Cold Doldrums

Try as I might, wracking my gray matter, I can’t think of a single thing worthy of blogging about. So –

Cold and rainy here in my part of the woods. Me and Little One did some errands while the wife took a sick Patch to the doctor. Dry cleaners, recycling center, library, B&N, pizza parlor. It was fun. Wound up discussing a joint research project she and I will develop: what happened to Amelia Earhardt? I love the Little One. She’s into history’s mysteries stuff, just like her dad. We always have stuff to talk about on these errand runs.

Felt like seeing a good western, so I borrowed Tom Horn (starring Steve McQueen) for tonight’s viewing. Dunno whether it’ll be good or not. Perhaps a blog post / review later in the week. Wife is taking the two girls to see The Lorax later. Part of her Lenten penance, I suppose.

Speaking of Lenten penance, well, I failed in mine. Was going to read through the Psalms, but, as usual, got distracted. Or – am I being called elsewhere? I think I am, but these things are so hard to discern that I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll extrapolate in a later post, maybe not. All’s I can say is that, strangely enough, this new “calling” seems to have a link in Paris. Hmmmm.

Spent two hours balancing the checkbook, paying bills, getting cra-pola organized and somewhat filed away. Only half-way done, though. Too tired and achey to finish. What I’m not too tired and achey to finish is The Searchers, the yellowed paperback I’ve been reading over the last couple of days, as well as Gods and Generals. Hope to put away thirty or forty pages of each in a leisurely sort of way later tonight when the house quietens.

Really, that’s about all that’s exciting going on right now. Though, with the way things have been lately, perhaps that’s the best blessing the Hopper family can have right now.

PS – Didn’t win the Mega Millions. Oh well. Always next week.

Mega-Million Boy

Or, How I’ll Spend My $640 million dollar winnings


Lessee …

Yeah, I’d do all the boring stuff you all would do, too. Pay off the house, buy a new one, set up my children’s educations, set up me and the Mrs.’ retirement blah blah blah. Then do the annuity thing so I’d get … oh, I don’t know … $5,000 a week? Is that too much? Too little? Seems right. That’s $260,000 a year. Maybe I should double it.

Anyway, before I do that, here’s the fun stuff I’d do …

1. Forget about going to France for a week. I’d go there for a month. Then do a month in Germany, Italy, Spain, England, Ireland. Then, every year, we’d hit another spot I’d never thought I would ever get to – Hawaii, Tahiti, the Caribbean, someplace cold, like Alaska, etc.

2. The Great United States Winnebago Tour! Except with a futuristic space-age Winnebago especially designed by NASA for Mark Zuckerberg.

3. I’d start a business. I dunno … maybe a publishing company. I think I have a nose for a good book, one that might be overlooked by the majority of the big players out there. And the wife would start up something too. Something fashion-y, trend-y, bling-y, that sort of thing. We’ve talking about it before, but I’m going to leave it at that.

4. As a corollary, I’d self-publish my two SF books and an anthology of my short stories. And if they only sell ten or twelve copies (how many people are in my family hm?), well, who cares! A business write-off!

5. On a serious note, just think about how much good one could do donating some of that money. Let’s say Uncle Sam takes half. Let’s say you only donate one percent of what remains. That means you’d be giving over 3 million dollars to a worthy cause! I’d donate to the Church (and perhaps cherry-pick where that money could be applied) and the American Heart Association. The wife has her own interests, too. Oh, and before I gave one cent I’d check out those websites that rate and rank charities based on bureaucratic overhead (or lack thereof) and make adjustments as necessary. Another thing we’d do is sponsor impoverished children from third-world countries.

6. Recording studio! I’d buy vintage Les Pauls and Strats, a 1969 Gibson SG, top-market six- and twelve-string acoustics, a bass guitar. I’d buy a $5,000 keyboard and hire someone to teach me how to play. Then the studio – soundproofing, booths, mixing boards, speakers, monitors, mics, drums, you name it. Remember that blues album I have between my ears! I’d be able to “self-publish” that, too.

7. Hire a bevy of twenty-something dudeslackers to finish off those thar web sites I never done did git finished.

8. I’d go back to school and get a real degree. In what, you ask? Hmmm. How about physics, astrophysics, higher math, theology, medicine, languages and literature, history, philosophy, philosophy of history, history of philosophy. One after the other, domino-style, but in no particular order.

9. How ’bout some culture? Season tickets to Lincoln Center in NYC is a definite. Plus, the wife and I would see a couple of plays a year on and off-Broadway. And, we’d love to get back to Napa Valley, where we honeymooned. Though this time for a whole month – how many vineyards and wineries could you hit in a month? Enough to kill a liver, so perhaps we better tone that one down. However, and come to think of it, I seem to recall a story about a pair of physicists who started their own winery and became very successful. That’d be something to think about. Yes indeed.

10. Cash Christmas for everyone in my extended family! Gotta love that!

GOOD LUCK!

Zen Cath

Bored last night, looking for something interesting aside from the War Between the States, the Old West, or lingua franca, I rummaged through a box of books at the foot of my desk. The hour was getting late and I was seeking to browse through something while I had my cookie and milk. Ah! This looks intriguing – Zen Catholicism, a slim volume I bought about a decade ago, made one unsuccessful go at, and thereafter exiled to The Box. Turns out I read most of the first chapter, about a dozen pages.

On the surface, Zen Buddhism and Catholicism are antithetical. Now, I’m not theologian enough to go into specifics, but I have done my share of reading in both to convince myself of this. Zen admits no God; Catholicism is all about relationship with God. That’s about as opposed as you can get, though I will say that the more ascetical strains of Catholic mysticism fall curiously in line with Zen practice.

Zen practice has always held interest for me. I’ve meditated about 200-250 times in my life. Before you think this makes me a Buddhist monk, let me just say that this is over the course of ten or fifteen years. So I’ve never been able to make it a daily habit. (I do, however, pray every night.) Reading koans has always been a source of whimsical curiosity for me, too, over the years, but I’ll be darned if I could ever figure out the Big Idea they try to illustrate. Even my own koan, which I’ve never been able to solve.

I’ve often wondered whether the best of both belief / practice systems could be incorporated. Indeed, that’s why I picked up this book all those years ago. I do think the man who walks with God is quite similar to the Zen monk who has attained Samadhi. The question I’ve always pondered was, regardless of the starting point, how do you get to that end?

Reading the first couple of pages last night, I was nearly overwhelmed by a very strong point the author quickly makes. The early Church Fathers took Greek thought and synthesized it with this developing thing called Christianity. Augustine did the same thing with neo-Platonism. And it is well known that Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotelian thought into the Catholic fold. The realization is – Christianity makes no bones about taking the thoughts and beliefs of the culture it finds itself in and “Christianizing” it. Baptizing it. Taking the good, leaving the bad, and re-shaping that good to fit the revealed plan of God.

See where he’s going with this?

Why could not the same be done for Eastern thought, now that we have been a global village for almost a century now?

Why not bring Zen into the Catholic tent? Would this make Catholicism unrecognizable, or would it further refine it, like Plato, the neo-Platonists, and Aristotle did?

Well?