Decorating and the Power of Women

One of the more exciting parts of having an apartment of your own (and by own I mean I share it with my sister and pay about 30 % of the rent; take a lucky guess who is the boss) is decorating it. Well, my sister has decorated the living room and kitchen and all common areas. I get to decorate my own room and my bathroom. I am still not sure how to decorate a bathroom, but I do know that any good bathroom needs reading material to make longer visits, especially longer visits after Mexican food, more enjoyable.

I have had Uncle John's Ultimate Bathroom Reader for awhile now. That is a definite. My journey in search of other reading material is where things got interesting. Last week, I had to mail a couple of letters. The post office in Rensselaer is inside the train station, leaving me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. After I threw a carefully aimed rock, smiting two pigeons resting and probably pooping on a nearby statue*, I went to the newspaper/book/magazine store in the station. Yeah, these stores are in every train station and airport. They always seem to forget to put the sales prices on their items. Don't they know that anyone can just leave the station, rent a car or call a taxi, travel thirty minutes to Barnes and Noble, get the same books on sale, and probably miss his train or flight?

Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue came out a few weeks ago with my favorite tennis player Maria Sharapova one of the prominent models this year. I fully intended to pick that magazine up. What I did not intent was for an attractive woman to be working in the store. She was actually very attractive. My self consciousness kicked in high gear. I walked right past Maria and the other swimsuit models. I had to get something to read, or I would just look weird walking in. I decided to get Maxim, being a little less purient than the Swimsuit Issue. I couldn't get just Maxim or I would look like some dumb meathead to the cute girl working the counter. I also picked up a copy of the New Yorker.

Talk about random. Buying Maxim and the New Yorker. Both, in their own way, write to their audience. Maxim seems to assume that every reader has his brainwaves tuned to beer, boobs, Spike TV, pizza, sports, dumb humor, getting laid, and nothing else. New Yorker thinks its readers think of themselves as being as sophisticated as the New Yorker thinks itself to be. And, all this thought went into making a purchase in front of a pretty woman who probably not only could probably care less about what I was buying, but who I will probably never see again. She did smile at me, though. She may even have been impressed my classy dressing. For all she knew, I am just as likely to be a Wall Street businessman just getting back to Albany from the New York City train as I am to be a middle school teacher.

*there were no pigeons. This is the Rensselaer train station, not Grand Central Station. I made that up. Everything else is true. Kind of like a Dan Brown novel.

The DaVinci Code: my book review

All too often while teaching religion, I receive excited queries from some of my students asking me if I “knew” that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that the Church has been covering it up all these years because it does not want people to know about Mary Magdalene. Riiiiight. The Church wants to hide Mary Magdalene. That must be why she is present at the empty tomb on Easter Sunday in all four Gospels. The reason why I am told these “facts” is my students have heard these facts either from reading or hearing about The DaVinci Code. I always replied that I had not yet read the book, so I cannot rightfully make comments about the claims of either Dan Brown or his fictional characters. Now that I am done with comprehensive exams, and no longer need to spend my non-work waking hours studying, I have time for free reading. I just completed The DaVinci Code, and I have a few comments.

To criticize the book for offering one dimensional characters, silly plot twists, and predictable discoveries about conniving figures who we thought were good-guys would be disingenuous on my part, since I particularly enjoy entertaining fluff without much depth. Curator Jacques Sauniere is murdered in the Louvre, and professor Robert Langdon, innocent yet the primary suspect, and cryptologist/granddaughter of the victim Sophie Neveu go on a wild adventure running separately from the cops, the tall limping albino Opus Dei monk who really committed the murder, and the secret “Teacher” orchestrating the crime, while at the same time trying to figure out the mystery behind the hidden secret Sauniere was killed for. We find out that Sauniere was part of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, that has and protects the true identity and nature of the Holy Grail. The Albino monk is Silas, a member of spooky Catholic organization Opus Dei, working for his mentor Archbishop Aringarosa and the unknown Teacher, to seek out the Grail for ad majorem dei gloriam. French police chief Bezu Fache seems too religious, and arouses suspicion about his motives in pursuing Langdon. Luckily, Langdon knows Sir Leigh Teabing, a prominent Grail scholar eager to help in their search, in the hopes of revealing the “truth” of the Grail to a world that has been denied it by the “evil” Church. But, would Sauniere really have wanted the truth revealed?

