Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Today, April 21, is the feast day of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 - 21 Apr 1109), the saint I chose for my Confirmation name.

Anselm appeals for many reasons. Perhaps chief among them is his motto of fides quaerens intellectum, ("faith seeking understanding"), which posits the priority of faith in the comprehension of the divine. In our yet modernistic age, we tend to employ a more scientific methodology in diverse areas of comprehension, including religious: an intellectual examination of objective evidence will supposedly bring us to the best conclusion.

To be sure, this method is not to be discarded. Christian apologetics presents evidence to be reasoned through to persuade people toward Christian faith. Saint Thomas Aquinas asserts that a reasoned examination of the natural order should lead us to the acknowledgement of God. Saint Anselm himself is famous for his ontological proof of the existence of God.

But since the Enlightenment, the pendulum has swung decidedly away from fideism (or authoritarianism, but that is a different post) toward rationalism and scientism. The challenge for the Church today is to maintain the beneficial aspects of the application of reason while offering greater, and hopefully persuasive, emphasis on the roles of the living out of faith and Apostolic authority.

Saint Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum offers the appropriate prioritization: the fullest human understanding of God absolutely requires the setting of a lived relationship of faith with God. Though Anselm is more greatly remembered for his intellectual writings, we must never forget that it was his life as a monk, a prior, an archbishop--a life of prayer, of devotion, of faith--that provided the soil from which such understanding could grow.

Saint Anselm, ora pro nobis!

In Memoriam: Gus Conley

First of all, Gus didn't choose us. Let's make that clear. We've had dogs that contributed to the selection/adoption process...that came up to us as if to say, "Please...pick me!" Not Gus. In late 1999, when we first took him out of his pen in the shelter for a little "test walk," he couldn't have cared less who was on the other end of that leash. He just wanted OUTSIDE!

Secondly, Gus was not what you would consider an intelligent dog. Even though he lived with my parents recently, he would "come to visit" with them fairly regularly. When he came, he picked up right away on how to go out the doggie door (and often headed straight for it), but he could never seem to remember how to come back in. Again, he just wanted OUTSIDE! (and so a pattern emerges...) Also, he was convinced that he could get to the cats who lived in the rafters of a shed on Kendra's parents' farm by incessantly digging at the foundation of the shed. He was no canine Einstein.

Third, Gus was not exactly a "people" dog. Oh, sure, he'd greet newcomers to the house. He'd diligently stick by your side if you were eating something. He would follow my dad around the house from the moment he (dad) got home until he (Gus) got his walk (OUTSIDE!). But if there was no explicit means to benefit (food, walk, a scratch on the rump), Gus generally was content to be away from the people.

Fourth, Gus lacked subtlety. When he first came to live with us, he took the liberty of "marking" our bed when I was still in it. One night, when we were having a group of friends over, he stood up on his hind legs to steal from the cheese tray on the kitchen counter while we were standing in the kitchen. And then there was the time, OUTSIDE, when in a fit of doggy jubilation, he launched himself over an enormous hole (dug for a basement; again, on the farm). The last visual I had was his lanky body, squirming, mid-air, when it dawned on him that he wasn't going to make it to the other side of the hole. (By the time I got to the hole, he was unfazed...up and out the other side.) But his begging at the table probably constituted his least-subtle times: he would come up and gingerly place his drool-filled jowls squarely on the lap of whomever he sensed was most likely to give him food--at times, brand-new guests to the house--leaving a huge smear of saliva on the unsuspecting person's trousers (or, in the worst-case scenario, if he/she was wearing shorts, on their bare leg).

Fifth, Gus left a bit to be desired in the appearance department. Oh, he had a very cute face, replete with saggy ears and droopy lips, and he maintained his puppy-dog eyes (which he mastered the use of when it came to begging) all the way to the end. But on his other--shall we say, less attractive--end, he had chewed almost all of the hair off his tail, such that it appeared as though someone had replaced his real tail with one from a 50-lb. rat. He had also obsessively licked what started as a small lesion on his "wrist" to the point that it was a golf-ball sized, open, festering wound.

Sixth, Gus lacked an essential element that makes for a good watchdog: bravery. Once, a party of male college students we had at our house was "raided" by a group of girls who burst in the door shrieking and emptying cans of spray-string about our living room. We found Gus, some time later, cowering under a futon in the only windowless room in the house. While his bark was enough to ward off any would-be miscreants, if that failed, you'd be on your own--he'd be the first one out the door. And don't even mention a thunderstorm around him.

