Dark Speech upon the Harp

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien

2012-01-25T23:48:00.000-05:00

(alias Dusty Springfield)

Possibly upcoming

2012-01-25T23:21:00.002-05:00

A poem by Jessica Powers
Haiku by dylanissimus
Political obiter dicta
Reflections on the Sacrament of Reconciliation

Stay tuned!

Bocelli and Bach: Ave Maria

2012-01-21T02:17:00.001-05:00

Not only is this musically quite lovely, but the video is also beautifully made.

A preamble, a modern hymn, and a prayer

2012-01-20T21:31:00.002-05:00

The singer/guitarist in this video is, I believe, a priest. The hymn is "Cry of the Poor," written by John Foley, SJ in 1978.

There is a preamble where the singer invites us to prayer; the hymn begins at approximately 1 minute, 40 seconds, into the video.

I needed to hear this hymn tonight.

Notes Toward a Supreme Ghazal

2012-01-12T13:36:00.000-05:00

Hacker likes to write in the ghazal form.
She does something every night in the ghazal form.

I've never attempted this mode of Arabic verse,
But I should try something light in the ghazal form.

It might also be a medium for invective:
Do poets vent their spite in the ghazal form?

It's mystifying to me, really, how anyone
Could seem to take delight in the ghazal form.

The anticlimactic repetition ending each couplet
Makes it difficult to excite in the ghazal form.

Hard to imagine Michael Longley or Seamus Heaney
Remembering the potato blight in the ghazal form.

Even a mind of the caliber of Albert Einstein
Would sound less than bright in the ghazal form.

Yet Marilyn Hacker writes passably good verse
About war-torn countries' plight in the ghazal form.

O dylan of darkspeech, fight! Let your words take flight!
Show your poetic might in the ghazal form!

Bard of Avon Calling

2012-01-10T09:55:00.003-05:00

I need to re-purchase a copy of Hamlet. The Pelican Shakespeare version of the famous play has these bizarre editorial emendations, "Lamort" instead of "Lamound," "heated visage" instead of "tristful visage," and so on. It's like reading the New American Bible version of the Bard of Avon.

Existence or its opposite? That's what I am asking myself.
Whether it be more or less dignified to put up with
The barbs and darts of brash Luck, or to use weapons
Against distress's oceans, to stop them from happening.

Too tired to translate the whole soliloquy into the NAB idiom.

Heschel III

2012-01-10T05:06:00.001-05:00

Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. Weary, sobbing, the soul, after wandering through a world festered with aimlessness, falsehoods and absurdities, seeks a moment in which to gather up its scattered life, in which to divest itself of enforced pretensions and camouflage, in which to simplify complexities, in which to call for help without being a coward. Such a home is prayer. Continuity, perseverance, intimacy, authenticity, earnestness are its attributes. For the soul, home is where prayer is.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, “On Prayer,” from Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, ed. Susannah Heschel (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996), p. 258

More from Heschel

2012-01-09T02:37:00.004-05:00

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.

*

When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question.

*

There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.

*

We must keep our own amazement, our own eagerness alive. And if we ever fail in our quest for insight, it is not because it cannot be found, but because we do not know how to live, or how to beware of the mind's narcissistic tendency to fall in love with its own reflection ...

*

What is subtle speculation worth without the pristine insight into the sacredness of life, an insight which we try to translate into philosophy's rational terms, into religion's ways of living, into art's forms and visions?

*

Souls that are focused and do not falter at first sight, falling back on words and ready-made notions with which the memory is replete, can behold the mountains as if they were gestures of exaltation.

*

from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, pp. 11-15, passim

Abraham Joshua Heschel

2012-01-04T06:39:00.000-05:00

It is the sense of the sublime that we have to regard as the root of man's creative activities in art, thought and noble living. Just as no flora has ever fully displayed the hidden vitality of the earth, so has no work of art ever brought to expression the depth of the unutterable, in the sight of which the souls of saints, poets and philosophers live.

+ + +

Only those who live on borrowed words believe in their gift of expression. A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic, the most essential, is never expressed.

+ + +

[from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (Noonday, 1979), p. 4]

From Tennyson's In Memoriam

2011-12-29T19:05:00.004-05:00

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Noël

2011-12-24T05:23:00.001-05:00

A poem by Anne Porter.

