The Anchoress

Siggy linked, the other day, to a very good conversation with God posted by Laurie Kendrick. Laurie had some very good things to say about prayer and how they get answered or, how they seem not to get answered.

I have never been a fan of “magic prayer” thinking. I distrusted the “Prayer of Jabez” movement from a few years ago, which seemed right up there with the “visualize, just visualize; manifest, just manifest” thinking behind this year’s “answer to all prayers,” called The Secret.

So I was skeptical when I received a review copy of Anthony DeStefano’s new book, Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To, published by Doubleday. My first thought was, “oh, brother, someone else has magic prayers to make everything in our lives get pretty!”

Thankfully, in reading some of the book (I haven’t finished it) I realize that DeStefano is not really saying anything we don’t know, he’s simply found a way to help us recognize what is - I believe - already in our collective gut. He’s managed to capture, identify and organize those thoughts and instincts that flutter about us by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, so that we might more easily catch sight of them, ourselves, and be opened. This is a good and helpful thing for a believer, but it is also good even for the agnostic who is not really sure God exists, but is willing to venture a prayer and find out.

The ten prayers God always says “yes” to:

1) God, Show me that you exist
2) God, Make me an instrument
3) God, Outdo me in generosity
4) God, Get me through this suffering
5) God, Forgive me
6) God, Give me peace
7) God, Give me courage
‘8) God, Give me wisdom
9) God, Bring good out of this bad situation
10) God, lead me to my destiny

That last bit might have been phrased by St. Catherine of Siena, “God, help me to be what you have created me to be.”

We know this stuff…but in the noisy world our restless natures may have forgotten it. DeStefano brings us a helpful reminder. Those of us who managed to go to useful Sunday School programs, or who had faithful nuns teaching us many years ago know very well that the best way to begin a day is to pray earnestly to be “an instrument” or “a blessing” to those we encounter, and we know the prayer always gets the divine nod. We know God will never outdo us in generosity. We know that the most awful sufferings of our lives - no matter how unendurable they seem - eventually come to an end and that, remarkably, when we look back, we usually can see something good that has emerged from the muck. Sometimes that takes some looking for, but wisdom will never be denied, too.

We know this, but it’s easy to forget. De Stefano has written his book in a wonderfully forthright, conversational tone that should be accessible to every reader, and I think most folks could take a great deal from it and apply to their daily lives, as a means of staying on an even spiritual keel.

I also think it’s an excellent book to give to a young person starting out in life; high school and college grads, young men and women going into the service or leaving the comforts of home for a new opportunity. The book could act for them as a gentle nudge to remember what things are really worth asking for - what things you really need. In fact, I would consider buying the book on CD for young folks, so they can do whatever it is they do to put it into their iPods, and take it with them. I believe the book goes on sale today.

Julie at Happy Catholic has a much more comprehensive review (with a nice excerpt) over at her place. She too liked the book although she also was initially put off by the title. I would have re-thought the title myself, especially since it ends with a preposition.

Speaking of Julie and books, she is making a very enthusiastic recommendation on a Rumer Godden book I have never read, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy:

Writes Julie: The first third of the book can be tough to read as Godden is devastatingly emotionally honest as always. Despite the fact that much of the book takes place in a brothel the words used are unobjectionable so one needn’t worry about that. As I read, I suddenly realize that I must have tried this book at least once before but always stopped as it was too painful. However, I was selling the book short by never pressing on as the last two-thirds took an upward swing that surprised and enchanted me.

I know all too well what enchantment Rumer Godden can bring to reader, as I have heavily promoted her classic, In This House of Brede here, and so many of you - male, female, Catholic and non-Catholic, believer and un-believer - have written to tell me just how remarkable you found the book. Ah, and I see that right now, Amazon is selling both Five for Sorrow and Brede together for a discount!

Mother’s Day is coming, isn’t it? I know which book I’m going to ask Buster to buy for me! Which one will you ask for?

