Matching Tracksuits

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Dead Door

Wednesday 16 February 2022

“Today’s the day we kill them off!” I declared as we started class today. We acted the entire fifth act in class. All three scenes amount to little more than half of act one, I’d say. They enjoyed it, I think. Kids said, “You know, you were right: I couldn’t understand Shakespeare at all when we started, but now I don’t even feel I need to look at the simplified version most of the time.”

In the afternoon, we got word about our homeroom’s door decoration: we won second place in the school. First place — another class on our team. Third place — another eighth-grade class. Our grade swept them! Our team took the top spots!

A fun day to be an eighth-grade teacher.

 

Faking It

Tuesday 15 February 2022

Juliet is dead now — at least in the eyes of her parents and extended family. Instead of marrying Paris today and going off to live in bliss as her parents anticipated, she has died in her sleep.

It’s strange how easily Friar Laurence manages to steer the family away from all thoughts other than the one he most desperately desires: get her buried as soon as possible, for who knows — from his perspective — what will happen if his potion wears off before they get her in the family crypt.

But why isn’t Capulet more concerned with what happened? How could a young girl die so suddenly? I think the notion, prevalent then, that someone could die of a broken heart goes a long way in explaining this. For Capulet, it’s easy enough just to accept the fact that Juliet never really got over her sorrow for Tybalt’s death, and it was of that broken heart that she died.

Soccer Practice

Monday 14 February 2022

It’s that time of year that includes “spring” in many things in the South (like “spring soccer season”) yet has weather most assuredly not-spring-like. We arrived at soccer practice at 6:30, and it was 54 degrees. By the time we left ninety minutes later, the temperature had dropped 11 degrees.

“My big toe is numb!” the Boy declared.

The Climb

Sunday 13 February 2022

It’s a bit steeper than it appears.

Spring 2022 Season Opener

Saturday 12 February 2022

We’re on a new team this year.

We were hoping for a change for how things went last season (i.e., not winning a single game and drawing only once).

Sadly, it was more of the same: 0-2.

Clerical Error

Friday 11 February 2022

A curious story appeared in Newsweek the other day that highlights some of the quirks of Catholicism. Apparently, a priest there has been saying the wrong words during baptisms, which makes the baptisms invalid:

A priest with over two decades’ worth of service to multiple congregations has resigned “with a heavy heart” in the wake of revelations that he incorrectly performed baptisms.

Father Andres Arango, who most recently served in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, was found to have used the wrong phrasing.

When performing the sacrament, Arango would say, “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

However, as the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made the diocese aware, the use of the word “we” made the baptisms “invalid.” Instead, Arango was supposed to use the phrase “I baptize” rather than “we baptize.” (Source)

So all these families have been taking their children to the priest to say the right words in order to remove the effects of the apple curse and safeguard their children from the horrors of hell, and this guy has been saying the wrong words! According to Catholic teaching, if they’re not validly baptized, they’re not saved. If they died still a child, then they go to limbo heaven — I forgot, the Catholic church changed that teaching when enough people protested that the idea of infants going to limbo for eternity was unconscionable. (Does this mean that all the infants in limbo never were in limbo, or did they get a “Get out of limbo free” card?)

For the poor schmucks who made it to adulthood and thought they were freed of the effects of the talking-snake-induced apple curse, it’s another story. These folks died in the assurance of heaven only to awaken in the next life to the surprise of, well, not just their lives but of eternity.

“Um, excuse me, I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” they shriek, doing their best to maintain some kind of professional decorum.

“No, no mistake,” the demon idly pulling their intestines out and wrapping them around its forefinger says, almost sounding bored.

“Yes, I think there was. You see, I was baptized.”

The succubus pauses for a moment, tightens the ringlets of intestine just a bit, yawns and says, “No, I’m afraid you weren’t. You see, Father Arango said ‘we baptize you’ when all decent priests know the correct words are ‘I baptize you.’ A simple clerical error, to be sure, but nonetheless, an error.”

“But, but!”

