Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango

Let me dispense with both the explanation and the apology for my lack of posting. While occasionally interesting, most of it has been said before.

Instead let me just say that I will defeat that devil whom Beelzebub put aside for me. (because one cannot forget among the new flashy animes the mega-awesomeness that is Neon Genesis Evangelion, nor among the new songs of music and the like the super-awesomeness that is Bohemian Rhapsody

Ah the devil, my old nemesis, to be truthful, I've never quite understood what my exact understanding of the devil was, much less actually understood what he was. Sometimes I've looked at him more metaphorically, sometimes I've felt that the theological dimensions ought be left to the Church, because I was surely not going to spend the time to get a good grasp of them, still others I've felt him (I use him as a shorthand, as an ex-angel Lucifer would be non-gendered) real but not something that I needed to worry about.

A semi-turning point in my understanding of the devil came at last year's Malankara Catholic Association's North American Convention. During said convention there was a speech by a Catholic priest who had served as an exorcist for many years (he no longer was one full-time after being moved from India to the US, but he occasionally was still consulted). I try to take people as being earnest by default, unless I have reason to disbelieve them, and I take Catholic priests to be my spiritual guides, however I will say I do not necessarily agree with every priest on every aspect of the faith or of life (after all there is plenty of disagreements about many different matters within the Catholic Church, only a small section of even the official theological positions are held to be absolute dogmas (for example there are an immense number of Church writings about Mary, the Mother of God, but only a small subset are dogmas "De Fide Credenda" (of certain faith), most notably the "Marian doctrines of the Catholic Church").

The priest in his speech, talked about his work as an exorcist. His description of the exorcisms he had participated in seemed fully truthful, and he had the appearance of an honest man (though there's always the chance I could be deceived, but that's true of everyone and everything), so I'd say I believe he was telling the truth. However, the events he talked about were well beyond anything I have experienced in terms of the supernatural, and yet, I have not seen much of the world and much happens in it that is incredible, but I believe much of this incredible. I'd say I trust in his descriptions of demonic possessions, as they are rooted not only in his experience but correlate with the Bible and the Catholic faith which I hold dear. Yet demonic possession still seems like an extraordinary event, and not something that I've seen anywhere in my life. At that point in his speech I sort of looked at this is as sort of a description of something remote from me, though perhaps filled with lessons for myself and others (for example, the priest talked about how all these demonic possessions had roots in the sinful behavior of the possessed or people around him.)

But the priest went on to talk about how the Devil was a very real presence in our lives and a real danger to us. Now of that, I'm not sure what to make of it. His talk of the Devil's dangers didn't really seem to offer a great deal of advice besides a general recommendation to avoid sin. So while I've tried to take the messages of his speech to heart, I'm still not really sure what to do about the devil.

There have been times when I've been tempted to believe that my mental illness was caused by demonic possession or otherwise influenced by the Devil. But my experience of the disease and its treatment suggest otherwise. The priest's speech also warned that people should not jump to the demonic possession label, that it was only after a thorough examination of other possible emotional, psychological, physical or spiritual causes was exorcism turned to. A nice phrase of his was that the Church uses "the rigour of the skeptic, but not the non-belief". Overall, my mental illness, while frustrating in its stubbornness and perhaps not a classic example of a particular disease, does make sense as a mental illness. So I really can't say I've had any experience directly with the devil.

Indirectly? Well, what does indirect experiences with the devil mean exactly? Temptations? Perhaps, but humans naturally have plenty of temptation, so who's to say what's devil brought. So I'm not sure what to really take from that priest's speech, or what to make of the devil, or exactly how I feel really about the whole thing. But one of the great things about carrying the memory of what you've heard forward in your life is you don't need to make a final decision about it at any one point. Later on, when events or circumstances remind me of it, I'll perhaps mull over things and make a firmer decision about the speech.

