Stay In Touch -Have I not proven to you that I Am in the saving sinners business? -Jesus
Sunday, July 31, 2011
! Très bien!
! Très bien!
Without squeamish impress, a sense of malakos invades
Savoy’s aire, as shell-less trailers transverse tooled blades
Crossed logs, walks, outdoor tablets, pavement to grass,
Oddly, then, to plate and fine pate, washed in wine glass.
! Très bien! Sinfully plied as ‘slug’ yet ! Ah, escargot!
Through long dynastic battles, steeped in slime, so slow
Tasty gastropods creep in sleep, en marche along the stones
Tiny silent marauders of the bottom of the damp dark zones.
~July 27, 2011
Fountain of Elias: Blessed Elizabeth to be Canonized
Fountain of Elias: Blessed Elizabeth to be Canonized
Excerpt:
It has been announced.
DIJON-FRANCE (12-07-2011).- On July 11, 2011, in the Chapel of the Archbishop of Dijon, in the presence of the Most Reverend Roland Minnerah, Archbishop of Dijon, the super miro process for the canonization of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) was opened...
["For those in God who love, there is no distance..."]
Excerpt:
DIJON-FRANCE (12-07-2011).- On July 11, 2011, in the Chapel of the Archbishop of Dijon, in the presence of the Most Reverend Roland Minnerah, Archbishop of Dijon, the super miro process for the canonization of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) was opened...
["For those in God who love, there is no distance..."]
Beyond the Sneers
If I go to the doctor’s office with a broken leg, people help carry me, console me, administer pain medication, especially during the diagnostic testing. They would think it a crime for someone to require me to walk on a broken leg. Why? Do no harm. Comfort as soon as possible, and in humane, as well as scientific, ways is the first order of “professional and human” business.
This is not true in the emotional, psychological and spiritual realms of our hearts and minds when they have been wounded or are sick for some reason. One must believe in these realms if one has ever grieved, loved, been afraid, angry or felt rejection. The first area that Jesus Christ focused on: the heart: for out of the heart all life proceeds.
Unfortunately, unlike the broken leg, it may take a long time before one is literally “driven” by the immense pain and circumstances to get help. Often one is so humiliated and terrified by the experience at all the rejection, ridicule, mocking and persecution from those one expected compassion and love before one even makes it to the medical office. Who wants to endure that crowd to seek help? So, if one finally makes it to the office for help one is terrified, frayed and exhausted beyond words. But by then the inner resulting explosions have made a real mess of trust and understanding.
And what is worse? Even before the counseling really gets started everyone has to ‘upstage’ the medical professional and treat you---and they get angry because you just don’t ‘get it.’ [Their treatment.] It is because they are afraid.
God says in the psalms, “The heart and mind of man are very deep.” It is a miracle that more doesn’t go wrong but how we literally beat up and destroy people who are already ‘broken’ is worse than unjust, it is evil. With the present demise of true family life and values MOST people are criminally ‘broken’ before they even reach adulthood, whether they are aware of it or not.
Pray for the mental health professionals, too. They are overworked, underpaid, and face untold societal battles in their struggle to help others.
Brandon Marshall on diagnosis: ‘I’ll be the face of BPD’ - Shutdown Corner - NFL Blog - Yahoo! Sports
Brandon Marshall on diagnosis: ‘I’ll be the face of BPD’ - Shutdown Corner - NFL Blog - Yahoo! Sports
Excerpt:
Brandon Marshall on diagnosis: ‘I’ll be the face of BPD’ By Doug Farrar
Excerpt:
Brandon Marshall on diagnosis: ‘I’ll be the face of BPD’ By Doug Farrar
This was one of many gripping sentences in one of the most unforgettable press conferences you will ever see, regardless of reason. When Miami Dolphins receiver Brandon Marshall(notes) took to the microphone to talk with the media on Sunday, the subject was the brilliant article written by Omar Kelly of the Miami Sun-Sentinel and published the day before. In that article, Marshall admitted to having a form of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder).
According to the Mayo Clinic, BPD can be seen with the following symptoms:
People with borderline personality disorder often feel misunderstood, alone, empty and hopeless. They're typically full of self-hate and self-loathing. They may be fully aware that their behavior is destructive, but feel unable to change it. Poor impulse control may lead to problems with gambling, driving or even the law. They may find that many areas of their lives are affected, including social relationships, work or school.
[My Response: Those who peruse my blogs know that I rally behind those who brave the tyrannical, malicious, evil reign of ignorance in our world toward people distressed by emotional and psychological illnesses. Just recently I was told, "Don't you know most people think that seeking help in counseling is just a bunch of crap?' That did it, for me. I literally saw stars! Why should seeking competent help be considered 'crap'? I have spent my whole life fighting this battle for someone I loved and gave my life for and I damn well am not going to put up with this blatant ignorance anymore. This man is brave beyond words and will help a lot of people because of it. God bless him. And for those too ignorant or unwilling to understand, I will pray for you. May God give him and me the courage to continue this battle for compassion.]
Anecdotal Evidence: `On the Flat of My Temples As Proud As a Wreath'
Anecdotal Evidence: `On the Flat of My Temples As Proud As a Wreath'
I was delighted to find this! What memories this brought back.
I was delighted to find this! What memories this brought back.
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: To My Friends
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: To My Friends
Excerpt:
...you
Who are reading me: remember the time
Before the wax hardened,
When everyone was like a seal.
Each of us bears the imprint
Of a friend met along the way;
In each the trace of each.
For good or evil
In wisdom or in folly
Everyone stamped by everyone.
Now that the time crowds in
And the undertakings are finished,
To all of you the humble wish
That autumn will be long and mild.
~ Primo Levi (1919-1987), Italian chemist and writer and poet, whose many works, especially If This Is a Man, his memoir of his year at Auschwitz, examined man’s struggles to maintain his humanity in the face of great evil
===================
It is one friend in the times when the camp became a bog that enabled him to endure, to survive at all and stumble out of Auschwitz. It is Primo Levi, as well as Elie Wiesel, that sing from deeps.
Excerpt:
...you
Who are reading me: remember the time
Before the wax hardened,
When everyone was like a seal.
Each of us bears the imprint
Of a friend met along the way;
In each the trace of each.
For good or evil
In wisdom or in folly
Everyone stamped by everyone.
Now that the time crowds in
And the undertakings are finished,
To all of you the humble wish
That autumn will be long and mild.
~ Primo Levi (1919-1987), Italian chemist and writer and poet, whose many works, especially If This Is a Man, his memoir of his year at Auschwitz, examined man’s struggles to maintain his humanity in the face of great evil
===================
It is one friend in the times when the camp became a bog that enabled him to endure, to survive at all and stumble out of Auschwitz. It is Primo Levi, as well as Elie Wiesel, that sing from deeps.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Anecdotal Evidence: `Life Changes Yet Remains the Same'
Anecdotal Evidence: `Life Changes Yet Remains the Same'
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Having just seen a lone goldfinch on a feeder in the backyard, I found Stanford’s “Summer Scene” stirring:
“With movement perfect and controlled
Through silence like the hush of sleep
The goldfinch cleaves the immobile deep,
Pale azure, in a loop of gold.
“Life changes yet remains the same.
The goldfinch flashes and is gone,
But through the emptiness is drawn,
The oriole’s thin dividing flame.”
Friday, July 29, 2011
Heavenly Respite: Repost
A Much needed Repost: Heaven's Respite:
posted by A Day-Brightener - Light On Dark Water
Wow! Sometimes you just gotta listen! Made my day!
posted by A Day-Brightener - Light On Dark Water
Wow! Sometimes you just gotta listen! Made my day!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Friendship — It Is the Awaited Hour
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Friendship — It Is the Awaited Hour
Excerpts:
FRIENDSHIP
It is the awaited hour
over the table falls
interminably
the lamp’s spread hair
Night turns the window to immensity
There is no one here
presence without name surrounds me
~ Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Mexican writer and poet, and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature
"There are four kinds of love, all good for their proper place," C. S. Lewis reminds us, using the Greek names. "Charity [agape] means love. It is called Agape in the New Testament to distinguish it from Eros (sexual love), Storge (family affection) and Philia (friendship)."
Excerpts:
FRIENDSHIP
It is the awaited hour
over the table falls
interminably
the lamp’s spread hair
Night turns the window to immensity
There is no one here
presence without name surrounds me
~ Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Mexican writer and poet, and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature
"There are four kinds of love, all good for their proper place," C. S. Lewis reminds us, using the Greek names. "Charity [agape] means love. It is called Agape in the New Testament to distinguish it from Eros (sexual love), Storge (family affection) and Philia (friendship)."
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Poetry Daily Prose Feature - Adam Zagajewski: "Rereading Rilke"
Poetry Daily Prose Feature - Adam Zagajewski: "Rereading Rilke"
Excerpt:
The wise princess, who admired the poet but also knew well his weaknesses, liked to address Rilke in her letters and otherwise as Dottore Serafico—what a lovely, ironic sobriquet! How good for us, his readers, that he escaped the dungeons of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, some kind of modern evil that manifested itself in World War I and flourished in the following decades in many areas of our planet never made inroads into Rilke's poetic meditation. This is our loss. We've learned that to understand the nature of modern evil is an utterly difficult thing, perhaps impossible; having Rilke among the researchers working in this particular artistic laboratory would have been of inestimable value. For me, the happy owner of the elegant slim book bought long ago, the Elegies represented just the beginning of a long road leading to a better acquaintance with Rilke's entire oeuvre. The fiery invocation that starts "The First Elegy"—once again: "who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels' / Orders? And even if one of them pressed me / suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed / in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure"—had become for me a living proof that poetry hadn't lost its bewitching powers. At this early stage I didn't know Czeslaw Milosz's poetry; it was successfully banned by the Communist state from the schools, libraries, and bookstores—and from me...
