Veni, Veni

Your light will come, Jerusalem. The Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.

--Responsory, Morning Prayer, December 19th

For Mary and Joseph

Blessed Woman,
Excellent Man,
Redeem for the dull the
Average Way,
That common ungifted
Natures may
Believe that their normal
Vision can
Walk to perfection.

--W. H. Auden

Joseph

If the stars fell; night's nameless dreams
Of bliss and blasphemy came true,
If skies were green and snow were gold,
And you loved me as I love you;

O long light hands and curled brown hair,
And eyes where sits a naked soul;
Dare I even then draw near and burn
My fingers in the aureole?

Yes, in the one wise foolish hour
God gives this strange strength to a man.
He can demand, though not deserve,
Where ask he cannot, seize he can.
But once the blood's wild wedding o'er,
Were not dread his, half dark desire,
To see the Christ-child in the cot,
The Virgin Mary by the fire?

--G. K. Chesterton

For the Time Being

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

W. H. Auden

I heard a Hymn

“The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.”

— Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, pp. 2,3

I heard music in a word

There’s not much difference between music and magic.

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Happy feast of the Immaculate Conception

“Mary was as pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun.  If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of the window.”
                 --Thomas Merton.

To reflect upon the Immaculate Conception of Mary is thus to allow oneself to be attracted by the “yes” which joined her wonderfully to the mission of Christ, Redeemer of human- ity; it is to allow oneself to be taken and led by her hand to pronounce in one’s turn “fiat” to the will of God, with all one’s existence interwoven with joys and sadness, hopes and disap- pointments, in the awareness that tribulations, pain and suffer- ing make rich the meaning of our pilgrimage on the earth."
             --BXVI, Message for the Sixteenth World Day of the Sick January 11, 2008



Mary, the Medium through which the Light enters the word, Ora Pro Nobis.

I dreamed a dream

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true. --Woodrow Wilson

The Truth of the World

We mean all sort of things, I know, by Beauty. But the essential advantage for a poet is not to have a beautiful world with which to deal: it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.--T.S. Eliot

Like Aslan's Country

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. --Kurt Vonnegut

A revolution in the mind

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. --Victor Hugo

A Magnanimous Man

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.-- Albert Camus

A Catholic Rethinking of All Hallows Eve

A really post, who would have thought!  I have a lot of things that I would like to write about but time and brain space are conspiring against that happening.  However, today being the 31st of October, I thought it fitting that does get written about is more thought on an old argument.  (You can read previous entries here, here, here, and finally here).

We often forget that the 31st of October is not just Halloween, but also the date the Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 thesis to the door of Wittenberg Chapel, and so is remember as the start of the Reformation.  The shared date brings to mind differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, particularly in regard to how they view the dead.  The Catholic Church stresses the unity of community of believers, including the unity of the dead and the living.  Those of us still one earth ask Christians who have gone before us to intercede for us, while we pray for the souls of the depart to abbreviate their time in purgatory and help them on their way to heaven.

And it is in this ritual that the two, Halloween and the Reformation are connected.  Martin Luther rejected the idea of purgatory and so for a Protestant the communion between the living and the dead only works one way--there can be no prayers for the dead.  John Zmirak at Inside Catholic points out that this is why so many Protestants see Halloween as demonic.  If the afterlife is restricted to a strict dichotomy between heaven and hell, then dressing up as anything as a besides and angel or a saint is a celebration of the demonic.  However, within a Catholic perspective the the spookiness, and the fright of Halloween reminds us of our human condition, of the uncertainty of the state of our souls and those who went before us, of the effects of sin and the importance of praying for the dead.

So while intercessory masses on All Souls day are important, dressing up as something scary for Halloween or participating in a day of the dead ritual like decorating a grave and pay your respects to a grave can also strengthen us and remind us of our role as the church militant.  As fallen people we ought to be frightened ever once in a while.

Visions of the Heavenly Kingdom

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may NOT obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A specter is haunting America

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have" -Thomas Jefferson

The Paradox of Humanity

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve…and that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.” —C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

When thinking is revolutionary

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy."

--NYU Humanist Neil Postman, concerning the rise of the television.

To be

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Start today, now show us how you feel

Make your way, it's time to choose

Have my say, I know, I know what I see

Have my say, they think you'll lose

For all this to mean so much to me

For all this, you make a move

Pass you by, it's all in this life you have

Pass you by, goodbye to you

1, 2, 3, 4 Move

If you don't stop there, you'll make it through.

