What is a youth?

From my favorite movie when I was 16, Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

I've been teaching myself this tune on my accordion. I used to find the accordion really intimidating, but now I find it to be a satisfying instrument.

Savannah

This weekend I went to Savannah with my family for my birthday. My sister found us an apartment a few blocks south of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and Flannery O'Connor's childhood home (LaFayette Square). Savannah is so different from what I think of as Georgia. I suppose my childhood memories of Georgia were all of Atlanta, Columbus, and that vast expanse of nothingness on the way to Disney World. Savannah seems like a whole different universe, although a one with Spanish moss, enormous live oaks, and Southern accents everywhere. I keep wondering why Southerners had invaded this old coastal city, but then I remember that we (in part) get our Southern-ness from this old coastal city. 

I didn't take many photos of the city itself. We visited Tybee Island on the first day and Hilton Head Island (South Carolina) on the last day. I took photos on Tybee Island near the lighthouse.

Tybee Island lighthouse

View from the lighthouse of Tybee Island

One of the houses next to the lighthouse as seen from the top of the lighthouse

Public beach on Tybee Island and a ship coming out of the Savannah River

The view towards South Carolina

Tybee Island lighthouse as seen from the public beach.

A view of Savannah from atop a parking deck (facing southeast)

Long Exposures

I went to our lake house this weekend for Father's Day. As the sun was setting I played around with long exposures on my camera. In some of the photos I blocked part of the lens with a card or my fingers to see if I could modify the light in a way similar to a graduated neutral density filter. It seemed to work. All of these except the last one were taken when it appeared totally dark outside.

I used a card to cover the sky and my finger to cover the water during part of the exposure.

If you look closely you can see star streaking.

I like how long exposures make water look like glass or ice.

Summer Days

The summer days are here. I have no desire to go outside between 9 in the morning and 4 in the evening, and it's so humid somedays not at all. A few minutes outdoors and clean crisp clothes become soaked in sweat, and mosquitos bite at any skin exposed in the attempt to be cooler.

On Sunday afternoons such as these I just lay around inside looking at the sun outside, picking up books to read or listening to podcasts. A nap later and it's still hot out. I think of some place cool I could go, but I'm sick of shopping and there aren't any movies I want to see. I could go to the library are walk through the stacks for a while, but the fluorescent lighting in mid-day gets on my nerves. I could visit family but they're probably all reclined in cool dark rooms passing the time in TV/iPhone half-attention. Mostly I wait until evening when I can go for a run and sweat out my ennui.

Even gardening in these days is not so fun - just keeping things alive by watering them every day.

In many ways summer in the South is like winter in the North.

Maybe I should vacation in a milder climate?

Radical Moderates

I was talking to a seminarian this week about what things are like at his seminary. He said they were "radical moderates," having extreme intolerance for anything that goes one way or the other, and strictly enforcing the middle ground. 

Radical moderates - what a lovely term!

This sums up qualms I have sometimes with the Aristotelian(-ish) worldview. It's too radically moderate. After a radical moderate has had his hands on the Gospel, it seems that hardly anything Jesus said can be taken at face value. Radical moderation is as distorting an ideology as any other.

Meek means sometimes be violent, i.e., not meek.

Forgive seventy times seven times means forgive, but only if they're sorry, and with qualifications, and never forget. 

Pluck out your eye means don't really pluck out your eye. 

Sell everything means keep most things and follow Jesus just as well. 

Turn the other cheek means sometimes don't turn the other cheek, or do it in a clever way that exacts retaliation.

I read Biblical interpretations like these and I have this icky feeling like the whole message has been castrated. I imagine it as like a lawyer at the feet of Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, interrupting Him at each point and saying, "Ah, not so fast! According to [such an such...]" Why did God come into the world to say a bunch of things that are to be taken as if they don't really mean what they mean?

I think our first reaction to hearing the words of Jesus is to take them at face value and wrestle with them if we need to. What we don't need are trite ways of explaining away every thing Jesus said so that they have no direct impact on our lives.

