Kewl boox aye skoored…

In Chinese they call them 珠寶 (zhū bâo). Hidden treasures. Book lovers know them like runners know the "runner's high": rare moments in a seemingly endless maze of browsing and to-buy-or-not-to-buying, moments when all the plodding aisle after aisle pays off. You find some book––maybe ragged, dusty and dog-eared (indeed, preferably)––which you just know has been waiting all this time to be found by you.

Less dramatically, of course, there are moments when you find a book or two that seem providentially to spur you on the path you are ambling.

Below are some such books I have recently acquired.

These first two are volumes 3 and 4 in the Bookman Translation Library. These aren't 珠寶 as much as they are little talismans of power and learning as I forge ahead on the path of mastering Chinese and, hopefully, using my language skills as a translator/evangelist now and in the future.

The first volume speaks for itself. Throughout the book there are small exercises designed to reinforce various skills and preempt various, and the penultimate 60 pages or so of the text are excerpts from English books and stories. These are "exercises for the reader" and Chinese translations are provided at the very end of the book (in the ultimate 60 pages or so).



The next volume is titled 譯藝譚 (Yì Yì Tán), which I will dare (before even reading either volume 3 or 4!) to translate as Sketches in the Art of Translation (or, literally, Talk(s) about the Art of Translation). This is less of a workbook than volume 3 (above), and more of a series of "meditations" from the editor, 黃邦傑 (Huáng Bāng Jié), on his own experiences as an translator for the benefit of the translator in fieri. I.e., moi.

The next book, titled The Insult & Lover's [English] Dictionary, is just lots of fun, and, after some vain attempts to find it online or, for that matter, find virtually any information about it on the Net, a real 珠寶!

Part 1 is all about "letting 'em have it" (罵人 mà rén) and Part 2 is all about "sweet nothings to a sweet someone" (愛情的話 aìqíng de huà). The contents are divided topically, based on various settings and problems (traveling, eating, flirting, apologizing, etc.), which is pretty pedestrian. What makes this a real gem, is that each expression is provided in English, Chinese, German and French! So far I have found no egregious errors in either English or German, so I can surmise the Chinese and French are equally orthodox and vivid.

See? Chinese, English, German, and French––with pictures, too! Now I know I can read it!













The last selection for the evening is a translation of Jonathan D. Spence's The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, which I treasure as one of my favorite books. Partially, I love the book because I have always taken Ricci as a personal role model: Catholic missionary, immersed in Western and Eastern wisdom, as well as profoundly averse in contemporary science and religion. It was a small grail-quest for me a couple years ago to reach the Jesuit Ricci Institute in Taipei and buy an annotated copy of Ricci's 天主實義 (Tiān Zhû Shíyì), The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. Ricci wrote this treatise in classical Chinese (!). It serves as a dual polemic against Buddhist apologetics against the Catholic faith and a broad apologetic of the Catholic Gospel in light of Asian tradition.

Anyway, the other reason I love Spence's Memory Palace, is because I am fascinated by mnemonics and the neurology of memory. After reading The Memory Palace, I devised one of my favorite script concepts, tentatively titled "Who's Afraid of the Memory Palace of You Know Who?" I won't go into details here, but suffice to say "Who's Afraid…" is a "mnemonic thriller" about history, voyeurism, memory, possession, love, and regret. A sort of "Little Matchstick Girl" meets Memento meets One Hour Photo… meets Matteo Ricci's memory palace. As a matter of fact, Spence's book, or, rather, his presentation of Ricci's astounding mnemonic skills, inspired me to construct my own memory palace. It is based on the Japanese tea house in Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (you know, the one in which the Bride hacks all the baddies to blood-spurting bits of samurai sushi).















