Stay In Touch -Have I not proven to you that I Am in the saving sinners business? -Jesus
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
A Spiritual Journey: Christians to Stand Out
A Spiritual Journey: Christians to Stand Out
Excerpt:
Today is the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In Reading 1 from Exodus 34, Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of commandments in his hands. The skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord. It made me see that an encounter with God must make us look different...
====================
Addendum:
Excerpt:
Today is the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In Reading 1 from Exodus 34, Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of commandments in his hands. The skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord. It made me see that an encounter with God must make us look different...
====================
Addendum:
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Compound Living
Compound Living
Excerpt:
Iranian photographer Ebrahim Noroozi’s portraits, about the life of a woman and 3-year-old daughter after her husband threw acid on their faces in the middle of the night, demands to be seen. The story won 1st in the 2013 stories category at the World Press Photo.
This still happens...
Excerpt:
Iranian photographer Ebrahim Noroozi’s portraits, about the life of a woman and 3-year-old daughter after her husband threw acid on their faces in the middle of the night, demands to be seen. The story won 1st in the 2013 stories category at the World Press Photo.
This still happens...
Monday, July 29, 2013
Abbey-Roads: The Pope doesn't give interviews... so who was that talking on the plane?
Abbey-Roads: The Pope doesn't give interviews... so who was that talking on the plane?
Excerpt:
"Allow yourself to be taught." - S. John of the Cross
Excerpt:
"Allow yourself to be taught." - S. John of the Cross
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Notes from PhD Land: On truth — War Poet — A Canadian Forces Artist Project by Suzanne Steele
Notes from PhD Land: On truth — War Poet — A Canadian Forces Artist Project by Suzanne Steele
Excerpt:
Well, well, well, so up next we come to Robert Graves that fantastical storyteller, spinner of word and life webs, love poet, war poet, memoirist, warrior of curled hair and curled nose and curled lips.
How is it then that I choose in this quest for defining/understanding truth in the Great War narrative (and indeed all war narrative), to read “Dear Roberto” – as Sassoon addresses Graves in Letter to Robert Graves an epistolary poem from the American Red Cross Hospital in 1918? Graves was economical with the truth, and lavish with the fantastical.
Famously, Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon combed Graves’s Goodbye To All That for factual errors and found plenty of whoppers embedded like land mines within the pages. Indeed Graves himself came to regret his hastily written memoir of the Great War, believing his stretched truth left scorched earth (it did).
Graves writes, that GTAT was “a reckless autobiography in which the war figured, but written with small consideration for anyone’s feelings.”
~Robert Graves on Goodbye To All That
(The Long Weekend, 216)
But as early as 1930, only months after publishing the memoir that would make him famous, Robert Graves comments on the semi-fictionalized memoir in a letter to the Times Literary Supplement:
Great latitude should therefore be allowed to a soldier who has since got his facts or dates mixed. I would even paradoxically say that the memoires of a man who went through some of the worst experiences are not truthful unless they contain a high proportion of falsities (TLS 1930)._
I remember sitting around the dinner table in the mess at Whistler during the Winter Olympics with the Commanding Officer of 3 VP. He asked me, “What’s the difference between a war story and a fairy tale?”
“A fairy tale begins, “Once upon a time…” and a war story begins, “Well there we were in the shit…”“.
Read on...
Excerpt:
Well, well, well, so up next we come to Robert Graves that fantastical storyteller, spinner of word and life webs, love poet, war poet, memoirist, warrior of curled hair and curled nose and curled lips.
How is it then that I choose in this quest for defining/understanding truth in the Great War narrative (and indeed all war narrative), to read “Dear Roberto” – as Sassoon addresses Graves in Letter to Robert Graves an epistolary poem from the American Red Cross Hospital in 1918? Graves was economical with the truth, and lavish with the fantastical.
Famously, Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon combed Graves’s Goodbye To All That for factual errors and found plenty of whoppers embedded like land mines within the pages. Indeed Graves himself came to regret his hastily written memoir of the Great War, believing his stretched truth left scorched earth (it did).
Graves writes, that GTAT was “a reckless autobiography in which the war figured, but written with small consideration for anyone’s feelings.”
~Robert Graves on Goodbye To All That
(The Long Weekend, 216)
But as early as 1930, only months after publishing the memoir that would make him famous, Robert Graves comments on the semi-fictionalized memoir in a letter to the Times Literary Supplement:
Great latitude should therefore be allowed to a soldier who has since got his facts or dates mixed. I would even paradoxically say that the memoires of a man who went through some of the worst experiences are not truthful unless they contain a high proportion of falsities (TLS 1930)._
I remember sitting around the dinner table in the mess at Whistler during the Winter Olympics with the Commanding Officer of 3 VP. He asked me, “What’s the difference between a war story and a fairy tale?”
“A fairy tale begins, “Once upon a time…” and a war story begins, “Well there we were in the shit…”“.
Read on...
Saturday, July 27, 2013
In Soviet Russia America, Internet search you! by Brian P. Kelly - The New Criterion
In Soviet Russia America, Internet search you!you! by Brian P. Kelly
Excerpt:
The NSA keeps telling us that they aren’t collecting the Internet data of U.S. citizens or individuals living in America. But, you ask, what about the data from Boundless Informant—the NSA’s internal analytics tool which can break down surveillance by specific country and surveillance program—that lists almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence gathered from U.S. computer networks in March? Or the fact that training materials for the NSA say that accidental collection of U.S. content is “nothing to worry about”? Well, you’ll just have to trust them on it. They promise that they'll play nice and not collect our data. And they’re a trustworthy bunch over there, it’s not like they would ever lie (especially under oath in a Senate hearing)....
Excerpt:
The NSA keeps telling us that they aren’t collecting the Internet data of U.S. citizens or individuals living in America. But, you ask, what about the data from Boundless Informant—the NSA’s internal analytics tool which can break down surveillance by specific country and surveillance program—that lists almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence gathered from U.S. computer networks in March? Or the fact that training materials for the NSA say that accidental collection of U.S. content is “nothing to worry about”? Well, you’ll just have to trust them on it. They promise that they'll play nice and not collect our data. And they’re a trustworthy bunch over there, it’s not like they would ever lie (especially under oath in a Senate hearing)....
Friday, July 26, 2013
A time to remember: PTSD & Anniversaries - Life after Trauma
A time to remember: PTSD & Anniversaries - Life after Trauma
Excerpt:
I hadn't remembered yet what today - or yesterday - was. I had too many things on my mind: my ailing mother, plans for a trip back to Michigan, caring for my recovering son, and a dozen more. I had talked to my therapist yesterday, the day of our anniversary, and didn't think of the date then, either. I did tell her that I'd been feeling like I had an itch under my skin. I attributed the edginess to worries about my trip home. Now, I realize that it was probably about the anniversaries all the time. Anniversaries are potent triggers for PTSD. Sometimes, we're aware of the date and sometimes, like today, feelings ambush us. I still don't know what caused me to remember the significance of today and yesterday's dates. One moment I wasn't consciously thinking about it, the next it hit me what day it was - what day it REALLY was, and a wave of sadness and regret washed over me. And I couldn't think of anything to do to commemorate the sadness of the losses.
Excerpt:
I hadn't remembered yet what today - or yesterday - was. I had too many things on my mind: my ailing mother, plans for a trip back to Michigan, caring for my recovering son, and a dozen more. I had talked to my therapist yesterday, the day of our anniversary, and didn't think of the date then, either. I did tell her that I'd been feeling like I had an itch under my skin. I attributed the edginess to worries about my trip home. Now, I realize that it was probably about the anniversaries all the time. Anniversaries are potent triggers for PTSD. Sometimes, we're aware of the date and sometimes, like today, feelings ambush us. I still don't know what caused me to remember the significance of today and yesterday's dates. One moment I wasn't consciously thinking about it, the next it hit me what day it was - what day it REALLY was, and a wave of sadness and regret washed over me. And I couldn't think of anything to do to commemorate the sadness of the losses.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
You are wheat and belong in the wheatfield....