The demon becomes irate: “Now look here — we don’t make the rules about these or those magic words. We’re just as bound to the formalities as you are.” He gives a good tug, dislodging the large intestines. “You’d have to take that up with God.”

“Where is he?”

“Not here,” giggles the tormentor…

All joking aside, there are lot of people now unnecessarily mentally tortured with the thought that their loved one is in fact in hell because of a priest’s mistake. Just how many people might be going through this?

Katie Burke, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Phoenix, told Newsweek that while the diocese has no exact number of invalid baptisms Arango performed, the number is “in the thousands.”

Thomas Olmsted, bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, wrote a January 14 letter to his congregation informing them of the invalid baptisms. He said it is his responsibility to be “vigilant over the celebration of the sacraments,” adding that it is “my duty to ensure that the sacraments are conferred in a manner” consistent with the Gospel and the tradition’s requirements.

I guess Father Arango should have realized the importance of using the proper words…

Band

Thursday 10 February 2022

Every morning during every third week of school, I spend half an hour listening to toots and honks, squawks and whistles, in various states of harmony and dissonance as band members willing to come in before school practice their pieces. I peek into the room and see at least one or two students who, in my class, are less than focused. Here, they’re all focus, all attention, counting out measures as they wait for their entrance, glancing here and there in anticipation of the trumpets’ entry or the flutes’ flourish.

Circles and Spirals

Thursday 10 February 2022

I’m reading Trent Horn’s Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties. He speaks of Karl Keating’s argument for scriptural inspiration, saying “when taken as just a reliable human document, the Bible shows that Christ not only rose from the dead, but that he established a Church built on the apostles.” These apostles “were then able to authoritatively declare the Bible to be the word of God.” So the Bible proves the church and the church proves the veracity of the Bible. That’s called circular reasoning, isn’t it? Horn doesn’t think so.

This is not a circular argument, in which an inspired Bible is used to prove the Church’s authority and the Church’s authority is used to prove that the Bible is inspired. Instead, as Keating says, it is a “spiral argument,” in which the Bible is assumed to be a merely human document that records the creation of a divinely instituted Church. This Church then had the authority to pronounce which human writings also had God as their author.

The level of cognitive dissonance in this statement is absolutely astounding. He can assert that calling it a “spiral argument” somehow removes the circularity of the argument, but in essence, he is still using the Bible to prove the Church to prove the Bible. No Christian ever regards the Bible as “a merely human document.” People regard the Bible as authoritative because they see it as divinely authored. I get that this is a distinctly Catholic explanation of things, but no Catholic ever sees the Bible this way, either. It is, defacto, divinely inspired in their eyes. The so-called divine nature of the Catholic church is in no way illustrated in the pages of the Bible, and we still have the basic problem of Biblical error: how are we to know that that particular portion of the Bible detailing the founding of the church is accurate? In short, we don’t. We have to take that on faith. And who is the one explaining all of this? The Church. So the Church says the Bible is just a humanly written document that proves the Church is divinely inspired, which then proves the Bible is not just a humanly-written document.

It’s almost as convoluted as God impregnating Mary to give birth to God to die to appease God’s anger, which is the story of Christianity in its most simplistic form.

New Soccer Season

Wednesday 9 February 2022

The sprint soccer season has begun — first practice was tonight. E is with a new team and a new coach. We’re playing on fields only 5 minutes away from our house rather than 20 minutes away.

E’s first impression: “The coach is good. And the kids are nice to me.”

I also had a good impression from what one of the parents said. Here’s hoping this season will be better than the last, which was not terrible, but certainly had some drawbacks.

New Desk

Tuesday 8 February 2022

K has decided to return to surveying. She’s landed a work-at-home gig that pays quite well without the moral stresses the current real estate market is putting on her. The things you have to recommend to your client these days to get a winning bid just feel too morally questionable to her, and then there’s the stress of working, working, working, and not even knowing if you’ll get paid (i.e., your client will have a winning offer).

