Ellen has a few observations on the campaign.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 10:31 PM

Other than blogging about saints, this has been my life this past week. Grandmother was in the hospital with a broken hip, and we were up to see her and will be back to see her again on Saturday. I don't think I will feel up to blogging about this any time soon, but those who are interested can read my husband's account. I made the usual holiday phone calls and got news from some of my very large family (I am one of nine children), and as usual haven't gotten in touch with some people yet. Joel has been posting on the saga of the air conditioning, so I won't get into that. It's worse for him than for me, since I get to go in to an air conditioned office during the day. The monthly Bible study I lead is gradually progressing through the Sermon on the Mount, and I got good news on the Yizkor Book Project I am working on; more chapters have been translated and added to the site.

A Yizkor book is a post-Holocaust memorial book for a Jewish community; this one is for Thessaloniki (also known as Salonika), Greece, which used to have a very large and thriving Jewish community, almost all of whom died in the Holocaust. The new chapters are some about Zionist groups in Thessaloniki and some names from tombstone inscriptions. The Thessaloniki Yizkor book translation project is here.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 10:20 PM

I found my great-aunt at the Ellis Island web site this weekend. The bare facts of her entrance to this country are on the ship manifest of the Themistocles, for December 12, 1916. On that day, Anna Gazi (Gazi being the feminine form, in Greek, of the name Gazis), an 18-year-old born in Kozani, Greece, entered this country. She was single, apparently travelling alone, and, according to the ship manifest, had paid her own passage from Athens (how did an 18-year-old Greek woman, the daughter of a baker, pay her own passage in 1916?). She entered this country in good health, with $22 in her possession, and planning to stay with her cousin Costas Decoktouris (whom I had never heard of before) in New York City.

Although my great-aunt travelled alone, she joined a small group of immigrants from Kozani already living in New York City. Her cousin Costas, a little more than ten years older than her, had first made the trip in 1906, and occasionally returned to Greece after that. He was joined in 1908 by his brother Demetrios, and his sisters Efthalia and Anthoula made the trip in October, 1916 and August, 1920, respectively.

And this is all I know of my great-aunt's immigration. My father immigrated much later, in the 1950s, on a Fulbright scholarship, and my family reconnected with my great-aunt, but I was too young to remember her.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 8:28 AM

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart!

Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move.

Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art,

And make me love thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dreams, no prophet ecstasies,

No sudden rending of the veil of clay.

No angel visitant, no opening skies,

But take the dimness of my soul away.

Teach me to love thee as thine angels love,

One holy passion filling all my frame,

The baptism of the heaven-descending dove,

My heart an altar and thy love the flame.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 7:54 AM

Good post on this topic over at Eve Tushnet's blog, which also has a good death penalty post today.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 10:41 AM

Finally, I'm rereading all three responses I got to my question (which responses are here, here, and here - or scroll down to August 26th at Eve Tushnet's blog if my link to her archives doesn't work). I gather, from there responses, that what makes prayer to saints meaningful in a devotional sense is the sense of connection to the Church as it stretches out over time, to people who have faced all the different kinds of circumstances we have faced, and to people who manage to live their faith in all the different roles to which a person might be called. And that connecting to the saint by prayer, rather than simply by stories, gives a sense of working together with the saint. I suppose that makes sense to me.

In a sense, I find it appealing that Catholicism manages to express a sense of ongoing connection between the living and the dead, and between our generation and past generations. Between prayer to the saints and prayer for those in Purgatory, I don't get a sense of death as completely cutting off a relationship, and there's also the sense that the Church in all ages continues to cooperate. On the other hand, seeing an appeal in this kind of thing isn't the same thing as believing in it myself. Mormons have all kinds of elaborate rituals for the living to perform for the dead (though not much, beyond Pioneer Day - which I sort of think of as the nearest Mormon equivalent to All Saints' - to correspond with veneration of saints), and I can see why all of these Temple ceremonies might have an appeal, but since I don't actually believe any of the theology behind it, I don't feel any impetus to go out and become Mormon.

