Chasing Immortality

Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved? --Troy

Power and Glory

“The glory of God is man fully alive" This quote from St. Irenaeus is beautiful, profound and very often misunderstood. It is not permission to do what you like, whatever feels right. Rather it is a challenge, one seen more clearly if you look at the not as often quoted second half of the statement, "moreover man’s life is the vision of God." We are only fully alive when we are fulfilling the plan God has set forth for us.

This plan, this imperative to live, becomes even more crucial when one considers that our lives, that the world is a gift. As the most recent papal encyclical says;

Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. . . Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance (Paragraph 34).

By living God's plan for us we are participating in and giving thanks for the the gift of our life and the universe. But more important being alive, truly living and fulfilling God's plan for us is an act of love and an act of worship.

Call me crazy

"As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it."-- Wendell Berry

The Eternal-Or lessons of the League of the long Bow

The sacred and the eternal can be hard to detect in everyday life. And while it need not always be front and center--the little things in life have their place and their own import--it is always important and cannot be ignored. And in a world where technology is constantly increasing the pace, making reflection more rare, recognizing the eternal, the unmovable, the First Things, is essential.

As the members of the League of the Long Bow put it:

"In all our adventures," went on the other, "we have all of us taken up some definite position and stuck to it, however difficult it might be; that was the whole fun of it. But our critics did not stick to their own position --not even to their own conventional or conservative position. . .The modern world is materialistic, but it isn't solid. It isn't hard or stern or ruthless in pursuit of its purpose, or all the things that newspapers and novels say it is; and sometimes actually praise it for being. Materialism isn't like stone; it is like mud, and liquid mud at that."

'There's something in what you say," said Owen Hood, "and I am inclined to add something to it. On a rough reckoning of the chances in Modern England, I should say the situation is something like this. In that dubious and wavering atmosphere it is very unlikely there would ever be a revolution, or any vital reform. But if there were, I believe on my soul that it might be successful. I believe everything else would be too weak and wobbly to stand against it."

When the Revolution Comes

I am back to writing real posts! Hopefully on a semi-regular basis, although we will see how that goes with me about to be a student again. But it was either that or let this become a blog of quotes I like (which there is nothing wrong with, as I really like quotes). Anyways, post!

The image of barricades has long enthralled me, as have tales of revolutions and hopeless last stands. I love stories about 1916 Ireland, Prague Spring, Les Mis, every other revolution France has had, and V for Vendetta among many more. I followed the recent "twitter revolution" in Iran with more enthusiasm and precision than I normally follow the news. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I no longer think that if there is a revolution it will occur on the streets but rather in the home.

The New York Times recently ran an article about the decline of cooking in America. Very few people make anything from scratch anymore, something that has become so acute that the definition of cooking as broadened to include opening a bag of pre-washed and cut lettuce and opening a can of salad dressing to pour on it. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that most meals are now eaten on the run or in front of a television.

The kitchen used to be the soul of the home. It was where the family gathered, where they were nurtured, and over the family dinner table was one of the chief sources of family time. Making something from scratch is also a gift of self, one so strong that eating another person's food, partaking of their hospitality, used to be enough to temporarily make you part of their family and provide you that protection.

The change then must come not on the streets but in the home. The focus must once again be set on people and time must be taken to provide for each other, to create, and most improtantly to share with one another, to break bread.

On some hidden path

"Not all who wander are lost."-- J.R.R. Tolkien

A Matter of Perspective

An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." St. Augustine The City of God

Poets and Dreamers

From Walden. I will post for real soon--I feel like I have so much to say but not time to sit down and get it into a comprehensive form. But I found this very pertinent right now.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that "there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme."(25) I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

I don't wanna grow up

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."--Pablo Picasso