I’ve always liked St. Catherine of Siena, who was made a Doctor of the Church nearly 700 years after her death. She always struck me as a sensible, right-thinking woman.

Her feast day was yesterday and Miss Kelly wrote a nice post about this heroic woman, including this:

In a letter to the weak and vacillating Pope Gregory in Avignon, Catherine exhorted him to:

“be a manly man…wanting to live in peace is often the greatest cruelty. When the boil has come to a head it must be cut with the lance and burned with fire and if that is not done, and only a plaster is put on it the corruption will spread and that is often worse than death. I wish to see you as a manly man so that you may serve the Bride of Christ (the church and its people) without fear, and work spiritually and temporally for the glory of God according to the needs of that sweet Bride in our times.”

As I said, a sensible woman with a message that resonates through the ages, particularly our age.

Catherine was only one of the thousands of gifted women whom the Catholic church has - quite the contrary to what sad, confused feminists would have you believe - respected and encouraged into becoming alive to their fullest potentialities.

Catherine was a woman who was all that she was born to be. She advocated that in everyone and said, “If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire,” so it makes sense that she would like manly men who had not lost their birth-gifts to fear of the world’s regard.

If you are not being what and who you were born to be, you’re going through life unfulfilled…and the world is missing whatever it was you were supposed to contribute. More on St. Catherine here.

Another very sensible woman, from our own age, Dr. Helen has posted several times on the problem of a society bent on finding “solutions” for the troublesome problem of boys being what boys are genetically programmed to be. She’s pointing to this book as an interesting response to both today’s society and Catherine’s admonition. It sounds good and I think I will order it, myself. I remember enjoying this book many moons ago, and this one sounds great, too.

Sometimes you can’t get a tune out of your head, as is the case with me and this glorious little trio by Mozart, Soave Sia Il Vento from the wonderful (if oddly wrought in this video) Cosi fan tutte.

They sing the song we all pray when we separate from our kids and loved ones:
Gentle be the breeze,
calm be the waves,
and every element
smile in favor
on our wishes

Unfortunately, youtube does not have a better-sung version online - lots of worse-sung tries, (including this amusingly deplorable attempt).

If you go over to Amazon and check out Bryn’s Tutto Mozart, they have a very generous full minute of Soave being sung gloriously by Bryn with Miah Persson and Christine Rice in their samples - look for piece #3 - which is slightly uptempo from the youtube clip.

This is the stuff to heal the soul after a day’s buffeting in the winds of an uncertain era.

RightWing Professor is thinking along the same lines and brings you a tremendous assortment of great moments in opera. Including my beloved Dame Joan Sutherland.

Related:
Keenlyside, Chilcott…
A luscious Cosi
More Keenlyside/Cosi here

Lorie at Wizbang picks up on something George Tenet said in an interview this weekendvideo here:

SCOTT PELLEY, CBS’ “60 MINUTES”: January ‘03, the President, again: “imagine those 19 hijackers this time armed by Saddam’s Hussein,” is that what you’re telling the President?

TENNET: Well I can’t explain it.

Writes Lorie: […] Maybe Pelley and Tenet think we should have waited until 2007 to address that threat, then if our estimates were off by a year or three and Saddam had the bomb in 2004, then oopsie, tough break.

Me, I’m surprised that Pelley didn’t ask Tenet about the NYT’s assertion (quickly dropped once they realized it helped, rather than hurt, President Bush) that Saddam was one year away from having nukes when we caught him. Ah, the inconvenient narrative again goes down the rabbit hole.

Christopher Hitchens calls Tenet a sniveling disgrace.

Sister Toldjah notes some challenges to Tenet’s themes that should not go unnoticed.

Michael Ledeen pulls no punches and calls Tenet’s book an utter strikeout:

This is our CIA at work, and unfortunately it’s what we’ve come to expect: the same organization that has been justly excoriated by commission after commission for its lack of understanding of the threat against the United States. Tenet reached his conclusions, and launched a bureaucratic tantrum, without talking to anyone present at the Rome meeting. Neither he nor his associates, nor anyone from his publisher, Harper/Collins, ever asked me about it, and when rumors began to circulate a few years ago, I insisted on recounting the actual facts to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Roger Simon finds errors that will likely go unaddressed, except by Richard Perle who was there…or not there, as it were.

