The Cross is a Tree

This Sunday's readings are laden with the paradox of our poverty, hopefully causing us to be reliant on the richness of God. The poor will inherit the kingdom of God. The hungry shall be satisfied. So, blessed are they.

But cursed are the ones who trust in man and the flesh and who turn away from God. They are cursed by dint of their own poverty.

These words of the first reading about the man who trusts in the Lord and becomes like a flourishing tree resonated with me:

"...does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit."

Wonderful. With our trusting submission to God, we are asked and made to bear fruit in the year of drought - in addition to the other years. Will you be trusting enough to keep going - say, as personal or universal upheaval perhaps occurs, and especially when what you thought rich turns to poverty - and then bear even more fruit than before?

This fruit-bearing seems almost synonymous with the absence of anxiety and fear that is mentioned in the same passage.

I've always liked Michael O'Brien. I read all his novels, non-fiction books, articles, reflections, essays, newsletters; I read everything of his. In his most recent newsletter he ended it with these words:

"Where do we find such love within ourselves? Truly, there is always love within us. Sometimes it is sleeping, and sometimes it is buried or badly bruised, and sometimes it is awake, though not entirely awake. In order to love with our whole minds, hearts, and souls, we must ask our Father in Heaven for the grace to love Him and each other, and then respond to the graces day by day. I recall how my children when they were small, around the time of my birthday, would ask me for a little bit of money, and then they would go off with their mother on secret projects, and a few days later they would give me their gifts with beaming faces."

Think about that.

Removing Sandals, not the Burning Bush

There is no other thing more frustrating to paint than the face of Jesus. To paint His face is hard well beyond the attainments of skill.

Skill for this task seems only necessary as antecedent exhaustion before the real strokes get made. In other words, more often than not, skill gets in the way. Artistic accomplishment alone is going to get you the most awful, rubber headache of a Jesus possible.

In light of that tortuous difficulty, one can understand the graphic shorthand that was developed over the centuries by iconographers. As my instructor says, you are making graphic annotations. You are not describing per se; you are realizing within the laws of the human hand.

What is it that we do when we come to terms with the limitations of something, like painting? We seek to attain what is most essential that can be attained through those limited means. Everything else gets bailed out. And in the end, depending on how well you've done, everything else has somehow been woven in.

If you do not recognize what you cannot attain through a limited medium, you will not attain to anything.

One can likewise understand the "shorthand" that was used to write Scripture - especially the New Testament. All that we know as Tradition was glanced at, in a kind of shorthand, like the graphic annotations of icons - like, yes, but also very different of course.

Take this passage from The Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2:

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand persons were added that day.

They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.

All who believed were together and had all things in common;

they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need.

Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart,

praising God and enjoying favour with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

There is so much, so much condensed and yet not said in that little passage, and in particular: "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers."

Already in those four things, which the one sentence mentions almost cursively, we get the sense that they are things that have a weight and world of their own, quite apart from the written word.

We can see by what Scripture does not tell us that Scripture is telling us something.

Scripture has a built-in modesty that tells us: do not take me up alone; that is heresy.

And where in scripture does it say that? Where indeed.

Perhaps sola scriptura doesn't nearly do as much disservice to Tradition as it does to Scripture. Iconoclasts after all, destroyed Scripture Illustrated.

Olympic Mail

From John Taschereau:

Well, family and friends, it’s the day before the 2010 VANCOUVER WINTER OLYMPICS - the Vancouver Olympics have finally come. The story of Whistler’s original development is truly fascinating — from its very inception decades ago it was built purposefully to host an Olympic event one day, due to its spectacular beauty, location, and snow, and that day has finally come. Whistler was originally founded to host an olympic event.

For those that know the area, everyone is always taken aback by the astonishing beauty of the World Famous Sea to Sky highway with its glacial vistas, its majestic peaks and deep fjords lavishly strewn with islands of all sizes and shapes. It's considered one of the most beautiful places on earth and no-one argues it’s title. It is quite something to share it with the world.

