There’s a dearth of good writing these days, and very few people recognize it. I can’t remember who coined the phrase “the dumbing down of America”, but writing is a good example of it. Do you remember the last email you received, or the last email you wrote? Did it use correct spelling and punctuation? There’s a reason for spell checkers out there, but few people use them.

A lot of people are offended by good writing, especially when the author’s choice of words are absent from their vocabulary. Good writing humbles us to admit we don’t know everything, and challenges us to reach for the dictionary. Popular culture, however, turns its back to this challenge, opting instead for the easy way out. It’s ironic that during the same period of time the use of expletives in daily speak has grown exponentially. I wonder if there’s a correlation?

I wrote a short article on the difficulty of making a Christian (or Catholic) video game on my personal site.

Learn about St. Polycarp’s life through Legos. That’s right Legos. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I think it’s great. Check it out here.

For real, this time.

Sorry, I’ve been traveling some lately so I haven’t posted. Quick summary of activities: Saturday to Houston (Pinehurst) to visit my Godson, Sunday back to Austin, Monday to Allen, Tuesday to Tyler then to Arlington, Wednesday back to Austin.

The weekend in Pinehurst was great, though my Godson is still pretty afraid of me. We tried to trick him so I could get a nice photo with him, but he caught wind of it and started wailing. We nonetheless managed to get a good picture of me and Enrique Manlio the III in our Viva Benedict XVI shirts which I’ll post as soon as my sister-in-law sends it to me.

The travel in the Dallas area was for work, but I got to hang out with Robert, the ex-roommate, and we hit up Texas Land and Cattle for 14.99 all-you-can-eat Sirloin on Monday night. Apparently a little known secret, the all-you-can-eat sirloin, that is. I give it two thumbs up.

In the mean time my girlfriend flew to Orlando for a Disney World vacation with her friends. She got real sick on the plane, so please say a prayer for her.

And Devin, I haven’t forgotten about the book meme. But as a wise Kung Fu master once said:

Patience, grasshopper

I just finished reading St. Joan of Arc, by John Beevers, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all, especially Catholics. I had read short summaries of St. Joan’s life over the years and even watched the silent movie about her (The Passion of Joan of Arc), but reading this book helped me learn about her entire life, the history of the war between the English and French that she fought in, and how on earth Catholic clergy put her to death, only to name her a saint centuries later.

The book is written in a very straightforward and succint style. Beevers does not get bogged down in the irrelevant and complex details of the war but does give you enough to have a basic understanding of it, so that you can appreciate God’s amazing accomplishments through St. Joan. The fact that a teenage peasant girl came to lead armies into battle in the 1400’s ought to convince anyone that God is real. She not only led the French into battle but turned the tide in the war with the English, who were soundly thumping the French in almost every way.

The last chapter about why St. Joan was declared a saint is especially excellent. It wasn’t her astounding military victories, nor the miracles that she performed, but her simple obedience to God in doing what he told her to do that made her a saint. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” and nowhere is this more evident than in St. Joan of Arc’s life.

One of my coworkers and I were discussing religion recently, specifically differences in Catholic and Protestant beliefs. The discussion led us to a familiar place for me: the question of authority. Having once been a Protestant, I know how hard it is to accept that God has given true authority to men on earth, authority that can “bind and loose”, that can forgive a person and withhold forgiveness from them.

My coworker accepts that all the books in his Protestant Bible are inspired by God. He is not so sure about the “extra seven” in my Catholic one, however. I asked him how the books in his Bible were chosen as the inspired ones, and how he could be sure that those particular ones were inspired, while others were not. (Here is our paraphrased conversation):
“God gave them these books as the inspired ones,” he said.
“But how did God do this?” I questioned. “He certainly didn’t plop the books down from Heaven into the laps of the apostles. Rather, these men, led by God, met and decided upon the canon of Scripture. These men were bishops, and the Holy Spirit infallibly guided them.”
He more or less agreed with that.
“Okay,” I pressed, ignoring that his Protestant Bible was missing seven of those original books the bishops decided upon. “If you accept that these bishops were guided by the Holy Spirit in choosing the books in the Bible, then why don’t you accept their decisions on other matters, like with the beliefs they declared were heretical? Did they suddenly lose the Holy Spirit’s guidance?”
“God gave them the books of the Bible, but he did not give them authority or guidance on other matters,” was my coworker’s reply.
“How can you believe God guided the bishops in one thing but not in another? How do you know when they were guided by God and when God decided not to guide them?”
Here my coworker didn’t address this question but began speaking about other matters of our discussion. I let it go, as I had presented him with the logical fallacy in the foundation of his beliefs in the Bible alone apart from the Church and the authority God gave it. He was not able to accept this logic because to do so would undermine the basis for his Protestant beliefs. I sympathize with him. I was not able to accept this logic, either, for a long time–was not even able to SEE the logic of it.

