December 30, 2010.

At about the time the young aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville was traveling horseback around the United States to study the character of the American Revolution, another young French aristocrat was getting ordained to the priesthood. He was Emmanuel d’Alzon, the founder of the Assumptionists. His family had experienced the terrific upheaval that was the French Revolution, and the new priest was to live out the rest of his life dealing with its consequences for the Church.

Dec. 28, 2010.

We don’t know the shape of the future massing up before us here in America and the democratic West. We don’t pay it much heed. But the power required to guarantee our supposed right to pursue whatever we want…that power is very great. The more we demand from it to satisfy our desires, the more power over ourselves we place in its ready hands. The power to satisfy is the power to manage, direct, supply and control, which is to say, it is the power to mismanage, pervert, deprive and enslave.

Dec. 27, 2010

A blizzard here in the Northeast… It’s the Feast of St. John, the Evangelist…

Once, long before he became an exile on Patmos stormed by apocalyptical visions, John sat in a storm-tossed boat on the Sea of Galilee. That boat, represented here by a 17^th century painting (Ludolf Bakhuysen), will serve as the masthead of this blog. According to the story, Jesus is sleeping on a cushion in the stern when a terrific storm blows up over the lake, threatening to sink the boat and drown those aboard. The disciples, overwhelmed by what looks to be impending doom, cry out to Jesus who seems disturbed only by the fact that he’s been unnecessarily roused from his slumbers. From his perspective, there’s nothing to be afraid of; he gives the command and the storm ends.