I'm closer to believing Catholic theology, in general, than Mormon theology, and Catholic theology about the saints (including the parts about veneration and prayer to the saints) seems, at any rate, internally consistent and coherent. There's a few things that put me off (e.g., veneration of relics, excessive credulity by some toward apparitions of the Virgin Mary, burying of statues of St. Joseph when selling a house), but as far as I can tell, most of this isn't a required part of Catholicism (e.g. most of the apparition stories which seem most dubious to me aren't formally approved by the Church anyway). Still, I feel enough of a Protestant barrier to avoid praying to saints myself; also I kind of suspect that, wherever they are, the dead probably have the same problem hearing from us as we do hearing from them.

On the other hand, I feel perfectly easy talking to saints, as long as that conversation doesn't include anything I'd associate too much with prayer (such as petition, or praise, or thanksgiving), and so, after being married into a Catholic family for fourteen years, I do occasionally include saints in my mental conversation. This feels natural to me, since I talk, in my mind, to people I know personally who have died (either to say what I think of them or to tell them about things which I might have told them if they were still alive), so including the occasional saint is just a natural extension of that. And, after all, it doesn't matter if they can't actually hear me; having the conversation helps me imagine what someone else, who perhaps experienced a similar situation to what I have experienced, would have said or done.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 10:39 AM

I've mentioned in the past the Quaker custom of reading and reflecting on advices and queries each month. My own Meeting reads the queries during Meeting for Worship on the first Sunday of the month, and spends some time reflecting on them and speaking in response to them right after the end of Meeting for Worship. This month's queries are on integrity. Here are the advices and queries:

Integrity and Personal Conduct

Integrity has always been a goal of Friends. It is essential to trust, to all communication between people and between people and God. Integrity grounds our beliefs, thoughts, and actions in our spiritual center and makes us whole.

Friends believe that we are called to speak the truth. A single standard of truth requires us to conduct ourselves in ways that are honest, direct, and plain, and to make our choices, both large and small, in accord with the urgings of the Spirit. In follows that we object to taking an oath, which presupposes a variable standard of truth. Be true to your word.

... let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay. James 5:12, King James Version

From early days Friends have opposed gambling and practices based on chance. These activities profit from the inevitable loss of others, promote greed, and conflict with good stewardship. Public lotteries have not furthered their purported benefit to the public good. All addictions are of concern. As the use of alcohol and tobacco all too often entail serious risks to self and others, Friends who serve alcohol at home should be diligent in offering alternatives. Alcohol should not be served at Meeting gatherings.

Find recreation that brings you joy and energy. Be aware of how your choices affect yourself and others.

How do I strive to maintain the integrity of my inner and outer lives?

Do I act on my principles even when this entails difficult consequences?

Am I honest and truthful in all that I say and do, even when a compromise might be easier or more popular?

Am I reflective about the ways I gain my wealth and income and sensitive to their impacts on others?

Is my life so filled with the Spirit that I am free from the misuse of alcohol and other drugs, and of excesses of any kind?

Do we, in our Meeting, hold ourselves accountable to one another as do members of a healthy family?

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 11:26 PM

Some people diligently complain about spam email. I usually take the lazy route, and delete or filter as much as possible. But occasionally I notice something which looks particularly worth complaining about. So, when I saw the subject "Legal Notification" in an email from someone I'd never heard of before, I thought, "scam" and decided to open it to see whether the scam was worth trying to nail the sender. Turns out to claim to be from "the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2" and to be claiming to already have sent my savings and credit information to an unknown third party, to be prepared to continue doing so - deducting $50 from my account for this ever so friendly service - unless I snail mail them $10 and request an application to make them stop doing this. OK, so one of two things is happening here. Either (ISC)2 is scamming me, or someone is trying to smear ISC2. Which is it?

In this case, it turns out to be easy to find the answer. In the first place, (ISC)2 has a link at their web site explaining that people are sending questionable spoofed email to discredit them, and, if you think you've gotten such email from them, to please send them all the headers. In the second place, the nifty tool Spam Cop tells me that the headers on this email are indeed spoofed, and that it doesn't come from isc2.org at all, despite the fact that its sender claims to be an account at that site. (Note: As in most email programs, I had to actually go turn on showing all the headers of the email to get Spam Cop the information that let it catch the forgery. The ones you normally see by default don't tell you enough. How you show all the headers varies depending on what email program you are using.) So, thanks to Spam Cop, I can acquit (ISC)2 of any hanky panky with my credit and savings accounts, and hopefully get the real offender's account yanked.

posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 11:14 PM