From Steve Wood’s Dads.org newsletter, dated December 12, 2006:

When I visited Russia a few years ago I was appalled to learn of a fiendish strategy of the former communist government. They developed a simple plan to strengthen allegiance to the all-powerful state while simultaneously weakening family bonds. They did it by offering the main meal of the day at factories and schools in order to supplant the family evening meal.

The erosion of the family meal, insidiously imposed on the Russian people by the communists, is being voluntarily adopted by millions of American families with tragic consequences.

Fewer American teenagers are sharing the dinner table with their parents. In a 2004 University of Minnesota study, 33.1% of adolescents reported eating family meals only once or twice per week. While only about a fourth of the adolescents reported eating seven or more meals with their family per week.

The Minnesota study found that teens who seldom or never eat with their families are:

• More likely to have lower grades
• More likely to suffer from depression
• More likely to think about suicide

The adolescent girls in this category were also found to have distinctively weak self-esteem and a high likelihood of actually attempting suicide.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in its study, �??The Importance of Family Dinners II,�?� reports that teens who have two or three (or less) meals per week with their families are:

• Three times more likely to experiment with marijuana
• Two and a half times more likely to smoke cigarettes
• One and a half times more likely to drink alcohol
• 79% likelier to know a classmate who abuses prescription drugs
• 31% likelier to know a friend who uses methamphetamines

Conversely, the 26% of teens that enjoy frequent family dinners (5 to 7 times per week) had:

• 40% likelier to earn A�??s or B�??s in school
• Low levels of stress in their families
• Half the risk of substance abuse
• Parents who were proud of them
• An ability to confide with their parents

Of all the teens surveyed, 37% reported that the television was on during family dinners. The TV is on in 45% of those families that dine together fewer than three times per week. As many of you have heard me mention, a dinner with the television on is a TV dinner, not a family dinner. There are those special exceptions, like when the Gators will be playing in the national championship game on January 8th. Otherwise, keep the TV off during your family dinner.

There are no second chances when in comes to fatherhood. You have precisely one opportunity to father your children. Establish the priority and make the effort to get home for regular family meals. Don�??t allow your willful neglect of family meals do what the communists tried to do: namely, weaken family bonds.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:1-3

This famous section of the Pentateuch not only serves to introduce the Bible, but also shows how God brought an orderly universe out of primordial chaos. It is noteworthy that God did so by speaking. He didn’t merely wave his hands, or by thinking, but said aloud, “Let there be light.” This magnificent image is echoed in the prologue to the Gospel according to John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.

John 1:1-3

According to the New American Bible, “The Word” (< Gr. logos, word) combines the creative word (Genesis) with the “personified preexistent Wisdom as instrument of God’s creativity (Proverbs) … and the ultimate intelligibility of reality (Hellenistic philosophy).” Thus, “The Word” is the origin and guiding force of all that is good in the universe — past, present and future.

But the question begs to be asked: If God created with a Word, what would this Voice have sounded like?

This same question seems to have haunted two famous orthodox Christian writers — C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Each chose to represent the mystery of creation in their own (somewhat allegorical) literary mystical worlds, also occuring through voice and music.

Read more »

Venetian painter, draftsman and colorist Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) — son, pupil and chief assistant to the famous Giambattista Tiepolo (1696�??1770), considered by many to be the last great Venetian painter — did not live in his father’s shadow. From the beginning, he struggled to cultivate an artistic identity all his own. A gifted genre painter, Tiepolo the Younger stamped traditional religious scenes with his “solidly quotidian vision.” By 1783, he had worked his way to become the esteemed president of the Venetian Academy, but gradually retired to his villa on the outskirts of Venice, where he worked simply to please himself. His painted decorations for his house are among his most personal and brilliant works. It was, however, his large finished drawings produced during his final years that established his reputation as a major artist. They belong to three long series �?? the adventures of the commedia dell�??arte character Punchinello; scenes of everyday life in the Veneto; and scenes from the New Testament.

