I had been working (dear things), on a long turgid piece about "committing the enormity" of reading a papal document, Pope Francis' recent Gaudate et Exsultate; and about having joined the Word on Fire 'Community's' Facebook page, where the Papal Exhortation turned out to be their first topic of discussion. It drew -- the Exhortation on the Community's page, not my unfinished turgid writing -- its first share of trolls.
Then again maybe I was one of them. I didn't like the Papal Exhortation much, either. Francis seems to say that people who like Catholic doctrine are "gnostics," unsympathetic mere scholars of rules, cold and judgmental. Now that can't be. I just met a gnostic, and he fits the real definition: one who mulls and purrs over all knowledge as a sort of private mental toy, amusing in the bits of it which have amused the common herd across all time and civilizations. The gnostic is not a mid-1950s angry fossil Catholic yearning for the Baltimore Catechism.
But time flew. Word on Fire 'Community' moved on to other matters. And after all one must get out of the rut of thinking one's own marvelous reactions to everything are so important. So someday-collectible, even. I hit delete.
It seemed better to clean house, repot a struggling philodendron, and take a pair of binoculars to the slough, and spot some blue-winged teals. "A mallard," my friend said that night, when I showed him a picture in a bird book. I said it was not, it was really a blue-winged teal. I had gotten a good look. "They're all mallards to me," he snorted.
We watched St. Vincent. He enjoyed it so much that in laughing and commenting on every third scene, he invariably missed the dialogue of the fourth. I've learned to laugh along, and then quickly fill him in on what just happened. We had a good time.
Then again maybe I was one of them. I didn't like the Papal Exhortation much, either. Francis seems to say that people who like Catholic doctrine are "gnostics," unsympathetic mere scholars of rules, cold and judgmental. Now that can't be. I just met a gnostic, and he fits the real definition: one who mulls and purrs over all knowledge as a sort of private mental toy, amusing in the bits of it which have amused the common herd across all time and civilizations. The gnostic is not a mid-1950s angry fossil Catholic yearning for the Baltimore Catechism.
But time flew. Word on Fire 'Community' moved on to other matters. And after all one must get out of the rut of thinking one's own marvelous reactions to everything are so important. So someday-collectible, even. I hit delete.
It seemed better to clean house, repot a struggling philodendron, and take a pair of binoculars to the slough, and spot some blue-winged teals. "A mallard," my friend said that night, when I showed him a picture in a bird book. I said it was not, it was really a blue-winged teal. I had gotten a good look. "They're all mallards to me," he snorted.
We watched St. Vincent. He enjoyed it so much that in laughing and commenting on every third scene, he invariably missed the dialogue of the fourth. I've learned to laugh along, and then quickly fill him in on what just happened. We had a good time.
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