Author: J. Thorp

The Second Third, Week 29: Expressive Reading

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Tonight was six-year-old Trevor’s night to lead us in prayer. He opened with an Old Testament reading from our Children’s Bible and did an admirable job: it was chock full of Hebrew names and ancient places and Biblical expressions like “The LORD’s anger was kindled against them.” He navigated it all with remarkable patience and skill, his concentration was absolute — and he almost didn’t sound like himself, since (when he reads his own books) he is quite expressive. With less difficult books, already he is mastering the skill of reading just ahead of his voice with his eyes to pick up on the cues in the text: Is there a question ahead? An exclamation? Is the character frustrated? Scared? Excited?

I, too, struggle to read expressively, mostly because until recently, it had been a long time since I’ve done so — years, in fact, since I’ve read aloud even a classic Dr. Seuss.

Then this spring I picked up The Little Prince, which I had never read before, and decided on a whim to read it to our brood, a bit to a time, after supper. It went over well with all four Thorplets, but although I had the notion of providing voices to the handful of wonderful characters who populate the book, I found it impossible, primarily because much of the time I was to emotionally, uh…engaged…to do so.

Next I tried an old favorite, Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, figuring a familiar tale might be suited to a more dramatic telling — but although I recalled the story and the characters, I quickly found the structure, style, and syntax of LeGuin’s sentences to require a great deal of concentration. At times, I had to back up and start sentences over!

I find that the more I read to the kids, the more I enjoy it. We finished the LeGuin’s book last week and will no doubt return to Earthsea again soon — but in the interim, I’ve resurrected a ghost of my own childhood, outdoor humorist Patrick F. McManus’s The Grasshopper Trap. For years growing up, every time a new McManus book came out (or a new edition of Outdoor Life magazine arrived), Mom or Dad, Jill or I, would read after supper. The first story in the book, “The Skunk Ladder,” is a classic, and the kids were quickly in stitches and begging for another. I remember these characters, too — Crazy Eddie Muldoon, Retch Sweeney, the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree, Pat’s sister the Troll — and tonight, after dinner, I began to have a little fun with voices. It was great fun, and good practice, too: in my Second Third, I intend to read aloud more often, to the older kids, to the new baby, and God willing, the grandkids. I need to hone my skills if I’ve ever going to tackle something like, of I dunno…The Hobbit?

Life In The Bubble

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On two separate occasions this weekend — on Friday evening and again on Sunday morning — I found myself in deep discussions with fellow parishioners about life inside “The Bubble.” I had heard people talk about “the bubble” (lowercase) before to reference our neck of the woods: the small(ish) communities of St. Michael and Albertville, home to lots of good all-around folk. But I hadn’t realized “the bubble” was actually “The Bubble” — and has come to mean, more specifically, the thriving Catholic communities in which people still have big families and pray the rosary and make it to Mass on Sunday (and any other time they can).

On Friday, I spoke with two other men about venturing outside The Bubble to work each day, the stuff going on “out there” we can’t stomach or abide, and the challenges this poses to our faith and sanity (not to mention our employment). On Sunday, the topic was the insidious encroachment of the outside world into The Bubble — the impossibility of shutting out the world entirely, and how best to manage the slivers of darkness that pierce the iridescent dome and seek to pop! it.

Sounds almost Amish, doesn’t it?

Then on Sunday night I had a dream, in which I was floating on a rubber raft of some sort in the twilight, while gathered around me were various coworkers from jobs past and present, none of whom I ever got along with particularly well. It was a meeting of sorts, except we were adrift, and I was the target of insufficient direction, unwarranted criticism, and a couple of disturbing come-ons. By the time I reached shore I was livid…and (this being a dream) got on my black and gold Huffy Challenger 3000 bicycle and headed straight home.

Home, in this case, was my childhood home on Littlefield Lake, which was a blissful place to be a boy. I rode back to old neighborhood, but, since I was still quite angry, circled the block atop the hill that sloped down to our house and the lake, blowing off steam, knowing my family didn’t deserve the brunt of that bizarre meeting. It was a damp spring day, and the roads were muddy — it must’ve snowed recently, because although it was warm and the grass was greening, along the shoulder of the roads were piles of wet snow a snow plow had kicked up.

Finally I headed down the hill, thinking I would have to push my bike through the heap of wet snow at the end of the driveway. But when I turned the corner, a number of friends from “The Bubble” were shoveling our the end of the drive. My CRHP brother* John M. was there, laughing and throwing snow at the other workers; our dear family friends Butch and Laura were there, joyfully lending a hand; Jim V. from the KCs was there; and more.** They shouted greetings and waved me through. In the garage, Butch and Laura’s oldest son and Bren were conspiring to avoid shoveling and go fishing instead.

It is a comfort to come home each evening to a community of faith and stability — with like-minded people who know where you stand and what you aspire to be. Last night at Adoration, while praying the Third Joyful Mystery, the Incarnation, it struck me: The Word Made Flesh isn’t just the Christ child born two millenia ago; it’s the Body of Christ working in concert here in this world, today, to bring about the Kingdom of God. I’m glad to be a part of it.

—–

* Christ Renews His Parish retreat
** These names are important because they represent the spectrum: a number of fellow Catholics I know in very different ways…

Angels Addendum

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In my earlier “book report” on Angels and Their Mission According to the Church Fathers, I indicated I could not find a specific passage that stated that angels are not properly understood as supernatural. The reason I couldn’t find that passage is because it’s in another book. Completely coincidentally, I had begun at the same time a section on angels in My Way of Life, which is the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, simplified for mere mortal readers. The passage (which is complemented by The Angels and Their Mission) reads as follows:

Because the angels are bodiless creatures, pure spirits, it is too often concluded that they are supernatural beings; they are not, God is the only supernatural being. The angels are natural beings, they belong in, and, indeed, dominate our world. They are creatures as natural as oaks, or sunsets, or birds, or men. To call them supernatural because they are not like ourselves is a part of that provincial pride by which a man puts human nature at the peak of the universe, primarily because he himself is a man.”

