Kevin Basil

Dear friends and followers: It has become necessary for me to take a break from social media. This will continue for at least the next three weeks, because I am finishing two major papers from last semester. I may come back just before August turns over the watch to September, or I may continue through the end of the fall semester. I have not decided yet.

Please keep this sinner in your prayers. As one of my teachers said recently, Prayer changes things.

I don’t watch much television (unless I’m at my parents — but that’s another story). In fact, for the past year, the only show I have been watching is Smallville, mostly because it was the final season. So now there is a hole where Smallville used to be. I have recently learned that Glee is now on Netflix streaming. Although I am certain it would become addicting, I am thinking I might give it a try. I am currently listening to the first season soundtrack on Spotify. Epic.

No, Glee is not at all like Smallville. I am a multivalent little atom.

Any thoughts? Do you like Glee? What do you like most or least about it?

Our father among the saints, Patrick, archbishop of Armagh and all Ireland, wonderworker.

Troparion, Tone I
Today, Armagh rejoices with Antrim and Mayo, * and all Ireland praises the illustrious apostle, Patrick. * On all he met he made a deep and lasting impression, * for the grace of God overflowed his noble and sensitive nature. * With the Lord Christ as his breastplate and the undying lamp of the Spirit in his hand, * he went forth to make the Irish people children of the font,
*** baptizing them into Christ, the only lover of mankind.

Kondakion, Tone IV
The evil one is ever on the watch to carry off entire nations as booty, * viciously plundering their spirit and leading the minds of the people into error. * For this, you wisely spurned the world as a passing dream prone to destruction, O holy Patrick, * preferring to be a merchant of that which lasts forever. * Thus, you led the Irish nation to worship Christ, our God, * becoming the blessed father of a multitude of sons and daughters in the Lord.
*** Beg him now to save our souls.

From The Monks of New Skete, Troparia and Kondakia.

The following interchange took place as I purchased beer at a convenience store on my way home from my extended family’s Christmas party tonight. The cashier was a cute brunette who sold me beer, so she was at least eighteen years old.

Cashier: May I see your ID?
Me (getting ID): You just made my day.
Cashier (looking at ID): Oh, you were born the same year as my mom!
Me (laughing) You just ruined my day.
Cashier: You’re still young.

Yeah. Right.

“Seminary is where blogs go to die.”

Someone posted that on the true blog-killer, Facebook, and I laughed. I almost wrote, right here in the space where you’re reading these words instead of what I wanted to write, “And something clicked inside me.” But that something clicks a lot and not a damn thing ever happens.

Take, for example, my Greek studies; I’m probably going to fail that class. Am I having trouble understanding what the aorist is, you ask? Or perhaps getting moods mixed up: Confusing the subperative and the injunctive? Nope. The problem is that I’m not memorizing a damn thing. That’s my problem. I know this. Something inside me keeps on clicking, and nothing changes. Click. See? Nothing. Click-click-clicklicklicklicklicklick. Not. A. Damn. Thing.

Something else needs to start clicking deep down inside me.

I might rename this old beast. I named it Decimation and Reconstruction around seven years ago. The blog was itself only a few months old, a little over a year. The webserver hosting my blog (and those of several other men in my parish) was cracked and everyone’s blog was down for about a week. At the time I thought Decimation and Reconstruction nicely summarized what happened and coincidentally served as a nice metaphor for our lives. I have left the title in place for seven years now.

I think perhaps I should rename the blog. Something like “The Abomination of Desolation,” or “Desolation and Recrimination,” or some other play on a Latinate “-tion” ending. Something that reflects that reconstruction never really happens: What is happening is always destruction. Even when we think we’re rebuilding after a massive decimation, we are either deluding ourselves or we are just building another Babel for the next act of God to destroy.

Who wins the clown of the day award? The two a——clowns that unnecessarily honked at me while I waited for a tow on a residential street. I had my hazard lights on, so no one else found such meanness necessary. Here’s to you, jerkoffs; you’re real cool. I hope someone honks in your ear next.

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings.”

Well, actually old Sol is shining rather brightly in fair Yonkers this day; he must not be too full of sorrow. Nature, unlike the implied stage directions in the Bard, usually continues blithely on, reminding us that our lives, too, go on, whatever our joys and sorrows may be.

“Bulgakov’s rejection of Marxism had a great deal to do with …the inadequacy of homo economicus [humanity defined by the economy]…. An account of human needs in terms of [economic determinism] leads — paradoxically — to an alienation… since it seeks a way out of personal struggle and growth, out of the risks of creativity. It sets up a mechanical opposition of economic interests, to be settled either by the logic of history (Marxism) or by the laws of the market (capitalism); but both resolutions sidestep the specifically human task of transfiguring the material world in and through the creation of community.” Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, on Fr Sergius Bulgakov

People sleep soundly in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do them harm.

I finally got tired of seeing this quoted (without irony). I decided to track it down. Here’s the skinny: It’s often attributed to George Orwell, a political observer and novelist, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, two novels about totalitarian regimes. That’s why I was suspicious. Orwell said that? I was thinking one of those two novels might be the source, meaning its context would be deeply ironic. As it turns out, Orwell didn’t say it. The other candidate, Winston Churchill, likely didn’t say it either.

