C. S. Lewis
again, from "Membership" in The Weight of Glory

As personal and private life is lower than participation in the Body of Christ, so the collective life is lower than the personal and private life and has no value save in its service. The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family, friendship, and solitude. To be happy at home, said Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economic, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.

-- Lewis, op. cit. (Macmillan, 1980), pp. 108-9.

1000 comments!

Kathy, OCDS was the thousandth commenting-customer of dylanblogs (incl. error503 and tenestar).

There should be a prize of some sort! Any ideas?

How about an angel?

My sincerest apologies

Crazy, but that's how it goes --
Millions of people livin' as foes ...
Maybe it's not too late
To learn how to love and forget how to hate!

It'll be some time before I'm able to post the complete transcript of the Osbournes' remarks at last night's American Music Awards. I know you're all disappointed.

Sharon Osbourne on Mariah Carey : "I f---ing love her!"

Sharon to Mariah : "Get your arse out here!"

Ozzy on his missus : "You can't take this f---ing lady anywhere!"

Two weblogs

which I've been visiting of late, with a frequency fast approaching "oft" :

The Rat and Not for Sheep ...

Well, since Pete's not an American Roman Catholic priest, we can extend to him the presumption of innocence, and the media can report with deferential solemnity his statement that his explorations in that area were research-related.

The headline above is my comment on a bit o' blogging by William Luse on the subject Pete Townshend's recent arrest.

C. S. Lewis
from "Membership" in The Weight of Glory

The society into which the Christian is called at baptism is not a collective but a Body. It is in fact that Body of which the family is an image on the natural level. If anyone came to it with the misconception that membership of the Church was membership in a debased modern sense -- a massing together of persons as if they were pennies or counters -- he would be corrected at the threshold by the discovery that the head of this Body is so unlike the inferior members that they share no predicate with Him save by analogy. We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with our Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer. His presence, the interaction between Him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the Body, and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with Him is out of court.

:: :: :: :: ::

Equality is a quantitative term and therefore love often knows nothing of it. Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live. Even in the life of the affections, much more in the Body of Christ, we step outside that world which says "I am as good as you." It is like turning from a march to a dance. [...] We become, as Chesterton said, taller when we bow; we become lowlier when we instruct. It delights me that there should be moments in the services of my own Church when the priest stands and I kneel. As democracy becomes more complete in the outer world and opportunities for reverence are successively removed, the refreshment, the cleansing, and invigorating returns to inequality, which the Church offers us, become more and more necessary.

Lewis, op. cit. (Macmillan, 1980), pp. 112, 115-6.

Go visit Doxos

and read everything that Mr Huw wrote yesterday, esp. the post on openly religious people on juries (New Jersey has its qualms) and the one on the real versus the imaginary Ireland (the post begins with stuff about Greeks and ends with stuff about Iraq, but is mostly about Ireland).

A Roundhead bishop?

An adjective besides "round" -- or perhaps a noun -- comes to mind.

MCNS of Ad Orientem on the liturgical "norms" proposed by Bishop Sylvester Ryan of Monterey, Calif.

Fr Groeschel relates the anecdote about Soren Kierkegaard that he would often sit outside his church on Sundays and drink beer. (I've heard this nowhere else, but if anyone can confirm the non-apocryphality of the ale tale, I'd be much obliged.) One wonders what the 19th century Lutheran from Denmark would do if he were a 21st century Catholic in Monterey.

I'd probably start drinking beer in Church. Hardly less reverent than what Bishop Ryan proposes, even if the beer in question were Blasphemy Brew Winter Lager.

I'd become a liturgical ... NORM !!!

Incidentally, sometime in the next 48, I have to post more Lewis, probably from "Membership." In that address, he thanks God that in his church, there are times when one kneels.

The death penalty : On the other hand

(Part of a discussion in a Yahoo! club over a year and a half ago. Here I propose to my interlocutor, a death-penalty advocate and evangelical Christian, some reasons why opposition to the DP is not unreasonable.)

I think some good arguments can be made for clemency, or at least for some skepticism about the death penalty. They are:

1. Inconsistency/inequality. Not everyone who deserves the death penalty, or who appears to deserve it, gets it. Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11th. The following day was the anniversary of the Nicole Brown Simpson & Ronald Goldman slayings. Their murderer still lives. Also, mobsters who have killed, or helped to kill, dozens of people, regularly make plea bargains or cut deals for immunity. Do we have a sound criterion for "choosing" who receives the death penalty? Or is it dependent on time, chance, & the skill of lawyers?

2. It may strike some as misplaced sympathy to consider the family of a murderer, but is it just to make a murderer's family grieve the death of their child (by execution)? Granted, as the President said of Timothy McVeigh, he chose his fate, he chose darkness over light, and death over life. But the family members of murderers are innocent. (This is perhaps not the most persuasive argument in favour of clemency.)

3. Some relatives of murder victims oppose the death penalty, citing love of enemies.

4. Should concern about a killer's mental state -- possible derangement -- enter into the equation? Sin is not pathology, and murder is not always indicative of mental illness, but serious & thoughtful people propose that it ought to be a consideration in the choice of execution or life imprisonment.

5. To the Christian mind, are we to assume that in even the vilest murderer the possibility of conversion is extinct?

What clemency advocates should not do, it seems to me, is equate the execution of a murderer with the taking of an innocent life (some people's understanding of the "consistent ethic of life" comes close to this). Such an equivalence is morally unsound, to me.

What clemency advocates must do is address the widespread feeling that for a murder, and especially for multiple murders with no discernible motive, life imprisonment seems somehow less than proportionate.

:: :: :: :: ::

My interlocutor's responses to each point

1. True enough, but I suspect that you could make a strong argument to that effect about every criminal sentence. What about clemency in those cases? On the other hand, the death penalty is obviously not just another criminal sentence, as it involves the irrevocable act of taking a human life. As a result, it may merit special consideration.

2. I don't feel that sympathy toward the family of the condemened is misplaced, but I don't think that it should influence whether or not someone is condemned to die. I did feel badly for the parents of Timothy McVeigh: although they undoubtedly made their share of mistakes as parents, I'm sure that they didn't raise their son with the intention of him becoming a mass-murderer.

3. Love of enemies is a Biblical mandate for individuals, but not necessarily for the state. Even if individuals forgive the murderer, the state still has a responsibility to mete out justice on the behalf of its citizens. I don't necessarily see inconsistency in forgiving someone, but still believing that justice requires them to pay for their crimes. Having said that, in practice it does seem a bit bizarre to say "I forgive you" and then "throw the switch" on the electric chair ...

4. Ohio just executed a man last week (the second execution in the state in the past 30 years) for murdering several people in Cleveland nearly 20 years ago. Opponents of the death penalty claimed that he was mentally ill. He may well have been when he was executed, but not when he committed the crime. I don't see why this should be a factor. However, if someone is mentally ill (and I mean CLEARLY mentally ill - as in they honestly have no idea of what they are REALLY doing) I see no problem with that as an extenuating circumstance -- it's just so difficult to prove, though. Psychology has really made a mess of things.

5. This is where I think many pro-death penalty Christians go wrong (I don't think it's an issue for non-Christians, for they rarely even consider this possibility.) I believe that anyone can be forgiven for anything, provided that they are truly repentant. Christ forgave the thief on the cross, saying "This day you shall be with me in paradise." Having said this, conversion should not necessarily negate the sentence (justice should still be served and I think we would suddenly see many "conversions" if it did.) I would think that someone who is truly sorry for their crime would be the first to admit that they deserve to be punished.

Wallace Stevens
On finding God in church & in the world : not a conflict, but a contrast

A brief religious meditation by the great American poet.

From a page called (sans blague) The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens.

(I can only assume that the spelling errors -- "dieties"; "alter" -- are not the poet's fault.)

The Weight of Glory : Membership & Pacifism

A small book by C S Lewis containing nine essays/addresses. Bought second-hand nearly a year ago, but somehow I could never get into it. The color & design of the cover doesn't help. Peach tones, with navy-blue lettering of an immodestly "swirly" sort. Nor did it help that the essay I most looked forward to reading ("Is Theology Poetry?") was like unto watching paint dry.

