Author: simchajfisher

In our area, most schools have some kind of garden for the kids to tend. Along with agriculture and botnay, gardens teach lessons about patience, persistence, and teamwork. You can even have the kids prep, package, and sell their produce after the harvest and teach them how to make change for customers for some integrated math.

Gardens also teach kids something that you may not realize they need to know: That food comes from somewhere. It doesn’t just get picked off the warehouse shelves along with iPhone components and graphic T-shirts (which also come from somewhere, of course, but that’s a matter for another day). Seems obvious, but many kids and even some adults never stop and think about it. They see food at the supermarket, and they sort of halfway imagine that it began its life inside a little package of plastic and styrofoam.

It may only be young kids and obtuse adults who need to be educated about the idea that food has to be farmed, harvested, processed, packaged, and shipped before they ever see it. But a good many adults who don’t consider themselves obtuse do think that the news they read online just appears on their screen, pre-packaged, materializing out of nowhere.

And so you see folks who still, after all these years, keep saying that the age of the newspaper is over. We have national or even global news aggregators who can deploy data-collecting bots to find and even write the stories that people really need to know, and it appears before us, all packaged up and ready to consume. who needs those retrograde reporters anymore?

My husband is a reporter. It wasn’t until he’d worked at this career for many years before I really realized how indispensable are people like him.

When you see a story on the TV news or in a larger newspaper, chances are someone has put years of work into that story long before you were ever even aware it existed. Why years? Because when you are a reporter, you don’t just show up at work in the morning and find a list of things to write about. The writing is only the very last step. Long before that, you are responsible for several things:

-Understanding what the people in that community are actually concerned about;
-Understanding what kind of story your editor and publisher want your paper to circulate;
-Getting to know who, in your community, has information that no one else has;
-Getting to know how to signal to those people that they can entrust that information with you;
-Learning how to figure out which information is reliable and which information will take you on a wild goose chase that wastes your entire day and/or gets you sued;
-Learning when to intimidate people and when to allow others to believe they’ve intimidated you;
-Learning how to verify things that seem too good to be true, and having the discipline to leave out details you know are true but can’t verify;
-Learning which stories are things the public really needs to know, even if it will annoy someone important, which things the public wants to know but maybe isn’t entitled to (like domestic abuse situations), and which things the public doesn’t care about but ought to, because it affects them more than they realize;
-Learning how to do favors for people so that they will be willing to do favors for you in the future;
-Learning how to write certain stories in such a way that, when the time comes, they will be willing to trust you with information in the future so you can write other, more important stories;
-Learning how to be compassionate with crazy people, suffering people, and people in unimaginable crisis, and still get the facts of the story without exploiting them;
-Learning how to hang up the phone, take a deep breath, and keep on going when people call you every name in the book, threaten and insult you, and try to get you fired just for doing your job; and
-Learning how to spend the day hip deep in tragedy, horror, and the hideous evils that are buried in every human society, and then go home and ask your kids how was school today.

And then comes the actual writing.

You have to learn the stylistically correct way to refer to a thousand different people and situations; you have to convey the truth of subtle situations without editorializing; you have to learn how to make a dull story interesting and an interesting story airtight. You have to learn how to convey complicated stories with lots of history in a way that careless, uninformed, uneducated, prejudiced readers can comprehend. And you have to do it on a deadline. You have to do this every single day.

This is the kind of work that doesn’t win you prizes or acclaim. It’s just what a decent reporter does.

There are lots of terrible reporters in the world, guys and gals who just slap together whatever falls into their laps. They hit their word count, put their byline on it, and call it “news.” But real news starts way, way back at the farm, where people like my husband are laboring every day.

News doesn’t just appear, fully packaged, in the form most people encounter it. And that’s why, internet or no internet, there will always be a need for newspapers. Someone has to be there, cultivating news stories by hand, one by one.

photo credit: Jürg The both read – for free via photopin (license)

[img attachment=”98244″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”whats for supper aleteia” /]

And then it was Friday. Here’s what we had this week:

Saturday
Chicken enchilada and chips

Well, these were horrible. It was one of those meals where you start out with non-optimal ingredients, then get started late, then have a brilliant idea to cook it in a new way which will surely save time, then realize that it takes way longer than usual, and also doesn’t taste good, and then you finish cooking it in the microwave and throw it together in a panic, burning your fingers and cursing your own thickheadedness. And there really wasn’t enough cheese. Cheese!

