We are forgiven because we are first loved (1)

Here’s a reflection on Jesus and Peter by my favorite triad of current spiritual writers, Richard Rohr, Brennan Manning, and Robert Barron.

Today, Rohr’s Daily Meditation mentions the connection between the charcoal fire at which Peter warmed himself in the courtyard as he denied Jesus thrice before the crowing at dawn (John 18:18), and Peter’s post-resurrection encounter with Jesus cooking breakfast on the lake shore over a charcoal fire (John 21:9), when Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him, to link and complete the symmetry of the triple denial. Rohr condenses this well-known, triply repetitive interrogation, paraphrasing Jesus’ forgiveness:

“He says, in effect, ‘Peter, it’s okay. Forget it.'”

Though I appreciate Rohr’s point, I’m unsatisfied with that simplification. We all know from human experience that, despite best efforts, “forgive and forget” is impossible. Below I share Bishop Barron’s solution to the problem of forgetting, but it too leaves me unsatisfied. Both miss the opportunity to put love first. I’ll explain, but first, Barron’s solution:

“… How in the world did Peter ever forget his terrible sin and move forward … Here’s the truth: Peter never forgot the fact that he denied Jesus… What happened to Peter was that although he knew he was a great sinner, he also knew that Jesus loved him completely, as he was — a sinner… [W]henever Peter thought back…, he didn’t think about it as *sin committed*, but *sin confessed and forgiven*…

Close, but still I’m unsatisfied. Peter doesn’t confess, nor does Yeshua mention forgiveness. Instead, we get the sense Peter was actually annoyed at being questioned 3 times about his love for his Lord. Thrice. No confession, no forgiveness. Love. Three times.  

Note that Peter is the one being asked if he loves the Lord. Clearly, Yeshua is messing with Peter’s mind here. I don’t think that’s questionable. The gospels seem bent on presenting Peter as a little dense. He has to be asked three times not because it’s important that he love his rabbi and messiah. No. Yeshua is sarcastically reminding Peter why Peter should be unconcerned with Peter’s failing! Of COURSE I forgive you Peter, and now you remember what’s primary here. This is no interrogation about proclaiming your love for me. This is a reminder that I first love you.

We are forgiven because we are first loved. 

How could Peter ever move on, forgetting this stinging reminder not to be obsessed by his shame. Not to make anything about himself primary – except one truth. Above all, he is beloved. 

Peter’s belovedness does not depend on his confession, nor his forgiveness. It has no dependencies. No conditions! When love is first, all flows FROM it. There’s no sense to grasping to achieve to receive. From the highest mountain to the deepest sea, love of us is inescapable because it is unconditional.

Neither the psyche of God nor of the one sent from the father is like ours. We are created out of love in his image; he is not made in ours. And that leaves my favorite third author with the final word in this short mash-up, where the question to Peter is NOT how well his love for his lord is proved, but instead:

.

Neil D.  2025-06-06

The Pennsylvania Canal in Pittsburg

I offer here slight clarification to “The Pennsylvania Canal” paragraph of Kathryn Bashaar’s awesome “Lost Pittsburgh Neighborhoods: Bayardstown” [http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/2019/05/lost-pittsburgh-neighborhoods-bayardstown/]

Great, great stuff, Kathryn! The research is very hard work; thank you for that. Re the canal, I think it’s best to consider it having 3 termini around Pgh – one into The Allegheny, a 2nd pseudo terminus at the basin, and yet a 3rd on The Mon.

Boats traveled down “the Allegheny line” after crossing to the river’s W/N bank from the mouth of the Kiski near today’s lock & dam #5 north of Freeport – 30 river miles upstream of Pgh. The canal lay, in general, on the very path of the W/N bank RR down the entire valley, from this point about 1 mile upstream from Freeport, all the way through the shadows of Troy Hill, and into East Allegheny (Allegheny City at the time) – roughly the North Shore – where a fork in the route occurred, at the sharp bend of today’s I-279 (also the bend in the short “N. Canal St.” BTW, the ground level street beneath this elevated stretch of I-279 bordering the stadium lots is “E Lacock St.” named after the first Harrisburg-appointed commissioner of the PA Canal project). 

From this fork in the canal at today’s bend of I-279, was a boat’s destination (1) the waters of the Allegheny River, (2) the basin downtown, or (3) the waters of the Monongahela River (beyond the downtown basin)?