Andrew McCarthy sinks his teeth into Tenet while AJ suggests his whine of a book is meant to set the Impeachment stage.

Flopping Aces says Tenet’s scored a foul, and cites another very interesting part of Tenet’s interview w/ Pelley.

Meanwhile…as we watch the press look ever backward in its quest to look forward to impeachment, no one is paying attention to Iran’s braggadoccio as they declare America “defeated” and take credit for our “withdrawal.”

Thank you, Harry Reid et al.

Related:
Oh, yeah, this is a RECENT hate

I hope someone, somewhere, is keeping count of all the times Al Gore has blocked the press from covering him. I recall he “taught a class” at Columbia University whereby the press was barred and if memory serves, students were warned not to talk to media. Then last year Gore closed the press to a speech he was giving, I can’t recall the particulars, but it was about Global Warming. Now, Gore is addressing the AIA and barring the press, again.

Considering how often this guy closes the door to the press, refuses to take part in debate before the press and dictates to the press what they should and should not cover according to his lights, I can’t understand why the folks in the MSM keep fawning over him. Gore is the antithesis of what they’re supposed to admire - openness, clarity, accessibility.

But he’s got the correct letter after his name, and I guess some in the press feel guilty that they did not give Gore the 10-15% advantage they so zealously (and blindly) pursued (and I believe achieved) for John Kerry.

And after all, Al Gore is not the only leading Democrat who picks and chooses what events the press may be permitted to cover, right Mrs. Clinton?

Al Gore’s not the only Democrat who will take drastic measures to suppress what they don’t like, right ABC?

Didn’t Howard Dean also just make some noise about how candidates should do their speaking without the press around?

Why yes, yes he did, indeed. Isn’t “secrecy” supposed to be bad? Isn’t one of the terrible evils of the Bush Administration that it’s so “secretive?” In the world of the mainstream press, the secrecy of something as vital as the NSA terrorist-wiretapping program is bad, but major political players closing events to media scrutiny is perfectly alright.

I guess secrecy is only bad when it’s not good. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

Ironically, the press loves to suggest that it’s the conservatives who are somehow trying to “stifle freedom of the press,” it’s the right who are blowing Tim Robbins’ “chill wind.”

The MSM wear convenient blinders; they keep themselves from noticing that the suppressive instinct continually flows from the left, where - as Ed Morrissey points out, the inability to control the narrative continues to cue the jackboot. As George Will writes it, perhaps the Fairness Doctrine should perhaps be re-named.

Maybe the folks in the press really do not understand who their friends are, after all. Maybe they’ve simply got the whole “friends/foe” thing mixed up, and not just in Iraq. As I wrote a while back, when some conservatives began eating their own over the illegal immigration questions, the enemy is whoever is trying to shut you up, even if they’re tacitly on the same side as you:

The fascist is whoever is trying to shut you up, shut you down, dis-employ you, silence you, cripple you or marginalize you for the crime of daring to fall out of step with the party and the conventional wisdom. Beware of them.

Who is trying to control the press and what they report, again? And why do they acquiesce? Who will guard the guardians, indeed?

WELCOME: CQ readers (and thanks, Ed!) While you’re here please look around as I’ve finally gotten back to work. We’re also talking about how the left is drinking the same hate-potion they did back in the day, St Catherine’s appreciation for manly men, George Tenet, the continual attempts by the academy to indoctrinate our youth, how Sheryl Crow really can save the world from Global Warming and the prayers God never refuses.

Related:
Media Whores and their Creators
All this Hillary Loyalty would be considered scary in W-land
Gore unhappy with Canada
Climate Change hits Mars

Sort of. I’m feeling 60 billion times better than I did through much of April - the blood counts are better, the immune system (which always poops out when the count goes bad) is stronger. Instead of needing many long naps throughout the day I am getting by with one rather short one, and I’m back to posting, although I’ll be taking it slow, I think, since the brain is still a wee bit foggy.

