Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

Newer Entries »

Obit watch: May 21, 2019.

Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Niki Lauda, one of the greatest racing drivers ever.

In his 17-year career (1969-1985) in the open cockpit of Porsches, Ferraris, McLarens and other high-tech torpedoes on wheels, mostly in Formula One competition, Lauda won 25 Grand Prix races. Points are awarded to the top six finishers in a race, and by amassing the highest point total in 16 authorized races, Lauda won the Formula One world driving championships in 1975, 1977 and 1984.
Since the crowns were first awarded in 1950, only five drivers have surpassed Lauda’s three titles. The record, seven, was set by Michael Schumacher, of Germany, between 1994 and 2004.

I wasn’t an avid follower of Formula 1, but I kind of liked Mr. Lauda. Especially after reading about him in Reader’s Digest. (I want to say it was a “Drama In Real Life”.)

But in his next race, the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, a 14-mile, 76-curve course, things went drastically wrong for Lauda and his 1,300-pound blood-red Ferrari.
It had rained and he hit a slippery patch at 140 miles per hour. He spun out, broke through a restraining fence that snagged and tore away his helmet, then hit an embankment and bounced back onto the track, where he was hit by several following cars. His ruptured fuel tank burst into flames that engulfed him in the cockpit.
By the time three other drivers pulled him from the wreckage, he had severe burns of the face, head and hands, a concussion, a broken collarbone and other fractures. His right ear was badly burned. Noxious smoke and gases from the car’s burning interior seared his lungs. He was rushed to a hospital in a coma, then to a burn center, seemingly near death.
On Lauda’s third day in intensive care, a Roman Catholic priest gave him the last rites of the church. Lauda was conscious, and the rites only made him angry. “I kept telling myself, if he wants to do that, O.K., but I’m not quitting,” Lauda told Newsday after he began a remarkable recovery.
He had a series of operations and skin grafts that left permanent scarring on his head. He lost part of his right ear, the hair on the right side of his head, his eyebrows and both eyelids. He chose to limit reconstructive surgery to the eyelids, and thereafter wore a red baseball cap to cover the worst disfigurements. But he began talking, walking and making plans for his return to racing.

See how powerful the last rites are? Either the person dies in a state of grace, or they get real angry and tell Death, “Not today, mofo.”

But I digress. Six weeks after the accident, Mr. Lauda finished fourth in the Italian Grand Prix. He finished the 1976 season in second place behind James Hunt, and won the championship in 1977.

For many years, Lauda championed safer racecar and track designs, and urged tighter controls over driving conditions and rules governing race organizers.
“Racing on substandard tracks or in unsafe weather doesn’t test courage,” Lauda told The Boston Globe in 1977. “At present, some of the Grand Prix circuits we drivers are asked to race on do not fulfill the most primitive safety requirements. Also, the decision to call off or stop a race can’t be left entirely to the organizers, who too often put prestige before the safety of the drivers. We need independent experts whose authority should be supreme.”

More:

Lauda, a licensed commercial pilot, founded and for years ran his own airline, Lauda Air, first as a charter, then as a scheduled carrier from Austria to Southeast Asia, Australia and the Americas. He sometimes piloted his airline’s flights. In 1991, a Lauda Air jetliner crashed in Thailand, killing all 223 people on board. Lauda was personally involved in the investigation, which was ruled an accident.

Lauda Air 004 crash from Wikipedia. This is one of those crashes that’s always fascinated and scared me: it seems unclear (the flight data recorder was badly damaged), but the apparent cause of the crash was that the thrust reverser on one engine deployed in flight causing the pilots to lose control, and the aircraft to break up.

“Personally involved” seems like a bit of an understatement. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Lauda was basically in Boeing’s face:

Lauda attempted the flight in the simulator 15 times, and in every instance he was unable to recover. He asked Boeing to issue a statement, but the legal department said it could not be issued because it would take three months to adjust the wording. Lauda asked for a press conference the following day, and told Boeing that if it was possible to recover, he would be willing to fly on a 767 with two pilots and have the thrust reverser deploy in air. Boeing told Lauda that it was not possible, so he asked Boeing to issue a statement saying that it would not be survivable, and Boeing issued it.

He established Lauda Air as a charter service in 1979, and in 1987 began scheduled flights. He sold Lauda Air in 1999. In 2003 he started a new budget airline, Niki, and often piloted its flights twice a week. It merged with Air Berlin in 2011. In 2016, he took over another charter airline, calling it Lauda Motion.