Stop dreaming, start something

When it's in your hand just start anew

It's okay to use your ability

You must know, it's hard to choose

Time will tell, it's hard that the way you feel

means you always seem to lose

Seize the day, the one that you left behind

It seems so strange that you don't move

Frozen still in front of your own lights

Win or lose, its time to choose

1, 2, 3, 4 Move

If you don't stop there, you'll make it through.

Stop dreaming, start something

When it's in your hand just start anew

The Simple Life

Today is the first day of fall and Bilbo and Frodo's birthday.  The combination of the two make this one of my favorite days, and a little introspective, so here are two thoughts for your day:

And yet less thanks have we than you. Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. "Strider" I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be kept secret to keep them so.  

--Aragorn, The Council of Elrond, FotR 

"The 22nd day of September, in the year 1400, by Shire-reckoning. Bag End, Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, West Farthing, the Shire, Middle-earth. The Third Age of this world. 

'There and Back Again: a Hobbit's Tale' by Bilbo Baggins. Chapter One: Concerning Hobbits. 

Hobbits have been living and farming in the four Farthings of the Shire for many hundreds of years, quite content to ignore and be ignored by the world of the Big Folk. Middle-earth being, after all, full of strange creatures beyond count, Hobbits must seem of little importance, being neither renowned as great warriors, or counted among the very wise. 

In fact, it has been remarked by some that Hobbits only real passion is for food. A rather unfair observation, as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales, and the smoking of pipe-weed. But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good-tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of things that grow.  

And yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me: It is not bad thing to celebrate a simple life." 

        - Introduction to Hobbits, spoken\written by Bilbo (Special Edition,  "Concerning Hobbits")

That Rings True

I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of thecrater, a last expiring dance. But a dance! 
--Henry Miller

Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all

-Vincent Van Gogh

The New Media

Last week the Oxford English Dictionary announced it would no longer be printed again.  I have never used the OED in person and, like apparently countless others, find the on-line version much more convenient and less straining on the eyes (unlike the print version you do not need a magnifying glass to make out the on-line version).

On the one hand this heralds some new and )mostly) positive advancements.  More people have access to the internet, either in their homes or in libraries and schools, and the vast amount of information that goes along with it.  Also, the English language now changes at a rate that makes printing a dictionary illogical because of how soon it would become obsolete.

However, I always have found the printed page of these huge old books and the physical presence of reference sections comforting.  You do not get the sense of the immense history of these words and the tradition you are inheriting when you are not pulling a 30 lb. book off the shelf.  You do not get the same sense of the interconnectedness of language when you cannot scan down a page and see a list of words which all come from the same root.  You cannot leisurely flip through the pages, looking for nothing in particular but knowing there are treasures on every page.   Our use of the dictionary will now be subject to the same forces as the rest of modern technology-it will be economical, purpose driven, and isolating.

As an interesting side note, the reason I was a week late in commenting on this story is because I was having computer problems last week and so was without regular access to a computer all week.  A printed book also cannot have problems with its motherboard leaving you without access.

Ennui

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.
Sylvia Plath

Look at the world through heaven's eyes

Walk on air against your better judgment.
--Seamus Heaney

Happy Birthday Mother Teresa!

Today marks the centennial of Mother Teresa's birth.  Mother Teresa, Pray for us.

“Today there is so much suffering - and I feel that the passion of Christ is being relived all over again - are we there to share that passion, to share that suffering of people?

Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society - that poverty is so hurtable and so much, and I find that very difficult....

You must come to know the poor, maybe our people here have material things, everything, but I think that if we all look into our own homes, how difficult we find it sometimes to smile at each, other, and that the smile is the beginning of love. And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something....

This is something that you and I - it is a gift of God to us to be able to share our love with others. And let it be as it was for Jesus. Let us love one another as he loved us. Let us love Him with undivided love. And the joy of loving Him and each other - let us give now... Let us keep that joy of loving Jesus in our hearts. And share that joy with all that we come in touch with. And that radiating joy is real, for we have no reason not to be happy because we have Christ with us. Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor that we meet, Christ in the smile that we give and the smile that we receive. Let us make that one point: That no child will be unwanted, and also that we meet each other always with a smile, especially when it is difficult to smile.”