It would be simple if this work of fiction were really just a lighthearted work of fiction. However, Brown offers a disclosure stating that certain parts of the book are true. Yes, he is sure to point out that, while the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei exist, the main characters who are members are fictional, and while pointing out that descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals are true, he never makes any claims about the historical theories put forth by the characters. Yet, it is these claims by the characters that have excited the popular imagination and must be confronted.

Both Langdon and Teabing refer anachronistically to “the Vatican” when criticizing past historical actions of the Church. Whether or not the claims made about the Church are true, it is incorrect to refer to the actions of “the Vatican” in the 15th century, much less the 3rd and 4th century. Vatican Hill, the location in Rome where St. Peter’s Basilica and Vatican City are located, has only in the last few centuries been the seat of Church governance. Before then, the Pope’s home base (and still the official Cathedral Church of the diocese of Rome) was the Cathedral of St. John Lateran in Rome. The 4th century, the era most derided in the book, the Pope was not in practical terms “in charge” of the Church, and East and West were still more than half a millennium from splitting. The Catholic Church as we know today, and Teabing loves to bash, was not around then. There was a Catholic Church, but it included both West and East, Latin and Greek, unlike today, where it is just Latin and few Eastern Rite Churches.

Spoiler Alert!! I will be giving away some important plot twists and book secrets. Skip if you do not want to know.

Teabing and Langdon’s major theses involve the idea that the Holy Grail is not the chalice of the Last Supper, but the blood line of the children of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, a 2000 year old secret that would shock the world. We learn in the book that the Priory of Sion heroically protects the secret by meeting and having Eyes Wide Shut style orgies. But, why keep this fact a secret? Why not tell the whole world that Mary Magdalene and our homeboy JC got….it….on? Then we can all have orgies.

Constantine made Jesus divine. But you see, Teabing tells Sophie when Langdon and she seek refuge in his mansion, the Church has suppressed this truth. All the early Christian followers “knew” that Jesus was just a swell guy, descended from the royal blood of David who married Mary Magdalene of the royal line of Benjamin to make a super royal bloodline. But, Emperor Constantine ruined all the fun. He had the JC—MM marriage written out of the Bible, and decided to “make” Jesus divine at the Council of Nicea in 325, in what turned out to be a real close vote. Now, since Jesus is divine, no one can challenge the Christian religion of the Empire. A divine Jesus could not have a wife, so Mary Magdalene gets hush-hushed. From then on out, Christianity phased out the pagan practices of goddess worship, cut out the divine feminine, and the world started sucking.

Whether or not Jesus is divine is matter of faith. However, from a historical perspective, it is incorrect to claim that Constantine is the first to call Jesus divine. Since the time of Jesus, there have been many followers who have considered Jesus to be God, to be one with the Father. Yes, there also were followers, such as Arius, who placed Jesus as less than God, and the merits of the decision at Nicea is a much wider topic than a book review, but it is historically false to claim that there were not early Christians who believed in Christ’s divinity. Also, the vote at Nicea was not close. It was an extreme majority that voted in favor of the Creed.

Jesus married Mary Magdalene. It is claimed by Teabing and Langdon that Jesus must have married Mary Magdalene because he loved her, references to kisses he gave her in apocrophal (non-canonical) gospels, and the “fact” that all Jewish men married then. However, in reality there is solid evidence against the view that Jesus married. NOT all Jewish men married. There was always a place for asceticism in Judaism. The Dead Sea Scrolls, just discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, were not early Christian texts, as mentioned in the DaVinci Code, but rather Jewish religious texts written by the Essenes, one group among a number of Jewish celibate ascetics, the equivalent of later Christian monks. While most Jewish men married, it was not unheard of for some to remain celibate. And, since marriage was looked highly upon, and all the great Jewish leaders from the Old Testament were married and had their wives mentioned, the only reason not to mention a wife of Jesus was that he probably did not have one. After all, at this time, it would have made Jesus look better to have been married. The only reason not to mention it is it is not true.

Sex is sacred. We can see the true colors of the Priory of Sion, the defenders of the “truth” of the Grail, in Sophie’s traumatizing experience that drove her from her grandfather. An orgy to show that sex is sacred? Actually, this is not a “new” idea. All of the ancient pagan religions believed that sex was divine, and many practiced ritualized sex. This is supposedly in contrast to the Church, which through the "fictional" story of Original Sin, has made sex dirty and shameful.

