Mega-spoilers for Doctor Who. I mean it. Don't read this post if you don't want season 3/29 spoiled!

This is your last warning. If you don't want things spoiled, don't read behind the link. OK, I may talk about Torchwood a bit, too. This has got to be the best season of Doctor Who ever. If you'd like to learn how to make these text cuts for your very own blog, check out this help article here. No clue why the tags are appearing before the spoiler cut, but there you go.

OK. Anyone else notice how this season of Doctor Who with the last episode of Torchwood follows the Revelation of St. John almost perfectly? There's still one episode left to go, but the similarities are uncanny. All biblical quotes are taken from the New Jerusalem Bible because that's what I've got lying around. Just some scattered thoughts I have:

The fifth trumpet and Abbadon has been pointed out about the last episode of Torchwood. That's when Jack and the Doctor meet back up.

Woman clothed with the sun/Martha: 12:1-6, she escapes to the desert and is the key to the dragon's downfall. (Think we'll see more of this tomorrow.)

Jack: "...people will long for death and not find it anywhere; they will want to die and death will evade them." (5:6)

Chapter 6: kind of describes the decimation (literal) at the end of "Sound of Drums": "the sky disappeared like a scroll rolling up and all the mountains and islands were shaken from their places." Paradox machine and when the sky split and the toclafane came? On the decimation of humanity: "Immediately I saw another horse appear, deathly pale, and its rider was called Death, and Hades followed at its heels. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill by the sword, by famine, by plague and through wild beasts."

I'm really seeing the Doctor as St. Michael lately. He's been described as a lonely angel, and it's kind of his job to protect people, the universe. It sort of fits that the dragon would be the Master--he's a fallen angel, he and his armies fight against St. Michael and company. "Sound of Drums" really set up the Master as a perversion of everything the Doctor stands for, including his relationship with others.

We'll see how tomorrow's episode changes everything.

1.) I'm still here. More fighting with financial aid. Hopefully it'll finally be resolved. At least they're convinced I have a Master's degree. Progress, I guess. This bout of fun involved having to call them every other day to get my award for this year and conflicting information, not to mention a hold on my account for no reason. Thanks to Student Fiscal Services--who really are wonderful--I think things are sorted out.

2.) Doctor Who: Yowza. Anyone else watching it? If you don't watch it, when it comes on Sci-Fi, check it out. Easily the best season yet.

3.) In lieu of actual content, a few things about how God wrote the world in LISP.



And here's a song about it. If you'd like to sing along, here are lyrics.

I've been in a funk lately. I'm sure part of it is financial aid worries (hopefully resolved) and the other part is that there are no good role models for lay Catholics. Rather, there aren't any that fit my situation in life. Most of the intellectuals I admire are monastics or people in religious orders. Lay modern Catholics? Can't think of many I'd like to emulate, especially for women. Most speak to childbirth and homemaking--both vitally important vocations, but neither mine.

So we've got St. Gianna Molla. She's never spoken to me. If anything her message seems to be the same as what I'd get from my family: I'm selfish if I don't have children. She's never mentioned for being a doctor during a time when women just weren't. She had to have been one sharp cookie--I'm sure the prejudice was against her to begin with, so she had to be better than those around her. I think a woman who was able to overcome such a situation back in the 1950's is enough proof of sainthood. But that's not what's emphasized in her story. I worry that the extremist "pro-lifers" are going to an idolatrous extreme, which objectifies women in opposite ways from hedonistic secularists.

Then we've got the Quattrocchi family. I swore I'd never discuss sex on my blog, but I can't say their relationship is one the Hoopy Frood and I would like to emulate, either. Sure, you can't build a relationship on sex, but going too far the other way--the term "living as brother and sister" for a married couple creeps me out in a deeply Freudian way--isn't good, either. Humans need closeness. There was a study done with primates--if you deprive them of touch from other primates they wither, give up, and die. I've seen the same thing happen to couples who've been married decades when one person in the relationship dies. The other person fades away.

Are children necessary for such a relationship? I know more than a handful of couples without children. The fruit of their love can't help but spill over into their relationships with other people. Maybe it's coincidence, but those couples--some of which have been married as long as I've been alive--are some of the most loving people I know.

I don't know why I was given the gift of being able to compose music. I have to believe it's not an accident, given the hardship and trials I've faced getting to where I am today. I'm not after fame and prestige--there are easier ways to get it beyond a doctorate in music composition. I don't know why I was given the gift of the Hoopy Frood, either, but I have to believe both of them aren't accidents.

Yet it seems like the overwhelming bias on marriage in the RCC emphasizes women giving up on their careers to be mothers. How is my being unhappy bringing glory to God or using the talents I have? (I know myself well enough at 32.5 to know that there is no way I'd ever be a happy person as a stay-at-home-mother.) How is throwing away my talents best for the relationship between the Frood and I?

