welcome back students of spring 2015

Greetings and Salutations Students of Spring 2015!

If you're taking my THE 1000C course, please clicky here.

If you're taking my THE 2400 or HON 2400 course, please clicky here.

You're the cat's pajamas.

gift of crying

During his most recent interview while returning from Sri Lanka and the Philippines, here's what Pope Francis said about the gift of crying:

Elisabetta Pique, La Nacion: "Representing the Spanish language group, I have two questions. This was a moving voyage for everyone. We saw people crying the entire time in Tacloban, even we journalists cried. Yesterday you said the world needs to cry. We would like to ask you, what was – and it was all very moving – what was for you the most moving moment? That is the first question. The second, yesterday you made history, you surpassed the record set by John Paul II, in the same place, there were 6 or 7 million people. How does it feel to have seen - Cardinal Tagle was telling us that during the Mass in front of the altar you asked him, but how many people are here? How does it feel to have surpassed this record, to have entered into history as the Pope with the Mass with the highest attendance in history? Thank you."

Pope Francis: "The most moving moment: for me, the Mass in Tacloban was very moving. Very moving. To see all of God’s people standing still, praying, after this catastrophe, thinking of my sins and those people, it was moving, a very moving moment. On the moment of the Mass there, I felt as though I was annihilated, I almost couldn’t speak. I don’t know what happened to me, maybe it was the emotion, I don’t know. But I didn’t feel another thing, it is something. And then, the moving moments: the gestures were moving. Every gesture. When I passed and a father would do this (gestures) and I blessed him, he would say thank you. But for them, a blessing was enough. I thought -- I who have so many expectations -- I want this and I want that. That was good for me, no? Moving moments. After I found out that in Tacloban we landed with winds at 70 kilometres per hour, I took it seriously the warning that we needed to leave no later than one o’clock because there was more danger. Regarding the great turnout, I felt annihilated. These were God’s people, and God was present. And the joy of the presence of God which tells us, think on it well, that you are servants of these people, these people are the protagonists. Something like this. The other thing is the weeping. One of the things that is lost when there is too much wealth or when values are misunderstood or we have become accustomed to injustice, to this culture of waste, is the capacity to cry. This is a grace we must ask for. There is a beautiful prayer in the old missal (1962, editor's note) for tears. It went more or less like this: ‘O Lord, you who have made it so that Moses with his cane made water flow from a stone, make it so from the rock that is my heart, that water of tears may flow.’ It’s a beautiful prayer. We Christians must ask for the grace to cry. Especially wealthy Christians. To cry about injustice and to cry about sins. Because crying opens you to understand new realities, or new dimensions to realities. This is what the girl said, what I said to her. She was the only one to ask that question to which there is no answer: why do children suffer? The great Dostoyevsky asked himself this, and he could not answer. Why do children suffer? She, with her weeping, a woman who was weeping. When I say it is important that women be held in higher consideration in the Church, it’s not just to give them a function as the secretary of a dicastery -- though this would be fine. No, it’s so that they may tell us tell us how they experience, and view reality. Because women view things from a different richness, a larger one. Another thing I would like to underscore is what I said to the last young man, who truly works well, he gives and gives and gives, he organizes to help the poor. But don’t forget that we too need to be beggars – from them. Because the poor evangelize us. If we take the poor away from the Gospel, we cannot understand Jesus’ message. The poor evangelize us. I go to evangelize the poor, yes, but allow them to evangelize you. Because they have values that you do not."

created for joy

Here’s the first episode of the new documentary on Christian marriage called Mission of Love. In the video first broadcast on NetTV, the TV station for the diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, here we meet so many beautiful images and words encouraging us that we are created for joy. We are made from joy and for joy. You’ll get to meet my family and see how we do big family crazy.

Next episode will be Feburary 15. Please watch and please share this video with everyone, especially those who need encouragement for the marriage.

mission of love

My family and I will be featured in a new documentary by NetTV, the Catholic station for the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens (fistpump).

Here’s the promo.

I encourage you to follow the NetTV Mission of Love on their website or youtube. Don't miss all ten episodes. My interview with the director and producer, Amanda Brier, went so well. I can’t wait to see it. God will be doing great things through this documentary.

May God bless marriages. It’s the mission of love. Please follow and promote the project to grow Christian marriages in Brooklyn, Queens, and around the world.

sports for compassion

On April 12, 2015, I will be running the Queens Half Marathon — not for myself, but for compassion. I’m running to raise donations for the mission of Heart’s Home USA, Brooklyn. They serve the poorest of the poor in my city, New York City.

These people are saints. If Mother Teresa chose New York City, it would look like this. And that is why we should support them in whatever way we can.

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 21:1).