Christmas (I and II)

2011-12-24T05:10:00.000-05:00

by George Herbert (1953-1633)

All after pleasures as I rid one day,
        My horse and I, both tir’d, bodie and minde,
        With full crie of affections, quite astray,
I took up in the next inne I could finde,

There when I came, whom found I but my deare,
        My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
        Of pleasures brought me to him, readie there
To be all passengers most sweet relief?

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
        Wrapt in nights mantle, stole into a manger;
        Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,
To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger:

        Furnish & deck my soul, that thou mayst have
        A better lodging then a rack or grave.

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
                My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul ’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
                Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
                Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
                Out-sing the day-light houres.
Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
                Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
                Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I finde a sunne
                Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
                As frost-nipt sunnes look sadly.
Then we will sing, shine all our own day,
                And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n his beams sing, and my musick shine.

The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ

2011-12-24T05:03:00.000-05:00

by Christopher Smart (1722-71)

Where is this stupendous stranger,
Swains of Solyma, advise?
Lead me to my Master’s manger,
Show me where my Saviour lies.

O Most Mighty! O MOST HOLY!
Far beyond the seraph’s thought,
Art thou then so mean and lowly
As unheeded prophets taught?

O the magnitude of meekness!
Worth from worth immortal sprung;
O the strength of infant weakness,
If eternal is so young!

If so young and thus eternal,
Michael tune the shepherd’s reed,
Where the scenes are ever vernal,
And the loves be Love indeed!

See the God blasphem’d and doubted
In the schools of Greece and Rome;
See the pow’rs of darkness routed,
Taken at their utmost gloom.

Nature’s decorations glisten
Far above their usual trim;
Birds on box and laurels listen,
As so near the cherubs hymn.

Boreas now no longer winters
On the desolated coast;
Oaks no more are riv’n in splinters
By the whirlwind and his host.

Spinks and ouzels sing sublimely,
“We too have a Saviour born”;
Whiter blossoms burst untimely
On the blest Mosaic thorn.

God all-bounteous, all-creative,
Whom no ills from good dissuade,
Is incarnate, and a native
Of the very world He made.

New Prince, New Pomp

2011-12-24T04:59:00.000-05:00

by Robert Southwell (1561-95)

Behold, a seely tender babe
      In freezing winter night
In homely manger trembling lies,—
      Alas, a piteous sight!

The inns are full, no man will yield
      This little pilgrim bed,
But forced he is with seely beasts
      In crib to shroud his head.

Despise him not for lying there,
      First, what he is enquire,
An orient pearl is often found
      In depth of dirty mire.

Weigh not his crib, his wooden dish,
      Nor beasts that by him feed;
Weigh not his mother's poor attire
      Nor Joseph's simple weed.

This stable is a prince's court,
      This crib his chair of state,
The beasts are parcel of his pomp,
      The wooden dish his plate.

The persons in that poor attire
      His royal liveries wear;
The prince himself is come from heaven—
      This pomp is prizëd there.

With joy approach, O Christian wight,
      Do homage to thy king;
And highly prize his humble pomp
      Which he from heaven doth bring.

Christus Natus Est

2011-12-23T06:12:00.001-05:00

by Countee Cullen (1903-46)

In Bethlehem
On Christmas morn,
The lowly gem
Of love was born.
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

Bright in her crown
Of fiery star,
Judea’s town
Shone from afar:
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

While beasts in stall
On bended knee,
Did carol all
Most joyously:
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

For bird and beast
He did not come,
But for the least
Of mortal scum.
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

Who lies in ditch?
Who begs his bread?
Who has no stitch
For back or head?
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

Who wakes to weep,
Lies down to mourn?
Who in his sleep
Withdraws from scorn?
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

Ye outraged dust
On field and plain,
To feed the lust
Of madmen slain:
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

The manger still
Outshines the throne;
Christ must and will
Come to his own.
Hosannah! Christus natus est.