For people with normal heads, I recommend Pioneer Woman’s recipe.

***

Everyone looks up to see a train go by.

Normally, I fly. I never drive. If I drive, you’ll never see me again, because I can get lost in my own backyard, no joke. This time, when I took a three-day trip to deliver some speeches, I took a train.

Oh, my brothers and oh my sisters, what a revelation! A train:

You can carry on pretty much anything. Anyway, I took four, count ’em, four bags with me, and I could have brought more. I arranged them all around my feet where I could see them and pet them and know that they are mine. I didn’t have to try and figure out which items I’d miss most desperately if they got accidentally sent to Weehawken, or discern which of my belongings could stand to be thrown with great vengeance and furious anger into the stone cold belly of an airplane. The woman in front of me carried on her dog, whom she says is a service dog. It’s a nice dog, but he couldn’t actually get into the train by himself. I, however, had no difficulty.

I brought four cans of seltzer. I stretched out my (admittedly stubby) legs. I paid an extra twenty bucks and got a smile and a nod toward business class, which was as hushed and solemn as the outer hall of a great bustling place of commerce: you can see the speed, and you can hear muffled sounds of industry as the engine does its work, but here, behind the tinted glass, we just glide and rest and wait. An old man across the aisle snoozed gently into his library book.

No one was shouting at me and then wondering, in a national security kind of way, why I looked so flustered. Nobody was smacking and cracking gum for the sake of their poor tender ears (and what about my tender ears, with that smacking and cracking?) Nobody took my shoes away, patted my torso, swabbed me for explosives, made me expose all my shameful toiletries and meds, or rolled their eyes when I accidentally packed a bottle of water (an $8 bottle of water, thanks). Nobody blared toneless, indecipherable announcements that made me afraid to go pee because maybe my plain was leaving, but maybe it wasn’t, or maybe it’s leaving from a gate three miles away in two minutes, who can say? Nothing of the sort.

The train station (all right, it was a bitsy little podunk station in small-town vermont) was just two little rooms with a desk and some brochures. They had set up folding chairs outside on the gravel, for our convenience, and a couple of industrial spools worked as tables. They didn’t even ask to see my ID. They opened the door and let me find a seat, and later (after we had a swept through a mile or two of golden forest) a genial fellow strolled by and asked where I was going. I said the name of the town and he smiled. And . . . that was it. I was in. I put my ticket back in my pocket and marvelled.

For the next two hours, we were whisking almost silently through the backyards of the world. Goats stood by in amazement. Hello, graveyard. Hello, mill wheel that nobody sees. Hello, halfway ravished field of corn. Hello, abandoned bridge overcome with vines. We’re passing you by on the trestle that replaced you, but we won’t trouble either of you for long. An endless cloud of dry, orange leaves hurried past the window, thrown back in the wake of this godlike train.

After ten minutes or so, I thought, “We’re picking up speed, but we’re not going to leave the ground.” I thought, “I never want to leave the ground again.”
Everyone looks up to see a train go by. And so they should.

**

Image via  Pixabay

Here’s a question from a friend:

We’re starting to wean our daughter. (Not up for discussion – I have less than a month til #2 is born and I haven’t been able to pump since I got pregnant. She only nurses at bedtime and seems to only do so for comfort. She is 1.)

When my husband was doing snuggles with her instead of me nursing her, I started bawling. Is this a normal reaction to weaning? Is there something I can do to help with this? (I did go in and have some cuddles before she went to sleep, my husband basically was trying to get her past the default time to nurse.) SHE seemed to have no problems with it. But I’d rather not be bawling every night when we put her to bed. (Yes, I know part of it is because hormones.) (I hope this makes sense.) (Parentheses!)

First, I’d like to emphasize what my friend said: the weaning is not up for discussion. Not even “friendly suggestions” or “gentle reminders,” please. Okay!