I would have liked to have met Mr. Lauda. He seems like another one of those kind of men they just don’t make these days.

Posted in Obits, Planes, Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 6, 2019.

Monday, May 6th, 2019

Rachel Held Evans, Christian author.

An Episcopalian, Ms. Evans left the evangelical church in 2014 because, she said, she was done trying to end the church’s culture wars and wanted to focus instead on building a new community among the church’s “refugees”: women who wanted to become ministers, gay Christians and “those who refuse to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith.”
Ms. Evans’s spiritual journey and unique writing voice fostered a community of believers who yearned to seek God and challenge conservative Christian groups that they felt were often exclusionary.
Her congregation was online, and her Twitter feed became her church, a gathering place for thousands to question, find safety in their doubts and learn to believe in new ways.

…

Ms. Evans was known to challenge traditional — and largely male and conservative — authority structures. She would spar with evangelical men on Twitter, debating them on everything from human sexuality to politics to biblical inerrancy.
One of those men, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that he was her theological opposite in almost every way, but that she had always treated him with kindness and humor.
“I was on the other side of her Twitter indignation many times, but I respected her because she was never a phony,” Mr. Moore said. “Even in her dissent, she made all of us think, and helped those of us who are theological conservatives to be better because of the way she would challenge us.”

She wasn’t someone I’d ever heard of (until I read the NYT obit) and I suspect there are a lot of things we’d disagree on. But there’s something about her story that touches me, and 37 years old is just too young to die.

Statement from her website.

It strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches something that nearly everyone can agree on. Whether you are part of a church or not, whether you believe today or your doubt, whether you are a Christian or an atheist or an agnostic or a so-called “none” (whose faith experiences far transcend the limits of that label) you know this truth deep in your bones: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”
Death is a part of life.

Posted in Books, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

Noted without (much) comment

Friday, May 3rd, 2019

“Becoming Catholic in the Age of Scandal” from the NYT.

He went on a search, exploring various faiths. Somewhat to his surprise, Catholicism appealed to him the most. He had friends in the church; they seemed to enjoy life, he said, adding, “They have philosophically vigorous backing for their beliefs.”

“You attacked reason. It’s bad theology.”

“The church at times can be frustrating,” she said. But she added, “People are people. Priests are people, too. There are those who are faithful and there are those who maybe struggle somehow. But God, and his word, is faithful.”

Posted in Religion | Comments Closed

Notre-Dame.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2019

I don’t feel like I have to comment on everything in the news here, but I feel like I have to say something. I’ve spent the past couple of days going around in my head about this.

I don’t have the personal connection to Notre-Dame de Paris that a lot of folks do: I’ve never been to France, much less seen it up close and personal. I feel like I should have more of a connection, being a frustrated amateur historian and Notre-Dame being one of the spiritual centers of my people.

I don’t know that I have any kind of profound take on it, compared to other, smarter people. There is a part of me that finds some level of symbolism in the fire taking place this week, of all weeks: Notre-Dame rising from the ashes as symbolic analogy to Christ rising from the tomb.

There is another part of me that wants to echo Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the distinction he makes: the church as corporate body that pays bills and employs people and owns buildings, and the Church as the great mass of believers, the continuity of belief and tradition in the lives of people, not in a building. Notre-Dame might burn, but the true Church will never die as long as there are believers.

But that seems dismissive. On the other hand, there are some takes I’ve liked:

(Thread.)

(Also thread. But calling out:

Remind you of anything in particular?)

It looks now like there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic: the rose windows survived, the art and relics were rescued (and if there’s any justice at all in France, Father Fournier will never be able to pay for a drink or meal with his own money for the rest of his life), and the cathedral will be rebuilt. As other, smarter people have pointed out, this isn’t the first time: Notre-Dame was desecrated and damaged during the French Revolution, and restored between 1844 and 1864.

(True side note: my mother emailed me and asked if Quasimodo made it out. I had to explain to her that he wasn’t actually in the cathedral at the time, but was in a small space behind the building: the hutch back of Notre-Dame. Thank you, I’ll be here all week.)

Edited to add: One thing I forgot to note: we know a lot about Notre-Dame.

Posted in History, Religion | Comments Closed

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…

Wednesday, December 12th, 2018

…please put a penny in the old man’s hat.

Or, you know, buy some books. (Yes, most of these links are Amazon links, and yes, I do get a kickback if you buy things through them.)