Rozewicz's poems were born out of the ashes of the other war, World War II, and were themselves like a city of ashes. Rozewicz avoided metaphors in his poetry, considering any surplus of imagination an insult to the memory of the last war victims, a threat to the moral veracity of his poems; they were supposed to be quasi-reports from the great catastrophe. His early poems, written before Adorno uttered his famous dictum that after Auschwitz poetry's competence was limited—literally, he said, "It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz"—were already imbued with the spirit of limitation and caution. I admired the spartan sparseness of Rozewicz's language then, and for some time I did agree that poetry definitely must be tame, metaphorless, prosy, since history had delivered it such a deadly blow....
Listen to great poets only; sometimes a Catullus can save you from a literary dictatorship of somebody who lives only five blocks away. And then perhaps you will see that under some circumstances the Zeitgeist may turn out to be no more convincing intellectually than a vulgar poltergeist. These were the happy beginnings of my long acquaintance with Rilke's poetry. Later I also delighted in reading his prose:
...I also read with pleasure and profit Rilke's book on Rodin. Every young artist should read it: this beautiful praise of discipline exerts a stimulating effect on younger minds who may tend to overrate the irrational, purely inspirational ingredient of artistry. Even later I discovered the ocean of Rilke's letters.
...His poetry is almost always high-strung; in a way it represents the essence of poetry in the purity of its lyric song. Rilke's oeuvre, especially in his last years, is also characterized by a certain "passivity"; this is a poetry that receives, that listens to, that waits for a signal coming from the outside...
Excerpt:
The wise princess, who admired the poet but also knew well his weaknesses, liked to address Rilke in her letters and otherwise as Dottore Serafico—what a lovely, ironic sobriquet! How good for us, his readers, that he escaped the dungeons of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, some kind of modern evil that manifested itself in World War I and flourished in the following decades in many areas of our planet never made inroads into Rilke's poetic meditation. This is our loss. We've learned that to understand the nature of modern evil is an utterly difficult thing, perhaps impossible; having Rilke among the researchers working in this particular artistic laboratory would have been of inestimable value. For me, the happy owner of the elegant slim book bought long ago, the Elegies represented just the beginning of a long road leading to a better acquaintance with Rilke's entire oeuvre. The fiery invocation that starts "The First Elegy"—once again: "who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels' / Orders? And even if one of them pressed me / suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed / in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure"—had become for me a living proof that poetry hadn't lost its bewitching powers. At this early stage I didn't know Czeslaw Milosz's poetry; it was successfully banned by the Communist state from the schools, libraries, and bookstores—and from me...
Rozewicz's poems were born out of the ashes of the other war, World War II, and were themselves like a city of ashes. Rozewicz avoided metaphors in his poetry, considering any surplus of imagination an insult to the memory of the last war victims, a threat to the moral veracity of his poems; they were supposed to be quasi-reports from the great catastrophe. His early poems, written before Adorno uttered his famous dictum that after Auschwitz poetry's competence was limited—literally, he said, "It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz"—were already imbued with the spirit of limitation and caution. I admired the spartan sparseness of Rozewicz's language then, and for some time I did agree that poetry definitely must be tame, metaphorless, prosy, since history had delivered it such a deadly blow....
Listen to great poets only; sometimes a Catullus can save you from a literary dictatorship of somebody who lives only five blocks away. And then perhaps you will see that under some circumstances the Zeitgeist may turn out to be no more convincing intellectually than a vulgar poltergeist. These were the happy beginnings of my long acquaintance with Rilke's poetry. Later I also delighted in reading his prose:
...I also read with pleasure and profit Rilke's book on Rodin. Every young artist should read it: this beautiful praise of discipline exerts a stimulating effect on younger minds who may tend to overrate the irrational, purely inspirational ingredient of artistry. Even later I discovered the ocean of Rilke's letters.
...His poetry is almost always high-strung; in a way it represents the essence of poetry in the purity of its lyric song. Rilke's oeuvre, especially in his last years, is also characterized by a certain "passivity"; this is a poetry that receives, that listens to, that waits for a signal coming from the outside...
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Abbey-Roads: From the Opinion Page: Homophobia on the rise in Minnesota.
Abbey-Roads: From the Opinion Page: Homophobia on the rise in Minnesota.
My response:
The whole purpose of my blog writing is to combat the 'scapegoatism' that is rampant in our world today. And If I were you, I would be doing all I could to combat it, too. It is a many-headed monster that can quickly turn on...you.
Parents beating on each other, on their children. School, church and work 'cliques' that have to size themselves up as the 'in' against those they deem 'out'. Bosses and supervisors that manipulate, torment and use employees. Ignorant, malicious bullying around every second and every corner. More rape is committed in the home by family members. More abuse goes on there, too.
If homosexuals is the faddish subject to 'oppose' then the need for projecting one's own evil latches on to them. It is on the rise, in my humble opinion, because the whole society and Christian Church, in its embarrassment and sinful cover up, seeks to focus on something else besides dealing with the 'why' and so someone else is carrying its shadow. Look at your music, your games, your videos, your movies and tell me what business you have of accusing or judging anyone. Each of us better get on our face before God for allowing such things.
When a projection is particularly virulent then that sinful 'feeling' or forgotten sin memory inside looks for a victim. If one beats up on a 'gay' person I would have to ask why? What resides within your heart that you are not facing? I don't see too many men outside strip bars beating people up because they are committing lustful acts. I don't see too many people protesting with placards when male bosses screw around with every secretary or female worker they can. It's adultery, fornication...in the eyes of God. Why are so many abused wives and girl friends so terrified that they remain silent? Because everyone in this culture is 'uncomfortable' in being asked to do something about it. And no matter how rich your bedroom, your clothes, your title...adultery and fornication...are still...adultery and fornication.
And no matter how many other people you beat up or torment, your sin not only remains within you, you are just adding to the pile you refuse to clean up before God. There's a hell of lot more sinful weird sex in those strip clubs with almost all the males within a 100 mile radius participating at one time or other...in and out of church membership. And the trillion dollar pornography industry? You know, the what stays in Vegas thing? And everybody 'smiles'? The scapegoatism of these gangs of bullies is evil. So, if they are singling out homosexuals perhaps it is to make themselves look good to....because....? They are certainly not pleasing God and they are certainly not doing anything good. Every time you have to put someone down or torment or bully or harm someone else to make yourself look good, the greatest harm is to your soul. It is diminished greatly and becomes more evil each time. For Catholics it is a deadly sin.
Unfortunately we continue to be a witness to the continual pummeling in all areas of our world against women, against Jewish people, against Christians, and even Muslim sect against Muslim sect. And, then there's Ireland...you know, North and South...Protestant and Catholic...not counting all the rest of the ad nauseum.
Scapegoatism can be defeated only if each person owns up to their own capacity for evil, repents for the actual evil they are committing and does something to change. Jesus said, "Out of the heart all these things come." That includes you. We live "after the Fall." "Sin crouches at the door" moment by moment. If you do not realize that the worst sinning that could ever be resides within you under the right circumstances, then you are ignorant and foolish. Once that is "faced" and dealt with in reality, then you will not need a 'scapegoat.' There but for the Grace of God go I.
It distresses me to see scapegoatism on the rise. It always mean evil people are going to take their evil out on someone else. And inevitably after the dust settles and the blood is drawn if one compares the self-righteous bullies with those they just beat up or harmed, the victim almost always is more innocent.
My response:
The whole purpose of my blog writing is to combat the 'scapegoatism' that is rampant in our world today. And If I were you, I would be doing all I could to combat it, too. It is a many-headed monster that can quickly turn on...you.
Parents beating on each other, on their children. School, church and work 'cliques' that have to size themselves up as the 'in' against those they deem 'out'. Bosses and supervisors that manipulate, torment and use employees. Ignorant, malicious bullying around every second and every corner. More rape is committed in the home by family members. More abuse goes on there, too.
If homosexuals is the faddish subject to 'oppose' then the need for projecting one's own evil latches on to them. It is on the rise, in my humble opinion, because the whole society and Christian Church, in its embarrassment and sinful cover up, seeks to focus on something else besides dealing with the 'why' and so someone else is carrying its shadow. Look at your music, your games, your videos, your movies and tell me what business you have of accusing or judging anyone. Each of us better get on our face before God for allowing such things.
When a projection is particularly virulent then that sinful 'feeling' or forgotten sin memory inside looks for a victim. If one beats up on a 'gay' person I would have to ask why? What resides within your heart that you are not facing? I don't see too many men outside strip bars beating people up because they are committing lustful acts. I don't see too many people protesting with placards when male bosses screw around with every secretary or female worker they can. It's adultery, fornication...in the eyes of God. Why are so many abused wives and girl friends so terrified that they remain silent? Because everyone in this culture is 'uncomfortable' in being asked to do something about it. And no matter how rich your bedroom, your clothes, your title...adultery and fornication...are still...adultery and fornication.
And no matter how many other people you beat up or torment, your sin not only remains within you, you are just adding to the pile you refuse to clean up before God. There's a hell of lot more sinful weird sex in those strip clubs with almost all the males within a 100 mile radius participating at one time or other...in and out of church membership. And the trillion dollar pornography industry? You know, the what stays in Vegas thing? And everybody 'smiles'? The scapegoatism of these gangs of bullies is evil. So, if they are singling out homosexuals perhaps it is to make themselves look good to....because....? They are certainly not pleasing God and they are certainly not doing anything good. Every time you have to put someone down or torment or bully or harm someone else to make yourself look good, the greatest harm is to your soul. It is diminished greatly and becomes more evil each time. For Catholics it is a deadly sin.