The answer is yes, it’s well within the range of normal. Crying about anything, everything, or nothing is normal at this stage of pregnancy. I got to the stage where I wouldn’t even bother to stop what I was doing in order to have a good cry. Sob, make a sandwich, eat it while sobbing, weep into the toddler’s diaper while changing it, carry on. You’ll feel so much better soon.

And yes, weaning can sometimes add an additional shift of hormones, making things even stormier. Hormones are such bullies.

Even when you’re not super duper pregnant or adjusting to weaning levels of hormones, it’s completely normal to feel strong emotions when your relationship with your child changes.

It’s such an odd thing: it’s not as if you actually want your child to stay one particular age forever. You know full well that a huge part of your job is to help her grow up and learn new things; and yet there’s always that mixture of pride and regret when she does something new. Sometimes the regret overshadows the pride, especially when the child is very young.

This emotion is only intensified when the child is growing up and you’re expecting another child. I remember so clearly wondering, “How can I possibly love the new baby as much as I love my . . . well, my real baby?” Because the first baby does seem so much more real, until the new one settles in. As much as we adore an unborn baby, he is largely unknown. You’ve never seen him, really, or held him in your arms; and although he is within you, he is removed from you by the veil of your own body. How strange, how strange.

So once again: it’s normal to feel a whole smorgasbord of unpleasant, intense emotions in the last stages of pregnancy: Not only the normal fear and delight and anticipation of the upcoming birth, but also guilt that we will be “displacing” the first child; and also hurt feelings when the first child seems already to need us less and can be happy with substitutes, like dad (and maybe some shame that you would feel that emotion).

Giving birth will usually calm at least part of these storms. In most cases, the mother will find that before long (sometimes there is a lag, and that’s normal, too!) she loves the new baby just as much as she “should,” and also that her love for the new baby increases her love for her “old baby.” Yes, there will be many periods of adjustment, but overall that’s what kind of thing love is: love increases love. Sounds like a cat poster, but it’s true: love increases love, even when you’re exhausted and overwhelmed.

(Caveat: If your dire or overwhelming emotions continue month after month, or if you feel strangely detached from your children after giving birth, you may be suffering from postpartum depression. This is not something you can pray or power your way through. Please tell someone what you are going through, and ask for help!)

And what about that changing relationship? Well, it’s hard. It can sometimes feel like there’s nothing but loss after loss as your kids get older and move away from you. “A mother is to be left,” as the saying goes.

I know it feels like every shift, every move away from you, is a little death. And it is. I’m not denying that. But at the same time, there is so much ahead of you. I wrote about some of the good changes you might see in The Case for Siblings: Why Having a Baby is Good for Your Other Kids. More broadly, you will find that your relationship with your child will continue to change over and over again, sometimes in ways that hurt, but also sometimes in ways that surprise and delight you.

Along with the difficult changes and losses, there are new, unforeseen pleasures to come in your relationship with your kids. You will be astonished at how much they can grow emotionally and psychologically from year to year, or even more quickly. A child who seems aloof, unreliable, and detached at 11 may suddenly become a great companion at 13. A kid who seemed hell bent on getting away from you at 15 may seek out your company at 17. Heck, I’m 41 years old and am enjoying getting to know my own father better, even now.

As they grow, you’ll see their personalities emerge in unexpected and sometimes thrilling ways. Yes, they will cause you grief and worry, and sometimes they’ll drive you crazy; but they’ll also amaze you with how much they know, how well they can cope with the world, how bold and generous and talented they are turning out to be. These are changes in your relationship, too. Change isn’t always loss.

The bottom line, existentially speaking: we’re all suffering losses and grieving separations all the time, but that’s not the final word. Every little pain we feel with the inevitable breeches and injuries we endure for love . . . every last one is a reminder that we are on our way home, to a place where all losses will be restored, all wounds healed, all tears dried, all loves reconciled.

So weep if you will. But know that the tears don’t go on forever.

***

image via Pixabay (Public Domain)

Today is the birthday of Esther Hautzig, who as a child of ten in 1941 was torn from her happy home in Vilna, Poland, and sent by Russian forces to a Siberian work camp with her family.

