Chelyabinsk Meteor

Y'all are by now aware of Friday's meteor, which busted a million square feet of windowpanes in Chelyabinsk, Russia. And I know what y'all are thinking: what a great opportunity to learn some Russian! Yes!

Chelyabinsk was a small town before WW2 turned it into a huge weapon-manufacturing city, beyond the reach of German bombers. Like most Russian, Chelyabinsk, Russia is pronounceable (and maybe understandable) if you know the letter-sounds. And you know most of them already: 

Ч   е  л    я   б  и   н  с к,      Р  о  с  с  и  я
Ch e   l  ya   b   i   n  s  k,      R  o  s  s   i  ya

Not too bad, especially if you've had some exposure to Greek letters via math, physics, or fraternities. BTW, a Russian C always sounds like S.

Chelyabinsk churned out so many tanks that it was nicknamed Tankograd, Tank City.  Yes, the Russian word for 'tank' is 'tank.'

 Т а н к о г р а д
 T a n k o g r a d

It's all Greek and Roman letters, not too tough. Tankograd made thousands of tanks at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory:

Челябинский  тракторный  завод
Chelyabinskiy   Traktorniy   Zavod

The 'iy' on the end makes the nouns into masculine adjectives because zavod / factory is masculine. But a Chelyabinsk newspaper might be called the Chelyabinskaya Gazette:

  Челябинская     газета
Chelyabinskaya   Gazeta

because a gazette, a newspaper, is feminine.

Among other weapons, Chelyabinsk made Katyushas, trucks mounted with rocket-launchers:

К а т  ю́ ш а
K a t yu sh a

The Katyusha rocket-launcher was named after a girl in a popular wartime song who misses her soldier boyfriend. Katyusha means 'beloved Katie,' a diminutive term of endearment for a woman named 

Екатерина
Ekaterina

It's pronounced "Yekaterina." 

And last is this easy one, which prompted the post. I expect you can figure it out on your own:

 

метеор 

 

A Cheap Bible

this post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

originally posted at New Evangelizers

When I first started reading the Bible regularly, I used a plain hardbound copy of the NAB. But because it was hardbound, I wouldn't mark it up. I kept telling myself to get over it: it was my book, I could mark it up however I liked. I finally forced myself: I highlighted something. I felt like a vandal.

So I bought a cheap paperback version of the same Bible. Highlighted something...that seems ok. Highlighted something else...uh-huh. Added some margin notes...I feel good! This works!

Over the next few years I colored and tagged that cheapie like a graffiti artist. But eventually that Bible became so globbed with stickytabs, highlights, underlines, paperclips and margin notes that it was unmanageable in Catechism class. As Frederick the Great said, "Wer alles verteidigen will, verteidigt nichts/ Who would defend everything defends nothing." If everything is eventually highlighted, then nothing is highlighted. Besides, I had internalized most of what I had been marking up. So three years ago I gave that copy to my son Michael, and bought another copy, same as the old one:

Still manageable. When it's not, I'll pass it on and start again.

Catholics who want to study the Bible are rightly advised to own a Bible that they are comfortable reading. My extra advice is to own a Bible that you are also comfortable marking up.




 P.S. Little quiz for ya! See handwritten note Shekhinah > Cherubim > Mary>. What's that got to do with the 'Signs and Wonders of the Apostles' in Acts 5?

A Big-Enough Sin

 

When I was a kid I was a glib liar. I wouldn't lie to get other people in trouble; but I'd lie to get myself out of trouble. A typical example: it's winter and I'm not supposed to play in the creek. So after school my friends and I ride bikes out into the woods. We roll up our sleeves and pants, take shoes off, and make a dam in the creek. I come home a bit wet. "Don't you sneak past me! Are you wet? I don't know...maybe a little. Didn't I tell you to stay out of the creek? Yes'm. Well? But we were just by the creek- throwing rocks. Uh-huh...well, you better stay out of the creek and if you can't stay dry you better not be by the creek either. Yes'm [scoot]." See, nobody's hurt by that. Just a little victimless lie to smooth out my life. Of course sometimes I'd get caught, and endure some punishment; but it was all kind of pro-forma to me.

So one day in early Spring I take off after school to go play basketball at Paul Grant's house. Momma knows I hate wearing shoes if it's not freezing cold. "Don't you leave this house without putting your tennis shoes on! Yes'm. And you better not take 'em off once you get out of sight. Yes'm [scoot]."

I bike over to Paul's. "Hey let's go play at EHS (Episcopal High School, about a mile away). OK!" Once there, it's not, you know, freezing. I take my tennies off and tie them to my bike's handlebars. We head over to the courts and play until it's time to go home.

