i suck at debating

this afternoon i joined an LDS member, a priestess of light, an ethnic catholic, and an agnostic in a passionate discussion of mormonism. at one point in the conversation, the priestess of light tried to convince everyone that mormonism and catholicism were more closely related than protestantism and catholicism because both faiths claim apostolic succession. despite a bag of facts, i couldn't seem to sway the priestess. thus, it is no surprise that when the debate got more controversial--i was arguing that mormons are not christians--i failed again. it took a dozen hand scratched diagrams before i could even convince my crowd that protestants, catholics, and orthodoxers fell under the same religious umbrella.

my inability to argue effectively isn't a new discovery. i have always had trouble pulling rhetoric from my brain without first thinking, thinking, and thinking some more. however, until yesterday, i was functioning under the false belief that, thank God, i could at least hold my own in a written debate. and then i posted in the controversial subject section of the grammar forum. ooooh boy, was it a disaster.

[i'll finish the 3-part post next time--i first had to confess my inadequacy in these logic wars]

andrew david. "belikin, the belizean hometown brew & a possible explanation for my sucky debate skills?" san ignacio town, belize.

ps. i may have the priestess of light's title wrong. i think she's also a druid.

a pretext to an ash wednesday observation 2

"hi, i'm andrew, and i'm an aholic. (see this post for the first part of the story.)"

"hi, andrew."

"i suppose that means that i'm an all-around addict. for instance, steve told me about mike sando's seahawks blog, and i've spent most of my evening reading about the grant (wistrom) release and (deon grant) signing. you've probably noticed that i'm addicted to blogging, and i also tend to grow enamored with particular topics. catholicism is one of those topics. however, my first catholic mass occurred years before the birth of my catholicism obsession. i hadn't yet puzzled over an alberto ferreiro christian history quiz or posted provocative questions on a catholic answers forum. and i certainly wasn't catholic. thus it was with great trepidation that one sunday i found myself in a communion line, approaching a real-life catholic priest.

"in protestant churches, communion is nearly always a serious affair, but there is often a subdued hint of celebration. here, everyone seemed downright stoic. i understood the mood, but i was rather worried about that sober-looking priest. as each congregant received the elements, they performed some kind of a ritual with their hands and then mumbled conspiratorially with the cleric. i hoped they weren't speaking latin. there was no way that i would pull this off.

"for a moment i thought of the last supper. it was as if i was one of christ's oft-confused apostles: nudge, nudge. hey, peter. peter! what's he mean with this 'take and eat my body crap'? he's so bloody morbid. i just don't get it. but that's as close as i got to jerusalem. instead of forgiveness and community, i was wondering how the grim-faced padre was going to handle my insubordination when i failed to dip the wafer at the proper angle. this could turn ugly fast.

"peter (my good high school buddy, not the simon peter, rock of christianity) was now standing with the priest at the altar. that meant i was next. i bowed my head, and prayed 'lord, help me do this right.'

"the heavens chuckled and the priest beckoned me with his eyes. sharp, searching eyes, peering into my soul, scanning my contents for a date of confirmation, confession, anything to identify me as a true believer. i stood still, hoping that the priest would make the first move, kindly offer me some bread and wine. (andrew, what a great surprise! here's a wafer and some juice, take these in memory of christ's death for you.) the second dragged mercilessly into two seconds, and then three. he seemed to be waiting, but i was frozen with indecision. suddenly, my body spasmed into action. i may have cupped my hands, i may have made the sign of a cross, i may have flagged down a wayward aircraft, it's rather unclear. as my body performed this mysterious communion jig, i stared at the priest, channeling silent pleas into his brain.

"and then he frowned. it was only a subtle downward settling of the lips, but i knew that the church was about to erupt into a chorus of fire and brimstone. and then pitch forks, stones, and fiery stakes. i was a goner.

"but the priest spared me the death knell. he handed me the wafer, i drank the wine, and the morning's trauma was complete. i escaped saint joseph's but i'm still haunted by a sense of paranoia whenever i attend a catholic mass. i'm older and wiser, and i now know that protestants aren't welcome in the communion line. while this may mean that i can safely wait in my seat during the eucharist, it also accentuates my sense that i'm an impostor. i walk into a cathedral and think, 'hey, everybody, i'm not catholic, look at me!' "

andrew david. "radical dizziness, an unmentioned symptom of non-catholics who take catholic communion" seattle, wa.

a pretext to an ash wednesday observation

"hi, i'm andrew, and i'm a thriftaholic."

"hi, andrew."

"i suppose that it all started with the synthetic wallet that i received in junior high. that wallet was my little maroon buddy. i liked to give him gifts: especially dual-toned pictures of pyramids and dead presidents. and i really hated to take back those hard-won bills; an empty wallet is a sad wallet. perhaps this thriftiness was the twenty-first century incarnation of that great protestant work ethic; perhaps it was inspired by my real-life buddy, evan pence; or perhaps i even inherited my mom's common sense (she'd be surprised to hear that!), but whatever the case, the net result of this spartan spending was that i never embraced activities that require a large monetary investment. for example, i see plenty of movies but shrink at the prospect of movie popcorn; i shun golf; and i've never been skiing or snowboarding.

"the closest i've come to skiing is an occasional inner tube run, a nearby hike, and a pair of weekends at the schweitzer ski lodge. and there was no snow at the lodge--it was summer. thus, instead of hurtling down the mountain on a fiberglass deathtrap, i swam in the pool, read ray bradbury's fahrenheit 451, and attended my first catholic mass.

"saint joseph's was a rather typical small-town church, but my experience there was hardly typical. i followed my friend peter and his family into a pew in the back and readied myself for worship. the order of service was tough to follow, but peter seemed to have a handle on the affair, so when peter kneeled, i kneeled. peter turned to page 232 in his colorful book of sayings, i turned to page 232. andrew, the human mirror.

