Good Italian Sandwich Shop

Here’s a random anecdote from my life, as this is a random blog it demands one. If you’re ever in New Haven Connecticut and want a bite to eat I strongly suggest going to “Liuzzi Cheese.” It is, as I described to a friend, Italian sandwich and specialty shop heaven. It’s run by an Italian family that goes back to the 1800’s, and has homemade classics like Sfogliatella, Arancini, homemade pastas, canolis, and much more. They also sell specialty goods imported from Italy. I’ve been to a few specialty shops and have been disappointed with the quality but to me this seems like the real deal. Anyways, if you’re in the area I suggest stopping in and getting a sandwich or plate of pasta, they have a website too, http://www.liuzzicheese.com/.

New Look

For the time being this will be the new look of "Tay Tay's Random Blog." While the new templates are interesting I do miss the old design quite a bit but it is unfortunatley impossible to change, so here is the template I chose. I'll be changing the colors once I have time to, and maybe even add a picture as the background although I feel that may be too distracting.

Certainty vs. Stability

This is one of those really funny stories that I just have to write about. Not funny in the sense of humorous but funny in that you step back and say “wow what a coincidence”. My last post was about faith and the difference between certainty and belief, I can be certain in something but faith requires belief in the absence of that certainty. So, I was reading from St. Augustine’s Confessions, and came across the part where Augustine describes the beginnings of his conversion. Essentially the first half describes Augustine’s youth and then his introduction to Christianity but his misgivings about it, but in book VIII he writes “My desire was not to be more certain of [God] but to be more stable in [God]” After reading that it just clicked, I took a step back and said to myself “wow, he actually said that and this is the idea I’ve been thinking about for the past few months.” In addition it is also a bit of an elaboration on C.S. Lewis’ idea about controlling out emotions. The real keys to faith are not in taking the in initial leap and believing at first, it’s continuing to believe, and that is what Augustine prays for. God could give us all certainty but once a storm comes in our lives those facts will mean nothing if there is no stability in God. For a while I’ve been writing about this “faith journey” but the thing I’ve realized lately is that there is no set amount to faith, no increments to count it by there is now way to for me to look back and say “well I may not be where I want to but I have twice the faith I had a year ago.” Faith is simply holding on to what we believe and never letting go; it’s belief despite our unbelief, and taking the second step after the first.

Faith and Spiders

Once I was remarking to my father that a certain college offered no campus ministry at all, and he replied that they think they’re “too smart for God.” I’ve found that this is a pretty common idea, it seems that nowadays we all want facts, we’ve got a wealth of information on the internet and we like to use it. We check Web MD to see what ails us, the weather channel to see how likely it is that it is going to rain, all this said are we “too smart” for God? No, absolutely not and actually we can be too foolish. I was foolish and still am in a way and we all are, I wanted the facts and thought I had them and replaced faith with certainty. Jesus said all we need was a mustard seed of faith and I couldn’t muster that. Instead I wanted to know, which is admirable but it won’t make me believe. I can spin off tons of facts that point to God, I can write about archeology and how the Bible is completely accurate, or physics and say how finely tuned our universe is, mathematics to point to the complexity of the world, biology to the intricate nature of the human anatomy, the list goes on and on. But it won’t replace faith and faith requires belief. I am deathly afraid of spiders, I don’t know what it is but I cannot stand to see something with eight legs spinning a web and moving around in my house. While I know that it is unlikely a spider will bite me, and depending on the species even more unlikely I will be harmed by a bite, I still am terrified. That is a case where my belief overcomes the facts. It is the same with faith, facts, equations, and graphs can change my mind but not my heart, and that is what matters. Am I saying that faith should be blind, or uneducated? No, I’m saying that the problem today isn’t that we’re “too smart” for God, we’re just too blind, afraid of stepping out of our comfort zone. Faith is tough, but we don’t need a lot which is a good thing, if I can believe in something and hold on to it despite my changing moods and fears of letting go, then that is what really matters. The only thing is that I’ll never know the truth if I don’t take the first step.

Notice

I've been thinking about changing the look of my blog since blogger now gives me the opportunity to upload my own photo as the background so if you go on to the blog some day and see that it changed don't worry it's still the same random blog that's been up since 2008. Also I am open to suggestions for a background image if you have one.

Hidden Blessings

Ever have one of those terrible days that you later find out were really a blessing? I just had one last Saturday during a baseball game. I play in a fall recreational league and in the first game of the season I was playing shortstop, not my usual position but I can hold my own. The first ball hit to me was pretty routine, would have been a one hopper into the glove and easily thrown to first for the out. Instead the ball hit a pebble or divot in the field because it shot up and hit me right above my eye. I finished the inning but left and went to the emergency room only to find I had a mild concussion (already counted on that) and a sinus fracture that will leave me out of baseball for a month. This was a terrible experience but here are a few hidden blessings, first the fracture was on my eyebrow, a few centimeters lower and there goes my sight in my right eye and my chances of playing baseball. Next because it hit the sinus bone which is really a sort of cavity there was minimal disturbance to the brain. Also there was no bleeding, which is uncommon, which means not health complications, and lastly I do not need surgery. It’s events like this that make me stand in awe and say “Wow, God must have been watching out for me!” While often things don’t always go our way and the ball easily could have hit my eye, it’s just one of those many blessings that we often look over in our daily lives.

Sox Update

For what it’s worth the last series win versus the Rays is the first series win the Sox have had against that team since May when they swept them. Despite that they are still out of the race (imagine where they could be if they didn’t choke in the last Rays series).