Entries from April 1, 2010 - April 30, 2010
Smackdown of the Gods
Something huge is about to unfold for me, and I've been too superstitious to discuss it very openly. As the result of a mysterious and marvelous chain of events, I am going to visit this guy. Yes, right here, very soon.
That is, unless more primordial deities like Pele here perform another cheap stunt for attention. (And they wonder why I'm superstitious? What, does my Expedia account get hacked by a lava conduit to Iceland?)
Actually, I blame this one. Either way, I am gearing up for one helluva pilgrimage. I cieli sono aperti. You will be kept informed, and may the best god win!
Brenda from Brooklyn
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My pope's 'veil of darkness'
Now that the New York Times has laid down the baton after their orchestrated Holy Week festival of pope-pounding, my feelings toward Benedict XVI are more conflicted than ever; his lifetime track record on clergy abuse ranges from all-too-typical avoidance and denial to unprecedented engagement, repentance, and reform. Sadly charisma-impaired, he's no rock star like John Paul II, yet he has dealt with the crisis more directly than JPII ever did.
Sick of getting my pontiff in cartoon form from the likes of Maureen Dowd, I've started reading some of his own stuff, and "complex" doesn't begin to describe it. He thinks, and writes, like a dark Time Lord plagued with bad dreams and tormented by human tenderness. Enough with the crap about "God's Rottweiler" already. The next time I'm almost beguiled by the kittenish Ms. Dowd's pop-snark take on matters Catholic, I'll let Benedict speak for himself:
"God is dead and we killed him: are we really aware that this phrase is taken almost literally from Christian tradition and that often in our viae crucis we have made something similar resound without realizing the tremendous gravity of what we said? We killed him, by enclosing him in the stale shell of routine thinking, by exiling him in a form of pity with no content of reality, lost in the gyre of devotional phrases, or of archaeological treasuries; we killed him through the ambiguity of our lives which also laid a veil of darkness over him: in fact, what else would have been able to make God more problematical in this world than the problematical nature of the faith and of the love of his faithful?"
Text: 'The Anguish of an Absence: Three Meditations on Holy Saturday,' from 30 Days, March 2006
Image: Detail, Fra Angelico, Deposition from the Cross, Museo San Marco, Florence
LILAC PROVES EXISTENCE OF GOD
FRAGRANCE CONFIRMS BENEVOLENT DEITY
RANDOM TRAGEDY, CHILDHOOD CANCER AND EVIL
REMAIN UNEXPLAINED
To see (and smell) for yourself, go here.