At the BC Legislature, there is a door reserved for heads of state. It’s the centre arch. No-one, including the Premiere, can walk through it, unless he is accompanying a head of state and otherwise uses the doors to the side of the arch. Today would have been a rare occasion for him to pass under the arch as Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to address each of us: the province and the country.

Google has done a special Street View for the Whistler slopes which brings you as close as anyone can get.

Apparently, the opening ceremony Oh Canada theme is incredible. The few that haver heard it say it’s astounding. Also, and confirmed, CTV’s Canadian "I Believe" song for these games has become № 1 on iTunes beating out all the major pop stars.

Our family went to see the torch when it passed through Cloverdale. The excitement of this not-even-once-in-a-lifetime-event is pretty crazy.

I have to admit that I have retained a deliberately, exceptionally guarded position of “least fan boy”, but tonight, I am sure everyone can feel the excitement that is absolutely everywhere and completely pervasive. The atmosphere is absolutely charged. You can feel it! Anything human is never perfect, and we all have our own sensitivities to ideas about who benefits and other uses for the money being spent. However, C’est une afait acomplis. We democratically went forward with this, proposed and started by a left (NDP) government under Clarke and manifested under the right (Liberal) by Campbell. For better or worse, we collectively have a decision to live with. Like all of life, we can make what we want out of what is before us.

The Olympics are FINALLY is here — after YEARS OF WAITING since the announcement, and for some, long, long before. I hope everyone enjoys everything they can out of this tremendously unique opportunity and take delight in wishing everyone a FANTASTIC TIME!

Enjoy the Games Everyone! GO CANADA GO!!! And as Stephen Harper proposed, let’s check our obsessive national humility at the door for once.

All the Best!
— John

I agree: "Like all of life, we can make what we want out of what is before us", and, "...let’s check our obsessive national humility at the door for once".

Those protesters are not my cup of tea, as much as I may side with their views and as much as I don't care for competitive sports.

I don't know for sure, but the ones who would protest at the Olympic opening are probably those people who like it when people dislike them; that is, they are not happy until they generate antagonism towards themselves, and they feel they are getting somewhere by doing this. In short, they are little Michael Moores.

They hurt the justice they want to work towards.

The Wrong End of Mystery

Scientists Baffled by Amazon Mystery

Some new archeological discovery always "baffles" the "world's scientists", as though they would have a clear handle on everything all of the time and both ways, into the past as well as our future.

It's like a false humility. Well of course you're baffled, dim wits, because no one can see eighteen hundred years into the past. Not everything is some code purposefully presented to our minds as a way of proving our perfect immensity. The codedness of mystery is an accidental; but mystery is the purposeful foundation of all of our inquiries, our adventures of being.

But no, they always have to put up this big show about how they've come across something that has them so baffled, and this bafflement in reality only works to increase their stature as experts. It works in the negative to make people think that we know most anything; and takes our minds away from the fact that we know largely nothing.

Hi, we're the News here, just to remind you that we (by which we mean 'we the world') know absolutely everything and there's no reason to despair. But wait, hold on a minute, there is something inexplicable, coming in just now - to tip the scales a bit so that our supreme knowledge doesn't immediately crush us with boredom - that has even baffled the world's scientists! Don't worry; Latin America has always been the seat of mystery itself, and the mystery in question most likely has to do with that peculiar and quaint specimen we now know as "religion".

You have to love those first conclusions they always come to; such as that these trenches were dug for religious or ceremonial purposes.

I don't know what the most likely cause would be; it could very well be for ceremonial purposes. But I find it funny that the "world's scientists" would not first suppose that these trenches were dug merely for agricultural reasons (i.e. drainage).

That would be too mundane. I mean, they're all over the place! And in different shapes too! No way could they have been for small scale crop fields!

What could these ancient peoples possibly have been communicating to our aerial cameras?

A great mystery!

Trees - Forest - Ink Drawing

Bad Chess Poem

To play online chess - good pastime.
Been playing it for years.
Profile shows more than
a thousand games played,
three quarters of them lost.