So to summarize: Protestants accept the books of the Bible as inspired by God, but most are ignorant of how those books were chosen (by human men, hundreds of years after Christ’s death and resurrection!). Since they don’t know how they were chosen, they just vaguely say “God gave us these books”, not realizing that in believing God supernaturally guided the bishops (during Church Councils no less!) in choosing the inspired books of the Bible, to be consistent in their logic they should also believe God guided the Church in making all of these decisions in doctrine, faith, morals, etc.

My friend’s computer was on the fritz again today. I had worked on it this past weekend and got it going again, but they said it was having the same troubles as before: When they go to get their mail on the web, they get an error with the internet that it can’t open the webpage.

Well, I checked it out, and noticed that the ZoneAlarm firewall process called vsmon.exe was taking on average 40% of the cpu, peaking at 95% at times. I looked at all the running processes and saw lots of processes with the same name running as different users (the childrens’ user names), like aim.exe, which is the AOL instant messenger (IM) chat program. I also saw a suspicious looking windows.exe running, and when I went to Start >> Run and typed msconfig, then checked the boot up programs, windows.exe was selected. I have never heard of such a program, so it made me think it was spyware trying to “act official” by giving itself such a name. Well NO DICE evil spyware people because I know your tricks. I unchecked it from coming up on startup, then rebooted.

I figured the true problem was the fact that since the children were not logging off when done with the computer but using the fast user switch feature to jump between accounts, all of their running processes stay running, and this bogs down the system. So the moral of the story is: Don’t use fast user switching, but log off and then let the next person log on.

I heard one of Chris Rice’s songs on the radio today. He’s a contemporary Christian artist who my mom likes a lot; I like a fair amount of his music as well. The song that played today has my favorite of all his lyrics: “Deep enough to dream”.

When I think about that phrase, I think of God’s love for us, and how his love is deep enough for me to dream of every good thing:
Deep enough to dream of life forever in Heaven…
Deep enough to dream that he will fulfill all my hopes and deepest desires…
Deep enough to dream of my life being transformed…
Deep enough to fight everyday against my selfishness and foolish pride…
Deep enough to love others, especially those who do not love me…
Deep enough to fight for purity with all my heart…
Deep enough to hope for St. Joseph’s constant help…
Deep enough to dream of resting forever in my Blessed Mother’s arms…

Can any of it really be possible? Is God THAT good?

All I can say is: I’m counting on it!

My mom gave me this awesome statue of St. Joseph and the child Jesus, hand-carved by a Latin-American artist, and it sits in a corner of my room on a pedestal. One day we will all come to know the tremendous grace and virtue that adorned St. Joseph’s holy soul. Through his intercession, may we be given Jesus’ constant help in our lives, especialy in becoming men after God’s own heart as he was.

If you have not gotten to read any of Danielle Bean’s articles or her book, you have got to go check them out. She is a Catholic mother who writes for the National Catholic Register (weekly Catholic newspaper) and also just recently published a book.

When I read a blog post on her website or one of her inspiring articles, I always exclaim to the G or to whoever is around: “It’s another Danielle Bean Winner!”.

Jimmy Akin tagged me with the book meme that has been going around the blogosphere by saying any blogger who read his book meme post and hadn’t done it yet were tagged, so here goes!

1. Total number of I own

Probably 50. I give them away once I have read them unless they are very special and I want to read them again.

2. The last book I bought

St. Joan of Arc by John Beevers. This book is really great as it is straightforward and clear in describing St. Joan’s life from a Catholic perspective.

3. The last book I read was

The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, volume I by Terry Brooks and the My Daily Bread devotional (for about the 4th time)

4. Five books that mean a lot to me

1. The Lord of the Rings. I had no clue Tolkien was a Catholic when I fell in love with these books as an atheist and memorized just about everything in Tolkien’s mythology.
2. The Life of St. Joseph by Sister Maria Baij, O.S.B. Private revelation of St. Joseph’s entire life. During the only Catholic courtship that I have been blessed with, I grew in devotion to St. Joseph with the help of this book.
3. By What Authority, an Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition by Mark Shea. I read this as I was seriously considering becoming Catholic, and it was just what I needed. Mark Shea crystallized on paper the thoughts I was having.
4. My Daily Bread by Rev. Anthony Paone, S.J. The little devotional book has been a wonderful blessing to my spiritual life with its short but insightful reflections and lessons.
5. The Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography, which I read when I first began RCIA classes to become Catholic. Reading about her life was my first in realizing how HOLY Catholic Christians could be.

I tag the G with the book meme.

I love the movie The Karate Kid. From a more objective perspective, I am sure there are lots of problems with the movie, but for me, who first saw it when I was about 8 years old, it’s just awesome! Mr. Miyagi has much wisdom to impart, and he is really hilarious in the way he does it.

For example, when Daniel-San sees Mr. Miyagi doing strange-looking jump kicks on top of a wooden pillar on the beach, he asks him later what he was doing:

Miyagi: Called Crane technique
Daniel: Does it work?
Miyagi: If done right, no can defense!

