Opinion 201

Did anyone else happen to stumble across this sad story?  It's a bit old, yes, but pathetic enough to endure.

Opinion 200: Fundraising

I love this, from President Obama's reelection site:

When Michael Jordan wrote a check to my campaign for U.S. Senate in 2004, I wasn't sure whether I should cash it or frame it.
Now Michael Jordan is taking his support to the next level. If you chip in whatever you can today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to meet both of us at an event later this month in New York City.
You're invited to bring a guest—so if basketball isn't your game, I encourage you to bring someone in your life who might enjoy meeting Michael and me over dinner, and maybe even shooting some hoops with some of the other basketball stars, past and present.
Now, I don't know if I'll want to sprint up and down the court that night, but I'm always up to launch a few jump shots. If you join me, don't be surprised if I challenge you or your guest to play.
Tonight is the deadline to throw your name in—and, today only, every entry counts for two. Make a donation, and you'll be automatically entered.
Thanks,
Barack

What children we've all become!

Opinion 199

I really love this picture.

Opinion 198: Words from the sage Randy Travis

"Since my phone still ain't ringing, I assume it still ain't you."

It's hard to turn down a simple, self-deprecatory country music lyric.

Opinion 197: Concerning books purchased

If you ever find yourself in Minneapolis' Dinkytown - an otherwise embarrassing experience, do yourself a favor and visit the Book House.  I am always impressed at the breadth of good books, both old and new, which can be found on their shelves.  I picked up four today a- book buying bonanza.  I have an odd habit of being extremely stingy with bookmoney for months on end and then, suddenly, as if loosed from invisible chains, bounding forth with open wallet, grabbing texts and throwing large sums of money across counters, rubbing book spines incessantly so as to distract myself from monetary guilt.

Loeb Classical Library: Cicero XXII - Letters to Atticus. 
-A fine Latin text with a very passable English translation.  I hope to practice my Latin on these pages.  God help them.

Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community -Wendell Berry
-It's really not what he has to say, it's how clearly he can say it.

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time - Stephan Mulhall
-No, I don't expect any real help here as far as my reading of Sein und Zeit is concerned.  But as long as I am lost in the cave, it'll be nice to have this Mulhall gentleman as a companion.

And a lovely, lovely hardback edition of The Hobbit, large print with Tolkien's illustrations. 

God I'm a cultured man.

Opinion 196

The last cigarette is never as good as the second to last cigarette.

Opinion 195

On a bumper sticker: "I'm pro life vest and I boat"

Opinion 194

While we're confessing our sins here, I must admit that I've been listening to commercial country music for about the last month.  In many ways its both better and worse than I had feared.

Opinion 193: Alas, alas, aesthetic displeasures!

Things about Orthodoxy which have little to no appeal for me
-Any staretz
-Essence/Energy distinctions
-Head coverings
-Monastic literature
-Patriarchates
-The Jesus prayer
-Prayer ropes
-Beards (though I do own one)
-Living bishops
-Holy Russia
-Small Greek villages


Lord, I'm in trouble.

postscript: And it's been years since I last picked up Schmemann!

Opinion 192: a follow up

Then again, if everything here is more or less true, what else could they do?  The letter is clear and coherent, even reasonable...I get the sneaking feeling that someone who doesn't stand on an eagle while being encouraged to live forever might have been the actual author.

Opinion 191: Adminstration

From the fascinating "headline news" post up at oca.org (entitled, romantically, "Locum Tenens, Administrator, Officers and External Affairs Director meet"):

"...'There was much discussion of a wide variety of issues,' Father Eric added."

Oh thank God.  There was a moment there where I was concerned that, sans discussion of diverse issues, our church could be in trouble!

Opinion 190: Obvious Questions

Heidegger ends Book One, Section 5 with this query:

As existentialia, states-of-mind and understanding characterize the primordial disclosedness of Being-in-the-world.  By way of having a mood, Dasein 'sees' possibilities, in terms of which it is.  In the projective disclosure of such possibilities, it already has a mood in every case.  The projection of its ownmost potentiality-for-Being has been delivered over to the Fact of its thrownnness into the "there".  Has not Dasein's Being become more enigmatical now that we have explicated the existential constitution of the Being of the "there" in the sense of thrown projection?

Yes, Martin, it certainly has.

Opinion 189

"Gay marriage will not undermine traditional marriage, but, God willing, it will subvert 'family values'.  Otherwise, the hell with it."