Also, there is a lot of news for me to catch up with. While I was out of it, I basically cast a bleary eye when I could at Instapundit, Captains Quarters, Jules Crittenden, and the headlines at Lucianne.com and felt reasonably aware of what the gist of the world’s stories were, thanks to them.

Thanks to all of you, once again, for your kind emails…I’ve answered most of you personally, but have a few more to go. More importantly, thank you for your prayers, which I know helped sustain me through the roughest part…I cannot tell you how humbled I am to know that people I don’t even know were praying for me and lifting me up.

But as Jeanette reminds us in this wonderful bit of news, prayer works.

Way back in 2005, we were liking intrepid young filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney, and looking forward to his witty and provocative video pieces at brain-terminal.

Now, Glenn Reynolds is linking to a great review of Maloney’s latest full-length documentary, one which will clearly need some help getting seen, as it dares to expose what Reynolds famously calls “the crushing of dissent” at American Universities.

I don’t want to give anything away, but I was struck by the scientist who said that her students were able to figure out her politics simply by noting what she did not say. Just by teaching her subject, without adding extraneous leftist political harangues, she had revealed herself to be a closet Republican. You won’t believe what happened when the faculty found out about her politics. But the full horror story is almost less disturbing than the reality of that single observation about silence. Particularly in some of the non-science disciplines, it really has gotten to the point where mere silence on matters political is enough to reveal you as the enemy.

A pal of mine, of whom I have written before, has told me much the same. A conservative who teaches Social Studies in a local school district, this woman works hard to keep her own political opinions outside of the classroom, but has been identified as a conservative simply by her silences. Fortunately, her winning personality has allowed her to escape the wrath of most (not all) of her co-workers:

Last week my best pal, who works within the public school system, encountered the same remark from a Social Studies teacher - “I shouldn’t like you; you’re a conservative. And yet, I do like you a lot.”

My pal was taken aback. “He ’shouldn’t’ like me because I’m a conservative? What sort of bigotry is that? No one would ever dream of saying, ‘I shouldn’t like you; you’re black, or I shouldn’t like you, you’re French’- what a sad way to live. Whatever happened to judging people on the content of their character, not on the externals of gender, race, or IDEOLOGY? ‘I like you even though you’re a conservative!‘” she fumed, “that’s like saying, ‘if the fascists ever come for you, I’ll hide you in my attic because you’re one of the good ones - you know, just like Archie Bunker occasionally liked a ‘good’ black person!”

Also, it is important to note that indoctrination does not begin on college. My sons both had minor dust ups in high school, wherein they resisted the politically correct data being programed into them. But they noted - as have other students - that as the older - unindoctrinated - teachers retire, the younger ones coming in seem to feel that teaching is all about passing on the PC nuggets - not about allowing kids to think for themselves. And as Ed Driscoll points out, they start early teaching students that America is to blame for all the worlds ills.

You can watch a trailer for Indoctrination U and sign up there to help the thing be seen. I hope it gets seen, because it’s important.

Related:
PC Kills Larry Summers
Fascism in the Education Schools
Not Everyone Wants or Needs to go to College
There are Different Truths
Buster and Generation Bliss
Future Journalist grills Anchoress
I’d consider home-schooling
The Unstoppable Allure In an Ironic Age

Sheryl Crow’s plea for all of us to save the toilet paper, save the world has been walked back as a “joke” (Ms. Crow, go join John Kerry over in that corner, please). Crow is just glad that her nonsense has people “talking about global warming,” because heaven knowns, no one was talking about it before she opened her yap.

Look, if we’re going to be urged - relentlessly - to accept that global warming is “the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced”, the unrelenting “crisis” of our time, if it’s as urgent a matter as these preening moralists insist it is, then we need to explore concrete, measurable means of conservation that - unlike “sparing the square” - may actually matter. Let’s start with Sheryl Crow’s medium, the rock concert, shall we?