Jack Kerouac: three haiku

2011-12-15T13:23:00.003-05:00

Beautiful summer night
     gorgeous as the robes
Of Jesus

*

The hermit's broom,
     the fire, the kettle
-- August night

*

Gull sailing
     in the saffron sky --
The Holy Ghost wanted it

+ + +

[From Book of Haikus, ed. Regina Weinreich (Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 30, 48, 70]

Ethiopian anaphora

2011-12-13T04:55:00.001-05:00

O Mary, vastness of the heavens,
foundation of the earth,
depth of the oceans, light of the sun,
beauty of the moon,
splendour of the stars,
your womb contained God
whose majesty makes man tremble.
Your arms cradled the burning coal.
You held on your lap the lion
whose majesty is awesome.
Your hands touched
him who is untouchable
and the divine fire within him.
Your fingers are like the incandescent tongs
with which the prophet received the coal
of the heavenly offering.
You are the basket bearing this burning bread
and you are the cup of this wine.
O Mary, you bring forth in your womb
the fruit of the offering ...
we most earnestly pray to you
that you may protect us from the ensnaring enemy
and that, just as the measure of water
is not divided from the wine,
so we may not separate ourselves from your son,
the lamb of salvation.

+ + +

[Found in Blessed are you who believed by Carlo Carretto, trans. Barbara Wall (Orbis Books, 1983), pp. 74-75]

Copiosa apud eum redemptio

2011-12-12T03:57:00.001-05:00

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;
Domine, exaudi vocem meam.

Fiant aures tuæ intendentes
in vocem deprecationis meæ.

Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine,
Domine, quis sustinebit?

Quia apud te propitiatio est;
et propter legem tuam sustinui te, Domine.

Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus:
Speravit anima mea in Domino.
A custodia matutina usque ad noctem, speret Israël in Domino.

Quia apud Dominum misericordia,
et copiosa apud eum redemptio.

Et ipse redimet Israël
ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus.

[Psalm 130 (129 in Vulgate)]

Carlo Carretto

2011-12-09T11:08:00.001-05:00

There are no limits to the way[s] in which we experience God.

He is always new, and I suspect that he never repeats himself in the way he chooses to approach us.

When I was waiting for him under the olive-tree, he came under the oak.

When I was waiting for him in church, he came in the city.

When I sought him in joy, he came in sorrow.

When I gave up waiting for him I found him before me, waiting for me.

God has always taken me by surprise, and his time has never been mine.

+ + +

[From Summoned by Love (Orbis Books, 1978), p. 76]

Fr Christophe Lebreton, slain at Tibhirine

2011-12-09T11:02:00.001-05:00

December 25, 1993

Christmas.

A dark night. The morning Star lights up each face. We are all alive.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

It is enough to stand firm in the power of becoming children of God,

born here of God.

What has happened to us?

You, the one who is above all,

the unexpected one, who reveals our thirst to us: come, oh!

Behold, I come quickly.

We are caught up in the Coming. It remains for us to follow the flow of grace.

+ + +

[From How Far to Follow?: The Martyrs of Atlas, by Dom Bernardo Olivera, OCSO (Cistercian Publications, 1997), p. 61

Song for Deborah

2011-12-06T06:04:00.001-05:00

My day began
A bit off-track
I spilled some coffee
Down my back

A magic trick
I hopped the train
It's off to work
Wake up my brain

Spilling coffee down my back
Thank Heaven it was cold
Spilling coffee down my back
I'm thirty-eight years old

A doppio espresso, Jack
I'm spillin' coffee down my back
The stain will turn my white clothes black
I'm spillin' coffee down my back

Heard at church today

2011-11-29T21:21:00.001-05:00

Avé Maria, cheia de graça,
o Senhor é convosco.
Bendita sois vós entre as mulheres;
bendito é o fruto do vosso ventre, Jesus.
Santa Maria, mãe de Deus,
rogai por nós, pecadores,
agora e na hora da nossa morte. Amen

Caryll Houselander

2011-11-20T03:28:00.001-05:00

The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin

Prayer

Mary,
Immaculate Love,
   we bless you.

Because, though rooted in earth
   as we are,
you opened your heart to God;
   expanding and opening wide
   to the heat of the sun
   in your sinless heart,
you opened our hearts
   to the light.

All generations bless you,
flower of our race.

We are crowned
   in you,
Queen of Heaven,
   crowned with stars
   by the hands of Christ.

+ + +

[From The Essential Rosary (Sophia Institute Press, 1996), p. 59]

Msgr Romano Guardini

2011-11-20T03:15:00.001-05:00

When is heaven truly and completely present? It is when all heaviness is gone; when all sluggishness has been overcome, all wickedness, coldness, pride, irritation, disobedience, and covetousness; when there is no danger anymore of falling away; when grace has made one's whole being open up, body and soul, to the ultimate profundities, when there is no further danger that it will all close in again, become hardened in ways of evil; when all work to be done on earth is finished, and all guilt has been paid by repentance. What all this means is: after death.