[Sorry, I must have deleted the 'source' from my notes. Let me know...]
Van Gogh`s father was the Minister of the small
Reformed congregation in Nuenen. Van Gogh`s knowledge of Scripture was profound
and he tried at one stage to become a minister too.
The parables of Christ appear to have been among his
favourite passages. The Sower is one of his constant references. As is the
parable of the grain of wheat in John 12. Fields of golden wheat are one
of his main themes
In a
letter to his brother Theo in 1883 Van Gogh wrote:
"I’m not an artist — how coarse that is — even to think
it of oneself — should one not have patience, not learn patience from nature,
learn patience from seeing the wheat slowly come up, the growing of things —
should one think oneself such a hugely dead thing that one believed one
wouldn’t grow? Should one deliberately discourage one’s development?
I say this to show why I find it so silly to talk about
gifts and no gifts.
But if one wants to grow, one must fall into the earth. So I
say to you, plant yourself in the soil of Drenthe — you will sprout there.
Don’t shrivel up on the pavement. You’ll say that there are city plants — well
yes, but you are wheat and belong in the
wheatfield."
The connection between wheat and the Eucharist needs no
explanation
Parables involving wheat are not unusual. See the Parable of
the Sower and the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares in Matthew 13
In a recent visit to Scotland
Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith gave a series of major speeches/homilies to a
beleaguered Scottish Church
In one of them he spoke of the parable of the grain of wheat
and the meeting of Christ with the pilgrims from the Diaspora and the
crowd in John 12
"I am thinking of Chapter 12 in John’s Gospel, verses
20 to 33.
In this text St John
allows us to overhear Jesus praying to his Father. The prayer, in fact, ends
with the words, “Father, glorify your name”, a phrase familiar to us from other
reported prayers of Jesus.
But there is something unusual, all the same, about the
prayer. It is not uttered in solitude, alone with his Father, in preparation
for some major decision; nor is it said in the remote solitude of a high
mountain; nor at the Last Supper with a few chosen friends; nor in the solitude
of the Garden of Gethsemane.
No – while Jesus is praying, he is surrounded by all kinds
of different people.
The text speaks, first of all, of a number of Greeks who had
arrived in time for the Feast, and who had expressed the desire “to see Jesus”.
Then Philip and Andrew are mentioned.
And, finally, we hear of a crowd of bystanders.
What is impressive here is that, although Jesus finds
himself surrounded by all kinds of noise and commotion, and by different
individuals seeking his attention, he is still able to find time to pray.
And that, of course, is what is encouraging to witness in
the lives of many hard-working parish priests today. Their life of prayer does
not take place in the quiet solitude of a monastery, but instead at the pulsing
heart of a busy parish with all its pressures and demands.
A life of dedicated prayer, in other words, but one achieved
against the odds, and in the midst of the world.
The prayer spoken by Jesus to his Father is brief but
unforgettable. He says:
“Now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say? Save me from
this hour? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your
name.”
Just before he pronounced this prayer, while the crowd were
listening, Jesus did not hesitate to deliver a number of robust and challenging
statements.
Here is one, for example: “Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” A hard
saying indeed! The words themselves: confident, hard-edged, and
authoritative.
But, when Jesus starts to pray, moments later, we have the
impression that, all of a sudden, he has been struck by the force and meaning
of his own words.
It is a rare moment in a Johannine text: this sudden, hurt
inwardness, this dawning realization, on the part of Jesus, of the sacrifice
that is being asked of him:
“Now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say? Save me from
this hour?” ...
The most human thing in the world is to want to avoid the
cross, and to want to say to God “Save me from this hour”.
But if, in those moments of great fear and anxiety, we fall
back on his grace, and on his strength as God, we will find courage to say,
“No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
In a homily on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, 29 March 2009, Pope
Benedict XVI spoke of this passage in Scripture:
"In the request of these anonymous Greeks we can
interpret the thirst to see and to know Christ which is in every person's
heart; and Jesus' answer orients us to the mystery of Easter, the glorious
manifestation of his saving mission.
"The hour has come", he declared, "for the
Son of man to be glorified (Jn 12: 23).
Yes!
The hour of the glorification of the Son of man is at hand,
but it will entail the sorrowful passage through his Passion and death on the
Cross. Indeed the divine plan of salvation which is for everyone, Jews and
Gentiles alike will only be brought about in this manner. Actually, everyone is
invited to be a member of the one people of the new and definitive Covenant.
In this light, we also understand the solemn proclamation with
which the Gospel passage ends: "and I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to myself" (Jn 12:
32), and likewise the Evangelist's comment: "He said this
to show by what death he was to die" (Jn 12: 33). The Cross: the height loftiness of love
is the loftiness of Jesus and he attracts all to these heights. ...
What our association with his mission consists of is
explained by the Lord himself. In speaking of his forthcoming glorious death,
he uses a simple and at the same time evocative image: "unless a grain of
wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears
much fruit" (Jn 12: 24).
He compares himself to a "grain of wheat which has
split open, to bring much fruit to others", according to an effective statement
of St Athanasius; it is only through death, through the Cross that Christ bears
much fruit for all the centuries.
Indeed, it was not enough for the Son of God to become
incarnate.
To bring the divine plan of universal salvation to
completion he had to be killed and buried: only in this way was human reality
to be accepted, and, through his death and Resurrection, the triumph of Life,
the triumph of Love to be made manifest; it was to be proven that love is stronger than death."
I had an incredible day at the 'Lunatic Asylum' yesterday...
I had an incredible day at the
Lunatic Asylum yesterday. Met several Queens--female
ones--one, the "Queen of the Whole Earth" whose hand I was allowed to
kiss and who conferred many titles upon me! Half, more than half, of the
lunatics are practically sane, except on one point, and some even go out to
work every day.
I've seldom, if ever, been present at anything so moving
as the prayers in the tiny Catholic chapel in the evening, organized entirely
by the patients, the prayers of their own choosing and said aloud: and what a
mystery and what an example--an ex-Trappist monk, a young girl, an old lady
bent double nearly, but in spite of it and in spite of being insane, beautiful,
and a handful of others--all people who had started out in life intent on a
high vocation, and given it indeed--utter abnegation, put away in a lunatic
asylum. And this is the point--they reached out in their prayers
to the whole world. As I knelt among them, listening at first and in the
end joining in unconsciously with them, I grew more and more amazed at their
petitions:
"For Russia"
"For the suffering people of Europe"
"For the sick"
"For prisoners"
"For the conversion of the world"
"For purity of heart in the world"
"For purity of heart here"--
and then, to me the most moving petition of all, "That we here in this little chapel dedicated to Your divine Heart may have perfect abandonment to Your dear will."
[...]
But no, it was simply an almost unbelievable showing of the heart of the Mystical Body of Christ, literally bleeding before God with the wounds of the world!
From The Letters of Caryll Houselander: Her Spiritual Legacy, ed. Maisie Ward (Sheed & Ward, 1965), pp. 91-92 (letter to Henry Tayler) -[Dark Speech Upon the Harp]
"For Russia"
"For the suffering people of Europe"
"For the sick"
"For prisoners"
"For the conversion of the world"
"For purity of heart in the world"
"For purity of heart here"--
and then, to me the most moving petition of all, "That we here in this little chapel dedicated to Your divine Heart may have perfect abandonment to Your dear will."
[...]
But no, it was simply an almost unbelievable showing of the heart of the Mystical Body of Christ, literally bleeding before God with the wounds of the world!
From The Letters of Caryll Houselander: Her Spiritual Legacy, ed. Maisie Ward (Sheed & Ward, 1965), pp. 91-92 (letter to Henry Tayler) -[Dark Speech Upon the Harp]
..................
Why must we be always feeling the pain of loss?
If we did not, we should not
realize that our idols are not God, are not Christ.
Bad as they are, they match our
limitations; and if they could content us, we should never know the real beauty
of Christ: we should not become whole.
It is one of God's great mercies that, although our
vanity and our fear and other mean passions crave for satisfaction, when they
are satisfied, we are not. There is an essential you, an essential me, who
cannot be satisfied excepting by God... [One paraphrase of St. Augustine's 'note']
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Here I Am Exposed Like Everyone | The American Poetry Review
Here I Am Exposed Like Everyone | The American Poetry Review
Excerpt:
Here I am exposed like everyone,
one hand already in the other world,
at my throat a soft cord
which floods me with music and drains me of blood.
This habit of writing, it’s terrible,
—one day I will die of loving someone—,
they say that’s being a poet; I say it’s being a saint.
No one canonizes us but we go on,
strange halos at our temples.
Sometimes we glow at night,...Gloria Fuertes
Excerpt:
Here I am exposed like everyone,
one hand already in the other world,
at my throat a soft cord
which floods me with music and drains me of blood.
This habit of writing, it’s terrible,
—one day I will die of loving someone—,
they say that’s being a poet; I say it’s being a saint.
No one canonizes us but we go on,
strange halos at our temples.
Sometimes we glow at night,...Gloria Fuertes
Anecdotal Evidence: `Books Are People Talking About Other People'
Anecdotal Evidence: `Books Are People Talking About Other People'
Excerpt:
“Somebody Reading,” in which Ricks quotes the wonderful letter Keats wrote to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana on Sept. 20, 1819:
Excerpt:
“Somebody Reading,” in which Ricks quotes the wonderful letter Keats wrote to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana on Sept. 20, 1819:
“Writing has this disadvantage of speaking one cannot write a wink, or a nod, or a grin, or a purse of the lips, or a smile law! One cannot put one's finger to one’s nose, or yerk [OED: “a smart blow or stroke”] ye in the ribs, or lay hold of your button in writing ; but in all the most lively and titterly parts of my letter you must not fail to imagine me, as the epic poets say, now here, now there ; now with one foot pointed at the ceiling, now with another ; now with my pen on my ear, now with my elbow in my mouth.”
Dare to Be Happy, Dare to Pray
Dare to Be Happy, Dare to Pray
Excerpt:
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
... ~Mary Oliver
Excerpt:
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
... ~Mary Oliver
Oh, Stranger!
....our lives are moulded and fashioned
by all the graces we have received or refused;
by all the gestures of love as well as the acts of hatred
or indifference;
by our successes as well as our failures.
Absolutely everything is engraved in our being.
So the experience of being loved by God
does not change our lives completely,
yet something is changed
when we realize that God loves us just as we are,
not as we would like to be
nor as our parents or society would have liked us to be.
God loves us today
with our gifts, our qualities, as well as our failures and our fragility.
If we have the impression people are disappointed in us
because we do not live up to their expectations;
if there seems to be a gap
between the way in which others perceive us
and who we really are,
between what we like to think we can do
and what we actually can do,
we need to discover God is never disappointed in us.
God knows us;
God knows our abilities and disabilities;
God knows we are a mixture of light and darkness.
Others may be disappointed
because they have an ideal image of Him,
but not God, who knows me today just as I am.
God does not live in the past or the future
but in the "now" of the present moment.
God sees me in my present reality
as I am in each present moment. -Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger
by all the graces we have received or refused;
by all the gestures of love as well as the acts of hatred
or indifference;
by our successes as well as our failures.
Absolutely everything is engraved in our being.
So the experience of being loved by God
does not change our lives completely,
yet something is changed
when we realize that God loves us just as we are,
not as we would like to be
nor as our parents or society would have liked us to be.
God loves us today
with our gifts, our qualities, as well as our failures and our fragility.
If we have the impression people are disappointed in us
because we do not live up to their expectations;
if there seems to be a gap
between the way in which others perceive us
and who we really are,
between what we like to think we can do
and what we actually can do,
we need to discover God is never disappointed in us.
God knows us;
God knows our abilities and disabilities;
God knows we are a mixture of light and darkness.
Others may be disappointed
because they have an ideal image of Him,
but not God, who knows me today just as I am.
God does not live in the past or the future
but in the "now" of the present moment.
God sees me in my present reality
as I am in each present moment. -Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger
Tea at Trianon: Caryll Houselander
Tea at Trianon: Caryll Houselander
Excerpt:
Caryll Houselander is one of the most intriguing personalities among modern spiritual writers. Always eccentric, Caryll was an artist who experienced the Gospel truths on a mystical level. A Franciscan tertiary, she overcame a troubled childhood and a bohemian youth in order to be a witness of spiritual motherhood and the consecrated life in the world...
Excerpt:
Caryll Houselander is one of the most intriguing personalities among modern spiritual writers. Always eccentric, Caryll was an artist who experienced the Gospel truths on a mystical level. A Franciscan tertiary, she overcame a troubled childhood and a bohemian youth in order to be a witness of spiritual motherhood and the consecrated life in the world...
Rodak Riffs...: Reflections: Too Little Seen As Too Much
Rodak Riffs...: Reflections: Too Little Seen As Too Much
Excerpt:
Here, from the Houselander’s Introduction, is an excerpt that immediately caught my attention:
How dear to us St. Catherine of Sienna is, because she loved her garden, because she made up little verses and gilded tiny oranges to humor a difficult Pope. How close she comes to us in her friendships: in the motley company of poets, politicians, soldiers, priests, and brigands; men who idolized her; and not only men, for St. Catherine was not only the most dynamic woman in history but also the best friend to other women that ever lived. Such things almost make us forget that she was fiercely ascetic, that for years she was fed only on the Blessed Sacrament, and that she was an ecstatic: her agony for the world’s sin is hidden under the beautiful cloak of her love for sinners.
“…she was fiercely ascetic…” yet she befriended all kinds of worldly men. Fiercely ascetic, yet she functioned in the world with her sacrifices “hidden under [a] beautiful cloak of love… ” This is a mode of existence for which I have boundless respect...
Excerpt:
Here, from the Houselander’s Introduction, is an excerpt that immediately caught my attention:
How dear to us St. Catherine of Sienna is, because she loved her garden, because she made up little verses and gilded tiny oranges to humor a difficult Pope. How close she comes to us in her friendships: in the motley company of poets, politicians, soldiers, priests, and brigands; men who idolized her; and not only men, for St. Catherine was not only the most dynamic woman in history but also the best friend to other women that ever lived. Such things almost make us forget that she was fiercely ascetic, that for years she was fed only on the Blessed Sacrament, and that she was an ecstatic: her agony for the world’s sin is hidden under the beautiful cloak of her love for sinners.
“…she was fiercely ascetic…” yet she befriended all kinds of worldly men. Fiercely ascetic, yet she functioned in the world with her sacrifices “hidden under [a] beautiful cloak of love… ” This is a mode of existence for which I have boundless respect...
Monday, July 22, 2013
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Anecdotal Evidence: `The Downward World is Prodigally Rich'
Anecdotal Evidence: `The Downward World is Prodigally Rich'
"You have not worked the silences." -Marina
Excerpt:
I missed the birthday this week of the English poet Elizabeth Jennings. She was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, on July 18, 1926, and died Oct. 26, 2001, in Bampton, Oxfordshire. She’s buried in Wolvercote Cemetery alongside Isaiah Berlin, J.R.R. Tolkien and James Murray, founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. I sense her work has never been well-known in the U.S. and is mostly forgotten in the U.K. Though a woman, her demographics have never been fashionable. She was a serious Roman Catholic, not an academic, an elastic formalist and never conspicuously political. She was also popular, by poetry market standards. Her Selected and Collected volumes of 1979 and 1986, respectively, sold more than 86,000 copies. When Nicholas Lezard reviewed her hefty Collected Poems last year, he called her work “accessible without being shallow,” as though such a distinction were necessary. She takes her rightful place among the most gifted of her English contemporaries – Smith, Enright, Larkin, Sisson, Gunn and Hill......