Part of working at home involves creating a new work space, with a fancy dual-monitor display system on an adjustable desk.

We got most of it set up tonight.

Fundamentalism and Democracy

Monday 7 February 2022

This is from about a year ago, but it is very much worth the time it takes to watch it. And anyone who watches this and is not terrified on some level…

At the heart of this, Jeremiah Jennings (who goes by the name Prophet of Zod on social media) points out that functioning society involves discussing disagreements with people while holding a few assumptions in mind:

He then goes on to point out, very convincingly, how fundamentalist Christianity doubts or even outright disputes each of these claims. The implications this civic breakdown has for democracy are frightening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lqaqp5TwnU

Sleeping with the Sharks

Sunday 6 February 2022

E’s Cub Scout pack had a special activity in Gatlinburg Tennessee this weekend: sleeping with the sharks at the aquarium. We went early Saturday afternoon and caught some amazing views on the way.

Once there, the Boy went go-carting, played some mini-golf, spent some time in an arcade, and tried mussels for the first time.

From there, we went to the aquarium. It was quite a unique opportunity for the kids, getting to spend a lot of time as the sole visitors in the whole complex.

This morning, we spent a little time in the aquarium before heading out for more mini-golf, some laser tag, and some lunch.

A busy weekend to say the least.

Lighthouse

Saturday 5 February 2022

In a scene in After Life,  Ricky Gervais’s character Tony Johnson is in the car as his brother-in-law drives, and he’s looking for music to play. He pulls out a CD, identifies the artist, and starts mocking his brother-in-law.

“Lighthouse Family?!?” he asks incredulously. He’s tempted to throw the disc out the window as he does several others.

Immediately I think, “I’ve listened to them. Or at least I’ve heard of them.” I hit “Pause” and sit staring at the screen. “Who was that group? How do I know them?” I wonder. I pull out my phone, load Spotify, search “Lighthouse Family,” play the first song that appeared, and in an instant, I know something is about to change.

When you’re close to tears remember
Someday it’ll all be over
One day we’re gonna get so high

The singer begins, accompanied by some light strings, a piano, and an organ.

“I’ve heard this, I think.”

The second line begins and the bass and drums enter:

Though it’s darker than December
What’s ahead is a different color
One day we’re gonna get so high.

“I’ve heard this! I know I’ve heard this — countless times, it seems.” But I can’t place it. Then the pre-chorus begins:

And at
The end of the day remember the days
When we were close to the edge
And wonder how we made it through the night
The end of the day remember the way
We stayed so close till the end
We’ll remember it was me and you

“This seems so very familiar!” But I still can’t place where I’d heard it. It feels like hearing a line from a film, knowing I’ve seen the film, but not even being able to remember the scene, the title, the actor. I familiar void.

When the chorus enters, though, I know. I remember where I’ve heard this song. I remember why I’ve heard it so many times.

‘Cause we are gonna be
Forever you and me
You will
Always keep me flying high
In the sky of love

“My God! It’s that song!”

In 1997, just a year after I’d moved to Poland, this song had just been about everywhere. On the radio. Playing in passing cars. At bars. At discos (i.e., Polish discos — dance places). Everywhere. And I always hated that song — so saccharine. Admittedly, the guy’s voice is gold, but the song itself? So empty. So vapid.

Yet I sit here listening to it, suddenly transported by a song I haven’t heard in over twenty years, a song I have thankfully and mercifully forgotten in probably just as long, and I feel such a longing to go back to that time for just one evening, just one beer, just one song. This song. It’s a song I hate and now, thanks to Ricky Gervais’s After Life, I love in that syrupy way that only nostalgia can inspire.

Negotiation

Thursday 3 February 2022

Going over some words in class today that might be new to some students (it was my remedial class), I started asking kids questions about the words.

“What might you prioritize as a student?”

“Your work!” someone responded. If only, young man, if only.

“What might I make projections about as a teacher?”

“Grades.” Yes, and if only you knew the projections — no, you probably do.

“With whom might you negotiate?”

“Your parents.” Of course.

