I thought I'd share this poem with y'all. Rene Clausen has set the first stanza to music in one of those pieces that... calm, and soothe, and help one to reflect on the eternal and transcendent.

DUSK AT SEA

by Thomas S. Jones, Jr.

Tonight eternity alone is near:
The sea, the sunset, and the darkening blue:
Within their shelter is no space for fear,
Only the wonder such things are true.

The thought of you is like the dusk at sea...
Space and wide freedom and old shores left far...
The shelter of a lone immensity
Sealed by the sunset and the evening star.

I set up a NetZero account, so at least I can check my email.

I went to a Sidewinders baseball game tonight. They were playing Nashville. It was a beautiful evening for baseball. The game was pretty even until the top of the 9th when Nashville came out strong and got 3 runs on the relief pitcher to make it 4-2. Fortunately the Sidewinders were able to come back with 3 runs of their own and make it 5-4.

I came home and watched a DVD I'd bought of the CNN special on 9/11. It was pretty good, although I cried a fair amount. As bonus material they had most of the President's speech to Congress on 9/20/01. My God! I'd forgotten what an amazing speech it was.

Blogging will be very light for the next few days. We had a really nasssty thunderstorm Wednesday that zapped my DSL router, so I have no regular Internet access until my replacement comes in next Wed. or Thursday. Hopefully I will be able to at least get my mail, but if you really need to reach me you'll have to call.

On a brighter note there was a message on my machine from a guy at Benchmark QA in Mesa that he got my resume and wants to talk to me.... YAY!

It would appear that Cardinal Maida has taken action in the case of Fr. Ortman... BISHOP COMPELS PRIEST TO APOLOGIZE FOR “PRO-CHOICE” DEFENCE. See also the text of Fr. Ortman's retraction here.

From Slashdot comes this cool review of Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship.

I was talking with my friend Jenn about my blog and how people might think it's vain to have a blog. I should have added (but didn't) that some people might not think it's vain to have a blog but might nevertheless feel it's vain to have a blog with the title of "Hi! I'm Gordon Zaft, why isn't everyone?".... By way of partial reparation I thought I would link to Jeff Miller's Litany of Blog Humility.

So my accomplishments for today are, I had lunch with my ex-boss William, and I mowed about half the back yard, and I applied for another job at Intuit that I'd somehow missed before. William took me to lunch (what a guy!) and we had a good talk. He had some good feedback for me on my resume, little tweaks mostly.

I just realized that this is my last free Tuesday night for a long time (assuming I stay in Tucson), since next week I have a Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee meeting, and the Tuesday after that is the Requiem dress rehearsal, and then the Tuesday evenings after that will all be taken up by my Living Stones classes. Ah well... so I'm heading out to Mass at the Newman Center in a little bit, then having dinner with my friend Jenn. YAY!

Okay, Mark Shea posted this link to Peter Vere's Canon Law blog. Apparently Kathryn Lively came up with a St. Blog's Drinking Game and abused the good name (?!) of canonists everywhere. Czech it out.

As I was walking to Mass this evening I started thinking about that old standby, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, that is "Outside the Church there is no salvation". The topic came up a while back on Mark Shea's blog in a discussion about the Bishops' Committee document on evangelization and the Jewish people. The Catechism quotes Lumen Gentium:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

I've spent some time today thinking about the last sentence. To me it seems related to the mysterium iniquitatis, the mystery of sin. While I certainly know many people who reject the Church, it's hard to believe that any of them actually know that the Church "was founded as necessary by God through Christ." One has to ask, how could any sane person actually do this? How could someone know the Church is what she truly is, and yet refuse to enter or to remain?

It's a mystery. On the one hand, it's tempting to say that no one actually does this. Yet, just as the mystery of sin is how we can sin even when we know better, so I have to believe that there are some who actually consciously reject the Church, even with full knowledge. Thanks be to God it's not up to me to figure out who they are, though.