Found here

Opinion 188: Ah, wretched state of online affairs!

Sloth goeth before a fall - a very slow and relatively relaxing fall.

Opinion 187: There goes Jonah

Oh, our poor little church.

Opinion 186: Independence Day

Well, some two hundred and thirty six years later tea prices are still relatively cheap and I've not had a red-coat unlawfully room and board my house ever once in my life.  Looks like America is still working. 

Opinion 185

Think of it this way: the Orthodox Church is the prodigal son, given to exile and dark, eccentric problems.  This exile is not only a literal experience in Orthodoxy, but a spiritual experience, one that is actually a great tool for expressing who Jesus is in the modern world.  There is an Orthodox intuition of alienation, one that can be transformed into: do you feel alienated?  So do we.  Come worship with us, etc. 


The Catholic Church is the older brother.  It done stayed home and enjoys a routine of logical acts of virtuous household behavior.  It's got its act together  (at least on paper- like all well-organized control freaks, it suffers from odd sexual deviations), yet has managed to abstract itself into categorical absolutes, so that it shudders when it even contemplates the messiness of the younger brother.  But hell, this world needs a bit of hard-headed manditory-ness and one of the reason folks are attracted to this older brother is the conclusion that someone has to speak on the Father's behalf and it's not going to be that brother given to idiotic wanderings, meals with swine and pirogi sales.


Biblical scholars are oblivious to the obvious.

Opinion 184

I've been reading Heidegger's Being and Time for just about a year now.  I'm a little over a third of the way through.  I've come to the conclusion that I do not like anything he has to say.  Instead, as far as I can tell, I just really like the way I feel when I read what he has to say.  All his obtuse sentences take my mind to some bizarre place of abstraction wherein things feel more tangible, and, being tangible, even more stretchy.  Does anyone else know what I mean?

Opinion 183

Sure as hell boring around here these days.

Opinion 182: Regionalism

Made at least eight mint juleps yesterday during my daughter's first birthday celebration.  Lord, you'd think it was Derby day.

Opinion 181: Holy Things: Rome, saints, trash, drinking

I've been trying to get a post together about Rome, not least the relics of St. Cyril, St. Paul's tomb, and the various Christian holy sites which were visited, however briefly.  Yet my words are not fitting together in any coherent or compelling way.  It's not that I had mystical experiences which cannot be expressed.  Rather the opposite in fact.  I can hardly remember a time in my life as a Christian that piety, prayer and devotion have been so muted in the day to day.  My experience of Rome's holy places were by and large revelations of alienation - visions of a life I am far from, reminders of how hard it can be to pray.  I did pray, though, mostly through a sense of appropriateness.  This is just what one does here, I thought.  How can a man of any Christian pretensions stand at the tomb of St. Paul, surrounded by a group of 30-40 German pilgrims, all quietly yet firmly saying the Creed and the Lord's Prayer together in a comforting Teutonic cadence, without himself mumbling something or another about God and needing help?  Can you touch the rock of St. Cyril's burial place without at least saying "I'm sorry..I'll get better"?

Rome was filthy, by the way.  Trash blows about the streets, cigarettes form mountain ranges along the sidewalks.  Many things are broken.  I saw a mother let her small daughter stop in on a street corner to relieve herself.  Everybody is on a damn moped.  Everybody who isn't on a damn moped is in some damn small car. 

It was nice, however, to see so many young monks and nuns.  Most weren't European.  The church's youth come from Asia and Africa now. 

St. Peter's Basilica was actually a profound experience.  I do not think I've been inside a more magnificent building. 

I attempted to drink a bottle of wine each evening we stayed in Rome.  I managed to go four for five.

Opinion 180: The German Economy

Well, that august title gives the impression of a more thorough treatment than you are going to find here.  Allow me a few observations though:
-Whatever one may hear about the stultifying powers of European socialism, what impresses me most about the state of the German economy is the omnipresence of small businesses.  On every street block there is a small bakery, a small cafe, a small butchery, etc. (in a decent sized city, at least). 
-This next statement is excessively anecdotal, so forgive me in advance, but to me, by and the large, the people working in these places, especially those who appear to be the owners, seem happy. 
-True, much of this observation is the residual effect of the overwhelming transcendent effects of travel, which blur the world and make it seem newer and brighter than it actually is (cf. Lost in the Cosmos). 
-The prevalence of cheap, local, and high quality dairy is also extremely appealing.