"You have not worked the silences." -Marina
Excerpt:
I missed the birthday this week of the English poet Elizabeth Jennings. She was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, on July 18, 1926, and died Oct. 26, 2001, in Bampton, Oxfordshire. She’s buried in Wolvercote Cemetery alongside Isaiah Berlin, J.R.R. Tolkien and James Murray, founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. I sense her work has never been well-known in the U.S. and is mostly forgotten in the U.K. Though a woman, her demographics have never been fashionable. She was a serious Roman Catholic, not an academic, an elastic formalist and never conspicuously political. She was also popular, by poetry market standards. Her Selected and Collected volumes of 1979 and 1986, respectively, sold more than 86,000 copies. When Nicholas Lezard reviewed her hefty Collected Poems last year, he called her work “accessible without being shallow,” as though such a distinction were necessary. She takes her rightful place among the most gifted of her English contemporaries – Smith, Enright, Larkin, Sisson, Gunn and Hill......
The very light is eagerly at play
And there are silences for me and you.
Elizabeth Jennings … accessible without being shallow. Photograph: Carcanet Press [Guardian UK]
Friday, July 19, 2013
We Are One: PTSD tips from Facebook
We Are One: PTSD tips from Facebook
Excerpt:
f I find something on Facebook I figure they posted it with intent to have it shared. The original source link is at the bottom. My comments in RED
10 Tips For Understanding Someone With PTSD
PTSD makes communication difficult...
Excerpt:
f I find something on Facebook I figure they posted it with intent to have it shared. The original source link is at the bottom. My comments in RED
10 Tips For Understanding Someone With PTSD
PTSD makes communication difficult...
Thursday, July 18, 2013
A Crimson Wound
All shades of doubt retain a crimson wound –
The one that goes the deepest. Take my case:
The one that goes the deepest. Take my case:
... These words still smart my ears and search the space
My mangled feet have walked. The miles pierce
And flay my pride. Humility’s made peace,
Though, with its twin – and knows there’s certain ground
To cover... ~Job, Korrecktiv
My mangled feet have walked. The miles pierce
And flay my pride. Humility’s made peace,
Though, with its twin – and knows there’s certain ground
To cover... ~Job, Korrecktiv
Breastfeeding Note From Pizza Waitress Pays It Forward | Parenting - Yahoo! Shine
Breastfeeding Note From Pizza Waitress Pays It Forward | Parenting - Yahoo! Shine
Excerpt:
...It was my birthday...The waitress gave this receipt to my husband. I was speechless and emotional. Although I don't need a pat on the back for feeding my child, it sure felt amazing. It is amazing how we women can make each other feel when we empower each other." ~Jackie Johnson-Smith
Excerpt:
...It was my birthday...The waitress gave this receipt to my husband. I was speechless and emotional. Although I don't need a pat on the back for feeding my child, it sure felt amazing. It is amazing how we women can make each other feel when we empower each other." ~Jackie Johnson-Smith
Going South Again: 'Wubba, Wubba, Wubba'
Repetition
I can’t say that I’m thrilled at all the pain I’ve
gone through and continue to endure at times, but I certainly understand more
about God, people and the universe than I did say a month ago. Yesterday at dinner I met a single mom who
works 139 hours a week. I asked
‘why?’ It was the ‘house’.
She then fixated on the girl walking by with short
shorts whose legs were smeared with a tan lotion that did not hide the scars of
‘cutting’. The young attractive girl now
haunts my memory. The woman told me to
‘get over yourself’; perhaps it is truer for me than for that young girl. Something inside me wants to scream, ‘Where
are your parents?’ Maybe they’re dead,
or divorced, or just don’t give a damn. Who knows?
***
“The
human race has either lost it or is about to lose it, maybe this time once and
for all.
She made a face. "I don't like it."
"Neither do I. But it's clear as a bank statement. This year the human race is letting down its hair, flipping its lip with a finger, and saying, 'Wubba, wubba, wubba'"
In other words, a time much like our own.
Doesn't it always seem like the world is going south in a hand basket?
She made a face. "I don't like it."
"Neither do I. But it's clear as a bank statement. This year the human race is letting down its hair, flipping its lip with a finger, and saying, 'Wubba, wubba, wubba'"
In other words, a time much like our own.
Doesn't it always seem like the world is going south in a hand basket?
~Robert Heinlein, The Year of the Jackpot
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The poet who saved a saint’s priceless letters | CatholicHerald.co.uk
The poet who saved a saint’s priceless letters | CatholicHerald.co.uk
Excerpt:
"...But where's the bloody horse?...." ~Roy Campbell
...It was March 1936. A series of anti-clerical riots swept through Toledo. Churches were burned and priests and monks were attacked in the streets. During these disturbances several Carmelite monks, disguised in lay clothes, sought shelter in the home of the South African poet, Roy Campbell, who had moved to the city with his wife, Mary, and their two young daughters in the previous year. Four months later, on July 21, republican forces advanced on the city. Under cover of darkness, the Carmelite monks once again called on the Campbells. This time, however, they were not seeking refuge for themselves but for their priceless archives, which included the personal papers of St John of the Cross. Campbell agreed to take possession of these precious archives and that night a heavy trunk of ancient documents was delivered secretly from the Carmelite library to the hallway of the Campbells’ house.
During the following day republican forces advanced through the city, forcing the defenders to fall back towards the Alcazar. Without the soldiers of the garrison to defend them, the priests, monks and nuns fell prey to the republican militiamen. The 17 monks from the Carmelite monastery were rounded up, herded into the street and shot. In the square outside Toledo’s town hall the Madrid militia lit huge bonfires which were fuelled with crucifixes, vestments, missals and any other religious items discovered in looted churches and houses. From their home, the South African poet and his family watched in horror as they saw the Carmelite library set ablaze.
![]()
catholiceducation.org
Several days later the Campbells were visited by a search party of militiamen. Expecting such an intrusion, Roy and Mary had already taken the precaution of removing all crucifixes and religious pictures from the walls. Their main fear was that the trunk containing the Carmelite archives, including the personal letters of St John of the Cross, would be discovered. The search, however, was not particularly thorough. At one stage some of the militiamen even leaned their rifles on the trunk without thinking of opening it.
During this search of his home, as he revealed in a radio interview several years later, Campbell had prayed to St John of the Cross, making a vow that he would translate the saint’s poems into English if his family’s lives were spared. Campbell fulfilled his obligation to St John, translating the poems to great critical acclaim. The poet and critic Kathleen Raine, writing in the New Statesman, encapsulated the critical consensus that Campbell’s translations represented a superlative achievement in English verse: “Of all living English poets Roy Campbell is the most masterly in his use of rhyme, and he is able to use metre so as to convey a sense of intense passion. He has reproduced the Spanish rhymes and metres as closely as possible, and yet his English versions have the freshness of original poems.”
In a broadcast talk on St John of the Cross for the BBC in 1952 Campbell stated that the success of the poems was due more to the grace obtained by the saint’s supernatural intervention than by any innate ability of his own.
...In similar vein, after Campbell had just finished delivering a lecture at the Ateneo in Madrid in 1954, he was asked by a priest in the audience to what he attributed the extraordinary success of his verse translations of St John of the Cross. “But the good saint helped me, father,” Campbell replied. “You see, when I got tired, or my spirit flagged, or I got stuck, I would just look over my shoulder and there St John would be, sitting against the sky, smiling down at me. He would call out Arre burrito! And I just went on trotting…”
...In spite of the turbulence of the times, the Campbells fell in love with Spain and Spanish culture. Mary’s enduring love for the figure of St Teresa of Avila had fired her imagination for Spain since her youth, and she had evidently passed this imaginative fire infectiously to her husband, as is evidenced by the poetry about Spain that he wrote after his arrival in the country.
“My parents were romantics,” stated Anna, the younger of Campbell’s daughters. “They saw life, they saw Spain, through a romance. They saw it through a cloud, a sort of imaginary Spain.” Campbell wrote: “From the very beginning my wife and I understood the real issues in Spain. There could be no compromise… between the east and the west, between credulity and faith, between irresponsible innovation… and tradition, between the emotions (disguised as reason) and the intelligence.”
Tired of the brief interlude of urban life, the Campbells moved to the village of Altea, near Alicante, in May 1934. It was here that the whole family was received into the Catholic Church. “I don’t think that my family and I were converted by any event at any given moment,” Campbell wrote later. “We lived for a time on a small farm in the sierras at Altea where the working people were mostly good Catholics, and there was such a fragrance and freshness in their life, in their bravery, in their reverence, that it took hold of us all imperceptibly.”
Fr Gregorio, the village priest, was delighted that a whole family of “English” was being won over to the Church. Two years later, the priest would be murdered by militiamen sent from Valencia. By this time, as we have seen, the Campbells had moved to Toledo, which Campbell eulogised in one of his poems as a “sacred city of the mind”....
---------
Joseph Pearce, professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Florida, is the author of many books, several of which are available in Spanish translation. His latest book, España salvó mi alma, is published by Libros Libres
Excerpt:
"...But where's the bloody horse?...." ~Roy Campbell
...It was March 1936. A series of anti-clerical riots swept through Toledo. Churches were burned and priests and monks were attacked in the streets. During these disturbances several Carmelite monks, disguised in lay clothes, sought shelter in the home of the South African poet, Roy Campbell, who had moved to the city with his wife, Mary, and their two young daughters in the previous year. Four months later, on July 21, republican forces advanced on the city. Under cover of darkness, the Carmelite monks once again called on the Campbells. This time, however, they were not seeking refuge for themselves but for their priceless archives, which included the personal papers of St John of the Cross. Campbell agreed to take possession of these precious archives and that night a heavy trunk of ancient documents was delivered secretly from the Carmelite library to the hallway of the Campbells’ house.
During the following day republican forces advanced through the city, forcing the defenders to fall back towards the Alcazar. Without the soldiers of the garrison to defend them, the priests, monks and nuns fell prey to the republican militiamen. The 17 monks from the Carmelite monastery were rounded up, herded into the street and shot. In the square outside Toledo’s town hall the Madrid militia lit huge bonfires which were fuelled with crucifixes, vestments, missals and any other religious items discovered in looted churches and houses. From their home, the South African poet and his family watched in horror as they saw the Carmelite library set ablaze.
Several days later the Campbells were visited by a search party of militiamen. Expecting such an intrusion, Roy and Mary had already taken the precaution of removing all crucifixes and religious pictures from the walls. Their main fear was that the trunk containing the Carmelite archives, including the personal letters of St John of the Cross, would be discovered. The search, however, was not particularly thorough. At one stage some of the militiamen even leaned their rifles on the trunk without thinking of opening it.
During this search of his home, as he revealed in a radio interview several years later, Campbell had prayed to St John of the Cross, making a vow that he would translate the saint’s poems into English if his family’s lives were spared. Campbell fulfilled his obligation to St John, translating the poems to great critical acclaim. The poet and critic Kathleen Raine, writing in the New Statesman, encapsulated the critical consensus that Campbell’s translations represented a superlative achievement in English verse: “Of all living English poets Roy Campbell is the most masterly in his use of rhyme, and he is able to use metre so as to convey a sense of intense passion. He has reproduced the Spanish rhymes and metres as closely as possible, and yet his English versions have the freshness of original poems.”
In a broadcast talk on St John of the Cross for the BBC in 1952 Campbell stated that the success of the poems was due more to the grace obtained by the saint’s supernatural intervention than by any innate ability of his own.
...In similar vein, after Campbell had just finished delivering a lecture at the Ateneo in Madrid in 1954, he was asked by a priest in the audience to what he attributed the extraordinary success of his verse translations of St John of the Cross. “But the good saint helped me, father,” Campbell replied. “You see, when I got tired, or my spirit flagged, or I got stuck, I would just look over my shoulder and there St John would be, sitting against the sky, smiling down at me. He would call out Arre burrito! And I just went on trotting…”
...In spite of the turbulence of the times, the Campbells fell in love with Spain and Spanish culture. Mary’s enduring love for the figure of St Teresa of Avila had fired her imagination for Spain since her youth, and she had evidently passed this imaginative fire infectiously to her husband, as is evidenced by the poetry about Spain that he wrote after his arrival in the country.
“My parents were romantics,” stated Anna, the younger of Campbell’s daughters. “They saw life, they saw Spain, through a romance. They saw it through a cloud, a sort of imaginary Spain.” Campbell wrote: “From the very beginning my wife and I understood the real issues in Spain. There could be no compromise… between the east and the west, between credulity and faith, between irresponsible innovation… and tradition, between the emotions (disguised as reason) and the intelligence.”
Tired of the brief interlude of urban life, the Campbells moved to the village of Altea, near Alicante, in May 1934. It was here that the whole family was received into the Catholic Church. “I don’t think that my family and I were converted by any event at any given moment,” Campbell wrote later. “We lived for a time on a small farm in the sierras at Altea where the working people were mostly good Catholics, and there was such a fragrance and freshness in their life, in their bravery, in their reverence, that it took hold of us all imperceptibly.”
Fr Gregorio, the village priest, was delighted that a whole family of “English” was being won over to the Church. Two years later, the priest would be murdered by militiamen sent from Valencia. By this time, as we have seen, the Campbells had moved to Toledo, which Campbell eulogised in one of his poems as a “sacred city of the mind”....
---------
Joseph Pearce, professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Florida, is the author of many books, several of which are available in Spanish translation. His latest book, España salvó mi alma, is published by Libros Libres
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
..Today the body of St. Teresa is preserved incorrupt, for everyone to see and honor; the body of St. John--no one knows where it lies; his very burial-place has been forgotten. Perhaps we know why; perhaps, too, we understand why to this day his life is "hidden with Christ," seeing how deeply he bore the wounds of Christ upon his body... ~Saints for Sinners, Alban Goodier, S.J.
Monday, July 15, 2013
'Behold, How They Loved One Another....'
Pope Francis condemned “all manifestations of antisemitism” during his first meeting with official Jewish representatives since his election.
Speaking to a delegation of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, which has traditionally served as the Catholic Church’s official link to the Jewish community, the Pope said: “Because of our common roots, a true Christian cannot be antisemitic.”...
Pope Francis, who previously served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, said that during his time in Argentina, Catholics and Jews “enjoyed each other’s company."
“We were all enriched through encounters and dialogue. We welcomed each other, and this helped all of us grow as people and as believers.” ~Josh Jackman, The JC.com, June 25, 2013
......
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.
Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.
5. We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).
No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.
The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to "maintain good fellowship among the nations" (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men,(14) so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.(15)
*
- "Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions: Nostra Aetate," Proclaimed by Pope Paul VI, 1965-OCT-28. See: http://www.vatican.va/
"Love one another as I have loved you."
"Love your enemies."
"No greater love has any man than this that he lay down his life for his friend."
"Love God...and your neighbor as yourself."
It is a reminder of the justice and respect God demands of everyone in our relationships with one another.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Say Cheese
The Country
by Billy Collins
I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice
might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight...
Post from Karen Edmisten
....and if you found the matches at the edge of town near opium dens...whoooooooo.....look out! The fat lady sang: "We can't let a good crisis go to waste, now caaaaaaaan we?"
Say Cheese
With lots of teeth
Just my 'good' side...fella
To stoke my fire!
Kinda reminds me of Coleridge's dream of 'third heaven'...ahemmmm....of course, he admitted he had enjoyed his opium before he attended the banquet where he announced his 'grand dream'...
by Billy Collins
I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice
might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight...
Post from Karen Edmisten
....and if you found the matches at the edge of town near opium dens...whoooooooo.....look out! The fat lady sang: "We can't let a good crisis go to waste, now caaaaaaaan we?"
Say Cheese
With lots of teeth
Just my 'good' side...fella
To stoke my fire!
Kinda reminds me of Coleridge's dream of 'third heaven'...ahemmmm....of course, he admitted he had enjoyed his opium before he attended the banquet where he announced his 'grand dream'...
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Warning Signs: From Communist to Conservative
Warning Signs: From Communist to Conservative
Excerpt: (I have great respect for David Horowitz and honor him. He needs to be listened to.)
By Alan Caruba
This quote is drawn from the nearly 400 pages of David Horowitz’s new book, “The Black Book of the American Left”, a vast collection of his commentaries and speeches, written since this son of communists, raised to be a communist, experienced an epiphany about communism when a friend of his was murdered by the Black Panthers, a 1970s group he thought was among the vanguard of social justice in America. ...His output is extraordinary and his conversion from communism to conservatism became his mission in life as he sought to explain first to himself and then to all others who would listen why he so deeply believed in a system dedicated to defeating capitalism, imposing Soviet-style dictatorships, and bringing down the United States, the champion of liberty in the world.
Excerpt: (I have great respect for David Horowitz and honor him. He needs to be listened to.)
By Alan Caruba
“The law of socialist economy is this: from each according to his exploitability, to the nomenklatura (the elite governing group) according to its greed. Not only does the socialist economy not produce wealth at a rate a free economy does; the socialist economy consumes wealth it accumulated in the past.”
“The truths revealed that we were just what our enemies had always said we were. There were spies among us, and we were agents for a tainted cause. All of us had treason in our hearts in the name of a future that would never come.”
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Obama Supporters Sign Petition to Repeal the BILL OF RIGHTS to Support t...
The man I feel sorriest for? The man going up and down the beach soliciting signatures of people...
Why would anyone sign away freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom from false arrest and imprisonment, freedom from government oppression?....
Those who signed it are guilty of a terrible ignorance. Freedom has to be protected and defended. It is not free.
Remember the USSR coup happened in a couple of hours....HOURS. Remember this President wants to get rid of 'one nation under God'...As a true democracy EACH PERSON is held responsible for that freedom. There are no groups responsible for 'keeping' us free...JUST YOU AND ME....
And the mindless who do the tyrant's bidding are usually the first to perish.
from Running Cause I Can't Fly... Mark Dice asks California beach goers if they'll sign a petition showing support for Obama in his quest to repeal the Bill of Rights. - http://www.youtube.com/
Folks, I've been doing this blog for almost 5 years, and until now help out hope that maybe, just maybe, the sheeple of this country would wake up at last and realize how savagely they've been treated, and maybe even do something about it. Well... You know, there's stupid, and then there's Americans... as the Mogambo Guru might say, "We're so freakin' doomed!" God help us all... ~cp
Your Choice:
rangerpulse.com
OR
thefinanser.co.uk
Why would anyone sign away freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom from false arrest and imprisonment, freedom from government oppression?....
Those who signed it are guilty of a terrible ignorance. Freedom has to be protected and defended. It is not free.
Remember the USSR coup happened in a couple of hours....HOURS. Remember this President wants to get rid of 'one nation under God'...As a true democracy EACH PERSON is held responsible for that freedom. There are no groups responsible for 'keeping' us free...JUST YOU AND ME....
And the mindless who do the tyrant's bidding are usually the first to perish.
from Running Cause I Can't Fly... Mark Dice asks California beach goers if they'll sign a petition showing support for Obama in his quest to repeal the Bill of Rights. - http://www.youtube.com/
Folks, I've been doing this blog for almost 5 years, and until now help out hope that maybe, just maybe, the sheeple of this country would wake up at last and realize how savagely they've been treated, and maybe even do something about it. Well... You know, there's stupid, and then there's Americans... as the Mogambo Guru might say, "We're so freakin' doomed!" God help us all... ~cp
Your Choice:
rangerpulse.comOR
Monday, July 8, 2013
The Golden Arrow
Sr. Marie of St. Peter and of the Holy Family OCD received the devotion to the Holy Face July 8 in the 1840s at the Tours Carmelite Monastery...for reparation...
Order of Carmel Discalcecd Secular - Meditations from Carmel Podcast
Quotations from Sister Saint Pierre Carmelite of Tours
"He told me that He wished to give me a "Golden Arrow" wherewith to wound His Heart delightfully, and heal those wounds inflicted by sinner's malice."
"He has given it to me as a "Golden Arrow," assuring me that each time I would say it, I would open His Heart with a wound of love."
"At that moment it seemed to me I beheld issuing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by this "Arrow," torrents of graces for the conversion of sinners."
"Our Lord has promised me that He will imprint His divine likeness on the souls of those who honour his most holy Countenance."
"All those who honour My Holy Face in a spirit of reparation, will be so doing perform the office of the pious Veronica."
"According to the care you take in making reparation to My Face disfigured by blasphemies, so will I take care of yours which has been disfigured by sin. I will reprint therein My image and render it as beautiful as it was on leaving the Baptismal font."
"Our Lord has promised me, that all those who defend His cause in this work of reparation, by words, by prayers, or in writing. He will defend them before His Father; at their death He will purify their souls by effacing all the blots of sin and will restore to them their primitive beauty.
-----------
Sister Marie of Saint Pierre (from the Carmel of Tours) and the Golden Arrow
In Tours, France during the 1840's a young Carmelite nun, Sister Marie of Saint Pierre, received a series of revelations from Our Lord about a powerful devotion He wished to be established worldwide - the devotion to his Holy Face. The express purpose of this devotion was to make reparation for the blasphemies and outrages of 'Revolutionary men' (the Communists), as well as for the blasphemies of atheists and freethinkers and others, plus, for blasphemy and the profanation of Sundays by Christians.
This devotion is also an instrument given to the individual devotee as a seemingly unfailing method of appealing to God in prayer - through adoration of His Holy Face and Name.
The following prayer was dictated by our Lord Himself to Sister Marie of Saint Pierre. Opening His Heart to her, our Saviour complained of blasphemy, saying that this frightful sin wounds His Divine Heart more grievously than all other sins, for it was like a "poisoned arrow".
After that, our Saviour dictated the following prayer, which he called "The Golden Arrow", saying that those who would recite this prayer would pierce Him delightfully, and also heal those other wounds inflicted on Him by the malice of sinners. This prayer is regarded as the very basis of the Work of Reparation.
"Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Adorable Face of Thy Beloved Son for the honor and glory of Thy Holy Name, for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of dying souls."
-- Sister Saint-Pierre
"O Jesus, who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the most abject of men, a man of sorrows", I venerate Thy Sacred Face whereon there once did shine the beauty and sweetness of the Godhead; but now it has become for me as if it were the face of a leper! Nevertheless, under those disfigured features, I recognize Thy infinite Love and I am consumed with the desire to love Thee and make Thee loved by all men.
The tears which well up abundantly in Thy sacred eyes appear to me as so many precious pearls that I love to gather up, in order to purchase the souls of poor sinners by means of their infinite value. O Jesus, whose adorable face ravishes my heart, I implore Thee to fix deep within me Thy divine image and to set me on fire with Thy Love, that I may be found worthy to come to the contemplation of Thy glorious Face in Heaven. Amen." ~St. Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face
Psalm 30:20-21
"O how great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee! Which Thou hast wrought for them that hope in Thee, in the sight of the sons of men. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy Face, from the disturbance of men. Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues."