Winning streak: usually at a minus.
Draws: counting twenty three.
Abandoned games: seventeen
(which I don't do anymore);
and one of the consistently
lowest scores,
so that folks with either
high or modest scores,
come to my table,

thinking, here's small fry
I can drum a few points out of,
easy prey. But I'm more
than they bargained for,
making them think twice;
causing a twitch in the confident
mouth, and once a while a thrum
of panic; perhaps sometimes
a glimmer of that mead hall instant,
when Grendel's fist met Beowulf's
and thought: damn it, shit,
since to have a high score
and lose to one who has a low score
means losing a ton of your points,
whereas having a low score
and losing to one with a high score
means losing very few points.

It's pleasure, putting up that fight,
spearing their antics with what might
I have - even when I lose.

Once though, I played one who
had a major ranking - one of the board kings -
such that I'm sure
his playing me was a source of shame
and guilty pleasure to him,
when by some updraft of grace
I was caught up in some risen winging:
move led to move; I mastered the board

and beat him. Couldn't believe it.
He immediately challenged me
to another, saying it was a fluke.

So we played another
and he promptly threw me back down,
but then, before he checkmated me, he
made a draw. Left me with my winning streak,
and he with his minus like an axe cleft
in the great trunk of a tree.

Most graceful player I ever played.

Crocuses Wide Open

February 4th. here in southern British Columbia. There are reports of some cherry trees already in full blossom in Vancouver. I'm starting to take back my earlier complaints. This global warming is wonderful. All you states and provinces in the dregs of winter cold, it's too bad you don't have global warming right now.

Those invested emotionally and financially in the winter olympics are wishing that our winter was more like the one we had last year (record snow dump) when we didn't have this global warming. If I remember correctly, at that time England was the place that had global warming.

The other night I caught this commercial on T.V.:



What an utterly ridiculous commercial. It was obviously made by the same people who made that California commercial. Those blue screens behind the sort-of-famous people (laid-back, sophisticated, home) are almost believable. It doesn't make me proud of my province. It's a rancid sort of provincialism on the steroids of the financial elite.

It is a commercial of course. Not that I'm expecting it to show Vancouver's homeless people getting culled from the streets by the police (a police force not entirely clean) so we won't look bad to "the world", but come on; a little less, uhm, we-are-the-freaking-world-of-the-Na'vi horseshit would be nice.

Forest Drawing

(Click to enlarge)

Furthest from the trails, where the ground is dense and springy, and the growing limbs crowd in and mix with the dead, proves to be the most advantageous for trying to bring out order.

Yesterday I was here behind a massive fir, the girth of which exceeded mine. In such a place there is nothing to quite jangle your nerves like a sudden deep grunting sound from directly behind you. Looking back this way and that, telling myself that there are no boars in these woods didn't help any to stop the heart from pounding. And then right behind the tree two racoons make their way, over wet ferns. The one ahead didn't notice me and kept on going. The one trailing behind saw me and froze, then startled, went some paces in the other direction away from me before carrying on down the hill.

I didn't know racoons could make that kind of sound.

Hirst and the Collectivist Fall from Art

Falling Man, By Max Beckmann (photo source: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/l09HZ3pUpdxjW_T-ESC-kA)

There is an alright article by Barbara Kay in today's National Post on Damien Hirst's four month London exhibit, No Love Lost, Blue Painting; a "radical departure" from Hirst's studio-produced conceptual exhibits (i.e. actual rotting copulating cows) in that he has painted, solo, twenty five paintings.

There's an even better, earlier article here in The Independent. The best line from the author (in which he mourns the blindness of those who attempt to connect Hirst's canvases with the works of yore and thus reduce the works of yore to superficial egoism):

"So many things obscure a pure attention to good art."

Ah, the inability to meet the demands of real art: the post-modern reward for our divestment of cumbersome, physical reality with its multitudinous array of objects, symbols and figurative species. The reward we now get for this divestment is an endless and cumbersome cacophony, obscuring the ability to see beyond the self - how paradoxical.