Books from Lame Excuse Books make fine presents for everyone on your list! Or, at least, every SF fan on your list. And if they are not an SF fan, books from Lame Excuse will make them one! If you sign up for the mailing list now, you’ll get the brand new Lame Excuse Books catalog absolutely free!

Speaking of SF fans on your list, I confess: I have not read these yet. But I backed the Kickstarter, am a big fan of the author himself, and have heard good things about the books, so I’d also suggest you consider Travis J. I. Corcoran’s The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation. The Powers of the Earth won the Prometheus Award this year: how could you go wrong with this choice? (Okay, maybe the SF fan on your list isn’t a Libertarian. Yet. Like I said, how could you go wrong?)

Also unread by me, but in my “to read” stack, and another person I like: Amy Alkon’s Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.

Here are some books I did read, and liked, this year, that don’t pertain to my more esoteric interests. (If that’s your cup of tea, you probably already have the book on Savage rifles: as a matter of fact, you probably bought it when Ian mentioned it was on sale at Amazon.) They didn’t necessarily come out this year (one did, and one was reprinted): these are just a few things I liked, and that I think deserve more attention. I know we’re getting close to Christmas, but many of these books are available in Kindle editions and can be delivered more or less instantly, if your recipient has bought into the Kindle lifestyle.

Under an English Heaven: The Remarkable True Story of the 1969 British Invasion of Anguilla, Donald E. Westlake: I wrote about this back when the book was first re-released, and I finished it not too long after the Amazon shipment arrived. This is every bit as good as I thought it was going to be: definitely more Dortmunder than Parker, but with the added bonus of being 100% true. Wikipedia really doesn’t do justice to the whole bat guano insane story, especially the British involvement in it: even after being repeatedly whacked across the nose with a metaphorical 2×4, the British government still failed to understand that the people of Anguilla didn’t want to be governed by a ruler who threatened to strip the whole island bare and reduce them to “sucking on bones”. Enthusiastically recommended, and not just for Westlake fans.

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Reverend James Martin, SJ: This was a Half-Price Books discovery. I feel obligated to note here that Rev. Martin is kind of a controversial figure on the Catholic Twitters. Briefly summarizing something that’s more complex, he represents and advocates for a more liberal Church, which puts him crosswise with certain other Catholics who I also respect greatly.

With that said, I thought this was a very good book. It’s not just about being a Jesuit (though there’s a lot of Jesuit history in it), but about applying the Jesuit way of thought and general principles in your daily life, whether you are a Catholic or not. You could be a Zen Buddhist or even an agnostic: Father Martin’s idea is that applying these principles can make you a happier, more spiritually balanced person. This is a book I want to go back to, perhaps next summer when I’m on a break from other activities.

The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church, Margaret Visser: I loved Visser’s Much Depends on Dinner when I read it (mumble mumble) years ago (and I need to re-read it). I was unaware of this book, though, until TJIC retweeted someone quoting from it (everything comes back to TJIC), so I went out and found a copy on Amazon…

…and I’m delighted I did. Visser’s basic idea is to take a “typical” church (St. Agnes Outside the Walls, in Rome) and show how the design and architecture of the church feeds into the liturgy of the church, how the liturgy of the church feeds into the design and architecture of the church, and how “all the pieces matter”. (Yeah, I know, I’m mixing the sacred with the profane. So shoot me.)

When I was reading this book, there was something on almost every page that was moving or profound or stunning or funny or that I just simply wanted to make a quote of the day over here. This is the kind of book that I want to buy more copies of and give out to people: that’s how strongly I feel about it.

Walking Through Holy Week, Karen May: Disclaimers: Karen May goes to one of the churches I go to, and I got this book for free because of something I was involved in at that church. All of that aside, I thought this was a wonderful guide to the liturgy and meaning of Holy Week. If you’ve ever wondered “What does this mean?” or “Why do we do this?”, this is the book for you. It’s also a book that I plan to re-read during holy week next year.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, Ryan North: I backed the Kickstarter for this (it was also the last Kickstarter I backed before I deleted my account) so I got the signed package deal. But you can still get the book from Amazon, or probably from your favorite bookstore.

When I was young, we had a two-volume set around the house called something like “How Things Work” that explained the basics of how everyday objects (like car engines, generators, etc.) worked. North (also the guy behind Dinosaur Comics) seems to be trying to do a similar thing, but not just concentrating on mechanical objects. The book itself is contained in a sort of narrative: basically, it’s intended to be a guide for a stranded time traveler so that they can rebuild civilization from scratch (or near it) to the point where their time machine can be repaired. I found parts of that narrative to be slightly annoying, honestly. But that’s a minor part of the book, and it’s offset by North’s coverage of, basically, how stuff works: everything from brewing beer and distilling alcohol, to designing a Pelton turbine, to “inventing” music and logic.

