Some Artwork

It's been awhile since I've posted, as I've been approaching the end of my term, and my writing time has been consumed with papers, studying and various other studious activities. Some of my work involves listening, though, and while I cannot write while listening, I most certainly can draw. Here is the result:

"Le Voyage dans la luna"
based on A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès

"Tripods"

"Self Portrait"

I've been playing around with a few different programs to create the above, namely Manga Studio Debut and Autodesk Sketchbook. I did start the third one by tracing an image, by the way, I'm rubbish otherwise at creating faces that look like the person I'm trying to draw. 

Hope this tides you over till I can return to writing. Cheers!

Neither in Quietism nor Utopian Frenzy

From CNN Money 

Today an important question will be decided. Today we will find out which man will lead the United States of America for the next four years.

This is not something to be taken lightly. To vote is a solemn duty¹ of every member of the Republic, and the role of the president as leader of the most powerful Western nation is a crucial one.

Yet, today, as we execute this duty, let those of us who are Christians not forget our highest allegiance. Christ alone is our Lord, and no early leader, be he liberal, conservative, or any other stripe, it the ultimate master of history.

We are called by our Lord to work for good in this world, and that means, among other things, that we must do our right duties as members of whatever nation we find ourselves in. If that nation is a Republic, that means we should vote.

We are not to be quietists, sitting on the sidelines and letting the world go whatever way it may. Or worse, as quietism all too often actually does, participating in the acts of the sinful world thinking it doesn't matter since God is in control.

On the other hand, we must remember that the world will not stand or fall on the actions of any man but Christ. Let the heathens rage at the heavens, the ultimate good has been accomplished on the cross. No matter who wins today, the world will not end. Ultimately, we must remember that Utopia is not ours to bring, and that while the Lord will use the work we do in building His Kingdom, it is He alone who can finally usher it in.

Do good work, but do not fret or fear. You stand secure in the One centre of all time and space who cannot be moved. The One is True, Good and Beautiful loves you and loves this world, and His word will be final. In the last day He shall come and wipe every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4) and justice at last shall be accomplished, but until that day let us in humility sow good seed in the little gardens we are given.

Especially in a country like American, which for all its problems is no tyranny, the leader we choose will not ultimately be able to do either too great of good, or of evil.

So I call to my Christian brothers and sisters to vote, in hope and peace of mind, and of course always with prayer upon our lips.

____________________________________________
1. It is a solemn duty I must confess I am failing in this year, as I was not responsible in ordering an absentee ballot in time.

All Saints vs Reformation Day

from WikiPaintings

On October 31st, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. For many, this marks the beginning of the Reformation, and the end of Roman dominion in the western church. Because October 31st marked the beginning of Protestantism, it is celebrated by many as Reformation Day.

It is fine for those of us not in fellowship with the Holy See to celebrate what we see as the end of many abuses perpetrated by the Church of Rome. Yet, there is an even more important holiday that we should not forget to celebrate. For October 31st is the eve of All Saints. Last year, I wrote a blog post commending the celebration of Halloween over the celebration of Harvest Festivals, since in the celebration of All Saints we celebrate "the holistic communion between all the saints extended throughout history and geography - the catholic communion."

This year, for the same reason, I want to commend the celebration of All Saints over the celebration of Reformation Day. As I said, it is fine to celebrate what we see as being gained in the Ninety-Five Theses, but we should not loose sight of the fact that Protestantism is an expression of a faith older and larger than it. The final reality we should all point to is the eschatological reality of union in Christ. The Church, despite her broken outward appearance, is spiritually one. To celebrate the communion of Saints is thus a much more noble thing than to celebrate any particular expression of that communion. Especially, it is greater than celebrating an event which, however important, was also responsible for the most serious visible fracturing of that Church since the Great Schism.

Therefore, with all the Saints let us give glory to God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for the Passion and Resurrection of His Son by which we have been called from all peoples into one family. 

