Seamus Heaney, Poet, Rest in Peace

Seamus Heaney

Poet

Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIA was an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Wikipedia

Born: April 13, 1939, Castledawson, United Kingdom

Died: August 30, 2013, Dublin, Ireland

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It's strange.  As I post this I find myself weeping.  Of late he had a profound influence upon me as a poet.  I respected him.  His 'essay' of 'Admonition' spoke deeply to me and I am grateful for his writings.

      Two fields back, in the house, small ripples shook   

      Silently across our drinking water

     (As they are shaking now across my heart)

     And vanished into where they seemed to start.    ~from Glanmore Sonnets: IV

Born on 13 April, 1939, on a family farm in the rural heart of County Londonderry, he never forgot the world he came from. "I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells / Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss," he recalled in Personal Helicon...The very first poem in his first major collection was called Digging, and it described his father digging potatoes and his grandfather digging turf. It ended...

"But I've no spade to follow men like them./Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests./I'll dig with it."

Now it's high watermark

And floodtide in the heart

And time to go...

What's left to say?

Suspect too much sweet talk

But never close your mind.

It was a fortunate wind

That blew me here. I leave

Half-ready to believe

That a crippled trust might walk

And the half-true rhyme is love.   ~Obituary: BBC

He recently suffered from ill health.

His 2010 poetry collection The Human Chain was written after he suffered a stroke and the central poem, Miracle, was directly inspired by his illness. Recalling how he had been lifted up and down the stairs to his bedroom, the poet eulogised the biblical characters who carried a paralysed man to Jesus to be healed.

In an interview with the Today programme's James Naughtie in early 2013, Heaney remembered how he felt when he first discovered poetry.

               "It was the voltage of the language, it was entrancing," he said.

"I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on."...

Mr Heaney is survived by his wife, Maire, and three children Christopher, Michael and Catherine Ann.

A funeral mass for the poet will take place on Monday at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Donnybrook, Dublin.

This will be followed by interment in Bellaghy.   ~BBC Notice

High School Teacher Gets 30 Days for Raping Student Who Committed Suicide

High School Teacher Gets 30 Days for Raping Student WhoCommitted Suicide

Something is desperately wrong with our judicial system when an adult only receives a month in jail for raping a minor.  When the crime is committed by a teacher, I think he/she should receive a stiffer sentence because our children are entrusted into the teacher's care.  These instructors need to have the fear of God in them so they won't do any harm to the young people they are hired to teach and so parents can feel secure when they send their children to school.

When I was a child, my parents NEVER feared that any teacher would harm me.  Times have certainly changed in the last several decades.......

Better Living through Beowulf | How great literature can change your life

Better Living through Beowulf | How great literature can change your life
Excerpt:     Please, pray for Robin, her father, and her family....
The passage they found had to do with rain since it’s been raining all summer in Sewanee, with rainfall 22 inches above normal. I share it here because the description of the rising flood waters in A. A Milne’s “Surrounded by Water” chapter in Winnie-the-Pooh also captures my sense that we are all about to be submerged:
It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness how old—three, or was it four?—never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.

At the end of the chapter, of course, there’s a miraculous rescue as Christopher Robin and Pooh turn an umbrella into a boat and save Piglet. I’m pessimistic that there will be any miraculous rescue here. This feels more like  William Cowper’s “Castaway,” about sailors looking on helpless as a fellow crew member drowns before their eyes:
He shouted: nor his friends had fail’d
         To check the vessel’s course,
But so the furious blast prevail’d,
         That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.
Some succour yet they could afford;
         And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
         Delay’d not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate’er they gave, should visit more.

The hospital is doing all it can and yesterday intervened as my father’s pulse started racing. But it feels is though the medical staff are just postponing the inevitable.
In the end, it may be our own metaphorical immersion in depression that we fear the most:

No voice divine the storm allay’d,
         No light propitious shone;
When, snatch’d from all effectual aid,
         We perish’d, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm’d in deeper gulfs than he.

Pray for us.

Man plots and plans while God laughs.

Georgia Public School says God is dead.  My responses:

          'Man plots and plans while God laughs.'  -Mexican proverb
That old argument from the 18th century atheists who had to revel in free sex with the lie that 'those old commandments didn't really exist' since, uh, well, ya know...there's not really a God...it has reappeared in every generation...The scenario and the argument hasn't changed since the serpent enticed Eve to eat the apple...
Seriously, though, I am not surprised it's coming out of Georgia where the center for law and justice has been brokering as much atheistic, socialistic thrust in every avenue of American society as it can get away with..in the name of 'freedom'...have to put all those young eager-beaver-legals to work...