If you would like to contribute, here’s how:

• Go to Sports4Compassion and learn more
• Use #sports4compassion in social media and the tattoo arts
• Follow the founder of Sports4Compassion Kari Stender on twitter or instagram

expectancy

On January 3, 2014, I spoke about expectancy to a gathering of my friends at Heart's Home. It was a message of hope, of saying one big YES to God. I hope you will listen to the hour long message that will speak expectancy into your life as you meditate on the central passage of Romans 8:28

"We know that in everything God works for good with those that love him, who are called according to his purpose."

Here's my presentation:

Influences on preparing this topic came from Banning Liebscher, Danny Silk, Rick Warren, and Parnell Lovelace.

beauty and the perfection of being

Beauty and the Perfection of Being - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

On October 23, 2014, I presented a review of Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective by my colleague, Alice Ramos.¹

Before I begin, I’m reminded of a scene in Woody Allen’s Play It Again Sam (1972). youtube

Allen: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?

Woman: Yes, it is.

Allen: What does it say to you?

Woman: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos.

Allen: What are you doing Saturday night?

Woman: Committing suicide.

Allen: What about Friday night?

Here in this exchange we see the desolation of not seeing dynamic beauty as a participation in the God who is Beauty Itself. The consequence is suicidal.

Two Alices

Not much more illustrates the ideas in Prof. Ramos’ book than knowing that there are two Alice Ramoses (Ramoi) in the world. One on the cover of Playboy magazine and one a professor of philosophy. One has given her body for the pursuit of perverted beauty and the other has given her mind for the pursuit of perfected beauty. There is so much at stake in getting the purpose of beauty right, especially in this postmodern age.

Beauty as Form and Splendor

I love Alice Ramos’ book and think you should read it. I’m going to focus my comments on chapter four “Beauty and the Perfection of Being.”

The thesis of the chapter is: “The purpose of this essay will be to show how a consideration of the beautiful and its features coincides with a discussion of first and second perfections in Aquinas, how such a consideration of perfection is related to the order of that universe in its static and dynamic dimensions, and how this order is a work of divine wisdom and beauty, requiring in its turn the cooperation of intellectual creatures.”²

God as Divine Artist is Beauty Itself and he creates beautiful things who have their beginning and end in him. The Triune God has created the marble and slowly with hammer and chisel breaks it into a beautiful statue. It’s beginning is beautiful and its end is beautiful. But it has to go through the breaking.

But let’s take a step back.

Beauty for Aquinas is the coinciding of form and splendor; harmony and brilliance; due proportion and radiance; as such, it is objective.

Beauty is objectively located at the intersection of the two intersecting moments of form and splendor. And the encounter of these is also characterized by the two moments of beholding and of being enraptured - beholding and being beheld.

Next, Let us define first and second perfections in Aquinas.

First perfection - a thing is perfect in its substance - in its creation.

Second perfection - a thing is perfect in its end.

The going out of God and the coming in toward God (the exitus and reditus) are all of God’s perfect activity and therefor participate in his beauty.

God as pure Act is these two perfections - he is the Alpha and Omega - the beginning and the end.

Part two - The part where this becomes dynamic beauty is in the entelechy. Ordination of the universe to the end is in the intellectual being who is grasped and grasps toward its perfect end in God.

Attaining second perfection - performance of beings proper operations toward greater degree of actuality.

This perfection is done by grace, by created actuation by uncreated Act.³

But here’s where I want to add the more to this really well done chapter.

I want more Jesus.

Our theology of Beauty is a theology of Glory but that also means then a theology of the Cross.

What we first encounter of God is manifestation - revelation - God’s active potent presence expressed - that presence express love by being present.

From today’s reading - Paul prays for the Ephesian church that they may come “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). And what we know of the love of Christ is that he has become broken for me. So beauty (Christian beauty) must understand that “Unless the grain of wheat falls and dies” (Jn 12:24), there is no actualized, perfected beauty.

I am convinced that beauty is the glory of God manifesting itself through created beauty, but through its being broke, cracked, and torn open. God as Beauty Itself converts us about his truth and goodness through beauty.

“In the experiences of extraordinary beauty — whether in nature or in art — we are able to grasp a phenomenon in its distinctiveness that otherwise remains veiled. What we encounter in such an experience is as overwhelming as a miracle, something we will never get over.”⁴

In this passage, Balthasar helps me understand that extraordinary beauty can overwhelm by its own power of being beautiful. The miracle of beauty can make a person never get over what they have just seen.

We first enter into relational trust (love) before or during which we learn the good and the true.⁵

“God does not come primarily as a teacher for us (“true”), as a useful “redeemer” for us (“good”), but to display and to radiate himself, the splendor of his eternal triune love in that ‘disinterestedness’ that true love has in common with true beauty.”⁶

He is saying here that the human encounter with the revelation of God is known through his radiating beauty glory.

