Daniel Tammet - Brain Man

The incredible story of Daniel Tammet, a savant with a mesmerizing gift for numbers and calculation. This is the 60 Minutes segment, Part One.

WOW....

The universe is amazing. Seriously. The fact that we exist at all is amazing. And we are but the size of the head of a pin in the vastness of space. We're like a grain of sand on a planet full of sand! When we hear the astronomical figures, the ratios, the spaces between things in space, it makes the head swim. There are over 50 billion galaxies in the known universe, there are gazillions of stars, and the one star that is our sun is so large that a million earths could fit comfortably within it's warm and cozy interior. That is amazing. My brain hurts. And yet even with this knowledge, people are bored today. "What'd ya do this weekend?" "Nothin' much... what'd you do?" "Same ole same ole. What'd you do?" "You already asked me that." "Oh yeah.... huhmph." I believe we are starving today for a renewed sense of wonder at the universe. Let's be honest; aren't we burying our heads for most of the day in malls, offices, cars, and supermarkets? Our eyes more often reflect the glow of computer screens and TVs than the starry heavens above, or the shining sun for that matter (ironically, I'm typing this on my computer). But we do love getting those unexpected doses of humility from the stuff in the heavens: the rain, snow, sleet, leaves, wind, starlight, and an occasional lunar eclipse! They're stellar reminders of our smallness in the great big world. They help keep things in perspective. Sometimes they just blow perspective out of the water completely, and we just say WOW, like a clip from one of those new Windows Vista commercials (irony again!). So last night, we had one of these cosmic moments. I didn't get the chance to see it (I saw a foggy moon abit after the fact), but reading about it and seeing the pics has been rather "illuminating." It was a lunar eclipse, and the best seats in the house were in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. (A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes between the sun and the moon, closing off the sun's light for a period of time. Coooooolness.....) I can't help but wonder what the ancients must have thought when the heavens did such crazy, creepy, and unexpected things. One thing I'm sure of.... it must have WOWed them, filling them with that healthy sense of their own smallness in the universe. On the flip side, in reading about the eclipse, this statement from one of our "modern" astronomers just made me shake my head: "It's not an event that has any scientific value, but it's something everybody can enjoy," said Professor So and So, of Britain's Royal Astronomical Society. Scientific value? It's not an event that has any scientific value? Why does it have to have scientific value? Some things, I believe, are just made to WOW us.

Windows Vista WOW Commercial

I love the WOW moments in this commercial. They're priceless, as is the funny twist in the last 2 seconds of this Italian version of the commercial.

Cardinal Rigali on the Transfiguration

Amazing Grace - A Review

We just saw the new film "Amazing Grace" and we loved it! Ioan Gruffudd does an excellent job playing the humble and passionate William Wilberforce, an 18th century man torn between his desire to give his life to God or to stay "in the world" and make it a better place. With the help of some dedicated friends, he soon discovers a man may do both. The main thrust of the film is his more than decade long battle with Parliament to end the slave trade in the British Empire.

One of my favorite lines came from the character John Newton, the former slave trader whose conversion led him to compose the famous song "Amazing Grace." Newton is played powerfully by an aging Albert Finney: "Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly. I'm a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior."

This film was a refreshing return to good plot, solid acting, strong characters, real history, and the power of virtue to pull us out of vice. Stay for the full ending, and the playing of the bagpipes!

Do You Believe This?

About 2000 years ago, a weathered old Jewish priest named Simeon was standing in the cool, shadowy interior of the Temple in Jerusalem. He was holding a little baby in his arms. With a surge of spiritual insight and trembling with emotion, Simeon whispered to the humble mother standing by "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

Two millennia have passed and that old priest's words ring truer than ever. Jesus is still a sign that is contradicted (or spoken against); our image of Him is still sometimes confused. His words remain an enigma that many feel is unsolvable. The truth of Who He is, Who He said He was, is still so contended, so contradicted that Mother Church still feels the stab of that unbelieving sword in her soul.

I think it all comes down to one question. The one He Himself asked to a troubled and weeping Martha, herself confused when standing beside another tomb just outside of Jerusalem. Martha was mourning the loss of her brother, Lazarus, who was wrapped in burial clothes and locked in the stone cave before them.

Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise." Martha said to him, "I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Oh there it is! The kicker at the end of this dialogue is so often missed or dissed as just some sweet "spiritual" sentiment, no matter how many times we hear it read at funerals and wakes.

"Do you believe this?"

We have to respond to the question. So.... do you? Do we? Do I believe this? And let's not call it by any other name. Don't "spiritualize" it, metaphorize or anesthetize it. Listen to the words of the writer/poet John Updike. Oh this is a good one. This one should go on the fridge, or at your desk in the office, or on the nightstand at home because it's just so good.


Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

- John Updike, Seven Stanzas at Easter

Tomb and Gloom - A Deeper Study

For those who really want to know what the buzz is all about on this Jesus Tomb controversy, here's Ben Witherington's excellent (and quite long) point by point analysis of the claims made in the documentary: http://benwitherington.blogspot.com

Also, an article on Catholic News that's a little more to the point:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0701131.htm

And finally, other sources for understanding what happened to the body of Jesus (but be warned, they have no credentials, degrees, or doctorates to their names), would be Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.