But necessity has made me read "Why I Am Not a Pacifist"; and pleasure has made me read "Membership."

"Membership" is great; it speaks my veriest thoughts in language that is not so near at hand, but should be. And it explains why presbyters who overemphasize "community" are to be regarded with suspicion, and why a prejudice against kneeling at Mass is a vile thing, indeed.

The essay also goes into the issue of "good" and "bad" egalitarianism, senseless and sensible democracy.

Its starting point is the thought that we are not members of the Church as we are members of a party or club (a statistical unit), but members of a Body with Christ the King as Head, and salient inequalities -- of function, of station -- among the members.

Now, the trick is : How to excerpt this so that it entices the curiosity, without my having to transcribe the whole blessed thing?

And do I continue to post excerpts from "Why I Am Not a Pacifist"? (A word I have trouble typing : it always comes out "pacificist" on the first go.)

Or should I treat the pacifist and anti-DP issues by asking (directing the question to two splendidly intelligent, unfailingly charitable fellow bloggers in particular) : Should we also favor disarmament of the police force? If our objection to the death penalty (and it is oft heard) is that innocent people may someday be executed, and even if not, all killing is bad, should we not immediately demand that all urban police forces renounce the use of firearms?

One can point to scores of innocent persons "executed" by the police force. In this city alone, the record is distressingly high. A young & entirely innocent Cape Verdean woman, shot dead because she was the passenger in a car which struck a police officer (non-fatally; slight injuries to the leg). And police frequently shoot people who have done much less than what would merit the death penalty in ordinary circumstances.

Or should we rather say, in terms of lethal force used by cops, abusus non tollit usus? If something can be wrongly used, it can also be rightly used. If something can be done immoderately (drinking alcohol; gambling), it can also be done moderately.

And ultimately, do we believe a given city would be safer if the police were to disarm? That, friends, is the question.

Legitimate defense
from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not." (65)

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's. (66)

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party. (67)

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." (68)

65 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,64,7, corp. art.
66 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,64,7, corp. art.
67 Cf. Lk 23:40-43.
68 John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.

Also, perhaps, to follow

The Catechism on the death penalty. Copied and analyzed. It is not abolitionist. It does claim, that in many instances, clemency is "more in keeping with the common good and more in conformity with human dignity" ... but even these words do not suggest that the death penalty is inconsistent with the common good, or out of conformity with human dignity.

Nowhere (but nowhere) does the Catechism say that the death penalty is always illicit; nowhere (but nowhere) does the Catechism call the death penalty an evil, or unjustifiable. It says that the death penalty is indeed defensible, and has always been considered in consonance with "traditional Catholic teaching"; it says merely that if non-lethal means are sufficient to defend the public against the aggressor, the State will limit itself to such means.

But who decides whether non-lethal means are sufficient? The answer seems plain -- the State itself. The "legitimate public authority" mentioned in paragraphs 2265 & 2266, the same legitimate authority that has "the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility."

We see, in some rhetoricians, a steamrolling over the nuances and finer distinctions of the Catechism. And while steamrollers are good for making asphalt nice and smooth, they are not particularly astute theologians.

Finally, a question : Does the Catechism exist online? I know I've seen the link somewhere. I'll look for it myself; a search engine should cause it to turn up. Is it on the Vatican website? (Yes. It's here.)

C. S. Lewis
on 'Resist not evil, turn the other cheek'

Does anyone suppose that Our Lord's hearers understood him to mean that if a homicidal maniac, attempting to murder a third party, tried to knock me out of the way, I must stand aside and let him get his victim? I at any rate think it impossible they could have so understood him. I think it equally impossible that they supposed him to mean that the best way of bringing up a child was to let it hit its parents whenever it was in a temper, or, when it had grabbed at the jam, to give it the honey also. I think the meaning of the words was perfectly clear -- "Insofar as you are simply an angry man who has been hurt, mortify your anger and do not hit back" -- even, one would have assumed that insofar as you are a magistrate struck by a private person, a parent struck by a child, a teacher struck by a scholar, a sane man by a lunatic, or a soldier by the public enemy, your duties may be very different because there may be then other motives than egoistic retaliation for hitting back. Indeed, as the audience were private people in a disarmed nation, it seems unlikely that they would have ever supposed Our Lord to be referring to war. War was not what they would have been thinking of. The frictions of daily life among villagers were more likely to be in their minds.

-- C. S. Lewis, from "Why I Am Not a Pacificist" in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Macmillan, 1980), pp. 49-50.

Other excerpts from this essay, perhaps, to follow.

Governor Ryan's decision

An article from the Chicago Sun-Times. Toward the end of the piece, brief profiles of some of those who were spared.

Via Rosa Mystica.

"The Black Lung Disease of the Intelligentsia"
according to George Will, non-judgmentality

A must-read essay (Happy Eye, pp. 24-26) on crime, on punishment, on psychobabble, and on a progressive élite's refusal to call anything bad, except intolerance.

In this essay, Will cites the opinion of one David Gelernter, a Yale professor of computer science who was seriously injured by a Theodore Kaczynski mail-bomb. Below, an excerpt :

The point of executing murderers, writes Gelernter in Commentary magazine, is not vengeance, or we would let the grieving parties decide the killer's fate. Rather, capital punishment is a "communal proclamation" of virtuous intolerance : it says that murder is intolerable. "The community certifies births and deaths, creates marriages, educates children, fights invaders. In laws, deeds, and ceremonies, it lays down the boundary lines of civilized life, lines that are constantly getting scuffed and needing renewal."

But here's the rub : "An execution forces the community to assume forever the burden of moral certainty; it is a form of absolute speech that allows no waffling or equivocation. Deliberate murder, the community announces, is absolutely evil and absolutely intolerable, period." So critics are exactly wrong when they say capital punishment reflects surrender to emotions (such as grief and rage). Quite the contrary, it represents modern society's overcoming its impulses, such as sentimentalism, squeamishness, and, most of all, the restful flight from being "judgmental."

Discussion of the above is cordially invited.

What city is being described?

From a 1936 British tourist-guidebook :

One may walk the streets for years without seeing anything more criminal than the solicitation of alms or the manifestations of inebriation.

Via George F. Will's latest collection of columns With a Happy Eye, But ...

Wilfrid Stinissen
from Nourished by the Word, p. 15

Do we let ourselves be struck by God's word or do we maintain sufficient distance so that we never come into the danger zone?

Massachusetts
by the Bee Gees

Feel I'm goin' back to Massachusetts,
Something's telling me I must go home.
And the lights all went out in Massachusetts
The day I left her standing on her own.

Tried to hitch a ride to San Francisco,
Gotta do the things I wanna do.
And the lights all went out in Massachusetts
They brought me back to see my way with you.

Talk about the life in Massachusetts,
Speak about the people I have seen,
And the lights all went out in Massachusetts
And Massachusetts is one place I have seen.

I will remember Massachusetts ...

Deuteronomy 30
from the New International Version

11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

Yesterday's quiz : dylan's answers

1. What do you like on your pizza?

Used to be pepperoni & sausage; but the double-meat topping causes one to wake up at 1 am with a thirst that a gallon of water can't slake. So pepperoni alone, or pepperoni & mushroom. Rarely, mushroom & garlic. Even more rarely, au naturel (just cheese).

2. What do you think of the following entertainers (pro, con or neutral shrug)?
a. Andy Kaufman
b. Melissa Etheridge
c. Bob Dylan
d. Susan Sarandon

Andy -- the Mighty Mouse thing was cool, and Taxi was cool when he morphed from Latka to Vic Ferrari; but as someone said, he went nuts. And failed to see that annoyance isn't comedy. The abstract expressionist stuff -- con.

Melissa -- Oh, quite pro, for reasons that Mrs vonH describes. One of the most perfect practitioners of yon basick olde rock 'n' roll. Comparable to Mellencamp, in this respect. And her "Born to Run" rendition was the highlight of the Oct. 2000 concert for New York, which aired on VH-1 (well, that, and hollery redham getting booed).

Bob Dylan -- Good with lyrics, even in the 80s ("What seems large from a distance, close up ain't never that big"). But he sings like a fly.

Susan Sarandon -- The cons outweigh the pros. But she can act. And I can take her a bit more than I can take Tim Robbins, whose Lefty Homework Movies entice me not.