“I don’t negotiate with my parents,” says one boy. “I do what I want.”

Bravado or inadvertent succint social commentary?

Test Day

Wednesday 2 February 2022

I swear, I’ve been teaching more than 20 years now, and I still cannot make a test for a gifted class that doesn’t just decimate the confidence of a significant number of students.

“Mr. S, I felt so much better about this test than the last one!”

I went through the test before the kids took it today and made some modifications that I was sure would help.

I had a couple of questions that, if one read it carefully, actually answered a couple of other questions partially. I made sure every passage I asked detailed questions about had appeared in in-depth in-class discussion/analysis. And still, a significant number of students were very disappointed with their scores.

But “decimating the confidence of a significant number of students” is not the same as “a large number of failing grades.” In fact, of 55 students who have taken it so far (several are absent for obvious 2022 reasons), only two failed outright. The curve, without any fiddling, looks quite acceptable:

Yet this type of curve is completely unacceptable to a group of high-achieving honors students. There will, no doubt, be requests for extra credit and the like.

(Side note: this marks post number 5,000. How ridiculous!)

Playing Cards

Tuesday 1 February 2022

K has been teaching the Boy how to play tysiąc. He’s getting the idea, but in the end, he still prefers a good game of war.

Just like he played with Babcia:

Playing Cards

Barron’s Response

Monday 31 January 2022

On Bishop Robert Barron’s minstry’s YouTube channel — Word on Fire — he had a conversation with staff member Brandon Vogt after Barron’s interview with Alex O’Connor in which they promised to go a little deeper in the responses.

Vogt points out that Barron and O’Connor went back and forth for a long time on faith, and invited Barron to elucidate a little. Instead, he just gave the same analogy, changing it from getting to know his interlocutors to getting to one one’s spouse:

The analogy which I think is very illuminating there I often use is come to know a person. So you’re coming to know another human being. Of course, reason is involved all the time. I mean, reason understands all sorts of things, but there is a moment when that person, if you’re coming to real intimacy with that person, reveals something about herself that you could not in principle know no matter how many google searches and how much analysis and how much how clever you. There’s no way you’d get what’s in that person’s heart unless she chooses to reveal it, at which point you have to make a decision: do I believe it or not. Now is it credible what she’s saying, and you might say, “Yeah it is because it’s congruent with everything else I know about her.” At the same time, is it reducible to what I know about her? No, otherwise it wouldn’t be a revelation. So that’s why it’s a false dichotomy to say reason or faith. No, it’s reason that has reached a kind of limit, but reason has opened a door. Reason has poised you for the self-manifestation of another.

Well, that’s not just with God; that happens all the time. When two people are married and deeply in love, I’m sure you could point to those moments when [your wife] revealed something to you that you would never ever have known otherwise. You revealed something about yourself to her and then the two of you, because you’re in love with each other, I imagine said, “Yeah, I believe that.”

Now, can I reduce that to an argument? No, you never can. In a way it remains always mysterious to you yet your will, in that case, has commanded your intellect. That’s exactly what Thomas Aquinas says about faith. It’s a rare instance when the will commands the intellect. Normally, it moves the other way right? The intellect kind of leads the will. The intellect understands the good and then it leads the will, but in the case of faith, the will leads the intellect. It says, “No this is worthy of belief. This person who’s speaking to me is worthy of belief, and what the person is telling me is congruent with reason yet beyond it, and so I choose to believe.” That’s the relationship between faith and reason it seems to me so.

In the debate with O’Connor, Barron defined faith as “the response to a revealing God.” That makes very little sense in terms of how most people use faith. “You just have to have faith that God’s plan, which involves this horrendous suffering, will result in good,” someone might say. Let’s switch those out: “You just have to have [the response to a revealing God] that God’s plan, which involves this horrendous suffering, will result in good.” Clearly, this definition of “faith” is not the same as the original sentence’s sense of “faith.” This might work for “the Christian faith” — “the Christian response to a revealing God.” That works. That’s fine. You’d also have “the Muslim response to a revealing God,” and so on — but this “faith” just means “belief system” or even “religion.”