Picture taken by tantumergo(A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics)-thanks for this picture.
Carmelite Monastery of Infant Jesus of Prague and St. Joseph-Dallas TX - where the Gardener meets you with 'clear water'....
This chapel is also a Shrine to the Holy Face. To the side of the altar is the Holy Face Icon which reflects the Confraternity of the Holy Face. It was in this chapel before the Holy Face on March 6, 2005 that I became a confraternity member. The chapel is so beautiful now. In my heart I still see the bare white walls and St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross flying from the walls above the altar--simpler times. My greatest blessings were before that Holy Face. I still see Mother Mary Regina (I know it was her.) kneeling behind the grate as my name and my mother's were added to the roll. It was in 2006 that I received a double blessing from Fr. Louis...little did I know of its import.
I don’t think we can imagine how much good their lives of prayer, sacrifice, suffering, and love do for all of us.
Tantumergo: A Blog for Dallas Catholics
I so miss the 'turn' ,Mothers.
Mother Juanita: I would not have survived the brutal North Face high cold winds of the mountain without those afternoons with you in my memories. There have been mostly tears here in this great exile.
Order of Carmel Discalcecd Secular - Meditations from Carmel Podcast
Quotations from Sister Saint Pierre Carmelite of Tours
-----------
This devotion is also an instrument given to the individual devotee as a seemingly unfailing method of appealing to God in prayer - through adoration of His Holy Face and Name.
The following prayer was dictated by our Lord Himself to Sister Marie of Saint Pierre. Opening His Heart to her, our Saviour complained of blasphemy, saying that this frightful sin wounds His Divine Heart more grievously than all other sins, for it was like a "poisoned arrow".
After that, our Saviour dictated the following prayer, which he called "The Golden Arrow", saying that those who would recite this prayer would pierce Him delightfully, and also heal those other wounds inflicted on Him by the malice of sinners. This prayer is regarded as the very basis of the Work of Reparation.
The Golden Arrow Prayer
"May the most holy, most sacred,
most adorable, most mysterious
and unutterable Name of God
be always praised, blessed,
loved, adored and glorified,
in heaven, on earth and under the earth,
by all the creatures of God,
and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ
in the most holy Sacrament of the altar."
Amen
most adorable, most mysterious
and unutterable Name of God
be always praised, blessed,
loved, adored and glorified,
in heaven, on earth and under the earth,
by all the creatures of God,
and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ
in the most holy Sacrament of the altar."
Amen
"Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Adorable Face of Thy Beloved Son for the honor and glory of Thy Holy Name, for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of dying souls."
-- Sister Saint-Pierre
"O Jesus, who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the most abject of men, a man of sorrows", I venerate Thy Sacred Face whereon there once did shine the beauty and sweetness of the Godhead; but now it has become for me as if it were the face of a leper! Nevertheless, under those disfigured features, I recognize Thy infinite Love and I am consumed with the desire to love Thee and make Thee loved by all men.
The tears which well up abundantly in Thy sacred eyes appear to me as so many precious pearls that I love to gather up, in order to purchase the souls of poor sinners by means of their infinite value. O Jesus, whose adorable face ravishes my heart, I implore Thee to fix deep within me Thy divine image and to set me on fire with Thy Love, that I may be found worthy to come to the contemplation of Thy glorious Face in Heaven. Amen." ~St. Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face
Psalm 30:20-21
"O how great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee! Which Thou hast wrought for them that hope in Thee, in the sight of the sons of men. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy Face, from the disturbance of men. Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues."
Picture taken by tantumergo(A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics)-thanks for this picture.
Tantumergo: A Blog for Dallas Catholics
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Decorated Wounded Marine Treated “Shamefully” By TSA | Weasel Zippers
Decorated Wounded Marine Treated “Shamefully” By TSA | Weasel Zippers
Obviously, his medals made him a high security risk.
My addendum: from NCIS 'Call to Silence'
[Coleman enters the squadroom with two Marine MPs]
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: Where's Gibbs?
Anthony DiNozzo: And a good afternoon to you too, Commander Coleman.
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: He was to deliver Corporal Yost to me...
Ernie Yost: Present and accounted for, sir!
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: ...at 0800. You're Ernest Yost?
Ernie Yost: [stands at attention] Yes, ma'am.
Anthony DiNozzo: This is Lieutenant Commander Coleman, Ernie, JAG Corps. She's here to, um... arrest you.
Ernie Yost: I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, Commander.
Anthony DiNozzo: [referring to the two Marines] What's with the Olsen twins?
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: They're here to escort the accused to Quantico.
Ernie Yost: Well, it's about time.
[He holds out his hands to be cuffed, but Kate pushes them down]
Caitlin 'Kate' Todd: *We'll* deliver him.
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: You've had two days to do that.
[DiNozzo pulls aside Ernie's tie, revealing the Medal of Honor. Coleman and the Marines snap to attention, and the Marines salute]
buzz-master.com
Obviously, his medals made him a high security risk.
My addendum: from NCIS 'Call to Silence'
[Coleman enters the squadroom with two Marine MPs]
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: Where's Gibbs?
Anthony DiNozzo: And a good afternoon to you too, Commander Coleman.
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: He was to deliver Corporal Yost to me...
Ernie Yost: Present and accounted for, sir!
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: ...at 0800. You're Ernest Yost?
Ernie Yost: [stands at attention] Yes, ma'am.
Anthony DiNozzo: This is Lieutenant Commander Coleman, Ernie, JAG Corps. She's here to, um... arrest you.
Ernie Yost: I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, Commander.
Anthony DiNozzo: [referring to the two Marines] What's with the Olsen twins?
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: They're here to escort the accused to Quantico.
Ernie Yost: Well, it's about time.
[He holds out his hands to be cuffed, but Kate pushes them down]
Caitlin 'Kate' Todd: *We'll* deliver him.
Lt. Cmdr. Faith Coleman: You've had two days to do that.
[DiNozzo pulls aside Ernie's tie, revealing the Medal of Honor. Coleman and the Marines snap to attention, and the Marines salute]
buzz-master.comSaturday, July 6, 2013
A Tranquil Star and Chickens
"A Tranquil Star, unlike most of Levi’s other writings, includes sections that are decidedly comical. An obvious example is his story “Censorship in Bitinia.” The leaders of the fictional country Bitinia found that human censors developed psychological problems. They switched to mechanical censorship, but that led to errors. They trained dogs, horses, and monkeys to do the job, but these animals “were too intelligent and sensitive.” Finally they found the answer: chickens. The story ends with the words “approved by the censor,” followed by the signature—the footprint—of a chicken.
On the surface the story is silly, but
Levi had experienced the horrors of totalitarianism. The fear of
dictatorship seems to lurk behind the fantasy and humor of his writing.
Repression of any kind is dangerous, potentially murderous. At the same
time, it is stupid. The chickens who carried out this policy were
birdbrains, literally. The human monsters like Hitler and Pol Pot who
caused the enormous suffering brought about by the tyranny they
inflicted were idiots—figurative birdbrains—who slaughtered millions of
innocents and by doing so brought about the end of their own regimes..." -
~George Jochnowitz, essay, March/April 2008 issue of Midstream
Friday, July 5, 2013
We Are One: Flashbacks
We Are One: Flashbacks
Excerpt:
I think I will create a page with ideas and links just for flashbacks. Why, you ask? I had them. One of the first ones occurred the day I was fitted for hearing aides. It wasn't until I was on the floor whimpering I would be good that I knew that I was in the grips of one. Flashbacks are nothing like how they are depicted in movies...they are scary and in some cases debilitating.
Excerpt:
I think I will create a page with ideas and links just for flashbacks. Why, you ask? I had them. One of the first ones occurred the day I was fitted for hearing aides. It wasn't until I was on the floor whimpering I would be good that I knew that I was in the grips of one. Flashbacks are nothing like how they are depicted in movies...they are scary and in some cases debilitating.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Peace or Freedom: The Reason for the Season (So to speak)
[My addendum to his:]
ONE NATION under God
...the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...