--Mother Teresa, MC
 Lecture for the Nobel Peace Prize
Oslo, Norway
11 December 1979

Cowards and Cages

“Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small,” said Lee. “Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses—the whole world over his fence.” —John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Prayer and the community

Last week was the feast day of St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein).  I remember when she was canonized, but until recently had not payed much attention to her.  Her philosophy and response to modernity and its offshoots (such as feminism) is amazing.  Here is an excerpt from The Hidden Life.  

The work of salvation takes place in obscurity and stillness. In the heart’s quiet dialogue with God the living building blocks out of which the kingdom of God grows are prepared, the chosen instruments for the construction forged. The mystical stream that flows through all centuries is no spurious tributary that has strayed from the prayer life of the church it is its deepest life. When this mystical stream breaks through traditional forms, it does so because the Spirit that blows where it will is living in it, this Spirit that has created all traditional forms and must ever create new ones.

Without him there would be no liturgy and no church. Was not the soul of the royal psalmist a harp whose strings resounded under the gentle breath of the Holy Spirit? From the overflowing heart of the Virgin Mary blessed by God streamed the exultant hymn of the “Magnificat.” When the angel’s mysterious word became visible reality, the prophetic “Benedictus” hymn unsealed the lips of the old priest Zechariah, who had been struck dumb. Whatever arose from spirit-filled hearts found expression in words and melodies and continues to be communicated from mouth to mouth. The “Divine Office” is to see that it continues to resound from generation to generation. So the mystical stream forms the many- voiced, continually swelling hymn of praise to the triune God, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Perfecter.

Therefore, it is not a question of placing the inner prayer free of all traditional forms as “subjective” piety over against the liturgy as the “objective” prayer of the church. Allauthentic prayer is prayer of the church. Through every sincere prayer somethinghappens in the church, and it is the church itself that is praying therein, for it is the Holy Spirit living in the church that intercedes for every individual soul “with sighs too deep for words.” This is exactly what “authentic” prayer is, for “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” What could the prayer of the church be, if not great lovers giving themselves to God who is love!

What's important in this life

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all. - Leo Rosten

Modern Music and Ancient Conversion Stories

I quite enjoyed this music video by Regina Spektor.  However, and this may just be cause I have Bede on the brain, did the windows and the birds remind anyone else of the conversation from Book II of the Ecclesiastical History where King Edwin is debating conversion with his advisors?  One of his advisors offers this rationale for converting.

The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another. Whilst he is within, he is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.

I love this passage because it is so Germanic in its outlook, and now we get it paired with spunky music!

An Intellectual Life of Labor

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.

Victor Hugo

Though history usually remembers you for one

"There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.”

--Aristotle

Taking a Stand

“ I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m going to take a stand. I’m going to defend it. Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it." Cameron, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Fortress of Solitude

City churches are sometimes quiet and peaceful solitudes, caves of silence where a man can seek refuge from the intolerable arrogance of the business world. One can be more alone, sometimes, in a church than in a room in one’s own house. At home, one can always be routed out and disturbed (and one should not resent this, for love sometimes demands it). But in these quiet churches one remains nameless, undisturbed in the shadows, where there are only a few chance, anonymous strangers among the vigil lights, and the curious impersonal postures of the bad statues. The very tastelessness and shabbiness of some churches makes them greater solitudes, through churches should not be vulgar. Even if they are, as long as they are dark it makes little difference.

Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which men can take refuge. Places where they can kneel in silence. Houses of God, filled with His silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily. Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.

There can be no contemplation where there is no secret.

– Thomas Merton,"New Seeds of Contemplation"

Interior Castles

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Seraphic Doctor

Christ is both the way and the door. Christ is the staircase and the vehicle, like the throne of mercy over the Ark of the Covenant, and the mystery hidden from the ages. A man should turn his full attention to this throne of mercy, and should gaze at him hanging on the cross, full of faith, hope and charity, devoted, full of wonder and joy, marked by gratitude, and open to praise and jubilation. Then such a man will make with Christ a pasch, that is, a passing-over. Through the branches of the cross he will pass over the Red Sea, leaving Egypt and entering the desert. There he will taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the sepulchre, as if he were dead to things outside. He will experience, as much as is possible for one who is still living, what was promised to the thief who hung beside Christ: Today you will be with me in paradise. 

