Go to the Hills

Leanne asked for fiction; here's fiction. It's simple, really, nothing fancy or striking, but I like it. Maybe you will, too.


Somewhere on the side of the road in the north Georgia mountains he stopped the car. He reached behind the seat to grab the last beer out of the cooler, being careful not to wake Ashley. Quietly he opened the door and stepped out of the car into the night. The crickets and tree frogs chirped their discordant symphony from the darkness as he walked over to the lookout point. A sliver of moon cast an eerie glow on the gorge that stretched out before him. The trees around him waved their leafy arms in the breeze and whispered frightening words in his ear. In the distance he could make out vague, black shapes. The warm spring breeze found its way under his shirt and he threw his head back to drink in the beauty and the eeriness of the night. His thoughts tangled together as he remembered the first time his parents had taken him up into these hills. He had been in love with them ever since. He had seen the Rockies and the Alps. He had seen the green hills of Ireland and the creamy beaches of Hawaii, but his heart always brought him back here, to the rolling blue hills of his youth.

He glanced down at the can of beer in his hand and wondered why he had brought it out here. He certainly wasn’t going to drink it. His mind wandered again, wandered to his childhood. How long ago it seemed. He tried to separate the faces in his mind, but they blurred together, melting and fading, fleeing from his grasp. And then, everything was sharp and clear, like a camera snapping into focus. He saw them all – even the ones that he had not thought of in years. He saw them all just as they had been when he knew them. One face jumped out at him and he tried to place it. He knew her… “What was her name?” he wondered aloud. He could see her face clearly but couldn’t remember her name. Funny, that, he thought. He shouldn’t have forgotten her name so easily. He let the faces fade into the background, and they took with them a part of his life so far.

He wanted to drive. He wanted to drive all through the long night and watch the sun rise somewhere in these blue hills. He wanted to forget about work and life and the cares of the world, and just get away for a little while, with Ashley by his side. But Ashley wouldn’t like that, he thought.

He popped the can of beer open and stared at it. He almost poured it over the side of the overlook, but some strange urge grasped him, and he stopped. Slowly, without really thinking about it, he tilted the can back and let the cool liquid pour down on his head. It ran over his face and down inside his shirt, soaking him. When the can was empty he stared at it, trying to figure out why he had done that. Well, it didn’t matter; he was soaked and smelled of beer, now.

Behind him he heard a step on the gravel. A hand slipped into his – a small, gentle hand that he knew well.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said.

“I was.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s eerie,” she said. “And…yes, and beautiful, too.” She laid her head on his shoulder and felt the dampness of the beer. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes, I just…well,” he smiled, “I guess I just needed a little shower.”

“Of beer?” He knew the quizzical look in her eyes without having to see it.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He shrugged and slipped his arm around her waist. They stood like that for some time, saying nothing.

Finally, he squeezed her waist and walked back toward the car. She followed.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Why?”

“I thought we could drive off into the night and watch the sun rise somewhere in these hills.”

“Why not?”

He smiled, turned the key, and – with the windows down and the wind in their hair – they did just that.

Overheard Between Two Guardians

The two angels watched from above as the canoe drifted closer to the outside of the bend. The current grew swifter and sucked the canoe toward the rock overhang, where the flowing water cut deep. The man in back paddled furiously, trying to turn the canoe towards open water and propel it forward, away from the low hanging wall that threatened to clothesline them. In the front of the canoe a redheaded girl was screaming "Rocks! Rocks! Rocks!" In light of the impending crush of the rock wall, her screams were reasonable. Above them, Stephen and Marie laughed.

Stephen: Ha, look at this idiot*, letting the canoe get sucked in towards those rocks. Should we get them out of this one?
Marie: Well, this girl's mom is praying pretty hard right now. Anyhow it's not her fault. I'll bet if I push her out of the canoe right now she'll be all right.
Stephen: Good idea.
Marie (shoving the redhead into the water just before the rocks could strike): What are you going to do?
Stephen: Well... he is kinda dumb. Look, he's trying to keep the canoe from getting sucked further under the rocks...
Marie: Yeah, shoulda bailed out when the girl did. But he's not a bad guy, y'know.
Stephen: I suppose not. Maybe I'll just get him out with a little reminder that he failed pretty epically on this one.
Marie: Flip the canoe on him?
Stephen: Why not? He's too stupid to jump out when he should. Maybe smashing his leg up would teach him some humility.
Marie (sounding very much like her ward): Ha, good luck with that.
Stephen: It's worth a shot anyway. At least he'll remember that he managed to find the only conceivably dangerous spot on this creek to screw up in.
Marie: Not really surprising, I suppose.
Stephen (sighing): No, I guess not.

