Anyone else had to Google 'limn' to see if it was a spelling mistake or not?
On a more serious note, I'm totally with you when it comes to writing about these things but that just makes me a little more annoyed when you criticise rock music because it contains words about sex and violence. Is this a little hypocritical?
I love rock music and was confused by his criticism of it at first, but it’s not hypocritical. Rock music is the evil that we can’t see. It’s outside the “bright lines” of the Venn diagram. He writes about murder because it’s an evil that we can see. He’s not writing about violence because he likes it. His murder stories show us the evil that implies the good.
it was a knee-jerk reaction. I was reading the words as an English speaker who was once chastised for saying brother-in-laws instead of brothers-in-law.
And yet as a fledgling Francophone, I recognize that the descriptive adjective that follows femme in plural should also be written in the plural.
Oh, be still my mind, close thy eyes and listen to what Andrew is saying. He’s not only a brilliant writer, he’s on a mission from God. 😉
So here I go replying to myself. Poor lonely child.
I don’t see where anybody has called me yet on my use of the word thy-
The decision to use thy instead of thine continued to rattle around in my head until I finally looked up the distinction between the two. The explanation I found was that, although the meanings are interchangeable, it is recommended to use thy when the following noun begins with a consonant, and the word thine when the following word begins with a vowel.
I guess all the years sitting in the pews of St. Philip’s pounded that into my brain. I’m not criticizing the mistake, just saying all the years of Mass have made it come naturally to me.
Right, corpseman. You can forgive someone for “attorney generals.” That actually sounds natural. But the CINC who can’t—or won’t, as you suspect—say corpsman is unforgivable.
Years ago as a college freshman our class read "The Great Inquisitor" and "The Myth of the Cave," and took all the wrong lessons from both--as one does, without the context. When I finally read The Brothers Karamazov, I found out what The Great Inquisitor excerpt really meant--that people do horrible things, and that abandoning God because you think that's not fair or that those things wouldn't be horrible if you didn't have God telling you they were horrible doesn't make anything better, it leaves you with only the horrible things.
Likewise, at about the same time I read some gruesome stories about saints and found them repugnant. Then I realized that people read and watch modern, fictional gruesome stories about torture and dismemberment all the time. The difference is that in the first case the tortures aren't the point, and in the second case they often are (true, really good horror movies and books end with all being set right by the forces of good, but more and more the torture seems to be the whole purpose).
The awful is real. The wicked is real. Everyone knows this, even if we usually ignore it. But that's not ALL that's real.
"I have received many letters from readers that begin with something like, “You call yourself a Christian, and yet you write about such horrible things.” And yes, I do, and I do."
I have to wonder if those who write this kind of thing have ever read the Bible (particularly The Old Testament)? Murder, Rate, Theft, Lying, Its all there. Sometimes I think it should be labeled PG.
Andrew, I received your book in the mail yesterday and began devouring it. (I confess that I got to the Psycho chapter at bedtime and thought it unwise to fall asleep reading that.). One thing (among many) I appreciate is your definition of evil (p.17), referencing the tenets of the Great Speculation, "the equal reality of of myself and others and the dearness of those realities" and equating those with the moral order as incarnate in Christ. Using that Great Speculation as a starting point made me think of an influential book of dialogues between Umberto Eco and Cardinal Martini called Belief or NonBelief? A Confrontation https://amzn.to/44YUfux. In this book, Eco proposes that instead of something like the Great Speculation, there is a more basic core of ethics in general and his offering is that it is based on location. Yes, location. "I am convinced," Eco said, "that notions common to all cultures exist, and they all refer to the position of our bodies in space. We are animals of erect stature, for whom it is painful to remain upside down for long. We therefore have a common notion of up and down, and tend to privilege the former over the latter. We likewise have a notion of right and left, of immobility or motion..." He goes on to build the concept of ethics on what humans can tolerate and then on the concept of constraint (so that no one else can violate that which we want to experience as members of the human race. So---- your book so far is excellent. I think you'd love the short and punchy Eco-Martini book, which was named one of the Los Angeles Times' "Best Nonfiction Of 2000" BTW. Rejoice, indeed-- a dialogue like that of yours with your son.
Anyone else had to Google 'limn' to see if it was a spelling mistake or not?
On a more serious note, I'm totally with you when it comes to writing about these things but that just makes me a little more annoyed when you criticise rock music because it contains words about sex and violence. Is this a little hypocritical?
🙋🏼♂️<—raising my hand because Andrew often puts on a master class.