It is true that the Church does not consider sex to be divine. Unlike the straw-man that is set up to be torn down in the DaVinci Code, the Church also does not consider sex to be evil or dirty. Sex is a normal human activity. Not demonic or divine. It is good and a gift of God, but thoroughly human. And, frankly, whether one is someone who believes that sex is only for marriage or that sex is for any two (or more) consenting adults, I think we can all agree that it is kind of creepy and weird to call sex divine or sacred or religious. It does not cure cancer or make you fly or anything. It’s sex. Even animals do it.

No need to reveal the “truth” of the Holy Grail. Let’s pretend for a second that there really was a big cover up, and the Church has kept the Priory of Sion, under threat, from revealing the truth, and that is why they have to keep the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene a secret, only meeting once in awhile to perform some, um, rituals. Teabing is secretly the Teacher orchestrating the murder of Sauniere and seeking out the Grail because he thinks the “truth” that JC and MM married should be shouted from the rooftops. Langdon hedges, because Sauniere, the Grand Master leader of the Sion’s, did not want it told, and, as Langdon says, “if you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted holy stories of…belief, should we do that?” After all, “those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical,” i.e. religious faith is based on fantasy, and it does not matter what one believes if it makes him feel good and he is nice to others. Plus, as we find out from Sophie’s long lost grandmother who is not really dead like we earlier thought, the “truth” about Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ marriage is found in art, historical objects, writings, phallic objects, and nature. Riiiiight. No reason to tell people the truth. We are the enlightened ones who have it.

Obviously, this is very patronizing. It conjures up images of the Grand Inquisitor who “knew” there was no God, but burned heretics to spare people the unbearable truth of a life without hope. If something is true, why not reveal it? And, the idea that the “important” truths are meant to be hidden and only known by the enlightened few is not Christianity, but Gnosticism. True Christianity is for everybody. Jesus did not come for just for the enlightened few. His message is for us all.

If Jesus is just a man, and not divine, what is the point of worshipping him, or Mary Magdalene, or their “sacred” bloodline? The reason why Christians worship Jesus, and do not just revere him as a prophet like Moses or Muhammad, is because we believe him to be the God whose love is stronger than death, who offers us hope for new life after this one. And, far from disgracing Mary Magdalene’s name, the Church honors her. Who but she is revered as the one who is definitively present at the empty tomb to witness the Risen Lord?

Nick Vs. Jessica: Is it chicken or fish?

On Thursday, after work and trip to the YMCA, I made my first trip to the grocery store to stock up for my new apartment. I have not really grocery shopped since Senior year of college. Even then, I was the rare grocery shopper. Despite sharing a townhouse/apartment with 3 of my friends, fully furnished with a kitchen, fridge, stove, etc., I still had a partial meal plan at the dining hall. Plus, the essentials such as milk and bread would always magically reappear in the fridge for me (thanks, Matt, Kirk, and Brian! Someday, I will pay you back). My few excursions to the supermarket were limited, for the most part, to the frozen food section and the beer isle.

I have grown up since then. Thursday at Wal-Mart Super center (Wal-Mart is my favorite store. There will be a Wal-Mart column someday. I promise), I was a good boy. I bought some canned beans, a bag of mixed vegetables, a bag of lettuce, milk, bread, marinara sauce, pasta, and stove-top stuffing. Of course, I did not forget the staples of my diet. I got the beer, and a few items in the frozen food section. Plus, there were the Reese's Easter Eggs on sale, so I had to get a pack of them :-).

The most enjoyable part of my shopping experience was not my isle rummaging, but the check-out line. I had about 24 or 25 items, I think. The express lines are for 20 or less, and I refuse to be That Guy (there is always That Guy who goes in the fast lane with too many items. You hate That Guy, I hate That Guy, we all hate That Guy). So, I was stuck in a regular line with the typical obese Wal-Mart shoppers who look like they are preparing to store their basement in case of a nuclear holocaust. Of course, what else is there to do in a 25 minute wait in the checkout line? That's right! Read the tabloids.

I went through Us Weekly, The Enquirer, and about 3 or 4 others whose names I can't think of. Every cover had the big new celebrity gossip story that I for some reason had been unaware of up to this point: Nick's new girlfriend and Nick and Jessica's escalating feud.