Unfortunately we continue to be a witness to the continual pummeling in all areas of our world against women, against Jewish people, against Christians, and even Muslim sect against Muslim sect. And, then there's Ireland...you know, North and South...Protestant and Catholic...not counting all the rest of the ad nauseum.
Scapegoatism can be defeated only if each person owns up to their own capacity for evil, repents for the actual evil they are committing and does something to change. Jesus said, "Out of the heart all these things come." That includes you. We live "after the Fall." "Sin crouches at the door" moment by moment. If you do not realize that the worst sinning that could ever be resides within you under the right circumstances, then you are ignorant and foolish. Once that is "faced" and dealt with in reality, then you will not need a 'scapegoat.' There but for the Grace of God go I.
It distresses me to see scapegoatism on the rise. It always mean evil people are going to take their evil out on someone else. And inevitably after the dust settles and the blood is drawn if one compares the self-righteous bullies with those they just beat up or harmed, the victim almost always is more innocent.
First Known When Lost: "Crowded With Thoughts That Need A Settled Home"
First Known When Lost: "Crowded With Thoughts That Need A Settled Home"
Excerpt:
...Wordsworth...
On the Banks of a Rocky Stream
Behold an emblem of our human mind
Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,
Yet, like to eddying balls of foam
Within this whirlpool, they each other chase
Round and round, and neither find
An outlet nor a resting-place!
Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,
Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.
Excerpt:
...Wordsworth...
On the Banks of a Rocky Stream
Behold an emblem of our human mind
Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,
Yet, like to eddying balls of foam
Within this whirlpool, they each other chase
Round and round, and neither find
An outlet nor a resting-place!
Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,
Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Abbey-Roads: A wretch like me.
Abbey-Roads: A wretch like me.
Excerpt:
Wretched? Wretched is good.
.
"If I had been able to find a creature more miserable than you" Our Lord said to Saint Margaret Mary, "I should have chosen her. "
.
Our Lord to Sr. Josefa Menendez: "If I could have found a more wretched creature, I should have chosen her for my special love, and through her revealed the longings of My Heart. But I have not found one, and so I have chosen you" (7th june 1923).
.
"Do you not know that the more wretched a soul is, the more I love her?"
.
"The fact that I have chosen a soul does not mean that her faults and miseries are wiped out. But if in all humility that soul acknowledges her failings and atones by little acts of generosity and love, above all, if she trusts Me, if she throws herself into My Heart, she gives Me more glory and does more good to souls than if she had not fallen. ...
Thursday, July 21, 2011
To Fight anti-Semitism (in all its forms)
In her diary she wrote: “Only now am I beginning to see what it really means to be a Jew in a Christian society.” “… You have to be someone exceptional to fight anti-Semitism, which is the most difficult kind of fight.”
Even though she believed she could have a successful career in Hungary, she felt it was not worthy of her. Catherine Senesh finally gave her permission. Hannah pleaded her mother to come to Palestine, but Catherine still loved and felt loyal to her homeland.
Hannah really wanted to go home, to go save her mother and other Jews. She tried to get the papers, but was denied. In February of 1943, she learned of a group of people starting an organization who wanted to form a rescue mission and go back into Hungary like Hannah did.
...One day, four guards took her to a room. There, she saw her mother for the first time in 5 years. Catherine Senesh had been arrested that morning. After not even a few minutes together, the guards separated mother and daughter once again.
The next day, a friendly guard brought a chair to Hannah’s cell and told her to step up and look out her window. There was her mother, in the cell across from her window! From their silent conversations writing letters in the air, she found out that her mother was being tortured as well. Hannah never gave in, although she felt the end was near. She wrote this poem about her time in the jail:
One - two - three . . . eight feet long,
Two strides across, the rest is dark . . .
Life hangs over me like a question mark.
One - two - three . . . maybe another week,
Or next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel, is very near.
I could have been twenty-three next July;
I gambled on what mattered most,
The dice were cast. I lost.
~The Summer That Bled book...
She would be appalled at the anti-Semitism now.
According to novelist and Israeli Defense Force veteran Alan Kaufman, IDF soldiers are sometimes referred to as 'matches', in an allusion to Hannah Senesh's beloved poem...j.b. spins blog
Even though she believed she could have a successful career in Hungary, she felt it was not worthy of her. Catherine Senesh finally gave her permission. Hannah pleaded her mother to come to Palestine, but Catherine still loved and felt loyal to her homeland.
Hannah really wanted to go home, to go save her mother and other Jews. She tried to get the papers, but was denied. In February of 1943, she learned of a group of people starting an organization who wanted to form a rescue mission and go back into Hungary like Hannah did.
...One day, four guards took her to a room. There, she saw her mother for the first time in 5 years. Catherine Senesh had been arrested that morning. After not even a few minutes together, the guards separated mother and daughter once again.
The next day, a friendly guard brought a chair to Hannah’s cell and told her to step up and look out her window. There was her mother, in the cell across from her window! From their silent conversations writing letters in the air, she found out that her mother was being tortured as well. Hannah never gave in, although she felt the end was near. She wrote this poem about her time in the jail:
One - two - three . . . eight feet long,
Two strides across, the rest is dark . . .
Life hangs over me like a question mark.
One - two - three . . . maybe another week,
Or next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel, is very near.
I could have been twenty-three next July;
I gambled on what mattered most,
The dice were cast. I lost.
~The Summer That Bled book...
She would be appalled at the anti-Semitism now.
According to novelist and Israeli Defense Force veteran Alan Kaufman, IDF soldiers are sometimes referred to as 'matches', in an allusion to Hannah Senesh's beloved poem...j.b. spins blog
Hear God's Whispers and sometimes His Groans
The diminishing of a soul is the end goal of any evil system---whether by an individual, a disease, a family, a church, a company store, a state, an army, a prison, a party, a belief, or a nation. Fr. Lynch in “Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless” reminded us we must never give up on ‘hope.’ We are accountable to answer for “the hope that is in us.” Faith, Hope, and Love: and the greatest of these is love.
To be rendered dumb and paralyzed before evil in extreme situations is to exist in a terror beyond belief. But the soul, heart and mind of each human being are a ‘divine spark’ of God. Those who ‘speak the words well’ must speak for those too wounded, for those who have lost the ability to speak or to fight. To open the windows of the soul, let fresh air in, create soul words, to give broken hearts wings, is the task of the artist, to be ‘co-creators, co-healers’ ---to be those who ‘hear God’s whispers and sometimes His groans.’
But the 'tenders of the heart' are so very few. Those who catch a tear, carry a sob, and comfort a sigh paid the price of knowing and the being able to comfort carved out before our meeting by an unknown hand.
I am reminded of this in St. Therese's loving of His Face:... l'regarde ...Try catching one of those Tears.
To be rendered dumb and paralyzed before evil in extreme situations is to exist in a terror beyond belief. But the soul, heart and mind of each human being are a ‘divine spark’ of God. Those who ‘speak the words well’ must speak for those too wounded, for those who have lost the ability to speak or to fight. To open the windows of the soul, let fresh air in, create soul words, to give broken hearts wings, is the task of the artist, to be ‘co-creators, co-healers’ ---to be those who ‘hear God’s whispers and sometimes His groans.’
But the 'tenders of the heart' are so very few. Those who catch a tear, carry a sob, and comfort a sigh paid the price of knowing and the being able to comfort carved out before our meeting by an unknown hand.
I am reminded of this in St. Therese's loving of His Face:... l'regarde ...Try catching one of those Tears.
Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
A new film.
REVISITING HISTORY: The documentary, ‘Blessed is the Match,’ tells the story of Hannah Senesh (played by Meri Roth, right) and her mother Catherine (Marcela Nohy´nková). [from Jewish Daily Forward, 2009]
A new film.
REVISITING HISTORY: The documentary, ‘Blessed is the Match,’ tells the story of Hannah Senesh (played by Meri Roth, right) and her mother Catherine (Marcela Nohy´nková). [from Jewish Daily Forward, 2009]
SHIRT OF FLAME: WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN: MOTHER LOVE AND ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX
SHIRT OF FLAME: WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN: MOTHER LOVE AND ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX
Excerpt:
I thought of another time I went with some fellow sober drunks to the downtown jail in L.A. We weren't allowed to shake hands or hold hands with the inmates in case we tried to pass some contraband. And so when it came time for the closing prayer, the three of us who had come in from the outside held hands with each other and formed a tiny circle. And next thing we knew, the inmates had silently come together, formed a larger circle, and were holding hands around us, and together, we all said the Lord's Prayer. Outside were locked doors, guns, barbed wire, and the guards in their darkened-glass, bullet-proof pods. But inside that circle--surrounded by cross-dressers, sex offenders, perverts, junkies, whores and thieves--I've seldom felt so protected, or so safe.
We must all be saved together! Reach God together! Appear before Him together! We must return to our Father’s house together…what would He think if we arrived without the others, without the others returning, too?
--Charles Péguy
Excerpt:
I thought of another time I went with some fellow sober drunks to the downtown jail in L.A. We weren't allowed to shake hands or hold hands with the inmates in case we tried to pass some contraband. And so when it came time for the closing prayer, the three of us who had come in from the outside held hands with each other and formed a tiny circle. And next thing we knew, the inmates had silently come together, formed a larger circle, and were holding hands around us, and together, we all said the Lord's Prayer. Outside were locked doors, guns, barbed wire, and the guards in their darkened-glass, bullet-proof pods. But inside that circle--surrounded by cross-dressers, sex offenders, perverts, junkies, whores and thieves--I've seldom felt so protected, or so safe.