Bob & Susan are alike in that it is not lunacy to acknowledge their excellence in certain things, but there are too many other things that curtail or thwart our enthusiasm.

3. For those of you who've read a heap o' Merton, what are your favorite moments in his writing (books, passages, poems)?

For me, the two big books are New Seeds of Contemplation and Thoughts in Solitude. Had come to prefer Thoughts in recent years, New Seeds being too long & too sure of itself, but there are marvelous chapters in New Seeds, such as "Sentences" (chapter 15).

Then, the Journals, esp. from the late 50s on; any poem of his dealing with winter (but I confess a weakness for the surrealist Cables to the Ace, as well); the letters in Road to Joy, esp. those to Suzanne Butorovich, Mark Van Doren, his Aunt Kit in New Zealand; all the letters to Robert Lax, in that Joycean argot they employed so exuberantly!

4. For those of you who've seen more than just one Benigni film, would you rather watch Life Is Beautiful or Johnny Stecchino?

Johnny. Too foo-nay. See. At once. Subtitles. 'Tis good to laugh.

5. Who is your favorite politician outside your own party?

Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- but among the still active? I'll pick Mass. Speaker of the House Thomas Finneran, only because he's reputed to be pro-life. And he vexes off large numbers of people. And he's smart. And he seems to be a human being. Commentators & analysts with Dem backgrounds who are nonetheless eminently fair to Repubs : Chris Matthews, Tim Russert. Bob Kerrey's hard not to like, in some ways. Also like Robert Reich, despite George Will's noting an invented anecdote in one of his books.

6. Should we care if J. Edgar Hoover was a drag queen?

Mister, we could use a man like Edgar Hoover again? I think that people who care deeply about such stuff hate Hoover for other reasons (he wasn't warm and fuzzy, was he?). Digression : I want to bring back HUAC. Investigate Helen Thomas, on suspicion of being a communist shrew.

7. Who is your favorite pre-Chaucerian poet?

Catullus & early Christian hymnographers. I like Michelle's answer of King David! I like all of Mr Riddle's answers, & am bewildered by the breadth of reading from various time-periods. But for me, it's all about Catullus. So many different moods, so personal; sometimes, so brutal. One of the greats, in (mostly) small form.

Sensation Time at the Home

In 1968, when Thomas Merton died, he was preparing two poetry manuscripts : one, the long poem The Geography of Lograire, an opus which his most resolute admirers find nearly incomprehensible; and the other, a collection of shorter lyrics to which he gave the provisional title Sensation Time at the Home.

It's fair to say that after 1963 Merton's poetics became a bit freer in form and prosody, sometimes to the point of being slipshod. His verse was often surrealist : rambunctiously & endearingly so in the sequence Cables to the Ace, but often the attempt to be "new" fell flat. He had written several moving & quietly artful lyrics during this time, most notably his poems to the nurse, five of which appear in the sixth volume of his journals, Learning to Love. But the poems of Sensation Time at the Home (Collected Poems, pp 611-665) seem very much hit or miss.

But the funny thing about being "hit or miss" is that, occasionally, there are hits! Here is my list of recommended Merton poems from Sensation :

With the World in My Blood Stream
Reading Translated Poets, Feb. 1
First Lesson About Man
Picture of a Black Child with a White Doll
Elegy for a Trappist
Le Secret (in French)
Origen
Early Blizzard

and maybe "A Baroque Gravure" and "Seneca," the latter much admired by Robert Lax.

:: :: :: :: ::

Elegy for a Trappist
by Thomas Merton, OCSO (1915-68)

Maybe the martyrology until today
Has found no fitting word to describe you
Confessor of exotic roses
Martyr of unbelievable gardens

Whom we will always remember
As a tender-hearted careworn
Generous unsteady cliff
Lurching in the cloister
Like a friendly freight train
To some uncertain station

Master of the sudden enthusiastic gift
In an avalanche
Of flower catalogues
And boundless love

Sometimes a little dangerous at corners
Vainly trying to smuggle
Some enormous and perfect bouquet
To a side altar
In the sleeves of your cowl

In the dark before dawn
On the day of your burial
A big truck with lights
Moved like a battle cruiser
Toward the gate
Past your abandoned and silent garden

The brief glare
Lit up the grottos, pyramids and presences
One by one
Then the gate swung red
And clattered shut in the giant lights
And everything was gone

As if Leviathan
Hot on the scent of some other blood
Had passed you by
And never saw you hiding in the flowers.

Vintage Peggy
Noonan, that is ...

From just before the 2000 GOP convention (advice to W as his speech did impend), and from just after (praise for W's speech, and for the convention's inclusivity).

the cup is raised the toast is made yet again
one voice is clear above the din
proud Arianna one word my will to sustain
for me the cloth once more to spin

Mrs Huffington on the ever-labile apostrophe. Via Nihil Obstat !!

Credo ut intelligam

blogs (in English) this splendid excerpt from a Karol Wojtyla poem about St Stanislaus.

Another post nearby -- just above, if memory serves -- gives us a small, wry poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

But
as the first result of this quiz attests

I have my watery moments.





You're ice! You can be very cold and distant and you are NOT a people person. You're pretty mean but you can be nice...to a select few.




What element are you?

I was just wondering

1. What do you like on your pizza?

2. What do you think of the following entertainers (pro, con or neutral shrug)?
      a. Andy Kaufman
      b. Melissa Etheridge
      c. Bob Dylan
      d. Susan Sarandon

3. For those of you who've read a heap o' Merton, what are your favorite moments in his writing (books, passages, poems)?

4. For those of you who've seen more than just one Benigni film, would you rather watch Life Is Beautiful or Johnny Stecchino?

5. Who is your favorite politician outside your own party?

6. Should we care if J. Edgar Hoover was a drag queen?

7. Who is your favorite pre-Chaucerian poet?

Added to Places Oft Visited

Under the un-red rubric of "Poetry, culture, politics (and so forth)" -- First Things, the Journal of Religion and Public Life.

Two war articles

via Lane Core :

Oriana Fallaci's How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost, from The American Enterprise; and How We Could Lose by Michael Ledeen, in National Review Online.

Merton
from Thoughts in Solitude, part one, essay IV (my copy : Image Books, 1968, p. 33)

The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered -- not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.

Hunger
by Countee Cullen (1903-46)

Break me no bread however white it be;
It cannot fill the emptiness I know;
No wine can cool this desert thirst in me
Though it had lain a thousand years in snow;
No swooning lotus flower's languid juice
Drips anodyne unto my restlessness,
And impotent to win me to a truce
Is every artifice of loveliness.
Inevitable is the way I go,
False-faced amid a pageant permeate
With bliss, yet visioning a higher wave
Than this weak ripple washing to and fro;
The fool still keeps his dreams inviolate
Till their virginity espouse the grave.

:: :: :: :: ::

Countee Cullen died on 10th January 1946, fifty-seven years ago today.

Strange morning

but I haven't fallen off the edge of this round planet; at least, not yet.

The approximate mood sequence : Misery, wrath, despondency, to minor joy over a sizable problem solved, to apprehension, to wanting to run away and hide. Am almost at the point of tears.

What next? It's not even 10 yet!

From today's installment of
Samuel Pepys

my wife and I went to Mr. Mossum’s, where a strange doctor made a very good sermon

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A hymn in Latin to the Mother of God, on the feast of the Nativity. With a translation by Philip Fischer, SJ.

Via the December 2001 (thirteen months ago) First Things.

Philip Baraka McKinney Berrigan
via the website of Fr John Dear.

A litany of sorts, with some puzzling elements :

"The following occur to me as worthwhile subjects of prayer:

-- that we disarm our hearts and our society;

-- that the Holy Spirit subvert, stalemate, and expose preparation for the invasion of Iraq;

-- that God intervene in the ecological crises as Lord of Creation, because we refuse to change our abuse of the earth;

-- that Americans begin to understand and resist the three-pronged aims for the Bush Administration: the trashing of civil liberties, perpetual war, and world domination;

-- that the swindle of 'foreknowledge' by the Bushites of 9/11 be fully disclosed;

-- that the 'crime' of 57 years of nuclear and its consequent wasting of our lives and planet, be revealed;

-- that Americans grasp that war is our #1 business; that we are a violent, killer people; and that we know virtually little of the nonviolence of Jesus and the Gospel;

-- that the scourges of abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty will be ended;

-- that the U.S. withdraw all economic and military aid from Israel;

-- that the global war against children be lifted;

-- that the rich West contribute medication and food to the global victims of HIV-AIDS; and

-- that each of us become people of fidelity, nonviolence, and justice.”