In the midst of all warranted criticisms against Hirst and his ilk, that pithy line remains like the last standing word - the only word that these kinds of exhibits deserve - while these nihilistic exhibits (and they are nihilistic) pull down with them into the pit, or nearly so, the critics who spend too much time and too much energy railing against, and detracting them.

The likes of Hirst ought not to ruffle or disturb us or even cause us to be indignant. The time to be disturbed was long ago, when only a few took up that prophetic role. Now is the time to re-build - or simply to build.

I find myself more indignant towards the critics (who I agree with) who come up with terms like "Retrogardism" (a turn on Avante-garde) as a "counter-movement" that brings “a multidisciplinary attempt to retrieve techniques and genres that fell into disuse during the modernist period.”

What? Do you not, even now, get it yet? Do you not understand that you are assuming a post-historical stance as much as Hirst assumes, by talking in the same bunk language of art history?

So many things obscure a pure attention to good art.

I believe that Max Beckmann was one of those prophets who came to be horrified by the sudden takeover of "pure abstraction" (which led to "conceptual art") in his day and yet understood the alternative trap of making a false counteractive art, "painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness."

If I was an art teacher I would make Beckmann's "On My Painting" and "Letters to a Woman Painter" required reading.

Beckmann saw in the rise of "pure abstraction" not so much the ruination of tradition, but the ruination of individuality.

"The greatest danger which threatens mankind is collectivism. Everywhere attempts are being made to lower the happiness and the way of living of mankind to the level of termites. I am against these attempts with all the strength of my being.

The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or antipathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees - an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physical reality.

Human sympathy and understanding must be reinstated." (Emphasis mine)

Beckmann wrote these words in 1938. And now so many, many worthless things obscure a pure attention to good art - and so we are impoverished and distracted, unable to expand the self because we are unable to meet the demand of looking beyond and through the self -to what?

What is there to deserve our princely and jaded gazes? What could there possibly be outside of the slaughterhouse, except to say that art the likes of Rembrandt only points to his personal genius and points to nothing else and then that anyone can paint like Rembrandt?

Specs

I have probably needed glasses now for a few years, though it was only very recently, in December, that I bought a prescription (first time since childhood getting an eye exam too!). Driving at night was mostly what prompted me. They are a fairly light prescription, but wow, what a difference.

They are classy-looking Ray Ban and I'm pretty sure the salesman that helped me whittle down the pair was Italian.

The other day I had my first scary spec moment - the moment you realize you were completely unaware that you're wearing the glasses, and you put your hand to your face and there they are, where they've been all along. They have become fused with your head.

It was spec-tack-you-lar.

I'm Game

Enbrethiliel has a game where you list ten favourite things beginning with the particular letter that is assigned.

The last one she did begins with the letter A. I know it's not a meme, but I couldn't help wonder what some of my favourite things are that begin with A. It is hard! It's especially hard to make it both "comprehensive and specific".

But here they are anyway, in no order of importance:

1. Andrei Rublev - the iconographer (which can also double for 'Andrei Rublev' the film, which can triple for Andrei Tarkovsky, the one who made the film. Triple Whammy. Bling!)

2. Ballade #3 in A-Flat. Pushing it? Maybe.

3. Asiminia Triloba - otherwise known as the Pawpaw tree:

4. Artificial Nigger, The (favourite Flannery O'Connor short story)

5. Argonauts, The - by Max Beckmann. The fact that Beckmann finished the painting (his ninth triptych) the day before he died (or minutes before he died as some sources say) only makes it that much more eerily but beautifully prescient. But look at it in comparison to the other triptychs. It's like all those tensions and contradictions have resolved somehow.

6. A-Team, The

7. April - Easter memories...

8. Adoration - No, I'm not just throwing this one in as a check in the "verifiable Catholic checklist"; I really mean it.