There she endured several years, and after she emigrated to New York, Hautzig wrote a novelized version of her memories of that time. The resulting book is the award-winning The Endless Steppe, which conveys the anguish of what the Jews and other prisoners endured, but without romanticizing the characters or browbeating the reader into feeling a sensationalized anguish. There is tragedy in the book, but also humor, sweetness, irony, and enough earthy details to make every page ring true.

I read this book obsessively as a child, and can still almost recite certain passages: The way her elegant little grandmother insisted on performing her daily pedicure even as they rattled through the wilderness packed into a cattle car on the way to Siberia; how her mother, tormented with respiratory problems, would put a glass of water by her bedside every night, and would wake to find it frozen.

Her family, like most of the Jewish population of her home city, were known for their education and cultivation, and the privations of their new life as prisoners cannot entirely change who they are. Esther ventures out one day, driven by starvation, to sell some of her precious volumes of Chekhov, and the reader feels the full force of her horror when she realizes the rotten-toothed buyer intends to tear out the pages and use them to roll cigarettes.  He’s feeling the pages to see how thin they are, how well they will burn. She snatches her books away and flees. This compromise, she will not make.

Especially taking is the way Hautzig never romanticizes her own motivations or her family’s response to their trials. The voice of the narrator is an authentically young teenage voice, a girl sees plainly that her family is in real danger of being destroyed, but who also feels the true anguish of every girl coming of age: falling in love for the first time; having to appear in school shoeless and wearing rags; suffering when a local queen bee is pampered and favored, while she is scorned for her backward ways.

Along with bugs, filth, danger, privation, deadly freezing cold, degradation, and the constant fear of death, there are bright moments: the rough kindness of their Siberian neighbors; the stark beauty of the steppe itself; and a sort of stone-soup moment when everyone contributes to make a goulash to celebrate Esther’s birthday.

They even contrive to hold a masquerade ball, and Esther relates how a friend has miraculously brought along a “flimsy blue georgette with great billowing sleeves, the sort of thing she wore tea dancing in Vilna. Where had she expected to wear this in Siberia? I wondered.” Her friend is willing to share; so

the collar, which came down to my navel, would be drawn into a ruff and the waist would be pulled in. And what would I be going as? I wanted to know rather belatedly.

“As something you’re not,” Mother said. Then she added, “In Siberia, you’re always in masquerade–“

Without a heavy hand, much of the book deals with themes of what is worth saving and what can be abandoned; what is part of you and cannot be thrown off or compromised, and what can be faked or endured for the sake of survival. Enduring themes for a coming-of-age story. The book opens with a dreadful decision of what to pack in the one suitcase they are allowed by the soldiers to bring. She must leave behind her pretty clothes and all the happy memories they represent, and also her cherished photo albums (“someone was bound to ask questions about the people in those albums”). What is worth saving? What is identity, and what is only trappings?

The family does hold together, as best it can. Once, as Esther is caught outside when a terrible, blinding Siberian storm blows up without warning, her life is saved only because her mother does what she always does: sings out the Sh’ma, the Jewish morning and evening central prayer. She hears her mother’s voice and knows how to get home.

If you haven’t read The Endless Steppe, you’re missing out. To my mind, the book is even more captivating and affecting than The Diary of Anne Frank. Of course I realize that a diary by a young girl is not a polished novel by an adult! But for purposes of reaching today’s kids, who need to know and understand what happened in this dreadful era of history, I’d like to see The Endless Steppe used more widely. A mature third grader would enjoy the book, but it would not be out of place in an eighth-grade classroom. It is one of a kind.

This week has been completely rotten and I don’t want to talk about it, so let’s talk about food! I also can’t find my iPad anywhere, and it has all the photos on it, hooray.

***

SATURDAY
Grilled pizza sandwiches

I love these, even if they are kind of a hassle to put together (when you make 12 of them, anyway). Brush the outside of the sandwich with melted butter mixed with garlic powder and oregano. Inside, you want (in this order) sauce, cheese, whatever filling you choose, and more sauce. I recommend putting the sandwiches in the oven for 5-10 minutes after they grill, because they are thick, and you want the cheese to melt all the way through.

***

SUNDAY
Caprese salad, suppli with prosciutto, roast garlic Brussels sprouts, breadsticks, spaghetti carbonara, free-form cannoli, and Italian ices

Suppli are breaded, deep-fried balls of risotto with mozzarella and prosciutto in the center. Here’s the recipe I used. Some of them held together better than others, but they were all tasty. I made about thirty.