Admittedly, much of these two features of German economic life are propped up, supported by subsidies, with committees and paperwork, etc.  Yet the German economy, for some reason or another (and believe me, I do not know a thing about how economies actually work) is undoubtedly the most robust in Europe right now - much to the chagrin of its neighbors.

An additional small defense for these otherwise unjustified observations of a tourist:  I've visited Germany five times in the last seven years.  If there is one foreign land which has given me the opportunity to grab anecdotal evidence, it is Germany.  A fine land!

The Italian economy, on the other hand, seems to be driven entirely by the purchase of  of espresso and parking permits.

Opinion 179: Returned, by the way

I hope to get some opinions up on Europe soon. Words of great importance, no doubt.


As for opinion 177, our bishop has posted his own defense.


As for evolution, ethics and Christian life, Sarah Coakley's extremely interesting and learned Gifford Lectures, titled Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation, and God, merit an attentive ear.  Go here.

Opinion 178: Creepy

The motto on the bell tower of the Minneapolis Family Church: Building world peace through ideal families

Opinion 177: Gressus Sum; Regressus Sumus?

I graduated yesterday.  It was sort of an alienating event.  I sat in the midst of a group of twenty-two year old strangers, all friend with eachother.  I know about seven people at the University of Minnesota, only one of whom actually walked yesterday.  I was hoping to avoid the ceremony all together, but my dear mother flew out to watch.  One must pay his maternal debts.  At any rate, I made genial small talk with the gentleman next to me.  We looked through the list of graduates and made fun of the unfortunate and impossible names.  Lord, there are embarrassing names out there.  A local hip hop artist gave the commencement address.  It wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Afterwords though, things were pleasant.  Friends and family and grilled steaks.  I received much bourbon and scotch as congratulatory gifts.  I'm out of academia for a bit.  We'll see how long it lasts.


_____


I wasn't in church yesterday.  The graduation commencement began at 11:00.  I'm told, however, that Fr. Jonathan made comments on new directives from the throne of Bishop Matthias.  Coming this fall, baptismal divine liturgies are no longer to be celebrated.  However, churches which celebrate them already can grandfather them in until their current priest retires or dies.  Prayers which were silent and have recently been read aloud are to be read silently again.  Women are not allowed to hold the communion napkin.

My gut reaction is that these are moves of a man afraid of "liberalism" and quite unsure of what to do about it.  Like his message last year concerning homosexuality, which was to be read from the ambo during the divine liturgy, it strikes me as something knee-jerk and reactionary.  It seems that with this barrage of new orders +Matthias hopes to counter secularism and liberalism by doing something "more traditional."  Personally, the silent prayers do not bother me.  As for baptismal divine liturgies, I'm extremely curious as to the reasoning behind the decision.  I know that Fr. Schmemann's name is associated with their reintroduction into the Orthodox Church, especially the OCA.  I don't know more than that.  When it comes to women and napkins, however, it leaves a foul taste in the mouth.  God forbid a woman stand that close to the communion cup for too long.


At any rate, it'll be interesting to see how this all pans out, both in my parish and in the diocese of the Midwest as a whole.  Again, I've not read the precepts and I'm only reporting on what companions have told me. 


Packing today for Europe.

Opinion 176: Evolution and Inevitability

Obama's evolving views on gay marriage can perhaps be likened to George W. Bush's evolving views on invading Iraq.

Opinion 175: We got plans

I head out the door in a few minutes to take the final final.  Greek today.  A bit of the Homeric hymn to Hermes, a bit of Cleanthes' hymn to Zeus, and a wee bit of a 10th Century Byzantine hymn to spring and Christ.  Then graduation this weekend.  Then on Tuesday the wife, child and I head to Germany for a couple of weeks and from there to Rome for five days.  Lord!

Opinion 174: Salesmanship

Thanks, Ancient Faith Radio.

You know, it's not really the attempt to sell this or that that bothers me - monks have always done that...well, always is a long time, but you know what I mean.  Rather, it's the aesthetic.  Stealing a complaint from the Ochlophobist's (who doesn't write anymore, just so you know) playbook:  it's the pious background, the woman kneeling in veneration; men in strange hats; candles.  Buy monastic, because monastic is the key to warm religious feelings wrapped in an alluring "eastern "environement.

Perhaps I'm just sensitive.

