Das Neujahr kommt . . .

So it's almost midnight and I find myself balanced on the precipice of 2010 held together in hope for a new year. This year has been incredibly stretching and at times exhausting, but I know it's all for future holiness. I am leaving 2009 healthy, simpler, and more compassionate.

Tonight I stuck with my recent trend of spending time with the family. I read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov in my new black slippers while drinking French Pressed Tanzanian coffee. After Mass and Vitale's pizza (God Bless Augustino, all his Sicilian siblings, and their ridiculously good pizza) my brother went off to his friend's house, and Mom, Dad, and I went downstairs to eat chocolate pudding in fancy glasses and watch "Up." I just about cried . . . 3 times . . . in the first 5 minutes.

Carl (the old guy) gives me, someone caught up in the demands of scholarly expectations, so much hope that rejuvenation is my vocation. Being young, no matter how old I am, is my New Year's resolution. Not to be ignorant or naïve, but to be hopeful and imaginative. I pray to see my God not in the theology books under my nose, but amongst the stars, in my fellow human beings, and his moving in nature. So often we shut of our senses assuming that we have enough experience to make our own decisions, but kids don't. They're porous persons who open their senses to world where its expected that they be in awe. When did we decide that it was unadult or not mature to be in awe?

(Ball Drop happened, I tinked a Two Hearted Ale with my mom and dad)

Jim Carrey is on Conan right now. He was my comedic hero as I was growing up. There were so many times when I used his jokes, his voices, his movements, etc. He inspired my sense of humor for so long, that youth and Jim Carrey are not far off to me. There were times when I would make jokes that no one laughed at, but I didn't care, because I bet Jim would've laughed. Besides you can always fall on your face in front of your friends. That was the comedic equivalent to "sing like no one is listening, dance like no one is watching, etc."and it kept me open. It kept me talking. It kept me listening. It kept me in this great conversation, or rather joke, that was going on between me and everyone else; me and God.

What if we went into this year thinking it's going to be a comedy rather than a tragedy? We might be doing something right.


Tübingen Wörter:
Wort: die Heiligkeit: Holiness
Verb: leuchten (leuchtete, geleuchtet): To shine

Daily Deutsch III

Heutes deutsches Wort: die Kerze: Candle
Heutes deutsches Verb: aus.löschen (löschte aus, ausgelöscht): To extinguish or annihilate

Here's a beautiful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke,

Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehn,
wirf mir die Ohren zu: ich kann dich hören,
und ohne Füße kann ich zu dir gehn,
und ohne Mund noch kann ich dich beschwören.
Brich mir die Arme ab, ich fasse dich
mit meinem Herzen wie mit einer Hand,
halt mir das Herz zu, und mein Hirn wird schlagen,
und wirfst du in mein Hirn den Brand,
so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen.

Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you;
plug up my ears, and I can still hear;
even without feet I can walk toward you,
and without mouth I can still implore.
Break off my arms, and I will hold you
with my heart as if it were a hand;
strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;
and should you set fire to my brain,
I still can carry you with my blood.

Tübingenvorbereitung: Tag I

Heute, sind meine zwei deutsche Wörter . . .
I. die Kinderzeit: childhood
II. der Spinat: spinach

Meine zwei deutsche Verben sind . . .
I. taufen (taufte, hat getauft): to baptize
II. an.riechen (roch an, hat angerochen): to smell

Projekt Tübingen

So, I'm studying abroad in April to the Universität in Tübingen, which is in South-West Germany. I've never thought about studying abroad until this year. My parents said that they were going on a family vacation in Germany, or as my grandparents called it, "zeh olt country." I figured I would rather stay there for 3 months and snag a German minor, rather than just going on vacation for a week.

My reasons for going to Deutschland, besides connecting with my heritage.
I. Get a German minor, which will really help me with my Theology major. Proficiency in German means I can read philosophers like Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger and theologians like Ratzinger and Balthasar in their original language. Right on.
II. Pope Benedict XVI was the chair of Theology at the Uni Tübingen and I might get to audit a theology class while I'm there.
III. Bike through Southern Germany and camp.
IV. Learn Hochdeutsch (standard German) as well as dabble in dialects such as Schwäbisch, Allemanisch, and Bayerisch (what my grandfather grew up speaking).

Recently (kürzlich), I figured I need to build up my vocab and "verbcab" before going. Not a lot of people know this, but German is pretty frustrating for English speakers. The English lexicon is primarily Romantic (French/Latin) and has forgotten the difficulties of Germanic grammar and replaced much of their Germanic vocabulary. I haven't found a German word of the day program yet, so I've devised my own.

Every day (täglich)
I. One German Word
II. One German Verb

Except Sunday. Sunday is when I take my 6 words and verbs and use them in a paragraph.
I'm a day behind so I'm going to do two today.
I hope to do this every day, so I can be able to articulate the beauty that is Tübingen in the beauty that is the German language. What you think German's ugly? Psssh, I beg to differ.