We must all be saved together! Reach God together! Appear before Him together! We must return to our Father’s house together…what would He think if we arrived without the others, without the others returning, too?
--Charles Péguy
Hannah Senesh: Why I Am Catholic: Quote of the Week
Why I Am Catholic: Quote of the Week
Excerpt:
There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. -Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (1921-1944)
Dear Hannah:
Excerpt:
There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. -Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (1921-1944)
Dear Hannah:
Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, the First Complete Edition
By Hannah Senesh, Marge Piercy, Roberta Grossman Lajos Jekely…Lajos Aprily
p. 169, ‘Letters’…
I slept quite well last night, and this morning after breakfast I went by bus to the Carmel. On the way up we passed beautiful modern shops,…
The Mission
The Last Border
I had the privilege of serving with Hannah during WWII, slogging through the land of the Ygoslav partisans for months until the terrible day she crossed the Hungarian border and fell into Nazi hands.
…in Cairo…She was happy, cheerful, joked…Her changes of mood astounded me. One moment she would be rolling with laughter, the next aflame with fervor. I felt that a kind of divine spark must be burning in the depths of her being…I’ll never forget the way she helped me overcome my enormous psychological tension during our training. Hannah seemed utterly fearless. …on the night of March 13, 1944, we were told to get ready to leave, she was overjoyed. She sang the whole way…That song…became our group’s theme song.
….Hannah was to continue on into neighboring Hungary, but we encountered a wall of reality at the very outset. We had to reach the Hungarian border on foot, and the partisans informed us that there was no possibility of crossing, because the Germans had recaptured the border region. “You’ll just have to wait,”…A few days later we learned that the Germans had occupied Hungary as well. It was catastrophic news for all of us---and it was the first time I saw Hannah cry…amidst her sobs she exclaimed, “What will happen to all of them…to the million Jews in Hungary? They’re in German hands now---and we’re sitting here…just sitting.”
Her conscience knew no rest. It was as if the earth beneath her were on fire. She constantly sought ways to cross the border, but we were entirely dependent upon the partisans, and our objective was foreign to them. Meanwhile we roamed that beautiful land of mountains and forests beset by rebellion and battle, awed by the magnificent landscape. We lived through amazing experiences---some disillusioning and depressing, others encouraging and inspiring. Our emotional fare was certainly varied. …exciting as the beat of the music…it was exhilarating to watch the men and women dancing, rifles strapped to their soldiers, hand grenades swinging from their belts. Hannah slipped into the main circle, quickly adapted to the beat, and danced for hours. We also endured fearsome, endless days under fire….We were completely alone, cut off, surrounded by the enemy. …continued running in an open valley, entirely exposed to the firing from the encircling hills. We tried desperately to catch up with the retreating partisans. All around we heard cries of fear from clusters of bewildered civilians who stumbled along, clutching pathetic belongings, their children, driving their thinning herds of cattle. The cries of the wounded and the groans of the dying filled the stillness; people dropped like wounded birds. All about us there was horrible panic. In the mad race to save my own life I forgot everything. Suddenly I stopped, horrified at the thought that I had been cut off from Hannah, I turned, saw her running behind me, breathing wildly, gasping for breath. Her instinct for self-preservation, goaded by the firing and sounds of battle, spurred her on. With our last ounce of strength we reached the forest and, we hoped, protection from enemy fire. We fell to the ground, exhausted but safe. For a short while we lay silently in the bushes,, clutching our rifles, listening to the incessant tattoo of bullets, the moaning of the wounded. …Our nerves were at breaking point. At the edge of the forest the Germans, shooting wildly in all directions, were so close they could have stepped on us.
…..
One evening we found ourselves in a village under the command of a woman partisan. When she stepped into the room where we were seated, I was astounded. I knew her! We had been childhood friends, had lived in the same district, had played together in the streets of the capital. The years of terror had left their mark on her face, and…her hair was streaked with gray. …it turned out that all of us in the room were Jews. We became very excited by this discovery and felt united by an almost sacred bond. She revealed the horrible suffering of the Jews in the Diaspora to us, who had been so protected in Palestine, ….
…later she handed me the four-line poem, “Blessed Is the Match,”…
…June 9, 1944…the day for her to cross into Hungary….dreams for the future…”We’ll arrange celebrations…and we’ll tell them everything that happened to us, and spin tall tales. …we’ll visit the entire country…We left the house together but walked in the opposite direction from the border…”Till we meet again---soon, I hope, in enemy territory.”…she turned and waved farewell. I didn’t know I would never see her again. Reuven Dafne
p.239 The Mission: How She Fell
May 13, 1944, the very day---….that the expulsion of the Jews from most of Hungary’s cities had begun….we were unaware…agreed to meet after the Sabbath service at the Great Synagogue in Budapest. And if Jewish services were no longer being held there, we would meet on the same day, at the same time, at the Cathedral.
I waited in vain for her…When I was thrown into jail, battered and broken in body and spirit, I kept thinking, it’s a good thing she doesn’t have to suffer all this. Who knows whether she could have stood it…it’s a good thing she isn’t here….
…arrested…in same prison…solitary cell…Her window became an information and education center, and from morning till evening prisoners looked toward it for news…She gave them new heart.
Her behavior before members of the Gestapo and SS was quite remarkable. She always stood up to them, warning them plainly of the bitter fate they would suffer after their defeat. Curiously, these wild animals, in whom every spark of humanity had been extinguished, felt awed in the presence of this fearless young girl. …We were moved to the Hungarian prison together…I heard how they had tied her…whipped her palms and the soles of her feet, bound her and forced her to sit motionless for hours on end, beaten her all over the body until she was black and blue. …only one thing, “What is your code?”…”You are state property; we’ll do away with you when we no longer need you, not before.”…They brought her to Budapest…there, to her horror, she found her beloved mother. …They threatened to torture her mother…and kill her. Still Hannah would not yield….Hannah’s fortitude saved her mother. …Sept 11 we parted..
Oct 28, 1944 the day of her trial…she explained boldly what had brought her to Hungary, analyzing in a penetrating way the political-moral decline of Hungary during the preceding years. And she stressed---in the very midst of Fascist rule---the great crime in which the Hungarians had participated…then the dark moment of execution in the gray courtyard beneath our cell window.
…her cell…Cell 13, the Condemned Cell…the letters she wrote were never delivered.
…
Senesh returned to her native Hungary in 1943 to help rescue Jews. She was captured by the Nazi's and executed at the age of 23.
Dolce Bellezza: Vol de Nuit by Antoine de St. Exupery. And Guerlain.
Dolce Bellezza: Vol de Nuit by Antoine de St. Exupery. And Guerlain.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Perhaps Antoine de St. Exupery is best known for his novel Le Petit Prince. Far from a typical children's book, Le Petit Prince closely examines matters of the heart, and in my opinion is best suited for adults. Or, for French V students as when I read it en francais for the first time at seventeen.
But, he also wrote Vol de Nuit (Night Flight), a novel published in 1931. This slim volume of only 87 pages is exceptional. Its subject matter is the mail flights which went to Patagonia, Chile, and Buenos Aires in the middle of the night so that the mail could be there in the morning. Its subject is the courage of the pilots who not only thrilled to the dangers of their job, but fought the fear inherent to its very nature. Its subject is Riviere, the leader of those men in aviation who challenges them to live up to honor and integrity, and Fabien, the pilot who encounters a storm during one treacherous night which is the central plot in this novel.
Antoine de St. Exupery's writing is a masterpiece. Practically every page has a phrase to reread, or a description to ponder:
Somewhere, too, the planes were fighting forward; the night flights went on and on like a persistent malady, and on them watch must be kept. Help must be given to these men who with hands and knees and breast to breast were wrestling with the darkness, who knew and only knew an unseen world of shifting things, whence they must struggle out, as from an ocean. And the things they said about it afterwards were--terrible! "I turned the light on to my hands so as to see them." Velvet of hands bathed in a dim red dark-room glow; last fragment, that must be saved, of a lost world. (p. 38-39)
St. Exupery himself surely knew of which he wrote, for "In 1944 he flew his plane over the Mediterranean on a World War II reconnaissance mission from which he never returned."...
...............
This caught my eye because at six I was given Le Petit Prince as a Christmas present by my grandmother. I always loved it.
...............
This caught my eye because at six I was given Le Petit Prince as a Christmas present by my grandmother. I always loved it.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Perhaps we need a round table.
Introduction: Perhaps we need a round table.
Psychotherapy: the purchase of friendship (1986) By William Schofield
p.4 1. The Countable Thousands
Over one half of all the hospital beds in this country are occupied by mental patients. There are 600,000 psychiatric patients housed in public and private mental hospitals at any given time. There are approximately 125, 000 new admissions annually to public institutions for custodial care of psychiatrically ill persons. Of the total number of patients admitted to state hospitals each year, nearly one third are patients who are entering such hospitals for at least the second time.
…These facts do not and cannot convey in themselves, to even the most sensitive and imaginative of persons, the true dimensions of hurt and loss experienced by these thousands upon thousands of psychological invalids. Statistics which are intended to bring precision to descriptive communication fail utterly when the essential subject is suffering. Human misery does not yield to quantification.