Boats to enter the Allegheny River’s waters (to navigate farther on the river, or to offload onto riverboats) would continue roughly straight, parallel to the river but on the far (N) side of today’s I-279 for another 1,000 yards (the route of today’s raised RR), passing under bridges at today’s Anderson St., then again under a Federal St. bridge. Once even with the 1st-base foul line of PNC Park, the route turned 90 degrees off today’s RR path, toward that edge of PNC Park, clipping the E edge of today’s Residence Inn, and into the river beneath those stadium seats. 

So, as a gentle clarification:) PNC Park’s right-field corner is not where the aqueduct(s) were (there was an original aqueduct, then a replacement by John Roebling of Saxonburg).

Instead, back at the fork under I-279’s bend at the N. Shore, boats destined for downtown – or the Monongahela bank beyond (at the mouth of Suke’s Run as you noted in your Pipetown report) – would make a sharp left, then float a short 250 yards directly toward the river and onto the aqueduct that originated about 85 yards upstream of today’s RR bridge toward the convention center’s upstream end.

The canal into downtown then carried them a short stretch – as you noted, along today’s 11th St. – to the basin. This basin that intersected the canal route stretched NE under the bus/train station complex to the far side of today’s tracks, and – on the opposite side of the canal – under Liberty Center’s Federated tower and the Westin hotel to 10th St.

Boats destined for the waters of the Monongahela continued through this basin intersection, bending right to parallel Grant St. for a block through today’s courthouse, then bent left through today’s UPMC Steel tower into a 270-yard long underground tunnel that emerged where I-579 crosses 5th Ave. After gentle zig-zagging down through 3 locks to the Suke’s Run mouth (< 25 yards on the upstream side of today’s Panhandle rail bridge), boats entered the waters of the Mon.

If you’d enjoy some video about the canal, search YouTube for my “PA Canal Hunter” series. And thank you again, Kathryn for sharing your hard research work!

Teachers, at the end of your year…

It’s easy to forget that you are superhero healers. But the only Teacher who could heal with a single touch was the son of God himself. Your healing powers take many touches. Young hearts are in your tender care for hours a day.

Like most of you, most of them are looking forward to a break from responsibility, accountability, and learning. However, in many of the stories about that Teacher from Nazareth, he reminds us as the physician healer, that not all of us are as sick as others, and he directs our attention to the sickest among us.

There are some young, tender hearts who are not looking forward to a break away from their superpower teachers. To those poor and sickest hearts, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

As your eyes roll up and back at the unruly instigators of chaos, remember that they want the same break as you do. But remember those poorest of hearts, and make sure that your eyes pierce theirs. Be sure those eyes see your light and taste the healing salt. I suspect they will remember it for months. And possibly much longer. 

Neil D.  2025-05-19

something I learned in high school

Describe something you learned in high school.

I learned that sometimes teachers get test answers wrong, and to catch those rare events was an ego trip. It’s also where they educated me, initiating me into the adult world, where I would often have wrong answers, or no answer at all. The lesson was not that being correct on question #7 was important, but that showing up for work, despite the occasional mistake, is what makes a person valuable at work. And adult life. Teachers don’t choose their profession. Their vocation calls to them. Not always. But almost every morning of the school year, they get up and go. If I can do that too, I can be seen as grown up. 

How ‘America First’ Ends

How ‘America First’ Ends

From

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/america-first-trump-doge/682164/

Interesting from a left mag:
Engagement is preferred to isolationism.

From the right, some speculate current policy shifts aim at

(A) getting other nations to strengthen their military deterrent strength because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm with Russia;

(B) getting other nations to strengthen their economies because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm on bilateral trade with Russia;

(C) reducing every American interest that isn’t aimed squarely – SQUARELY without distraction or dilution – at checking China both militarily and financially.

There’s a single location on the globe that dictates the world’s future for decades (or centuries), and it ain’t Ukraine or Gaza, for crying out loud. It is…

The Taiwan Strait

I’m no more immune to desensitization by statistics than anyone else. The Ukraine horror, for example, is honestly reduced to that word “horror” because it doesn’t touch me directly. And if it doesn’t touch you directly, I’m not interested in your pretentious moralizing or virtue signaling. But I’ll concede without hesitation that neither you nor I have iron-cold hearts. It shatters mine as it likely does yours.

I think that’s OK. It’s hard not to sound trite, but I think it’s “fine” and “good” for you and me to be heartbroken over Ukraine, Gaza, and everywhere else a single human being suffers. Both you and I are human beings. And so is each individual in the CCP; but, yes, I’ll risk the blanket statement that they are lesser human beings. Or, from a different and more salient perspective, they are *greater* human beings in terms of using the power to which the rest of us human beings are vulnerable. Nietzschean Uberman-style.