Still, even without a final decision on it, it seems rather cowardly to regard the speech as truthful and containing advice, but to not actually act on any part of it. I guess one thing is I've tried to take "the rigour of the skeptic, but not the non-belief" position more toward the devil when it comes to my general understanding of how the universe works. In terms of my daily life, I guess the thing to keep in mind is that evil is not just a passive thing, whether devil borne or borne out of human nature or by others, its something that can actively work against you and those that you love. And thus you have to guard against it to some degree in your behavior. Now, I'm not saying that you should be paranoid about your actions, I've been there and that's lead me further away from God rather than toward Him, but as something to bear in mind rather than to fret about, it might be a good idea to reflect on things and try to correct yourself when it comes to motivations to do wrong. And when you feel a great desire to do something, think about what that desire is rooted in.

And yet I've often received a lot of advice that a person should not worry too much about life and let things happen, trusting God that things will work out. Some aspects of that advice I find very valuable to me, other implications, such as not trying to change things in your life, I find not suited to myself, but useful for others. Yet I think even in this framework of sort of going with the flow, you can carry an awareness of what the flow is and how it's like, and if it's generally carrying you in a direction that's good, then that's fine, but you need to have an awareness that this can change, and that sometimes the flow will go in the wrong direction, and then trusting in God means trusting in God's ways and if those contradict with the flow, it means trusting in God to aid you as you try to correct the flow of your life.

None of this philosophical rambling is directly related to the Devil, I suppose, but the point is if evil is an active force in the world, whether you take a relaxed attitude toward life or are always looking to change things, you must not just be wary of evil that you can fall into, but rather be an active force for good, in your life and in the world (though by being good in your life you inevitably become a force for good in the world, because the good path is God's will, and God's will is to save the world).

But what does that really mean? Well, mysterious are the ways of God, and sometimes the path He sets before us seems mysterious as well. And we can walk with Faith, Hope and Love, but that seems still sometimes like not enough of a direction. Sometimes the direction we must travel in life, the direction of God's will just seems impossible to grasp. But that's okay, God knows that we cannot grasp all of His will, it's okay to be confused, we try to do the best we can, and trust that God will make it all work out.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Our Father who art in Heaven

I always wanted to do an exposition on the Lord's Prayer, but I'll bow to a more esteemed expert. Thanks to Binu Abraham for pointing this out to me.

From a letter to Proba by Saint Augustine, bishop

(Ep. 130, 11, 21—12, 22: CSEL 44, 63-64)

---

On the Lord’s Prayer

We need to use words so that we may remind ourselves to consider
carefully what we are asking, not so that we may think we can
instruct the Lord or prevail on him.

Thus, when we say: Hallowed be your name, we are reminding
ourselves to desire that his name, which in fact is always holy, should
also be considered holy among men. I mean that it should not be
held in contempt. But this is a help for men, not for God.

And as for our saying: Your kingdom come, it will surely come
whether we will it or not. But we are stirring up our desires for the
kingdom so that it can come to us and we can deserve to reign there.

When we say: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are
asking him to make us obedient so that his will may be done in us as
it is done in heaven by his angels.
When we say: Give us this day our daily bread, in saying this day we
mean “in this world.” Here we ask for a sufficiency by specifying
the most important part of it; that is, we use the word “bread” to
stand for everything. Or else we are asking for the sacrament of
the faithful, which is necessary in this world, not to gain temporal
happiness but to gain the happiness that is everlasting.

When we say: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us, we are reminding ourselves of what we must ask and what
we must do in order to be worthy in turn to receive.

When we say: Lead us not into temptation, we are reminding
ourselves to ask that his help may not depart from us; otherwise we
could be seduced and consent to some temptation, or despair and
yield to it.

When we say: Deliver us from evil, we are reminding ourselves to
reflect on the fact that we do not yet enjoy the state of blessedness in
which we shall suffer no evil. This is the final petition contained in
the Lord’s Prayer, and it has a wide application. In this petition the
Christian can utter his cries of sorrow, in it he can shed his tears, and
through it he can begin, continue and conclude his prayer, whatever
the distress in which he finds himself. Yes, it was very appropriate
that all these truths should be entrusted to us to remember in these
very words.