I like what I read quoted in Richard Weaver: Plato built the cathedrals of England and Aristotle built the manor houses.

Can morality change based on natural law?

Natural law is based on nature. But what if our understanding of nature changes? Does morality based on the underlying understanding change also? I can think of one way in which it did.

In the Old Law, it was forbidden to have sex during menstruation. This was listed as an abomination along with homosexuality, incest, and bestiality. It was unclean. The punishment was to be cut off from the people of God.

Since the New Law, there has been some variability in opinion about this practice. In the early Church and middle ages, it was generally regarded as sinful, though the sin would not be imputed to the woman if her husband demanded sexual intercourse during that time. It was considered sinful because in the middle ages there was the common belief that sex during menstruation caused miscarriages.

In the early modern period, it was demonstrated by science that sex during menstruation does not cause miscarriages. Subsequently, to my knowledge at least, having sex during that time by married couples is not considered sinful in the least degree.

In this case, it seems that a developing understanding of human nature has affected the moral conclusions drawn from that understanding, such that what was once considered a sin is no longer considered sinful.

Can this work in the opposite direction? Can something that was once considered not sinful later be considered sinful if our understanding of human nature develops? I was thinking about this today after having recently read about the concept of concealed ovulation.

Scientists have noted that in females of the human species ovulation is concealed. In most other animals, including those with whom we share recent common ancestors, ovulation is not concealed. In these species, a female's fertile period is conspicuously displayed, and in fact she can only engage in sexual intercourse during that period. Human females may have sex during any part of their cycle, and the timing of her ovulation is not obvious.

There is a diversity of opinion among scientists as to why humans evolved to have concealed ovulation. Some argue that it may confer survival advantages, while others say it may have just been a coincidence or an accident following from some other selective process.

Catholics, however, are not allowed to believe that the human being is a product of chance or blind selections made of random mutations. Catholics must believe that God guided the process, that the way we are is intentional (if the way we are by nature is not intentional, arguably we could not base morality on our nature). Therefore, we can rule out the possibility that concealed ovulation is an accident or coincidence. God intended human ovulation to be concealed.

Where am I going with this? When I was thinking about these things earlier, it seemed to me that this conflicts directly with Natural Family Planning. Does NFP deserve to be called natural? Will we eventually find out that it is contrary to nature?

The Church has obviously and definitively allowed and endorsed the use of NFP, at least for the past 150+ years, allowing married couples to limit sex to infertile periods for grave reasons (though as far as I know, She has not explained what these grave reasons are, nor have I ever heard anyone speaking on NFP emphasize this stipulation). But, could the Church change her position on this issue if there were developments in our understanding of human nature, for instance if we discovered that human ovulation is meant to be concealed by nature?

If ovulation is meant to be concealed, and the aim of NFP is to expose what our nature intended to conceal, then the methods of NFP could be thought of as an abuse of the human intellect, the intemperate acquiring of knowledge, and to act on such knowledge would be an act against nature.

We know that nature forbids some kinds of knowledge. For instance, carnal knowledge of a member of the same sex is against nature. It is therefore not a stretch to argue that nature could forbid other forms of knowledge dealing with our generative power.

Now, the Church has the definitive voice on morals, so I would not think that anyone should have their conscience disturbed on this matter unless the Church ever makes a statement about this. Still, it is something to think about on a speculative level.

Fusion!

In the garden I've achieved cold fusion. Or, rather, Lilium 'Fusion' is blooming. This is a man-made hybrid between the Easter lily (L. longiflorum, a native of Japan) and the leopard lily (L. pardalinum, a native of California), a cross made possible by a technique called embryo rescue (the parents are naturally incompatible).

Lilium 'Fusion'

While staking one of the plants, which flopped over due to rain and possible over-fertilization, I knocked off a flower accidentally, so I brought it inside to keep in my room. Later on, I tried taking photos of it using my camera's bulb mode. I made these in a dark room and lit the scenes using flashlights, safety goggles, and my iPad screen. Some are kind of psychedelic, but I promise I was completely sober.

