Fountain of Elias: Death of St.Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face

Fountain of Elias: Death of St.Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face
Excerpt:
From Terry Nelson:

Little Therese died on September 30, 1897 at 7:20 in the evening, after a prolonged agony...

Poet Kofi Awoonor is among those confirmed dead in the attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.

          ...along with his son...

                                                    Rest in God's peace.

Songs of Sorrow

by

Kofi Awoonor 

Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus

It has led me among the sharps of the forest

Returning is not possible

And going forward is a great difficulty

The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faeces

Into which I have stepped

When I clean it cannot go.

I am on the world’s extreme corner,

I am not sitting in the row with the eminent

But those who are lucky

Sit in the middle and forget

I am on the world’s extreme corner

 I can only go beyond and forget.

My people, I have been somewhere

If I turn here, the rain beats me

If I turn there the sun burns me

The firewood of this world

Is for only those who can take heart

That is why not all can gather it.

The world is not good for anybody

But you are so happy with your fate;

Alas! the travelers are back

All covered with debt.

Something has happened to me

The things so great that I cannot weep

[...]

I have wandered on the wilderness

The great wilderness men call life

The rain has beaten me,

And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives

I shall go beyond and rest.

I have no kin and no brother,

Death has made war upon our house...

'They Have Forgotten Who They Are'

Orwell's Picnic ~: What else is art good for?         [Reprint]
Excerpt:
                                                       

In Western societies, particularly in the post-colonial Anglo nations, we are suffering a terrible crisis of self-understanding. One of the things that struck me the hardest when I finally went back to England as an adult was that the English seemed to have forgotten how to be English. They have forgotten who they are. The older ones seemed to remember but appear to have learned to be ashamed of it. It was a very strange thing and I marked it at the time as a terrible evil. A society that doesn't have a self-understanding, doesn't have a sense of who and what it is, can't be one that will survive for long.

One of the things that art does, particularly painting, is to help define a cultural identity. For obvious reasons this is especially true of Italy. I'm still working my way around Vasari's Lives of Artists and it is clear that the world of painting for three of the most important centuries of art were utterly dominated by Italians (as we call them now).

But if we want to know who we are, how we think of things, how we see the world and what it means to us, painting is obviously the most direct and simple means. I think if the English were to revisit their artistic heritage, there would be great gains in re-establishing a solid national identity...

Truth and Identity (My addendum)

[The abbess at a well-known Benedictine monastery related that it is only in the crucible of suffering where God chooses to reveal to us who we are. In Torah therapy there are three basic relationships that are the foundations of our being in relating to God and the world around us:

---there are those with whom we work and interact with in our outer culture

---there are those closer to us: siblings and close friends

---the most important and defining relationship, however, are our parents

What I have discovered is that all of these and how we view ourselves must be incorporated in the truth that we live After the Fall. This is no trite statement of challenge. There are critical, deadly reasons the enemy through Bultmann and de Chardin's heresies tried to dismiss the Garden of Adam and Eve as myth. If it is myth then sin doesn't really exist. This results in the fundamental denial of our very being as that which is created by God. I guess I was just too stubborn to ever believe that idiocy which required way more 'faith'. Each of us is a created, unique daughter or son of Almighty God. The enemy hates that fact.

After the fall as descendants of Adam and Eve we bear the effects of that rebellion within ourselves as 'fallible' and subject to death. Adam and Eve were clothed by God from the beginning. From the beginning the enemy has challenged our 'world view'. Hilary White is right: We have forgotten who we are.

The modernism(s) thrown at us are just variations on the central drama in that Garden that always whisper the lie: 'God didn't REALLY say that...did He?'

After the Fall sin crouches at the door for each human being at every moment. We sin. That sin affects not only us but everyone. God as man died on the Cross to save us from sin. If we deny the true beginnings we deny reality within ourselves and in all that occurs in the world around us.

No matter who our earthly parents were they are embedded into our being which makes the rising misogyny and child/woman abuse an ungodly aspect of our world today. The family is the PRIMARY spiritual and human responsibility for each man and woman. Each man is called to be a spiritual leader and lover of his own family. He will be called to account for that which he does or does not do for his wife and his children. Did he love his wife as Christ loved the Church? Did he take the spiritual leadership of his sons and daughters leading them to God and reflecting that relationship in his daily life? Did she love her husband and her children? Did she build a nurturing home?

Although Carl Jung refuted Christianity he did point out one important spiritual concept in discerning a true shepherd in the Church. As the story goes a Christian leader was extolled to him as being unbelievably righteous and upstanding. No fault could be found in his leadership. The man was introduced to him. He asked to visit his home and meet his wife which was granted. In that visit Jung discovered the great sickness and evil in the man. Who in your world is forced to carryyour shadow, your anger, your guilt, your madness, your perversion of truth?

