January 31, 2014

• Too Many Thoughts for Just One Post

  Incredible amounts of want-to-shares, but we're going out to eat soon (Granny's Kitchen, Fort Pierce) -- and some idiot once advised not to write stuff like that on social media because burglars are waiting to rob your house.

  Burglars, beware.  Guard dogs are on duty.

  Last night we heard the Haifa Symphony Orchestra of Israel, come to Vero Beach to play Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in g, followed by Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in f, followed by the first encore, solo violist Victor Khristosov featured in a performance of the theme from Schindler's List, followed by the second encore, Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."  (It was tough letting go of that orchestra.  You can imagine.)

  My favorite of Tchaikovsky's symphonies is No. 5, but No. 4 is my second favorite of his.  And Mozart's No. 40 is my favorite Wolfgang symphony.  So it was a good evening.

  As they all are.

  **************

  Drastic mood change ahead.

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  I missed Tuesday's op-ed by NYTimes David Brooks, but caught up with it after seeing today's letters to the editor.

  Brooks's piece was mostly baloney, but there was a brief reference to wanna be atheist but became Catholic song writer Audrey Assad whom I will listen to on YouTube if I get a chance, thanks to the Brooks article.

  The op-ed was titled "Alone, Yet Not Alone" and dealt with the subject of religious belief.  But as I said, it was mostly baloney.  Sometimes Brooks can write intelligently, but this wasn't one of those times.

  Nevertheless, he concluded by quoting St. Augustine, and THAT was worth retyping here:

  "It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, nor the gentle odor of flowers, and ointments and perfumes, nor manna or honey, nor limbs welcoming the embraces of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God.  Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God -- a light, voice, odor, food, embrace of my innerness, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part.  That is what I love when I love my God."

  All very nice, but Brooks writes from the perspective that fundamentalists have a monopoly on these feelings, and that's crap.

  Letter writer Elizabeth L. Benjamin, a clinical psychologist from Boulder, Colo., echoes my feelings when she writes:

  "The beautiful description of Augustine's experience of loving God is wonderful because it is personal, internal and spiritual.  It is not intrusive, coercive or directed at forcing others to change and conform, or suffer."

  You can imagine what the two paragraphs were that opened Ms. Benjamin's letter.  Here they are:

  "David Brooks is correct that there is hostility between secular and "orthodox religious believers" in America today.  An important distinction must be made, however.

  "A secular person is much more likely to feel anger or frustration not because of what the fundamentalist religious person believes, but because of what religious beliefs drive that person to do.  Suicide bombings, denying civil rights, exporting fear and loathing to other countries, bombing abortion clinics, 'honor killings,' elimination of accurate science in education -- these are examples of toxic behaviors with broad impact that have been justified by religious faith."

  The other two letters in today's Times were just as good.  I may have time to retype them later.

  • 11:10 am
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