9. Al Yankovic, Weird! Just don't anyone say anything. Leave me alone.



10. This film:



Photo source: http://www.larapeyzaj.com/rnler/tropikal.htm

Home

Still Life: done enough

I'm not going to wrangle with this one any longer.

From the Mailbox

You know you're a fan when you actually hope that the sign is real - and then start wondering to yourself about what other kinds of street signs could be similarly adapted.

The pass of Caradhras with a slash through it...for No U-Turns?

No Dirt on Avatar

Where I remember Cameron's Titanic getting a lot of word-of-mouth that eventually made it the box-office smash that it was (not to mention the repeated viewings by adolescent girls), I'm certain that Avatar's smash has to with the media hype machine. There seemed to be a glaring and calculated push for the film leading up to its release and after. People seem to be seeing the film out of some kind of popular obligation. You know, we gotta see Avatar, because, you know.

I may be totally wrong there though.

What I'm not wrong about is my complete non-desire to see this film. While I can understand the often over-generous Father Barron's case, namely, to go see the film for the visuals, keeping in mind that it is brimming to the teeth with Hollywood-approved "religion", I wonder to myself: how can one watch a film simply for its visuals without imbibing of the anthropology that drives, or underpins them? And if one is immersed in those visuals, thrilling to them, enjoying them, then where is the radar that lets one know that the "underpinnings" are making their way into one's consciousness?

As for the visuals that I've seen of the film so far, they produce no feeling in me that I would want to bathe in them. Alan Capasso's comparing them to Thomas Kinkade's imagery is relevant here. Avatar's visuals may be far less sentimental, but there's an alignment to be made. The glowing of the trees is not like the glowing of the trees about Treebeard's sleeping place. The visuals seem to have a naught-but-brilliant saturation that washes out, in wide open-air vistas that seem to terminate only in the limitless information bank of computer-blue, any notion of real dirt.

I wonder if this film, bound with its visuals, represents the first culturally significant, syncretistic plunge into a "sinless" new era. There is always so much second-guessing at that threshhold: do we really want to jettison all these things that we said have kept us chained back all this time?

Avatar may represent that plunge-taking. Which one could counter with another take on where we are actually heading, like with Werner Herzog's extended funeral procession, Aguirre, The Wrath of God: a film with a different take on nature, and our fallen nature.

I have my problems with Herzog (I often suspect him of being a nihilist), but I've always admired, yes, his visuals; the progression of his images; his going after "ecstatic truth". I especially like his film Fata Morganna.

And I've always liked his hands-on, physical, athletic, chunky realism; the fact that he always uses real things whenever possible, not simply because he wants his films to look real, but because using real objects has an inherent way of whittling the path, the trajectory of your film. Artists love limits.

Take the wonderfully haunting opening from Aguirre, The Wrath of God. That might be one of the floating mountains in Avatar; except for the fact that it's also a thousand other things and yet none of them: that line of people coming down that mountain face, in time, and just a few feet away to the side of them is sheer, ecstatic eternity.

By Lord, if that is not an awesome image of our place in this world, then, well, you might as well plug yourself into the nearest tree and dream away.

The Handiwork of Vancouver Police

The only wrong thing he did was open his door to the police (Oh, we were supposed to go to the basement suite door instead - whoops). Watch the video of this man's injuries:

http://ca.yahoo.com/s/1128766

Bones around his eye broken; lacerations and bruising to the knees; back and sides thumped swollen and deep red.

You have to wonder about headlines that use words like, "alleged beating".

Or as John Taschereau writes in an e-mail concerning the release of the article he links to below:

"HERE WE HAVE THE VANCOUVER POLICE Chief desperately trying to fool the reader into thinking the police were “just doing their job” while they ARRESTED AND MERCILESSLY BEAT UP THE WRONG MAN.

And it’s worse than that…Turns out the guy was not even resisting arrest which begs the question: why the police beat the shit out of someone who was not resisting arrest?

And why did the police originally say the man was resisting arrest?

We have two crimes against a law abiding citizen by a corrupt police force.