Whatever be the other words we may prefer to say (words which
the one praying chooses so that his disposition may become clearer
to himself or which he simply adopts so that his disposition may
be intensified), we say nothing that is not contained in the Lord’s
Prayer, provided of course we are praying in a correct and proper
way. But if anyone says something which is incompatible with this
prayer of the Gospel, he is praying in the flesh, even if he is not
praying sinfully. And yet I do not know how this could be termed
anything but sinful, since those who are born again through the
Spirit ought to pray only in the Spirit.

---

One is never disappointed with St.Augustine (though he did have some odd opinions about babies and plays among other things).

May God Bless you all.

Happy Reunion Day!

For this post I have plenty of possible material. I could whine, I could apologize, I could shout in fury, but that would ignore the fact that today is Reunion Day.

Honestly, I was planning a post on half-a-dozen other topics this morning when I found out it was Reunion Day.

And by now, the hair-scratching over what I'm talking about should surely be boring into...

Anywho, what I'm talking about is that today is a celebration of the Reunion of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and the universal Catholic Church (the capitalizations here are... well, broad and random guesses of what should be capitalized, I'm Christian, that's just how we roll).

A little history.

To summarize (immensely), is because of intolerance, stubbornness, and various other factors, the Malankara Church broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th C., and then through dedicated hard-work, especially by the Servant of God Archbishop Geevarghese Mar Ivanios, this breech in the Christian family was in part healed. But there is so many of these breeches.

It really is a shame, the divisions in Christianity, because, when it comes down to it, Christians got to show the love, and to have these walls between us, that's blocking up the love.

I jest, but in all seriousness, I do believe in the Love of God, and it is that Love which redeems souls, the only real part of humanity that is of any importance. How then can anything be placed above that Love to justify its divisions?

Love rules. You gotta accept it, swallow your pride, bandage the wounds, apologize, beg, do what it takes, to spread the love. That's why we're here. And that's the only real way to measure the worth of life when push comes to shove, the love you bear and the love you share.

And it isn't always easy, but if God's with you, can even your own weaknesses stand against you?

In then end, all I can say is I will try to love everyone, the best I can, and in doing so love God the best that I can, and in doing so...

I could go on into endless Christian mysticism rants, but let me just say Happy Reunion Day!

And may God Bless you allS.

I'm back, not quite in black

If any noticed, I had a bit of an unexcused absence for a long weekend, but hah!

Not that I need any excuses from you bums!
BUMS!

I'm just kiddin' I love all you folks out there in Internet-land!

Indeed, I'm bringing quite a bit of love with me now, because I just came back from the 2009 Malankara Catholic Association Convention, Woooo!!!!

Woooo!!!!!!!!

Malankara Catholics rule!

So I got a lot of thoughts and feelings coming out of there. Unfortunately I lost my exact notes (a similar situation happened to me at a certain Rutgersfest some time ago), but still I'm feeling good, and feeling post-y-ish. Although a full account of things will have to wait. Till then peace I'm out a'right?

Just kidding folks, I'm too awesome to exit with that sort of remark. Because I'm just that cool.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

These things I do believe

By circumstance of thought, if nothing else, I find myself thinking and developing manifestos and expositions of what I believe in, partially or fully, to a degree or at the core of my being, incidentally or crucially, and I think as part of the Rand Show, me, being Rand the great and glorious, my beliefs would fit well to posting.

However, as I wrestled with which belief to start with, the answer became clear.

Have I not always insisted of the centrality of my faith to me? And what does a Catholic believe?

And thus I have reproduced below the Nicene Creed. It is also attached to the side, but I thought I might draw a little attention to it, because as I said, this is something quite dear to me, quite more so than life itself:

The Nicene Creed

We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered, died, and was buried.

On the third day he rose again
in fulfilment of the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and His kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son
he is worshiped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.

Amen

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

A holiday is a holy day (although Valentine's Day is no longer technically a holy day, it remains so in my heart), as the word would suggest, but days of holiness have reasons for their holiness and that, my friends, is where the history comes in.



DISCLAIMER: This is going to be somewhat more personal, its going to go on tangents which contain telescoping parentheses, its going to be heavily Catholic, and while I'm going to put in as much history as I can, this is a post about love written by a rank sentimentalist, so be prepared for some rank sentimentalism.