I knew that Nick and Jessica's marriage had ended. I had just assumed it was over a disagreement concerning whether tuna is chicken or fish (It is Chicken of the Sea). Apparently, I now learned, Jessica may or may not have cheated on Nick with some singer from Maroon 5, and Nick was now being Mr. Playboy, dating around with lots of different women to get back at Jessica. On the cover of all the magazines was Nick's new current girlfriend, some 19 year old blond named Jessica Cavalleri or something from some reality tv show I had never heard of who recently had dated USC quarterback and Nick Lachey buddy Matt Leinart.

Generally, my rule of thumb (and I am only 25) is that it is probably not a good idea to date someone who was not born at least, say, before Mookie Wilson hit the ground ball through Bill Buckner's legs in the '86 World Series, and, while it is okay to look at girls younger than that, if you don't want to be creepy, girls that you look at should have been born at least before, I don't know, let's say the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Nick Lachey is 32. Whatever. If he can snag girls like that (I saw her on David Spade's Comedy Central show; she is hot), more props to him. Apparently he is following the "if there is grass on the field, play ball" rule. It's not for me, but, then again, I'm not married to someone as dumb as Jessica Simpson (I'm not married to anyone). That has got to fry his brains, just being around such dimwittedness.

Reggie Cleveland All-Stars

The 1970's was the decade of disco, blacksploitation flics, porno mustaches that would put even Adam Morrison to shame, and an unheralded pitcher named Reggie Cleveland who won 105 games in his not so distinguished Major League career. Thanks to ESPN Sportswriter and uber-fan Bill Simmons (I highly recommend you read his columns: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index ), Reggie Cleveland is the inaugural member of the note-so-but-hopefully-soon-to-be-famed Reggie Cleveland All-Stars. It is, as explained on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Cleveland_All-Stars ), "a fantasy award team for sports figures whose names do not match their ethnicities, especially white players with African-American sounding names." Included on the team are the likes of Grady Little, Jarrod Washburn, and Mack Brown, Bronson Arroyo, J.J. Redick, and Troy O'Leary. So, check it out. I would even suggest this be expanded to other celebrities, such as movie stars, rock stars, pop singers, and others. Let me know if you can come up with anyone who belongs on the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars.

St. Joseph of Cupertino, The Dunce

On Wednesday, March 15, I will be flying to down to DC to take my comprehensive examinations, my last step to receiving my Masters. It is a two day long exam, 4 hours each day, all essays. I am going through a 30 book reading list to prepare in my free time, when I'm not busy teaching and coaching, and moving into my new apartment. I am doing my part to prepare, and dear readers, here is your part. First, the background:

There is a saint named St. Joseph Cupertino, the patron saint of examinations. He was really slow intellectually, and rejected from many trades. He was grudgingly accepted into a monastery as a novice. His goal was to be a priest, a goal that could only be reached if he passed an oral examination of one question that could be on just about anything. He studied as hard as he could, but was only able to learn one small passage from I think the Gospel of Luke. He prayed really hard to God to be asked about the one thing he knew when tested. When he was tested, his question was on the one thing he knew! He passed and was ordained.

If you would like more detail on St. Joseph Cupertino, here is the short version from the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08520b.htm, and here is a longer (and better) version from EWTN's website: http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/JOSEPH.htm .

I would like you all to pray to St. Joseph Cupertino for me to help me on my comprehensive exams. Below are the two prayers to him. So, pray for me :-).

Prayer to St. Joseph of Cupertino for success in Examinations.
This powerful prayer is very effective in examinations. It has to be said before appearing in the examination. There are two variants to this prayer. Both the prayers are equally effective. You can choose any one of these:

First Prayer
O Great St. Joseph of Cupertino who while on earth did obtain from God the grace to be asked at your examination only the questions you knew, obtain for me a like favour in the examinations for which I am now preparing. In return I promise to make you known and cause you to be invoked. Through Christ our Lord. St. Joseph of Cupertino, Pray for us. Amen.

Second Prayer
O St. Joseph of Cupertino who by your prayer obtained from God to be asked at your examination, the only preposition you knew. Grant that I may like you succeed in the (here mention the name of Examination eg. History paper I) examination. In return I promise to make you known and cause you to be invoked. O St. Joseph of Cupertino pray for me O Holy Ghost enlighten me Our Lady of Good Studies pray for me Sacred Head of Jesus, Seat of divine wisdom, enlighten me.