As the canoe flipped over the right side smashed wickedly into the young man's leg. He plunged into the cold water only a few seconds behind his companion and, probably with Stephen's help, managed to swim down stream and into the open, away from the current and the rocks, where he suffered a brief attack of Limited Vocabulary Syndrome, before finally recovering with some help from the rest of the group.

*"This idiot" is, of course, your humbled, bruised author, who really does owe some thanks to that redhead's mom for her prayers, even if they were mostly for her, and only for me in a sort of incidental, or even accidental, way.

After the Deluge

The streetlight glows a melancholy yellow through the downpour, just like that night so many years ago when I walked in the rain with a friend. Time dulls the memories. The joys and sorrows seem to me like ghosts floating through the dense gray of the storm. I said goodbye again last night. Not forever, no we never say forever. She said she'd have to come visit, had to keep an eye on me, keep me out of trouble. I reckon she might.

The threads of life twist and dance, a woven chord of black and silver, blue and gold. And red. We danced a little closer, we few. The grace of friendship gave us strength and joy. For a time our lives touched, our stories tangled into one.

We dance on, reminded anew of the grace of a memory. A friend to be honest with you, to put up with your bitching or your drunken phone call. A sister to love you. She was not the first to leave. No, the little one left first, the one that moved far away. Like a cat she was there, and then she was gone. I don't think cats get all teared up when they hug you. Generally, cats aren't much good for a hug.

We dance on. Everything is a grace. The chord may have changed, but the strength is still there. Across the miles we are together in faith. The things that I remember seem so distant, though it hasn't really been that long a time. The shades of a year drift into the fog that has swallowed others before them, but I can still make them out. Many years ago I watched in the mirror as the ghost of Christmas past waved at me under a gray December sky. Through the years that have passed we have changed, we have grown, but when I go home she lets me visit her; she lets me be her friend. I hope I do the same when others come to me.

The Red Headed Colleen

1 part Irish cream.
1 part Irish whiskey. (I'd recommend Powers Gold or, if you must, Jameson. The original was made with Black Bush.)
Top it off with a thin layer of cinnamon.

Sip it, chug it, warm or over ice (well, I drank it warm, I imagine it'd be good over ice).

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of new drinks. My friend Suzanne, who is one of my circle of beer friends, helped with the creation of the drink. We have another idea in the works which we haven't had a chance to try yet.

Education: Principles

What is it that constitutes education? What ought the focus to be? We have lost sight of the foundations we once saw so clearly, and our thoughts have turned to shallow, egalitarian pursuits, which should on their very face be contradictory to good education. Education, in its nature, is discriminatory. It is based upon the idea that the better is preferable to the worse, that knowledge and understanding are goods to be pursued. Now, though, we see more than anything a desire for sameness. The structure of the school system is geared towards achieving equality among the students. Rather than pushing each student to excel as much as possible, we push each student to reach the same goal. To make this possible, we set that goal so low that the very worst students may reach it, and then require the bright minds in the classroom to slog along drearily through topics that they mastered upon hearing. This problem exists in private schools as well as public; it is structural. The best intentioned of teachers, the most Catholic of schools, still struggle to overcome this basic egalitarian structure. And so those inquiring minds, who could swallow algebra and geometry whole, who read classical literature for fun because it is intelligent, literate, and substantive, these minds are stifled by boredom and left to rot on the wayside of the highway to sameness.

A properly educated child is a dangerous weapon. A boy, once taught to read, will soon discover worlds of adventure laid at his doorstep – if, that is, he can escape the hatred of reading instilled in him by the politically correct, empty hogwash forced down his gullet by a system that does not want him to be a man. Tales of adventures, of heroism and fair maids, of treasures and scoundrels, will inspire him to be a man to match his heroes. Indeed he runs the risk of misbehaving horribly and turning into something not at all effeminate. Worse, this love of reading may wax non-discriminate, and his wandering eye may fall on some volume that contains more profound ideas and fewer adventures. He might perhaps read it without proper supervision by an amateur expert in interpretation, and he might, just might, form his own ideas without regard to what everyone else in the class is told to think!

