Juan de Yepes Álvarez was born into a Jewish family in a small town near Ávila, Spain in 1542. He became a Carmelite priest after attending a Jesuit school and is famous today as reformer, theologian, mystic, poet and saint. St. John of the Cross, in his writings on the progress of the soul, stressed that one cannot approach God except through darkness and confusion. He wrote movingly of the ineffability of God’s love.

To celebrate the new scanner that I hooked up to my computer today, which will make what was ineffable effable, I am quoting this passage from his The Dark Night, which is addressed to his fellow contemplatives:

Contemplation is called “secret” not only because of one’s inability to understand but also because of the effects it produces in the soul. The wisdom of love is not secret merely in the darknesses and straits of the soul’s purgation (for the soul does not know how to describe it) but also afterward in the illumination, when it is communicated more clearly. Even then it is so secret that it is ineffable. Read More »

LOOK at the opening paragraphs of this article at ScienceDaily:

Women with advanced degrees in math-intensive academic fields drop out of fast-track research careers primarily because they want children – not because their performance is devalued or they are shortchanged during interviewing and hiring, according to a new study at Cornell University. Read More »

HE HAD unusually large ears that stood out like satellite dishes alongside his heavily grooved face. He wore a hearing aid nevertheless and a white, blood-stained apron. Three days a week, he worked at the chicken counter, slicing fryers, hacking bones and tossing out giblets.

I started to go the local farmers’ market more than 20 years ago and most Wednesdays I would buy six pounds of chicken bones, as well as other things, at the stand where Bill worked. I made broth with the bones.

Bill and I had instant rapport. I would look for him every week and we usually talked before and after he filled my order, a routine that seems archaic in an age of supermarkets and high-speed commerce but is still possible in some isolated corners of America where retail has not been thoroughly air-brushed and conglomeratized.

It is always smart for a merchant to show interest in his regular customers. But Bill did not own the place. So when I say he always asked how I was with genuine and disarming interest, I should add that this was not salesmanship. It may have been part flirtation, but Bill was not capable of salesmanship. He had a transcendent relationship with the drumsticks and turkey necks before him. They were a help with the bills, but they were also the means by which he achieved the more important business of catching up with the customers.

I know other women enjoyed chatting with him at the counter too and also lit up when they saw him, but I liked to think there was some element of exclusivity in our friendship. Although he was well into his seventies when we first met and had worked as a truck driver for many years, a way of life that would seem to preclude much in the way of common interests between us, he was one of the most charming men I have ever known. Read More »

AT VFR, there’s an excellent discussion of the professional and social costs of speaking honestly about race. One commenter, who writes under the pseudonym Nemo Quivedit, describes the personal hell he experienced after posting some relatively innocuous statements on Facebook about black crime and family dysfunction. His business in the entertainment industry was shunned and he lost many longtime friends. Eventually, however, he found new friends and better business opportunities. He writes:

Now that I can See, I can perceive the Enemy as he is: the First Revolutionary. Instead of fighting against his Revolution openly, where his minions can train every weapon on me and mine, I now fight a guerrilla war. I have become an anonymous counter-revolutionary, striking him from behind dozens of Internet pseudonyms and with weapons he can neither defend against nor adopt.

I am happy now. I am also a great deal more free. I learned a lot from my own lynching — namely, that fighting the Enemy on his terms is a recipe for suicide.

I learned one more lesson as well: to stay the hell off Facebook.

If you choose to publish this message, please do not reveal my name, initials, or e-mail address, as I do not wish to expose my family to any further torment from our open-minded, accepting, diversity-loving countrymen.

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THE AMERICAN crooner John Gary signed his first contract with RCA records just before the Beatles came to America. His success came at the end of an era and was quickly overwhelmed. He never made it to the pop charts. The dreamy songs of romance and love that were his speciality and that he sang with such moving intensity lost favor. But the sentiments he expressed and his remarkable artistry had a timeless quality. He was one of the great voices of 20th century popular culture.

Born in 1932, Gary was known for his astounding vocal range, which varied from a sustained falsetto to a rich baritone. He often sang to lush, velvety orchestral accompaniment, which contrasted well with his highly controlled voice  (he once held a record for underwater breathing endurance) and was sometimes cloying. His version of “I’ll Be Seeing You,” one of my favorite of his songs, is available for 99 cents from Amazon. You can listen to two Gary songs — “Tammy” and “Stranger in Paradise” — at the website for his fans. Notice how he articulates the words, “I hear the cottonwood whispering above” in “Tammy.” That’s classic John Gary.

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M. MATTECK writes:

There are two words that we use in the English language that do a much better job of describing “the Left” and their mindset. One is the word “sinister,” used in heraldry to describe the left side, and the other is the French word for left which is “gauche.” I consider both of these words to describe precisely the liberals who seek to promote their perverted agenda in our society. “Left” is too innocuous.