There are a couple fold aspects to St. Valentine's Day. Firstly, as many classicists will emphasize, the holiday takes the place of a popular Roman holiday, Lupercalia. Like many pagan Roman holiday's its association with the pagan religion made it uncomfortable for Christians to celebrate and difficult for potential converts to give up.



(Would they have to give it up? If I might point out some Christian precedent, this situation is somewhat similar to eating food that has been offered up to idols, ie, enjoying the benefits of pagan ceremonies without participating in the pagan part, and this situation was a historical dilemma for Christians. The solution however, can be seen in the First Letter of Paul to the Corithians. He says that in his view it is not a sin to eat food offered to idols, although if the Christian worried that it might be a sin, then it would be a sin because he or she would be choosing pleasure over potential sin. Thus my view is that enjoying the celebrations of a pagan holiday without having any sort of reverent attitude to the religion that sparked the celebration would not be a sin, however, if the Christians were ambivalent and worried about the potential sinful nature of the holiday, then precedent holds they should probably not participate, and this likely was the case of many Christians in the Roman world with Lupercailia, hence the dilemma.)



But while the celebration of Lupercalia was primarily of fertility (in this it was also a celebration of spring, similar to those present in many other cultures, perhaps explaining why its replacement spread so fast), it also had aspects of celebrating love, and love was (and is) a hugely important theological principle among Christians.



(while Jesus himself talked about love, the most famous theological speculation after Jesus about love was St. Paul's in his First Letter to the Corinthians)



Thus a logical way out was to change the celebration from fertility to love, and to secure the new emphasis, no longer was the celebration commemorating the abduction (essentially rape, but to be fair marriage by abduction was practiced by many cultures in the ancient world) of the Sabine women by the early founders of Rome (a more exact explanation of Lupercalia can be found in this page by Professor James Grout of U. Chicago), but rather now the emphasis was on a saint who embodied love. Yet to not break completely from the fertility celebration, the saint had to be one of marital and romantic love. The question of if this saint was real or was just folklore or was even invented so that there could be a saint of marital and romantic love is still debated among historians, but I find it of less importance. The importance of the holiday is romantic love, which good marital love hopefully has, and so instead of joining that debate, I instead direct you to a good place to check out the various stories of several, perhaps real, saints called Valentine who are celebrated on this holiday.



And here's a little more on the Catholic perspective on St. Valentine's Day (if I'm seeming a little uber-Catholic today, well it's because I am uber-Catholic and as I said holiday has historically and literally meant holy day). By the way, the previous Catholic site I directed you to comes from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, a good resource (the early 20th century encyclopedias, many of whom are on the web and public domain, represented a different age in encyclopedia making, when it was not just about knowledge (not that there's anything wrong with solely-knowledge-centric encyclopedias) but also about fine writing and that's why a lot of people still like them despite their age) but a bit out of date, this second Catholic site is from AmericanCatholic.org and is up-to-date, for example, it notes that St. Valentine's Day has been taken out of the Catholic Liturgical Calender.



And for you Valentine's Day haters out there, here's a Christian anti-Valentine's Day site (although it's from BibleStudy.org which I feel is a bit Protestant-y) and here's a secular anti-Valentine's Day site. (the secular one's also a bit more bitter and a bit more vulgar, but hey, so are many people (including me occasionally) around Valentine's Day)



My own feelings about the day are not historic (so I'll try to be brief about them), and they might strike some as not strictly Christian (although they are rooted in my faith). I like St. Valentine's Day a lot, I think love is something sacred and grand, and while I do not think romantic love is for everyone, (historically has been acknowledgement that romantic love is not for everyone, see for example, Jesus's words about marriage and divorce) I do believe it is wonderful for those who can find it and have the capacity to embrace it. I hope someday to fall into the latter category myself some day.



And if I do not have anyone to celebrate the majesty and mystery of romantic love, well, at least I can raise a toast to it. Because it really is good stuff, after all, were it not for romantic love, none of use would even be here.

Just to start some controversy

I think overall I've been relatively uncontroversial in my ideas. So I thought I'd throw something out there, and leave it out there for people to look at and maybe get angry at and I'll explain it later.