Anyhow, they've got some good deals on candles and prayer ropes.

Opinion 173: on drinking

For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.


(Dionysus, from a fragment of Eubulus’ play Semele)

Opinion 172: On that other blog/experimental similes

Hell of a lot more popular, so it seems to me.  Fools.  All I can say is that popularity passes like any modern successful NFL offense.

Opinion 171: Crude, beware

Constantine V, or Constantine Copronymus,  was emperor of the Byzantines from 741-775.  He was very much an iconoclast. A footnote on his name nickname:


"This epithet for Constantine (meaning 'shit-called'), a favourite among the iconodules, perhaps refers to the story that, during his baptism, he defecated in the font..." (from Andrew Louth's fantastic The Church in History, Vol III.  Greek East and Latin West).


I cannot tell you how much it delights my heart that our holy Orthodox fathers dubbed him "shit-called."

Opinion 169: Pascha (see Opinion 168's preface on why posting these pictures is wretched and immoral)

Opinion 168: Holy Saturday

Preface: I am against taking pictures in church services. One should not photograph the Eucharist like it was just another "event" mixed in with birthday parties and vacations to Florida. That being said, these were so enjoyable to see that my sentimentality got the best of me. My qualms are weak; my vices are stong.

.

Opinion 167: Minnesota Weather

Yesterday, 75 with a tornado warning; today it is snowing.

Opinion 166

Virtues of our age:
-multi-tasking
-making an app
-working out
-going viral
-having your own water bottle


Ah, noble age!

Opinion 165

Every time someone at work finds out that I'm in church all the damn time, I always get a response of this sort: "I would have never thought you were religious at all." Oh, how I would have been ashamed of this but a few years ago.

Opinion 164

At three in the morning, roused from shallow sleep by screaming baby, it is quite easy to understand how domestic violence happens.

Opinion 163

From last night's post-service homily: yes, Christianity is about the inner change of the heart...but the outward signs of faith - the whitewashed tombs as it were- are quite pleasant. So don't neglect the exterior. Yes, the man under the white vesture is filthy, but damn that's a nice white vesture! What a sermon!

Opinion 162: Pete Hegseth

The above Republican contender for Amy Klobuchar's U.S. Senate seat came to Republic the other day for an event with college Republicans. After drinking two beers his tab was brought to him. Being in front of some sort of constituent who he no doubt feared would take issue to his drinking, he denied ever drinking the beers. Later on in the evening, when alone, he agreed to pay his tab.

Opinion 161: Gregory's Episcopal Advice

"Now of the lion one need have no fear, the leopard is a gentle creature, and even the snake you are terrified by is likely to turn in flight; but there is one thing you must be aware of, I assure you: bad bishops."

From his rather vitriolic de se ipso et de episcopis ("concerning himself and the bishops")

Opinion 160: The Pope in Mexico

Opinion 159

Opinion 158

What I like about the McDonald's next to campus is that they have a McDonald's flag and an American flag on their flagpole.

Opinion 157: Overheard at work

Girl One: Yeah, he was so nice. We used to call him "Jesus".
Girl Two: Jesus?
Girl Three: Yeah, he was like so nice and kind. He had, like, all of Jesus' good qualities but none of his bad.

Opinion 156: A noble question, indeed

Opinion 155

After the Akathist last night, Fr. Marc brought up the curiosity that we Christians worship a king born without a male seed. A kingship in the ancient near east without the proper paternity, without the right nobility of blood, was really no kingship at all. Jesus is in this way a new sort of king, really a type of anti-king. His is a kingship that culminates in defeat, moreover - not a good prospect in kingliness. As Fr. Marc likes to say, if your king's throne is death on a cross, he is not the sort of king who is going to protect you and your village.

Opinion 154: the Presidency

The more I observe Barack Obama, the more I am convinced of an all-encompassing lazy and arrogant middle-of-the-road bourgeoisie hey-I want to govern like Bill Clinton temperament. Ah, but the alternatives, the alternatives!

What is ironic is that Barack Obama is undoubtedly the most corporate candidate around. Yet taking a glance at his pasty-white and creepily neurotic would-be contenders leads one to think that there are things worse than corporate hacks.

I think I will vote for Pope Gregory the Great.

