Ever read something that disconcertingly expresses your own thought?

From the complementary psalmody for Midday Prayer:

Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy.
We are filled with contempt.
Indeed all too full is our soul
with the scorn of the rich,
with the proud man's disdain.

I would take out "we" and put in "I". Sometimes I look at myself in a detached way and feel a little frightened by how scornful I can sometimes be. I'm really not going to be able to explain that attitude to the God who humbled himself even to death on a cross.

A new blog and a strong reader base

I'm more than happy to link to the site of a seminarian named Andrew, who writes, "My blog is mostly a catechetical/quasi-intellectual look at the faith, with focuses on prayer, theology, philosophy and developments in the Vatican. It's called "In Umbris Sancti Petri": http://inumbrissanctipetri.blogspot.com.

I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet but I wanted to put that up there right away, because I'm flattered by what he wrote in the comment a few posts below. I'd like to thank all of my pretty strong readers who made this possible! :) Actually I just read the post on St. Justin Martyr's use of fire to explain how the Son can be begotten by the Father and yet be no less God. I hadn't heard that metaphor before; it's very good.

Andrew-- God bless you and all seminarians, and for what it's worth I find I get a surprising number of hits by commenting on other sites, particularly the high-traffic blogs like Mark Shea's and Fr. Z's.

The artistic horror of bad Bible translation

As a girl I liked to read the Bible during the sermon on Sunday, and the story of Samson was a favorite of mine. He was always owning the Philistines, particularly when a bunch of them rushed him, thinking he was tied up, but "The Spirit of the LORD came upon him in power" and he broke the ropes, grabbed a nearby jawbone, and struck down a thousand of them. His victory chant felicitously rhymes in English:

With a donkey's jawbone
I have made donkeys of them.
With a donkey's jawbone
I have killed a thousand men.

Afterwards he asked God for a drink, so "God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hakkore, and it is still there in Lehi."

I once saw a painting of this at the Getty. But why the heck was there water spitting out of the jawbone? It turns out that "Lehi" also means "jawbone" in Hebrew, so a Dutch Bible translated it that way, and a Dutch artist, Saloman de Bray, painted it that way.



Even sillier is the thing I learned today from Fr. Schnippel. It seems that when St. Jerome was translating the Old Testament into Latin (A.D. 405), he tripped over the Hebrew description of the rays of light that would shine from Moses' face after he'd been in the presence of the Lord. The Vulgate translates this as "horns of light", and consequently we have these lovely Renaissance statues of Moses-- with horns!

"Shop by anxiety zone"

That's what the front page of Lands' End says right now. Can you imagine them selling men's suits that way? "Shop by anxiety zone", indeed. They don't even pretend that women enjoy buying swimsuits. It's kinda funny.

That reminds me of an awful commercial I saw some years ago (men, stop reading now before it's too late!) for Tampax. It has a high school girl explaining that she had been too nervous to try a tampon, but then her college-aged older sister visited home and said, "You're still using pads?" For a second the younger sister looks directly into the camera, imitating her older sister's patronizing, you-need-to-grow-up expression. (I remember feeling vaguely guilty and very irritated by the stare.) So then, the younger sister tells us, she tried tampons and they were so easy and you should do it too. Yes, the whole goal of the commercial was to shame women into buying the product. If you're not using Tampax, you're just a frightened high school girl!

I don't normally go all feminist on things, but on that occasion I wished the whole world would boycott Tampax into bankruptcy. Or at least fire the idiots who pitched that commercial.

More pictures from St. Andrew's Abbey and environs

Some friends and I went on Thursday. In addition to St. Andrew's Abbey, we hit a nearby nature preserve, and toward evening we hiked around some poppy fields. Did you know that it's illegal to pick a California Golden Poppy anywhere in California? True story. Okay, starting with the abbey:



A cat had the run of the ceramics shop.



This church totally looks like it was built by and for men. Brick-and-wood pews, sparse decoration, bare planks...



Pretty tulips outside, though.



The monks serve our soup course.



Ever wondered what vegetarian Benedictines eat? Wonder no more! (Jello salad too!)



I've no idea how he got the name.



I think God had fun making the desert horned toad.



"A good plant for the Extraordinary Rite!" as one of our company remarked.



My camera didn't capture the color well, but the poppies made it look exactly as if someone had sprinkled lots of the powdered cheese from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes onto the hills. It was so incredibly windy that the poppies were all closed up, but they still looked wonderful.