Not to mention the fact that the movie stars Elizabeth Shue, who is such a beatiful girl. Here’s a picture I just took while watching the movie with my new digital camera (thanks be to God for this luxury!).

(image removed due to other sites linking to it excessively)

So I was sitting at St. Louis this morning during Mass, the memorial for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and I was like, “God, what better day is there than this for a Catholic girl to go to Mass?”. I surveyed the congregation and did not see one girl within ten years of my age. What else do you have to do at 8 am Saturday morning on such an awesome feast? Think about the benefits you would have gotten had you gone:

1. Receive the Lord of the Universe in the Eucharist
2. Learn more about the Mother of the Lord and her Immaculate Heart, so full of love for you.
3. Receive even more grace from God as she prays for you (Jesus has trouble saying no to her since she IS his mother).

I know you are disappointed probably, but don’t fret! There are many more Marian feastdays left this year, and I hope to see you at one of them. Until then, Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

I spent several hours this evening with my good friend Nathan. We’ve been friends for a long timea now, and I was at his mom’s house in G-town eating very good food and burning things in an old empty oil drum. His mom is moving to California, and so she pulled out all the old papers and mementos that she has of Nathan growing up. Some stuff we kept but most we threw into the fire.

I was growing nostalgic about some of the things that we were destroying, but after a while I realized that these papers and awards and certificates were merely signs marking events in our lives, and that the real worth is found in me and Nathan’s friendship with each other. As we stood together stoking the fire, we talked a little about this idea. I silently thanked God for our friendship and prayed that our Immaculate Mother would draw my good friend and his family into Jesus’ Sacred Heart.

I go to adoration on Fridays for one hour at St. Louis. On First Fridays of the month, we are blessed to get to have adoration in the chapel instead of in the baby cry room. So today, First Friday (and Solemnity of Jesus’ Sacred Heart), I went to adoration.

I was adoring Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament, exposed beautifully in the monstrance on the altar, in the chapel that is really one part of the cross that forms the church (classic church style). A woman came into the chapel and walked past the Blessed Sacrament; I think she made some small gesture acknowledging it, and then made her way to the main sanctuary area where she knelt down in a pew. I wanted to shout over to her: “Hey! Good woman: Jesus is right here before us exposed in the Blessed Sacrament! Come back over this way.”

I wondered at how she could not know about Jesus’ Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Then I realized that probably many Catholics don’t know about it. This is perhaps one reason why we have almost 5,000 families at St. Louis and yet only about 60 people on our schedule for weekly adoration. The other thing I realized is that I often assume that others know what I know about the Catholic faith, when this situation proves that is not true, and therefore it is up to me and others to teach those who are ignorant (I use the word ignorant in a pure theological sense, not to say that this woman was “stupid” as is often connoted with the word).

This is not the first time that I have had a strange experience with adoration. One time while leaving adoration, held in the baby cry room at the back of the church, I saw an elderly man sitting in a pew, and so I said to him “We are having adoration in the cry room back there.” He looked at me like I was crazy and said “What?!” and so I told him again, but either he completely didn’t hear me, or the word “adoration” didn’t make sense to him.

So what can we do to educate fellow Catholics on the basics of our wonderful faith?

I have always been a fan of Jean Claude Van Damme movies. Bloodsport is probably my favorite, followed by Kickboxer. I watched the last few minutes of Kickboxer on TV with Gerardo tonight, and realized with fascinated horror that the main evil dude in the movie, who is named “Tong Po” is actually played by himself! Though Van Damme ultimately defeats him in combat to defend his brother and save his girlfriend, I would definitely not want to meet Tong Po in a dark alley.

(image removed due to other sites linking to it excessively)

My friend’s computer was not working well recently. I have fixed the computer a few times, usually spyware programs had snuck onto the system and were bringing down the performance to a standstill. However, this time, I had removed all the spyware but the computer still had problems. Specifically, when you clicked on a link in a webpage, three out of four times, NOTHING happened. It didn’t even try to go to the site whose linked you clicked on. Then, one out of four times it would go there.

This was very frustrating for them, as you can imagine, as browsing the internet became almost impossible, and since they check their email through the web, it wouldn’t work right, either.
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They had already talked with the SBC Yahoo people to test that the DSL modem was working right, so I brought over my own ethernet controller, thinking that maybe their ethernet card was the problem. Even with my ethernet controller, the behavior was exactly the same, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. I thought a bit and decided I needed to see the internet activity, and since I saw that Zonealarm was not on the system, I downloaded it and installed it. As soon as I set it up, it blocked some “attacks” from other computers on the internet. I told it to block all such attacks.

Miraculously, the links began working normally again! After thinking about it, I figured that there must have been so many of these internet computers “scanning” or “attacking” my friend’s computer that it was disrupting their internet connection. Either that, or perhaps just one especially malicious computer was doing so.

Lesson from this story: Install Zonealarm or use the Windows firewall and keep it on, blocking bad dudes! May God bless you.