After death -- when time is no longer; when everything is in the everlasting now; when nothing can change anymore, but the creature stands illuminated by the light of eternity, before God -- at that time, everything will be open, and will remain so. That is being in heaven ...

This is how we properly understand heaven. It is that close presence wherein the Father stands in relation to Jesus Christ. And heaven for us will be participation in this intimacy of love. This condition is already beginning; it approaches closer; now in peril, it is fought over, lost, and won back again. So it goes with our Christian life.

[Via Magnificat, November 2011, pp. 275-6. From Msgr Guardini's book The Inner Life of Jesus]

Blessed John Paul II

2011-11-11T04:21:00.001-05:00

Despite the suffering that invades my soul, I feel empowered, even obliged, solemnly to reaffirm before all the world what my predecessors and I have repeated so often in the name of conscience, in the name of morality, in the name of humanity, and in the name of God:

Peace is not a utopia, nor an inaccessible ideal, nor an unrealizable dream.

War is not an inevitable calamity.

Peace is possible.

And because it is possible, peace is our duty: our grave duty, our supreme responsibility.

[From Breakfast with the Pope: Daily Readings (Charis/Servant Publications, 1995), meditation 7]

St Francis de Sales

2011-11-10T08:48:00.005-05:00

One form of gentleness we should practice is toward ourselves. We should never get irritable with ourselves because of our imperfections. It is reasonable to be displeased and sorry when we commit faults, but not fretful or spiteful to ourselves ...

All irritation with ourselves tends to foster pride and springs from self-love, which is displeased at finding we are not perfect.

We should regard our faults with calm, collected, and firm displeasure. We correct ourselves better by a quiet persevering repentance than by an irritated, hasty, and passionate one.

When your heart has fallen raise it gently, humbling yourself before God, acknowledging your fault, but not surprised at your fall. Infirmity is infirm, weakness weak, and frailty frail.

[Via In the Footprints of Loneliness by Catherine Doherty (Madonna House Publications, 2003), p. 81]

And now, brethren,

2011-11-09T20:27:00.001-05:00

all that rings true, all that commands reverence, and all that makes for right; all that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is gracious in the telling; virtue and merit, wherever virtue and merit are found -- let this be the argument of your thoughts.

Philippians 4:8, trans. Msgr Ronald Knox

Bishop Robert F. Morneau

2011-11-03T03:45:00.002-04:00

A third grader got it right.
"A saint is someone that
the light shines through."

She was looking at a stained glass window --
the one St. Francis inhabits.
Every morning the light comes
and Francis lets the light pass through.

Saints are bearers of the light
and love
and life.

Just ask any third grader.

+ + +

[From A New Heart : Eleven Qualities of Holiness by Robert F. Morneau. Via A Maryknoll Book of Inspiration : Readings for Every Day of the Year (eds. Michael Leach and Doris Goodnough, Orbis Books, 2010), meditation for November 1, p. 332]

Robert D. Lupton

2011-11-01T06:40:00.000-04:00

I am reassured to know that the straightness of my grain is not a precondition of usefulness to God. And I am humbled to see that out of the twistedness of my wounds, he designs for me a special place of service.

[From Theirs is the Kingdom by Robert Lupton. Quoted in Reconciliation by (Bishop) Robert F. Morneau (Orbis Books, 2007), p. 81]

Wendy M. Wright

2011-10-29T18:01:00.000-04:00

[...] our hearts cannot be fixed on the generic or the ideal but must learn and exercise love through the particular. We are called to encounter God in the specific, embodied persons and events with which we come in contact. The extended tradition of contemplation on the Sacred Heart makes this abundantly clear. In much of that tradition the distinctive, bodily heart of Jesus is the focus. I have come to love the stunning fleshiness of it all, the sense that in gazing upon the organ itself one can know the depths of God. I admit it took me a long time to adjust to this concept and that originally I came to my study prepared to focus on the heart in a more conceptual manner. But the tradition is unambiguous. God does not love only with a free-floating, "spiritual" love but with the rush of blood, the tensing of muscle, with the tearing of tissue and bone. And so must we love.