The Bible and Treating the Elderly with respect

The Bible and Treating the Elderly with respect
Excerpt:
...treatment of the elderly needs to be an area of great concern to all of us.
There seems to be two views of age in today's society. The most prevalent view seems to be that of repulsion. Age is looked upon as an incurable disease. We fight against aging, we do not want to be reminded of what time can do to us. Thus, the aged elderly person is cast from society. They are made to feel useless, a burden to family, and often are cast off, avoided except on rare occasions of birthdays and Christmas morning. Another view is that age is beautiful. That age demands respect and dignity. That the elderly are giants of the forest, wise, full of experience, worthy of our praise and adoration. This is the view the Bible holds on age...

We Are One

We Are One
Excerpt:
I am Christian and I learned a few things about and from abusers.  Abusers use the knowledge that I am Christian to their advantage.  They tell me I am being unforgiving when I place boundaries to protect myself from their cruelty.   They say that being Christian means I turn the other cheek and the other one and the other one.  Parent abusers say to Honor your parents without behaving honorably.  Abusers are knowledgable of religious beliefs and use them to their own advantage to keep down their victims.  I understand Bible bashing from another perspective by those that use the Bible to manipulate and hurt others.  For a time, I stopped reading scriptures because I saw how they were used negatively.  Christ knew of my experience and prompted me to keep reading and studying and opening my heart to all He had to say.  One of those passages is where He counsels to put on the Whole Armor of God.....He wants me to wear Armor....He is not expecting me to be defenseless.
........
Truth is the clarion call to recognize the behavior of abusers.  Meeting their lies with truth reveals them for what they are and protects who we are...

Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, 2013 | All Manner of Thing

Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, 2013 | All Manner of Thing
Excerpt:

A great sign appeared in heaven:
A woman clothed with the sun,
and the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 

Sing ye to the Lord a new song:
because He hath done wonderful things.

The Ideological-Theological Spectrum - Harvesting the Fruit of the Vatican II

The Ideological-Theological Spectrum - Harvesting the Fruit of the Vatican II

We Are One: Coping with PTSD

We Are One: Coping with PTSD
Excerpt:
I read and study about my challenges. I learned when medical doctors had no answers for me that I am responsible for my health, physical, emotional, or spiritual. I also believe that in this age of information glut someone else has written about my challenges somewhere.  Quite early on when I still thought all my problems were a physical ailment I discovered in the basement of our local library a computer connection that brought all the information at all the hospital libraries to a single library terminal.
[...]
What I learned I used to change my life.  I am still using research to study.  Today I am giving a review:

Coping with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:  A guide for families by Cheryl A. Roberts
ISBN: 978-0-7864-4974-3 http://mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4974-3

I found this book at the library when I was looking for another one.  I was impressed that there wasn't a suggestion that was in the book that my counselor didn't suggest or try.  I turned down medication for reasons too complicated for me to understand, let alone explain, but I know for some people medication makes a difference.  Overall opinion for the book is it gives a current overview of practices for coping with PTSD today...
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Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.  - Philip K. Dick  

We Are One: Possible reactions

We Are One: Possible reactions
Excerpt:
Social support is extremely important for preventing and helping with PTSD. It is important for family members to take care of themselves; both for their own good and to help the person dealing with PTSD.
Stand with us, and help us save lives!!!...

And The Tatoo...

I've never understood why this 'gift of remembrance' came to me.
Recently I read that silence and solitude cannot heal all things, all memories.  There are queries of the soul and heart too deep to bury; 'the very stones will cry out.'  His Sword has two sides: Justice||Mercy.  Both are gifts of grace and love.
Yesterday I ran across an admonition: "You have not worked the silences..."  Some of us are tapped on the soul to 'hold and carry' the wounded.  A few years ago I watched a retired psychiatric nurse who was grieving especially for her brother paint a picture.  The picture was full of the shadows of people...Those whose 'sight' includes those surrounding us with unmet needs who can find themselves in battles few understand especially in a world that despises the spiritual, the soul, and holds contemplation in contempt.
  