Likewise a girl might discover that there is beauty in being feminine. She will perhaps find in Mary the ultimate model of a mother. She may read Jane Austen without being told how horridly sexist her novels were. She may expect men to be men, rather than wishing they were girls. She runs the risk, terrible indeed, of wanting to conform to traditional gender roles, because she recognizes that in being a woman she is fulfilling a unique and precious place in the world, one which will earn her the respect, admiration, and love of every man worthy of the name.

Words are dangerous, for they convey ideas. There is a reason that education once centered around Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Language is the means by which ideas are exchanged. A word written speaks through time. The dead cry out to the living, saying, “Look, here is truth, here is beauty, here is wisdom.” Through reading we learn to think about meanings. Reading alone is not sufficient, though, for many of the dead and living lie. We must learn to discriminate between truth and falsehood. We must learn to take the good because it is good, and to leave the bad because it is bad. Usually, we take the bad because we are told it is good, and leave the good because we are told it is bad. Arithmetic (and ultimately higher mathematics) is vital to education because it teaches one to think with discrimination, to discern proof from sophistry, to know that begging the question is not a valid argument, and to reason about truth from first principles. A mind that devours inputs as a child’s will must be well-ordered. A well-ordered mind is capable, not only of absorbing old ideas, but of forming new ones; not only of reasoning about truth, but of expressing that truth to others in words. A child who reads and thinks clearly can, in turn, cry out to future generations, “See, here is the truth, here are beauty and goodness.”

Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

Transfiguration Thursday

Funny, that the Solemnity of the Transfiguration should fall on the same day of the dropping of The Bomb on Hiroshima. We celebrate God's glory revealed; we remember hell unleashed.

Thinking about the Transfiguration and what it means for us, I am reminded of something the Cheshire Cat once told me, back when I first knew her, oh, seven years ago. She said, “It would not be good for this world to be perfect, because then what joys could heaven hold?” The Transfiguration, like the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is a glimpse of Heavenly Glory. I’ve heard said that on that mountain, when Christ revealed Himself in His Divine Splendor to the three apostles, they missed the point – they were thinking of worldly things, of setting up tents and ministering. Given the propensity of the apostles towards density (a propensity that we all have) I would not be surprised. Still, I think there is something else at work here. They glimpsed Christ glorified, they heard the voice of God, they tasted Heaven, yet they could not retain it. The moment passed. I wonder if, in the moment of splendor, they were merely reaching for a way to hold on to this revelation. Yet the moment passed. There was work to be done, both by Christ in his immediacy, and later through the apostles. I wonder if Peter and John and James ever reached out, longing to regain that moment on the mountain top.

How often are our lives like that? When we experience moments of extraordinary Grace and consolation, what do we do with them? Do we listen to Jesus speaking to us in silence and love, do we abandon ourselves to Him, or do we grasp at it, trying to keep it for ourselves, and miss the point? And what, pray tell, do we do when the outpouring of Grace has faded and we are cast back into the world, to struggle every day with the forces of evil? We truly are blessed in the Eucharist, for each day, if we so desire, we can be present when heaven and earth kiss, and the veil is parted ever so slightly, giving a foretaste of what is to come.

May we experience the Transfiguration in our lives each day, to be reminded of God’s love, glory, power, majesty, and grace. Let us strive to work diligently in service to the Lord, seeking His guidance, imploring His mercy, and begging that our lives may be pleasing in His sight. When those outpourings of Grace come, let us rest in Him. When we are troubled, let us rest in Him. Let us cast ourselves always at His feet.


Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

Anyone Know What Day It Is?

It's Hiroshima Day! Time to stir the shit. Strategic bombing is, well... very strategic. "Hey, our soldiers and your soldiers are killing each other, but it's taking too long, so we're gonna start bombing your wives, children, fathers and mothers. Suck it bad guys!" And so we have Dresden, Tokyo, and finally Hiroshima, 64 years ago. Then again, we've been making war on civilians since Sherman burned, looted, and raped his way through Georgia.

If you can find it, I recommend this book, and also this article ... and this one.

From Will Grigg on the tazing of a pregnant woman, and other insignificant behaviors.

Also, I love hummingbirds.

That's all I've got for now. There's a post on education coming up that I'm nearly finished with, as well as some half-remembered ideas creeping around inside the cobwebs of my brain.


Anima Christi, sanctifica me