I recall U2’s fun, splendidly ironic “Zoo TV” Tour of the early 1990’s. The band spent over 18 months traveling the globe in support of their fantastic album, “Achtung, Baby”, hitting all the stadiums and large venues on every continent. 157 shows. The tour boasted:

The stage…featured vidi walls, 36 video monitors, numerous television cameras, two separate mix positions, 26 on stage microphones, 176 speakers, and 11 elaborately painted Trabants, several of which were suspended over the stage with spotlights inserted into headlights, which all required 1 million watts of power to operate: enough to run 2,000 homes.

A total of 52 trucks were required to transport the 1,200 tons of equipment, 3 miles of cabling, 200 labourers, 12 forklifts and one 40-ton crane, required to construct the stage.

And that was for every show.

That’s a pretty impressive bit of consumption, but let’s add into it the luxury jets (and non-luxurious staff planes) that carted U2 and their handlers, techies, roadies, belly-dancers, make-up, costumers, etc all around. Add to it the air-conditioning at the indoor venues. Add into it the trains, planes and automobiles used to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the shows. Add to it the klieg lights used for every televised interview, the trees killed to print every magazine promo and to print the $30.00 posters sold at all 157 shows. And consider if you will the souvenir teeshirts - probably stitched together in some hellish Indonesian sweatshop - that weren’t even made out of bamboo fiber!

Good heavens, if only U2 had not run the ZooTV tour, the planet may not be in its death throes, today! If only, when Al Gore was writing Earth in the Balance he had alerted us to this sort of hoggish consumption (by these supporters of the Clinton/Gore campaign) and what it could mean for the planet, the icecaps wouldn’t be melting in 2007!

Now, I grant you, Sheryl Crow is unlikely to mount such a tour, but that noted environmentalist Sting will be keening with The Police through at least 40 venues in North America and who knows where else, worldwide. Already the tour rehearsals are being taped and disseminated - lots of energy being used up - and the posters are being printed. The spotlights, amps, mics etc are being loaded into 18 wheelers. So is all the bottled water that performers, crew and patrons will consume.

I don’t know how CD’s are made - I don’t know if they are (as were vinyl records) petroleum-based products, but in creating a CD - from the time spent in studio, then in production, then in adding a book, then in wrapping, then in transporting in thousands of trucks to hundreds of malls, to the displaying and selling of same in well-lighted music stores - it seems to me an enormous amount of energy is expended. Sheryl Crow, Sting, Bono - these people are consuming energy on unimaginable scales, while wagging their fingers at the rest of us and telling us to be more mindful. Very likely at some point they will take part in some sort of world-wide “awareness concert event,” that will suck up enough power to light up a continent for several nights (and which will generate more posters, tee-shirts, more merchandise to be shipped) in order to demonstrate how much they care, and to tell us to turn off our air-conditioners. They will not care, by the way, whether you come to the concert in a Prius or a Hummer, as long as you slap down your dough and listen to them pontificate. And buy their stuff.

All of these artists will be covered by deathless television news and infotainment crews, who drive their own trucks, use their own lights. The rockers will be joined in their “awareness event” by people like Leonardo DiCaprio, who makes his living in a medium where klieg lights burn by the hour, limos and trucks shuttle important people and their equipment to-and-fro, enormous amounts of paper and tape are expended for promotion (which also involves lots of air-travel - not commercial, for our little princes and princesses, but private). DiCaprio will tell us to take mass-transportation whenever possible while jetting about guilt-free; he’ll be using his Academy-Award Presenter Gift, free carbon-offsets as plenary indulgences, so he’s green. Somewhere in the world a tree will be planted.

