Prediction

I think I know who'll be throwing out the first pitch at Fenway today. The Red Sox higher-ups are keeping it a secret, and will say only "it'll give you goosebumps." I think I've got it figured out.

She's seven years old.

Will update you if my prediction is accurate or not.

Update, Wednesday: I was wrong. See comment box.

Welcome!

According to the newly installed ClustrMap, this blog has recently had visitors from Brazil, Japan, and Belgium (or was that northern France?). Canada, Hawaii, wherever you're from ... welcome!

Discovered

An online selection of Emily Dickinson's poems.

To all souls that love God, to all true Christians, there shall come a first month of the year, as the month of April, a day of resurrection.

from the Homilies of St Macarius

And now for something completely different ...

Amazing Grace, 2007. By a new artist!

Joss Stone
née Joscelyn Eve Stoker

"Son of a Preacher Man," 2006:



The dress is a little too short.

Dusty Springfield
née Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien

"Son of a Preacher Man," 1968:

One year

Today marks the anniversary of my return to "regular" blogging! That is, if 5-10 posts a week can be called "regular" when compared to the 50+ posts per week of five years ago.

Well, here's the post that (re)started it all, one of my favorite passages from the Book of Wisdom.

Realism, modified

On the night after Patrick met Patrick, to joust with their gladsome épées, Felix awoke (and rushed toward the coffee-pot, because his body believed the sunrise to be imminent) at 3:04 am.

O fortunate Felix, who can re-read Caelica as the sparrows sleep and the airplanes murmur sweet nothings! O happy city, in which haikus are crowed at the drop of dawn!

Secret enclave : wistful.

Corners of porches. Corners of libraries.

Ensconced in yesterday. Sheltered from sun.

Poignancy and trees. Sky shuttered out.

Storage of memories. Old houses best.

Jamaica Plain backyard. Fences and neighbors.

Autumn all year. Even in April.

Temperature

Crickets chirp in Celsius,
sparrows Fahrenheit.

News items

Bulletin : Pencil-sharpeners are hungry for what is blunt.

Bulletin : Possible Downtown Crossing explorations & the scampering ram.

Bulletin : Time to get the Scrabble partner's watch fixed.

Bulletin : Importance is vital. Write that down.

Bulletin : Seasons are changing. Blossomings burgeon. Trees get an A-plus in creativity. Too rambunctious for the A in conduct.

Bulletin : Teachers don't teach trees how to grow and rejoice. Unless they're poets & do so in November.

Bulletin : Martin's daughter-in-law still shines like any star, at the age of twoscore something.

Bulletin : Blind gondoliers travel canals that are (what else?) Venetian!

Bulletin : Pack-rats indulge in schemes to resurrect literature.

And today's weather : A chance of audacity, hampered by clouds, assisted by them rather.

Surrealism

There are two ways of having a cup of tea. Carefully and cautiously. Paying heed to the steep prices, and the bleeding bag of leaves.

A cup of tea is a simile. So went the meanings. Here we abrade with the sound of abrupt.

When we write a villanelle, it is in the realm of such. Of such and of suchlike. The governor is swift and Wyoming is compared to the Pyrenees.

Innocent can mean unwedded. Les noces parfaites. Have we glanced at the etymologies for "hectic" and "fettle." Have we collaborated with our choice rejoicer.

Scripture and Holy Tradition [...] give us no grounds for supposing that, through a steady advance in "civilization", the world will grow gradually better and better until mankind succeeds in establishing God's kingdom on earth. The Christian view of world history is entirely opposed to this kind of evolutionary optimism.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 134

Jussive

The rive-gauche mafia's jussive cries
for help and collegiality
thunder faintly down profligate corridors
of panache and decentralization.

Whose palazzo is it anyway?
We are chirpy, chirpier, chirpiest
choristers addicted to life.
We are known as a place of welcome,
so stay away
if you're not one of us.

Where are the lispers and traipsers of yesteryear? Or yesternight
    even?
Huddled in a bunker, knocking back the bubbly?
Such froth! Such frippery! Oh, you ...

you rascal,
with your lissome repartee
and your bodacious "fear of same."

2003

Five poems

Wine, guitars, blue bulls, red sun,
outmoded whispers --

*

The haiku of blue
by Kobayashi-Rimbaud
shines like jolie lune ...

*

Ashberyana:
traceries of yestermorn,
forgeries of night

*

Hoosegow bumpkin strums
on mauve mandolin

*

Weighing grey, rehearsing sound,
eccola! Spring rain
drops like light

2003

Realism, modified

The stone is dreaming of Vienna. Bowie plays Doha.