This past year has been extraordinarily difficult and at times very painful so even though almost everything I post has some correlation to my promise 'to remember' I have not posted my annual story of Margaret of Hungary. This promise has profoundly rewoven the fabric of my being.  In so many ways she also remembers me. Across the interstices of Eternity two women's lives have intertwined to such an extent that I would never believe it if I were not one them.  When I met Margaret she was an old woman dying.  I was a young student studying chemistry and Latin. I already had a history degree with a major in modern European history with a specialty in Holocaust studies.  However, as I was soon to learn, I knew absolutely 'nothing' about it.
Where we met was just as astonishing to me.  I was finishing up my studies at a university in West Texas.  She had come from Budapest, Hungary.  I was Roman Catholic.  She was Jewish. That which has always stood out in my memory of her: her beautiful eyes, her dark, raven hair, her rolling accent and the 'tattoo'.
When one studies science with lectures in the morning and long Chemistry labs in the afternoon, time for work and study are at a premium.  Through the medical school I was hired to care for patients returning home from the hospital who still needed care.  It was called 'crisis care' and then there were no programs as are available in today’s mass marketing health care industry. 

Her son was a doctor and professor of physiology.  Margaret had suffered a massive stroke and needed constant care. I was assigned the graveyard shift.  While caring for most of my previous patients who eventually went to sleep, I could study which kept me awake.  This was not so with Margaret.  She was in distress and unable to communicate her needs.
That first night it was frustrating for both of us.  I finally realized she wanted to use the bedside commode.
She was dead weight but I was able to lift her onto the seat.  She was still crying.  I spoke softly to her trying to listen for her words when it struck me that one of the reasons I was having difficulty understanding her speech was that she had a very thick accent.  For chemistry I had studied German, French and Russian to read the journals so I said to her: "You're eastern European!"  All of a sudden this dying, lifeless woman raised herself up, threw back her head and with eyes flashing retorted, "I am Hungarian!"  We both smiled.
We were only assigned each patient for three weeks until the funding ran out.  Each evening I looked forward to being with her.  She pulled out her family album and showed me her pictures.  This small woman had been a concert violinist in Budapest.  She had married a university professor of physiology who was also a physician.  They had three beautiful children.  In 1944 they were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz.  After a time she was moved to Ravensbruck.  By some miracle they all survived.  Her children went to the United States.  She and her husband remained in Hungary.  In the Hungarian Uprising soviet tanks killed many, including her husband.  She had to flee Hungary.  Terrified she remained for months in Tunisia until her son finally was able to bring her to live with him in West Texas.
                    The night she revealed these dark things to me is tattooed on my soul.
She knew she would not live very long.  It was important this story.  I know it.  She had not been in West Texas long when her family was encouraged to get her out of the house and meet others.  None of them were that active socially.  The shades were kept down and there was a reticence to interact.  She finally allowed her son to take her to the senior center.  It was a warm, sunny spring day.  She sat alone at one of the round tables waiting for the noon luncheon when an older man entered the room.  He came and sat across from her.  She felt uncomfortable. With a smile he stared at her and said, pointing to her 'tattoo', "and you just thought you could get away from us."  For what seemed like eternity she froze, stunned.  Then she rose and went to the office where she came unglued.  They called her son to come get her.  The man had left.  She never left the house alone again.
I taught chemistry classes for years across from this center and would sometimes go to the window and stare at those who went in and out the front door.
The last day of my time with Margaret her doctor son came into the room.  He thanked me and said she seemed more alert and happy.  I told him that she had shared her life with me.  Tears filled his eyes.  "She has never spoken of it to any of us."  He was with her as I was leaving but I returned to her bedside and with tears in my eyes I hugged her and whispered, "I promise I will remember."  Unworthily I have kept my promise.  Each year for decades my chemistry and physics students heard her story.  Now, as I am retired, I share it with those who will read it.
           Thank you, again, Margaret of Hungary. May you rest in peace.
===============
               What brought it to mind today was the ‘Hiding Place’ movie last night.