…Really to know such suffering at all, short of experiencing it ourselves, we must see it directly. We must visit a mental hospital; we must see the faces of patient after patient; we must observe the daily routine…
….people may become ill and present problems…when in unbearable conflict with unacceptable and often unconscious aspects of themselves and their relationships or struggling with the effects of harmful early experiences. …the setting for (the process of healing) is…relationship…must involve trust and confidentiality…true love and acceptance…
.................
[And the 'invisible wars' continue, unabated.]
True Christianity
This is what we Soldiers of the Church Militant should be for others:
Father Emil Kapaun, pray for us. [h/t A Trail of Flowers..]
Running 'Cause I Can't Fly: "A Look to the Heavens"
Running 'Cause I Can't Fly: "A Look to the Heavens"
Worth a look:
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri.
Worth a look:
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri.
L O G O S: Freud Misguided
L O G O S: Freud Misguided
Excerpt:
Recent scholarship, he [the author, Howard Markel of the University of Michigan] writes, has offered “nuanced contemplations on the connection of Sigmund’s cocaine abuse to his signature ideas about accessing unconscious thoughts with talk therapy; the division of how our mind processes pleasure and reality; the interpretation of dreams; the nature of our thoughts and sexual development; the Oedipus complex; and the elaboration of the id, ego and superego.”
He quotes the historian Peter Swales thus: “Freud’s [concept of the] libido is merely a mask and a symbol for cocaine; the drug, or rather its invisible ghost, haunts the whole of Freud’s writing to the very end.”
My response:
I am no fan of Freud but I am concerned at the way in which society, including institutions with Christian and Jewish foundations, are 'throwing those with mental illness to the dogs' while offering no help or alternatives. The increase in ignoring abuse in families, of women and children, the sick and the handicapped, and the elderly is appalling. Those who have lived through the rejection and abuse since early childhood suffer even more as they enter adulthood. And with the liberal propaganda of drug-use and of violent, angry abuse with denigrating objectification of women, is there any wonder people suffer. The use of prescription drugs to numb people, without helping and treating them, is a mindless, evil choice to further ostracize them. The reality is no one wants to take the time or trouble to love and heal. Personally, I don't think they know how or want to know how.
Over and over I hear that the therapist is often the only person to believe there is abuse going on. Often the very last people to believe it is the family and the church family. I feel for the TINY few who have spent their lives serving and helping in true Christian charity. They are often overworked, underpaid and certainly not recognized. And I am certain they too feel like they are fighting an uphill battle. And the Christian organizations and services that berate and attack the sufferers as those who are possessed with demons is a cruelty beyond imagining. Those who are abused are continually treated as if they are perpetrators and not victims. At the very least they are told to 'get over it.'
With the increased lack of true scholarship, rejection of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and little or no true Christian teaching, especially in so-called Christian schools and 'most' Churches(?), I can only weep for the dark, spiritual vacuum into which we continue to be headed. Most people I work with don't even know the Ten Commandments. And the Catholic school I visited handed out Chicken Soup for the Soul and Harry Potter novels that had been graciously(?) donated to them for free. My immediate thought: "I'll bet it was!" When I questioned it I was met with "We have to interest them in reading."
As following Christ continues to become another prestige-building country club, people in the Church just don't really care---they pay the dues they have to pay. Without Love there is no respectful intimacy between spouses, in families, in institutions, or in the city.
At the end, each individual will face Christ and will be judged by 'LOVE' of others. But Lord, when did we see Thee sick, hungry, naked, ...."Whatever you do to the 'least' of My brethren you do unto Me."
My response:
I am no fan of Freud but I am concerned at the way in which society, including institutions with Christian and Jewish foundations, are 'throwing those with mental illness to the dogs' while offering no help or alternatives. The increase in ignoring abuse in families, of women and children, the sick and the handicapped, and the elderly is appalling. Those who have lived through the rejection and abuse since early childhood suffer even more as they enter adulthood. And with the liberal propaganda of drug-use and of violent, angry abuse with denigrating objectification of women, is there any wonder people suffer. The use of prescription drugs to numb people, without helping and treating them, is a mindless, evil choice to further ostracize them. The reality is no one wants to take the time or trouble to love and heal. Personally, I don't think they know how or want to know how.
Over and over I hear that the therapist is often the only person to believe there is abuse going on. Often the very last people to believe it is the family and the church family. I feel for the TINY few who have spent their lives serving and helping in true Christian charity. They are often overworked, underpaid and certainly not recognized. And I am certain they too feel like they are fighting an uphill battle. And the Christian organizations and services that berate and attack the sufferers as those who are possessed with demons is a cruelty beyond imagining. Those who are abused are continually treated as if they are perpetrators and not victims. At the very least they are told to 'get over it.'
With the increased lack of true scholarship, rejection of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and little or no true Christian teaching, especially in so-called Christian schools and 'most' Churches(?), I can only weep for the dark, spiritual vacuum into which we continue to be headed. Most people I work with don't even know the Ten Commandments. And the Catholic school I visited handed out Chicken Soup for the Soul and Harry Potter novels that had been graciously(?) donated to them for free. My immediate thought: "I'll bet it was!" When I questioned it I was met with "We have to interest them in reading."
As following Christ continues to become another prestige-building country club, people in the Church just don't really care---they pay the dues they have to pay. Without Love there is no respectful intimacy between spouses, in families, in institutions, or in the city.
At the end, each individual will face Christ and will be judged by 'LOVE' of others. But Lord, when did we see Thee sick, hungry, naked, ...."Whatever you do to the 'least' of My brethren you do unto Me."
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
A Year with Rilke: With Real Love, There Are No Recipes
A Year with Rilke: With Real Love, There Are No Recipes
Excerpt:
...Love...Whoever takes it seriously, discovers that, as with death which is real, so with real love, there are no easy recipes. For both these undertakings, there are no universally agreed-upon rules. But in the same measure that we begin as individuals to explore life's meaning for us, these great things come toward us to be met and known. The claims made upon us by the hard work of love are bigger than life and essential to our unfolding, and we are seldom up to them at the outset. But if we hold steady and take this love upon us as a task and a teaching, instead of losing ourselves...his may be felt as a small illumination and step forward by those who come long after us. That in itself would be a lot.
Rome, May 14, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet
Excerpt:
...Love...Whoever takes it seriously, discovers that, as with death which is real, so with real love, there are no easy recipes. For both these undertakings, there are no universally agreed-upon rules. But in the same measure that we begin as individuals to explore life's meaning for us, these great things come toward us to be met and known. The claims made upon us by the hard work of love are bigger than life and essential to our unfolding, and we are seldom up to them at the outset. But if we hold steady and take this love upon us as a task and a teaching, instead of losing ourselves...his may be felt as a small illumination and step forward by those who come long after us. That in itself would be a lot.
Rome, May 14, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Nature Notes: Dandelions
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Nature Notes: Dandelions
Excerpt:
Friendship, that “luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen,” is a gift.
“I have no duty,” writes C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves, “to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadows of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
NATURE NOTES: DANDELIONS
Incorrigible, brash,
They brightened the cinder path of my childhood.
Unsubtle, the opposite of primroses,
But, unlike primroses, capable
Of growing anywhere, railway track, pierhead,
Like our extrovert friends who never
Make us fall in love, yet fill
The primroseless roseless gaps.
~ Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Irish poet
Excerpt:
Friendship, that “luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen,” is a gift.
“I have no duty,” writes C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves, “to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadows of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
NATURE NOTES: DANDELIONS
Incorrigible, brash,
They brightened the cinder path of my childhood.
Unsubtle, the opposite of primroses,
But, unlike primroses, capable
Of growing anywhere, railway track, pierhead,
Like our extrovert friends who never
Make us fall in love, yet fill
The primroseless roseless gaps.
~ Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Irish poet
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Diary Review: Israel’s Joan of Arc
The Diary Review: Israel’s Joan of Arc
Excerpt:
Hannah Senesh might have been 90 years old today, had she lived past the age of 23 when she was convicted of treason and executed by a German firing squad. Although a Hungarian Jew that had emigrated to Palestine, she returned to Europe to take part in a dangerous military plan to rescue Jews from Hungary. She kept a beautifully-written diary from the age of 13 until the day of her death, and, to this day, it is widely read in Israel, where she is a national heroine.
Hannah Szenes, often anglicised to Senesh, was born in Budapest on 17 July 1921, the daughter of playwright Bela Senesh (who died when Hannah was about six) and his wife Katherine. She wrote plays for school productions, and developed a considerable talent for poetry. She attended a Protestant high school which accepted Jews, where one of her teachers was the Chief Rabbi of Budapest, an ardent Zionist. As a result of his influence, she joined a Zionist youth group, and then moved to study at an agricultural school in Palestine.
Excerpt:
Hannah Senesh might have been 90 years old today, had she lived past the age of 23 when she was convicted of treason and executed by a German firing squad. Although a Hungarian Jew that had emigrated to Palestine, she returned to Europe to take part in a dangerous military plan to rescue Jews from Hungary. She kept a beautifully-written diary from the age of 13 until the day of her death, and, to this day, it is widely read in Israel, where she is a national heroine.
Hannah Szenes, often anglicised to Senesh, was born in Budapest on 17 July 1921, the daughter of playwright Bela Senesh (who died when Hannah was about six) and his wife Katherine. She wrote plays for school productions, and developed a considerable talent for poetry. She attended a Protestant high school which accepted Jews, where one of her teachers was the Chief Rabbi of Budapest, an ardent Zionist. As a result of his influence, she joined a Zionist youth group, and then moved to study at an agricultural school in Palestine.