-- Philip Berrigan

The swindle of 'foreknowledge' by the Bushites of 9/11?

One wonders if the late Mr Berrigan's concept of 'justice' ever included the obligation to refrain from calumny, slander, detraction, mendacity, etc.

The Meaning of Life
via Wilfrid Stinissen's Nourished by the Word : Reading the Bible Contemplatively (Liguori, 1999, pp 8-9)

What does the Bible say concretely about life's meaning? What is the Bible's fundamental message? I believe that one can summarize it in this way. You, human being, who think that you are alone, you are not alone. God exists, and he is a God for you.

Martin Heidegger (1899-1978) speaks about Geworfenheit as one of the basic categories of human existence. When one is not anchored in God, one has the impression of being cast into existence and left there to fend for oneself. One who doesn't flee from himself and seek his identity in work and performance can scarcely avoid feeling a fundamental loneliness :

"In reality, no one is interested in me. What really moves, drives, and inspires me leaves others unmoved. However much my friends may assure me that they are not at all indifferent, that they share all that concerns me, there is nevertheless one last disappointment left. I am basically alone and uninteresting."

No, the Bible says you are not alone. You are not geworfen (thrown out/away), but geborgen (protected). God is so interested in you that he is not content just to give you fine presents, but share his situation with you. He comes to where you are; he walks into your life.

The quintessence of God's word is : I am with you, I am with all of you. All those who believe in the Bible are persons who possess this wisdom : The Lord is with us [ ... ] In the New Testament, he is Emmanuel, God with us. God is with his people.

For us, who are stamped by a milieu where God is hushed up, it is a good antidote to read the Bible, and there get to see how God is always with us, how nothing happens outside him, how everything that happens is an element in your loving relationship with him.

Sentences

That which is oldest is most young and most new. There is nothing so ancient and so dead as human novelty. The "latest" is always stillborn. It never even manages to arrive. What is really new is what was there all the time. I say, not what has repeated itself all the time; the really "new" is that which, at every moment, springs freshly into new existence. This newness never repeats itself. Yet it is so old it goes back to the earliest beginning. It is the very beginning itself, which speaks to us.

-- Thomas Merton, from "Sentences," chapter 15 of New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions Paperbook 337, 1961), p. 107

Survey of Literature
by John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

In all the good Greek of Plato
I lack my roastbeef and potato.

A better man was Aristotle,
Pulling steady on the bottle.

I dip my hat to Chaucer,
Swilling soup from his saucer,

And to Master Shakespeare
Who wrote big on small beer.

The abstemious Wordsworth
Subsisted on a curd's-worth,

But a slick one was Tennyson,
Putting gravy on his venison.

What these men had to eat and drink
Is what we say and what we think.

The influence of Milton
Came wry out of Stilton.

Sing a song for Percy Shelley,
Drowned in pale lemon jelly,

And for precious John Keats,
Dripping blood of pickled beets.

Then there was poor Willie Blake,
He foundered on sweet cake.

God have mercy on the sinner
Who must write with no dinner,

No gravy and no grub,
No pewter and no pub,

No belly and no bowels,
Only consonants and vowels.

Taking cues from the flock?
see the 4th comment to the post immediately herebelow

Actually, in terms of "taking cues from the flock," we can imagine instances in which a pastor, a liturgist, or a bishop is somewhat too avant-garde & "the flock" has got things exactly right, because they're rambunctiously orthodox.

Vice President Quayle was fond of condemning a "progressive (or : liberal) élite" that was removed from, and arrogant about, the concerns of ordinary people. One can encounter something similar in ecclesial circles.

And indeed, in The Ratzinger Report, the estimable prelate tells of an Episcopal parish in New York City that some jacobins wanted to renovate to make less "archaic" & more "modern." The layfolk, largely poor and not suffering from the chronic itch to innovate and tinker, put a halt to the proposed renovations. Bravo to them!

But certainly the democratic heresy (voting on dogma, jettisoning doctrine that seems to a plurality of layfolk to be outdated) should be avoided, rebuked, driven out, cast into hell.

It's curious that those who are most clamorous about "separation of Church and State" would also be those readiest to employ the tools of the State (plebiscite, referendum, majoritarian tyranny) to re-shape & re-invent the Church !!

Back to women's ordination

What's really galling about this St Louis Post-Dispatch editorial is its conclusion that the ordination of women would help "the numbers problem."

Numbers of vocations? Numbers of active Catholics?

Ignore the theology, for a moment. On a demographic basis, it's just not true.

Talk to the Episcopalians. In 1974, when women's ordination began (uncanonically), the ECUSA had 3.5 million members. Currently, they're down to about 2.2 million ... An elimination of one-third of the laity. (We'll refrain from mentioning the point of comparison that immediately suggests itself.)

And perhaps some impeccably moderate souls who might initially have favored or been indifferent to women being ordained must have noticed, as time went on, that their church was becoming a kind of High-Church Relativism, or Progressivism with Stained Glass, and that the "values" being preached were basically those of far-left politicians. A fellow Bay State blogger has spoken of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts as "the Green Party at prayer."

Jesus Christ -- the same yesterday, today and always -- is difficult to find in an ecclesial body whose raison d'être is to make as many Spongian concessions to the Zeitgeist (rather, to what progressives believe to be the Zeitgeist) as you possibly can.

When churches begin to show signs of believing that academicians, politicians, and theoreticians are wiser than God, that Church crumbles, or becomes quite vacant.

Unless the Lord build the house, its builders labor in vain. This is, in part, why the Holy See is under no obligation to listen to the editorial writer of the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

A vast St Blog's conspiracy ... to resurrect disco!

Or at least, to have disco tunes, songs, and anthems echoing through the avenues & corridors of our brains, all the livelong day.

The epicenter of this conspiracy is in the American Midwest. One family, in particular.

There's a blogger who has chosen what she claims is an echo of Charles Dickens' Bleak House as the title of her weblog, but as we know, with equal feasibility and greater singability, it could be an echo of the Commodores' "Brick House."

A junior member of this same family has a weblog with a title which instantly causes us to think of the late Van McCoy's choreographical imperative "Do the Hustle!"

And since there is so much warmth, domesticity & good vibes emanating from this family of blogs, we have no choice but to remember that epic and epochal tribute to familiaris consortio -- no, not the papal document, but Sister Sledge's exuberant sibling rallying-cry "We Are Family."

We're on to you. You thought you could subvert all things normal and decent with these incessant disco references and subliminal 70s messages. But you've been found out!

Boston Herald's Margery Eagan

on the candidacy, the rhetoric, and the ever-changing coiffures of the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Eagan is very much one of "the usual suspects" when she writes on Church matters; but with increasing frequency of late, she's been eminently readable on politics -- prompting a 20-minute laughing fit at this address when she referred to unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Shannon O'Brien and US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as "the Doublemint Twins."

"Ordain women & drop the celibacy requirement!"

Mark Shea's contest, the rules of which are posted at exceptionalmarriages dot com. Based on one of the usual suspects proferring the usual solution to all the church's ills.

If Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner hadn't been so distracted by pondering the gender-inequities of the Roman Catholic Church, he would have ably fielded that simple grounder, and the Red Sox would have won the 1986 World Series. It is painfully obvious, in retrospect.

Oh, yeah. Big time. And Chappaquiddick wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been these silly archaic laws against drunk driving.

From Hopkinton, Mass.

The town's vandals are getting shorter, more destructive and growing bushy tails.

Curiosity killed the ... squirrel.

Zoinks!
An oversight remedied

The Mighty Barrister has been added this day to Places Oft Visited.

I had added it long ago to personal "favorites," and naturally assumed that it was also listed here.

All right. What's wrong? Main page : no stuff. Wherefore?

Books purchased yesterday
with the last of the gift certificates!

With a Happy Eye, But ... : America and the World 1997-2002 by George F. Will

A Far Rockaway of the Heart by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

:: :: :: :: ::

Yes, you can all start humming, crooning, singing or whistling Neal Hefti's most famous composition, the Odd Couple theme!

I think I like Ferlinghetti. He seems to have stayed away from drugs and lethal drink; he doesn't habitually perpetrate exhibitionist palinodes to his own sex life; he abstains from most other things that seem daring to the sophomore, but wearisome to the veteran.

He's got an appealing simplicity that is really not at odds with a certain sophistication : a kind of carefully orchestrated insouciance. Poetry is not spontaneity, as Marianne Moore reminds us, but "a simulacrum of spontaneity"; and to achieve that simulacrum is often hard work.

It might be worth noting that Ferlinghetti has served as translator into English of both Jacques Prévert and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Particularly with Prévert, the kinship is salient, and the resemblance almost striking.

I may offer an excerpt presently, but the steam from yonder coffee beckoneth.

Diminishment

September. Oh, you linger, summer buzz.
We crave a starker season, north and neat:
The purity of winter, day-long night.

We seek the solstice, dark sticks, chaste chill,
Where vocables of frost compose themselves
Beneath the crisp unflourishing leaves earthfallen.

Polestar of pallor, snow beneath moonlight,
Cities as quiet as country vacancy,
The timeless birth of zero, birth of death,

Dives impoverished, cloistered, penitent,
Stripped of all but his awe, December's prayer,
The shiver-quiver, spoken ghost of breath,

Cold calendar, perennial ebb of warmth,
The proximate diminishment of light.


© 2001, 2003 by Thomas D

?

this post has been removed

At sixes and sixes

It snowed in Boston on December 6, 2002, and it snowed in Boston on January 6, 2003 !!

A snowy Saint Nicholas Day and a snowy Epiphany !! Not to mention a snowy Christmas night !!

Will it snow on the 25th anniversary (Feb. 6) of the Blizzard of '78 ?? Let's go for the trifecta !!

Forgive the un-Pepysian exclamation points. I must get back to my ale, brawn-middlings, and cheese.

Or is it a venison pasty of palpable beef, before the morning draught?

(Maybe a few tablets of the literary antacid, Pepysid-AC.)

The communion of saints
yesterday, tomorrow ... today

Yesterday at chapel, the Mass of Blessed "Frère André" (Bessette) was celebrated, and the celebrant mentioned that he knew some elderly folk who remembered Blessed André ... from times that the saintly Holy Cross brother spent in Rhode Island.

I have met a nun (fittingly, a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament) who met Saint Katharine Drexel!

Fr Benedict Groeschel has estimated that he's met at least four canonizable saints, and several other folk (among them, non-Catholics) whose saintliness would be well-nigh indisputable.

'I believe in the communion of saints' is, for me, one of the easier sentences in the Creed to say. It's made all the more easier by the reminder that it's something that's still going on, still being increased, still growing ...

And certainly, there's a dimension of futurity there. To believe in the communion of saints also means to believe that God isn't quite finished with this world -- never finished, until the world's last day, working in the world through his holy ones. So : 'I believe in the communion of saints' isn't merely a "yesterday" thing (let's look back at all these holy souls, and be encouraged and inspired by their example); it's a "tomorrow" thing (there will continue to be saints)!

And then of course, it's a "today" thing.

But herein lies a dimension I'd like to thrust aside. The universal call to sanctity, or sainthood. The "I want you!" side to sainthood. It's as if God's attempting to wake me up : "Rise and shine, time to become saint dylan" -- yikes!!

Pillow over the head. Duck back under the covers. Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute ...

You mean that minimizing mischief isn't enough?

Psalm 119 : 'Mine eyes prevent the night watches'

XIX. Clamavi in toto corde meo.

I CALL with my whole heart; * hear me, O LORD; I will keep thy statutes.

146 Yea, even unto thee do I call; * help me, and I shall keep thy testimonies.

147 Early in the morning do I cry unto thee; * for in thy word is my trust.

148 Mine eyes prevent the night watches; * that I might be occupied in thy word.

149 Hear my voice, O LORD, according unto thy lovingkindness; * quicken me, according to thy judgments.

150 They draw nigh that of malice persecute me, * and are far from thy law.

151 Be thou nigh at hand, O LORD; * for all thy commandments are true.

152 As concerning thy testimonies, I have known long since, * that thou hast grounded them for ever.

XX. Vide humilitatem.

O CONSIDER mine adversity, and deliver me, * for I do not forget thy law.

154 Avenge thou my cause, and deliver me; * quicken me according to thy word.

155 Health is far from the ungodly; * for they regard not thy statutes.

156 Great is thy mercy, O LORD; * quicken me, as thou art wont.

157 Many there are that trouble me, and persecute me; * yet do I not swerve from thy testimonies.

158 It grieveth me when I see the transgressors; * because they keep not thy law.

159 Consider, O LORD, how I love thy commandments; * O quicken me, according to thy loving-kindness.

160 Thy word is true from everlasting; * all the judgments of thy righteousness endure for evermore.

Possible autobiography titles

Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty

Getting Down to the Nitty-Witty

Getting Down to the Witty-Gritty

:: :: :: :: ::

Other rhyming words suggest themselves ... but we wish to keep things comparatively decorous.

And of course, my home state is in the process of getting down to the Mitty-politty.

I get a kick from Champaign

... rather, from Champaign, Illinois's native son George F. Will. Two briefish snippets from his compilation of Clinton-era columns The Woven Figure :

p. 223

Oregon, a progressive place, is pioneering a new wrinkle in democratic practice. The primary and general elections that will choose a successor to Senator Packwood will be the nation's first elections of a federal official conducted entirely by mail.

Like most improvements, this is atrocious.

:: :: :: :: ::

p. 221

John Silber, the sandpapery president of Boston University, might have been governor of Massachusetts -- he was the Democratic nominee in 1990 -- were he not given to speaking his formidable mind as bluntly as he did when a voter asked what we should teach our children. "Teach them that they are going to die." And have a nice day.

Archaic English

from the website of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA)

... added yestreen to Places Oft Visited

A parent worries about the blunt psychic trauma that his children shall have to endure if exposed to thees and thous at the Divine Liturgy. Will there be an impediment to his children's understanding the prayers? Why must the language be so stilted?

A priest responds to these concerns by gracefully praising "archaic English" and by showing the down-side to vernacularity, novelty, and obsessive contemporaneity.

Is the glass half full?

Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald shares the thoughts of a correspondent who says that life isn't so bad in anno gratiae 2003, and deplores the tactics of high-school teachers who encourage their students to complain.

Mr Fitzgerald's correspondent misses much that is ominous, but he does successfully make the point that American life is not nearly as arduous as it could be, or as it once (not too long ago) was.

A General Confession
from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer

DEARLY beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy. And although we ought, at all times, humbly to acknowledge our sins before God; yet ought we chiefly so to do, when we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul. Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart, and humble voice, unto the throne of the heavenly grace, saying --

¶ To be said by the whole Congregation, after the Minister, all kneeling :

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind In Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

Waferfest 2003?

Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings gives us a bit o' New Year's blogging on ... well, Barney-hymns & community & all other things that make the average guy want to alter the Boomtown Rats lyric to "I don't like Sundays."

I had hoped he was joking about the New Jerusalem Bible's rendering of Matthew 16:18; alas, he wasn't. "On this rock I will build my community."

Le tombeau d'Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98)

Tel qu'en Lui-même enfin l'éternité le change,
Le Poète suscite avec un glaive nu
Son siècle épouvanté de n'avoir pas connu
Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange !

Eux, comme un vil sursaut d'hydre oyant jadis l'ange
Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu,
Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu
Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange.

Du sol et de la nue hostiles, ô grief !
Si notre idée avec ne sculpte un bas-relief
Dont la tombe de Poe éblouissante s'orne

Calme bloc ici-bas chu d'un désastre obscur
Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne
Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur.

Gosford Park

Monumentally, fantastically, terrifically, fabulously, immemorially disappointing.

