McDonalds!

January 30, 2008

Well, no cleats in San Sal that worked out for me to buy. Very sad. I did reveal some photos, and I took Francisco with me as a guide to some new places. I also broke down and treated him to a cultural experience at McDonalds… a rarity indeed because it’s SOOOO expensive here. Its 5 dollars for a Big Mac combo here, that’s 5 hours of internet time!

Anyways, not much else to report as of late. My fever has pretty much disappeared, but the faint headache is still on its way out. Weird. I’ve spent the last few days of recovery enjoying the Journey Home Network downloads (part of the Coming Home Network). I have tried to catch up on the Brothers Karamazov as well, but the headache kept that limited. Although I’ve only got about 100 pages left!

“Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education. Remember too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, “Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to-day.” For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected, that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not. And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too. And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much more will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you. And He will forgive him for your sake.”

The Brothers Karamazov, Book Six, The Russian Monk, p. 293

Dia de my boy De Sales

January 24, 2008

An interesting historical primary document from the beginning of the Counter Reformation (id say)

Following on the heels of Saint Sebastian, the epitome of the active will, today is celebrated his counterpart of the elevated intellect on my birthday of all days, one of my favorite writers in the past 2000 years……Saint Francis de Sales. He was a young priest sent to the southern region of France in the latter 16th century, I believe, to try and counter the influence of Calvinism there which had converted nearly the entire population. For years he tried to get people to listen to him, much less donate food for him to survive while he was there, but he roamed without much of anything other than his two books. He later then had the idea of writing pamphlets and leaving them under the doors of houses on certain topics. Soon after his success with some families took off and by the end of his life, it is said that the entire region had reverted back to the universal faith, some number greater than 50,000. Not bad for starting with just a few dozen Catholic families. These pamphlets were later gathered into a single book, under the name Controversies. He also has another one that’s not too shabby.

Oh yeah, I would also like to apologize for my leaving out a word in one of the comments on the discussion about faith a few posts ago. I left out the word ‘not’, when I said, “and let it be known that I do agree with the analogy of us being a dunghill covered by snow.” Oops, the devil is working overtime lately.

Speaking of the devil, man I’ve had a fever and headache the past few days, and it peaked the night of my bday when well… it was a long night. Hopefully it’s out of my system today. Some say that it’s from the powder from the roads here, that’s seems to be a popular reason for sickness this time of year. Oh well.

It wont fit.

Let’s see what else. There were some interesting conversations last night after dinner. I think it all started when I brought the Iliad and the Odyssey over to show their kids the size of the actual stories….they are reading excerpts right now in school of them. Later the topic of encyclicals came up and I told him that I had found a Spanish copy of Benedict’s first one “God is Love” here in the house if he wanted to read it… he’s always sad that I don’t have anything in Spanish that he can read too…haha. The access to that kind of stuff is somewhat non-existent here, for so many reasons. From there, we were all around a bucket of some kind of beans and we were peeling them and talking about random things. Francisco, one of the kids who I would say is the least religious in the family, I think he basically just doesn’t see its use, so after Don Raul asked his usual history or religious questions, I asked Francisco the question that Edward asked earlier in the comments to see how he would respond. If God is all powerful, can he create a rock so big that he can’t lift it. He laughed and without skipping a beat said, “While I think its kind of obvious that if he can create it, he can pick it up.” Which I know only answers part of the question, but I was happy to accept that part, because my Spanish wasn’t good enough to fully express what I wanted at the moment haha. After we discussed Pascal’s Wager for a few minutes, to which Don Raul really enjoyed, laughing for a while at the end. The final story that came up while stripping beans, was a discussion between Don Raul and his wife Dona Amalia about some person in the Bible, and whether they were the same person or different because they had the same name.

I think Im hurting.