Mark Shea wrote an article in a recent issue of This Rock about salvation outside the Church, and how often it is misunderstood by people at either extreme in the Church. The real problem today, though, are not the Feeneyite tendencies among the traditionalists (though it is problematic, they are not much listened to). The real problem is the indifferentism that is so rampant in so many places in both society and even the catechetical efforts of the Church. If you don't have to be Catholic to be saved, some people seem to find no other reason why anyone should bother to be Catholic. It seems to me if you can't think of anything, you shouldn't be preaching or teaching.

I came across this helpful guide to Pronunciation of Church Latin. Good stuff.

This evening was a busy one... I walked over to campus (woo hoo, 8 blocks) to go to 5:15 Mass at the Newman Center. For some reason, daily Mass is now in the conference room and not the chapel. Bleah. I suspect it's to save $$ on air conditioning.

After Mass I walked to the Student Union and had some dinner, then over to the Music building for Collegium Musicum rehearsal at 6:30. Rehearsal went pretty well, always a little weird with a new group and new director. About half the people are from the Lane Justus Chorale so I knew a lot of them. One very pleasant surprise was Erin Cain, a soprano who sang with Lane Justus her senior year of high school, then graduated and went off to school in Oklahoma. She's back in Tucson now (all graduated) for good, and getting married in a couple of months or so. She has a terrific voice and is such a sweetheart. She has a solo on one of the LJC CDs, I think it's "O Vos Omnes."

After CM, Amber Lee and I dashed over for the last part of the Requiem rehearsal; we worked on the last movement (Agnus Dei). The group is sounding better but there are still some frightful places...

Woo! I finally got my lawnmower fixed and mowed the front lawn. Doesn't take much to make me happy... In other news I applied for 5 more jobs today (3 of them at one company) -- 4 in Phoenix and one in Silicon Valley.

I've applied for four more jobs today, two in Tucson, one in Phoenix, and one in Silicon Valley (Menlo Park).

The much-discussed (at St. Blog's, that is) Rod Dreher piece about the Pope is now at OpinionJournal. I'll post my own reflections later.

Slashdot posted a link to this Timeline of Online Gaming (well, really "online worlds"). Nice to see that the Plato system gets proper credit -- Plato went live in 1961 and the first network gaming was in 1969. Take that PC types!

Amy Welborn pointed out this story -- Single religious women drop standards. There's a lot to think about in this story but I was particularly struck by the last paragraph:

"Young men and women have accepted the message from their culture — a message that is not supported by the data — that cohabitation is a good way to prepare for marriage," he said. "They believe that they are in training for marriage. They are in training, but it seems that cohabitating is training them to develop exit strategies for getting out of relationships, including their marriages."

Just got back from a quick trip to Tempe. Drove up Friday night and went to the monthly Opus Dei Evening of Recollection. An evening is sort of like a mini-retreat, we usually have a meditation by Fr. Matt, opportunity for confession, a talk by a layman (Tom Kane), followed by Adoration/Benediction along with another meditation by Fr. Matt. Stayed with my brother Greg Friday night.

Saturday I had breakfast with Greg and my beautiful nieces Chelsea and Cori, then hung out for a bit with Greg and my nephew Geoff. Then I went and saw Star Wars II again, this time with my friend Tiffany (amazingly enough she still hadn't seen it!). Then a quick bite to eat with Tiff, a visit to Fry's Electronics, and home to Tucson. Phew!

Okay, so I finally got my resume etc. together to apply for the position of Assistant Director, MMT Operations. Of all the jobs I've applied for this is the one I most want, I think. I know I could do this job, but whether I can convince the powers that be of that is an open question. I also got my application in on the ASU job.

So I've applied for 3 more jobs today, all in Tucson -- at BRO, Oaktech, and Misys (aka Sunquest). I also found an interesting job at (gasp!) ASU! You know I'm desperate if I'm thinking about applying for a job at ASU... still... a job is a job. It might be a little strange since my ex-gf works at ASU, but it is a big campus. Not that I would mind seeing her, but she might. Ah well.

For those that didn't see it in the comments section, Aristotle Esquerra sent a link to Trash the Hymn - Hymn Parodies. This is probably only funny to Catholics, but to me it's "a hoot" as they say.