Opinion 153

At times Lent is the brightest, most pure and warming place a man can find himself in. Other times it is merely some cold and abstract notion which less busy people seem to be doing in a church building far away. What really happens to a life when it adds a few more prayers at home, travels to church a few more times, and gives just a little bit of money to the poor? I don't have any idea, really. Though these ideas do appeal to me, at least intellectually. I think that my philosophy of Lent-at least for this particular season- is simply: do what you're told.

Opinion 152

I had to sad occasion of visiting an Office Max this morning. It felt like a funeral parlor. I think all office supply stores are becoming relics of a previous age. Never have I been so often asked "Can I help you find something?" by so many in such a short period of time.

Opinion 151

"What I'm now going to relate is the history of the next two centuries," writes Nietzsche in the opening of his posthumously arranged Will to Power. Well, no one ever accused him of modesty.

Opinion 150: on how one cannot "return to the Fathers" (or at least not with any ease!)

As I am writing my senior thesis on certain aspects of Gregory of Nazianzus' life and thought, I find myself back with the Fathers again, for the first time in a long time. It is hard to read their letters and sermons and not feel compelled to rigorous traditional Christianity. I start to feel pious. I think about acts of asceticism. Suddenly, things - all things - seem simple and clear. I think about Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy ORTHODOXY, that simple and invincible solution to all wiles of the devil. Yet I don't trust this instinct. First and foremost, there is some doubt as to whether this is the instinct which the Fathers themselves were trying to instill. Yes, they were in some ways pious traditionalists, but their lives and setting were so dramatically different from ours that I just cannot easily assume that, for example, an ultra-traditional ROCOR setting would be the first choice for the likes of Gregory or his friend Basil.

Moreover I cannot convince myself for any long period of time that modernity didn't happen and that many of my most basic assumptions about the way in which the world works are very different than ancient assumptions. I don't think the deserts are full of demons. When a famine hits some poor country in Africa, it is not my first inclination to think God is reprimanding those people for falling away from him. I certainly have not seen many miracles in my life, and the ones which may or may not have occurred I am very willing to doubt. The heart, after all, is above all things deceiving.

Yet I do believe that the content of the Christian faith which the Fathers handed down to us is in some way or another true. How it translates into this contemporary world of ours, however, is a question which confounds me. There is a well-known and good-hearted Orthodox priest blogger who instructs us not to live in a "two-storey" world, in which God is up there and we are down here and a great gap has come between us. It's a nice thought, Father, but it’s really too late. In a very real way God is dead and we have killed him as Nietzsche declared (pointing out what was only obvious). A great sundering has happened and it has changed the human mind and heart and many an effort to undo this change look, to me at least, like games of make-believe.

That Jesus of Nazareth rose from the tomb is something I somehow believe, something I even assuredly believe. Yet the collective conscious of humanity has rejected this truth. Even those who believe it subjectively cannot help but be effected by humanity's decisions to disbelieve it. Our belief has been handicapped for we cannot escape the fate of our common humanity. We are flesh and blood and our flesh and blood has been changed by our age. We can not see things which those before us could see, thus for all intents and purposes these things do not exist. God has died in modernity. We are again waiting outside his tomb.

Opinion 149

There is an old abandoned building downtown Minneapolis, with glass doors that still open and allow folks waiting for their bus to stand out of the wind and enjoy a good view of oncoming buses. The doors are still open, I believe, since they provide one way out of a parking lot in the neighboring building. Recently I was told by a newly-arrived and well-bundled security figure that I "couldn't wait for the bus here". Well, okay. It's strange that someone has hired a figure to stand in a cold abandoned building in order to tell others not to stand in a cold abandoned building.

Yes, I realize there could be an "incident". Then the owner of the abandoned building would be liable for whatever nonsense takes place within its empty storefront. But doesn't he or her know how damn cold that wind can be? And how are we to be human without incidents?

Opinion 148: greasing the wheels

When you e-mail an academic and mention that you've read their book, you're bound to get a quick reply.

Opinion 147: Misinterpreting Nietzsche

"What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" asked Nietzsche's madman.

Yes, but what is Christianity but the message of those who gathered at the tomb of their God? Take that, you idiot!

Opinion 146

Some days you just wake up feeling religious.

Opinion 145: wherein he tries his hand at Marxism and cultural theory

nevermind

Opinion 144: toothpaste

According to its packaging, our new toothpaste has been "Proven by science".
Thank God.

Opinion 143

Four hours of sleep or four hundred dollars. Lord, it's not an easy decision anymore.