I bike home. I walk in, Momma gives me the Death Stare. Uh-oh. "Your daddy wants to talk to you when he gets home. Uh...ok." Daddy gets home. "I understand your momma told you straight to your face today not to take your shoes off because it's so cold. Uh...yessir. Did you take your shoes off anyway? Uh...no! So you kept your shoes on? Yes! (What am I supposed to say? All I can do is bull through at this point.) OK- I'm gonna ask you One Last Time: did you disobey your momma and take your shoes off today? No! Well, whose tennis shoes did Mrs. Grant see hanging on your bike over at EHS this afternoon? [What? What!?] Uhhh...mine. Now this is when I get my punishment. It'll be way big, but life as we know it will continue. But Daddy didn't say a thing; he just looked at me with the saddest, most pained expression I'd ever seen on an adult's face. And at that instant I understood that I had hurt, badly hurt my parents by disobeying and lying. It had never occurred to me that hurting parents was even possible; and that it was possible because they loved me, but I wasn't sure why that was so.

It turned out that Momma had called Mrs. Grant earlier to have her send me home. Knowing we had gone to EHS, she drove over, but didn't see us in the back playing ball. Returning home, she called my mom: "I went over to EHS but couldn't find the boys. But Christian was there, I saw his bike and his tennis shoes tied to the handlebars." Can you believe it!?

Oh, my punishment: there wasn't one. My father just got up off the sofa and went to hang out in the kitchen with my momma. They were cool to me for a long time. I never did say I was sorry, although for the first time, I was. I was so undone to realize how hurtful it was to lie that I was terrified of bringing it up. I was afraid they wouldn't believe I was sorry (having cried wolf so often), and wouldn't forgive me. But I learned a lifetime's lesson about lying and love that afternoon.

I was lucky to commit a Big-Enough Sin when I was kid instead of waiting 'til I was 20. Or 50. Or never. It would seem odd to recall so old a sin, but I've thanked God for the Tennis Shoe Lie almost every week for more than 40 years. On the other hand, my parents have forgotten about it; but that would be in the nature of forgiveness.

We cover the Prodigal Son every year in Catechism class. We pay special attention to the older son: he is jealous of the newfound love between his forgiving father and his repentant younger brother. He could have it as well; but unlike his brother, he hasn't committed a Big-Enough Sin to shock him into realizing he too should seek forgiveness. He figures he has nothing to repent for, and doesn't. And misses out on the deeper love that springs from repenting and forgiving.

Time permitting, I introduce the Prodigal Son parable with the story of the Tennis Shoe Lie. It pumps some personal and contemporary meaning into an evergreen tale the kids have already heard a thousand times.




*Converse All-Stars by Wahyu Affandi

Greenville-Ephrathah 12: Third Billing

 Li'l 'phrathah's fired-up

Please join us at St. Anthony's Catholic Store on Tuesday, February 19th from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm for a Book Signing.

Featured will be nationally known author, Abby Johnson, with her book "Unplanned".

She will be joined by local authors Robbie Boman, author of "Miracles of South Carolina" and "More Miracles of South Carolina", and Christian LeBlanc, author of "The Bible Tells Me So".

Hey, I ain't complaining. As Crash taught Nuke to say, "I'm just happy to be here."

How to Pray the Dominican Way

This posts links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

 

When I’m browsing at St. Anthony’s Catholic  bookstore here in Greenville, S.C., I tend to glide past the Prayer section on the way to Apologetics, Church History, that sort of stuff.  Like, I already know how to pray, y’know? And I’m not a very reflective person-  so I rarely read books about praying. But then this book fell into my hands: How to Pray the Dominican Way by Angelo Stagnaro.  The Dominican Way? Sure, I guess. But it was the subtitle that caught my eye: Ten Postures, Prayers, and Practices that Lead Us to God.

You know this saying which is ascribed to St. Augustine: “He who sings, prays twice.” I understand this to mean that a human being is comprised of a unity of body and soul. And that to pray is generally understood as a spiritual act, leaving the body to twiddle its thumbs ‘til the soul is done.  But if the body sings the soul’s prayer, then the entire human being prays.  In my mundane prayer experience I’ve found that to completely true. I give singing and praying an A+, compared to a B for just praying on the inside.  So the bit about “Ten Postures” drew me in.

The book begins with a pithy biography of St. Dominic de Guzman, and treats the saint’s evangelistic engagement with the Albigensian heresy in useful detail. Critical to the rest of the book’s content, one learns (or is reminded) that the Albigensians made much fuss over the soul, while treating the body and the physical world “with disdain.” This prelude shows us right away the attention that Dominic would pay to the divine fusion of body and soul; and his motivation for developing specific modes of prayer that would engage them both. As I tell the kids in Catechism class: the Body trains the Soul; the Soul trains the Body. St. Dominic would like that.

Following the bio are a few pages in which the author tells us how to use the book. After that, ten chapters focus on ten ways to involve the body in prayer. A typical chapter is titled “Lying Prostrate on the Ground.”  I plugged into this one right away because I’ve been praying prostrate for years in my bedroom, and it works. So I knew Mr. Stagnaro wasn’t just cranking out pious pap. When an author comments on a subject I already know something about, and I find his comments to be reasonable based on my own experience, I’m more inclined to accept his thinking on what I am not familiar with. And speaking of the unfamiliar, in this chapter on lying prostrate he presents a winsome way of praying the Jesus Prayer within a natural rhythm of measured breathing. Wow…never thought of that. I’ll have to give it a try.

The other chapters are similar. They lead with a few words about Dominic and the posture in question; then a few meditations which correlate with that posture; and finally a good-sized chunk of Scripture to pray and reflect on, thematically aligned with the body’s posture.

So: will How to Pray the Dominican Way have any influence on me? Happily, it will. I’m not an adventuresome pray-er, but this explicitly physical approach was new and interesting  to me, and worth a try. If you are not like me, and take a pro-active approach to prayer, you’ll love this book. If you are like me, and won’t crack a book like this, crack this book. I expect you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

This review was originally posted at Standing on My Head

Subtled into Nakedness

This posts links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

 Right there it says naked

We cover the first two chapters of Genesis in the first class of each year. The kids figure out pretty fast why Adam and Eve weren't ashamed to be naked in Eden. Later, while discussing chapter 3, they explain why after Adam and Eve sinned, their nakedness was cause for shame. Of course, naked is naked- right? Or could there be more to it?

Someone corresponded with me recently regarding a post I wrote in 2011 about Semitic triliteral roots. Commenting on the wordplay of the Hebrew Old Testament he said: "...somebody who gave me his Hebrew OT had underlined two words in the early chapters of Genesis. If I remember, they were 'erom and "erom, one with the light opening and the other with the ayin opening. One means naked, and the other means subtle -- and I'd say that the author was saying something there. What do you think?"

I didn't think anything yet, but would check it out. I use the Protestant Blue Letter Bible website. I reference the King James Version there. Just FYI, it's very close to the Douay-Rheims Challoner translation.

Not knowing either of those Hebrew words, I first searched for instances of subtle in the KJV O.T., found none. Huh...that was unexpected. Tried naked, found lot of verses. Naked was always used in its literal sense, e.g. "he was naked"  vs. "the naked truth." That might simplify things. Checked the Hebrew for one of the instances of naked:  עָרוֹם `arowm, naked, Strong's H6174. (Strong's Concordance is a Bible Greek and Hebrew language reference) I had a look at the Septuagint translation just to see how `arowm was translated into Greek. In every case, `arowm was translated as gymnos, naked: you know, like in gymnasium. No alternate words, no shadings of meaning: naked is naked. That's good. Yes, `arowm isn't  'erom, but I don't know if there's a single standard for transliterating Hebrew into English letters and sounds.

I noticed that `arowm derives from a root word, עָרַם `aram Strong's H6191. `Aram means shrewd, crafty, and...subtle. That was easy! Now I check on instances of `aram in the OT, and in Genesis in particular, because that was where my friend said the words were underlined. Uh-oh, it's not used at all in Genesis. Huh. That must mean there's another word that's close to`aram, and basically means the same thing. I try Strong's 6190 and 6192: sometimes adjacent words are related. No luck. I go back to`arowm, naked, and try H6173: no luck. H6175, yes: עָרוּם `aruwm, shrewd, crafty, sly, subtle. First use of `aruwm is in Genesis 3:1, "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." (KJV) Aaack! the KJV spells 'subtle' an older way: subtil. That's why I didn't get a word search hit on "subtle." I may as well check on naked again while I'm at it, but this time just looking at Genesis. Ha! There are two Hebrew words for naked in Genesis:

"And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." `arowm, Strong's 6174, I've already looked at that one.

Here is the other naked used three times:

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.... And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" This naked, a shameful naked, is עֵירֹם `eyrom, Strong's H5903. And here's an elegant closure: `eyrom's root is H6191, `aram, shrewd, crafty, subtle. If you are like me and can't read Hebrew, you can still see how all these related words have the same 3 letters, and differ mostly by the jots and tittles, the vowel points, that affect pronunciation. When you consider that those markings weren't invented until around 700 A.D, for practical purposes all these similar "words" are more like a single word with an array of vowel changes to clarify particular meanings (sort of like woman and women; or read and read).

So why does all this matter? Well, it's a wordplay-  like this: Adama is Hebrew for ground; Adam is Hebrew for man. So Adam אדם was made of Adama אדמה, see? And both words spring from a common root. Likewise, the name Yitschaq /Isaac יצחק springs from the root word Tsachak צחק, laughter. Sarah laughed at the idea of bearing a son in her old age; and laughed again when Laughter was born.

So in our Genesis case there are two related Hebrew words, which tell us that Adam and Eve didn't realize they were shamefully naked until the serpent had subtled them into eating the fruit. That is, "[T]he serpent was more `aruwm (subtle, tricky)  than any beast...and they knew that they were `eyrom (naked)." I imagine the lesson is that after the Fall, there persists unashamed pre-Fall nakedness within marriage; and shameful, sly nakedness outside of marriage. That's my guess. And it's a lesson I can work into Catechism class starting next year.

An Adam-Adama sort of pun, which I already teach along with Isaac and Laughter. So when it comes to the Old Testament, though the Greek Septuagint often provides specificity, something may be overlooked if you don't check the Hebrew as well.

Res Ipsa Loquitur: Mass Model

 

No, not a mass model...

 

...a Mass model.

About 8 minutes of class time. Yes it's bedlam, but you can hear the kids thinking and learning. Multiply this 8 minutes by 7, and you get a sense of how much content is covered in 55 minutes of teaching, and at what depth.