And heck, while I'm at doing a photo blog, here is me with my new little buddy, Amble. He was a shriveled, malnourished but spunky street puppy who started followed me one night, about a month ago, while I was walking home from school (long story…sigh…). I eventually lured him in with food and was able to grab his nape, whereupon, once he was done crying and trying to nip me, and had completely emptied his bladder onto my pants and shirt, I carried him home, showered him and, in time, de-flea'd and dewormed him. He's putting on some weight and growing all the time. Just last night he lost another baby tooth. He's only about 4 months old. I still need to get him the battery of dog vaccines, but the vet said we need to get him over a cold first and, well, since then I just haven't found the time to go back. Bad master! Amble is unbelievably tranquil and friendly; the only time he makes noise is when he is in pain or sees me walking away from him, as if for good, and he is tied up or held in somewhere. In Taiwanese they say that fortune is about to come your way after a dog follows you. Well, let's hope it's true! I'd like to think Amble is my own Santa's Little Helper.

Wisdom from…

GREGORY THE GREAT (540–604): Slothfulness in Idle Words

Those given to talkativeness should be made to realize how great is their plunge from rectitude when they fall into using a flood of words. For the human mind is like water: when enclosed it raises itself to higher levels, seeking the heights from which it descended; but when released it loses itself, being uselessly dispersed through the lower levels. For all the words wasted when the censorship of silence is relaxed are like so many streams carrying the mind [nous/νοῦς] away from itself. The result is that it becomes incapable of returning within to knowledge of itself: it is so dissipated by talkativeness that it cannot enter the secret place of deeper thoughts. By not enclosing itself within the defenses of watchfulness [viz., nepsis; link], it lays itself completely open to the blows of the enemy who lies in wait for it.

Very often slothfulness in guarding against idle words proves to be our downfall, for little by little we come to utter harmful ones. At first we enjoy talking about other peoples' affairs; then through detraction we belittle the lives of those we discuss; and finally we break out into open slander. Under this provocation quarrels arise, hatred is kindled, and peace of heart is destroyed. This is why James says: Let everyone be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and why Truth himself warns us that on the Day of Judgment people will have to render an account for every idle word they have spoken.
(Pastoral Care, pars III, XIV: PL 77, 72-74.)

Gregory was bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, and left examples of his preaching to the Roman people. His Book of Pastoral Rule became the textbook of medieval bishops.

ST. AUGUSTINE: O Beauty, So Ancient and So New

Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, too late have I loved you. You have called to me, and have cried out, and have shattered my deafness. You have blazed forth with light and have put my blindness to flight! You have sent forth fragrance, and I have drawn in my breath, and I pant after you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst after you. You have touched me, and I have burned for your peace.
-- Confessions 10, 27

Dare we understand this piety in any less than a radically tactile, sacramental, Eucharistic way? Augustine had, by his own creed as a Catholic bishop, quite astoundingly smelled, tasted, and touched His Lord, albeit under the form of bread and wine.

Prayer. My faith, O Lord, which you gave me through the humanity of your Son, calls upon you.
-- Confessions 1, 1

ST. THOMAS D'AQUINO: THAT GOD IS ETERNAL

[1] From what we have said it is further apparent that God is eternal.

[2] Everything that begins to be or ceases to be does so through motion or change. Since, however, we have shown that God is absolutely immutable, He is eternal, lacking all beginning or end.

[3] Again [Amplius]. Those beings alone are measured by time that are moved. For time, as is made clear in Physics IV [11], is “the number of motion.” But God, as has been proved, is absolutely without motion, and is consequently not measured by time. There is, therefore, no before and after in Him; He does not have being after non-being, nor non-being after being, nor can any succession be found in His being. For none of these characteristics can be understood without time. God, therefore, is without beginning and end, having His whole being at once. In this consists the nature of eternity […totum esse suum simul habens. In quo ratio aeternitatis consistit].

[4] What is more, if it were true that there was a time when He existed after not existing, then He must have been brought by someone from non-being to being. Not by Himself, since what does not exist cannot act [Non a seipso: quia quod non est non potest aliquid agere]. If by another, then this other is prior to God. But we have shown that God is the first cause. Hence, He did not begin to be, nor consequently will He cease to be, for that which has been everlastingly has the power to be everlastingly [quia quod semper fuit, habet virtutem semper essendi]. God is, therefore, eternal.

[5] We find in the world, furthermore, certain beings, those namely that are subject to generation and corruption, which can be and [can-]not-be. But what can be has a cause because, since it is equally related to two contraries, namely, being and non-being, it must be owing to some cause that being accrues to it. Now, as we have proved by the reasoning of Aristotle, one cannot proceed to infinity among causes [cf. SCG I, xiii]. We must therefore posit something that is a necessary being. Every necessary being, however, either has the cause of its necessity in an outside source or, if it does not, it is necessary through itself. But one cannot proceed to infinity among necessary beings the cause of whose necessity lies in an outside source. We must therefore posit a first necessary being, which is necessary through itself. This is God, since, as we have shown, He is the first cause. God, therefore, is eternal, since whatever is necessary through itself is eternal.

[6] From the everlastingness of time, likewise, Aristotle shows the everlastingness of motion [Physics VIII, 1], from which he further shows the everlastingness of the moving substance [VIII, 6]. Now, the first moving substance is God. God is therefore everlasting [Prima autem substantia movens Deus est. Est igitur sempiternus]. If we deny the everlastingness of time and motion, we are still able to prove the everlastingness of the moving substance. For, if motion had a beginning, it must have done so through some moving cause. If this moving cause began, it did so through the action of some cause. Hence, either one will proceed to infinity, or he will arrive at a moving cause that had no beginning.

[7] To this truth divine authority offers witness [Huic autem veritati divina auctoritas testimonium perhibet]. The Psalmist says: “But You, Lord, endure forever”; and he goes on to say: “But You art always the selfsame: and Your years shall not fail” (Ps. 101:13, 28).
(SCG, I, xv)

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES:

Just as it is an impious effrontery to attribute to our own will the holy works which the Spirit inspires us to perform, so it is brazen-faced impiety to want to attribute our lack of cooperation to a failure of grace or of heavenly aid. The Holy Spirit proclaims everywhere that we bring about our own perdition. He desires nothing more intensely than that we allow that fire to be enkindled in our heart which the Savior brought down to this world. The sacred text also tells us clearly that God does not want anyone to be lost, but wills that all should be saved. [cf. 1 Tm 2:4] Our Savior came into this world that all may become His adopted brothers and sisters.
(T.L.G. Book 4, Ch. 5; O. IV, p. 228)

G. K. CHESTERTON:

WOMEN have been set free to be Bacchantes. They have been set free to be virgin martyrs; they have been set free to be witches. Do not ask them now to sink so low as the higher culture.
('All Things Considered.')

Muscles… HURT! Muscles… BIG! Heart… HURT! Heart… BIG!

Muscles grow by being destroyed. So too the heart.

If we keep our muscular activity below the threshold above which muscle tissue is torn, we never give our muscles a chance to heal and gain strength. Certainly, we can keep our tone up and stay in shape, but if we ever let our habitual steady level sink too close to the atrophy level, we will, over time, need more and more effort to maintain the same physique. Only if our muscle tissue endures true tearing pain and actual cellular damage, can we become stronger, larger, more robust, and healthier.

Likewise, only if our hearts experience true shocks from time to time, and only if our "psychic tissue" is torn down on a regular basis, can we hope to achieve emotional and social maturity. This is hardly a prescription for masochism or wild risk-taking. It just means a commitment to progressive involvement in reality. Feeling the pain of torn muscle tissue, our nervous system naturally urges us to cease the motion and retreat to a comfortable stance. But our commitment to health and greater vitality spur us on to "play through the pain" for greater gains. In a similar way, when we feel the trauma of emotional conflict, we are inclined to retreat from the source of our irritation into a safe "holding pattern." If, however, we are fundamentally committed to facing reality, and facing those who share reality with us, we will endure the pain of emotional surprises and shocks, knowing that such woes actually yield our growth.

Struggle is a sign of life. We may worry about rescuing a flailing man from deep water in time, but we needn't rush to pluck out the man just floating there, face down, silent, motionless, as if he were calm and at peace. If our relationships with family, friends, lovers and coworkers were steadily free from surprises, resistance, and friction, we would begin to atrophy on multiple levels. We would become like the "humans" in WALL·E: swollen with comfort, limp with leisure, bloated with bliss, and fatally detached from and numb to reality buzzing around us. Struggle is a sign of life.

If you were to lie still for 24 hours, you would die. Your lymph system is designed to be in motion and keep the impurities flowing out. From one perspective, astronauts have it easy: they can lift heavy objects like feathers and glide wherever they want with the push of a finger or toe on any object. But their ease is also their peril: removed from the steady grinding pressure of gravity and the cumbersome pounding of our legs in motion, astronauts' bones begin to deteriorate. So, to prevent this, they must stand on a vibrating pad a few times a day, just to shock and jar and irritate their bones into staying healthy. So it is with the heart: only if we bear the steady grinding pull of others on us and maintain the cumbersome progress of climbing up and down and over and behind and around the obstacles generated by others, can we jar our minds into mature relational health. Struggle is a sign of life.

The trick is to keep moving. But this trick, like all tricks worth watching and learning and performing, is a trick made possible by grace. In the words of the prophet Isaiah (chap. 40):

[28] Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary,
his understanding is unsearchable.
[29] He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
[30] Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
[31] but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

At times grace helps us fly, but at other time it may just be the fumes we need to keep walking, to keep on moving, to keep going, to keep the left foot switching with the right, no matter how slowly, and now matter how many blisters shriek for us to stop moving on. We are not called to suffering as such, but we are called through suffering to glory and health and wisdom on the other side. Being created in the image of the Triune God, we are inherently relational beings. There are no pure individuals, and, therefore, there is no purely individual growth or wisdom. Everyone has a mother and a mother tongue, neither of which he invented or chose. We are in this together or we are not at all. The fecund collectivity of human nature does, alas, bring with it a price, namely, the price of me putting up with all you other folks (or vice versa, depending where you're looking from). We might be happier, in some abstract realm, "all on our own," but we would also lack the goods which collaborate to produce human maturity if we were not crammed into the restless grinding mesh of human existence. We might be happier apart from others, but we would not be ourselves apart from them. This paradox holds preeminently in the Church, the Body of Christ, since, in fact, it is the social and familial orders which take their shape, providentially, from the Triune-Christocentric sacrament known as the Church. As we read in Philippians (chap 1):

[27] Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you stand firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
[28] and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear omen to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God.
[29] For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake,
[30] engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine.

We are, again, called not to co-suffer with Christ, just for divine kicks. Rather, co-suffering with Christ is a function of His hypostatic, consubstantial union with us as co-existers. Christ only suffers in the Church because He has deigned to incorporate us into His Eucharistic covenant. We, in turn, only partake of His suffering in the Church because He animates the Body, only because His Body is alive, in motion, restlessly pursuing the divine glory. Because the Body is alive, and we are in the Body, we will, naturally, feel the supernatural trauma of a living body just like muscular cells feel the trauma of exercise.

Don't say "I believe" if you're not prepared to be torn. Don't say "I love you" if you're not prepared to cry. Don't say "We're in this together" if you're not prepared to regret the unity and yet still keep trudging through. Don't say "I want to live" if you're not prepared to shear away and tear down whatever would drag you down to death. Love someone who will always "shock" you out yourself into your better self. And then love that someone in the One who shocked Himself in order to tear us out of the dying body of the world into His living, moving Body called the Church!

Me? This guy?

I want to thank those of you that have expressed concern and/or curiosity about my status of late, namely, why I haven't blogged, basically, at all in the past weeks. My life of late has been simply exhausting and emotionally draining. I have not given up on this blog, or on writing, but I have simply not had the mental or spiritual stamina to produce anything for weeks. I am in a life-changing crucible and need your prayers.

H1N1…

C3PO.

R2D2.

HAL 9000.

867-5309.

A1D5.

Sittin' on the dock o' the bay…

…watching a year roll away.

I haven't written much lately, because I've been in a tough spot the last month, at least. I have, however, been "out and about" from time to time on other blogs, chiefly, a dwindling thread at Ben's Xanga blog.

It's late, and I'm tired, so I will only post some snippets of my interaction with him, pretty raw, but hopefully the points still come across for blog standards.

"… you seem to want to raise some shared standard of "goodness" (i.e., some axiom or core of rules) over God, in order for Him to "earn" the label, but this is precisely what eucharistic Christianity rejects. God Himself constitutes goodness, not voluntaristically, but ontologically, and goodness is given to mankind only iconically, in Christ, not legally, in "pure reason."

"As for the goodness of God being predicated on His sheer aseity, well, yes, that's a major foundation of Christian ethics. All things that exist are good insofar as they partake of God's being qua Actus Purus. Even the devil is not wholly evil, since he at least exists. Hence, evil is not real; it is a void, a lack, an absence of a properly ordained good in nature. The constancy of moral opposition to evil in Christianity, which you maladroitly wield as some kind of rapier against me, is predicated entirely on the eternity of the Good One. As long as God exists, anything that detracts from the properly ordained "effulgence" of His glory in creation, is evil. Without God, we have no reason to be perennially bothered by evil. This no more entails that evil "disproves" God's existence than a bouncing foul disproves the existence of base lines in Wrigley Field.

"… The ENTIRE POINT of this debate is the source of goodness. You are getting annoyed by my presentation of the Christian story of goodness, but at the same time you expect me to answer as a Christian. Perhaps you would prefer me leaving aside all the messy details about the Trinity, the Incarnation, sacramental theology, and redemption, so that I can talk from a "merely religious" point of view. Sorry, I'm not that generous. You may not like the Christian story, but you can't call me arbitrary just because I'm sticking to the tenets of my faith.

"Lastly, do you know how tinny and priggish you sound by suggesting humanity is not cared for in ANY meaningful sense? If the world is so bad, why are you still breathing it in? As William Hasker once asked, if the evil of this world truly disproves the goodness of God, why do we still cling to this world? If it were truly an evil world designed by a weak and/or deviant Creator, what goodness in it keeps us from committing suicide? More to the point, what keeps you from killing yourself? Is everything in your cushy, Western life really such a scorching burden? Do you have nothing for which to be grateful? (And if you do have such benefits, to whom are you thankful?) As for the cop out about "starving children in Africa," one must wonder, if life for them really is so awful, why they don't commit mass suicide either. Perhaps the still regnant paternalism and sniffy racism of Western atheology is not to their liking and they can, like all fundamentally healthy groups of human families, see the overriding and undeniable goodness of life in this world of ours. Ever seen "La vita è bella"? Ever read "Crime and Punishment"? Sadly, whiny navelgazing is still a very popular form of reasoning among atheists. One must wonder why, historically, atheism has risen in parallel with worldly comforts and capitalistic hedonism. One would almost suspect God is being blamed for killing the vibe at the orgy and not at all being thanked for the ongoing goods brought forth from creation day after day."

"… I am not a Platonist. I am a hylomorphic "Thomistotelian" (as I like to call it, or an "Aristhomist"), albeit with a significantly chastened "Keefian" form of hylomorphism based on eucharistic ontology. Hylomorphism states that formal order is intrinsically rooted in matter. Matter is no-thing without form, and form does not exist "out there, up there" apart from substantial existence in matter. So we are very much on the same page vis-a-vis the software/hardware analogy.

"This, however, raises profound difficulties for physicalism and naturalistic ethics. To wit, does not a multiply executable program imply a Programmer who is supervenient to the various material instantiations at his disposal? Moreover, does not the evolutionary contingency of "objective morality" nullify the multiple executability of one-and-the-same program? That is, if goodness is not super-naturally objective, then who is to say THIS version of evolved goodness is the same version of goodness on a second run of the biological merry go round? And if "our" objective morality is but one contingent version of countless possible "codes" of goodness for hypothetically diverse sequences of evolved beings, then our morality really is not objective.

"Naturalists, such as Sam Harris in his first book, like to say we should be moral thus and such, since that just pleases our evolved nature better than other (religious) forms of morality. But if you admit from the start that we only happened to evolve as we have, and that human nature is a wax nose which a sufficiently advanced science can tweak pretty much without limit, then WHY SHOULD we heed the ethical instincts we happen to bear? What second-order normativity grounds first-order natural ethics? If there is not some second-order norm, then we have no moral obligation to respect the contingent impulses of our "moral nature." Explaining why we believe in moral behavior does not address the truth or falsity of that moral behavior itself. Hence, evolutionary ethics can only describe how we have come to believe the moral fictions we believe, not prescribe which fictions are actually, objectively good.