For this passover to be perfect, we must suspend all the operations of the mind and we must transform the peak of our affections, directing them to God alone. This is a sacred mystical experience. It cannot be comprehended by anyone unless he surrenders himself to it; nor can he surrender himself to it unless he longs for it; nor can he long for it unless the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent into the world, should come and inflame his innermost soul. Hence the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit. 
  
St. Bonaventure, from the Office of Readings 

Happiness and health are a bonus

May you live all the days of your life. - Jonathan Swift

The Simple Things

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? - Oscar Wilde

A summons

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience – almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasonedpublic debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good (cf. Spe Salvi, 24). Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that “in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation”, and a democracy without values can lose its very soul (cf. Centesimus Annus, 46). Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent “indispensable supports” of political prosperity.


--Benedict XVI

Stand up and fight, and I'll Stand Up with You

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it. - William Penn

And I Must Follow if I Can

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. --Lao Tzu

Once a King or Queen of Narnia, Always a King or Queen of Narnia

The preview for the latest of the Chronicles of Narina movies was recently released.  I know it is unfair to judge a movie by its preview, and I for one am still hoping that despite his limited appearance in the preview they have not reduced Eustace's role in the movie.  However, the lack of attention given to the arch of Eustace's conversion and repentance allows the preview to make another point.  The Pevensie's question  why they were summoned to Narina, for they believe that they are only called to fight its wars and so are confused as to their mission now.  In response, they are told they are all about to be tested.  Lucy is presented with the a vision of her deepest desires coming true and Edmund is confronted with the specter of the White Witch.

The later recalls one of the best and worst scenes from Prince Caspian--when Peter and Caspian almost bring back the White Witch and are saved at the last moment by Edmund.  This scene is the culmination of a lot of angst on the part of Peter, who had been petulant through the duration of the movie believing that he somehow was owed something by his previous kinghood.  He fights with people, Caspian and others, trying to reassert his authority.  This is a serious misunderstanding of Lewis's conception of kingship.  It is not an administrative office, especially for those filling the four thrones at Cair Paravel--it is sacramental.  Throughout the books the Peter lives this, he is always described as gracious and magnanimous, the archetype of a true king.  

The one virtue of this scene is in how it depicts Edmund.  He does not succumb to the pettiness of the others and is the only one to react immediately and decisively against temptation--he smashes the ice wall through which the White Witch is communicating with and seducing Caspian and Peter.  Just as the White Witch says he is marked as a traitor in the first book, once Aslan has bought his freedom he is marked as one redeemed and does not renege on his redemption.  

Conversion, grace and redemption are the central themes of each of the Chronicles of Narnia.  And while Lewis's work is not so simplistic that once a character undergoes these changes they are perfect- Lucy is tempted to read the book in the professors library in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, her sin is not a renouncement of the good and a decision to join the side of evil-- a conscious choice to join Aslan never wavers.  While this make be simplistic in the real world, within Narnia once a person makes a decision to join Aslan, a real conversion, they stand strong against the White Witch.

It is precisely this grace which Hollywood does not understand--what Aslan means when he says "Once a king or queen of Narina, always a king or queen of Narnia." 

A prayer

“ May the wind always be at your back, and the sun always upon your face, and may the wings of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars."

--George (Johnny Depp) in Blow

The Men Who Don't Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha!  He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

Robert W. Service, The Men Who Don't Fit In

Out with a Bang

“I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing.”

-- Jack Kerouac

Together as one

“Friendship is born as that moment when one person says to another, "what! You too? I thought I was the only one."- C. S. Lewis”

Did they beat the drums lowly?

Music in a Word, or vise versa

We have danced around the topic of music at many points in the past but never really explored it in full.  While I do not have the time to do so now, here is an interesting article about the ability of music to convey truth when words cannot and its role in ecumenical discussions.

No One But Myself

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Blood, sweat and tears

"So there I sat and smoked my cigar until I drifted into thought. Among other thoughts, I recall these. You are getting on in years, I said to myself, and are becoming an old man without being anything and without really undertaking anything. On the other hand, whenever you look in literature or in life, you see the names and figures of celebrities, the prized and highly acclaimed people, prominent or much discussed, the many benefactors of the age who know how to benefit humankind by making life easier and easier, some by railroads, others by omnibus and steamship, others by telegraph, others by easily understood surveys and brief publications about everything worth knowing, and finally the true benefactors of the age who by virtue of thought systematically make spiritual existence easier and easier and yet more and more meaningful--what are you doing?