It is the glory of the Lord manifested in the cloud of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night that convinces Israel to leave Egypt and head toward the promised land (Ex 13:17-22). It is the glory of the Lord that settles on Mount Sinai manifesting the potent, fiery presence of the Lord who gives the Law to Israel through Moses (Ex 19:16-20). It is the glory of the Lord that comes upon the first temple built by Solomon revealing God’s kingly dwelling in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem (1 Kgs 8:1-11). It is the glory of the Lord that rushes upon Mary who conceives in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit the Son of God incarnate (Lk 1:26-38). It is the glory of the Lord in his disfigured crucified state that after he breathes his last makes the earth quake and the temple curtain torn in two such that the veil between the world and the Holy of Holies reveals that the “glory of the Lord fills the whole earth” and the centurian representing the world believes “Truly this was the Son of God” (Mt 27:50-54). It is the glory of the Lord represented by tongues of fire that comes upon the apostles on the feast of Pentecost manifesting God’s dwelling presence with his Church (Acts 2:1-13). For von Balthasar, in the Old and New Testaments, it is the glory (beauty) of the Lord that manifests the Father’s potent presence in the world through the Son and Holy Spirit and reveals the goodness and truth about his love for the world. The Son of God did not just come to teach or to be useful, he came to reveal God’s love. That our perfection is in our end, through the cross of his grace.

Consider these two apples - which is more beautiful?

If we have a static view of beauty the whole apple; if we have Alice’s dynamic view - the answer is the second.

1. Alice Ramos, Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). ↩
2. Ramos, Dynamic Transcendentals, 72. ↩
3. Matthew Lewis Sutton, “Mysterium Christi: The Christologies of Karl Rahner and Maurice de la Taille," International Journal of Systematic Theology, 10 (October 2008): 416-430. ↩
4. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, trans. D. C. Schindler (San Francsico: Ignatius Press, 2004), 52-53. ↩
5. Here we see the Bonaventure moment in Balthasar. ↩
6. Hans Urs Von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, trans. Kenneth Batinovich and Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 80. ↩

analysis of visual arts

The visual arts can be analyzed in several ways. Here are 10 guiding elements that will help you analyze art in your writing.

1. EDGE / LINE

   • 3D – boundary or edge of the mass
   • 2D – examining the movement of the vanishing point or look at succession of connected points
     • analyze characteristics of edges and lines
       • direction
       • length
       • width
       • emotional and expressive properties

2. SHAPE

   • 3D – forms and masses
   • 2D – area of color, tone, line, or combination
     • analyze characteristics of shape
       • organic (modeled after plants and animals)
       • geometric

3. COLOR

   • character of a surface by wave lengths
     • analyze characteristics of color
       • hue
       • value – amount of white or black
       • intensity
       • monochromatic / polychromatic – one color / several colors
       • analogous / complementary – remember the color wheel
       • primary palette / secondary palette

4. VALUE

   • relation of one part to another with respect to light and darkness
     • analyze characteristics of value
       • white added – lighter value
       • black added – darker value
       • chiaroscuro – dramatic (example Rembrandt)

5. TEXTURE

   • actual tactile quality of a surface
   • visual illusions of tactile qualities on a flat surface
     • analyze characteristics of texture
       • smooth
       • rough
       • impasto – thick pigment, globs of color (example Van Gogh)

6. SPACE

   • environment or background for an art work
   • voids, emptiness, absences within an artwork
     • analyze characteristics of space
       • 3D – interaction of artwork with surrounding space
       • 2D – areas of lesser visual interest

7. FORM

   • comprehensive physical design of an artwork
     • analyze characteristics of form
       • open / closed – focus only within or going out
       • dynamic / static – movement

8. BALANCE

   • controlled tension by shapes depending on variables such as:
     • placement
     • size
     • spacing
     • direction
       • analyze characteristics of balance
         • symmetrical / asymmetrical
         • formal / informal
         • structured / intuitive

9. RHYTHM / REPETITION

   • perceptible sequence of identical or similar material
     • analyze characteristics of rhythm and repetition
       • double
       • triple
       • mixed

10. DOMINANCE / SUBMISSION

    • highly accentuated versus recessive focus of attention
      • analyze characteristics of dominance and submission
        • how did the artist establish your attention around the object
        • how did the artist guide you away from certain elements toward other elements of the work

evil passive verbs

Evil lurks when using these verbs in your writing. Avoid.

is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, I'm, it's, he's, here's, she's, that's, there's, they're, we're, what's, who's, you're

heinlein's rules

Writing rules from Robert Heinlein

• You Must Write
• Finish What You Start
• You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
• You Must Put Your Story on the Market
• You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold
• Start Working on Something Else