A Quick "Defense" of the Disney LucasFilms Buyout

From Disney

I have a big midterm tomorrow, so this is going to have to be quick. For those of you who don't know, Disney has bought out LucasFilms and made plans to release a new Star Wars film in 2015.

Many fanboys and girls have dutifully announced the end of the world.

It's an understandable reaction. Afterall, Star Wars has already been trampled on so horribly by Lucas, imagine what the Mouse might do. Nevertheless, I, for one, am cautiously optimistic.

To begin with, let's face the fact that Star Wars will never be what the originals were. Even a film that matches their quality will never match their magic. Let's also admit that, as I said before, Lucas himself has trampled on Star Wars. The prequels are horrible. Moreover, Star Wars stuff is being made. There's already the Clone Wars TV show, plans for a live action show, and that peculiar Seth Green comedy being made.

Disney has also shown they can do Star Wars. Star Tours is a brilliant expression of the Star Wars universe (at least the original is, I'm not really acquainted with the new one).

Not too long ago, Disney bought out Marvel, to similar fan distress. Now, that wasn't as big of a deal as this, but let's look at what's happened. Despite jokes to the contrary, Mickey Mouse has not waltzed into a Marvel film. Moreover, there's that little thing called Avengers. It hasn't all been perfect, of course - witness Disney's cancellation of the near perfect Spectacular Spider-man to replace it with an utter failure, but neither has it been disastrous.

Star Wars has needed to be emancipated from Lucas for a long time. A cultural myth that big shouldn't be in the hands of one man whose vision for it is so utterly divorced from that of his fans. I suspect a new Star Wars film under the direction of Disney will be good. Not, as I said, as good as the originals (but we still have those, and who knows, maybe Disney will let us get our hands on the original originals again), but possibly at least as good as Avengers, which is considerably better than the disaster of the prequels.

Here's to hope.

Holy Virginity

Virgin Mary Annunciate by Fra Angelico
from WikiPaintings 

Sex is good. Or so I've been told, loudly and often, by churches eager to set themselves apart from a past perceived as anti-sex. We are not those old Greek Fathers who hated sex. We now see that the Jews perceived sex as unambiguously good, and so, therefore, should we. Nevermind, of course, that the culture which surrounded the Greek Fathers also saw sex as good, and engaged in it, apparently, in ways wild enough to make the sexual revolution look like a Victorian luncheon. Nevermind that when Socrates, in Phaedrus, contrasted love and sex, he was doing so in a society in which pederasty was the norm. Nevermind that Christianity, in making virginity a virtue for all people actually created great liberty for women.

And certainly let's not ask how we got from the (admittedly extreme) place of St. Gregory of Nyssa insisting that the Song of Songs could only be allegory and not about sex at all, to a place where Mark Driscoll can claim it's not at all allegory, but just a sex manual.

No, nevermind all that, the Greek Fathers were prudes, and we most certainly are not.

Of course, we are quickly reminded, this is sex in its proper context, which is marriage. Till we can have this proper sex, we should wait. Virginity, then is virtuous.

Yet what if the Greek Fathers had a point? Yes, sexuality is a good thing, when it is, and we should never cease to give glory to God for His gift to us of it. Yet in a world in which sin is a reality, it is hardly unambiguously good. Its not just promiscuous sex that's the problem either, married relations have their fair share of problems.

I vehemently affirm the proposition that sex is good, and that we should not forget this fact. Yet, it's a fact that would be hard for us to forget in the world we live in. Our culture frequently tells us that sex is good. We tell ourselves sex is good. And let's not forget the huge problems that single men and women in the pastorate have in finding jobs, or the marginal place which single people are assigned in our churches. Nor is it unproblematic that, in my experience, the Christian desire for companionship looks almost identical to that of the contemporary non-Christian world, and radically different from that of the past. The pendulum has swung too far.

Let us continue to affirm the goodness of sex, but let us recover virginity. Let us affirm the positive goodness of virginity as a virtue, and not just its negative goodness. In other words, let us not just see virginity as avoiding a sin of commission, but as a positive commission of virtue. Let us also not fall into the trap of thinking that spiritual virginity is asexual. To engage virginity as a Christian virtue is very much to engage ones sexuality. One cannot be a virgin without being a sexual being.