I can point to Catholics I'd like to emulate, but they aren't "big names" or canonized saints. Maybe things are changing. Over on Whispers in the Loggia, Palmo wrote a wonderful article about the role of women in Benedict's papacy, including a letter from him about the need for women in the Church. So why doesn't the institutional Church value women's talents?

Blog Like it's the End of the World

You can read more about my chronicles of zombie apocalypse here...

(Some NSFW language...because during a zombie attack, you don't have time for pleasantries...)

For more information go here.

Care and Feeding of Your Catholic, part 5, "mixed" relationships.

OK. This one's a bit more pragmatic. Nothing special, just a few tidbits I've gleaned over 8 years of life with the Hoopy Frood. Feel free to add, reject, or correct. Seems like the issue of "mixed" relationships--that is, a relationship with a person who's not Catholic--keeps coming up in various forms, blogs, and forums.

1.) Rule #1: The only person you can change is yourself.

2.) Rule #2: Your relationship isn't a zero-sum game.

3.) Golden Rule in all things.

Really, that's all there is to it. The times religion's been an issue, someone broke one of the three rules. (In any issue, I might add, not just religion.)

I mean, look, it's not theoretical physics. One of the common things I see come up is converting one's spouse. If one's spouse wants to convert, that's one thing. If they don't, forcing the issue isn't going to do anyone any good. Would you want your spouse to try to convert you to their religion? No? Then why do it to him/her? And as to sneaking green scapulars into your SO's stuff, is that really building trust? Would you want your SO sneaking their religious items into your things to make you convert? You can respect a person's beliefs without agreeing to them, and such tactics don't overly seem respectful.

The rest, really, is just details. What I've found works for us is a common ground, some area we can agree on. (In anything, again, not just religion.) Lord knows we've had our squabbles, but also one pig-headed statement doesn't merit another. ("Get bent," is not appropriate apologetics, for instance.) And really, if a couple disagrees, it means they disagree. It doesn't mean they love each other less, which I think some newer couples seem to equate disagreement with.

The other big source of discord has been a lack of knowledge or understanding. For instance I have a horrible habit of ripping on evangelicals. I really do try to be nice, but their beliefs are the opposite of mine. Their emphasis upon their take on Christianity as being the only way (in some cases) really grates on my nerves, especially since some of them think they're closer to "authentic" Christianity. Some of my in-laws are evangelical Christians, and I know I've said some unkind things that hurt the Frood, even though I wasn't specifically talking about his family and he's neither Christian, nor evangelical.

Conversely, I've had to sit through some rather uncomfortable moments, one in particular where it was said that all people born into a denomination aren't strong in their faith, when I've been a Catholic since birth. To me it feels like they rub their faith in other peoples' faces. To them, it's as if I'm not "on fire." I"m a contemplative--I need silence in my worship, where they have no problem with pop and more "boisterous" worship. They see ritual as dead, where I see it as a sign of the universal Church and something transcendent. It's funny that the Hoopy Frood and I aren't even the same religion, yet we agree on more in things spiritual than between his family and I, and we're all Christian.

So I guess the bottom line is love your SO, keep a sense of humor about it all, and be prepared to pass the ketchup or apologize, when one of you puts your foot in your mouth.

At some point words become frail. I could say so much about what I'm doing as a composer, yet nothing but silence would come close to that by which I'm confronted in the act of composition. I could fill reams of program notes about formal method and procedures, but never be able to describe the terrifying (awe-inspiring) intimacy of the moment that music gets written.

I think why so many composers in computer music hide behind technology is because without an instrumentalist to be shielded by, they're completely exposed. Every fault and failing is blasted to the world. Elements of themselves, which may or may not exist, are splayed for all to see and consume or vomit back in disgust. Real intimacy with one person you know well is scary enough. With people one doesn't know? Horrifying.

Walking along the main street by my studio, words and actions become raw. The suffering of panhandlers contrasts the bacchanalia of fraternities and sororities. Mundane errands, lunch-seekers, and drug-pushers collide. Their humanity is too much. Nothing I can actively do will fill the gaping void formed from everyday life.

This is not the place prepared for me. A composer's music, a contemplative's prayer (if the two were ever separate), this is the bread of my life for others and my vocation. If, as critics of contemporary music alledge, we only write music to be ellitist, then if not for others, why would we expose ourselves (lovingly) in such a vulnerable way?

Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole creation, moved by your magnetism, offers you at this dawn of a new day. This bread, our toil, is of itself, I know, but an immense fragmentation; this wine, our pain is no more, I know, than a draught that dissolves. Yet in the very depths this formless mass you have implanted--and this I am sure of, for I sense it--a desire, irresistible, hallowing, which makes us cry out, believer and unbeliever alike: 'Lord make us one. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "Mass on the World"