The blood of my generations was shed from Valley Forge to France for this:
For people to be free from tyranny and its demonic madness in order to praise and serve God.
Revolutionary
War: John Walters, Charles Hamrick, Solomon
Langston, Essex Worsham
Frontier Wars: Peter Hamrick
Civil War: Jack Hamrick, Zacheus Horn, Jesse Horn, Wyatt
Watson, Jeff Watson, George Watson, Patrick Worsham, John Howard, C.C. Koonce
World War I: Clifford
Walters—gassed in the trenches of France.
World War II: my father
For you Cliff. As they said, 'Nuts!'
His Post:
The Reason for the Season (So to speak)
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
...........................
From GetReligion: on Gettysburg...
The Daughters of Charity at their provincial house in Emmitsburg, Md., could hear the cannons of Pickett’s Charge 10 miles off. They helped their chaplain pack a wagon with medical supplies and, when the cannons were silenced, a dozen sisters rode with him to tend to the wounded.
“They had already been on battlefields in the North and the South,” said Lisa Shower, who gives Civil War tours at the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. In 1863, nuns were the nation’s only trained nurses.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Love and Confidence in the Heart of Mary - Vultus Christi
Love and Confidence in the Heart of Mary - Vultus Christi
For today's feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary....
For today's feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary....
Monday, July 1, 2013
From Folly to Folly
From Folly to Folly
Communism arose from rebellion against the oppression of the tyranny of a group of people who persecute and steal and murder others for their own gain and power. The enemy of souls is good at setting up divisions and then murdering whatever side doesn't follow his mayhem. The names really do not matter...Egypt...Babylon...Ottoman Empire...Rome...British imperialism/colonialism...etc
The fact remains that tyrants hate God, His People, His Law, His Church. All totalitarian systems are demonic in nature. 'You shall know them by their fruits.'
Jesus said the serpent was a liar and murderer and deceiver from the beginning. That has not changed.
Liberation Theology is heresy because it rewrites Scripture in Marxist Communist terms. It is that old serpent again making God's Word 'slippery'..."He didn't really say that, did He?'... Well, in fact, yes He did and does. The Christian is to leave everything and follow Him to bring the Good News. Liberation theology seeks to rewrite what that 'Good News' is. It is the veritable fox in the chicken coop.
It seeks to replace the Gift of Redemption bought on the Cross with liberation through rebellion. God sent His Son to lead us to repentance not social liberation. When we repent, are forgiven, receive God's Holy Spirit, are sent out according to His Will, then the true Good News is propagated. Yes, we are to remain poor before him, but we are not pervert that to serve our own ends.
Liberation Theology arose because the people of God's Church weren't faithful. When we die and face the Lord Jesus Christ He will ask us about what we--each of us--individually--did or did not DO when the poor, the sick, the dying, the widow, the prisoner...came before 'each of us'. We judge ourselves in how we treat our spouses, our children, our family members, and our neighbors according to God's precepts not our own.
The Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy are not, never were, never will be, 'liberation theology' which seeks to promote the illusory 'utopia' of socialist marxism. If you disagree then go to every socialist country from Britain, Russia, China, North Korea, the countries of South America, Cuba...and LOOK...
I ask one question of each of those countries: 'How's that working out for you?'
Marxism is a false parody of Christianity. Its social arm, marxist liberation theology, is devastating to the poor of every type. It is, as Marx said, the 'captivity of the dimensions of alienation'. It takes the poor, mockingly, holds out carrots for awhile, just long enough to 'hook them', and then vacuums them dry to the bone of everything. In Cuba, for example, the young are fed the ad nauseum, then the free sex leads to rape, multiple abortion and insane asylums that tell you that you aren't crazy for hating such a demonic ravaging of innocence and goodness. However, they tell you that you are crazy for loving God and so tthe victims of this demonic system cannot know of His Love, His Forgiveness, His Providence, His Healing, and His Redemption.
You can bake a cake, put icing on it, decorate it but if even one drop of poison remains, eating it will destroy you.
Jeremiah went into the temple, stripped the fancy curtains hiding the idols worshipped by the king and the high priest, and prophesied of their doom at the hands of the Babylonians. Even then the leaders did not want to 'give up' their own power....prestige...money... In the end Israel lost it all.
Might try Deuteronomy 18 too.
As today, unofficially since 1969, is the Feast of the Precious Blood....
“You know that you were redeemed from the vain manner of life handed down from your fathers, not with perishable things as silver or gold but with the Precious Blood of Christ as the Lamb without blemish and without spot.” - 1 Peter
Communism arose from rebellion against the oppression of the tyranny of a group of people who persecute and steal and murder others for their own gain and power. The enemy of souls is good at setting up divisions and then murdering whatever side doesn't follow his mayhem. The names really do not matter...Egypt...Babylon...Ottoman Empire...Rome...British imperialism/colonialism...etc
The fact remains that tyrants hate God, His People, His Law, His Church. All totalitarian systems are demonic in nature. 'You shall know them by their fruits.'
Jesus said the serpent was a liar and murderer and deceiver from the beginning. That has not changed.
Liberation Theology is heresy because it rewrites Scripture in Marxist Communist terms. It is that old serpent again making God's Word 'slippery'..."He didn't really say that, did He?'... Well, in fact, yes He did and does. The Christian is to leave everything and follow Him to bring the Good News. Liberation theology seeks to rewrite what that 'Good News' is. It is the veritable fox in the chicken coop.
It seeks to replace the Gift of Redemption bought on the Cross with liberation through rebellion. God sent His Son to lead us to repentance not social liberation. When we repent, are forgiven, receive God's Holy Spirit, are sent out according to His Will, then the true Good News is propagated. Yes, we are to remain poor before him, but we are not pervert that to serve our own ends.
Liberation Theology arose because the people of God's Church weren't faithful. When we die and face the Lord Jesus Christ He will ask us about what we--each of us--individually--did or did not DO when the poor, the sick, the dying, the widow, the prisoner...came before 'each of us'. We judge ourselves in how we treat our spouses, our children, our family members, and our neighbors according to God's precepts not our own.
The Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy are not, never were, never will be, 'liberation theology' which seeks to promote the illusory 'utopia' of socialist marxism. If you disagree then go to every socialist country from Britain, Russia, China, North Korea, the countries of South America, Cuba...and LOOK...
I ask one question of each of those countries: 'How's that working out for you?'
Marxism is a false parody of Christianity. Its social arm, marxist liberation theology, is devastating to the poor of every type. It is, as Marx said, the 'captivity of the dimensions of alienation'. It takes the poor, mockingly, holds out carrots for awhile, just long enough to 'hook them', and then vacuums them dry to the bone of everything. In Cuba, for example, the young are fed the ad nauseum, then the free sex leads to rape, multiple abortion and insane asylums that tell you that you aren't crazy for hating such a demonic ravaging of innocence and goodness. However, they tell you that you are crazy for loving God and so tthe victims of this demonic system cannot know of His Love, His Forgiveness, His Providence, His Healing, and His Redemption.
You can bake a cake, put icing on it, decorate it but if even one drop of poison remains, eating it will destroy you.
Jeremiah went into the temple, stripped the fancy curtains hiding the idols worshipped by the king and the high priest, and prophesied of their doom at the hands of the Babylonians. Even then the leaders did not want to 'give up' their own power....prestige...money... In the end Israel lost it all.
Might try Deuteronomy 18 too.
As today, unofficially since 1969, is the Feast of the Precious Blood....
“You know that you were redeemed from the vain manner of life handed down from your fathers, not with perishable things as silver or gold but with the Precious Blood of Christ as the Lamb without blemish and without spot.” - 1 Peter
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