The Friday Five

Ah yes, the mindless memes that float around the Blogosphere. . .

1. What do you most want to be remembered for? Up to this point? That I was a good dad who loved his rugrats. Lots.

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?“Pray to God as if everything were dependent upon Him, but live your life as if everything were dependent upon you.” It’s a quote from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. That and “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!”

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year? Hmm. . . I dunno. I wrote a rather lengthy paper demonstrating how Kantian epistemology was refuted by relativity and quantum physics, but it needs polishing before I feel comfortable submitting it. But I think the one thing I am most proud of was attending an interfaith meeting at St. George’s Episcopal when Mr. Phelps decided to pay our city a visit.

Mr. Phelps, if you remember, was the individual who came to protest The Laramie Project at Mary Washington College and then proceeded to protest the area churches for being “lukewarm on gays.” The meeting was gathered to co-ordinate a response to Phelps and his crew. Rather than creating a response from the churches, I advocated a strategy of non-response or of a terse one-line rejection designed not to give Phelps et al. any ammunition. It worked, no one got sued, and there is no internal debate about homosexuality other than what previously exist. In effect, Phelps failed to acheive his goals, whereas a full-fledged confrontation would have only served Phelps’ goals. I felt instrumental in making sure that didn’t happen, saving the Church from a bit of scandal and our parishioners from a good deal of grief.

4. What about the past ten years? Oh jeez. . . I was 15 ten years ago, so that’s a fairly wide span of life experience in my POV. I could culminate it in terms of my political experience, but I’m not exactly “proud” of all that I’ve done. It’s been one of those things you just do because its the right thing to do and needs to be done. That seems rather sappy, and if you’re truly a cynic it sounds ‘political’, but it’s honest.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say? Be intolerably patient, go to Mass, and pray as often as you can to Christ, because he’s just about the only thing that makes sense in this world. If you’re Catholic, the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a great centering tool.