Theme post, yeah right
Jan. 23, 2002
Lame theme post idea for some of us, Dave.
Perhaps I'll list my excuses for not following the newest theme post, which is "an old post from the first quarter of the life of your web page."
1. The most obvious reason: for the greatest part of the life of my web page, I didn't log. The log part of my site is only a few months old, and contains probably less than 10 posts. If I had an archive you could easily read them all and decide for yourself, which brings me to reason
2. I don't have an archive, so you can't read my old posts. But just as I'm too lazy to format an archive, even though Lumberjack makes it so easy that even I could do it, so I'm also too lazy for rigging up a page for me myself to read my old entries from the database, and so, here we are, both equally ignorant of what I said more than 3 weeks ago.
Wow, check out the grammar of that last sentence. It must be early in the semester. For entertainment purposes, I'll leave it as-is.
That reminds me of something funny. We had a theology colloquium on hell today, and the presenter was discussing why a theology of hell was developed at all in Christian thought, and she said, laughing, "Well, one reason is definitely for the entertainment value!" Then she mentioned the ridiculous glee with which, for example, Dante condemned his contemporaries to perpetual literary immolation in the Divine Comedy.
Having excused myself, in lieu of an old weblog post, I'll substitute an excerpt which none of you (except Matt) has had the opportunity to read before. This was my statement of purpose for the application to the Theology Department at Notre Dame. It was last edited February 2, 2001, almost a year ago. Although I would definitely say the specific nuances of my academic interest have changed somewhat, one thing that hasn't altered is the passion for the subject that this brief passage displays:
"After such an experience, it is perhaps not surprising that my love affair with the liturgy should grow; that the calling I felt that day to Eucharistic communion should be recognized as a call to Eucharistic service. What I felt during my first mass has become clear to me as the effect which liturgical practice can and should have on the people of God. Not only has the liturgy not lost its meaning in this age of racing, rushing emptiness, but it has a purpose which is not new but is yet uniquely suited to the needs of today. That mission is the infusion of the contemplative life of the church, the life of love and the search for the presence of God, into the life of the Everyman Christian. It is, as Thomas Merton says of prayer, 'the deepening of personal realization in love, the awareness of God.' In other words, liturgy makes the experiences of the mystics both really and symbolically available to the participant. Even the overworked, discontented, or misunderstanding can come to the table and be one of the lovers of God."