A Pond for Ponderings

So up until this point, I have not really been blogging . . . sadly. I've been posting short papers that I wrote and thought were fun. Dante and Yoga being two interests of mine. As I go through my Junior Year at Aquinas, my papers are only getting bigger and bigger, so I think I'll actually use my blog to blog. I'm assuming most people wouldn't want to browse through miles of me writing about ecclesiological models with comparative theological analysis through various philosophical lenses. Some might, but not everyone's as sick as me in that regard.

I watched Julie & Julia last night and I loved it. I want to cook so much right now. Somebody buy me Julia Child's French cookbook. The best thing about that movie, to me, was the simple pleasure she had in expressing her thoughts in some ordered fashion, while cooking allowed her to do the same.

I hope that this place will be a Pond for Ponderings. That's what I call my Moleskine journals. Pond is the key word. It's not an ocean for whales and sharks. It's not a stream that has no time to stop and reflect. It's a simple place, with simple fish, and simple pleasures.

The whole idea is that when you're fishing you might catch a small fish. The only problem is that if you keep doing that, you only catch the same size fish, everyday.
In my pond when I catch an fish, I toss it back. I let it swim, grow, mingle with other fish, and multiply. You can only catch bigger fish if you toss the smaller ones back.

The same thing goes for ideas. Everyone needs a place where they can catch some ideas and toss 'em back.

I hope I can come back to this and see how they've grown. I hope I can come back to this and see how I've grown. Cogito ergo sum. Think holy; be holy. Think good; be good.
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov 23:7).

Who knows what a simple thought or a simple man might grow into . . .

Correlations Between Yoga and The Christian Life

Yoga is the practice of bringing together. In Sanskrit, yoga means binding or bringing together (it is the root from which we get our work yoke). It brings together the body’s movements with breath, the yogi’s attention to the present moment, and the yogi’s spirit with the yogi’s body. It is intended to even bring the yogi’s spirit in touch with a greater spiritual reality. Yoga as an Eastern practice is viewed with suspicion in the Christian West, but the discipline and insight yoga has to offer should not be so easily dismissed.

The bringing together soul and body by being aware of ones breath is nothing foreign to Christianity. Breath in Greek and Hebrew, which author the Christian canon, is rendered pneuma and rûakh. These words represent wind, breath, and spirit, and this poetic language show that the Western mind and yoga have common ground.

Attentiveness to breathing is often the starting point for Christian meditation as well. The Hesychastes begin with awareness of breath, so that they can understand the rhythm that their body is giving them. With this in mind they can orient themselves toward hesychasis or contemplative silence and stillness.

Christians need reorientation, because to do otherwise is to sin. The Greek and Hebrew words for sin are h’amartia and khattah represent deviating, missing the mark, or moving without proper orientation. This moral failure results from ignoring the order given by God to his creatures. Christians are constantly trying to bind themselves back to this moral order. This is most perfectly done by conforming ones will to the divine will. Christian anthropology teaches that humans are created imago Dei, and thusly they are the image, the reflection of the divine. A mirror that does not perfectly reflect is a bad mirror, so deviation and distortion violate a person’s humanity.

Yoga can teach Christians how to be aware of their alignment. Yoga is analogous to the spiritual life, and so if one can be bind ones body and soul in harmony, they will have a model to do the same in their spiritual life. Yoga is a penetrating process were one begins to practice even off the mat. Awareness of breath and body continue and a person is constantly realigning or deepening in everyday life.

The reason yoga is often viewed with suspicion in the Christian West is due to its relation to Hindu and Buddhist culture. Christians are often afraid that mantras and other practices within yoga will lead to Buddhism or Hinduism, which is not necessarily the case. One element of Hindu philosophy that must be understood cautiously is the word yoga, and what does it mean by bringing together? When one discovers that Atman and Brahman is the same thing, a fusion takes place where the selfless person is absorbed into the divine. This is a different understanding that the Christian idea of communion. Communion is brought about by the fact that there are many persons co-existing, for persons can love each other. This is the reason why the Christian God is a Trinity of three persons in one nature. Communion respects the dignity of individual persons while recognizing the common nature that unifies them.

In yoga, one could say communion is an applicable concept, because ones breath and ones movements may be brought together, but that does not mean that the lungs or the muscles cease to have their individual dignity. It is the fact that different things come together in synergy that makes yoga so beautiful.

One Christian motto (of the Benedictine monks) is ora et labora (pray and work). Yoga is a discipline that can help teach one how to unify together how one prays with how one works. This closes the gaps and binds together a person’s moments of prayer into a constant prayer. Prayer cease to be some activity one does now and again, but becomes something that one is. Yoga has the potential to teach Christians the idea of “practice.” It can teach them that the spiritual life is an on going process of awareness and re-alignment constantly in a world that is so often deviating and distorting.