Early Riser or Night Owl? It makes a difference

Posted on December 22, 2007

This new study shows that how we sleep often reflects how we function intellectually and socially. Researchers claim that early risers tend to “reach conclusions through logic and analysis. Night owls are more imaginative and open to unconventional ideas, preferring the unknown and favoring intuitive leaps on their way to reaching conclusions.

Morning people are more likely to be self-controlled and exhibit “upstanding” conduct; they respect authority, are more formal, and take greater pains to make a good impression. (Earlier research also suggests that they are less likely to hold radical political opinions.) Evening people, by contrast, are “independent” and “nonconforming,” and more reluctant to listen to authority—which suggests that teachers may have several reasons to prefer those students who wake up in time for class.

Tony Blair Converts to Catholicism

Posted on December 22, 2007

Former Prime Minister of England and presently a Middle East peace envoy, Tony Blair has converted from Anglican/Protestant faith to the Catholic faith. No reasons have been offered yet; however, both his wife and children have been Catholic for some time.

Is this a political move to soften Middle East perception, a family induced capitulation, or a sincere affirmation of Catholic faith and practice versus his prior commitment to the Anglican Church?

The Cultural Elite are No More!

Posted on December 21, 2007

A UK study claims that the cultural elite are no more, the kind of people who prefer high culture over pop culture: “We find little evidence for the existence of a cultural elite who would consume ‘high’ culture while shunning more ‘popular’ cultural forms.

This study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, included the US in its study dividing people into four groups: univores, omnivores, paucivores, and inactives.

  • Univores: only like popular culture
  • Omnivores: like everything from opera to soap opera
  • Paucivores: (taken from “paucity”?): absorb very little culture
  • Inactives: absorb practically none.

Researchers concluded that social status, from vocation, not social class, from wealth or birth, are more determinative for cultural taste and preference. They also concluded that cultural elitist are no more, that at most we are omnivores, a kind of cultural eclectic. You you agree? Which category would you claim, if any?

BONO on CHRISTMAS

Posted on December 20, 2007

I posted this last year and found it just as reflective and awe-inspiring as last year…

This reflection on Christmas occurred after Bono had just returned home, to Dublin, from a long tour with U2. On Christmas Eve Bono went to the famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean. Apparently he was given a really poor seat, one obstructed by a pillar, making it even more difficult for him to keep his eyes open…but it was there that Christmas story struck him like never before. He writes:

“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”

Isn’t it compelling? The logic and love of a personal God revealing himself, accounting for our person-ality, our propensity to love. And oh, the mercy of God, born in shit and straw, to rescue us from ourselves, our godless gift-giving, and our arrogant disregard for God and for others so that we might know and enjoy him and his new creation forever. And that he, the infinite God, would do it in Christ, in time, in space, in confounding condescension to pivot the course of the entire creation project from despair, destruction, and dereliction to a hopeful, whole, and happy future.

Will you ponder the poetry of Christmas this year, the genius of the incarnation? What obstructions are in your path to dwelling on the vulnerable, inexhaustible power and love of God in Christ? Renounce them and rivet your attention on the Christ.

Excerpt taken from Bono: in conversation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 124-5.