Oh, but dylan, didn't you get it? It was a social commentary, on the mores of the day, upstairs-downstairs, a wonderfully sardonic examination of the difference between the classes ...

It did not magnetize. It did not entertain. It had its moments of what might be called "cuteness," but no. If you've managed to avoid this one, please continue to do so.

Also added to Places Oft Visited

Under "Weblogs" : A Catholic Point of View ... primarily because of its encyclopedic collection of links to papal writings in the left-hand margin!

And under "Catholic Sites (votive, not VOTF)" : one of the most ineluctably magnetizing of recent papal allocutions, the current pontiff's Letter to Artists.

May 28, 2002 at A Religion of Sanity

A thoughtful, measured, and exquisitely charitable piece on the eighth bishop of Boston, who recently resigned his see. It recalls Cardinal Law's cultural confrontation, if you will, during the homily at the funeral of his brother bishop, John Cardinal O'Connor ... and hypothesizes that the chattering classes never forgave the prelate for his clarion call to be "unambiguously pro-life."

It also makes an excellent point about a shepherd's having to contend with the "goatishness," if you will, of many of his sheep! and doubtless, many will point out that the shepherd in question should have shown a firmer hand not only with goatish dissidents, but with wolvish presbyters.

I regret that it's taken me seven months to find this cheeringly and wonderfully readable item!

What Timing

[this post has been deleted]

Mysterium Crucis

blogs on the Lost Gospel of Q, X, Y and Z. How in the not-too-distant past, he says, he took four relatively normal friends and "infected" them with anti-Ecclesial sentiments, iconoclasm & general philosophical nuttiness. A very moving post ... which begins by noting an exemplar of praiseworthy Christian tolerance.

Long post (well, longish), but certainly worth reading. I think I've been, at various moments, all four of his monogrammatically denominated friends.

:: :: :: :: ::

Worth noting, too, that Mysterium Crucis has been added this day to the Places Oft Visited in the margin of this weblog, Tenebrae and Star alias More Last than Lux.

Tabula Rasa
by Hayden Carruth (b. 1921)

There, an evening star, there again. Above
The torn lovelace of snow, in the far sky
That glows with an afterlight, fading,

The evening star piercing a black tangle
Of trees on the ridge. Shall it be our kiss?
Can we call its sudden singleness,

Its unannounced simplicity, its rage
In the abhorrent distances, its small viridine,
Ours, always ours? Or shall we say

This wintry eloquence is mere affect
Of tattered snow, of tangling black limbs?
Everything reproaches me, everything,

Because we do not stand by Leman's water,
By the onyx columns, entablatures, all
The entablatures, watching the cygnets fade

With Sapphic pathos into a silver night.
Listen, the oboe and the little drum
Make Lulliana where the old whores walk ...

Do men and women meet and love forthwith?
Or do they think about it? Or do they
In a masque play fated figures en tragique?

Perhaps they are those who only stand
In tattered snow and dream of fated things.
The limbs have snatched the star, have eaten it.

Another night, we've lost another day. Nothing
Spoke to us, certainly nothing spoke for us --
The slate is clean. Here therefore is my kiss.

=====

Hayden Carruth, "Tabula Rasa," From Snow and Rock, from Chaos (NY : New Directions Paperbook 349, 1973), pp. 16-17.

Isaiah 61

1 Spiritus Domini Dei super me,
eo quod unxerit Dominus me;
ad annuntiandum laeta mansuetis misit me,
ut mederer contritis corde
et praedicarem captivis liberationem
et clausis apertionem;

2 ut praedicarem annum placabilem Domino
et diem ultionis Deo nostro;
ut consolarer omnes lugentes,

3 ut ponerem lugentibus Sion
et darem eis coronam pro cinere,
oleum gaudii pro luctu,
pallium laudis pro spiritu maeroris.

of course this is estlin
the 94th of his 95 poems

being to timelessness as it's to time,
love did no more begin than love did end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad?only their smallest joy's
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

--do lovers love?why then,to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools,all's well

PSALMUS 139 (138)

1 Magistro chori. David. PSALMUS.

Domine, scrutatus es et cognovisti me,

2 tu cognovisti sessionem meam et resurrectionem meam.
Intellexisti cogitationes meas de longe,

3 semitam meam et accubitum meum investigasti.
Et omnes vias meas perspexisti,

4 quia nondum est sermo in lingua mea,
et ecce, Domine, tu novisti omnia.

5 A tergo et a fronte coartasti me
et posuisti super me manum tuam.

6 Mirabilis nimis facta est scientia tua super me,
sublimis, et non attingam eam.

7 Quo ibo a spiritu tuo
et quo a facie tua fugiam?

8 Si ascendero in caelum, tu illic es;
si descendero in infernum, ades.

9 Si sumpsero pennas aurorae
et habitavero in extremis maris,

10 etiam illuc manus tua deducet me,
et tenebit me dextera tua.

11 Si dixero : “Forsitan tenebrae compriment me,
et nox illuminatio erit circa me,”

12 etiam tenebrae non obscurabuntur a te,
et nox sicut dies illuminabitur
(sicut tenebrae eius ita et lumen eius).

13 Quia tu formasti renes meos,
contexuisti me in utero matris meae.

14 Confitebor tibi, quia mirabiliter plasmatus sum;
mirabilia opera tua,
et anima mea cognoscit nimis.

15 Non sunt abscondita ossa mea a te,
cum factus sum in occulto,
contextus in inferioribus terrae.

16 Imperfectum adhuc me viderunt oculi tui,
et in libro tuo scripti erant omnes dies:
ficti erant, et nondum erat unus ex eis.

17 Mihi autem nimis pretiosae cogitationes tuae, Deus;
nimis gravis summa earum.

18 Si dinumerabo eas, super arenam multiplicabuntur;
si ad finem pervenerim, adhuc sum tecum.

19 Utinam occidas, Deus, peccatores;
viri sanguinum, declinate a me.

20 Qui loquuntur contra te maligne:
exaltantur in vanum contra te.

21 Nonne, qui oderunt te, Domine, oderam
et insurgentes in te abhorrebam?

22 Perfecto odio oderam illos,
et inimici facti sunt mihi.

23 Scrutare me, Deus, et scito cor meum;
proba me et cognosce semitas meas

24 et vide, si via vanitatis in me est,
et deduc me in via aeterna.

two sijo : may soon disappear

1.

Four in the morning : city streets are silent, blessed hush!
Not yet time to start the coffee, maybe in an hour or so.
My thoughts intend a pilgrimage to where my sweet one sleeps.

2.

Glorious hopes and fairest dreams, distant memories.
Lost in the mist, alive no more, those noble resolutions ...
But look, how the newest-fallen snow enlivens the cold dark branches!

The mystery of the settings

Changes have been made to settings. Over 48 hours ago.

The changes show at "edit your blog" but they are not yet showing up at this blogspot page.

Any changes made to "template" -- adding a link to Places Oft Visited, for instance -- are getting through just fine.

But the big changes at Settings (name of blog, description of blog) have not yet been duly recorded.

Curious.

poème de kew-mangs

silently if,out of not knowable
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery of your smile

sing or if(spiralling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss

losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
--you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars

this post

has been removed

President Bush helps revive American culture

George F. Will reminds us of the obscene frivolity of the Clinton administration with respect to its Arts and Humanities appointments, among other things, and convincingly demonstrates that W, for all his solecisms of speech, has a better grasp and a higher notion of "culture" than your average rodhamite nihilist.

An obstatric complaint : Allen Tate, not Alan.

Caryll Houselander
quoted in a recent Saint Francis Chapel (Boston) bulletin

In The Reed of God, Caryll Houselander wrote of the Annunciation, Our Lady said 'yes'. She said 'yes' for us all. It was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass with the tiny hands of flowers, flung golden seed against it, even, in the hours of storm, lashed it with the boughs of a great tree - the prophesy of the Cross - and yet the spirit was on the outside. But one day a girl opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and sweet by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house a Child was born and the Child was God.

Our Lady said 'yes' for the human race. Each one of us must echo that yes for our own lives.

Vespers prayer : Phos hilaron
via the goarch.org Online Chapel

O joyful light of the holy glory of the immortal Father, the heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ. Now that we have reached the setting of the sun and behold the evening light, we sing to God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is fitting at all times to praise you with cheerful voices, O Son of God, the Giver of life. Behold, the world sings your glory.

Daily Confession of Sins
via Myriobiblios Orthodox Prayer Book

I confess to Thee, my Lord, God and Creator, to the One glorified and worshipped in Holy Trinity, to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all my sins which I have committed all the days of my life, at every hour, in the present and in the past, day and night, in thought, word and deed; by gluttony, drunkenness, secret eating, idle talking, despondency, indolence, contradiction, neglect, aggressiveness, self love, hoarding, stealing, lying, dishonesty, curiosity, jealousy, envy, anger, resentment, and remembering wrongs, hatred, mercenariness; and by all my senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; and all other sins, spiritual and bodily, through which I have angered Thee, my God and Creator, and caused injustice to my neighbours. Sorrowing for this, but determined to repent, I stand guilty before Thee, my God. Only help me, my Lord and God, I humbly pray Thee with tears. Forgive my past sins by Thy mercy, and absolve me from all I have confessed in Thy presence, for Thou art good and the Lover of men. Amen.

PSALMUS 51 (50)

1 Magistro chori. PSALMUS. David,
2 cum venit ad eum Nathan propheta,
postquam cum Bethsabee peccavit.

3 Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam;
et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum
dele iniquitatem meam.

4 Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea
et a peccato meo munda me.

5 Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco,
et peccatum meum contra me est semper.

6 Tibi, tibi soli peccavi et malum coram te feci,
ut iustus inveniaris in sententia tua et aequus in iudicio tuo.

7 Ecce enim in iniquitate generatus sum,
et in peccato concepit me mater mea.

8 Ecce enim veritatem in corde dilexisti
et in occulto sapientiam manifestasti mihi.

9 Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor;
lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

10 Audire me facies gaudium et laetitiam,
et exsultabunt ossa, quae contrivisti.

11 Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis
et omnes iniquitates meas dele.

12 Cor mundum crea in me, Deus,
et spiritum firmum innova in visceribus meis.

13 Ne proicias me a facie tua
et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.

14 Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui
et spiritu promptissimo confirma me.

15 Docebo iniquos vias tuas,
et impii ad te convertentur.

16 Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae,
et exsultabit lingua mea iustitiam tuam.

17 Domine, labia mea aperies,
et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.

18 Non enim sacrificio delectaris;
holocaustum, si offeram, non placebit.

19 Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus;
cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.

20 Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate tua Sion,
ut aedificentur muri Ierusalem.

21 Tunc acceptabis sacrificium iustitiae, oblationes et holocausta;
tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.

Beware the Kalends of January!

for with the new year comes the almost obligatory name-change, after 85 days with some form of Tenebrae in the title!

Call it a case of the thirteen-week itch !!

I've already changed the settings at blogger; the change has not yet been reflected at blogspot.

Ring out the new, ring in the old
beginning the New Year at St Blog's with a complaint about liturgy

I first noticed this thread at And then? -- a weblog whose title entices us, all the more so since we know the reason for the title.

The blogger at El Camino Real asks, "Is it a sin to attend the Novus Ordo?"

The blogger at Pompous Ponderings has posted a splendid thoughtful spot-on reply.

And herebelow are my comments appended to the relevant post at Pompous Ponderings. I have edited them in the interest of greater prolixity, profundity, precision.

I sympathize with Mr Culbreath's complaint in some of its particulars, but I think he fails to distinguish with sufficient clarity between what is heterodox and what is merely esthetically displeasing. Sometimes they go hand in hand, sometimes not. I wish that he'd cite examples of the liturgical abuses he means.

I think, too, that the laity can give us "abuse" at the Liturgy -- if there's a chattering, garrulous, social club atmosphere before Mass rather than prayer, or merely quiet to let pray those who are inclined to prayer. If the laity have no awareness of where they are.

Music matters, and I'll take J. M. Neale & Isaac Watts & anything Latin over the Broadway-meets-Barney flavor of some current hymns. Some, not all.

Mr Culbreath may also have a (sharpish!) point about episcopal scrutiny being not what it should be. In this area of concern and other areas.

But "is it a sin to attend the Novus Ordo?" No (and if I may, Hell, no!).

Nothing to me is more quietly lovely than the simple uncluttered prose of the daily Mass in a small chapel. One of the most beautiful Masses I ever attended was in an inner-city convent's chapel on the only really arctic day of last winter (the day the Patriots had their Super Bowl victory parade, but one quickly forgot about that!).

Sundays at my parish, for reasons which we could all divine, can be a trial. But Christmas was a splendor. The music is getting better, and Fr Brian didn't over-use the word "community" in his homily.

Happy New Year
scriptum in vigilio inceptionis anni redemptionis nostrae 2003

Dear friends and readers, pray for a poor sinner. Illum oportet crescere; me autem minui (John 3.30). The "old man" must decrease, that life and light and joy and hope may increase.

There are harbingers! Also, apprehensions.

But join me, if you will, as we come to the setting of the year, in the last few verses of the Phos Hilaron :

You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of Life,
and to be glorified through all the worlds.

Robert Royal on Thomas Merton

In First Things, six years ago. Found via the Flos Carmeli comment-box.

This is, I believe, the same Robert Royal who has written a very readable (but sobering to the point of being depressing ... if not heart-sickening) volume about The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century. Also, a Crossroad Spiritual Classics volume on Dante Alighieri.

Royal's assessment of the "several-storied" Thomas Merton shows an awareness of the flaws of this ineluctably compelling figure, but on balance generous and patient. (In this respect, Royal's essay differs slightly but significantly from a 1999 article in Touchstone by Eric Scheske, which grouped Merton with Jack Kerouac and J. D. Salinger as "three American sophomores."

Dana Gioia's essays

I haven't quite succeeded in taking myself ad lectum yet. I have, however, found my way into the essays of poet Dana Gioia. Here, there are many pieces dealing with poets I enjoy, or even revere. Some poets we do not revere, but recognize.

Even when writing about a poet whose esthetic temperament differs appreciably from his own, Mr Gioia is charitably shrewd and consistently perspicacious. With respect to the work of James Tate, Gioia shows a surprising amount of patience and finds much to praise. His note on Adrienne Rich shows a salutary awareness of the difference between poems and slogans (although when I've encountered Rich, whom I don't often read, the poems are usually poems). The piece on Auden is disappointingly small, but well. And there is a justly magnanimous assessment of Richard Wilbur, who with sanity and skill has produced much that is ineffaceable.

It often happens that we will resist a poet's poems, until we discover the poet's prose. Mr Gioia is an admirably sane poet, whose resistance to the baser forms of histrionics and wildness might be at the expense of attracting immediate attention, but his essays show that he is equipped with a fine critical mind, and a soul that knows how properly to appreciate the invaluably good.

George F. Will
in The Woven Figure (p. 144)

Novelist Walker Percy defined a "deconstructionist" as an academic who claims that the meaning of all communication is radically indeterminate but who leaves a message on his wife's answering machine requesting pepperoni pizza for dinner.

I must take myself to the place where all serious thinking gets done, and no small amount of working (i.e., bed) and read more of Mr Will. I do not recommend reading Mr Will in chapels, as you might encounter a sentence like the one above, and become audibly seismic with laughter.

Update, 12.40 am (now, the 31st!) : Yes. I must go to bed. To read the first essay/column, about the scarcity of civility and the erosion of manners in "Dennis Rodman's America," or to re-read Will's obituaries of men who were unswervingly loyal to bad ideas, Allen Ginsberg and Alger Hiss.

Via Ad Orientem

A splendid article in the Manchester Union-Leader about Melkite Catholics in the Granite State.

Carlo Carretto (1910-88)

From his book In Search of the Beyond (Orbis, 1976), trans. Sarah Fawcett. In chapter 17, "Blessed are the pure in heart," Carretto, a Little Brother of Jesus in North Africa, quotes the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin : "Raise me up until, at long last, it becomes possible for me in perfect chastity to embrace the universe" [p. 161].

Carretto continues his meditation :

I do not know where one could find a more beautiful way of expressing the beatitude of purity.