Am I wrong, btw, or is film petroleum-based? When summer blockbuster films are being made, doesn’t Hollywood create huge explosions, sending all sorts of pollutants into the air? Has anyone ever bothered to calculate just how much damage the film industry inflicts on the environment when they spray fake snow, or take leaves off of trees to “create” winter? [UPDATE: In fact such a study does exist, and it’s not very flattering to Hollywood - admin]

Getting back to the rockers, I doubt The Police will consume quite as much energy as U2 did in 1992-93, but ZooTV took place at the beginning of the Eight Years Perfection and the Vacation From History. We were all having so much fun that even Al Gore, wasn’t complaining about what a glorious sort of energy-feasting gluttony was being perpetrated by basically all of the rock bands, as big screens and pyrotechnics became ubiquitous -and not just for concerts, but for political events as well.

In these Bushian days, of course, we are living in the very worst era in the history of the world, and we’re being told that in thirty years our children’s planet will die unless we unquestioningly accept the unproven scientific premise that “human activity is warming the planet and this is bad…(but you can save the planet by buying these carbon offsets I’m selling with every copy of Earth in the Balance…”)

If things are as dire as Gore and his minions insist, then I say “stow the concerts, save the world.” Just for one summer, cancel it all!

Of course, that means less fun for all of us, but we should not be having fun when the world is going to end in thirty years, anyway. Canceling summer entertainment in all of its forms will deprive artists and corporations of hundreds of millions of dollars, and those economic losses will trickle down everywhere - to the stores, the restaurants, the hotels, the airlines…the loss of income will affect employment numbers, it will be felt by the vendors selling wares at concerts and even by the Indonesian sweatshops no longer engaged to create $40.00 tee shirts. You will feel the pinch, somehow, and so will I. But a “crisis” situation demands a “crisis” response, and if we suffer a little, at least we all suffer together.

But meanwhile, an entertainment-free summer may have conserved so much energy, that we might just be able to defeat the “man-made catastrophe” of global warming, in its entirety. And wouldn’t that just be something? C’mon, now - wouldn’t it all be worth it?

If Al, Sheryl and Sting and Bono (and I’m a fan) and Leo are willing to do their parts and go away for a few months - for just a few months - in order to save the world, well…I’ll do my part and give them up!

UPDATE: Excellent snark by Lewis Black on celebrity hypocrisy via Instapundit.

More here.

Related:
Fools and money, soon parted
Newsbusters on the scheme of carbon offsets.
Is Fascism like Porn, Do You Know it When you See it?
Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps.

Because I really cannot resist: Glenn Reynolds posted this interesting bit about Canada considering walking from Kyoto and joining the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6). That would be this program, which the press ignored in 2005.

Yes, it’s a Bush idea, which is why you have probably not heard anything about it. No one has, of course. You’re not allowed to know that President Bush is green, because that ruins the narrative, doesn’t it?

As I have said before - if the Global Warming situation were the undeniable and scientifically proven “crisis” some would have us believe, the town cryers would be applauding any and all initiatives. That they do not tells you all you need to know about whether something is real or simply a political wedging tool.

Before I head back to my couch, I just want to say thank you again, for all of your amazingly kind emails. I am slowly mending but tire way too easily and most of my energy is being used up going from doctor to lab to imaging place. I really will try to respond to all of your notes when I can sit up for more than 15 minutes.

Diana Butler Bass has written a strong piece, a fascinating meditation on the mother of Cho Seung Hui:

Other than being the mother of one of the murdered students, I can imagine nothing worse than being the mother of the murderer, a murderer who committed suicide. How isolated she must be. She, too, is grieving, mourning the loss of her only son, mourning her dreams for him, and mourning her memories of his childhood. She has little – except confusion, guilt (however misplaced that may be) and questions.
[…]
I am not calling for a media pursuit of this anguished woman. Rather, her absence from the story strikes a heart-breaking cord, causing me – also a Christian and mother – to wonder about her silence.

Throughout the story, however, Eve says nothing. She is silent. One can only imagine her anguish: Have I birthed this violence into the world? My son, my beloved son, the firstborn of all humanity, is a murderer. He has killed his brother. Is this my fault? What have I done?

You’ll want to read it all.