Now on display at the Frick gallery, in NYC, guest curator Dr. Adelheid M. Gealt assembles 60 examples from Domenico Tiepolo’s ‘New Testament’ cycle of drawings. Completed in ink and wash, Tiepolo’s jittery outlines (in marked contradistinction to the clean, fluid brushstrokes that characterized the work of his father) serve to add a feeling of tension or movement to the scene and work to make this series his most original accomplishment.

Recently, I serendipitously took a break from my work just in time to catch Bill Moyers’ On Faith and Reason on PBS. The series is devoted to exploring various aspects of spirituality and religion as they relate to science, reason, politics, art, culture and everyday life. Today’s guest was a woman née Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, but who later assumed the pseudonym Pema Chödrön at her ordainment as a Buddhist nun in 1974, at the age of 38.

I found the interview rather curious. Since my earliest days in martial arts, I’ve had more than a strong academic interest in Eastern philosophy — from Buddhism to zen to taoism. What I’ve often marveled at is the sheer number of Westerners — of Christians — who explore these philosophies and their religious branches. The sad part is that most people spend many more years, money and effort in studying these (as well as exploring other faiths and sects) than they do at rediscovering their own Catholic Faith, which they largely misunderstand, take for granted or dismiss entirely.

Admittedly, there’s a lot in Buddhism, zen and taoism to admire, if only for the simplicity of their ‘pearls of wisdom.’ Indeed, much of their philosophies are quite compatible with Christian doctrine. But the sad part is that people who convert to these religions seeking to ‘awaken to the self’ or to ‘discover the truth’ inevitably discard and cast out the real Truth — that is, God.

Take the interviewee, Pema Chögrön, for example. Falling away from the cradle-Catholicism of her youth, she explored numerous alternate religions, including Protestantism and scientology, before discovering and becoming enamored with Buddhism. When asked by Moyers if she now believes in God, Chögron states, “Buddhists neither believe nor disbelieve in God, but rather leave it as an open question.” That is to say, they are — or at least she is — agnostic.

If a Buddhist does not firmly believe in God, then his attempt at self-purification distills down to a very human act. Strangely, converts like Chögrön often say that they were drawn to Buddhism precisely because of this grounding in the self: Buddha, as a mere man, embodies what every “sentient being” has the potential to become through his own will, independent of any divine intervention or guidance. At first, this is comforting, for a person seems in control of his own life. By stripping away the veil of falseness that obscures human vision, Buddhists argue, one is able to discover the ‘truth,’ and thereby discover how to live. Upon closer inspection, the lack of God in the Buddhist framework is alarming and distressful. While a human attempt at self-purification may consist of genuine remorse over past actions, without God, it cannot be redemptive.

Catholicism has a grand heritage, including many mystics and contemplatives. The various orders are founded upon centuries of beautiful tradition, and many, such as the Carmelites, have ‘tertiary’ (or ‘third’) orders for the lay community. If Jesus, due to His divine nature, doesn’t seem approachable, then blessèd Mary and the Saints serve as innumerable reminders of what each and every person has the capacity to become, through the grace of God.

This — God’s grace — is the principal difference that sets the Christian contemplative tradition apart from its Eastern siblings: Whereas in Buddhism and zen and taoism, the practitioner strives for self-purification and perfection by controlling negative emotions, or by ‘reorienting the self’ to turn a peaceful and kind face to the world, the Christian contemplative calls upon the grace of God to aid him in his transformation. In so doing, his spiritual combat is not a personal one, limited to human abilities and the natural world, but now extends into the supernatural order. Its purpose transcends ‘being nice’ and strives toward cultivating true Virtue.

Dietrich von Hildebrand explains this difference more eloquently than I:

[The natural idealist’s] object is not to be reborn: to become radically — from the root, that is — another man; he merely wants to perfect himself within the framework of his dispositions. … invariably in the idealist, the readiness to change is limited to a concept of nature’s immanent evolution or self-perfection: its scope remains exclusively human. Whereas, with the Christian, it refers to a basic transformation and redemption of things human by things divine: to a supernatural goal. … [Furthermore,] the idealist’s readiness to change is aimed at certain details or aspects only, never at his character as a whole.