If all else fails

Write about all the proper themes
Write about bridge-builders and icon-makers
Write about massacres and resolute measures
Write about popular music and cultureslaves
Write about the Book of Common Prayer
Write about the grousings of overpaid first-basemen
Write about formality and decorum
Write about sartorial splendor
Write about religion and discount prophecy
Write about the whited sepulchres
Write about September 16th on Hampden Street
Write about ethics in journalism
Write about the President of the United States
Write about the burning issues of the day

Write about all the wrong things
Write about Silver Lake New Hampshire
Write about the death of American poetry
Write about nihilism and prenatal infanticide
Write about the sparrows 30 minutes before sunrise
Write about Hildegarde of Bingen
Write about an appointment at 2:45 pm
Write about the drunk who met His Eminence
Write about women who make the city heaven
Write about Westminster and Windmill Hill
Write about the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Write about sinners and dense theologians
Write about the mysteries of life
Write about taboos and kinks and addictions

Write about things you don't know about
Write about people and places you haven't met or seen
Write about mediocrities and blithe spirits
Write about the second cup of coffee
Write about Dutch waitresses who pretend to be Irish
Write about serious things like Hollywood marriages
Write about the contemporary scene with detached irony
Write about the French because somebody has to
Write about Saint Monica who prayed for her son
Write about cappuccino at the Kendall Square Cinema
Write about dashed hopes and broken promises
Write about red leaves in late August
Write about variety being the spice of life
Write about a sturdy hammock in suburban shade

And if all else fails be silent
Because silence never makes mistakes

1997

Emily Dickinson
from a letter

The Sailor cannot see the North --
but knows the Needle can --

poem

about the retreat to the Trappist abbey sixteen years ago ...

Commonwealth Avenue Mall

Sparrow, fierce extortionist!
I have no more crumbs.

2003

To a Trappist

Oh, to be he, with snakes in the jakes!
Cistercian Merton, in his hermitage of icons,
in his dream-den where Proverb sings a secret ageless wisdom,
yes, the monk of hopeful phone-calls to hospitals of love.
Cistercian Merton, left of center, marginal in the rusted trailer,
patron of my fringe existence, pray for me
with your edifying cables, your sensational times,
your blind-lion tears between loblolly pines,
your vanishing trails to the stone Buddhas of unforeseen heaven,
your vow of silent conversation, prosing haiku pictures
of the cloistered farm, of nature's wreckage,
of the ramshackle glory of things as they are,
your coffee on cold mornings, your dexterous calligraphies,
your ephemeral Zen monuments of anguish and joy,
your sinful-saintly standing watch as the world does its work,
your searing psalmody, your soaring liturgies, your telling beads of
      heartbreak,
your sighs to the hills and frosted nightstars
of a distant immortal Kentucky.

2003

call it what you will

1

leaf-life blighted by the smoke
from a passing bus

2

treble tolls of bleak dismay
drab rodomontade

3

the morning of the poem
jazzy drops of rain

4

and the dulcet bumblebees
murmuring their gripes

5

lemon-scented buttercups
lisp their odes to spring

6

canopied boulangeries
rambunctious churches

2003

Surrealism

The ecumenical python lunged at the scrumptious daisy, causing paroxysms of havoc, maniacal fits of glee, in the community of Anglo-Catholic tumbleweeds.

Here endeth the lesson.

16 years ago this week

I was making a retreat at a Trappist monastery. The monks were very kind. A cherished memory.

Poem

I have tried to hold you in my heart; 
You will not accept this grasp and clutch.
(Days turn into years: shall I forget
Her whose face and voice I loved so much?)
Splendid, gentle, proud, defiant one,
Dwell within me like an inner sun:
Warm the places lacking love and light.

Speak to me of peace, O sainted soul:
Mercy must be born again in me.
Come, beloved, teach a prattling fool
Ways of hope and faith and charity.
Smile upon my sorrow; banish fear;
Cleanse me from the sins of yesteryear:
Live within my life and make me whole.


1999

Cummings

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

44 tomorrow!

Happy birthday to Tracy Chapman. Here she is as she was 20 years ago ...

Perché là dov'è il tuo tesoro, sarà anche il tuo cuore.

Matteo 6:21

The Christian is the one who has brothers and sisters. He belongs to a family -- the family of the Church.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 108

Easter reflections

from John Henry Newman at Apologia, and from Romano Guardini at the Daily Eudemon.

Easter
by Eric Milner-White (1884-1963)

THOU ART RISEN, O LORD!
Let the gospel trumpets speak,
and the news as of holy fire,
burning and flaming and inextinguishable,
run to the ends of the earth.

THOU ART RISEN, O LORD!
Let all creation greet the good tidings
with jubilant shout;
for its redemption has come,
the long night is past, the Saviour lives!
and rides and reigns in triumph
now and unto the ages of ages.

THOU ART RISEN, O LORD!
Let the quiet Altar dazzle with light;
let us haste to thy Presence
wondering, incredulous for joy;
and partake of thy Risen Life.

THOU ART RISEN, MY LORD AND MY GOD!
Rise up, my heart, give thanks, rejoice!
And do thou, O Lord, deign to enter it
despite the shut doors.
Shew me thy hands and thy side,
that it is thou thyself.
Send me about thy business,
servant of the living King, the King of kings;
and hide my life in thine
for ever and ever.