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: December 2010
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: December 2010
Excerpt:
(The Tramp at Christmas by Anna Mary Robertson
“Grandma” Moses, 1860-1961, American painter)
“It will not bother me in the hour of death,” wrote C. S. Lewis in A Letter to an American Lady, “to reflect that I have been ‘had for a sucker’ by any number of impostors; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.”
THE BEGGAR
He begged and shuffled on;
Sometimes he stopped to throw
A bit and benison¹
To sparrows in the snow,
And clap a frozen ear
And curse the bitter cold.
God send the good man cheer
And quittal² hundredfold.
~ Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962), English poet
¹ benison – blessing
² quittal – acquittal, forgiveness
Excerpt:
(The Tramp at Christmas by Anna Mary Robertson
“Grandma” Moses, 1860-1961, American painter)
“It will not bother me in the hour of death,” wrote C. S. Lewis in A Letter to an American Lady, “to reflect that I have been ‘had for a sucker’ by any number of impostors; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.”
THE BEGGAR
He begged and shuffled on;
Sometimes he stopped to throw
A bit and benison¹
To sparrows in the snow,
And clap a frozen ear
And curse the bitter cold.
God send the good man cheer
And quittal² hundredfold.
~ Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962), English poet
¹ benison – blessing
² quittal – acquittal, forgiveness
SHIRT OF FLAME: FAITH AND THE SURPRISE ENDING
SHIRT OF FLAME: FAITH AND THE SURPRISE ENDING
Excerpt:
Linda: You once quoted Mother Teresa, “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” What are some examples of small, loving, gestures that you feel might propel us towards less destruction and more compassion in our lives?
Heather: Wishing people well in our hearts, especially people who have hurt us. Letting people off the hook. Saying, “ I’m sorry”, saying “That hurt”, saying “ I value your friendship”. Noticing small beautiful things like a branch or the shape of a bowl. When in doubt, saying nothing. Praying to be relieved of the desire to be the favorite, to be consulted. Not taking our anger out on the people who can’t fight back—the telemarketer, the person driving ahead of us on the freeway, the tech person we get to after an hour on hold. Setting people free to live their own lives and realizing that as soon as we get focused on someone else’s life and how we think it should be changed, we’re not fully inhabiting or living our own lives.
Excerpt:
Linda: You once quoted Mother Teresa, “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” What are some examples of small, loving, gestures that you feel might propel us towards less destruction and more compassion in our lives?
Heather: Wishing people well in our hearts, especially people who have hurt us. Letting people off the hook. Saying, “ I’m sorry”, saying “That hurt”, saying “ I value your friendship”. Noticing small beautiful things like a branch or the shape of a bowl. When in doubt, saying nothing. Praying to be relieved of the desire to be the favorite, to be consulted. Not taking our anger out on the people who can’t fight back—the telemarketer, the person driving ahead of us on the freeway, the tech person we get to after an hour on hold. Setting people free to live their own lives and realizing that as soon as we get focused on someone else’s life and how we think it should be changed, we’re not fully inhabiting or living our own lives.
First Known When Lost: "Some Corner Of The Heart Where Love For Living Thing Can Find A Place"
First Known When Lost: "Some Corner Of The Heart Where Love For Living Thing Can Find A Place"
Excerpt:
...howe'er bereft,
Scorned, or neglected, fear not such a dearth.
Though poor and destitute of friends thou art,
Perhaps the sole survivor of thy race,
One to whom Heaven assigns that mournful part
The utmost solitude of age to face,
Still shall be left some corner of the heart
Where Love for living Thing can find a place.
William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works (1849).
Excerpt:
...howe'er bereft,
Scorned, or neglected, fear not such a dearth.
Though poor and destitute of friends thou art,
Perhaps the sole survivor of thy race,
One to whom Heaven assigns that mournful part
The utmost solitude of age to face,
Still shall be left some corner of the heart
Where Love for living Thing can find a place.
William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works (1849).
Anecdotal Evidence: `The Work of Seasons and of Hands Unseen'
Anecdotal Evidence: `The Work of Seasons and of Hands Unseen'
Excerpt:
If a garden implies order, the backyard is less garden than semi–domesticated nature. A post oak pruned for horizontal sprawl and shade grows from a hole in the wooden deck. Twenty feet to the northeast stands a loblolly pine, suggesting an oversized bottle brush. Along the vine-covered fence grow Southern wax-myrtle, parsley hawthorn, oleanders, papyrus, two palmettos with trunks like artichokes carved from wood, and two sego palms – few flowers and nothing edible by humans.
As I write, ...
Excerpt:
`The Work of Seasons and of Hands Unseen'
As I write, ...
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Who Is My Neighbor? Part II: Domestic Violence
excerpt:
The reality is that no one is immune to domestic violence. It exists in our poorest and in our wealthiest communities, and affects women and men of all colors, creeds, and orientations. ---------------
Here are just a few of the numbers for you:
~ 1 in 4 women report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabitating partner, or date at some time in their lifetime.[1]
~ Approximately 4.8 million intimate partner rapes and physical assaults are perpetrated against U.S. women annually, and approximately 2.9 million intimate partner physical assaults are committed against U.S. men annually.[2]
~ In one 24-hour period in 2010, more than 70,648 victims of domestic violence and their children received life-saving services from local domestic violence programs. Domestic violence experts answered more than 23,522 emergency hotline calls. In one day alone, 9,541 requests for services went unmet, largely due to lack of funding.[3]
~ According to data from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), even LGBTQ domestic/intimate partner violence reports rose 15% between 2008 and 2009, and it is a pervasive social problem at a time when LGBTQ-specific programs are losing staff or closing altogether due to the economic crisis.[4]
While this data is some of the most current available, it’s important to remember that, unfortunately, it potentially underestimates the magnitude of intimate partner violence, because domestic violence often goes unreported... h/t Sanctuary of the Abused
[But while we are cavorting about wearing 'skirts'...how about locking arms [You know sheltering, embracing, loving, protecting, helping, comforting,...let's see, any other ways we can help?] with those 'getting beat up' because they are women...That might be a 'loving touch', huh? Oh, no, we 'might get involved' and 'be touched' ourselves!]
Adoro te Devote: The Truth About God's Love
Adoro te Devote: The Truth About God's Love
Excerpt:
While I don't normally read or pray the "Psalm-Prayer" after every Psalm, today one portion of it from the Office caught my attention:
That line spoke volumes to me; we are, in fact, weighed down with sin, and only God's great mercy can relieve the crushing burden. Note in the prayer that we don't ask only for a little mercy, but boldly, we ask for what Our Lord has provided through the Cross: the FULLNESS of His mercy.
In prayer, even though we are "weighed down with sin", we still go to Him, prodigal children, humbly demanding our birthright.
It was t hen that it struck me more profoundly than it ever has before; we have nothing...
[None of us is EVER more than we were 'when we first began'...ALL the rest, forever, is 'amazing grace'. Forget that and you are lost.]
Excerpt:
While I don't normally read or pray the "Psalm-Prayer" after every Psalm, today one portion of it from the Office caught my attention:
"We, your children, are weighed down with sin; give us the fullness of your mercy."
That line spoke volumes to me; we are, in fact, weighed down with sin, and only God's great mercy can relieve the crushing burden. Note in the prayer that we don't ask only for a little mercy, but boldly, we ask for what Our Lord has provided through the Cross: the FULLNESS of His mercy.
In prayer, even though we are "weighed down with sin", we still go to Him, prodigal children, humbly demanding our birthright.
It was t hen that it struck me more profoundly than it ever has before; we have nothing...
[None of us is EVER more than we were 'when we first began'...ALL the rest, forever, is 'amazing grace'. Forget that and you are lost.]
Who Is My Neighbor?
John's account of Jesus healing the blind man offers a closer look at several cases of spiritual blindness, cautioning readers not to miss the chance to help others.
John chapter 9 begins with Jesus passing by the blind man. "As Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.'” (John 9:1-4)Instead of focusing on what they might do to help the man in his need, the disciples wasted time trying to assign blame. They spoke as though they were above the situation, not face-to-face with it.
Jesus Heals the Blind Man
"When He (Jesus) had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam'...so he went and washed, and came back seeing." (vs. 6-8)-------------------
I remember as a child the story of the boy who cried because he did not have a new pair of shoes, then he saw a man who had no shoes. The man who had no shoes cried until he saw a man who had no feet. Today perhaps we should forgo castigating someone who has no skirt and get off our backsides [not the multitudinous agencies we 'assign' to do our alms' service for us] but for each one of us to 'feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort those who mourn, visit the sick, take in those who are pregnant, shelter the homeless, befriend and mentor the sinner...' Love your neighbor as yourself.
Who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, "There was a man..." Oh, you know the Good Samaritan story in the Bible, don't you? Oh, and don't forget the Prodigal Son, either. And, go tell Peter....And, Jesus saith unto her, Mary...
thirteenpetalledrose: Spiritual Eyes
Excerpt:
This Tuesday, July 19th, is the Fast of Tammuz beloved and marks the beginning of the three weeks of mourning. The purpose of such fasts in the Jewish calendar according to Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov's book, OUR HERITAGE, is "to awaken hearts toward repentance through recalling the misdeeds of our forefathers, misdeeds that lead to calamities". It is also a time for introspection into our own lives to see the places where we have fallen short of the potential that G*D has for us. The fast is observed from the break of dawn till sunset. It is also customary to give to charity. ...
This Tuesday, July 19th, is the Fast of Tammuz beloved and marks the beginning of the three weeks of mourning. The purpose of such fasts in the Jewish calendar according to Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov's book, OUR HERITAGE, is "to awaken hearts toward repentance through recalling the misdeeds of our forefathers, misdeeds that lead to calamities". It is also a time for introspection into our own lives to see the places where we have fallen short of the potential that G*D has for us. The fast is observed from the break of dawn till sunset. It is also customary to give to charity. ...