Many, many wives, and children, become the scapegoats of males who hate women, who refuse to grow up and take the spiritual leadership of their families, who blame their wives for the emptiness and miseries in their souls and in their children. The basic evil of men not growing up is that of leaving their family members unprotected against attacks against each family member's soul. Just because a man doesn't agree with that assignment, like it, or rebels against it doesn't mean that the destruction won't take place---for generations. Instead of 'building up', cherishing, loving and protecting their wives and children, I find in ALL the families around me the men of the families denigrating, mocking, hating and resenting any helping of others in the family, berating women, and in many ways neglecting their wives and children. In every home I have lived in I find lying, pornography and violence.

Women are anointed by God for tenderness, love, mercy and nurturing. They are pro-creators of life itself. Bd. John Paul II not only respected women but recognized women are gifted with great wisdom in love and mercy. That gift can be destroyed with denigration and abuse, especially sexual abuse. As women are forced into a more 'sex object', demeaning role in our culture, their gifts too are forced into the background. Great, great harm and wounding occurs in the family because of this. Eros is a fundamental God-created gift of love and in its proper, protective place engenders life itself and great creativity.

There is no answer for each of us until we deal with our own father and mother in wisdom, love, forgiveness and truth. There is a profound reason for The Holy Family. There is a reason Jesus Christ, God-Man respected, cherished, loved and honored Mary, His Mother. And Scripture states that God is the 'father' of all the 'families' of the earth. We don't belong to just one small, tiny group. We are 'members' of many generations that we will meet, hopefully, in Heaven.

'What else is art good for? It is the gift of creativity. It is a gift of God who is calling out to us in our woundedness. We cannot be healed or be a beacon of hope until the 'fundamentals' of Truth are established. I cannot walk away from reality to establish some illusory spin which will only collapse.

"If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?" We must flee to the foot of the Cross.]

Our Lady of Sorrows

   Google Images

 My mother in heaven is mourning with her!

The Seven Sorrows (or Dolors) are events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary which are a popular devotion and are frequently depicted in art.^[1]

It is a common devotion for Catholics to say daily one Our Father and seven Hail Marys for each.

1.     The Prophecy of Simeon. (Luke 2:34-35) or the Circumcision of Christ

2.     The Flight into Egypt. (Matthew 2:13)

3.     The loss of the child Jesus in the Temple. (Luke 2:43-45)

4.     Mary meets Jesus on the way to Calvary.

5.     Jesus dies on the cross. (John 19:25)

6.     The piercing of the side of Jesus, and Mary's receiving the body of Jesus in her arms. (Matthew 27:57-59)

7.     The body of Jesus is placed in the tomb. (John 19:40-42)   [Wikipedia]

September 8th we celebrated the Nativity of our Lady and  September 12th, the Holy Name of

Mary. The entire Month of September honors Our Lady of Sorrows, today's memorial. 

Surrounding her children with her protective mantle as this blog reminds us.

Nuestra de Los Desamparados pray for us!

May 'you' rest in peace

Marbled stones' markings make truth an oblation
None may mar it, hide, torture or change its quotation.   ~(c) 8/15/10, ‘As the Screw Turns’
------------------

Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.

The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,

For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.

It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you,
That is woven and woven and waiting to be worn,

Neither as mask nor as garment but as a being,
Torn from insipid summer, for the mirror of cold,

Sitting beside your lamp, there citron to nibble
And coffee dribble . . . Frost is in the stubble.              ~Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942).

"Do Whatever He Tells You"

In honor of the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary
     

VERITATIS SPLENDOR

 
"Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5).     [h/t Abbey-Roads]

The Jew, the Samaritan, the Other, Me

In the Midst of the Fire

In the midst of the fire, on the slope of the North Face, I went on to be an explorer, a geographical surveyor. 

[I wrote these words in 2009 as I began a battle of dark exile.  The infamous sheer, frozen North Face with its screaming, icy winds are certainly no metaphor for healing—at least not usually.  But that is what is happening for me.  I was shocked at how crowded the trails are.  Sometimes as I pass a climber all we can do is nod at each other for each of us is frightfully clinging to every ledge, to every finger hold, to every toe hold available. Marine!:

After the war and paupers’ burials, we had more time for reflection and ritual.  Across the river, beneath the columned buildings, a forgotten man---honorably discharged.  I watched the small, older group quietly move in step, listened to the weeping chords with Taps on that cold November day in Arlington National Cemetery.  I was there for architecture and building; so, after respectful silence I remained to survey alone.

   Thus, another, so soon, was not easy to see, to take, as the larger marching group moved in, dress blues, cadenced drums, snapping orders, replacing the throbbing solitude.  It was not possible to ignore these people. Most were young.  On this cold day, November 6, 2009, they buried their own; Capt. David Seth Mitchell, USMC, 30 years old, killed in action in Afghanistan on October 26, 2009.  There were tears on war torn faces of the men in dress blue and a break in the chords of Taps.

 Jesus, give us, I begged, the wisdom and strength to get through this terrible wilderness.

