Tasty Tidbits 7/12/11

Today’s Tidbits:

1. You know it was a great vacation when …
2. Pro Urbanism, Anti-sprawl.
3. If there’s no solution, there’s no problem.
4. Messages from beyond the grave.
5. The Faith Never Delivered to the Saints.

1

You know you’ve had a great vacation in Traverse City when reconciling the credit card statement a month later, fer cryin’ out loud, brings smile after smile to your face.

• “Fustini’s“
• “Mission Table“
• “Left Foot Charley“
• “Stella“
• “Blu“
• “Amical“
• “Right Brain Brewery“
• “Cherry Republic“
• “Hanna“
• “Omlette Shoppe“
• “Jolly Pumpkin“
• “Good Harbor“
• “The Cove“
• “Oryana“

No “Boskydel,” though; Bernie Rink only takes cash or check, and his website’s some darned affectation his son is putting on for him. I hadn’t noticed the slogan “No, we don’t sell any goddam T-Shirts.”

Blogging it brought more smiles to my face.

2

Public Discourse continues to delight me. It doesn’t hurt that they’re discussing topics I think a lot more important than Jacko’s death, Mel’s drunken anti-semitic outbursts, or Charlie Sheen’s latest whatever.

3

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal calls out “The First Rule of Liberalism“: “Every failed measure justifies more of the same.”

I prefer Pat Buchanan’s more shocking formulation of a somewhat kindred thought: “If there’s no solution, there’s no problem.”

“Problems” have solutions; but there are evils afoot in the world that have no solutions. And when government tries to solve an evil that has no solution, we end up with things like California wanting to eradicate bullying, or Dubya wanting to eradicate tyranny. Since the evil is solutionless — intractable — the chosen instrument is endless war, physical or ideological, and the measure of domestic tyranny that accompanies war.

So adjust your crap detector to go off whenever it hears a politician declare “War on ______________.”

4

I never thought I would block e-mail from Tom Marzen, Esq. We had a many wonderful conversations and even shared a room at a conference in New Orleans once.

But Tom has gotten some odd ideas since he died four years this past Saturday. He has started sending links so his ole’ buddy can find cheap Canadian Viagra. (Speaking of which, am I the only person dyslexic enough to misread “Vitara” on a cute little Japanese S.U.V.?)

Perhaps he’s trying to tell me that we were wrong about what’s really important in life (Wink! Wink!), but there’s plenty of people telling me that already.

Sorry, Tom; you’re on the blocked list. You can Rest in Peace.

5

The story is told on a sportscaster thrusting a mike at the Coach of a “Cinderalla Team” and asking “Coach! Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine your team in the Final Four?”

The Coach replied “In my wildest dreams, they don’t even play basketball.”

Did the Episcopalians of 80 years ago ever in their wildest dreams imagine a “prayerful celebration” like The Cyndi Lauper/Lady Gaga Pride Eucharist?

(HT Tom Crowe at Catholic Voter) Do you think there’s any chance that this is substantially the faith of the 1920s’ Book of Common Prayer?

In my terminal denomination (before I left denominations behind), the worship trajectory went from exclusive Psalmody, unaccompanied by instruments, though man-inspired hymns with Organ accompaniment, to Praise Songs with amplified rock bands, in the space of roughly 140 years. I thought manmade songs with good Organ accompaniment, especially if they were addressed to God, were the epitome of “traditional.”

Lex orandi, lex credendi. The most stable Protestant denomination I know is the Reformed Presbyterians, and that’s almost certainly because they won’t give up exclusive Psalmody, unaccompanied. (They’re stably wrong, and subject to non-worship fads like Christian Reconstructionist versions of Theonomy, but that’s another subject.)

You can’t tell me that the change from unaccompanied Psalmody to Praise Bands leading Praise Songs is merely cosmetic, and that the substance remains the same. I know some devout Gen-Y Protestants who have never heard the greatest hymns of my childhood. And I don’t know what they’re singing at Church now. So in a very real sense, I consequently have no idea what the substance of their faith is.

What would your grandparents think of your Church’s worship? Of the Faith it reflects — and shapes?

Don’t try to fool me. I’m 62, and I know darned well that today’s “conservative” Evangelical and Fundamentalist Churches, let alone the “mainstream,” do not sing the same hymns or preach the same way as they did in the 1950s. The stalwarts of the 50s would be appalled if they could drop in. They probably would walk out in protest (were it not that symbolic protests weren’t, so far as I can recall, a notable part of the 50s).

It is a historic anomaly that the same thing can be said of today’s Roman Catholic. His or her pre-Vatican II grandparents would not, or would barely, recognize the new order Mass, and would probably walk out in protest (as I saw one traditionalist walk out of a Red Mass when he saw one of many novelties). But Rome’s trajectory downward has been devolution by punctuated equilibrium, not the Protestants’ steady slide.

How will your grandchildren worship, if they worship at all?

Apart from a language barrier, a Christian of the 4th Century, transported magically to St. Alexis Parish (or any Eastern Orthodox Church) next Sunday around 9:30 am, would recognize the Christian liturgy we’ll be serving. And the substance behind that liturgy is the same, too. We didn’t invent it. We inherited it from almost two millennia of believers who sometimes laid down their lives for it.

Come and see.

And Bon Appetit!