I couldn’t help but lead in to the subject by using the Mary situation. I told them that many Protestants believe that Mary had more children than just Jesus. Dona Amalia’s first response was ‘ahhhh whatever’ (a liberal translation). So I had to explain that they take it from a few certain verses in the Bible where we have in our English translation as Mary being the mother of James and Joses (Joseph) as well (Mark 6:3). But I told her (who thought that the person of discussion was the same) that she has to be careful at times when thinking people with same names are the same person. Using the Mary situation, I pointed to the fact that at the crucifixion of Christ it says that Mary and John were at the base of the cross, and that a separate Mary, the mother of James and Joses, looked on from afar with some other people (Matt 27:55-6). So just reading one verse, she might come to that conclusion, but sometimes you have to dig into Scripture a little more ;) (or more in this case in Tradition that has always supported the fact that Mary had no other seed…..check out one example in St. Jerome’s late fourth century rebuttal On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary against Helvidius, you can find the complete transcript of the ancient document here… http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3007.htm)
As far as the birthday goes, I was writing grants with Don Mauricio all morning, even though the temperature came back and I became somewhat useless haha. I rested during the day and took some drugs and felt better and then went to dinner with the Lopez family. They had made chicken tamales and then we had sweet bread and coffee. It was fun, they told jokes and took pics with my camera etc. I ended up going to bed early at 930 after reading some more Fyodor, but was back up again by 1030 :)

Don Raul cracks me up in the background.

Saturday I’m planning on going to the capital with Francisco to check out some rumors of cleats that can fit me in the capital. As well as Saturday morning talking with the fam through the internet. Hoorah.

Dante has an interesting allusion in Paradiso.

“On earth my body[John the Evangelist] now is earth and shall
be there together with the rest until
our number equals the eternal purpose.
Only those two lights [Jesus and .....see 4th Catholic/Lutheran Commandment and 5th others] that ascended wear
their double garment [body and soul] in this blessed cloister[heaven].
And carry this report back to your world [earth].”

Dante, Canto XXV, Paradiso

Please someone ask why I say Catholic fourth commandment. Ok fine, Ill share, actually Wikipedia had a very informative article on the subject with some decent sources. I guess this is also reflected in our minor differences in the ending of the Our Father.

January 25, 2008

Just wanted to write this to congratulate Ansley on her package arriving on my birthday, that’s impressive timing. Once again, she came through with the Reese’s. Very Nice. This quotes for you, letter to follow.

“God whispers in your soul and speaks to your mind. Sometimes when you don't have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at you. It's your choice: Listen to the whisper, or wait for the brick.”

Unknown.

Dia de San Sebastian

January 20, 2008

Holler to my boy Sebastian today. Coming up on my bday is the feast day of the other bastion of faith that I enjoy.




The past few days have been fun and busy and each day a different new thingy. I really wanted to say that word for some reason….thingy. Haha. Anyways, yeah lets see…. ummm… well the little basin that keeps my water for bathing someone how leaked all the water out in an hour. It was actually somewhat impressive…I saw it half full, and an hour later, ha, no more. Some of it is leaking the room, but most of it I think is outside. So I’ve been looking for some kind of caulking here in the town, but not any luck, I could do a little cement mix, but Don Raul told me they tried it like three times and its still eventually leaking. So I don’t know what I’m going to do, I might have to go to the capital or Zacate soon to get this sucker working.




Hmmm… oh yea, I went to the inauguration of a basketball/soccer court that one of the volunteers got built…I had to get up at 4…grrrrr. We got to play a game against a San Vicente team and it was awesome to get my hands on a basketball. We had 10 volunteers to play so we had one team play one quarter and on and off. It was really fun, although we eventually lost 30-24 in the last minute. Our team was hilarious though, one guy fouled out on the honor system in only two quarters :)

The New Court

I left early after the dedication by the priest and the games and food, and went to San Vicente to pay my light bill and get some other work done. I took the bus to Zacate to take mine to San Pedro, but I arrived 7 minutes late, with only one bus that remained in the terminal… to San Salvador the capital. Wonderful. I had to call and tell them I wasn’t going to make the meeting that night, and had to stay the night in the capital at our cheap volunteer hostile. 3 dollars! We had planned to start painting at the 7 the next morning at the medical dispensary, so I got up at 4 again to catch the first bus, yeah it left at 630am….haha. Eventually I got back and we enjoyed painting all day. Fun stuff, but what a cluster.

I will eat you.

That night, I had a dream that my teeth fell out….is that a nightmare?


“When facing a difficult task act as though it is impossible to fail.If you're going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce.”

(Notice on a chalkboard in an East Greenwich, R.I. deli.)