I understood that we must be kind for every soul endures great suffering of its own, that we must have great love for each soul, beginning with the elect for His steps were always in compassion, mercy and Love.  

Each soul is a universe of its own.

  We must be sensitive to our neighbors’ sufferings whether of body, mind or soul.  You, O God, act toward us as we act toward others.  We must pray for great wisdom, prudence and love in dealing with others.  Silence is a powerful weapon, a language all its own. Interactions must be seasoned with encouragement.  We must never tritely interfere with the consciences of others.  A priest has the grace, bound to sacred secrecy, to hold in silent love the soul of another when that soul pours out his or her soul.

  

 I was not aware, until thrust into this storm, that souls are so closely united. “How much the sick and suffering, especially the dying, need our prayers and our compassionate love and service.”  

(The sisters would walk on by St. Faustina’s room as she endured thirst and pain which the sisters could have assuaged. One nun stood for an hour at the foot of St. Therese's bed as she was dying with a leering, mocking sneer.) 

  

There are no ‘little’ acts of compassion.  That day even the blazing, burnt copper aspens quaked in mourning, moaning in the bitter heavings of the cold winter wind.

Capt. David S. Mitchell, along with all who have perished in this war against the tyranny of terrorism , may you rest in peace.
                                                  _________

Winter’s Wall              

 Blood flows red, ne’er blue, tho’ darker shades staining years

Cadenced pulse, crashed waves, evergreen sappings pummel fears.

Cryin’ blue, stone gray, crimson tidals drenching earth.

Powdery mists softly kiss dew forms stilled from mirth.

Winter white cloaked mule and deer, ancient brick-stone wall,

Celebrates punctured arch gate, time-limned in stone’s fall.

Flecked granite, limestone, gneiss-ed lining, in blood strewn

Gentle tears, frozen, borne through terror, sculpted, hewn.

Vibrant, leaves, lively coursing veins, betray held hues;

Autumnal swirlings, wild wisks, thrilling life imbues.

Sleeping forms silent ‘neath soft moss, save single cross;

Memories, soul tunes, tender, marking sorrowed loss.

~(c) 9/22/10

We Are One: Changes

We Are One: Changes:
Desert Survival - World changes Morning sunshine beating down on my head, sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades, clear indicator...
          Some things we NEVER forget.
I watch the seasons pass, from the dusty grays and browns of summer to the dustier grays of winter, followed by an amazing riot of color each spring.  I changed jobs but not climbing the mountain. 

...I start to have trouble climbing the mountain.  I figured it was just fatigue from working a more demanding job.  September 2001 stands clear and ominous in most people’s minds.  The reports of crashing planes barely infringed on my depression.  I stare at the computer monitors in the photo lab; the images repeated over and over.  My mind doesn’t seem to grasp that I am watching people die.  The grayness in my mind doesn’t lift. ...
thankfully I switched to automatic pilot to trudge up the mountain.  I pondered on the tragedy of planes crashing in three different locations in one morning; so many suffered terrible losses.  Families ripped apart, in a matter of moments...

We Are One: Tell your story

We Are One: Tell your story:
You own everything that happened to you.  Tell your stories.  If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better...

CHOPIN: AN INVENTORY - Jorge de Sena - Poetry International

CHOPIN: AN INVENTORY - Jorge de Sena - Poetry International
Excerpt:

CHOPIN: AN INVENTORY

Almost sixty mazurkas; about thirty etudes;
two dozen preludes; a score of nocturnes;
some fifteen waltzes; over a dozen polonaises;
scherzos, improvisations, ballades, four of each;
three sonatas for piano; and two concertos for piano and orchestra,
one berceuse, one barcalole, one fantasy, one tarantella, etc.,
besides some seventeen songs for voice and piano; a fatal case of tuberculosis;
a talent for concertizing; many mundane successes; an unhappy passion;
a celebrated liaison with a famous woman; other assorted liaisons;
a country without sure borders or definite independence;
the French Europe of Romanticism; several friendships with the eminent;
and scarcely thirty-nine years of life. Others lived less, wrote more,
tasted more bitterly the classically bitter bread of exile, were ignored
or persecuted, died forsaken, didn’t linger in alcoves
or salons of glory, confined themselves less to the instrument they had mastered most,
and were exiled longer in suffering for a non-existent country..            ~Jorge de Sena

Living in the 'don't bother me' eras

He is our only hope, isn't He? And if He's not for us, who is He for? He came to heal those who suffer, after all, and suffering is the result of sin. My suffering is the result of my sinfulness and that of those around me, simple as that.

I suppose some people are fortunate enough not to need as much healing as others, but it seems to me indicative of our culture's fear of suffering that even we Catholics, who traditionally have had a deeper acceptance of the place of suffering in life, are offended by those who mourn.
~Pentimento
  ~h/t coyoteprime, Running 'Cause I Can't Fly

Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Mafiocracy...

Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Mafiocracy...: ... 'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie'