Evil and the Father of the Prodigal Son

So, Fr. Spitzer, (S.J.) the president of Gonzaga university and a great philosopher, gave a mini lecture at a dinner I got to go to. The subject was the problem of evil. Can an all loving, all powerful, and all knowing God coexist with evil? It was totally awesome so I'm going to try and type up what I got from it. The way he said it was, of course, much more entertaining and articulate. He's writing a book about it. It comes out in about six months. I want to read it. You should all look him up and read one of the books he wrote. Brilliance. In any case this is something like his points from the other night:

1. The first thing to remember in times of suffering is who God is. Jesus came to reveal the Father to us. The parable of the prodigal son reveals God to us. God is the father of the prodigal son. Any image we get of God, that cannot be reconciled to the Father of the Prodigal Son is wrong. He is not the vengeful god who waits for a chance to get us back for all the nasty things we do. He is not the steel god who is sick and tired of our whining; "Stop being such wimps! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." He is not the god who could care less. All these false images of God come from the devil. If you start thinking God is doing something that the father of the prodigal son wouldn't do, then you have something wrong.

2. The father of the Prodigal son didn't cause any of the bad things that happened to his son. God did not create evil. He is not the steel god who created evil to make us stronger. He created love and freedom. Love is a choice. So if God had made humans to love Him but not given us free will to love Him then He would have created nice little robots who display loving behaviors. God can't make true love without freedom and you can't freely choose to love without also being capable of choosing Not to love. But, God, if He is all powerful, can create us any way he wants, so why did he create us with the ability to choose not to love? Fr.'s answer to this was that God is incapable of making a square circle and it's not God's problem it's a problem with the square and the circle. They exist in a finite world. They are mutually exclusive of each-other. God cannot create a contradiction. A creature who can choose to love but cannot choose not to love is a contradiction. The Father of the Prodigal Son does not withhold the inheritance from the Son. Neither does he limit how and on what the son uses that inheritance.

3. God works through suffering and evil in the world. He did not create them but he works through them. (Just like in Tolkien's Silmarilion,) God robs evil of it's victory by turning it to His greater glory. We can trust the Father of the Prodigal Son to make good come of rather bleak situations. One example of this that Fr. Spitzer gave was the loss of his own eye sight. Spitzer has macular degeneration and is almost completely blind. He says the worst part of this is that he has to ask for rides. He told us about when he first found out and he made God a list of things he could do if God gave him back his sight. But you never hand God a plan cause he doesn't follow them. And you never hand God a time table cause his time table is always bigger and longer than yours. Since he has been almost blind, Spitzer has gotten twice as much work done as he did all the years before. "I was lolly-gagging!" He pointed out jubilantly "Since I've been here, I've written five books!" There were questions after and he told us that he would not be offended if we left early. He wouldn't see us anyway. It was not as if God liked to see Spitzer struggling with his sight. He has compassion: He suffers with us. But He worked through it for the greater good of Spitzer and (I think) the world.

So, that is what I got out of the talk. There was a lot more. Fr. Spitzer is a very entertaining and articulate speaker. I wish I could reproduce all the stories he told and the points he made. It was awesome. You can just feel love and deep faith radiating from this man. I can't wait till his book comes out.

I love colors.

This is Jessica and she was on my crew for a show I stage managed. I have had this photo of her, I think is just gorgeous, for almost three years and I have always wanted to draw it. So I finally printed it out. Me and my box of colored pencils got to work a few weeks ago and I have been working on it little by little. I finished it the other day and was really pleased with how it turned out. I wish things that came from my head looked that good. This is probably the first drawing that has turned out something like what I wanted. A big step for me. I love colored pencil but I drive myself crazy trying to get things perfect. I got colored paper for my birthday and have had a ton of fun with it. It's so different having to work to get your highlights light enough rather than worrying about your shadows being dark enough. I like it. But my shadows still don't want to be dark enough.

So, now that I've said how much I like it I will start with the self critique. I got lazy with her neck and it's all wrong. Then I accidentally brushed some of the black onto it and so now it just looks funny. All the hair on her right side was really hard to get right. As you can see, I didn't get it right at all. The colors are all wrong and I was pretty much making up the shapes as I was going along. Part of the problem was that my printer refused to print the colors right. So the whole picture is accurate to my print but much less glorious than the original photo. Some day I'll have to do it again and get some decent prints and pay attention more. Her face is pretty good, I think. I wasn't perfectly accurate but it's not too bad.
But it's pretty good for a first attempt. :D

So, I've totally lost contact with Jessica. I can't remember her last name.
In any case, if you're out there Jessica, thank you for posing for the picture. I hope you don't mind me drawing it.

The smell of burnt Marsh-wiggle

"On word. All that you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap that likes to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overworld. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the worlds as dull a place as you say." ~Puddleglum ~C. S. Lewis ~The Silver Chair

C.S. Lewis be praised! It's so simple and so good. Whenever I'm frustrated with relativism or anything else that puts down my faith to escapism or superstition I have only to read this passage from The Silver Chair. Never let yourself be lulled to sleep by the "logic" or materialism or anything else that smells of enchantment. Step back and stop trying to fight the battle on their terms. Burnt Marsh-wiggle may not be an enchanting smell but it sure makes it easier to think.
Life's just better here. It's infinitely cool to be a Christian and anyone who tells you otherwise is either jealous or ignorant. Christ's world licks the atheist's world hollow. People who live like Narnians are just more fun to be around.
Humans have an insatiable appetite for perfection. We all want that perfect beauty, that perfect love. They don't exist in this world, it just doesn't happen. Somehow the idea of perfection came into this world. Maybe the humans made it up. It doesn't matter. I'm going to live out my belief that perfect love exists and it is shaped like a Cross.

P.S. if you haven't read this book, the burnt Marshwiggle thing goes like this; The evil witch of the underworld had put some powder on the fire so that it gave off a sickly sweet smell. It was part of her enchantment. She was telling them all that there was no sky or sun or anything above ground and that they had all made it up or dreamed it. Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle was a hero cause he stampped out the enchanted fire, burning himself very badly thereby clearing his head of enchantment, which makes it hard to think, and makeing the room smell like burnt marshwiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. Then he makes this speech.
Now go read the book.

Just last week... no wait... it was about a month ago...

The first thing you loose when you leave civilization is respect for you clothes. After a mile or two you are still looking for a clean spot on a log to sit on. After another mile or two you would plop down in the middle of a muddy stream bed without a second thought.
Summer is the time when you have allot of adventures and then you spend fall catching up on them in your blog. One of my last summer adventures was a eight mile hike in the Montanan mountains... or some of them anyway. More like big hills actually, I know what a mountain is.
It was amazing. I've never been back packing before and I don't know exactly what I was expecting but this was way better. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to carry a thirty pound pack for as eight miles but I did alright. From far off all those big hills make a pretty postcard. They're all misty and purple against the morning sky and then you get so close to them you can't see them anymore. This was supposed to be an easy hike since it was my first time. I don't think our guide did his research very well. Eight miles, three thousand feet. Not bad. I"m sure me climbed more than that from all the ups and downs we took. We gained every foot at least twice. Three steps up two steps down all the way. Then there was the little detail of the trail. No one had been on it in who knows how long. We pretty much blazed our own trail for the last few miles. And there was, of corse, the thousand foot rock hill right at the end. No one remembered to bring ropes or climbing gear of any kind. My dad gets half way up, then he radios back "Some one take my picture from down there before I die." We did.
If you can pick him out I'll give you a virtual mountain goat. It wasn't that bad actually. It was worse than it looks in that picture of course but I've been told by more experienced hikers that I have no real bragging rights. I got up in one piece (all the casualties happened on the way down).
There was this deer... doe, I guess. It was the biggest fattest doe I've ever seen. The ones that live around here and eat peoples gardens are like little stick figures. This beast was the size of a horse. It wasn't shy either. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. I guess it was a little shy of cameras, though the rocks we threw at it didn't bother it a bit. Every few hours at night it could be heard snuffling around our camp. I was sleeping next to a tree so it didn't get me but I guess it stuck it's big snout into my dads ribs, right through the tent. It was a little unnerving to have it saunter on through while we made our breakfast. We took to calling it the "dumb-dumb-dumb DOE" Like Beethoven's fifth.

Our camp site was really beautiful. (you can't actually see it in this picture. The trees on the right block it but you can see teh rocks we fished off of over there.) I has a lovely day, went fishing for the first time, climbed up another few hundred feet (cause we hadn't had enough the day before) following the stream that filled the lake we camped at, took some pictures,


(like this one. It's really hard to make a 'w' with rock fragments so the tense is wrong now. I'm there in spirit, how bout that?) a butterfly landed on my hand and hung out there for about ten minutes.
Hiedi, you should have been there when it got dark. The stars were incredible. I found Draco and some of our other friends but then the Doe came and ousted me from my observatory. Okay, well, we could hear her stomping around and I wasn't going to wait until she found us. Wait a minute, I don't think Hiedi knows I have a blog... Maybe I should fix that...
Then we packed up and trekked back. On the way down The Rock, we sort of had to crab walk or slid on our back sides to keep from over balancing and toppling to our deaths. Dana lost the seat of her jeans. My back pocket didn't survive. One of dad's water bottles went bouncing and spinning down the hill and into the forest below. We didn't find it so it's still up there somewhere if anyone wants to earn a virtual helicopter by leading an expedition out to rescue it. After we got off The Rock, walking felt like trying to stilt on tent polls cause my knees were so shot.
The rest of the hike back went really fast. We got back to the amish bakery just before they closed and bought some very delicious sandwiches and milkshakes. It seemed so unfair to spend half the day getting our eight miles behind us and then take just a few minutes to drive the other eight miles to get lunch. It's amazing that Americans spend so much time thinking of ways to save time when we move so fast anyway we should have all the time in the world.
That sentence was probably horribly incorrect grammatically. I think it's time for Karen to stop typing.

There's a story in that somewhere.

It came from a dream or a conversation or something I read on the web.
I worked it in my mind as I walked to the bus. The sleepy college students silently commiserate at the bus station. They hunch their shoulders and stick their fists in their pockets. My chin rests on my color bone and I watch the moister from my nostrils make fog on my glasses. It slowly clear and I see the still figures with their back packs full of books. Then they are gone behind a cloud of precious heat escaping from my body. The bus pulls up. The doors open and we all file on sullenly flashing our passes at the driver who nods and counts us as we pass. Suddenly we are people again. the hoods are lowered and heads are held up. People get comfortable for the long ride. I sit by myself for now. At the next stop there will be many more students getting on. Across from me a student is making an attempt at getting some reading done. Another is listening to his i-pod and getting ready to fall asleep. We mind our own business. We are all in this together but no one wants to talk about it. Not this early in the morning.
It starts as a few lines in a green note book. I scribbled hastily on whatever page falls open. No one can read it but me. No one would try.
It's just an idea. Maybe it will stay an idea forever. There is nothing terribly original about it. It's been done a million times. Somewhere some one else had an idea and wrote it down and it grew. It was special to that person. It's special to me. Something about it strikes a spark in my mind. It's a door that begs to be opened and explored. I'll get around to opening it someday. The green note book was supposed to be for taking notes in class. Now it sits in one of the darker corners of my closet filled with thoughts and musings.
Funny how these things come: in dreams and little things people said. And always on the bus.
"No one ever writes stories about the happily ever after part." Some one said that once. i can't remember who. I thought about it on the bus. I wonder what happened to Sleeping Beauty after she woke and, presumably, became the queen of a country at the ripe old age of one-hundred-sixteen. There's a story in that somewhere.
Speaking of princesses, I read once about a viking damsel who turned pirate and had the first co-ed long boat known to legend. She was finally defeated by a Danish prince in a stunning sea battle. The Danish prince was an old suitor of hers. At the end of the battle he fell to his knees on her blood stained deck and asked her to marry him. She said yes! That's quite a story already but it would be interesting to explore.
"You know what's cool about being Catholic? You can be very Irish or you can be very Mexican and be very Catholic either way." That would be a fun thing to write about; a Mexican and an Irishman stuck together somehow. There are several ways to get a story out of that.
Maybe one of them will actually become a story someday.

"Rules suck"

Where did our culture get it's fear of rules? Somebody decided one day that rule existed to keep us from having fun and therefore ought to be broken shamelessly. I think this is one of the sillier concepts America has come up with. I was talking to someone about what it would be like to do God's will at every moment. The person I was talking to kept objecting that having God control him so much would be torture. They don't seem to be able to reconcile the idea of an all loving God and a God who uses phrases "thou shall not" and "deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me". Yes, God is loving enough to give us free will, and he asks us, in love, to form our will to be one with His. He's bit smarter than us, after all. The fact that doing as your told actually brings you greater happiness never entered my friend's mind. If you asked him if God loved him, he would say yes. If you asked him if God knew what was best for him, he would say yes. But if you ask him if he would like to do God's will at every moment of his whole life, he says "That's Torture!" There is something wrong with this picture. It's so sad it's almost funny.

A couple thousand years ago somebody had it right. That somebody wrote a psalm about how wonderful it was to follow the commandments of a loving and wise God.
He says:

"With my whole heart I seek thee; let me not wonder from thy commandments!
I have laid up thy word in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Blessed be thou, O Lord; teach me they statutes!
With my lips I declare all they ordinances of they mouth.
In the way of thy testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on thy precepts, and fix my eyes on they ways.
I will delight in thy statutes; I will not forget thy word."

Later he goes on:

"Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things our of thy law."

A little later...

"My soul is consumed with longing for thy ordinances at all times."

He longs to understand and follow perfectly all the rules. They guide him, console him. It sounds strange on my American ears. Statutes and Delight in the same sentence? His souls is Consumed with Longing for God's Ordinances? It seems so contrary. He's either crazy or the biggest suck up ever. I wish I could pray this whole psalm with sincerity. When I think about giving God my every moment, it terrifies me as much as anyone. But I want to want to do it. I know in my head it will be the best for me. Getting things from my intellect to my will is the hard part. At the moment my will is in rebellion. I read once that if you have even the smallest desire to be a saint, and you give that to God, He will do great things with it.

I want to want Your will. I will fix my eyes on thy ways. Teach me thy statutes.

The are verses from Psalm 119 (or 118). Revised Standard Version. Catholic edition.

Oh and by the way.

I have been meaning to write about my new baby brother. I think I mentioned him earlier but he has not had a blog all his own. I have been trying to think of something to say about him. What do you say about you first brother? I could go on about the baby things but they are not all that new to me. I remember three other babies. They all make adorable little noises and faces and they mess their diapers and nurse and sleep for most of the day. Not that every baby isn't a miracle that is new and beautiful but I don't think I need to describe his daily activities for all and sundry. He does normal baby things.
I could talk about how I am feeling about having a brother. I have four wonderful sisters. In the past we've proudly boasted of our brother-less state. Our family had an identity of having no boys and no regrets. During the pregnancy we were a bit defiant. Why would God give us a boy when we do so well with girls. Maleny said that if it was a boy we had to send it back. I even said having a boy in the house would make me all the more anxious to move out. (Which is something I will need some pushing to pursue.) Now that he is here I don't mind so much. He's a baby, which is what we wanted. Even Maleny said that he was exactly what she wanted, if not what she expected. I thought we should have named him Isaac because of all the laughter when we found out. But dad said this issue was a non-negotiable. I guess St. Isaac is his patron along with St. Lawrence (patron of comedians, on whose feast day our David was born) But now that the shock has worn off we are all falling back into our natural family routine. Only with a baby brother. It's not that much different yet. I guess we're in for an adventure when he gets a little older, or so all our acquaintances have been eager to remind us. "You're gonna have to redefine everything you thought was normal." A dear friend gleefully informed us. Our one male cousin was playing cool and disinterested. "I'm planning on ignoring him till he's old enough to play video games." My mother was indignant at this comment. "It's just a boy thing." My aunt assured her. We're not looking forward to all the "boy things." Mom says most of that is just bad behavior and she will tolerate none of it. There have been all sorts of comments about what sort of psychological problems a boy raise in a house of five girls will have to face. "Poor kid." is probably the most repeated phrase. Just the way "Your poor dad!" used to be when we told people that we had five girls and no boys. Some one today commented on David's tendency to sleep with half open eyes. "With five sisters, he's gonna have to sleep with one eye open." This makes no sense to me. What terrible things are the expecting us girls to do to him? It makes me wonder if they know us very well. Honestly now! I don't think it would take a deep acquaintance with my sister and I to deduce that we are not particularly pugnacious. Most of us treat each other with a decent amount of respect and have no intention of picking on any one. We're all different enough so that we are either all normal or all oddballs in one way or another. We just have better things to do than harass each other about it. Our evilest plots for David involve teaching him how to swing dance and getting him into theater because there are simply not enough boys in the world who know how to sing and dance. Maybe this sounds like torture to some people but he can hardly escape being musically inclined. He comes from a family of musicians. Dad's side of the family is incredibly musical. If he doesn't get it in the genetics, he will get it in his upbringing. In the average day he hears folk music, contemporary christian rock or folk rock, classical flute music, broadway show tunes pounded on the piano along with some classical pieces, all of us singing along to all of the above plus some a cappella gregorian chant and medieval polyphony. And we dance with him all day long. Poor kid. Some one call child protective agency!
Well, in any case. I'd like to introduce you to my brother: David Francis.
Here he is being wonder full, looking over my sister C.C.'s shoulder. Odd looking child. Skinny and big eyed. He looks like a staving child from a third world country. If only he wasn't so adorable when he cried he would get his dinner a heck of a lot faster. :P