To have a heart inhabited by God's heart, we must love specific people in all their idiosyncrasies. We must practice an energetically engaged love that mucks in the messiness of things.

[from Sacred Heart: Gateway to God (Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 78-79]

Quotations of note

2011-10-29T10:13:00.004-04:00

We need not be afraid of the power that is in us; it will meet its match one day in the omnipotent weakness of God.

Fr Simon Tugwell, OP

+ + +

Beauty is the purpose of history.

Fr Arturo Paoli

+ + +

Information and insight, [Sister Thea] would assert, are not the only qualities that characterize a university. The university, surely the Catholic university -- should transform the person into a living icon of Christ and help the person see the mark of God in all creation. For her, one who masters human knowledge, however extensively, but fails to employ that knowledge for the betterment of the human family and the promotion of God's reign -- for her such a person remains fundamentally ignorant and irresponsible.

Bishop James Lyke, OFM, accepting the Laetare Medal for Sister Thea Bowman

+ + +

And this is my prayer, that your love may grow ever richer in knowledge and insight of every kind, enabling you to learn by experience what things really matter.

Philippians 1:9-10 (Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha)

Sister Ruth Burrows, OCD

2011-10-28T10:28:00.002-04:00

Christian prayer is nothing other than being present to God so that God can give to us. The only thing that matters is that we believe this and stay there with him, regardless of how we feel or don't feel. I suggest that the most profound expression we can give to faith is to set aside an inviolable time each day, no matter how short, when we deliberately affirm God's, Jesus' absolute love for me here and now and that we stay there in blind trusting faith, receiving it. This will mean learning the precious lesson that, in fact, we have no inner resources of our own; it will mean learning to live happily without any assurances from within ourselves but casting our whole weight on to infinite love. This is to glorify God for it glorifies God's true nature, which is love.

[via Magnificat, October 2011, meditation for the 26th]

A Maryknoll Missioner in Burkina Faso

2011-10-26T19:08:00.000-04:00

One day I started to play Frisbee with a young boy who had stopped by for a visit. While we were playing, one of the young women who worked in a bar as a prostitute started watching us. After a little while, I threw the Frisbee to her, and she joined in with our fun. Then a little while later, an old man came walking by and started watching us play. Pretty soon the young woman threw the Frisbee to him. He dropped the Frisbee and his cane too, but then clumsily picked it back up and threw it to the young boy.

And there we were, the most unlikely mix of people in a little African village: an old man, a prostitute, a little boy, and a foreigner, all standing together in a circle, throwing a Frisbee, and having fun together. When I reflected on this experience later, I realized that I had received a vision of what the reign of God is all about: love, equality, beauty, and enjoyment with no one excluded or left out.

~ Dennis Moorman, MM, from Why Not Be a Missioner?

Via A Maryknoll Book of Inspiration: Readings for Every Day of the Year, ed. Michael Leach and Doris Goodnough (Orbis Books, 2010), p. 330

happy birthday estlin

2011-10-14T06:04:00.003-04:00

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born--pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if--listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go

~ E E Cummings
born 14 October 1894
died 3 September 1962

9th blog-o'-versary!

2011-10-08T14:13:00.005-04:00

The occasion falls today. Hurrah etc., let joy be unconfined.

And here is the initial post of Dark Speech upon the Harp, which was called Tenebrae back in 2002 -- the post is of a poem by Theodore Roethke. Enjoy!

Msgr Massimo Camisasca

2011-09-26T19:53:00.002-04:00

Even the weight of your sins would lead you back to me, God says. The whole of Christian wisdom is summed up in this sentence. For in becoming man, God chose to communicate himself, not only in spite of fragility, but "through" it. If we agree to this divine method without reservation, we can stop looking at our limitations as a reason for discouragement or frustration, and so as something to forget, to censor, and can start looking at them as stones to build with. The whole of our lives, with all their lights and shadows, exists in order to manifest the glory of Christ (Jn 9:3). If we refuse this logic, life will always be a burden that sooner or later we will find unbearable.