We used Fanny Farmer’s recipe for spaghetti carbonara. Still sticking with Fanny Farmer after all these years. I don’t know if people even buy physical cookbooks anymore, but if you do, this one is indispensible.

Roasted garlic Brussels sprouts, oh yass. Cut up the Brussels sprouts, toss them with red onions, coarsely-chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil, and roast them up. (Recipe here, but it’s pretty basic.) Pretty and yummy. I grew up with nothing but boiled or raw vegetables, so roasted veg with little crisp charred bits on them is a wonderful new class of food.

Cannoli shells were nowhere to be found, so we got those flower-shaped pizzelle wafers and piled cannoli filling on top (drained ricotta cheese, powdered sugar, a little nutmeg, and a little vanilla extract), sprinkled shaved chocolate on top, and of course – boop! – a cherry.

***

MONDAY
Egg-in-toast, sausages

I-do-love-egg-in-toast.

***

TUESDAY
Chicken curry salad, caramelized butternut squash, green salad

An okay recipe. I’ve never been to Whole Foods, so I don’t know how close it is to what they sell. I poached the chicken, then mixed it up with celery, red onions, and chopped mixed nuts. For the dressing, I ran out of mayo, so I used part plain yogurt. Couldn’t locate my tumeric, but I used plenty of curry. I also bought blonde raisins, but couldn’t find them, until after supper.

I guess it wasn’t really the recipe’s fault, huh.

The caramelized butternut squash is Ina Garten’s recipe. Always trust a chubby cook. You peel, seed, and dice the squash, put your chainsaw away, and mix the squash up with melted butter and brown sugar and a little salt and pepper, then roast for almost an hour at 400. So good, and it went well with the curried chicken and the spinach salad.

Honestly, the photo that was supposed to go here was the only decent one anyway. I can take respectable photos with my iPad as long as there is good natural light, but if the sun’s gone down, it all looks like prison food.

***

WEDNESDAY
Beef stroganoff and egg noodles

This was a dumb choice for a recipe to inaugurate my new slow cooker lifestyle. I usually buy pretty fatty meat, because it’s cheap, but then I can drain it after cooking it in a pan or whatever; but you can’t really do that with a slow cooker without losing all the gravy, too. Also, half the mushrooms had gone moldy, and the cream of mushroom soup turned out to be cream of chicken. Why is there such a thing as cream of chicken? Nobody wants that. And we were out of onions. And I only had one beef bouillon cube. I thew in some terrible wine, salt and pepper, and a few chopped garlic cloves.

When it was all cooked, I drained off most of the fat/gravy/point of eating stroganoff and mixed in a bunch of sour cream, and served it over egg noodles. It was a pretty poor stroganoff, but on the other hand, life is nothing but a meaningless progression of jolts, jabs, sorrows, and sighs, so why should we expect stroganoff to be any better?

***

THURSDAY
Hot dogs, chips, frozen corn

Had to be at a meeting at dinner, so this did the trick.
Then I had a bad evening and stepped on broken glass and had to get three stitches in my toe. The ER doc says, “Wow, that is the most Lidocaine I have ever put in a toe!” 6 cc’s, if you’re interested. Hooray for my preternaturally sensitive feet. I somehow stomped all over the house sloshing blood all over the place without realizing I had even hurt myself, but I sure as hell felt those needles. On the other hand, I got an evening out with my husband.

My toe hurts.

***

FRIDAY
Pasta

Or I will just sit around feeling sorry for myself and thinking about my toe.

Okay, so I’m ready to start fresh with my slow cooker next week. Actually, I bought two four-quart slow cookers. They are just the very basic Crock Pot brand, with a switch for high, low, and off. They were on sale at Walmart, so I stopped resisting. I have to leave the house for several hours every day and have tons to do when I am home, so I probably should have gotten one of these years ago.