Furthermore, the faith that Barron gives in this example is not faith — it’s trust. It’s a trust that is based on experiential evidence. I believe my wife because she’s shown herself to be trustworthy. I wouldn’t make this same move (to use a favorite Barron term) with a stranger. The only time such a move (there it is again) is conceivable is if the revelation the stranger gives you is utterly trivial: “I have a dog.”

This faith/trust often moves into faith/trust in Jesus, that we’re to get to know Jesus and then we’ll have faith in him. Or trust in him. But that is utterly different from the situation with my wife. My wife is physically present with me. She’s not some hypothetical spiritual being out there but a real person that I can observe and talk to.

“You can get to know Jesus,” comes the rejoinder. But how? Directly? No.

I can get to know him through the Bible, but that’s problematic for obvious reasons that I’ve discussed numerous times here. It’s filled with contradictions. The image of God presented in the Old Testament is positively barbaric. It’s packed with immorality commanded from God — it’s just not a good example of a good supposedly written by an omnipotent being.

I can get to know him through what the church teaches about him, and here the Catholic church has a leg up on Protestants because they don’t restrain themselves to the Bible. The magisterium has equal footing — or nearly-equal footing. So if the Pope says it ex-cathedra, it’s an article of faith. Still, that’s just the same as relying on the Bible — it’s a product of humans.

Finally, I can get to know him in that way that Evangelicals and Mormons are especially fond of: that sense we have in our heart (it’s telling that religions insist on using that metaphor when we’ve known for ages that the seat of our intellect is not our hearts but our brains — it’s an attempt, I suspect, to move the whole experience away from the intellect) that God is involved in our lives. That warm feeling in their hearts that Christians attribute to the Holy Spirit. I don’t doubt the experience of that warm feeling, but to attribute it to anything outside one’s own mind is itself an act of faith, an act not based on evidence. “It’s the Holy Spirit!” the Bible proclaims and our pastors echo, and so Christians accept that explanation. Muslims have the same experiences but attribute that not to the Holy Spirit (that would be blaspheme, for God is one!) but to Allah. Hindus would make the same move. (It’s rubbing off on me.)

So all three ways we get to know God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit are questionable: they’re all open to interpretation; none are firmly grounded on rational reasoning based on evidence. That is what we skeptics mean when we say that faith is not reason, that it does not work in a similar way, and that it is separate from (sometimes anathema to) evidence.

Bishop Barron on Faith

Sunday 30 January 2022

I was listening to a debate between Alex O’Connor and Bishop Robert Barron on YouTube during my run this evening, and they got to talking about the nature of faith. I wanted to respond to it, but I didn’t want to take the time to transcribe large portions of the video, so I tried my first-ever response video…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmkvZTjsnGU

The original debate is here:

Pinewood Derby 2022

Saturday 29 January 2022

For this year’s car, we decided to get a little silly.

Post-race damage evident

“I can’t believe we didn’t make a single cut on the car this year!” was the Boy’s refrain.

We drilled a couple of holes to put in some weight; we sanded a lot; and we painted a bit. However, not a single cut.

We haven’t had a lot of success in the pinewood derby. I don’t think the Boy has even placed in his den let alone the pack.

Still, we kept trying. Last year, we employed a number of tricks:

  • polishing the axels;
  • bending the axles to make the wheels point outward at the bottom to minimize friction;
  • mounting one front wheel high so that it didn’t touch the track;
  • making sure we’d put the weight in the perfect location relative to the car’s center of gravity.

None of that really helped.

I think this year we were both hopeful that if we didn’t place in the actual race we might get some recognition for originality. After all, we entered a stick of butter.

“I can’t believe we didn’t make a single cut on the car this year!”

It did about as well as our fine-tuned, finely-balanced car from last year in the race. And in the superlatives?

The Boy’s expression says it all.

“I was hoping to win something today,” he said quietly afterward.