Envy -- MaryAnne, frequently jealous of the attention that Ginger got
• Anger -- The Professor, seething at the failure of repeated attempts to leave the island
• Sloth -- Gilligan, always resting in his hammock
• Covetousness -- Mrs. Howell, wanting more
• Gluttony -- The Skipper, large and nominally in charge
• Lust -- Ginger, hanging on to her movie star glamour even as a castaway

Fr. Barron observed that in his Divine Comedy (of which Purgatorio is the middle part), Dante made Mary the Mother of Jesus a counter-example to each of the vices. He also had practical advice for cultivating the virtues that flip those vices on their heads:

• Humility
• Admiration
• Forgiveness
• Zeal for the mission (because sloth is not just laziness; it's also aimlessness, which implies that its balancing virtue needs both direction and drive)
• Generosity
• Asceticism, understood as proper disciplining of the appetites
• Chastity, understood as right relationship, and holding fast to the dignity of people as ends in themselves rather than means to personal pleasure.

In what I thought was an arresting metaphor, Fr. Barron quoted John Henry Newman to the effect that what gives a river vibrancy and life is the strength of its banks. If those banks are chopped away, he explained, the river spreads out into a "lazy lake," lacking purpose and direction.

When you've found the mission that God has for you, he said, you've found the "pearl of great price" that Jesus was talking about in the famous parable.

Rest in Peace, Terry Pratchett

Friend Felix has some nice things to say about an author whose work we both appreciate.

150 years ago today

Gerard Vanderleun remembers Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address for the truly great speech that it was.

Many of the people commenting at Vanderleun's blog think ill of Lincoln because of the executive power that he sometimes wielded cavalierly, but Lincoln was hardly the first or last American president to think in terms of ends justifying questionable means.

I believe that George Washington was a better man and a better president, but Abraham Lincoln deserves his almost-always-stratospheric place in any conversation about great Americans. One of the things that made Lincoln great was his carefully cultivated willingness to speak and write as often as practical within the ambit of first principles. Vision matters, and Lincoln had vision. He was a leader rather than a manager.

The difference between Walden Pond and Assisi

Anthony Esolen with something I had never thought about before:

"The world tells stories of people who work hard and go from rags to riches. It also tells stories of people who through their own folly or wickedness go from riches to rags. But Christians tell stories of those who through poverty...reap untold riches. This is not because we scorn the good things of the world, but because we seek what is above. Saint Francis himself, as that poor man of God, would fall in love all the more joyously with the beauty of the earth, even preaching to the birds.

"This is hard for us to understand. A secular person might say, 'Yes, I see what you mean. You are advocating a simple life, like the one that Thoreau lived when he retreated to Walden Pond. Then he could appreciate the beauties of nature, and not be encumbered by the cares of the world.'  No, that is not it at all. Thoreau was animated less by love than by disdain. Sure, he was in a better position to love the natural world while living in a hut by the side of a lake than while living in town. But the joy of Saint Francis is missing. That is because Thoreau's self-imposed poverty was a protest against the way his fellows lived. Saint Francis, in his poverty, did not betake himself to the woods to escape the evils of Assisi. He preached in that town he loved, by way of his life."

-- from the book, Reflections on the Christian Life: How Our Story is God's Story