"and then came eucharist. i'm still surprised that peter never told me. during the course of our friendship, we'd had plenty of religious debates; you'd think that he'd have mentioned that nazarenes don't take catholic eucharist. or perhaps he might have motioned me back to the pew when i followed him into the receiving line, 'there, there, andrew. stay in your seat like a good protestant.'

"as our line edged forward, i risked a peek beyond peter and tried to observe the proper protocol. before the priest offered congregants the bread and wine, he paused as they made some kind of motion with their hands. but their backs were to me, and i could only see a brief flash of fingers. i started to panic. my mind was calculating the distance from the communion line to the exits: about fifteen paces. perhaps they were making the sign of the cross, i thought. but is it left to right? or maybe it's backward, like reading hebrew. do you look the priest in the eye?"

"well, it looks like time's up for tonight, andrew."

"oh, sorry. to be continued...."

liturgy

i like liturgy. there's something empowering in performing the same rituals as christians from 300 years ago; it reinforces the truth that this Christ that i worship is also the lord of peter, aquinas, and luther.

but sometimes my doctrine doesn't square with my liturgical preferences. for example, catholics are the undisputed masters of high liturgy, but their methods of christianity seem to dangle one toe in the pre-resurrection world--despite Christ's promise of personnel salvation, they appoint intermediaries to God: the saints, the pope, the priests, each is somehow more suited to conversing with the divine than your everyday john doe.

in some way, this theological construct (albeit more nuanced than my white-washed sentences suggest) is then reflected in liturgy. the rituals of liturgy are foreign to the usual human experience. to an outsider, they may seem strange and off-putting. indeed, i'm perhaps most attracted to liturgy because it pervades the worship experience with a sense of mystery. when liturgy's done right, there's something mystical, some sense that God is so much bigger, so much more powerful, so much more divine, so much more out of this world than the happy-smiley bestfriend of evangelicals like me.


andrew david "the other reason i like liturgy: cool cathedrals" morningside heights, nyc.

while in nyc, we walked through the cathedral that stands guard over the basinger's block in morningside heights. these pictures aren't particularly great, but i do think that they capture the immensity of the cathedral. staring up into the dark stone space of these rooms sent my mind reeling back to the fifth century. like liturgy, there is something awe-striking in these cathedrals, something that causes one to become thoughtfully reverent, something that inspires silence even in a buzzing metropolis like nyc.

by the way, check out the drops of blood (?) on the holy grail image.
brought to you by the17pointscale

the catholic colbert

ack! look at the time! from where i'm sitting it's 12:08am. since i promised a splash of catholic fun, here's a link that you MUST press. i found it on looking closer, a blog by past image artist of the month, jeffrey overstreet. mister overstreet's internet home seems devoted to movie links (i.e., trailers and reviews) and commentary, but every july 17, 2006 he sends readers to mormon 2 catholic. and that's the link of interest. though mormon 2 catholic may be intriguing enough to warrant further study, today's post is more about laughs than life journeys or spiritual quests. and when you need big belly laugh, everyone (who watches cable) knows that you can depend on stephen colbert. on the serious side, the link also includes some interesting quotes from the man behind the laughter, just be sure to watch the video first. and, if that's not serious enough, here's an npr interview with colbert (which i haven't listened to yet).


andrew david "two paintings that remind me of my short-lived career as a junior high painter" moma, nyc.

1. Vasily Kandinsky. (French, born Russia. 1866-1944). Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 3. 1914. Oil on canvas, 64 x 36 1/4" (162.5 x 92.1 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2006 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris; if you're still skimming this citation, let me say again, this painting is just like the masterpiece i created in mrs. barnfather's class!

2. Marc Chagall. (French, born Belarus. 1887-1985). I and the Village. 1911. Oil on canvas, 6' 3 5/8" x 59 5/8" (192.1 x 151.4 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2006 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. the crazy thing is that if, on your very first attempt at finding the name of this painting, you google "painting moma woman milking cow scythe," you will find the painting in question. and, from the looks of it, pages turned may be yet another noteworthy blog; at least there's a ton of stuff on literature. ummm..the colors are weird....sorry....

...if you haven't clicked the link yet, do it now....

Wangling out

http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=rescind

the 17 point scale would like to make a correction to the 10/25/05 post (or wangle out of that post). like many jokes, this one may have crossed the line. we unsuccessfuly attempted to slip into the language of catholicism. having never been a catholic and only attended a few services, this was perhaps a sinking ship enterprise. in any case, in our sad excuse for satire, we flippantly adopted the phrase 'fallen catholic' to denote someone who does not regularly attend mass. indeed, we expected readers to think ' ah, fallen catholic, that's like calling a bedside baptist a heathen.' thus, while the comment was made in jest, it perhaps lacked both context and sensitivity. sorry.

Andrew David 'Priest Cleaners' Concord, Mass. 2005

Perhaps I'm a bit of a rogue Protestant. For example, in the winter of 2004 I knew nothing of blogs. Well, nothing except that they played some vague role in the dissemination of political news. In any case, while my roommates lost fake money on online poker, I lurked at an online catholic apologetics discussion site (http://forums.catholic.com/). In fact, while there I contributed to a thread on inter-faith marriage and started a thread inquiring about the catholic perspective of protestants. I thought the responses were quite interesting: http://forums.catholic.com/search.php?searchid=1290293. Then, bursting with my new found knowledge, I invaded my family camp-out to play the devil's advocate for Catholic theology. Gosh, I'm even dating a 'fallen' catholic. Still, I find this picture particularly relevant, especially in light of the recent sex scandals and the clergy's occasionaly dark history. Yep, I really think that the Catholic priesthood may need some cleaning help.