At this point my introspection was interrupted because my cigar was finished and a new one had to be lit. So I smoked again, and then suddenly this thought crossed my mind: you must do something, but since with your limited capacities it will be impossible to to make anything easier that it has become, you must, with the same humanitarian enthusiasm as the others have, take it upon myself to make something more difficult. The idea pleased me enormously; it also flattered me that for this effort I would be loved and respected, as much as anyone else, by the entire community. In other words, when all joined together to make everything easier in every way, there remains only one possible danger, namely, the danger that the easiness would become so great that it would become all too easy. So only one lack remains, even though not yet felt, the lack of difficulty. Out of love of humankind, out of despair over my awkward predicament of having achieved nothing and of being unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, out of genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I comprehend it is my task to make difficulties everywhere. It was also especially striking to me that I might actually have my indolence to thank that this task became mine. Far from having found it, like Aladdin, by a stroke of good luck, I must assume that my indolence, by preventing me from opportunely proceeding to make things easy, has forced me into doing the only thing that remained."

--Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments

I can dream a whole new world

"It wasn't those writers or artists who accurately recorded life: the special ones were the ones who drew it or wrote it so personally that, in some sense it seemed as if they were creating life, or creating the world and bringing it back to you. And once you'd seen it through their eyes you could never un-see it, not ever again."--Neil Gaiman

The Funny Tricks of Time

There are days when living in the world becomes difficult -- customary things slip through my mind and little tasks become a burden. My head seems completely out of it instead of it's usual capable self. Today was one of those. I continually forgot little details that made me have to do things over and slowed down my work immensely. I seemed to be floating in the present, so focused on the immediate that I had no perspective. Living in the moment can be enjoyable and freeing, but if taken to an extreme it removes us from the world, limits our interaction and our ability to function in the way that is expected of us. How much do we need to be in this world? How much should we bend to it's expectations?

Time is horizontal and our identities stretch through it. Both the past and the future affect the person we are and the way we are living in the present. Living with a conscious knowledge of them seems natural and approapriate to mankind. We cannot excape time. It is a necessary factor in human experience, human perception, human life. But we are not slaves to it. We must seek a balance - a way to live in which we function in time but are not controlled by it.

Thinking about the role time places in one's identity helps reveal how intrinsic it is to human nature. Monsignor Sokolowski, a Philosophy Professor specializing in Phenomenology said in a lecture he gave:

If I'm daydreaming about something I did yesterday, I am now doubled into the one who was doing what I did yesterday. My identity is not found primarily in my present self. It's found in between myself now and myself then. We have this duality within our own selves. We carry around our past and our future. We live not only in our immediate surroundings, but in the absence of the future and the past, and we see ourselves in that future and past. Indeed, sometimes the memory is so powerful and intrusive that it won't remain past. It becomes present constantly, and that's known as a kind of psychological difficulty. Overcoming that problem essentially involves distinguishing between one's present self and one's past self. And one's identity is the identity that occurs between those two.

Following another level of personal identity, we can sympathize with another person and yet know that the other person is always irreducible to us. Wouldn't it be scary to have someone else's memory come up inside of you? Isn't it odd how when we see somebody we haven't seen for 10 or 15 years that we think of them as somehow alien because we realize they have so many memories that we never shared with them?

The rest of the article is quite interesting and he provides a brief yet clear introduction to phenomenology. It can be found at http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/news/newsletter/1999/spring/sokolowski.htm

I'm Alive at Last

“ To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." --Oscar Wilde

Haunt the ground where it was I once tread

To live as I have done is surely absurd

In cheap hotels and furnished rooms

To walk up side streets and down back alleys

Talking to oneself

And screaming to the sky obscenities

That the arts is a rotten business indeed

That mediocrity and the rage of fashion rules

My poems and paintings piled on the floor

To be one with himself

A Saint

A Prince

To persevere

Through storms and hardons

Through dusk and dawns

To kick death in the ass

To be passed over like a bad penny

A midget

An Ant

A roach

A freak

A Hot Piece

An Outlaw

Raise your cup and drink my friend

Drink for those who walk alone in the night

To the crippled and the blind

To the lost and the damned

To the lone bird flying in the sky

Drink to wonder

Drink to me

Drink to pussy and dreams

Drink to madness and all the stars

I hear the birds singing

Jack Micheline, Poem To The Freaks

Story of my life

When I get a little money, I buy books, and if there is any left, I buy food and clothes. ~ Erasmus