I know, I know, everyone’s so over slow cookers and is now on to Instant Pot pressure cookers. I hear you can even make vanilla extract in a matter of minutes with an Instant Pot; and many people recommend cramming their pre-teens inside with a few cloves and a leek. Eleven minutes later, you open the lid and find a fully-formed adult who is ready to work a forty-hour week, do his own laundry, and always remember Mother’s Day. I, on the other hand, am about three steps removed from grinding maize between two flat stones and glowering moodily at my uppity, upwardly mobile neighbors with their la di da three sisters.

SO HIT ME. What do you make with your slow cooker? Doesn’t have to be dinner. The kids are very intrigued and will be excited to make anything at all.

When I was little, a girl in our town was murdered. It quickly came out that the murderer was a local man, someone everyone knew and lived with. That made things even more horrifying: Not only had the town lost a child, they discovered that the evildoer was one of them.

Once the initial shock wore off,  some of the Christians in the community started to talk about forgiveness. They decided together that they would do the right thing and forgive the murderer for what he had done.

My parents, who were fairly new converts, were scandalized. I was amazed at their outrage, because I had the vague idea that it was Christian to forgive. I remember my mother telling me with vehemence, “They don’t get to forgive him.”

Why? Because that was the job of the dead girl’s parents, when they were ready. They were the ones who had been wounded — they and the girl herself, of course. The rest of the community had been injured as well, with the loss of the girl, and because it’s frightening and upsetting to have a murder happen close to home. They could forgive him for that, and they could decide how they were going to behave toward him and his family. 

But they could not forgive the murder itself; and their dramatic, public decision to forgive him was a grave insult to the grieving parents. “I forgive him for what he did to you!” It have felt like a second attack. How dare they?

A similar thing happened when Fr. Maciel’s monstrous crimes were uncovered. The Church in the United States suffered intensely, and still suffers; but at least in my corner of the country, there was a lot of scandalous scrambling to forgive abuse by parties who hadn’t been abused. They may or may not have been trying to imitate Christ by extending forgiveness, but it was a misplaced effort. Only Christ, and his priests acting with the power given to them by Christ, can forgive sins; and only the wounded party may forgive the aggressor personally. We can forgive the aspects that affect us, but we cannot disburse the debt of forgiveness owed to someone else.

My friend Sheila Connolly, who did suffer abuse at the hands of the Legion of Christ, told me:

It does really hurt when someone forgives your abuser FOR you, and then gets mad at you because you aren’t as forgiving as they are. ‘Why are you so bitter? *I* forgave him for abusing you, why can’t you?’ Millions of people who had never been harmed by him in the least were SO proud of how they were able to forgive him. Those of us whose lives had been destroyed by him? Our feelings didn’t matter.

Let’s be clear: We are told not to judge each other. We are called to love each other, including abusers, including murderers, including rapists, including people who hate and scheme against the Church, including people who cover up the crimes of others, including people who commit crimes, including people who defraud others, including people who bring shame to causes dear to us. We are commanded to love them.

But no matter how much we love someone, that does not mean that they are excused from facing the consequences of their behavior, which may include prudent mistrust; and they are not excused from their debt to the party they have actually sinned against.

My sister Abby Tardiff explained it this way:

We are obligated to love. We are obligated to wish everyone well. We are obligated not to be bitter. That’s all true, but the definition of “forgiveness” is more specific than that–it means releasing someone of a debt they incur by harming you. Check out the Lord’s Prayer: “as we forgive those who trespass against US.”

I should be loving and kind to people who owe other people large amounts of money, too, but I can’t forgive their debts. My inability to forgive debts owed to other people is due not to a moral flaw, but to a logical impossibility.

Got that? It’s not laudable to forgive someone who has assaulted someone else. It’s not even foolish or sentimental to forgive someone who has assaulted someone else. It’s impossible to forgive someone who has assaulted someone else.

When we Christians publicly pat ourselves on the backs for how forgiving we are willing to be, it tells the actual wounded party: “You have no claim. The harm that was done you has been repaid. All done; move along.”

Easy for us to say. Easy, because it doesn’t mean anything.

***

Image via Pixabay

There’s a meme going around social media, and it’s making my eye twitch. Well-meaning but careless readers believe that, as the meme implies, it’s an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Here’s the quote:

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It’s fine, as far as it goes, but it’s certainly not from Screwtape, and it’s certainly gets nowhere near the level of wit, insight, or clout that C. S. Lewis could turn out with his left pinky finger. (And Uncle Screwtape would never say, “Keep up the good work!”)