All in all, Gus was often times an aloof, apathetic, dim, unaware, obsessive, neurotic dog, motivated mostly by thoughts of food and going OUTSIDE.

But he was also exuberant, hopeful, and in one particular time with my mom, extraordinarily compassionate. He had a wonderful howl-song he woooooo-ed at you when he was excited. As a young dog, he would gleefully tear around the house, leaping down half-flights of stairs and "dinging" his tail against a metal pole in our living room. When he especially wanted something from you, he would left-handedly paw at you in a very convincing (and very endearing) way. And he had about the cutest head-tilt I've ever seen.


In sum, he was ours.

And we couldn't have loved him more.

Gus Conley

January 31, 1998 - April 19, 2012

Philosophical Reflections: "It Can Happen" by Yes

Having the right music playing when you’re huffing and puffing at the gym can make a tremendous difference. In the mishmash of musical albums and genres on my iPod, I’ve found myself coming back again and again to the Yes album 91025 (released in 1983), and specifically to the song “It Can Happen.” There’s just something about that particular song that I can’t seem to get enough of as I’m sweating it up on the elliptical machine. It’s one of those songs that, once it begins to fade, I go back and restart. Of course, given who I am, when such an anomalous habit takes shape, I have to wonder why. Why does “It Can Happen” so captivate me?

Is it the lyrics? I don’t think so. To be honest, I’ve only just now looked carefully at them, and though there are a few flashes of poetic promise, I don’t find myself gripped as if they’ve finally put some deeply held, yet elusive truth into words for me. It seems a bit more like they’ve paired some tangentially related, abstract phrases in an effort to appear deep and esoteric.

Is it the tempo? The beat? Well, to be sure, these things help in getting through my workout. And there is something about a bass cranking out repeated quarter notes on the tonic in a driving rock-and-roll song that connects with my spirit. Still, it’s not that alone.

A magazine article I read a couple of years back introduced me to the musical representation of philosophical, theological, and metaphysical concepts through the way the composer (the article was speaking of J. S. Bach) utilized dissonance and resolution: an extended period without resolution set the listener up to yearn for the return to the root chord, which, even with vast departures from it, seems to stick in the residual memory. When resolution comes (if, indeed, it does), it is like a fulfillment of the very yearnings the composer has created within us through dissonance.

Believe it or not, this is what I find in “It Can Happen.” In fact, it is the repeated return to resolution—to the base key—in the song that I find myself greatly anticipating through the wandering verses and solos. But when it comes, it comes full-on, each time better than the last: the aforementioned driving tonic bass notes, the complementary harmonies (vocal and instrumental)…it’s like coming home after a long journey, it’s a resolution to disparate, even seemingly irresolvable, tensions.

And of course, this gels well with my worldview. Saint Thomas Aquinas put forth an exitus-reditus schema to creation: all things flow out from God and are drawn back into God. The consummation of all things will be marked by a unity—a union, in fact—of God and man through Christ (cf. Ephesians 1:7-10).

Were these types of things intended by Yes in composing and performing the song? Doubtful. Still, the song speaks to me in this way…and whether such a metaphysical statement is consciously intended or not, given the way our universe is structured, It Can Happen! See what you think…

The Triduum According to Mary

On the eve of this Triduum, I am struck by the thought that Jesus accepted beatings, scourging, a crown of thorns, and the Cross as someone’s son. I’ve been contemplating what Mary must have gone through, seeing her only son—knowing he was completely innocent—mocked, beaten, and tortured to death. Soul-piercing sword, indeed.

Noble fathers can be imagined to give their lives sacrificially in defense of their children. Loving mothers protect and watch over to the point of death. Even not-so-noble, not-so-loving parents are generally expected to precede their children in death. It is an aberration of the natural order for parents to outlive their children, especially once the more vulnerable stages of infancy have passed.

Yet Mary watched as her adult son underwent unspeakable cruelty. While others laughed, he bled. While others mocked, he breathed his last. I imagine Mary unable to weep, so paralyzed by the depth of her anguish.

In Catholic theology, Mary is not only the Mother of God, she is the Mother of the Church—mother to us all. These next three days, may we have but a taste of her tremendous grief, may we have a mother’s love for the afflicted Jesus, that we might share in her exuberant joy at the Resurrection.

Blessed Mary, our Mother, grant us through thy intercession the grace to walk these sorrowful days with your love in our hearts.