My favorite

There are also other lilies blooming in the garden:

Lilium regale (and weeds)

Daylilies 'Hyperion' (top) and 'August Orange' (bottom), both cultivars from the early-mid 20th Century

'Hyperion'

'August Orange' (not so late-blooming in Alabama)

Giving time for Evil Things

It may not always be good to think or speak about evil. Even by inviting into the mind an evil thing in order to abhor it, one still allows it space to displace good things. 

St. Paul tells us "whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

I was thinking this yesterday while listening to a Matt Fradd podcast on St. Thomas Aquinas's view on wet dreams. Aquinas says (emphases mine), 

A second cause of nocturnal pollution is on the part of the soul and the inner man: for instance when it happens to the sleeper on account of some previous thought. For the thought which preceded while he was awake, is sometimes purely speculative, for instance when one thinks about the sins of the flesh for the purpose of discussion; while sometimes it is accompanied by a certain emotion either of concupiscence or of abhorrence. [...] Thus it is evident that nocturnal pollution may be sinful on the part of its cause. on the other hand, it may happen that nocturnal pollution ensues after thoughts about carnal acts, though they were speculative, or accompanied by abhorrence, and then it is not sinful, neither in itself nor in its cause.

What Aquinas is saying, in other words, is that even thinking or speaking about carnal things with abhorrence can cause wet dreams later on. Though it is not sinful to speak speculatively about such things (or to have wet dreams caused by them), wouldn't it be better not to speak of them at all most of the time?

I've noticed after following Matt Fradd, who frequently speaks against pornography, that hearing him is often the first time I think about pornography in a day, and after thinking about it, it stays in my mind for a while. It is difficult for me to think about how pornography is abhorrent without also imagining why it is abhorrent, which leads to imagining what pornography is like, which may lead to further imaginations which may not be pure. Thus, I find myself most tempted by pornographic thoughts and temptations after I've turned my mind away from good things in order to speculate about the evil of pornography. 

Furthermore, the more I hear about the evils of pornography, the less the emotional effect. The mind grows numb after overexposure; but the mind should not grow numb to evil. A child who eats a strawberry for the first time savors its sweetness, but over time it becomes just an ordinary strawberry, and in order for it to have the same effect of sweetness needs to be dipped in sugar. After tasting strawberries dipped in sugar, strawberries alone taste insipid. In the same way, hearing too much about the evils of a thing may tend to move one in the direction of indifference toward the evil.

I heard a saying once which I liked: be careful whom you choose to be your enemies; you will become like them. In order for someone to become an enemy, we must first take them seriously, give credence to their power. It is difficult for us not to be influenced by those we believe to be powerful.

It is like those who have obsessive thoughts about evil spirits. Satan may delight in those who don't believe he exists, but he also delights in those who take him seriously and fear his power. It is better to be like St. John Vianney, who upon waking in the night to see the devil in the room with him, simply said, "It's just you" and rolled over and back to sleep.

Toccata & Fugue

I've never wanted to give a standing ovation to a YouTube video before this one. I think I just cried a little.

My Genetics

Recently my mom gave me a DNA test for ancestry. I got the results back last week. Some things were surprising (I have no Native American inheritance) and others weren't (I'm mostly British). Here are the percentages:

56% British
17% Irish
14% Western European (including France, Germany, Switzerland, northernmost Italy)

The remaining 13% was mostly Scandinavian, though there were minute (2% or less) possibilities of Spanish, Italian, and Greek, which the test said was unreliable.

The test also identified me as descended from early settlers of central Alabama.

Since my Dad has said his grandmother or great-grandmother (I can't remember which) was Cherokee, I was expecting to see that in my ancestry. It is still possible that she was Cherokee, but I did not inherit her genes.

The test was accurate in terms of matching me to relatives. It matched me with my mother, my aunt, and a cousin in Florida, all of whom also took the test.

It was also interesting to compare my results with my mom's. I am much more British and much less Scandinavian and Spanish than she is, which sort of shows me what I must have inherited from my father, who must be mostly British.