Truth Is

"Truth is a power, however, only when one requires of it no immediate effect, but has patience and figures on a long wait. Still better, when one does not in general think about its effects but wants to present truth for its own sake, for its holy, divine greatness. . . . As already said, one must have patience. Here months may mean nothing and also years. And one must have no specific aims. Somehow, lack of an agenda is the greatest power. Sometimes, especially in recent years, I had the sense that truth was standing as a reality in the room." -- Romano Guardini, Catholic theologian, writing in 1945, in his twelfth year living under Nazi rule.


In an age of rampant agendas and poison ideologies, this seems worth noting.


(Thanks to Rev. Richard John Neuhaus)

A Bad Habit Is Hard To Break

File this under "Has Been A Nun."

Like The Sun From Out The Wave

"God paid a ransom to save us from the impossible road to heaven which our fathers tried to take, and the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. He paid for us with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God." -- Peter 1:18-19

“They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars. For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.

“On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.”
-- G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man


In a sense, it is easy to be an "Easter " person. Glory. Joy. Sadness forgotten.

But the joy has no depth, no substance, unless we remember that there is no Easter without Good Friday. Without the misery of Hell, we have no glory of Heaven.

We cannot fool ourselves that life is all Easter Sundays. The Good Fridays will come to us. As a wise priest once said, if you haven't seen Good Friday yet, if you haven't yours yet, don't worry, it will find you. But the glory of Easter, the abiding joy that exists even in the face of suffering and death, is what transcends the Good Fridays of our existence.

Christ's Resurrection is not a metaphor. It is not a myth borne of group hypnosis. And it is not just emotional anaesthetic to help us believe in a loving world of round edges and happy endings. Easter celebrates a historical fact that provides a new and permanent way of seeing the world and making sense of the whole sweep of history and of our own, individual lives.

As Chesterton notes, the Death and Resurrection of Christ ended the old world with brilliant and Satan-crushing finality, and opened the door to a mind-shattering new eternity. Christ, in his Resurrection, brings us to the threshold of hope, to a wondrous new Eden.

Why The Caged Bird Sings

An old priest once told me this story.

One day, a man came across a young boy carrying a banged up birdcage. Inside the cage were two small birds.

“Where’d you get the birds?” the man asked.

“I caught ‘em,” the boy said.

“Really? What are you going to do with them?”

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “Play with 'em, I guess. Shake the cage, dangle a string through the bars, tease ‘em, feed ‘em worms, I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do with them once you get tired of them?” asked the man. “You can’t play with them forever.”

“When I get tired of 'em? I don't know. I guess I’ll feed ‘em to my cat. He likes birds.”

The man asked, “How much do you want for them?”

The boy looked surprised. “What do you want these birds for, Mister? They’re nothing special. They ain’t worth anything.”

“How much do you want?” the man repeated.

The boy was still surprised. “Look, they’re just field birds. They ain't good for nothin'. They can’t sing. You can’t eat ‘em. They ain’t even pretty to look at. You don’t want these birds.”

The man repeated: “How much do you want?”

The boy eyed the man closely, and said, “How much you got, Mister?”

The man looked at the birds for a moment, then took out his wallet and handed the boy all the money in it – he wasn’t sure how much. Then, he bent down to lift the cage as the boy counted his money.

He walked into an alley between two buildings, and set down the cage. He knelt, opened the cage door, and tapped on the bars, hoping the birds would fly away.

And Not A Drop to Drink

Terri Schiavo is a 41-year old woman who is brain damaged and who some doctors say is "in a persistent vegetative state." For this reason, her husband has decided to remove the tube that gives her food and water.

Terri's parents went to court to try to stop her husband. Florida's legislature has passed laws to stop her being starved and dehydrated to death. At each turn, the state courts in Florida ultimately have denied efforts to keep her alive. Today, a judge in Florida again ruled that the tube keeping Terri alive should be removed.

It appears that, unless the U.S. Congress can act in the next three days, before they leave town for Easter recess, Terri will surely die. She is quite unlikely to survive until Congress returns from its break.

Terri's parents do not seek "extraordinary" means to keep her alive. They simply want her to get food and water. They also believe that physical therapy will help her eventually to swallow on her own. Other doctors believe that, with help, Terri might recover.

Terri's husband, who has been living with his girlfriend long enough to have two children by her, claims that he loves Terri and that Terri told him she did not want to be kept alive, even by routine feeding and hydrating methods. He has no evidence of this -- no living will, no documents, no notes, no witnesses, no nothing.

There are other elements of this case that raise questions. According to Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer who has researched this case exhaustively:

* Terri's husband told a jury in Terri's 1992 malpractice trial that Terri would live a normal life span. Get it? The long her life expectancy, the bigger the jury award.