The answer is because the LAW in this country no longer stands for anything other than the inside boys club of what they can get away with. BC citizens will have to take it to the face a bunch more before they decide the police and the RCMP need to be disbanded and a new, local force put in place.

Vancouver police chief says innocent man beaten by officers did not resist.

Regrettably, the police cannot be trusted. When this kind of thing happens, they are criminals."

Go to the link John provides for an article that gives some details of the case, which took place 2:20 a.m. Wednesday (Jan. 20).

Most of the articles so far, as well as the video linked to above, use words that try to focus one's attention on it being a "wrongful arrest" of "mistaken identity". Well yes, they got the wrong guy. But that doesn't mean beans in this case. One of the sources even uses the words that Yao Wei Wu was "roughed up" during the arrest.

No, actually; he was severely beaten the second he opened up his door.

Vancouver, which is going to host the winter Olympics this February, may have one of the most corrupt police forces around. In the past few years, story after story has come out about beatings - and drunk-driving (then fleeing the scene) - but especially the beatings, and the use of stupid, over-aggressive force, leading to death.

The most well-known to date is the case that took place, and which was caught on video, three years ago at Vancouver airport. Robert Dziekanski, fresh from Poland to be with his mother, after being held in some area of the airport, was shot with Tasers five times, only 25 seconds after police arrived. The first shot brought him to the ground where he started convulsing. The officers proceeded to shoot him with Tasers four more times, and Dziekanski died.

Confiscation and suppression of the video; a lot of testimonies made by the officers in court totally contradicted by evidence later brought out; corrupt investigation into the case; it can be gleaned in this wikipedia article.

Here's the video:



One of the officers involved in the Dziekanski case was later involved in a drunk-driving accident, where he fled the scene and went home where - so he testified - he drank some vodka to calm himself down, and then walked back to the scene whereupon he was given the breath-test.

Police corruption in Vancouver goes back some:

"The Vancouver Police was at the centre of one of the biggest scandals in the city's history in 1955. Feeling frustrated that blatant police corruption was being ignored by the local media, a reporter for the Vancouver Daily Province switched to a Toronto-based tabloid, Flash. He wrote a sensational article alleging corruption at the highest levels of the police department in Vancouver, specifically, that a pay-off system had been implemented whereby gambling operations that paid the police were left alone and those that did not were harassed. After the Flash article appeared in Vancouver, the allegations could no longer be ignored, and a Royal Commission, the Tupper Commission, was struck to hold a public inquiry. Chief Constable Walter Mulligan fled to the United States, another officer from the upper ranks committed suicide, and still another attempted suicide rather than face the inquiry.[5] Other scandals and public inquiries plagued the force before and since this one, dubbed "The Mulligan Affair," but none were so dramatic." --wikipedia

Wine in Cana

Puritans and those of the puritanical ilk (they need not necessarily be Christian) do not really hate alcohol. What they really hate are enzymes. They cannot stand enzymatic activity. It is not so much the fact that wine can get you drunk that causes them irritation. It is the fact that wine comes out of such a frivolous and unforced process as fermentation that very nearly causes them to go raving mad; for they would rather believe that such an accidental-looking thing as fermentation were an oversight of God rather than admit it was His will. But wine is God's will, or He would not have made it in Cana.

We can say that enzymatic activity, along with all the Christ-precluding symbols created in nature that have anticipated His coming (precluding and anticipating of course precisely because He was already before creation), is a clear natural forerunner symbol of Christ's third manifested epiphany and first public miracle.

There is a limitless range of symbols to be read in nature that mirror God's supernatural working and manifestation in His Son. While it is true that Christ would have suspended the laws of nature to make the wine in Cana, it is also true that the natural enzymatic process of fermentation anticipates this first public miracle of Christ; by mirroring the Cana miracle in the rather miraculous process we call fermentation.

But as natural fermentation anticipated the miracle at Cana, likewise the miracle at Cana represents and anticipates Christ's coming "hour"; the new baptism; the new wine of the Holy Spirit to be poured out on the world.