Opinion 142: Birth Control

Three thoughts about the Obama administration's attempts to make Catholics pay for birth control and other unseemly commodified assaults on human nature:

1-Fuck off, Mr. President.
2- The best line from the Bishops written response: "All the other mandated 'preventive services' prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease."
3-The real winners in all this, of course, are the pharmaceutical companies, who one way or another will increase their sales, I'm sure.

Opinion 141: anthropology

"Great in its littleness," was how St. Gregory described the creation of us and our world. One is reminded of hobbits.

Opinion 140: on the glories of the Eastern Church

At some point in his tumultuous time in Constantinople, St. Gregory Nazianzus was trying to work as a mediator between two factions of bishops, one with an eye to the West, the other to the East. Those in the East brought up as an argument for Eastern supremacy the fact that Christ had been sent to the Eastern part of the world to be incarnate. Gregory replied with nefarious wit that perhaps he had been sent to the East because he knew it to be wicked enough that there was a good chance he'd find someone there willing to crucify him.

Opinion 139: A saintly crankiness

From Gregory Nazianzus' Farewell Oration to the Bishops at Constantinople (Oratio 42):

"Besides all the issues, this is simply my temperament: one most subjects, I do not agree with the crowd, nor can I endure walking the same path as they do. That may be rash or ignorant, but it is nevertheless the way I habitually feel. The things that others enjoy annoy me, and I delight in what is annoying to others."

Opinion 138: Aesthetics

This new design is wonderfully hideous.

Opinion 137

"They Shall Beat their Swords" - Paul Mariani

With my father's Army ballpeen hammer I'd found
down in the cellar, I kept banging on the swordblade,
trying to turn it back into a plowshare like the ones
the prophets sang of. Plowshares, Hell, what did I know
of plowshares? Once more trouble was stewing-

you could taste it-what with old Shermans phosphoring
into ash across the desert, and all those blackened corpses
on the road to Tripoli and Hell. My right forefinger
stood poised on the passage from Isaiah, searching for
the recipe for peace. Too late, the pundits wagged. Too late!

Too late for anything like peace. A thousand generations
since Cain clubbed his brother in some field, and a million
cries for peace, for plowshares, say, and what's to show?
The bells keep tolling in their broken towers for the dead
at Megiddo or at Manhattan's smoking prow, as at Shiloh,

Passchendaele, the Bulge...and now in some hell hole called
Abbotabad. Four Blackhawks in and one already down.
And the ballpeen hammer bangs once more as some blinded
prophet scrambles from his bed. Ah, my father, look how
the plowshares keep turning into bullets, and the bullets into brains.

Opinion 136: The dissapointing Jesus

"He is not what we would make of him."

A line from an anymous Mt. Athos monk.

Opinion 135: A good point, Master Webb

Fervent Christians see in Mormonism a mirror distorting their own faith, reflecting an image strangely recognizable yet recognizably strange. Hard-core secularists think Mormonism is the best example of the strangeness and danger inherent in all religious belief. Deriding Mormonism pulls off the neat trick of making the devout and the godless feel as if they are on the same side.
-From Steven Webb's "A Mormonism Obsessed with Christ" in this month's First Things

Opinion 134: Escape!

I'm in the mood to throw away these weary books and, abandoning class, read nothing but Homer and Tolkien.

Opinion 133: Again!

Lulled into a stagnant and servile stupidity!

Opinion 132

Reading Marx is fun until you realize he's an economist.

Opinion 131

One wonders if not having any enemies is the sign of an extremely mishandled life.

Opinion 130: drink

He had, furthermore, gone some eight days without whiskey. Each moment brought a different shade of heartache, a different sense of betrayal.

Opinion 129: on his difficulties

Ah, how he pined for a cigarette. It wasn't nearly so bad when he was with reputable company, but when he was among thieves and wretches, or when he was by himself (the most disreputable of all companions, to be sure), his mind and heart felt like lonely pilgrims headed towards a dreary pit of gray. Ah, clean lungs and money in pocket...you are but slight prizes; you are small consolation for such great loss!

Opinion 128: (upon receiving a spiritual vision and the authority to teach [and hand-fire, of course])

You're pretty much going to be the same damn person you are now until the day you die. Improvements, if they come at all, will come scarcely and with little satisfaction. This is a pessimism, yes, but a healthy pessimism if it causes you to consider all the more the invincible mercy of God.