              "There's no pit so deep, that He is not deeper still."   ~Betsie Ten Boom

 

Father of James DiMaggio killed himself over 16-year-old crush 18 years ago to the day that DiMaggio was shot dead by FBI | Mail Online

Father of James DiMaggio killed himself over 16-year-old crush 18 years ago to the day that DiMaggio was shot dead by FBI | Mail Online  
[h/t Donald Douglas, American Power blog]
Excerpt:
By Lydia Warren, Michael Zennie and Jessica Jerreat
James DiMaggio's kidnapping of 16-year-old Hannah Anderson, whom was said to have a 'crush on,' could be a horrific case of history repeating itself, it has been revealed.
DiMaggio's father, also named James DiMaggio, shockingly killed himself 18 years ago to the day that DiMaggio was shot dead by an FBI agent in the Idaho wilderness. Hannah was found safe and is expected to be reunited with her father today.
The similarities between the elder DiMaggio's suicide and his son's death are uncanny.
James DiMaggio Sr. was also infatuated with a 16-year-old girl - James Jr's classmate - and resorted to violence when she refused to run away with him, it was claimed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389292/Father-James-DiMaggio-killed-16-year-old-crush-18-years-ago-day-DiMaggio-shot-dead-FBI.html#ixzz2bhjHwAiQ

BLOODAXE BLOGS: LOUIS SIMPSON (1923-2012):‘The American Chekhov’ by Neil Astley

BLOODAXE BLOGS: LOUIS SIMPSON (1923-2012):‘The American Chekhov’ by Neil Astley
Excerpt:
One night I dreamed that I was walking with other shadowy figures along what seemed to be the bank of a canal, when bullets slashed the trees and shells were falling. I woke and wrote out the dream, and as I wrote remembered… it wasn’t a dream, it has actually happened. For one of the symptoms of the mental disorder that came after the war was amnesis… there were bright patches with darkness all around. How this scene came back clearly.
    I wrote it as a poem. I had been reading Heine’s ballads, and the poem took the form of a ballad. As it was a poem, not just memory, I was free to invent.
    [The King My Father’s Wreck, pp. 56-57]

DENISE LEVERTOV en castellano: SALMO ACERCA DEL CASTILLO

DENISE LEVERTOV en castellano: SALMO ACERCA DEL CASTILLO
Excerpt:

Déjame estar en el lugar del castillo.

Deja que el castillo esté en mí.

Deja que se alce sólido desde el círculo del foso...

Trait 03 – Lost Identity | The L.I.S.T. ACA Group

Trait 03 – Lost Identity | The L.I.S.T. ACA Group
Excerpt:
We Became Approval-Seekers And Lost Our Identity In The Process.
Very early in my childhood I began to watch the expressions on my father’s face very carefully.  By doing so I could quickly determine what kind of mood he was in and adjust my behavior accordingly.  My responses to my father were always efforts to keep him “happy”.  Whenever possible I used humor to keep him from escalating a sour mood.
Approval-seeking became a powerful defense mechanism that I used whenever I was faced with people who were potentially threatening or violent – and my father was at the head of that list.  I believed at a deep level that if I could get people’s approval, they wouldn’t hurt me.
Today I know that when I fall into an approval-seeking stance – and sometimes I find it difficult not to – I lose my identity.   I abandon my natural self.  The real me slides under the door because I’m concentrating on responses and behavior that will please another — not me.  So I have said no to the authentic me and yes to someone else’s wants...

Life after Trauma: Complex PTSD

Life after Trauma: Complex PTSD
Excerpt:
Judith Lewis Herman's book, Trauma and Recovery, is a landmark book. I don't use this term lightly...
Introduction 
In most books, you can skip the introduction. However, I suggest that you read Herman's introduction. It's brief and clear about why we should be interested in trauma. Herman argues that, "Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims." (p. 1) She then goes on to describe the conflict that is at the heart of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: "the conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma." And that's just on page one! 
[...]
Stages of Recovery
As important as the first part of Herman's book is, the part that glued me to the page was the stages that trauma survivors must pass through in order to successfully recover from PTSD. (Caveat: to recover doesn't mean that people who have experienced significant trauma will return to their pre-trauma state. It means, rather, that the survivor will be able to reconnect with others both on the individual level and on the community level.) 
Safety
The first, and most important stage, is that the survivor must be safe...
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...Keeping things inside doesn't help. I talk to my therapist, several close friends, and my husband. They don't have answers, but they don't judge me either, and they provide me with much needed compassion. But BE CAREFUL, don't talk to people who judge you or tell you things like, "just get over it." Avoid those sorts of people like the plague.
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My Note:
There is a destruction of 'trust' in all societal systems by many. There is a destruction of 'fight' also as a jamming survival mode sets in.  Some are not able to overcome the shattering effects of living a lifetime of this.  It can never be done alone.  Never.