Medicare Fraud in the US: The Castro Connection | Babalú Blog
Medicare Fraud in the US: The Castro Connection | Babalú Blog
Medicare fraud is rampant in the U.S., and by far South Florida holds the dubious distinction of leading the nation in that area. And in my opinion, it is no coincidence that an inordinate amount of Cuban American medicare fraud fugitives have found refuge in Castro's Cuba. Where there is smoke, there is usually fire, and when your nose encounters putrid odor, it usually emanates from a source known to stink....
[Well, Christians, are you ready for your proper role? The corporal and spiritual works of mercy for your families, your neighbors, your city? It is now. Love one another as I have loved you. Exclude no one.]
Medicare fraud is rampant in the U.S., and by far South Florida holds the dubious distinction of leading the nation in that area. And in my opinion, it is no coincidence that an inordinate amount of Cuban American medicare fraud fugitives have found refuge in Castro's Cuba. Where there is smoke, there is usually fire, and when your nose encounters putrid odor, it usually emanates from a source known to stink....
[Well, Christians, are you ready for your proper role? The corporal and spiritual works of mercy for your families, your neighbors, your city? It is now. Love one another as I have loved you. Exclude no one.]
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Patum Peperium: I've been too kind to David Brooks.
Patum Peperium: I've been too kind to David Brooks.
[My response to David Brooks:
These people are cowards. They are ignorant of the blessings of 'hard things'. So, when they 'get there' they will go out as empty and as spineless as they have lived. For they never loved.]
[My response to David Brooks:
· people run away from burdens these days. There's nothing they hate more than to be burdened or tied. This accounts for this perverse cult of youthfulness: youth is in itself the yet unburdened state - so we worship youthful looks as the sign and symbol of that craving, almost the promise of its fulfillment. But to attempt to keep it for ever only leads to sterility in every sense: monstrous perversion of youth, destined as blossom of the fruit...
o Broken Lights Diaries 1953-54
But, personally I like Annie Dillard's response to those 'lobotomists' of the spirit..."You first."These people are cowards. They are ignorant of the blessings of 'hard things'. So, when they 'get there' they will go out as empty and as spineless as they have lived. For they never loved.]
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Come the Wild, Wild Weather
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Come the Wild, Wild Weather
(Yellow Rose by Pierre-Joseph Redouté,
1759-1840, French botanist and watercolorist)
In the language of flowers, the yellow rose represents friendship....
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Come the Wild, Wild Weather
(Yellow Rose by Pierre-Joseph Redouté,
1759-1840, French botanist and watercolorist)
In the language of flowers, the yellow rose represents friendship....
Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner
Her first novel, A Start in Life, was published in 1981. Hotel du Lac (1984), won the Booker Prize for Fiction and was adapted for television in 1986. The Bay of Angels (2001), concerns a single woman coming to terms with a new sense of freedom when her widowed mother re-marries and moves abroad. The Rules of Engagement (2003), her twenty-second novel, is a story about friendship and choices.
A Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge, Anita Brookner lives in London. She was made a CBE in 1990. Her most recent non-fiction book is Romanticism and Its Discontents (2000), and her most recent novel is Strangers (2009)
Biography
Novelist and art historian, Dr Anita Brookner, was born in London on 16 July 1928. She studied at King's College, London and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She spent three years studying in Paris as a postgraduate, and went on to lecture in art at Reading University and the Courtauld Institute, where she specialized in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art. She became the first woman to be named as Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge University in 1967.Her first novel, A Start in Life, was published in 1981. Hotel du Lac (1984), won the Booker Prize for Fiction and was adapted for television in 1986. The Bay of Angels (2001), concerns a single woman coming to terms with a new sense of freedom when her widowed mother re-marries and moves abroad. The Rules of Engagement (2003), her twenty-second novel, is a story about friendship and choices.
A Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge, Anita Brookner lives in London. She was made a CBE in 1990. Her most recent non-fiction book is Romanticism and Its Discontents (2000), and her most recent novel is Strangers (2009)
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Thought for the day ...
Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.
- Anita Brookner, born on this date in 1928
Friday, July 15, 2011
A Common Reader: The Peloponnesian War summary
A Common Reader: The Peloponnesian War summary
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
(W. H. Auden, from "September 1, 1939")
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
(W. H. Auden, from "September 1, 1939")
Anecdotal Evidence: `What, in the Beginning, We Are Not'
Anecdotal Evidence: `What, in the Beginning, We Are Not'
Excerpt:
...“He's still as interested in ideas and literature as he's ever been, though he said again that he's reading few new books (mostly those of a few favorite crime fiction writers) and is doing a lot of re-reading.”...
Excerpt:
...“He's still as interested in ideas and literature as he's ever been, though he said again that he's reading few new books (mostly those of a few favorite crime fiction writers) and is doing a lot of re-reading.”...
-
I think reading is, if not a skill, something you need to do regularly, in order to get the most from it; with all the instant, less mentally demanding distractions we have now, fewer and fewer people find the time to read deeply, unfortunately.
Anecdotal Evidence: `Pilots Who Are Their Own Craft'
Anecdotal Evidence: `Pilots Who Are Their Own Craft'
Excerpt:
Dozens of dragonflies are flitting about the engineering quadrangle when I arrive in the morning. The sun is still low but already blinding. Light glints off wings and abdomens, turning them into harmless (to humans) tracer bullets ricocheting over the grass...Pantala travels 11,000 miles across the Indian Ocean from India to South West Africa, twice a year.”...
Strength and beauty linked is always impressive, in insect or poem. Pantala is the Ur-dragonfly, a perfect killer, so well-adapted it has colonized the world...” I can’t imagine catching a dragonfly in flight with my hands, or grasping a good poem after the first read.
Excerpt:
Dozens of dragonflies are flitting about the engineering quadrangle when I arrive in the morning. The sun is still low but already blinding. Light glints off wings and abdomens, turning them into harmless (to humans) tracer bullets ricocheting over the grass...Pantala travels 11,000 miles across the Indian Ocean from India to South West Africa, twice a year.”...
Strength and beauty linked is always impressive, in insect or poem. Pantala is the Ur-dragonfly, a perfect killer, so well-adapted it has colonized the world...” I can’t imagine catching a dragonfly in flight with my hands, or grasping a good poem after the first read.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Creative Minority Report: From Satanist to Saint?
Creative Minority Report: From Satanist to Saint?
link to the Catholic Herald UK
Angelo Stagnaro visits the resting place of Blessed Bartolo Longo, the turbulent occultist who become a champion of the rosary..
link to the Catholic Herald UK
Angelo Stagnaro visits the resting place of Blessed Bartolo Longo, the turbulent occultist who become a champion of the rosary..
Monday, July 11, 2011
First Known When Lost: Life Explained, Part Eighteen: "An Aimless Unallayed Desire"
First Known When Lost: Life Explained, Part Eighteen: "An Aimless Unallayed Desire"
Excerpt:
Destiny
Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
-- Ask of the Powers that sport with man!
They yoked in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurled him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallayed Desire.
Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852).
Excerpt:
Destiny
Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
-- Ask of the Powers that sport with man!
They yoked in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurled him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallayed Desire.
Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852).
Sunday, July 10, 2011
A life in writing: Cynthia Ozick | Books | The Guardian
A life in writing: Cynthia Ozick | Books | The Guardian
Excerpt:
Her best known piece of writing is the 1989 short story, "The Shawl", with its furious first line: "Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell." It describes the journey of a woman and two children into the Nazi death camps. It is short, brutal, hallucinatory. She wrote it, she says, in a way she has never written anything, before or since. "I'm not a mystic, I don't believe in any of that. I've been on the side of rationalism. I had an experience, just the first five pages – I hate to say it, it's the kind of absurd thing that I mock – that I wasn't writing it, that it was dictated. Just for those five pages."
Excerpt:
Her best known piece of writing is the 1989 short story, "The Shawl", with its furious first line: "Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell." It describes the journey of a woman and two children into the Nazi death camps. It is short, brutal, hallucinatory. She wrote it, she says, in a way she has never written anything, before or since. "I'm not a mystic, I don't believe in any of that. I've been on the side of rationalism. I had an experience, just the first five pages – I hate to say it, it's the kind of absurd thing that I mock – that I wasn't writing it, that it was dictated. Just for those five pages."
As a five-year-old in Russia, Ozick's father recalled being locked with other Jews from his community in the synagogue, which the mob gathered outside and threatened to burn. (They were rescued by a priest from a neighbouring village.) Ozick had, by contrast, an uneventful upbringing and describes herself as a "garden variety New Yorker"; it took some nerve, I should think, to have written from the point of view of Rosa in the story, who sees her baby starved and murdered, thrown up against an electric fence by a camp guard. When "The Shawl" was published a psychiatrist wrote to Ozick assuming that she was herself a survivor. She wrote back to correct him and "he wrote something very strange; he accused me of lying, said I was delusional, told me that his patients, many of them, were so rattled and destroyed by their experiences, that they too denied this event. It amazed me, simply amazed me, for someone to make such an assumption. That really brought home to me the sense of [my own] presumption."
On the other hand, she says, "All writing is presumption of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being."...
Saturday, July 9, 2011
First Known When Lost: "The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain"
First Known When Lost: "The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain"
Excerpt:
The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactnesses
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
Wallace Stevens, "The Rock" (1954), Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America 1997).
Excerpt:
The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactnesses
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
Wallace Stevens, "The Rock" (1954), Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America 1997).