* Once Terri won a $1.3 million verdict, Terri's husband paid off his hired gun and also put 300 grand in his own pocket, but he never began rehabilitation for Terri. In fact, the evidence is that, at first, Terri's husband tried to save the $750,000 initially put aside into Terri's treatment fund. He immediately put a "Do Not Resusitate" card on his wife's chart -- the better to kill her with. He would not even permit Terri to be given antibiotics to fight infections. In fact, in the five years between 1993 and 1998, he spent only $50,000 on her.

* Once Terri's parents began to put up a fight, Terri's husband spent most of the $750,000 allegedly put away for Terri's treatment has been spent on lawyers to lead the charge to expedite Terri's demise. About $450,000 of the "Terri Fund" has been paid to Terri's husband's lawyers. Another $200,000 went to expenses not intended to ensure Terri's continuing survival. But still her parents fight to keep her alive. So much for the argument that Terri's parents sought custody to "get the money" for themselves. There is no money. In fact, her father has depleted his own retirement fund trying to keep her alive.

So it comes down to Congress. Democrats in Congress, with a couple of exceptions, and even many Republicans, will not sound even a dry cough to ensure that Terri gets help. More-sanctimonious-than-thou Robert Byrd, easily one of the crassest politicians in Washington, but someone who, at least, would kick a bottle of Poland Spring with the toe of his shiny Bruno Maglis to a drunken, cotton-mouthed bum sprawled on the sidewalk, cannot raise the energy to support legislation that might keep Terri alive. And so, very soon, without a hoarse whisper from the most powerful legislative bodies in the world, Terri will probably die.

It's enough to drive you to drink.

Putting Words In Your Mouth

Lyrical ideas have dominated my thoughts for a long time.

Or perhaps I should say that ideas about lyrics have dominated my thoughts for a long time.

Popular music is a compelling expression of many things, among them, emotion, culture, and wit. The best music marries the music itself with lyrics of beauty, strength, cleverness, or humor. I hope to look at these types of lyrics in the future.

But for today, I am interested in bad lyrics. But not just bad lyrics -- rotten lyrics. The worst lyrics you can possibly imagine. Not just nonsense lyrics of the Maresy Doats variety. Like them or not, songs like that are almost tolerable since they do not presume to take themselves seriously. The really horrible songs, however, employ lyrics that combine self-satisfying gravity and importance with ridiculous sentiment and just plain awful word choice.

I hope to roll out a few of the best, by which I mean the worst, songs I have come across in my many decades of musical enjoyment, and I hope you will join in with your own.

My first nominee is “Jesse’s Girl,” written in 1981 by rock “star” and sometime soap opera “actor” Rick Springfield. The lyrics to this song are so bad, they will make you laugh. When you are not laughing, you likely will be retching. Take a look.

Jesse's Girl

Jesse is a friend
Yeah, I know he’s been a good friend of mine
But lately something’s changed that ain’t hard to define
Jesse’s got himself a girl and I wanna make her mine

And she’s watchin’ him with those eyes
And she’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it
And he’s holding her in his arms late, late at night
You know I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman like that

I play along with the charade
That doesn’t seem to be a reason to change
You know I feel so dirty when they start talkin’ cute
I wanna tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot
Cos she’s watchin’ him with those eyes
And she’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it
And he’s holding her in his arms late, late at night

You know I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman like that
Like Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman
Where can I find a woman like that

And I’m lookin’ in the mirror all the time
Wonderin’ what she don’t see in me
And I’ve been funny, I’ve been cool with the lines
Ain’t that the way love supposed to be
Tell me
Where can I find a woman like that

You know I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I want Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman like that
Like Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I want, I want Jesse’s girl

Copyright © 1981 Rick Springfield, RCA Records


First off, I include the copyright only out of sense of propriety, since it is beyond comprehension that anyone would steal these lyrics or falsely claim their ownership.

I also note that Mr. Springfield’s search for a woman like Jesse’s is very likely to be made more difficult by a past that includes having written lyrics like these. And while he tells us that he’s “been funny” and “cool with the lines” with Jesse’s unnamed girl, I have a feeling that a guy with a gift such as his for turning a phrase is more likely to have been Strange-funny than funny of the “haha,” charm-the-clogs-off-my-best-friend’s-girl sort. I have no difficulty in believing that Mr. Springfield spends lots of time looking in the mirror; unfortunately, whatever else Jesse’s girl does not see in him, she does not see a poet.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these lines -- “You know I feel so dirty when they start talkin’ cute, I wanna tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot” -- are probably the worst and stupidest couplet in the history of the English language. These lines manage to be simultaneously illogical, silly, offensive, and voyeuristic. I will put those 25 words up against any other 25 words in the history musical lyrics as a measure of sheer idiocy.

As Yeats could have told Mr. Springfield, “Hearts are not had as a gift. But hearts are earned.” Unfortunately, I have a feeling that these two poets run in different circles.