Curé of Ars: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. John Vianney

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. John Vianney 
Curé of Ars: Patron of Priests
[Note: In 1925, Pope Pius XI canonized him. His feast is kept on 4 August.]
Excerpt:
But the chief labour of the Curé d'Ars was the direction of souls. He had not been long at Ars when people began coming to him from other parishes, then from distant places, then from all parts of France, and finally from other countries. As early as 1835, his bishop forbade him to attend the annual retreats of the diocesan clergy because of "the souls awaiting him yonder". During the last ten years of his life, he spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional. His advice was sought by bishops, priests, religious, young men and women in doubt as to their vocation, sinners, persons in all sorts of difficulties and the sick. In 1855, the number of pilgrims had reached twenty thousand a year... 

Translating Jean Améry | Adrian West

Translating Jean Améry | Adrian West
Excerpt:
[...]
If the French then is airier, more refined and expository, is this infidelity to Améry’s text, or merely a hewing to the French Améry might have written, had he been capable, or, if he was capable, as I believe him to have been, had he not been consumed by intimations of his own worthlessness? Might such a translation then comprise a service rendered to the spiritual reality of this deeply frustrated writer?
I have used the word expository on purpose here, to inspire thoughts, not only of exposition, but also of exposure, of denudement. The need to be known is a profound one and yet the trust in others, in continuity, and even in one’s own psychic and physical integrity necessary to lay oneself bare is often shattered in those who have been subject to trauma and degradation, and in many cases it can never be repaired. When I read Améry, particularly his fiction, the at-times misplaced curtness, the refusal of elaboration, is off-putting, and in translation, there is a temptation to smooth things out. Whether this is right or not, one cannot say; it is a question of the writer’s ultimate identity, his ontology. When we cry at a child’s dying, it is not only for the impotent immaculate being lying vulnerable on white cloth but also for the many-petalled flower of its possibilities that minute by minute are extinguished. Our voice is not our ideal voice but nor is it merely the distortions that have been effected upon this ideal by material forces that were directed toward our destruction.
[h/t Pykk]

Applebaum and Shore: life under communism and its long, bitter aftertaste | The Book Haven

Applebaum and Shore: life under communism and its long, bitter aftertaste | The Book Haven
Excerpt:
...Having a mother who was 100% Magyar was a good antidote to political correctness.  And she never forgot nor forgave the conference that forked over most of Eastern Europe to Stalinist rule.  (Perhaps it’s no coincidence that her daughter writes so much about Cold War-era writers from Poland and Russia.)
[...]
You can read the article, “When Evil Was a Social System: The Moral Burdens of Living under Communist Rule in Eastern Europe,” here.
I pulled out piles of excerpts to cite, but this humble blog post quickly became top-heavy, and I felt the ominous presence of the copyright cops outside my door.  Let me settle instead for citing Caldwell’s concluding paragraphs:

“These two books are a sign that something is changing in our understanding of the twentieth century. Applebaum and Shore, while close in age, are on opposite sides of a generational razor’s edge. Applebaum, born in the 1960s, has adult memories of the Cold War; Shore, born in the 1970s, does not. Applebaum speaks to, and in the idiom of, those who survived totalitarianism. She dedicates her book to ‘those Eastern Europeans who refused to live within a lie.’ Her big, resolute book gives us the most authoritative knowledge we have about communism, and only the most authoritative knowledge.

Read on...

[...]

Meanwhile, a final anecdote lingers:  “Applebaum mentions a girl sent home from school for saying, ‘my grandfather says Stalin is already burning in Hell’—sent home not because the teacher disapproved, but to protect the girl, her friends, her grandfather, her school, and the people who ran it. In such circumstances, propaganda can be a balm. It provides a way for men to lie to themselves, to rationalize submission to the strong, to save face. ‘I don’t like everything Stalin says,’ you could mutter (quietly!) to your wife, ‘but someone has to do something about the illiterate.’” Do I detect a whiff of Czesław Miłosz‘s ketman here?

Our Lady of the Forsaken (“Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados”)

Nuestra Señora de los desamparados or Our Lady of the Forsaken, Patron Saint of Valencia - Spain.