A couple observations:

  • My Way of Life is a lovely pocket-size volume, and the section on Angels and the introduction (which was referenced near the end of last year’s holiday letter) alone make it worth the read.
  • However, as you can see from the sentences above, the simplified Summa is not a without complexity. It has, for the moment, made me content to leave the full-blown Summa on the shelf.

Someday, perhaps. By the way, my own copy of The Angels and Their Mission arrived yesterday, which means it is available for lending.

The Second Third, Week 28: Benefit of the Doubt

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I work in building full of highly educated and opinionated people, in a large and complex organization with constituents, intense competition for resources, and exhausting internal and external politics. All of these things are magnified in times of stress and rapid change — an historic economic downturn or transition in leadership, for example — and since my place of employment has both of those underway, everyone is a little fried.

It’s easy to be worn down by the relentless progress and pace of things, to be stretched thin by the pressure to move mountains in minutes, and to find yourself tripping on raw nerves. At times like these — and throughout my Second Third — I hope to be more conscious about giving the people around me the benefit of the doubt. Most of my colleagues, friends, and family would never go out of their way to cause me difficulty, pain, or offense. Most of them have good intentions and are doing the best they can with the hand they’ve been dealt. So when I’m tempted to be irritated and angry, I’m gonna do my best to hold my tongue and remember that their world is tilted and spinning, too.

Book Break: The Angels and Their Mission

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A group of friends and I had just finished watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose with our priests, Fr. Richards and Fr. Meyers, and Fr. Richards assigned me a book report. We were in the middle of a fascinating discussion about what the Catholic Church actually believes about the Devil, possession, and exorcism, and I asked the following question(s): If the Book of Revelation reveals to us that the Devil doesn’t win, why does he bother trying? Can he hope to change the outcome? Can the Devil hope at all?

The short answer was a supposition: that the Devil, being consumed with his own pride and envy, is likely so inwardly focused that it doesn’t matter what God does or what scripture reveals. The longer response concerned ancient teachings about the heirarchy of angels in heaven and an inverted but parallel heirarchy of fallen angels in hell — Father Meyers spoke to this topic, and I must’ve responded positively, because Fr. Richards then said, “I don’t know as much about this topic, but I have a book that was given to me to read — since you’re interested, why don’t you borrow it…then you can summarize it for me.” He went to his office and retrieved the book. “So that about that report…should I expect it in a few weeks?”

The book was The Angels and Their Mission According to the Church Fathers by the theologian Jean Danielou, first published in Belgium in 1953. Father’s edition is a thin hardcover English version from the 1950s. At 114 pages, it is a quick read, though not always easy; it assumes a familiarity with who (and when) the Church fathers were, and the ability to untangle English translations of ancient writings. I’m sure much of it went over my head.

That said, it is organized very simply, which is helpful with a largely unfamiliar topic. Each chapter addresses the Church’s age-old beliefs about angels with regard to a specific topic: The Angels and the Law, The Angels and the World Religion, The Angels of the Nativity…all the way to The Angels and Death and The Angels and the Second Coming (bringing us full circle, back to our discussion). Each chapter explains the role of angels with regard to that topic, citing scriptural references and ancient writings dating to the Middle Ages, the Early Church, and even ancient Jewish traditions. And while some of the passages and references may have been beyond me at this point, the structure made it easy to pick up the main points of each chapter.

The introduction is worth a read: it begins by sagely acknowledging that angels may be regarded as an odd topic for an entire book, however brief, and admitting that we live in a world in which many people “deny the personal character of celestial spirits.” It then goes on to touch upon a few of the mistakes people make when trying to make sense of angels. Don’t skip it, even if it doesn’t all sink in.

Three primary points stuck with me from the body of the book:

  • Angels ought not be regarded as supernatural, but as spiritual. This point may not have been explicit in the book (that’s my way of saying I can’t find the passage again), but it was certainly underscored by it — just because we can’t see angels doesn’t make them supernatural; it just means they are spiritual, and not corporal. Angels are created beings, created for a purpose, just like us. Their existence is natural because it comes from God and is sustained by God. This is reassuring, somehow, for someone who finds the supernatural nerve-wracking.
  • Angels are extraordinarily active in our world. The Church fathers believed that angels don’t only show up on the scene to deliver extraordinary news (St. Gabriel), to do battle with evil (St. Michael), or to assist in deliverance (St. Raphael) — they oversee the laws and order of the universe and nature; they minister to each nation and to each individual, working to draw them nearer to God and the Truth (with widely varying results; we do, after all, have free will); and they are constantly working with the Trinity to bring God’s plan for the world to fruition.
  • Angels long for that fruition of God’s plan, just like we do. Based in part on the first bullet, although angels are often closer to God than we are, they are not one with God and do not know His mind. They are amazed to see it unfold (God becomes man!?), and, based in part on the second bullet, they are working hard, like us, and long for the joy and peace and rest promised in the end.

As I read back over this post, my skeptical streak asks, “Do you really buy all this?” While I struggle answering that question with an unqualified yes, I can truthfully say, “More and more every day.”

One more thing: I found an inexpensive copy of this book on eBay — should be here today or early next week, if you want to borrow it. (Or perhaps, after he reads this, Fr. Richards will loan you his.)