Friday, July 8, 2011
The Dark Center of Modern Society: Tate
Deep Illness of the Modern Soul
Lear: Get thee glass eyes,
And, like the scurvy politician,
seem
To see the things thou dost
not. Now,
now, now, now,
Pull off my boots; harder,
harder: so.
Edgar: O, matter and impertinency
mixed!
Reason in madness!
-----------------
On Dante….”sight is the king of the senses and that the human body, which like other organisms lives by touch,…” Tate, The Angelic Imagination
What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? ~Allen Tate
Carried to the heart? ~Allen Tate
On ‘Essays on Four Decades’ by Allen Tate
Tate "raised issues that still need to be confronted in our society." Louise Cowan continues in her introduction to this edition:
"[Tate's] concern ... was with one theme: the 'deep illness of the modern mind.' 'The mind,' he wrote, 'is the dark center from which one may see coming the darkness gathering outside us.'
"This darkness, as he has indicated ... stems from the West's retreat from its own fundamental principles. A society can hardly revert to a healthy paganism, he once wrote, after it has had the Christian revelation. Following a refection of the brilliant synthesis of Medieval Christendom, what was ahead for Western culture but abstraction and fragmentation? Having once known the higher reality, how can a culture be vital and productive with a lesser view?...
"One discerns in all his work ... that Tate is himself that marginal figure, standing between two epochs, lamenting the loss of an age of faith and dreading the oncoming darkness.... It was given to Tate to visualize the end of modernity."
Allen Tate guides us into the core of Western thought.
"[Tate's] concern ... was with one theme: the 'deep illness of the modern mind.' 'The mind,' he wrote, 'is the dark center from which one may see coming the darkness gathering outside us.'
"This darkness, as he has indicated ... stems from the West's retreat from its own fundamental principles. A society can hardly revert to a healthy paganism, he once wrote, after it has had the Christian revelation. Following a refection of the brilliant synthesis of Medieval Christendom, what was ahead for Western culture but abstraction and fragmentation? Having once known the higher reality, how can a culture be vital and productive with a lesser view?...
"One discerns in all his work ... that Tate is himself that marginal figure, standing between two epochs, lamenting the loss of an age of faith and dreading the oncoming darkness.... It was given to Tate to visualize the end of modernity."
Allen Tate guides us into the core of Western thought.
……………….
The human place is a soulful place — a place consisting of multiplicity, richness, and ambiguity. The horizontality of communitas is exemplified in the face-to-face encounter.
When we insist upon one language, one understanding, we build our tower of Babel. Such a monstrous enterprise lacks humility, for the hegemony of the One Voice drowns out the Saying of the many. With the ego-centric attempt to construct a metaphysical language, we erect a tower which attempts to leave behind the messy, earthy, paradoxical nature of encounter…
In his estrangement, his dwelling place -- his origin -- becomes uncanny. He returns with boons for his community, and his dwelling place is enriched by the strange treasures he bears along with him on the festive return home. The journey outward is not in the service of an ethereal escape from the human realm; rather, Janus’ adventure into the strange is in the service of a transformation of the ground of his dwelling.
In “Theorizing, Journeying, Dwelling,” Bernd Jager writes:
The journey cut off from the sphere of dwelling becomes aimless wandering, it deteriorates into mere distraction or even chaos or fugue. The journey requires a place of origin as the very background against which the figures of a new world can emerge...To be without origin, to be homeless is to be blind. On the other hand, the sphere of dwelling cannot maintain its vitality without the renewal made possible by the path. A community without outlook atrophies, becomes decadent and incestuous. Incest is primarily the refusal of the path; it therefore is a refusal of the future and a suicidal attempt to live entirely in the past. The sphere of dwelling, insofar as it is not moribund is interpenetrated by journeying (249).
Here, the theorist is described “as a recipient of the divine message and as a faithful transmitter of that message back to the people” (236). The poet, then, is a theoretician in the truest, most original sense of the word.
The poet is the dwelling-venturer who discovers the Divine not by rising above materiality, but rather by a deepening of experience. Allen Tate makes the distinction between the angelic imagination and the symbolic imagination. While the angelic imagination “tries to disintegrate or to circumvent the image in the illusory pursuit of essence,” the symbolic imagination “conducts an action through analogy, of the human to the divine, of the natural to the supernatural, of the low to the high, of time to eternity” (427). The symbolic imagination begins within the human place, and through the soul-making of de-literalizing the image, the poet works to show the traces of the Divine in the concrete description of the mundane. The poet who imagines symbolically cultivates the dwelling-place of the human, and she does not mistake herself for a god. Instead, she discovers the gods in the…dance…Symbolic Imagination
Men in a dehumanized society may communicate, but they cannot live in full com-
munion. ~Allen Tate, The Forlorn Demon
munion. ~Allen Tate, The Forlorn Demon
On Anne Roche Muggeridge and her death.
Review of her The Gates of Hell book: Those already familiar with an earlier work by Malcolm Muggeridge's courageous, Canadian-born daughter-in-law, titled The Gates of Hell, will know what to expect from this latest study of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. (The American edition is, more accurately, subtitled Revolution in the Catholic Church.)
Despite a succession of devastating accounts of spiritual corruption and decline in sections of the Catholic Church in the Western world by the likes of James Hitchcock, Michael Davies, Msgr George Kelly and Christopher Derrick, the silent majority of Church-attending Catholics seems still blissfully unaware of any serious crisis of faith.
If Anne Roche Muggeridge's latest book fails to arouse more of the Catholic electorate - or of that minority which still reads religious literature - it seems nothing ever will.
...
, to realise, that a full-scale revolution has been completed within the Church, a new Reformation institutionalised, involving a sweeping takeover of Catholic structures with a "liberal consensus" created, and dissent made orthodoxy. At the same time, non-revolutionised Catholics have "begun to behave like exiles".
…………………..
Robert Lowell: Under the influence of Allen Tate and the New Critics, he wrote rigorously formal poetry that drew praise for its exceptionally powerful handling of meter and rhyme. Lowell was politically involved—he became a conscientious objector during the Second World War and was imprisoned as a result, and actively protested against the war in Vietnam—and his personal life was full of marital and psychological turmoil. He suffered from severe episodes of manic depression, for which he was repeatedly hospitalized.
Lowell in the mid-fifties began to write more directly from personal experience, and loosened his adherence to traditional meter and form. The result was a watershed collection, Life Studies (1959), which forever changed the landscape of modern poetry.
Considered by many to be the most important poet in English of the second half of the twentieth century, Lowell continued to develop his work with sometimes uneven results, all along defining the restless center of American poetry, until his sudden death from a heart attack at age 60.
Considered by many to be the most important poet in English of the second half of the twentieth century, Lowell continued to develop his work with sometimes uneven results, all along defining the restless center of American poetry, until his sudden death from a heart attack at age 60.
In Your Weakness, In My Weakness
Reading 1
2 Cor 11:18, 21-30
Brothers and sisters:
Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast.
To my shame I say that we were too weak!
But what anyone dares to boast of
(I am speaking in foolishness)
I also dare.
Are they Hebrews? So am I.
Are they children of Israel? So am I.
Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.
Are they ministers of Christ?
(I am talking like an insane person).
I am still more, with far greater labors,
far more imprisonments, far worse beatings,
and numerous brushes with death.
Five times at the hands of the Jews
I received forty lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned,
three times I was shipwrecked,
I passed a night and a day on the deep;
on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers,
dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race,
dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city,
dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea,
dangers among false brothers;
in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights,
through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings,
through cold and exposure.
And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me
of my anxiety for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I am not weak?
Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?
If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
And the saga continues on into the next day.
Brothers and sisters:
I must boast; not that it is profitable,
but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago
(whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows),
was caught up to the third heaven.
And I know that this man
(whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows)
was caught up into Paradise and heard ineffable things,
which no one may utter.
About this man I will boast,
but about myself I will not boast, except about my weaknesses.
Although if I should wish to boast, I would not be foolish,
for I would be telling the truth.
But I refrain, so that no one may think more of me
than what he sees in me or hears from me
because of the abundance of the revelations.
Therefore, that I might not become too elated,
a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.
Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness.”
I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.
Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and constraints,
for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong.
============
2 Cor 11:18, 21-30
Brothers and sisters:
Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast.
To my shame I say that we were too weak!
But what anyone dares to boast of
(I am speaking in foolishness)
I also dare.
Are they Hebrews? So am I.
Are they children of Israel? So am I.
Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.
Are they ministers of Christ?
(I am talking like an insane person).
I am still more, with far greater labors,
far more imprisonments, far worse beatings,
and numerous brushes with death.
Five times at the hands of the Jews
I received forty lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned,
three times I was shipwrecked,
I passed a night and a day on the deep;
on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers,
dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race,
dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city,
dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea,
dangers among false brothers;
in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights,
through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings,
through cold and exposure.
And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me
of my anxiety for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I am not weak?
Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?
If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
And the saga continues on into the next day.
Brothers and sisters:
I must boast; not that it is profitable,
but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago
(whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows),
was caught up to the third heaven.
And I know that this man
(whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows)
was caught up into Paradise and heard ineffable things,
which no one may utter.
About this man I will boast,
but about myself I will not boast, except about my weaknesses.
Although if I should wish to boast, I would not be foolish,
for I would be telling the truth.
But I refrain, so that no one may think more of me
than what he sees in me or hears from me
because of the abundance of the revelations.
Therefore, that I might not become too elated,
a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.
Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness.”
I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.
Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and constraints,
for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong.
============
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)