The Legend goes that in 15th century 3 young men dressed as pilgrims arrived to a Valencian hospital. The hospital looked after the mentally ill (hence "the forsaken"). A friar who greeted the pilgrims had a blind wife. The men offered to build an image of the Virgin in exchange for food and shelter and stayed in a room for four days. Not hearing a sound, the friars broke the door in and saw that the image of the Virgin had been constructed and the men vanished. At the same moment the woman's blindness was cured. Since then it is believed that the three men were angels, and various Spanish artists who were inspired by the image commented on the supernatural element in the statue.

History of Our Lady of the Abandoned

In 15th century, a religious brotherhood was founded in Valencia, Spain to care for and minister to the needs of forsaken children in supplication to Our Lady of the Abandoned Ones. However, it remained wanting of an image with which to begin its veneration and devotion.

One day three young boys came knocking on its door seeking shelter. They were allowed to stay and these boys offered to carve the image needed in gratitude for the asylum. They were provided with a large slab of wood and sculpting tools. They asked that they be left in silence and undisturbed for three days to finish the task.

The youth locked themselves up in the room for three days and after that time, the children still did not come out. The brothers decided to force open the door but the boys where nowhere to be found. Instead, at the center of the room, a majestic, protective and beautifully carved image of Our Lady greeted them. This mystery was soon followed by countless miracles attributed to the workings of this holy handiwork. In 1885, Our Lady of the Abandoned Ones was proclaimed Patroness of Valencia.

In the 1700's, Fr. Vicente Ingles, a Spanish friar went to Valencia and brought home to the Philippines a replica of the image. The image has since been venerated in Sta. Ana, Manila for 300 years.

In the 1700's, Fr. Vicente Ingles, a Spanish friar went to Valencia and brought home to the Philippines a replica of the image. The image has since been venerated in Sta. Ana, Manila for 300 years.

Our Lady of the Abandoned became the Patroness of Hulo, Mandaluyong through the suggestion of the Catholic Chinese residents who always visit the Shrine of Our Lady in Sta. Ana. She is the refuge of the unloved and the rejected. Many prayers have been answered through her powerful intercession.

 A saying of St. Bonaventure that is linked to the devotion to Our Lady of the Abandoned Ones:

“When all human help fails, it is imperative that we not despair. For normally in this extreme situation, the divine help of Mary comes.”

That is, when man is completely abandoned, it is necessary to have hope, because this is the moment that Our Lady will give her assistance.

===========

Fr. Jofre arriving at his church for Mass was horrified to find a violent mob in the act of hanging a mentally deranged man.  He established a chapel to aid such unfortunates. Eventually an order of priests and nuns were established to minister to them.

I remember Elie Wiesel's comment..."They are more defenseless than the poor"...which should elicit great mercy and compassion.

===========

Our Lady of the Forsaken (“Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados”) by Tomás Yepes.(As patroness she is pictured on my blog in the side bar-->)

Painted in 1644, Yepes recreated in minute detail the way the statue of the Virgin appeared, with all of its many adornments and votive offerings.The painting falls under the category trampantojos del divino, meaning “divine trompe l’oeil.”

For me it is the Divine Healer forever leaping out of the frames within which we constantly attempt to constrict Him.  I love that about Jesus--He doesn't like to be stuck in boxes either.

Pentimento: No Gay Friends

Pentimento: No Gay Friends
Excerpt:
Having reverted rather dramatically to the Catholic faith about ten years ago, I have an interest in conversion narratives (an interest which extends to my professional life, since the book I'm currently writing for a British publisher, one of the reasons for my currently scanty blogging, is about religious conversion in Victorian England). In light of this, I got hold of a book that made a bit of a bump in the Christian press a few months ago, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, the conversion memoir of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a reformed lesbian and erstwhile professor of feminist studies and queer theory. (I like that her name means "rosary"; she is Italian-American and was raised Catholic, but her conversion was into a Reformed, i.e. evangelical Presbyterian, denomination.)
This is not a book review; I'm only a few dozen pages into the book. I have to confess to being slightly put off by its slapdash writing and virtually-nonexistent copyediting (though I suppose a small Christian publisher like Butterfield's doesn't have much of an editing budget), but the book is both more complex and more honest than most conversion narratives I've read. What interests me most, though, is what Butterfield, after her conversion, did with her past... 

Abbey-Roads: Why are Catholics so worried about the Pope and what he says?

Abbey-Roads: Why are Catholics so worried about the Pope and what he says?
Excerpt:
Don't cry for me Argentina.