I love rock music and was confused by his criticism of it at first, but it’s not hypocritical. Rock music is the evil that we can’t see. It’s outside the “bright lines” of the Venn diagram. He writes about murder because it’s an evil that we can see. He’s not writing about violence because he likes it. His murder stories show us the evil that implies the good.
You might be correct but I'm not going to give up Led Zeppelin in favour of Leonard Bernstein just yet.
Not me!
Femmes fatales or femme fatale?
Talk about missing the point, right?
But I can’t help it;
it was a knee-jerk reaction. I was reading the words as an English speaker who was once chastised for saying brother-in-laws instead of brothers-in-law.
And yet as a fledgling Francophone, I recognize that the descriptive adjective that follows femme in plural should also be written in the plural.
Oh, be still my mind, close thy eyes and listen to what Andrew is saying. He’s not only a brilliant writer, he’s on a mission from God. 😉
Can’t wait for your book to arrive!
So here I go replying to myself. Poor lonely child.
I don’t see where anybody has called me yet on my use of the word thy-
The decision to use thy instead of thine continued to rattle around in my head until I finally looked up the distinction between the two. The explanation I found was that, although the meanings are interchangeable, it is recommended to use thy when the following noun begins with a consonant, and the word thine when the following word begins with a vowel.
Oops.
I guess all the years sitting in the pews of St. Philip’s pounded that into my brain. I’m not criticizing the mistake, just saying all the years of Mass have made it come naturally to me.
Well, there was a certain “smartest man in the room” who said, “Attorney Generals.” 🤷🏼♂️
OK. I give up. Who was that?
Obama.
Don’t forget Marine Corpse. That one was unforgivable. But I half suspected at the time that he did it on purpose.
Right, corpseman. You can forgive someone for “attorney generals.” That actually sounds natural. But the CINC who can’t—or won’t, as you suspect—say corpsman is unforgivable.
Years ago as a college freshman our class read "The Great Inquisitor" and "The Myth of the Cave," and took all the wrong lessons from both--as one does, without the context. When I finally read The Brothers Karamazov, I found out what The Great Inquisitor excerpt really meant--that people do horrible things, and that abandoning God because you think that's not fair or that those things wouldn't be horrible if you didn't have God telling you they were horrible doesn't make anything better, it leaves you with only the horrible things.
Likewise, at about the same time I read some gruesome stories about saints and found them repugnant. Then I realized that people read and watch modern, fictional gruesome stories about torture and dismemberment all the time. The difference is that in the first case the tortures aren't the point, and in the second case they often are (true, really good horror movies and books end with all being set right by the forces of good, but more and more the torture seems to be the whole purpose).
The awful is real. The wicked is real. Everyone knows this, even if we usually ignore it. But that's not ALL that's real.
"I have received many letters from readers that begin with something like, “You call yourself a Christian, and yet you write about such horrible things.” And yes, I do, and I do."
I have to wonder if those who write this kind of thing have ever read the Bible (particularly The Old Testament)? Murder, Rate, Theft, Lying, Its all there. Sometimes I think it should be labeled PG.
We have our copy on the table as of 2 days ago. Soon we will be reading.
Looking forward to time well spent.
Andrew, I received your book in the mail yesterday and began devouring it. (I confess that I got to the Psycho chapter at bedtime and thought it unwise to fall asleep reading that.). One thing (among many) I appreciate is your definition of evil (p.17), referencing the tenets of the Great Speculation, "the equal reality of of myself and others and the dearness of those realities" and equating those with the moral order as incarnate in Christ. Using that Great Speculation as a starting point made me think of an influential book of dialogues between Umberto Eco and Cardinal Martini called Belief or NonBelief? A Confrontation https://amzn.to/44YUfux. In this book, Eco proposes that instead of something like the Great Speculation, there is a more basic core of ethics in general and his offering is that it is based on location. Yes, location. "I am convinced," Eco said, "that notions common to all cultures exist, and they all refer to the position of our bodies in space. We are animals of erect stature, for whom it is painful to remain upside down for long. We therefore have a common notion of up and down, and tend to privilege the former over the latter. We likewise have a notion of right and left, of immobility or motion..." He goes on to build the concept of ethics on what humans can tolerate and then on the concept of constraint (so that no one else can violate that which we want to experience as members of the human race. So---- your book so far is excellent. I think you'd love the short and punchy Eco-Martini book, which was named one of the Los Angeles Times' "Best Nonfiction Of 2000" BTW. Rejoice, indeed-- a dialogue like that of yours with your son.
Not me!
So excited to get the book!