7 Quick Takes

January 21, 2021 by Amy Welborn

— 1 —

Well, greetings. A bit of a traffic pick-up around these parts, mostly related to two posts:

A quick one tossed off about Biden’s bust of Cesar Chavez (Chavez was famously – to people who remember history – anti-illegal immigrant. Like, to the point of UFW policies of reporting illegals for deportation and even violence.) And then this one – on Biden’s dreadful, but absolutely not surprising EO on gender garbage.

Of course, today is the 48th anniversary of the tragedy of the Roe and Doe decisions – with no DC March for Life to bear witness. I’ve never gone, but my College guy has gone the last three (or maybe 4…can’t remember) years. First in high school, and last year, with his college. It’s too bad, but it was necessary, for so many reasons, to cancel the DC gathering this year. Given security and Covid, it just wasn’t doable. A wise decision to cancel it.

But the witness hasn’t been cancelled. Every day, it’s happening, in small ways, and every day, people are supporting and choosing life. It happens heart-to-heart, it happens in phone calls, it happens in families and in institutions.

— 3 —

I was looking over some resources and found this homily from Cardinal Rigali, delivered at the March for Life vigil Mass in 2008. It’s quite good, particularly in his allusion to the space in which he and the congregation were gathered, and in his reminder of the importance of the small and the quiet.

The Incarnation Dome is not made of huge, impressive pieces of glass. Its beauty and impact lie in the intricate interplay of so many tiny pieces. God is good at using many humble “pieces,” as we heard in our reading from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. Instead of choosing “great” or impressive people in the eyes of the world, God uses the humble, the foolish, the weak and “those who count for nothing” to accomplish His purposes.
It is when we least expect it that the tiniest among us can humble the powerful. One day not long ago, a very influential stem cell researcher, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, was humbled when he was looking through a microscope at a human embryo in a fertility clinic. As the New York Times reports:
“The glimpse changed his scientific career. ‘When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,’ said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two. ‘I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way’.”
As they say, the rest is history. Dr. Yamanaka used his scientific knowledge to discover a new approach to stem cell research that many of his colleagues say will make embryonic stem cells obsolete.
If God can use a helpless embryo to change a human heart, He can certainly use us with all our limitations and weaknesses.

— 4 —

Lots of folks are talking about this one, for good reason: “Everything is Broken.” It ties in with a lot of stuff I’ve been thinking and writing about, and I’ve been intending to structure a post around it, but might as well start by sharing it with you here.

Today’s revolution has been defined by a set of very specific values: boundarylessness; speed; universal accessibility; an allergy to hierarchy, so much so that the weighting or preferring of some voices or products over others is seen as illegitimate; seeing one’s own words and face reflected back as part of a larger current; a commitment to gratification at the push of a button; equality of access to commodified experiences as the right of every human being on Earth; the idea that all choices can and should be made instantaneously, and that the choices made by the majority in a given moment, on a given platform represent a larger democratic choice, which is therefore both true and good—until the next moment, on the next platform….
….
The internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up the value from local businesses, national retailers, the whole newspaper industry, etc.—and no one seemed to care. This heist—by which a small group of people, using the wiring of flatness, could transfer to themselves enormous assets without any political, legal or social pushback—enabled progressive activists and their oligarchic funders to pull off a heist of their own, using the same wiring. They seized on the fact that the entire world was already adapting to a life of practical flatness in order to push their ideology of political flatness—what they call social justice, but which has historically meant the transfer of enormous amounts of power and wealth to a select few.
Because this cohort insists on sameness and purity, they have turned the once-independent parts of the American cultural complex into a mutually validating pipeline for conformists with approved viewpoints—who then credential, promote and marry each other. A young Ivy League student gets A’s by parroting intersectional gospel, which in turn means that he is recommended by his professors for an entry-level job at a Washington think tank or publication that is also devoted to these ideas. His ability to widely promote those viewpoints on social media is likely to attract the approval of his next possible boss or the reader of his graduate school application or future mates. His success in clearing those bars will in turn open future opportunities for love and employment. Doing the opposite has an inverse effect, which is nearly impossible to avoid given how tightly this system is now woven. A person who is determined to forgo such worldly enticements—because they are especially smart, or rich, or stubborn—will see only examples of even more talented and accomplished people who have seen their careers crushed and reputations destroyed for daring to stick a toe over the ever multiplying maze of red lines.
So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators. Anyone actually concerned with solving deep-rooted social and economic problems, or God forbid with creating something unique or beautiful—a process that is inevitably messy and often involves exploring heresies and making mistakes—will hit a wall. If they are young and remotely ambitious they will simply snuff out that part of themselves early on, strangling the voice that they know will get them in trouble before they’ve ever had the chance to really hear it sing.

— 5 —

Speaking of church structures….our Birmingham c athedral is in the beginning stage of receiving and installing a new pipe organ. It will take a while, but the first stage – the removal of the old organ, which was a mess, is finished. And since the pipes of that organ completely covered the stained glass window in the loft…well, now we can see it!

Photo was taken by my son this morning after he was finished with his chemistry class.

It’s newer than almost anything else in the church, including the other stained glass. It was installed in 1972, after the original was apparently badly damaged in a storm. You can learn about the new organ and see a schematic of how it will look in the church, framing that window, here.

— 6 —

It’s been a fairly busy week – Son #5 has restarted boxing boot camp – he’d done it for a couple of years in a special, small homeschooling group, but had been away from it for a while. Well, now that he can (ahem) DRIVE – he is free to go at 5:30 am, as many times a week as his little heart desires. So he’s done that twice this week (actually one once in the morning, the other in the early evening, although I hear the plan is to do the crack-o-dawn session Friday as well), had his Algebra II tutoring session, one of two Latin tutoring sessions this week, a remote piano lesson, and chemistry. College Guy has worked, I’ve had a couple of meetings on projects and recorded something for Loyola. Oh, and yes, planning a trip out west for about a month from now. Pretty stoked about that.