"By contrast, if goodness really is an identifiable pattern embedded in matter (as hylomorphism largely suggests), then what grounds the formal identity (i.e., objectivity) of goodness? Does matter itself create its own pattern? If so, how can that pattern be recognized apart from discrete, nominalistic clusters of matter? If not, what orders matter?"

"… your humanism, like that of transhumanists', is just another form of misanthropy. Denigrating what the majority of humanity, both diachronically and synchronically, treasure most, in the name of some abstruse happy-days-ahead technotopianism that seems, wonder of wonders, not only to ring your bell the loudest but also to fit right into your projected lifespan. (Cue Rodney Stark mocking previous technotopians for expecting, in every case, a cybernetic revolution that just happens to fall inside their probable mortality horizon and then going on to predict the same technotopia in his own life horizon.)

"… you concede the match by admitting your "objective morality" is ultimately decided by whoever holds the mic in your "mature conversation" about morality. I see no need to retread what I've already said about the Christocentric ontology and morality, since you have more than once ridiculed it as arbitrary. I appreciate your slightly more irenic tone by the end of this reply, but I hope you can see why I see it as disingenuous. "Sure, your little Eucharistic theology is welcome to the podium… but then we reality-graspers need to get on with saving humanity from its own hopes and nature." As they say, scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist. You lost your faith in the Gospel because it didn't work fast enough, didn't work efficiently and "rationally" enough; but the whole time, your apostasy is just an attempt to perfect your evangelical desire for redemption by technocratic means. You still bleieve in "sin" and "damnation", but only now you call them "religion" and "piety." You are committed, with a quaintly religious zeal, to save "humanity" (how Platonic of you!) from its naive religiosity, to call it up to the altar of technological perfectibility ex Christo.

"As always, the argument from evil comes down to the rankest, (and yes) most "priggish" form of this basic claim: "Well, if *I* were God, I certainly wouldn't run things this way." The complaint is duly noted, but such a critic not only hoists his Adamic flag of hubris for all to see, but also concedes he has merely aesthetic objections to the Creation of the Holy One. The reason, therefore, that your reference to actual suicides does nothing to touch Hasker's point about the fundamental, and performatively undeniable goodness of the world, is that actual suicides try to have it both ways. To wit, a person driven to suicidal ideation by "natural evil" immediately forfeits the cogency of his/her complaint by offing him/herself, and this because the entire basis for his/her "argument from despair" is mounted on the charmingly naive claim (cf. the Chinese for 以管窺天) that he/she just KNOWS, based on his, uh, vast range of experience, that this world rationally leads the clear-eyed to suicide. But as soon as his veins are empty in the cooling crimson porcelain tub, the world goes on. And others drink beer, make love, cheer for sports, and find solace before the Blessed Sacrament. And the good creation continues, fallen but redeemed, bloody but unbowed in Christ blood. The suicidal atheologian mounts his entire argument on inductive grounds (i.e., the world renders "a good God" unacceptably implausible), but then, conveniently enough, cuts off all further inquiry with his own mortal fiat. Only a non-suicidal atheologian (à la the Sisyphusean Sartre… and his possible closet Catholicism) has the right to KEEP complaining about evil, and this, ironically, only because he KEEPS living long enough for ultimate good to, perhaps, prevail. In either case, of course, the basic anthropocentrism of atheology is evident for all to see. Wee humans complain that their wee experience trumps the grand claims of a good God. Darn it, they say so. The only difference, in this light, between Christians and suicidical atheologians is that the former cling to hope and faith in God as the ballast against the world obvious fallenness, while the latter wallow in the fallenness of the world. We are all morbid cynics, but only Christians are morbid cynics who believe, cynically, scandalously, that the only "salvation" available to mankind comes in the naked, obscene brokenness of man himself offered up to God in Christ."