We can glean from these three - the natural miracle of fermentation, the supernatural miracle of Christ turning water into wine, and that most important thing of all, for which Christ was very impatient: namely, His death, resurrection, and pouring forth of the Holy Spirit - a clear, resounding, threefold image of what our conversion ought to look like, indeed, the fact that our conversion is not just a process, but is ever more away from our own strength.

We will not keep ourselves clean if we do not "dirty ourselves"; that is, if one only clings to their baptism like a passport, or one-way ticket, then over time it will turn out that one is only holding on to their idea of baptism, and the idea of their cleanliness. Things do not always operate, in fact mostly never operate, the way we think - never mind the supernatural ways of God.

Our bowels afford a good example. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the human body knows how essential are good bacterium, microorganisms - enzymatic activity; not only for digestion and extraction of nutrients, but for the defenses of the immune system. People who have been put on antibiotics at any point will know this; the risk of contracting something else while taking them, or shortly after. That's not to mention the direct side effects.

The knowledge of good microorganisms in the bowels, and of course everywhere, has given many doctors and practitioners of medicine second thoughts about the use of antibiotics and other "cleaning" operations, such as enemas, and the ways we eradicate germs through chemical sterilization.

The precarious position of our own cleanliness - afforded by undeserved grace through repentance - will turn drastically to one worse than our previous position (the man who came back home from the desert) if our initial baptismal waters are not converted, through the strangely miraculously enzymatic process that is one with the sacrament of baptism, into new wine. It is not enough that we be made whiter than snow, for if we think that, we will not stay white, but will become defiled.

We must be made whiter than snow, but our only way of staying pure is through fermentation: in which, among other things, we develop richness, character, body (this is most importantly in spirit, not "personality", for it is often that these things are not apparent to ourselves) that consoles other people like the inebriation of the finest wine.

This is, in part, what the Catholic Church means when she says that baptism is the beginning, not the end-all-be-all, of conversion. Baptism is sufficient, as a beginning. Oh, it's very necessary, but there still remains, for all of us, complete transformation.

Now, sin is ever the "inferior wine"; the wine that runs out, that is extremely limited; the evil charade and mockery of the good wine; the artificial wine that leaves you with a headache because it has been filtered of microbes, and perhaps adulterated with taste-enhancing additives.

Notice that the inferior wine is spent when Jesus makes the new wine. There will not be any mixing; no "bettering" of the inferior wine by adding some good wine into it. He could well have foreseen the shortage and made a surplus before any servant noticed the depletion. On top of this, the new wine is made in different containers - indeed, the jugs used for purification - rather than the ones that held the inferior wine.

We can witness here the very image of conversion. It is obvious enough: the old self completely dies; not just the manifest acts, the inferior wine of sin, but also the container that held it; and an entirely new container is given to hold…this time, water - humble water. You are filled to the brim with water, for after the habits of sin, nothing better will do but that clean equilibrium of clear water, held with awe, the fear of God.

Sometimes it feels like you are not even holding this water. Though you may be certain it is there, you cannot feel the liquidity of the water; it can feel just like clean empty space because you are holding the water so deeply and so docilely.

Notice how big these stone purification jugs are: twenty to thirty gallons each. To be so hollowed out; the thought of going from that small but full jar of inferior wine to this large container that is hollowed out is scary. How can I have that much room inside myself? I cannot give that much up. But God hollows us out, through purification that necessarily hurts.

One - the water - is brought on by revoking something, banishing it, repenting of it, emptying ourselves, and being emptied by God, of it: a form of subtraction and submission. The other - the new wine - is brought on by positive addition, and is another kind of submission. We are made into new wine from water by conforming, in addition to repenting, and continuing to repent.

So, to bring up another natural thing that symbolizes the supernatural: it was in God's plan that we delight in wine, for even in that delight we catch a meager and limited modicum, a pale and paltry reflection of God's delight in us - when we conform to Him in whose image and likeness we were made.