• “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
  • Alternative: “We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
  • In his 1945 “Notes on Nationalism”, Orwell claimed that the statement, “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf” was a “grossly obvious” fact. “Notes on Nationalism”
  • Notes: allegedly said by George Orwell although there is no evidence that Orwell ever wrote or uttered either of these versions of this idea. They do bear some similarity to comments made in an essay that Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, when quoting from one of his poems. Orwell did write, in his essay on Kipling, that the latter’s “grasp of function, of who protects whom, is very sound. He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.” (1942)
    • “Yes, making mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep” – Rudyard Kipling (Tommy)
    • “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.” – Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men)
  • Alternative: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” – Winston Churchill (miscellaneous quotation, no date)

Source: Wikiquote

These will go a long way to explain why Wesleyans (including Methodists, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and others) consider it a religious duty to sing (and almost a sin not to).

1. Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please.
2. Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.
3. Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
4. Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
5. Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
6. Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.
7. Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

From John Wesley’s Select Hymns, 1761

Last night, I dreamed a bizarre and frightening end. I don’t usually remember my dreams (though psychologists tell us we are always dreaming, even when we don’t remember). Of course, what I do remember is fragmentary.

I remember someone saying something about a nuclear blast. So I look up at the sky, and see what look like clouds in the shape of a mushroom cloud, much like all those films of above ground nuclear testing in the South Pacific. I said, “They’re just clouds!” Then there was a flash of light, and my heart started palpitating.

Next I recall huddling up close to the foundation of a house, while the firestorm of the explosion rushed by. Everything gets blurry at this point. Did any of my friends survive? No one who was with me at the moment of the explosion survived, but eventually there were other people, I think.

Was the explosion a single bomb over New York City, or had other cities been affected or attacked? Was only New York destroyed, was the entire world in ruins? These questions were never answered in my dream, but it seemed like everyone wanted to know, and no one did.

There were questions about what to eat, whether things were poisoned with radiation. Eventually, everyone decided that everything had been tainted, so there was no point in trying to meticulously ferret out safe foodstuffs. I guess it was a matter of eat the poison or starve to death, though no one ever said this out loud, that I recall.

Finally, I was alone, swimming naked in cold, clear water; the light refracted along the bottom was the color of the sky. I knew it was contaminated with radiation, but I dove in anyway and swam among ice formations that looked like human skulls.

That’s when I woke up and wondered why I keep dreaming of nuclear holocausts.

A jester with a very large bauble
once tried to settle a squabble.
He laughed at the king,
and danced with the queen,
and now owns a penthouse in Kabul.

Several years ago, British Petroleum (BP) completely changed their branding. They stopped using a recognizable, if uncreative, shield emblazoned with “BP” which was readily identified as their trademark. They shifted to an unrecognizable poly-shape — what is it? a flower? a starburst? an explosion? (Good association for an oil corporation, that last one.) It seemed less creative, and no one ever identified the new branding scheme with the product: British Petroleum (or, more precisely, BP gas stations). It has been a decade since this branding shift, designed to imply that the company is green. Apparently, the image of BP as green has worked.

The brand still fails, however: Foreign Policy’s image of the multi-foliate jabberwocky becoming covered in oil did not immediately bring to my mind associations of BP until I had laboriously read through the text of the advert.

And this is before we get to the damning text of FP’s article. Green is the new black, apparently.

We have been thrust out of the garden of paradise for our failure to see God through his creation. The world was meant to be transparent, a crystal clear window through which we saw God in all his splendor. Instead, we made the world an idol, and it became opaque. We can no longer see God through it.

Let us cleanse our minds through fasting.

Please forgive me, brothers and sisters, for all the evil I have committed against you.

It has been almost a week since the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Carrefour (car-FOO), Haiti, just southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

I suspect that my church’s charitable organization is funneling funds to other charities with resources on the ground in Haiti; this is good but not exactly efficient. With that in mind, here are some charities that already have resources in Haiti.

The easiest way to get some money to Haitian relief efforts is to pick up your phone and text “Haiti” to 90999. This will charge $10 to your phone bill and give it to the American Red Cross, which has had a presence in Haiti for 5 years. Twitter: @RedCross

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) has been in Haiti since 1991. Twitter: @msf_usa

The New York Times Haiti Earthquake Recovery group on Facebook posted a list of the top ten most efficient charities in Haiti from Charity Navigator, a non-profit group dedicated to evaluating the effectiveness of charities and protecting donors from fraud and waste. Twitter: @CharityNav.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the efforts of several missionary friends of mine. Quisqueya Christian School in Port-au-Prince is still standing, miraculously. As a result, it has become a center for relief efforts. A nearby orphanage collapsed, and it is providing housing for the newly homeless orphans. It is also providing space for doctors to treat the many people wounded in the earthquake. Many of the staff lost homes and family and are living in tents on the football (soccer) field. There is a PayPal link on their webpage. Charity Navigator has not rated their effectiveness; I can only offer you my assurance that the people I know who run the school, as well as alumni, are of the highest caliber. They do not have a Twitter account.

A letter today from my church’s charitable organization strengthened my suspicion that they do not have their own resources on the ground in Haiti. I believe they are simply funneling funds and resources to other charitable organizations. This is good, because many people give to charities they know and trust without researching their capabilities and infrastructure. I hope this article provides you with other outlets, should you desire to make more efficient use of your donations.

(Aside: My thoughts are intended only for individuals trying to decide where to give their money. If your local parish is participating by collecting funds or necessary items, such as toiletries, please participate fully. If it is not, encourage your priest or pastor to organize something locally.)