The Wanderer

	Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?	Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?
	Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?	Where the giver of treasure?
	Hwær cwom symbla gesetu?	Where are the seats at the feast?
	Hwær sindon seledreamas?	Where are the revels in the hall?
	Eala beorht bune!	Alas for the bright cup!
	Eala byrnwiga!	Alas for the mailed warrior!
	Eala þeodnes þrym!	Alas for the splendour of the prince!
	Hu seo þrag gewat,	How that time has passed away,
	genap under nihthelm,	dark under the cover of night,
	swa heo no wære.	as if it had never been!
	Stondeð nu on laste	Now there stands in the trace
	leofre duguþe	of the beloved troop
	weal wundrum heah,	a wall, wondrously high,
	wyrmlicum fah.	wound round with serpents.
	Eorlas fornoman	The warriors taken off
	asca þryþe,	by the glory of spears,
	wæpen wælgifru,	the weapons greedy for slaughter,
	wyrd seo mære,	the famous fate (turn of events),
	ond þas stanhleoþu	and storms beat
	stormas cnyssað,	these rocky cliffs,
	hrið hreosende	falling frost
	hrusan bindeð,	fetters the earth,
	wintres woma,	the harbinger of winter;
	þonne won cymeð,	Then dark comes,
	nipeð nihtscua,	nightshadows deepen,
	norþan onsendeð	from the north there comes
	hreo hæglfare	a rough hailstorm
	hæleþum on andan.	in malice against men.
	Eall is earfoðlic	All is troublesome
	eorþan rice,	in this earthly kingdom,
	onwendeð wyrda gesceaft	the turn of events changes
	weoruld under heofonum.	the world under the heavens.
	Her bið feoh læne,	Here money is fleeting,
	her bið freond læne,	here friend is fleeting,
	her bið mon læne,	here man is fleeting,
	her bið mæg læne,	here kinsman is fleeting,
	eal þis eorþan gesteal	all the foundation of this world
	idel weorþeð!	turns to waste!

Saint George and the Dragon

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."--G. K. Chesterton 

Pardon me for being late with this post, the feast of St.  George was April 23rd, but it is that point in the semester.  

A few years ago Saint George and a few other saints (including Saint Christopher) were taken off the off the official church calendar because of a lack of historical evidence for their existence, probably prompted by the more fantastic elements in their vitas.  

George's actual life has always been shrouded in mystery.  Pope Gelasius stated that George was among those saints "whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God."  Yet legends about the soldier saint who refused to give up his faith in the face of Diocletian's persecutions and who slayed dragons abounded during the Middle Ages, particularly during the Crusades.  

Which brings me to the Chesterton quote.  While I am inclined to believe that George existed that is not the most important thing to be gained from his life.  What is important, what is more than true, is George's witness.  He is a protector of Christendom, both in his slaying of the dragon and in his giving his life for his faith.  Whether factual or not, George's life remains a witness to Christ and an example to us all--and that makes him worthy of the title saint.  

The Modern World

When we look at modern man we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance, we've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven’t learned to walk the earth as brothers and sisters.  
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Song

I am sorry I have been so lax about posting for national poetry month.  Here is something from (in my opinion) one of the greatest living poets:

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes. 

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

The first step

Nothing happens... but first a dream.-- Carl Sandburg

Wandering

from "Wandering" by Hermann Hesse, translated by James Wright

Unfettered

What's money? A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do." - Bob Dylan

Who am I to follow?

I don't want to need to be the best. Yet I can not stand when someone is better than me. Constantly, I find myself doing everything I can to prove my dominance over others. Why? Why can I not be pleased in others sucsesses as well as my own? It is because of my Pride.
Damn your Pride William. My Pride is the only thing they can not take from me! They can and they will. Lord, help me fight it, give me the strength to rise above it. I'm as proud as ever! Pride is not the opposite of Shame, it is the source. True Humility is the only antidote to shame.

Prayer

As You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge 
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.
--Czeslaw Milosz