While I believe that embracing the ideal of love is probably the most important guide to salvation, I believe different churches rank as different value in their ability to guide people to salvation.

Here's my ranking of religions (this says nothing about the people who belong to these religions, or the fact that all these religions are valid belief systems, but rather it's a matter of my philosophical and religious agreement with the religions):

Christianity > Judaism > Islam > Sikhism > Hinduism > Buddhism > Agnosticism > Atheism > White power churches

Within Christianity, I have another ranking system:

Catholicism > Eastern Orthodox/Oriental Orthodox > Protestants > Mormonism/Jehovah's Witnesses

Now there are a lot of other religions out there, they tend to fit somewhere on my scale but almost all are above Atheism except those that are explicitly based on hate like the White power churches.

I'm a devout Roman Catholic, but I'm not one casually. I believe that while you should take in your parents' religion and the religion of those you look up to as a kid, at a certain age (probably starting around 7 (the age of reason by Roman Catholic standards when you start understanding the rituals that you do) and intensifying around 13 (when a lot of kids get Confirmed)) you have to really start looking at your religion. Now I don't mean throwing away your previous beliefs with no reason. After all, since you have motivations to do things in life you always have some beliefs, even if they're implicit, so why not start out with some explicit beliefs that you can actually examine and mold. What I'm really trying to say is you look at your beliefs, find contradictions, see if you can resolve them, if you can't discard one of the beliefs that caused the contradictions. Then you extend the beliefs to create new conclusions, again this will generate contradictions. Then you look at the beliefs that form the core of your beliefs, again this process will generate contradictions: resolve them. Finally you take the sum of that whole matter and decide what is the best course for you religiously.

I say this not with the idea that everyone should develop a complete religious philosophy all by themselves. Look, when you're having trouble with a math problem, what do you do? You consult a math textbook. But what if there are different schools of thought about that mathematics problem? You find an expert in math who you trust and respect. Math actually has a lot to do with religion since they're both based on axioms (basic beliefs) extended by logic (for those of you who scoff, I'd like to point out nearly all of modern logic is based on the work of the Catholic Church (CATHOLICS RULE! WOOOOOO!), and at this moment theologians are pouring over religious texts and applying the logic to explicate them). A lot of religious topics are hard to understand, don't be afraid to take guidance from people you respect and trust. Still you have to see if the commitment you make to a religion agrees with your basic beliefs and the ideas that you were able to work out. Moreover, if you have the time, look through and analyze the beliefs of the religion you adopt, and also others if you have more time. Of course, it could be you can't find any organized religion that agrees with your basic beliefs, I'd probably argue that's a flaw in your basic beliefs, but that's a philosophical matter in which I acknowledge that many rational, thoughtful people can come to different conclusions, and then you would have to take no organized religion.

Well, I sort of went back on my I'm not going to explain this rule. And to go back on it even further, I'd like to throw in a session I did earlier explaining some of my religious thoughts (most notably my problems with reincarnation and Buddhism). But I'm not going to explain everything (although you might have noticed that the religions I hold in higher esteem are those that are closer to Christianity, and the denominations of Christianity I hold in greater esteem are those that are closer to Roman Catholicism, but still there are additional reasons for my rankingology). Still I think this is enough to start some controversy.

Get mad or get Catholic! Come on!

Rutgers Rules!

"Rutgers University is inarguably America's cockiest, smartest party school. The only school in history who rejected their Ivy League invitation"
-The Star Ledger
So yeah Rutgers rules, anyways, I'm back from Texas and I have the Robot devil's hands to prove it. Had a great time down there, among the buffulo, or well, maybe not among the buffulo, but among the Malankara youth (basically the type of Catholic I am (well, sort of, since my mother is of the Syro-Malabar rite and I attend Latin rite masses often, I could also be placed into one of those, maybe, possibly, eh, I'll deal with that matter in another session), it has to do with Eastern-rite Catholicism, I'll get into it later). Lot of fun time, a lot better than what I expected from a Christian youth conference. Lots of fun people, some interesting speechs (a couple less interesting ones), a nice basketball tourtament (to prove how fun it was, I'd like to point out that it led to two hospitalizations), some dancing lessons and some nice socializing. To be honest I was a little afraid that the conference would be 1-dimensional and the people there would be 1-dimensional, I suppose this was just me playing into stereotypes, after all I'm a deeply religious person who does deeply religious people and I've got so many dimensions that they're slowly collapsing in on themselves in one of those infinite black hole things. So met some nice people, did some cool stuff, all awesome.