We should also not let the religious virgins and sacramental marriages be two different worlds. Both expressions of Christian virtue ought to speak into and inform each other.

Many of the great Saints of the Church, from St. Paul to St. Thomas Aquinas, and above all, of course, the Virgin Mary, have been such virgins.

 I will close by saying that it is not impossible to transverse from one world into another. For those, like me, who are single, but do not feel a call to lifetime celibacy, there is still a place for positively engaging our virginity as a special gift by which can be identified with the great Saints of the Church, and be shaped more into the image and likeness of Christ. We can, and ought to, engage our virginity as a prayer unto God, and not merely as a waiting room for the glorious future of marital bliss. Let us be present to where we are, that, in the sacrament of the present moment, we, with all the Saints, might be transformed by God's love so that our lives might be a good for the sake of others.

The Martyrs Testify: Christian Catholicity Against the Victim Mentality

The Martyrdom of St. Stephen
by Annibale Carracci from WikiPaintings

A few weekends ago, Regent College had a conference on faith and politics. During this conference, Peter Leithart spoke on the role of martyrs in the transformation of society. He emphasized the powerful witness of the Christian martyrs against the system of power in the old roman world, and how this witness stood as a prophecy of the coming destruction of pagan Rome, and as a prayer to the God who would surely not let the seed of the martyr blood lie fallow. Leithart then emphasized that we ought to identify ourselves with the martyr witness.

In response to this, Iwan Russel-Jones worried that to focus on the martyrs would simply encourage the harmful victim mentality of modern evangelical Christians.

And he's right - it might. Indeed, I think it will if we continue to forget the catholicity of the Church. If we forget that we are one body with the martyrs past, present and future, then we may indeed exaggerated our own sense of cultural alienation into melodramatic martyr language.

However, I believe that the prescription of Peter Leithart is precisely what we need to cure the victim mentality. For Leithart is not advocating a localized view of martyrdom and the church, but a global one. When we are truly catholic, remembering that many Christians today are true martyrs, and that they are our brothers and sisters, along with the saints in Heaven who's prayers continually go up before the throne of God, then we can be under no illusion that our present trials are martyrdom. Our witness will become the prayers, fasting and acts of service we do in honour of those whose lives have become true sacrifices.

Let us remember the martyr-saints who have gone before us, and those who stand beside us in the Church militant.

A Reflection on Angels

by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo via WikiPaintings

The grace of God is a terrible thing. Not in the more common parlance, but in the old sense of a thing likely to cause terror. For we, our faith tells us, have been creatures of the darkness who "loved darkness rather than light, because [our] deeds were evil" (John 3:19). The light blinds us, the message of God leaves us paralyzed.The Word of God, by whom we are made whole, is "like a refiner's fire" (Malachi 3:2).

Is it any wonder then, that throughout scriptures, the presence of angels, the messengers who carry the words of God, leaves men stricken with holy terror? Often, this is understood as a result of the angel's otherworldly nature, for they are indeed utterly eldritch in their appearance. Yet, might it not be they themselves that terrify, but the message they carry?

For though they bring good news, the message is also terrifying. We are called to give up ourselves, to raise crosses and be buried with Christ that we might live to God. That this is a scary thing should not be downplayed.

To those in darkness, the messengers of God seem to bring death. Yet, though we die, if it be in Christ we shall live. Like Isaiah, though we be men of "unclean lips," God will make us clean that we might become messengers of His Kingdom (Isaiah 6:5-7).

We will, and we should, fear this message of God, but more so should we hope. The messengers of God are but creatures, and the words they have brought us are not, ultimately, words of death, but words of life! Today, as we celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, let us remember to whom their presence should ever point us. Let us, when we hear the message, like the blessed virgin Mary, declare to God, "Let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). Let us receive Christ this day, that "as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen" (Angelus).