Thank you again for your “adroit” wit, and “dexterous” use of logic and reason on your blog! May you be blessed in your right-mindedness!

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AT RICOCHET, Paul A. Rahe has a very powerful piece on the latest controversy between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration. First he points out that while protesting the provision in Obamacare requiring Catholic institutions to cover abortion drugs and contraceptives in their health plans, Church leaders have not protested the fact that individual business owners, including Catholics, will be forced to do the same thing. A compromise on the Church’s behalf is no help to these individuals.

Rahe then explains the roots of the present day crisis. The Church’s enthusiastic acceptance of liberalism on other issues has brought about a disastrous decline in its moral authority and virtually assured that abortion funding would ultimately be government-mandated. He writes:

In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal. They gloried in the fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Frances Perkins – a devout Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent – Secretary of Labor and the first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post. And they welcomed Social Security – which was her handiwork. They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think. Read More »

ANDREW writes:

I read your recent blog posts on contraception, culture, white fertility and parenting with great interest.

Artificial contraception was introduced in Europe and North America decades before Asia, Africa and Latin America. I am a cancer specialist, and I can assure you that growing evidence clearly shows the link between hormonal contraception and breast cancer. Ovarian cancer may also be linked to estrogen pills.

Further, landmark studies have found that prostate cancer is linked to oral pills used by women. Here is one study. At this point it is not known whether it is due to direct absorption of estrogen by penis from vagina, or due to ingestion through water and food items. But the link is incontrovertible.

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JANE writes:

I want to share with you my catch of the day while out surfing the net. I was reading about the economy and global shipping when I came upon a comment (buried in the comments section) referring to why the Exxon Valdez happened. Read More »

MICHAEL writes:

Last night, I read Jill Farris’s comment regarding “six more children” and found it to be one of most moving comments I have ever read.

SEBASTIAN writes:

The couple featured on the Macy’s Valentine’s Day catalogue, the same one that shows a wedding cake with two grooms on top, is mixed. As expected, she is white and he is … not white, though not black either. I suppose the inference is dark Hispanic. I found a paper version today on a park bench and asked a friend who works in the industry about the couple. She was pretty sure it was a first for Macy’s, which is more middle class/conservative than the edgy, more expensive stores. Not something to boycott over, of course, but since you were on the subject I pass it on. Read More »

MICHAEL S. writes:

This is really annoying. I get my shirts at Penney’s and my trousers at Macy’s. I’m on the “set it and forget it” clothing plan.

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PAULA BLANCHARD wrote the following e-mail to the corporate office of J.C. Penney today to protest the hiring of the lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as the company’s official spokeswoman. See the family retailer’s response to Mrs. Blanchard below.

To J.C. Penney:

I am NOT a member of One Million Moms. I have shopped J.C. Penney for many years, however, and am very disturbed by your new spokesperson. Ellen started out by criticizing a huge customer base. In my experience, many of your customers are traditional families with traditional values. I do not appreciate having Ellen’s “Gayness” thrown in my face every time I see a J.C. Penney ad. Read More »

THIS COPY of Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn (1506) does not do justice to its incomparable depth and beauty. The colors are not here. But the painting is magnificent even in a lesser form.

The portrait went under many restorations and evaluations over the years before it was conclusively determined in 1927 to be the work of Raphael. It is believed to have been inspired by the Mona Lisa and the subject – the noblewoman Maddalena Doni – shows the same captivating psychological integration. Soul, intellect and affections are in perfect harmony. There is such calm watchfulness in her eyes. She is child and woman all at once.

The unicorn is a medieval symbol of purity. Thus we must conclude that a portrait of a modern woman with a unicorn in her lap would be most inappropriate.

In her Story of Painting, Sister Wendy wrote:

Raphael is one of the most acute of all portraitists, effortlessly cleaving through the external defense of his sitter, yet courteously colluding with whatever image the ego would seek to have portrayed. This duality, looking beneath the surface and yet remaining wholly respectful of the surface, gives an additional layer of meaning to all his portraits. We see, and we know things that we do not see; we are helped to encounter rather than evaluate.

IN RESPONSE to yesterday’s announcement that the Pentagon will place more women near the front lines as military police, radio operators, intelligence analysts and support staff, a reader shares her experience as a military police woman.

PAULA BLANCHARD writes:

THE organization One Million Moms is mobilizing resistance to the middle class department chains for their public approval of homosexuality. J.C. Penney’s has chosen the openly lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as its spokeswoman. And Macy’s recent catalogue featured an ad with two grooms on a wedding cake.

Ellen DeGeneres yesterday called the organization’s members “haters.”

According to a release by One Million Moms:

OMM began contacting JC Penney after the store announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres (sic) would become the company’s new spokesperson. Read More »