From My God, My Glory : Aspirations, acts, and prayers on the desire for God, ed. Joyce Huggett (Triangle/SPCK, 1994), p. 69.

from Easter Sermon of St John Chrysostom

Let all then enter the joy of our Lord!

Both the first and the last and those who come after, enjoy your reward!

Rich and poor, dance with one another, sober and slothful, celebrate the day.

Those who have kept the fast and those who have not, rejoice today, for the table is richly spread.

Fare royally upon it -- the calf is a fatted one.

Let no one go away hungry.

All of you, enjoy the banquet of faith!

All enjoy the riches of his goodness.

Let no one cry over his poverty, for the universal Kingdom has appeared!

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again, for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free.

He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He spoiled the power of hell when he descended thereto.

Isaiah foretold this when he cried, Death has been frustrated in meeting him below!

It is frustrated, for it is destroyed.

It is frustrated, for it is annihilated.

It is frustrated, for now it is made captive.

For it grabbed a body and discovered God.

It took earth and behold! it encountered heaven.

It took what was visible, and was overcome by what was invisible.

O Death, where is your sting?

O Death, where is your victory?

Christ is risen,
and the demons are cast down.

Christ is risen,
and life is set free.

Christ is risen,
and the tomb is emptied of the dead.

For Christ, having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who sleep.

To him be glory and power forever and ever!

Amen. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This is a Night above all nights, when
keeping watch at Your grave
we are the Church.
This is the night of strife
when hope and despair do battle within us.
This strife overlays all our past struggles,
filling them all to their depths.
(Do they lose their sense then, or gain it?)
This is the Night, when the earth's ritual attains its beginning.
A thousand years is like one night:
the night keeping watch
at Your grave.

-- Karol Wojtyla, "Easter Vigil, 1966"

The Agony

by George Herbert (1593-1633); found at Mere Comments.

Attributed to "Michael Angelo"

From the Library of World Poetry, intro. W. C. Bryant (orig. publ. 1871, republished 1987 by Chatham River Press), p. 43.


The might of one fair face sublimes my love,
For it hath weaned my heart from low desires;
Nor death I heed, nor purgatorial fires.
Thy beauty, antepast of joys above,
Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve;
For O, how good, how beautiful must be
The God that made so good a thing as thee,
So fair an image of the heavenly Dove!

Forgive me if I cannot turn away
From those sweet eyes that are my earthly heaven,
For they are guiding stars, benignly given
To tempt my footsteps to the upward way;
And if I dwell too fondly in thy sight,
I live and love in God's peculiar light.

Cummings

there are possibly 2½ or impossibly 3
individuals every several fat
thousand years. Expecting more would be
neither fantastic nor pathological but

dumb. The number of times a wheel turns
doesn't determine its roundness:if swallows tryst
in your barn be glad;nobody ever earns
anything,everthing little looks big in a mist

and if(by Him Whose blood was for us spilled)
than all mankind something more small occurs
or something more distorting than socalled
civilization i'll kiss a stalinist arse

in hitler's window on Wednesday next at 1
E.S.T. bring the kiddies let's all have fun

Cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having--
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
--it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving--
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
--alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing,the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living--
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
--it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Cummings

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
--fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young

pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin

comes here a man would have from madame death
neverless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing(if he should not sing)

how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice,

Bishop Kallistos Ware
from The Orthodox Way (SVS Press, 1995), p. 19

Wherever we look, we see not only confusion but beauty. In snowflake, leaf, or insect, we discover structured patterns of a delicacy and balance that nothing manufactured by human skill can equal. We are not to sentimentalize these things, but we cannot ignore them. How and why have these patterns emerged? If I take a pack of cards fresh from the factory, with the four suits neatly arranged in sequence, and I begin to shuffle it, then the more it is shuffled the more the initial pattern disappears and is replaced by a meaningless juxtaposition. But in the case of the universe the opposite has happened. Out of an initial chaos there have emerged patterns of an ever-increasing intricacy and meaning, and among all these patterns the most intricate and meaningful is man himself. Why should the process that happens to the pack of cards be precisely reversed on the level of the universe? What or who is responsible for this cosmic order and design? Such questions are not unreasonable.

Updated

My other blog, with a sentence from St Gregory of Nyssa.

Pat Buchanan loses his cool



.. while discussing Ferraro's remarks about Obama with Keli Goff (at whom he directed his impatience) and Rachel Maddow.

Not his most glorious moment, but hardly a hanging offense.

Whatever happened to a cup o' joe?

wonders the blogger at June Cleaver After a Six-Pack.

I'm linking to this, because I don't want to scandalize my few remaining readers by posting the obscenity-laden YouTube featuring an eight-minute Denis Leary rant on the exact same subject.

For the record, I have never patronized a Starbucks.

An elastic use of words?

The blogger at The Daily Eudemon wonders if the definition of "pro-life" has become a bit ... undefined.

I'm thinking

that "Client 9" would be a great name for a band.

Of course, this is much graver matter.