I propose a toast

... to former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard. Best remembered for a historic gopher ball (Roger Maris's 61st home-run in 1961), he deserves credit for having held the likes of Mays, McCovey, and Clemente to under .200 against him. Not bad at all.

Here's to you, Mr Stallard!

Phos hilaron

O Gladsome Light
of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father,
Heavenly, Holy, Blessed Jesus Christ!

Now that we have come to the setting of the sun
and behold the light of evening,
we praise God Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For meet it is at all times to worship Thee with voices of praise.
O Son of God and Giver of Life,
therefore all the world doth glorify Thee.

Fragment

I'm trying to remember this poem I wrote 27 years ago. It appeared in my highschool literary magazine in the fall of 1985. I can't find a copy of it anywhere. I've asked friends if they have copies: no luck. Here is all that I can remember of the poem.

*

THE HOLY SEASON
by Thomas D, 1985

Despite the weather
(the orange winds of fall
and green of April),

God's children safely stay:

[...]

protects [...] from the blizzard tides,
prevents the ark's timber from rotting
and keeps the just-born babies golden, asleep.

Never forgotten
(blessed by the raindrop)
is the landscape[?]

[...]

but where is the saint or sage who can explain
the adolescent pair of sister suicides?
This question will echo long past the holy season
for the answer lies nowhere on this landscape.

The hilltop cross
sheds artificial light
each evening, despite.

O Holy Night

As performed by Miss Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

The Cherry Tree Carol

As performed by Miss Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

Christmas sights

Peace Garden, St Leonard's Church, Hanover Street, North End, Boston

Outside St Stephen's Church, Hanover Street, North End, Boston

Christmas lights in The Red Hat, Bowdoin Street, Boston

A Carol

("Minuit, chrétiens": translated by Thomas D)


Midnight, O Christians, is the solemn hour
when God who is truly Man comes to you:
he shall remove the stain of our offenses;
he'll please his Father and make all things new!
The whole world trembles, chills of expectation:
the long-sought night which brings us saving grace
now has arrived!  O kneel in adoration!
Behold, behold the Child-Redeemer's face!

Now may the light of faith ceaselessly burning
show us the way to the cradle of birth,
just as of old, the brightest star in heaven
led Eastern sages across desert earth.
The King of Kings is born where beasts are feeding:
O powers-that-seem, so boastful of your place,
proud men and cold, now heed the silent teaching!
The Child is God, his Mother full of grace.

The Savior's strength has burst through every fetter;
our world is free, heaven open once again:
a lowly slave becomes a prince's brother;
chains break asunder.  United are men!
What shall we give the Lord for all his goodness,
made flesh for us, to suffer pain and death?
Rise from your sleep!  Deliverance is upon us!
A child is born: praise him with every breath.

Stubborn and tough

Trolley ramp, Lechmere Station, East Cambridge.
Photo taken while I was waiting for the Number 80 bus.

My lady's knitting

... and a cup of coffee!
and a bottle of water!

The beautiful purple-blue square!

Photograph

December by the brook. Arlington.

snowless freeze
and late November sunlight

the rusty workmanship
of ordinary time

"the fences of the light"
brown leaves gray trees

the industry of man
in metallic suburbs

abandoned shells of trucks
beside the endless railroad

no sunlight colder than yesterday's

*

the monarchy of yesteryear
has fallen like a city

the landscape writes a song of desolation

its entertainments are the cloak of grief

its prayers are phrased to distant vacancy

the earth grows adamant and passionless
beneath the tiny grandeur of the stars

can darkness comprehend
beatitude

Our Lady of Guadalupe. Feast: December 12

Nouwen and Houselander: Recent Reading

Your heart is broken, the heart that did not know hatred, revenge, resentment, jealousy or envy but only love, love so deep and so wide that it embraces your Father in heaven as well as all humanity in time and space. Your broken heart is the source of my salvation, the foundation of my hope, the cause of my love. It is the sacred place where all that was, is and ever shall be is held in unity. There all suffering has been suffered, all anguish lived, all loneliness endured, all abandonment felt and all agony cried out. There, human and divine love have kissed, and there God and all men and women of history are reconciled. All the tears of the human race have been cried there, all pain understood and all despair touched. Together with all people of all times, I look up to you whom they have pierced, and I gradually come to know what it means to be part of your body and your blood, what it means to be human.

Henri J M Nouwen, Heart Speaks to Heart: Three Gospel Meditations on Jesus (Ave Maria Press, 2007), pp 36-7

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The Christ Child in a nation is like the presence of the child in the house: everything centers upon his youth; and he fills everything with his life. If He goes away, the child's values go, too, such as the sense of wonder, mystery, beauty, and adventure: the poetry which, free from materialism, is the most complete realism.

Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God (Sheed and Ward, 1961), pp 103-4

Twitter meme: Proud to be a fan of ...

Here are 10 things of which I am "proud to be a fan."  There are others, but these were the first ten that came to mind.

Dylan Thomas
Theodore Roethke
E E Cummings
Shakespeare
monks
The Smiths
Tracy Chapman
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Boston's CatholicTV
Blessed John Paul II

Advent (In Mary-Darkness)

I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.

And on one night when a great star swings free

from its high mooring and walks down the sky

to be the dot above the Christus i,

I shall be born of her by blessed grace.

I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,

with hope’s expectance of nativity.

I knew for long she carried me and fed me,

guarded and loved me, though I could not see.

But only now, with inward jubilee,

I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:

someone is hidden in this dark with me.

Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, p. 81

*

And here is Fr Philip Dabney, CSsR, of Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, incorporating lines from the poem above into a short homily (it's toward the end):