Still hosted by Conversion Diary
1.
I haven’t been blogging for a while. That’s
partly intentional, partly just because I haven’t had the interest or energy
for it lately. But, while visiting my sister in Maine she was very insistent
that I take it up again, so here we are.
2.
Regardless, I’m putting a hold to Famous
Catholics and other series, just because I’m a little tired of them and I want
to flesh out the blog a little bit more.
3.
My current task in life is learning to accept
drudgery. I don’t mean useless drudgery (but I have to accept that sometimes as
well), but the small, persistent effort required to acquire new skills and
knowledge. See, I’ve usually been the type of person who tries to snatch at
things all at once in one great effort, and since that usually fails, I get
discouraged fairly easily. I’ve known for a long time that this is a bad idea,
but now I’m working on reforming my attitude into a healthier, steadier method
of attack. It’s too soon to tell how successful I’m being, but I’ll keep you
informed.
4.
Speaking of Maine, we were up there for my
niece’s second birthday. She’s cute beyond words and extraordinarily
independent. “No, I’ll do it!” was
her typical response to offers of help, whether for opening coolers, walking
uphill, playing on the swings, or pretty much anything that she put her mind to
doing.
5.
It took me over a year to do it (mostly because
I was reading in fits and starts), but I finally finished Luigi Giussani’s
great theological trilogy: The Religious
Sense, On the Origin of the Christian Claim, and Why the Church. It’s an incredibly dense, complete explanation of
the Catholic faith which sets things out in a frank, sensible, and fairly
easy-to-follow way. If I had to summarize his main point, it would be the
importance of focusing on the essential questions involved in such matters and
trying to understand and answer them rather than more superficial, secondary
questions. An essential question would be, say, “what is unique about the
Christian claim,” and a non-essential question would be “how does Genesis
square with Darwin?” Of course, he says it a lot better than I do. Giussani has
had a huge influence on my own philosophical and religious views, so he’s
highly recommended.
6.
With Giussani finished, I’m now tackling
Whittaker Chambers’s Witness about
his experience in and break from the Communist Party. I started reading it
while I was in college, abandoned it when I left, and have made one or two
aborted attempts to resume in the meantime. Now I’m pretty well set on reading
the whole monstrous thing (seriously; it’s huge). Chambers is an excellent
writer, and his real-life account is as riveting and moving as any spy novel,
and considerably more depressing. He makes no bones about his predictions for
the future, and none of them are very cheerful.
7.
In weighing my next big purchase, I’m not sure
whether it should be A). an ‘assault-rifle’ (Not sure whether I want an AR-15
or a Kalashnikov; the former has more American spirit, but the latter is
insanely durable) B). a desktop computer so I can start learning 3D art and
animation or C). a pickup truck to replace my aging Ford Focus and further my plans
to live out of a camper for a while. In the meantime I’m enjoying the fact that
I’m the kind of person for whom those
are the options.
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