Dietrich von Hildebrand
Transformation in Christ
p. 6

For those of you who are yearning to discover the Truth, do not wander waywardly. The answer does not lie in Gnostic fallicies. Instead, gaze inwardly and find that God is already there. Once you realize this, you can follow in the venerable footsteps of Catholic mystics and contemplatives.

To learn more, check out the following resources:

The Interior Life

• Cloud of Unknowing
• Interior Castle — St. Teresa of Ávila
• Dark Night of the Soul — St. John of the Cross
• Practice of the Presence of God — Brother Lawrence
• Abandonment to Divine Providence — Jean-pierre de Caussade
• Imitation of Christ — Thomas à Kempis
• Spiritual Combat — Lorenzo Scupoli
• Spiritual Combat Revisited — Jonathan Robinson
• Introduction to the Devout Life — François de Sales
• Transformation in Christ: On the Christian Attitude — Dietrich von Hildebrand
• I Want to See God: A Practical Synthesis of Carmelite Spirituality and I Am a Daughter of the Church — P. Marie-Eugene

Prayer, Meditation & Contemplation

• Prayer — Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Christian Meditation — Hans Urs von Balthasar
• New Seeds of Contemplation — Thomas Merton
• Beginning Contemplative Prayer — Kathryn J. Hermes
• Centered Living — M. Basil Pennington
• The Diversity of Centering Prayer — e.d. Gustave Reininger

Vocations

• Read more about religious orders here.

Accounts of the papal trip to Turkey have downplayed the appalling conditions under which the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church is obliged to exist in Istanbul. There is little ‘freedom of religion’ there. The Pope is well aware of the situation, as he is aware of many things others would prefer to ignore. Above all, as Successor of Peter, Pope Benedict in this season is renewing the world’s consciousness of the glories of what God has revealed about Himself, at a time when such glories tend to cause unease among materialist minds. His message includes the wonderful mysteries of the ‘Four Last Things’ which are supposed to be the subject of Advent preaching: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.

The Pope bids the world to pay attention to reality. Superficial attempts at anticipating Christmas point up the banality of a culture which avoids the deep mysteries of Redemption. Avoiding Advent by the denials and distractions of ‘the Christmas rush’ bring to mind the quip that reality is for people who can’t cope with drugs.

A recent Wall Street Journal headline read: “A tumultuous World Tests a Rigid Pope.” There are different kinds of rigidity — One is plain stubbornness, and another is false pride; but there is also a rigidity which is the virtue of fortitude in the face of weakness.

History has known many churchmen willing to be pliable at the expense of truth, beginning with one of the Apostles, and that mentality is easily scandalized by integrity. Some were astonished at Pope Benedict’s advice to some Catholic theologians in October: “Speaking just to find applause or to tell people what they want to hear … is like prostitution. Don’t look for applause, but look to obey the truth.”

The Catholic World News (CWN) service recently commented that in the student unrest of the 1960s, Joseph Ratzinger was rare among academics in refusing to give in to polemical thugs. Only weeks ago, we saw the dismal fecklessness of university leaders at Columbia in challenging student rioters. the Pope has long been familiar with such unedifying scenes. He did not retreat into wounded reaction in the social chaos of the 1960s and ’70s, and he continues to confront and engage those who prefer ideology to reason. As CWN put it, many who now call the pope “rigid” are justifying their own sell-out to the mob:

… they put up for sale what ought not to be sold. Those who are conspicuously successful don’t like to be reminded of the way they got started (”I was young and needed the money…”), and their distinguished professorships make them forgetful of the metaphorical Hershey bars for which they first swapped their virtue. For such persons, the existence of a Ratzinger is like a slap on a sunburned back. Small wonder if stung pride tries to make him out to be the weakling.