I commented on a post a few days ago and said I doubt the Pope sees others as enemies.  I also doubt he needs handlers.  He's from Argentina people.  He lived through some pretty gruesome history and his life was anything but comfortable.  He knows how words are twisted, how propaganda works against the Church.  People are concerned about what and how the Pope speaks?  That's absurd.  Who do you think you are?

You want to censor the Pope?  You want handlers to keep him distant from the people?  You are afraid that he will be misinterpreted?  That's totally hypocritical.  That's like Peter remonstrating with Christ, trying to hold him back, saying he shouldn't have to suffer, he should avoid the cross.  Christ whipped around and said, 'get behind me Satan'.  The Gospel story should be sufficient to put us in our place.

The Pope said what he said.  Stop trying to speak for him.

Every Pope has said things and has done things that have been twisted to suit agendas.  How is that our concern?  Why do we think we have to worry about how the Pope's words are perceived?  Haven't we lived through misinterpretation of actual documents of Vatican II?  What about St. JPII kissing the Koran?  How about Benedict's condom statement?  It is not long ago pious pundits were worried Benedict wasn't allowed to do what he wanted, that his desires were not being met - handlers/bureaucrats were holding things up.  (Seriously - do you people talk and write so much you no longer remember what you say?)

Aren't official documents from the Popes and the CDF routinely ignored or reinterpreted to suit those whose responsibility it is to teach and abide by them?  Are not pastoral concessions/dispensations routinely made for Catholics in all sorts situations?  How about married priests?  How about annulments, which secular critics refer to as Catholic divorce.  How about admitting men with homosexual inclination to seminary?  Kind of an inconvenient truth, huh?

You are worried that the faith and Catholic teaching will be misunderstood?  That the Pope should only speak with prepared theological texts?  This is exactly what the Pope has spoken against - distancing the faithful through over dependence on academic, theological, dogmatic dissertation and cold, official statements in ecclesial language.

The Pope speaks directly, plainly.

He is the son of Italian immigrants.  He is the type of man who sits in the kitchen and talks with the family and friends who stop by.  He's ordinary.  He welcomes persons into his life.  He went into the favelas and made friends and spoke their language, shared their concerns.  When he says something, he means it.  He welcomes sinners and eats with them.  He doesn't brow beat theology and dogma and damnation every time he opens his mouth.  

He doesn't need holier-than-thou handlers watering down or icing up the faith.

Polish priest's dismissal exposes rift over dialogue with Jews | Reuters

Polish priest's dismissal exposes rift over dialogue with Jews | Reuters
Excerpt:

The Warsaw diocese of the Roman Catholic Church sacked Lemanski as parish priest in the small village of Jasienica for what it said was his insubordination after numerous clashes on issues such as in-vitro fertilisation, abortion and his engagement with the Jewish community.
Lemanski sealed his fate when in a radio interview he accused Archbishop Henryk Hoser, who oversees his parish, of asking whether he was a Jew and circumcised - a charge the diocese has denied.
The episode exposed a rift within the church, as it struggles to retain a central role in Polish life, between conservatives and those who want more openness in dealing with social issues and some of the darker episodes in Poland's past.
"At a time when Pope Francis is calling for open-mindedness, the church in Poland is crawling into its shell," said Iwona Jakubowska-Branicka, a sociologist at Warsaw University.
"As with many moral issues, the question of relations with Jews has been swept under the carpet," she said.
Relations with the Jewish community are an especially difficult subject in Poland, where millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust during the Nazi German occupation of the country...

God Speaks to Us Before We Are

God Speaks to Us Before We Are

Butterfly Mail

Talking of butterflies:

That gargantuan golden swallowtail,

The lovely, flitting white and yellows,

Each haunts my gardens:

Their flights realize

Heavenly grandeur

Bursting tenuous bonds;

Giggling at my stereotyped despair

Their elusive escapades

Mock living in a dish,

Under covers

(Tatted piecemeal leftovers).

They—such pioneers of aerotowing

Bliss,

Spectral ramblers,

Auspicious spiralers of unbridled canopies,

Gold dust varnishers,

And just sometimes, just...

A deranged crooked flyer

In aerial combat avoidance

Of a flycatcher’s meal.

Such few takers

For spying on rambling commas!

(Much less semi-colon highland flits!)