One of the things I like about North’s book is his concept that there are five foundational “technologies” you need if you want to re-invent civilization: spoken language, written language, a “non-sucky” number system, the scientific method, and a calorie surplus. I haven’t seen things laid out in that way before, and it makes a lot of sense. Language lets you communicate ideas, the scientific method lets you test them, numbers let you do math to implement your ideas, and surplus calories let you sit around and have ideas, instead of trying to scratch survival out of the dirt.

There are also a off-the-wall ideas, like “instead of inventing clocks that work on ships, let’s invent radio!” that I’m not completely sure I agree with, but are interesting to consider. (In fairness, most of these, like the radio idea, are only being relayed by North.)

In a way, it reminds me of James Burke’s “Connections” (which I rewatched a few months ago), except instead of showing how invention proceeds in fits and starts, the idea is to bypass all the fits and starts and speed things right along. If you have a curious and reasonably mature child (there’s some factual material in here about human reproductive biology, so parental advisory), you could do a lot worse than to give them a copy of this book and a flash drive with all the episodes of “Connections” on it for Christmas.

If anybody else has any recommendations, please feel free to leave them in comments. Even if you’re plugging your own book: go ahead and do it, just don’t be obnoxious about it.

Posted in Books, Christmas, Endorsements, Geek, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch (and other things): May 15, 2018.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2018

I decided to put the Margo Kidder obits here: NYT. WP.

Adam Parfrey, publisher of weird stuff under the Amok Press and Feral House imprints.

My feelings about baseball in general, and the New York Yankees specifically, are well known. But this is a nice story:

For the past three years, the Yankees have been quietly sending flowers to the families and police departments of slain law enforcement officers across the country.

…

While the flowers usually arrive without warning or explanation beyond the message on the card, the gesture can elicit strong emotions. In Fargo, when Officer Jason Moszer was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2016, his 11-year-old stepson, Dillan Dahl, was devastated. When the flowers from the Yankees arrived, Dillan took them to his room and watered them, trying to keep them alive for as long as possible, said his father, Tim Dahl.
“It was the first time he smiled in days,” Dahl said.

This is a good story, too, and one I didn’t have time to blog on Sunday:

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 22, 2018.

Thursday, February 22nd, 2018

For the historical record: Billy Graham.

Posted in Obits, Religion | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 4, 2017.

Thursday, May 4th, 2017

Tony Alamo, crazy cult leader.

At its height, his ministry claimed thousands of members nationwide, drawn to Mr. Alamo’s virulent anti-Catholicism and apocalyptic speech, in which he claimed that God had authorized polygamy, professed that homosexuals were the tools of Satan, and believed that girls were fit for marriage. “Consent is puberty,” he told The Associated Press in 2008.

He was convicted of tax evasion in the 90s and did four years for that. Then, in 2009, he was convicted of sexually abusing young girls (eight year olds, dude) and sentenced to 175 years in prison.

Former followers said Mr. Alamo had grown unhinged after his wife, Susan, died of cancer in 1982. Her body had been kept in a room at the northwest Arkansas compound, and his followers kept a vigil, praying for months for a resurrection. The body was eventually placed in a concrete crypt.

And that’s not even the weird part.

Posted in Obits, Religion | 1 Comment »

Obits and firings: March 10, 2017.

Friday, March 10th, 2017

Sweet Angel Divine, aka “Mother Divine”, passed away a week ago Saturday.

She was about 91. (One of the tenets of her religious movement was a disregard for chronological age.)

Mrs. Divine was the widow of Father Divine:

A charismatic preacher since the early 1900s, Father Divine — or the Rev. Major Jealous Divine, to give him his full title — declared in 1932 that he was God and attracted legions of devotees drawn by his message of racial equality, clean living, communal living and cash-only financial transactions.

One of the best things in the St. Clair McKelway collection Reporting at Wit’s End is his profile (with A. J. Liebling) of Father Divine at, more or less, the height of his empire. “Who Is This King of Glory?” might be available online, too, but when I went to the New Yorker website, it looked like you needed a subscription to read it there. In any case, I commend the McKelway/Liebling profile to your attention.

Scot McCloughan out as general manager of the Redskins.

And the Brockster out as quarterback in Houston. Speculation (both in the sports media and from people I know in Cleveland) is that the Browns aren’t going to keep him, either.