Let me explain Malankara a little before I move on (see I told you I'd get back to it, and I'm sure you thought, oh he's never going to get back to it or he's only going to get back to it months down the line, but here it's coming and you know what that makes you, a bum, yeah that's right, I called you a bum, bet you didn't expect that). See the Catholic world actually consists of several rites, the one that has the most people and which most people know of is the Latin rite, led by the Pope (hence Roman Catholics), but there are other rites. There are a couple very small other Western rites, like the Mozarabic rite practiced historically throughout Spain and Portugal and still in a couple churches in Spain, but most other non-Latin rites are Eastern rites, ie, east of Rome and Latin speaking Europe. These rites came into and out of communion with the rest of the Catholic world through a variety of reasons and ways, a couple actually never fell out of communion. Most Eastern-rite churches, however, find their origin in the split between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds, over several issues including some theological and cultural points, but mostly over the pre-eminance of the Pope over the other leaders of the Christian world, especially over the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Bzyantine Emperor. This created many Orthodox churches, most in communion with each other but some in a seperate group called the Oriental Orthodox. Over time parts of many of those churches came back into the Catholic fold through reunion movements sponsered (occassionally forcefully so) by various religious and political leaders.

This might explain how the Malankara Catholic Church (sometimes called the Syro-Malankara) was formed but that's not the case (probably, the history is a little hazy and confusing). For the Malankara Church, the initial split from Rome reached back further to the contraversies over Jesus Christ's exact, percise nature (I use this in the general sense, not in the theological sense), this prompted what was called the Nestorian Church (the current descendents of this church dispute this name, I'm kind of hazy on the matter myself, but the proper name for them is the Ancient Church of the East for those still outside the Catholic Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church who rejoined the Catholic Church) (let's call them Assyrian Churches since their patriarches were Assyrian) to split off, this being largely the church in Iraq and east of Iraq including India and what would later be the Malankara Catholic Church.

Little confusing, yeah, I'm a little confused by it too at times. Ok, but the situation was that the Indian churches (yes there were Indian churches, started by Saint Thomas, found in the Kerala region of India) was that they were mostly in communion with the churches in Iraq, accept some might have been in communion with churches in Syria, and some might have still been in communion with the Pope and just isolated (my father who knows the matter better than I would probably scold me for not knowing this better if he read this session, but hopefully I'll revisit this sometime when I know matters more certainly).

That was the situation in the 15th century, then the Portugese came. They found the local Christians practicing their own rite and tried to enforce communion with Rome. Some joined willingly, some joined unwillingly, but an Indian-rite denomination (although influenced by Portugese practice (to what degree I'm not exactly sure, it's generally said that the Portugese were not very respectful of the local Indian Christians, on the other hand, the rite that emerged from this was still very much Indian)) was formed in communion with Rome, this was the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. Also at the same time the Portugese baptized some new Christians, these became the Latin-rite Cahtolic Church in India. But some of the local, older Christians were defiant about Portuguese domination and impositions and the force the Portugese used, and these stayed part of the Orthodox Churches or part of the Assyrian Churches or on their own, and some were later influenced by Protestantism and their were other splits and such, it's all very, very confusing.

Anyways, what is more clear, is that Bishop Mar Ivanios, then of the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church, in 1930 led his church and others to reunite with Rome and form the Malankara Catholic Church, of which my father is a member of. I attend the Malankara masses and consider myself a member although I also attend Latin rite masses and like I said my mother is Syro-Malabar. And this church had a North American Youth Conference (Youth being 15-35, with a good number in their 20s) in Houston and that was where I was.

Anyways the important thing is is that the Malankara Catholic Church rocks the house, Catholic rule in general and I had a lot of fun.

So I got ot go to sleep soon, so take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!