Mimicry Will Get You Everywhere



Another reason to imitate Christ, because in the end that is really what matters. If your a waitress, here is some beneficial news.



From Nature magazine:



Waitresses who copy their customers' behaviour get substantially bigger tips than those who don't, Dutch psychologists have discovered1.



"Mimicry creates bonds between people - it induces a sense of 'we-ness'," says Rick van Baaren of the University of Nijmegen. "You know that what you're doing is ok, and you become more generous."



Van Baaren's team studied staff in an American-style restaurant in southern Holland. In half of the tests, they primed a waitress to repeat customers' orders back to them. In the other half, she said something else positive, such as "Coming right up!"



When copycatting, the waitresses' average tip almost doubled, to nearly 3 guilders (US$1.20). Service charge is included in Dutch restaurant bills, tips are a small additional gift.



The experiment is the first to show that mimicry has concrete benefits, van Baaren claims, although many understand its benefits implicitly. " A good salesperson knows from experience that people like to hear and see themselves," he says. Business training manuals often advise mirroring the customer.

A Jewish Woman and the Pope



Dr. Lena Allen Shore's books Building Bridges: Pope John Paul II and the Horizon of Life is now available.



I worked on this book with Dr. Allen Shore for a number of years but in the end we did not publish it, but I highly recommend it. Dr. Shore has had a personal relationship with the Pope (they both grew up in Poland at roughly the same time), for the past twenty years and regularly communicates with him.



She is a fascinating woman who lives now in Philadelphia. She and her parents survived the Shoah by pretending to be Catholic. Now the Pope regularly advises her to "be herself." A reference I think to the many years, the formative years of her life where to be herself would have meant certian death in a concentration camp.



Two fascinating people brought together in the twilight of their lives to "build a bridge."

Catholic Reform



It is interesting everytime a new group arises claiming to be the new reform movement that is going to change the church. Almost all of the modern examples of this like "Call to Action" or "Voice of the Faithful" all emphasize an idealogy where the real reason for being Catholic is way down on the list of what they feel is important. For the most part all of these groups end up being a reason to meet once a year in some large metropolitan area to showcase their speakers who rail against the way the church is versus the way it should be--they are all what I would call "church" people and they tend to screech like the "church" lady that Dana Carvey used to portray on Saturday Night Live.



Contrast this with the groups that have worked reform in the history of the Church, let me take St. Francis for an example. Did Francis' begin by taking on a political slogan? No, he began by praying before a crucifix. He began with a look into the Gospels and a re-encounter with Christ. Christ was his focus and through the eyes of Christ he saw the church that Christ founded falling into ruin and felt the command to rebuild it--begining with the crumbling church that he was praying in. Here is true reform--not focused on the structures of the Church but rather on Christ and following Him. In this view of reform the Church is seen transfigured, her humanity veiled, the battle won.



A St. Francis could meet a horrible priest and fall to his knees kissing his hands and lauding the loftiness of the vocation that the man was so poorly living. More than one such priest was brought to his knees by such an encounter. Francis stands as the true model of reform and it has absolutely nothing to do with what the pastor, bishop or pope is doing but everything to do with how am I following Christ. Of course the Church is indispensible from this discipleship because Christ founded the Church and gave it the power to teach in His name.



The problems that we face in North America as Catholics is like that of the Church of Ephesus to whom Christ said in the Book of Revelation, "You have lost the love that you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first."



What would the reforms of Vatican II be like if we could recapture our first love?

Tomb of Zachariah Found



With an interesting twist...



From the Star-News Online:



The discovery was a stroke of luck: the light of the setting sun hit an ancient tomb at just the right angle and revealed hints of a worn inscription, unnoticed for centuries, commemorating the father of John the Baptist.



"This is the tomb of Zachariah, martyr, very pious priest, father of John," the inscription of 47 Greek letters reads.



Was John the Baptist's father a martyr? Evidently the early church linked the Zachariah mentioned in the writings of Josephus (or indeed they knew of the actual case) with that of John's father:



The Gospel of Luke describes him as an elderly man from the priestly caste of Abijah who, while burning incense in the Temple one day, was told by an angel that his wife Elizabeth, also advanced in years, would bear a son, who was later to become John the Baptist.



Jewish historian Josephus writes that a priest named Zachariah was slain by Zealots in the Temple and thrown into the Kidron Valley below - which would explain the "martyr" reference in the Greek text.



The inscription suggests that local Christians believed Zachariah was buried at the site of the tomb. But because hundreds of years had passed from his death to the inscription, and with no other corroboration, Zias and other scholars say they'll never know for sure.

Sad News--Separated Conjoined Twins Die



From The Globe and Mail:



Neurosurgeons separated 29-year-old Iranian twins born joined at the head after two days of delicate surgery, but both sisters died Tuesday shortly after their parting.



The hospital announced Ladan Bijani's death, then, a few hours later, a nurse involved in the surgery said Ladan's sister, Lelah, had died.

Myth of ADHD?



Interesting piece on Attention Defecit Disorder, that begins like this:



In 1851, a Louisiana physician and American Medical Association member, Samuel A. Cartwright, published a paper in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in which he described a new medical disorder he had recently identified. He called it drapetomania, from drapeto, meaning to flee, and mania, an obsession. He used this term to refer to a condition that he felt was prevalent in runaway slaves. Dr. Cartwright felt that with “proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented.”1



If Dr. Cartwright would submit his paper today, even to the most unrespectable medical journal, it would merely raise a laugh, or Dr. Cartwright himself would be considered disordered. But in 1851, slavery was still acceptable and therefore his invented disorder was not frowned upon.



A great opening!

Ontario and Merton



Amy has blogged about our recent trip to Canada over the weekend. My own experience focused upon the diversity but at the same time the unity. Where here we still seem to be segregated into our subgroups--there it seemed a rather remarkable merging of peoples, as I commented to Amy once during the weekend that this truly seemed to be the "melting pot" that we in the United States often pride ourselves in being.



As I sat listening to music (some of which wasn't all that impressive but truly unique) and watching people, I had an experience similar to that of a trip we made to the zoo when a peacock strutting around shaking with color tried to entice the female into some embrace of unity. The colors and cultures seem to shake about me and invite me to become one with them--this seemed to reach an apex at an early morning Mass when the words from the Eucharistic Prayer seemed to leap out at me "Fill us with his Spirit through our sharing in this meal. May he take away all that divides us. May his Spirit keep us always in communion... Father, make your church throughout the world a sign of unity and instrument of your peace."



It was sort of a Merton experience similar to one he had while waiting at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville and later wrote:



"In Louisville, on the comer of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. I have the immense joy of being human, a member of the race in which God himself became incarnate. The sorrows and stupidities of the human condition can no longer overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. If only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."



Anyway, we have much to learn about Communion and all of the attempts to build community have only thwarted what God wills.