Wanton exercisers—gliding, lolloping, swooping;

Swooners, following sweet nectars,

Startled, wondering at a gigantic Monarch

Reigning beside mere humble buds.

Tiny paradisial light sweepers

Passing in review before electric-blue dragonflies;

Skippers, Gatekeepers, and all tiny sentry commons

Humming soundless tunes and bowing;

Still that buffy private of jagged jaunt

Who ‘jested, quaff’d and swore’ explodes

In fantastic eddies, amazes in dusky flings.

Hermit flies and chalky scrubbings

Strike in primeval beauty along great closed-over avenue;

Rebelling ghosts of spreading habitats

Along ancient tracing of the railway network

Remind us of lost landscapes of managed human brambles.

Undaunted white, yellow, brown and red wings

Exult in hidden elixirs of rampaging alien invaders.     ~©7/31/13

My Sequel to Notes from PhD Land: On truth — War Poet — A Canadian Forces Artist Project by Suzanne Steele...

My Sequel to Notes from PhD Land: On truth — War Poet — A Canadian Forces Artist Project by Suzanne Steele...
The heart, mind and soul of man is living, dynamic, ever-changing and part of that is processing, dealing, interpreting 'what actually happened' for there is light between the seconds, pulsations between the steps, and higher, lower chords beyond those played.
As my poem line says: Tell it slant-till it kind....
===============

The needless words are needed; they're part of the journey from platitude to point.
The distribution began. Sam made himself a dispenser of bric-a-brac, with a pin pot here, a matchbox there, a napkin ring beside, and a snuffbox neighbouring, and again a pin pot, according to the choice of men and women.....

On Remembering....Elie Wiesel:

Breshit:  I persisted. “It says so in the Torah.” That stopped me. The Torah demanded silence and a kind of sacred respect. All prohibitions came from the Torah.

With time, however, study became a true adventure for me. My first teacher, the Batizer Rebbe, a sweet old man with a snow-white beard that devoured his face, pointed to the twenty-two holy letters of the Hebrew alphabet and said, “Here, children, are the beginning and the end of all things. Thousands upon thousands of works have been written and will be written with these letters. Look at them and study them with love, for they will be your links to life. And to eternity.”

When I read the first word aloud—Breshit, “in the beginning”—I felt transported into an enchanted universe. An intense joy gripped me when I came to understand the first verse. “It was with the twenty-two letters of the aleph-heth that God created the world,” said the teacher, who on reflection was probably not so old. “Take care of them and they will take care of you. They will go with you everywhere. They will make you laugh and cry. Or rather, they will cry when you cry and laugh when you laugh, and if you are worthy of it, they will allow you into hidden sanctuaries where all becomes …” All becomes what? Dust? Truth? Life? It was a sentence he never finished... 

*I am also told that to write your memoirs is to make a commitment, to conclude a special pact with the reader. It implies a promise, a willingness to reveal all, to hide nothing.* People ask, Are you capable of that? Are you ready to talk about the women you have loved for a year or a night, the people who have helped or denigrated you, the grandiose projects and petty schemes, the true friendships and the ones that burst like soap bubbles, the fruitful adventures and the disappointments, the children dead of starvation and old men blinded by pain? You have yourself written that some experiences are incommunicable, that some events cannot be conveyed in words. How do you intend to surmount that contradiction? How can you hope to transmit truths that you yourself have said lie beyond human understanding and always will? It was said of Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk that he remained silent even when speaking. Is there a language that contains another silence, one shaped and deepened by the word?

And yet... Precisely because the future eludes us, we must create it.

I mean to recount not the story of my life, but my stories. Through them you may perhaps understand the rest a little better. Some see their work as a commentary on their life; for others it is the other way around. I count myself among the latter. Consider this account, then, as a kind of commentary.

Moreover, I must warn you that certain events will be omitted, especially those episodes that might embarrass friends and, of course, those that might damage the Jewish people. Call it prudence or cowardice, whatever you like. No witness is capable of recounting everything from start to finish anyway. God alone knows the whole story.

To paraphrase a Talmudic saying, I hope the last page will bring me greater certainty than the first.  Do we write because we are happy or because we’re not?  -Elie Wiesel, Memoirs, Vol. 1

"In extremity, states of mind become objective, metaphors tend to actualize, the word becomes flesh.(1977,205) -Terence Des Pres, 'The Survivor'