So if you work for a corporation that is DEI-inclined, go ahead and apologize for the ill-acquired land on which your office is built. Put some signal icon on all your social media that Black Lives Matter. Advocate for the new 54% of teenage girls who now “identify” as trans after a single generation. And blame climate deniers for normal planetary dynamics. Protest or support strapping some cloth over the bottom half of your face from ear to ear, or whether the 75th needle should be injected into your newborn. You are brilliant; you’ve been educated by the technology that has connected the world.

Except in China.
And in Russia.
Where they have leaders giggling about my angst that their minions can easily have my credit card and Social Security numbers 10 seconds from now.

They aren’t giggling about how easy it is. They are giggling that I give a shit about that.

As long as I’m worried about that, I will make my leaders worry about it too. And as long as my leaders are worried about that, they don’t know what the hell is happening that actually matters…

Wait,…

Pardon me, it MATTERS to you and your current children. For a minute. Or a year, or maybe even half a decade. You are pissed off that you read this lame article for this long, because it took you five minutes to get this far….

They’re a little longer-viewed than you are.

Yes, super powers care about the impact of a 15 second TikTok. But only because they can do simple math. Simple. Math. 15 seconds times 2 billion people is a pretty goddamn big impact.

So go hold your protest on Wall Street or some Ivy League campus. Our ACTUAL enemies never dreamed how easy it would be. It almost makes me wish I was one of them.

Wanna vote for Trump? Excellent.

Wanna hate and oppose him and half of the US electorate?

Not just excellent…

Beyond what evil can *imagine*!!!

“I love Trump.”
“I hate Trump.”

“Holy shit,” says the CCP: “This is easier than dynamiting fish in a barrel.”

“‘Divide and conquer’ was supposed to be hard. But all we needed was a couple of teenage hackers to tip the world upside down. Because Western adults are juveniles.”

Guilty.

And now the CCP must be thinking that this was quite obviously “destiny,” because we “morally upright” people in the west seem now to want to destroy ourselves.

The dividends of peace are annihilation.

Separating the church and state were not originally American ideas. Nor democratic ideas. And I don’t know whether they predated Christianity or not, but we elite moralists and virtue-signalers ought to think hard on the synoptic gospel passages about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. What in hell could Jesus have possibly meant? (Emphasis on “in hell.”)

In the Old Testament, why “in hell” did The Lord require the annihilation of certain peoples? (Whether The Lord did or did not, that is how the storytellers told it.)

If you read much around the “render unto Caesar” passage, you know that the context was excoriation of hypocrisy. As adults, we all should know that the engine of hypocrisy is guilt. And “majority guilt” sounds like it excludes minorities. Isn’t that what “white guilt” means, exactly? I’d like to unpack and expand that a little bit…

I’m a white Caucasian Christian heterosexual male. By popular understanding, I am the best of the best oppressors! Yay me! And Trump is, according to the oppressed, my hero! And if you do not share my precise identity, you are oppressed. Accordingly, if your “identity” shares my demographics, you are guilty of the most ism’s in any western cultures. Shame on us, and power to our resistors!

Support DEI!
Stand for freedom of choice!
Pro Palestine!
Hate Trump!
Support Ukraine!
Down with tariffs!
God is dead!

Love Trump!
Pro Life!
Marriage amendment!
Peace through strength!
Jesus saves!

Whatever you advocate, just don’t watch the US dollar be undermined by non-dollar investment in Africa, Canada, Panama, Mexico, Russia…
After all, reproductive rights have been overturned by SCOTUS!
*Most* teen girls might be suicidal without gender-affirming care.
Elon is a Nazi.
Biden was a puppet.

Just don’t pay any attention to…

The Roman Empire was toppled by… WTF? Christianity? Persians? Jews? Mongols? Britons? Germanic barbarians?

Roman psychosis.

Roman denial.

Hypocrisy? Oh, hell no.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

Unless it’s engagement with Putin.

…

The Taiwan Strait

It’s the epicenter of today’s *actual* Cold War, and I myself have pretty much zero tolerance for disputes about that.

Whether it’s already too late to inhibit Sinohegemony ain’t anything I can opine. But the CCP has made their plans clear for decades, and so I’m more than pissed that leaders of the so-called world powers like the US and Europe have betrayed all of us by astounding neglect.

In my ignorant opinion, there’s better than a coin-flip’s chance that our great grandchildren’s lives will be controlled by the CCP – if not *directly* governed by it, and if not our grandchildren.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

While hippies got high, feminists took the pill, Bob wrote protest songs, and American boys killed in rain forests on the other side of a desktop globe, “I am not a crook” engaged China.

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

As long as the orange-haired antichrist doesn’t engage Putin.

…

Neil D. 2025-03-26