The Texans cut their losses with Osweiler after one season. He signed a four-year $72 million contract, including $37 million guaranteed, last year. Even though the Texans won the AFC South and advanced to the divisional round, he played poorly.

Edited to add: Well. The Browns have cut Bobby ThreeSticks now. And nobody thinks His Brockness is going to be asked to hang around. So who’s quarterbacking come fall? The season is closer than you think…,

Posted in Books, Firings, NFL, Obits, Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 25, 2016.

Tuesday, October 25th, 2016

The A/V Club is reporting (based on a Facebook post by his family) the death of Christian comics impresario Jack Chick.

A long time ago, I ordered a complete set of all the Chick comics (at the time) and some of the Alberto Rivera comics. I think I still have those in a box somewhere…

For the historical record: Tom Hayden.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 21, 2016.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2016

Curtis Hanson, noted film director. A/V Club.

“L.A. Confidential” was a swell movie. I wouldn’t mind watching that again.

D. Keith Mano. I was most familiar with him as a National Review writer, and was unfamiliar with his work as a novelist.

“Seriously, at the end of a CC class when I was fed up with all the atheism, socialism and relativism taught, I went over to St. Paul’s Chapel and said, ‘If that’s the way the world is, I’d better turn to God,’” he told The Columbia Spectator in 1976.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 28, 2016.

Monday, March 28th, 2016

Mother Mary Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network.

Jim Harrison. I feel kind of bad about saying this, but: I bought a copy of The Raw and the Cooked, mostly because it gets a lot of praise from various food writers that I like. I’ve tried to read it, and found that it’s about 50% really good food and outdoor writing…and about 50% pretentious twaddle.

Posted in Books, Food, Obits, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

Those Darn Episcopalians!

Friday, January 15th, 2016

Credit on this is due to Lawrence, who sent me a link yesterday. I also mostly stole the title from him.

I’m not Episcopalian (or Anglican) and, while I don’t talk about my religion here, I am fascinated by the way various religions work (or don’t work, as the case may be). The link Lawrence sent me pushed my hot buttons, but to be honest, I had to re-read it a few times before I felt like I understood it.

So the archbishop of Canterbury apparently called a big meeting of the archbishops of the Anglican Communion. As I understand it, the Anglican Communion is sort of the governing body of the Anglican churches. This may be a poor analogy, but it seems like you can think of the archbishop of Canterbury as the Pope of the Anglican church, with the other archbishops sort of being the equivalent of their Catholic counterparts. (But there’s a lot more democracy and fellowship involved.)

In this case, the meeting was of what the church calls “primates”, which (again, if I understand correctly) are basically the archbishops who head up the regional Anglican churches in the Communion.

Results of this meeting leaked out yesterday, and the Primates were forced to issue a beautifully written statement:

Today the Primates agreed how they would walk together in the grace and love of Christ. This agreement acknowledges the significant distance that remains but confirms their unanimous commitment to walk together…
This agreement demonstrates the commitment of all the Primates to continue the life of the Communion with neither victor nor vanquished.

But what did they actually decide?

It is our unanimous desire to walk together. However given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.

The Episcopal Church is basically the branch of the Anglicans in the United States. The Communion is stripping them of their ability to participate in decision making, and seems to be saying the American church is not “in full communion”.

Why? What brought this on? Three words: same-sex marriage.

The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union. The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching.

The NYT summarizes these developments.

I’m kind of torn by this, even though I don’t have a dog in the fight. On the one hand, I support same-sex marriage. On the other hand, I also support the rights of churches and individuals to make their own decisions based on their faith. I’d violently oppose any governmental effort to force the Episcopal Church to allow same-sex marriage, but if they reached that decision independently, that’s their choice.

It’s more…curious to me than anything else. I had it in my head that the Anglican Communion, and especially the archbishops of Canterbury, were extremely liberal. If anything, I would have expected the communion to go in the opposite direction and allow same-sex marriage in all the churches.

And I’m wondering if this will cause an even bigger split:

The archbishop of Canterbury permitted the participation at the gathering this week of Archbishop Foley Beach, who leads the Anglican Church in North America, a breakaway group formed in the United States and Canada to protest the moves there to ordain gay bishops and recognize same-sex marriages. The Anglican Church in North America counts just over 100,000 members.

I’d welcome discussion of this here, especially from Anglicans/Episcopalians who want to correct my misunderstandings of the church or doctrine.

Posted in Clippings, Religion | Comments Closed

Newer Entries »