Today I would translate Jesus's words, 'Blessed are the pure in heart' as, 'Blessed is he who knows how to embrace chastely the entire universe.'

Jesus did not come in order to add to our burdens, he came to set us free; he did not come to deprive us of them embrace, but to make it chaste.

To be pure is to embrace things chastely; to be impure is to embrace them in a lustful way, defiling them, violating them and prostituting them in the process. Is that not true?

A man embraces his own wife chastely, but not the woman he buys by exerting his male superiority.

We embrace our work chastely, and our house acquired honestly, our toil and our friendships, but not our thefts, our arrogance, our blasphemies, our insincerity or our intolerance.

There is a vast difference between a husband's creative embrace, and the functional embrace of the soldier of fortune who breaks in the doors of the vanquished and rapes the first woman he meets.

As soon as we really understand that Jesus did not come to deny us love and union, but to raise them to a new level for us, making them even more beautiful, more human, more joyful, more authentic, we will have taken a great step forward in our understanding of the Gospel. But often, only too often, we want to try things out in our own way, and nine times out of ten, our misfortunes stem from this desire of ours to 'try,' from this practical if not theoretical denial of the law which God gave us out of love.

My favorite 18-syllable word

Gloria! As in :

Angels we have heard on high,
Sweetly singing o'er the plains,
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their joyful strains
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Mysterium Crucis

The blogger writes on the absolute necessity of wonder, on nature which certifies the supernatural (but is not to be worshiped), and on the 2000-year-young Ecclesia, which had him "enraptured" even from a distance.

Rules for good living?
Someone wonders, How do we become like children, to see the world anew?

I'm not one who consistently embodies the virtue of hope or the quality of joy ... but I'd say, Read the poetry you like to read; say the prayers that you like to say; smile at a passerby every twice in a while; thank Heaven often for your friends; and be on the qui vive, on the "lookout," for God's small surprises --

a white moon in a blue daylight sky; an unexpected moment of peace in a busy day; the sight of a sparrow; the sight of a pair of compassionate eyes coming from a lovely face; the sound of a compassionate voice ... cool air or warm air; beautiful music; the ability to finish a task, or to begin a task; every unimpaired breath; coffee at 5.50 on a Monday morning in December (and be thankful for any day on which you do not need to rush things!) ...

I'd sum up the foregoing by saying : Cultivate gratitude for the smaller things.

Caryll Houselander (1901-54)
Magnificat meditation for December 30th

There is nothing that is so irksome as the ache of an old wound, and it is from countless old wounds, old sores, and welts and suppurating sores and gangrenous wounds that the world is bleeding to death. It is old wounds that are poisoning the life-stream of humanity.

It is no wonder that there has never before been so conscious a longing for a "new heaven and a new earth." Men look more wistfully on the first leaf of spring than they have ever done before.

To wake one morning to see the first prick of green on a city tree is to experience joy like the receiving of a sacrament. To look out of the window upon a patch of blue sky newly washed with rain is an experience as poignant and sweet as a sudden vivid memory of childhood, in which for a moment we walk on thinly sandalled feet through the long, dewy grass of a tangled garden that is no more.

So old are we, so old our aching wounds, that the loveliness which is actually here and now seems to be a memory. The heart cries out to be made new to renew the earth.

This is precisely what happens when we become children. We are made new; our newness renews the earth.

We are restored to the sense of wonder. We see the stars, the coming of spring, the familiar faces of our friends, the white bread on the table; for the first time we dimly apprehend the mystery of the sacramental quality of our daily life.

24 prayers of St John Chrysostom

(1) O Lord, deprive me not of thy heavenly blessings.

(2) O Lord, deliver me from eternal torments.

(3) O Lord, if I have sinned in mind or thought, in word or deed, forgive me.

(4) O Lord, deliver me from every ignorance and heedlessness, from littleness of soul and stony hardness of heart.

(5) O Lord, deliver me from every temptation.

(6) O Lord, enlighten my heart which evil desire hath darkened.

(7) O Lord, I, being man, have sinned: do thou, being God, in lovingkindness forgive me, for thou knowest the weakness of my soul.

(8) O Lord, send down thy grace to help me, that I may glorify thy holy Name.

(9) O Lord Jesus Christ, enrol me, thy servant, in the book of life, and grant me a blessed end.

(10) O Lord my God, even if I have done nothing good in thy sight, yet grant me, according to thy grace, to make a beginning of good.

(11) O Lord, sprinkle on my heart the dew of thy grace.

(12) O Lord of heaven and earth, remember me, thy sinful servant, cold of heart and impure, in thy Kingdom.

(13) O Lord, receive me in repentance.

(14) O Lord, leave me not.

(15) O Lord, lead me not into temptation.

(16) O Lord, grant me thought of good.

(17) O Lord, grant me tears, a remembrance of death, and a sense of peace.

(18) O Lord, grant me mindfulness to confess my sins.

(19) O Lord, grant me humility, charity, and obedience.

(20) O Lord, grant me endurance, magnanimity, and gentleness.

(21) O Lord, plant in me the root of all blessings, the fear of thee in my heart.

(22) O Lord, vouchsafe that I may love thee with all my heart and soul and in all things obey thy will.

(23) O Lord, shield me from evil men and devils and passions and all other unlawful things.

(24) O Lord, who knowest thy creation and what thou hast willed for it; may thy will also be fulfilled in me a sinner; for thou art blessed for evermore. Amen.

:: :: ::

From A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers, foreword by Alexander Schmemann, explanatory notes by Nicolas Zernov (Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1983, eleventh impression 1991), pp 14-15

Lewis & Kubrick & the Rocky Banality Picture Show
the Late Late Late Shows : not a wonderful life !!

Wee hours television included a semi-enticing hour-long program on PBS about the writing of Clive Staples Lewis. A "drive-by" exploration, if you will, of some of his more famous works, both Narnia and the merely Christian. Distracting interludes, when no one was talking, of "nature" being filmed at its most cloyingly pretty. One expected to hear, "And now, Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" at any second. Main complaint : the speakers/commentators weren't captioned often enough. An unfamous theology professor from Wheaton was captioned twice; but I caught only by implication that the fellow in clergyish white was one of Joy Gresham's sons. Debra Winger was identified as Debra Winger.

Also on the tube during the wee hours this past night was Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining. The more I see of Kubrick, the more I'm troubled. Granted, this was a horror film based on a Stephen King novel. But as cinematic artiste, Kubrick seemed always to have an insalubrious fascination with evil. He seemed anti-American in Dr. Strangelove; or, How I Gave My Film an Exceedingly Pretentious Subtitle and anti-family in every film from Lolita to A Clockwork Orange to Eyes Wide Shut. Parents are insufferable or they're dolts or they're psycopaths. Marriage is a sham. The American dream is a mocking mirage at best (as in the Sam Mendes film American Beauty, a film that bothered me less than it bothered some, in part because of Kevin Spacey's incessantly magnetizing watchability in just about anything), and a terrible nightmare at worst.

I suppose it could be said in Kubrick's favor that, much like C. S. Lewis (a man with whom he has ostensibly little in common), he reminds us that good and evil do exist, and are different. But Kubrick makes his evil almost gorgeous, with really splendid and beautiful cinematography, at least in films like Shining and Eyes Wide. So, in Kubrick, we're dealing with an artist of indisputable genius whose energies, it seems to me, were devoted -- with constancy & consistency & consummate skill -- to the mockery of the sacred, especially of family. Would it be apt to call him a Nietzschean figure?

I don't know what word would be apt for that grossly overrated bit of 1970s cultural detritus that VH-1 airs periodically, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It cannot be watched for more than two or three minutes at a time, and even that brief a glance is a ghastly squandering of our precious temporal resources. The film is as oppressive as Stalin, as funny as AIDS. The soundtrack is vile, the acting pubescent, the philosophy that of the bathhouse : a lethally sad hedonism that thinks it's discovered something new. An idiotically carnal banality that just knows it's smarter than the normal people. In reparation for the dangerous and sickening idiocy of this mind-numbingly boring (yet wildly popular?) piece of dreck, I think we should all start our Lents about six weeks before Ash Wednesday.

Where have you gone, Frank Capra? Our nation turns its soiled soul, its wounded heart, its bleary eyes to you!