Screwtape did have something to say about politics, but it’s more subtle and less meme-able. Here’s a passage from the actual book (“we” refers to the demons who tempt humans, and “the Enemy” is God):

About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate.

Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster.

On the other hand, we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice.

The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner.

Memes are designed to make you think, “Hey, YEAH! I’m RIGHT! I’ll go tell everyone.” And Screwtape’s advice is designed to make you think, ‘Oh, crap. I’m wrong. I’ll go to confession.”

Another way to tell the difference between real and fake quotes, besides the dubious content? The style and vocabulary. Remember several years ago, when everyone was drooling over this putatively prescient quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind is closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”

And I’m a Chinese jet pilot.

This sounds like Shakespeare in the same way that my dog smells like camelias, which is to say, not at all. Not said by Caesar, not written by Shakespeare, not quoted by anyone who has even a nodding familiarity with how the English language is supposed to work.

As Mother Teresa once said, “Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people pass along bogus quotes without even stopping to think if the attribution is plausible.” Or was it Abraham Lincolnmeme who said that? Aw, who cares. I’ll just pass it along.

Anyway. Here’s another quote that really is from Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, and which really can inform us as we defend and endorse our presidential candidates — and it’s short enough to fit inside a meme:

“To get the man’s soul and give him nothing in return—that is what really gladdens our Father’s heart.”

I believe not only that C.S. Lewis wrote that, but that a demon would actually think it. And you can pass that along, too.

***

Image: “The Laughing Demon” Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m pleased to announce the lucky winner of a sterling silver hand-cast replica of Joan of Arc’s First Communion ring, courtesy of Door Number 9 on Peter’s Square! The winner is . . .

Kate Davis, who entered the giveaway by tweeting a message on Saturday, Oct. 8 at 4:19 PM.

I’ve emailed the winner using the address provided to Rafflecopter. Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks to Door Number 9 for sponsoring this prize!

You can still pre-order this lovely ring from Elisa Low’s shop — the sooner the better, as they are made to order. Also check out Door Number 9 on Etsy for a wide array of handmade goods, quirky, Geeky, Catholic, and more.

On this date in 1944, the tiny Himalayan country of Tuva, populated mainly by Buddhist nomads, voted to become part of the USSR, and it is now a republic within the Russian Federation.

In Tuva, Stalin did his best to quash indigenous cultural practices, but traditional throat singing has endured and even flourished in recent decades. It used to be practiced only by men, but women are now learning the craft.

And a weird craft it is. Tuvan throat singers produce two sounds at once: a deep, deep, buzzing drone and, simultaneously, a higher-pitched overlay, often birdlike or locust-like in tone. In this example, the fellow on the right sets up the verse, and then the second voice joins in with two more tones coming from the same throat:

It’s music meant to carry in wide-open spaces, over lonely, isolated, wind-swept plains between high mountains. The sounds not only literally resonate in the topography of that world, they also echo the actual voices of nature: the unimpeded wind, the birds, streams, the crowds of insects, and perhaps the thundering hooves of yaks and the much-admired Tuvan horses.

It’s such a different kind of singing, and it calls for such a different kind of listening, I can’t get enough of it.  A blogger for Carnegie Hall notes:

a respected Tuvan musician [demonstrated] the igil, a bowed instrument with two strings tuned a fifth apart. When asked to play each string separately, he refused, saying it wouldn’t make any sense. The only meaningful sound was the combination of the two pitches played together.

Here’s one throat singer who is having a wonderful time being awesome, exotic nomad dude for a more global audience:

And here’s an extraordinary concert (the video is over an hour long) by a group of guys who open by making a sound you will never forget:

That’s my soundtrack for today. Astonishing. What are they singing about? I wish I knew! Many of the songs, I gather, are about horses and women and how excellent they are.

I wish I could make two sounds at once. I wish I could produce something and feel so placid as they seem to feel while doing it. Most of all, I wish I were better at listening to the whole of something, rather than picking out little threads and trying to make definitive sense of them in a linear fashion. It’s not as important as I think.