We are frequently tempted to censor difficulties, to hide them even from ourselves. When we do that, we are diverging radically from the way that God acts with us: every detail is a matter of importance for him. This kind of censorship is a diabolical act, which is often born of a fear of another's judgment, of the fear of losing the positive image that others have of us. But our stature before Christ has nothing to do with his image, nor can it be measured in terms of the mistakes that we may make or avoid making. Rather, it is decided by Christ himself and by our belonging to him. So to hide your own limits, your own problems, really doesn't make any sense. You do not find freedom from your own miseries by censoring them, but by handing them over to Christ, which is to say, by letting him embrace them. This embrace is like the one with which the mother enfolds her child in her arms, with which the lover takes the beloved into his. Indeed, it is infinitely more affectionate than these other gestures. Within this embrace, everything is taken up and directed to the one goal that makes life exciting: the glory of Christ on earth.

(via Magnificat, September 2011, meditation for the day, Sunday the 25th)

"The frost stings sweetly with a burning kiss"

2011-09-23T14:05:00.000-04:00

"The Sisters" by Roy Campbell:

To a Pet Cobra

2011-09-22T02:40:00.003-04:00

To A Pet Cobra
by Roy Campbell (1901-57)

With breath indrawn and every nerve alert,
As at the brink of some profound abyss,
I love on my bare arm, capricious flirt,
To feel the chilly and incisive kiss
Of your lithe tongue that forks its swift caress
Between the folded slumber of your fangs,
And half reveals the nacreous recess
Where death upon those dainty hinges hangs.

Our lonely lives in every chance agreeing,
It is no common friendship that you bring,
It was the desert starved us into being,
The hate of men that sharpened us to sting:
Sired by starvation, suckled by neglect,
Hate was the surly tutor of our youth:
I too can hiss the hair of men erect
Because my lips are venomous with truth.

Where the hard rock is barren, scorched the spring,
Shrivelled the grass, and the hot wind of death
Hornets the crag with whirred metallic wing --
We drew the fatal secret of our breath:
By whirlwinds bugled forth, whose funneled suction
Scrolls the spun sand into a golden spire,
Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.

Dainty one, deadly one, whose folds are panthered
With stars, my slender Kalihari flower,
Whose lips with fangs are delicately anthered,
Whose coils are volted with electric power,
I love to think how men of my dull nation
Might spurn your sleep with inadvertent heel
To kindle up the lithe retaliation
And caper to the slash of sudden steel.

There is no sea so wide, no waste so steril
But holds a rapture for the sons of strife:
There shines upon the topmost peak of peril
A throne for spirits that abound in life:
There is no joy like theirs who fight alone,
Whom lust or gluttony have never tied,
Who in their purity have built a throne,
And in their solitude a tower of pride.

I wish my life, O suave and silent sphinx,
Might flow like yours in some such strenuous line,
My days the scales, my years the bony links,
That chain the length of its resilient spine:
And when, at last, the moment comes to strike,
Such venom give my hilted fangs the power,
Like drilling roots the dirty soil that spike,
To sting these rotted wastes into a flower.

+ + + + + + + + + +

from The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry, ed. Dame Edith Sitwell (Little, Brown, and Company, 1958), pp. 924-5.

Francisco de Quevedo

2011-09-18T03:57:00.001-04:00

The blogger at Laudator Temporis Acti gives us a sonnet by the Spanish poet, translated by Willis Barnstone. A somewhat negative view of "The Ages of Man": not for the prudish!

Jacques Maritain

2011-09-17T19:31:00.001-04:00

"The human being down here in the darkness of his fleshly state is as mysterious as the saints in heaven in the light of their glory. There are in him inexhaustible treasures, constellations without end of sweetness and beauty which ask to be recognized and which usually escape completely the futility of our regard. Love brings a remedy for that. One must vanquish this futility and undertake seriously to recognize the innumerable universes that one's fellow being carries within him. This is the business of contemplative love and the sweetness of its regard."

Jacques Maritain, quoted in A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, ed. Jonathan Montaldo (HarperCollins, 2004), p. 273

Dame Edith Sitwell

2011-09-16T05:29:00.002-04:00

"I have got a very nice new lunatic -- a lady in Dublin. She has written to tell me that all R.C. priests have lots of illegitimate children -- usually by their 15-year-old nieces. I am replying that I know they have. My own dear confessor often brings round his happy little brood of ten to have tea with me. Four are by his own niece, but he is sadly forgetful about who are the mothers of the rest. There were eleven, but unfortunately he ate one, in a fit of absent-mindedness, one Friday.

"Osbert says I must not write this, as it will be published, and people will say (A) that I have no moral sense, (B) that I am flippant; but I reply that it will not be the first, second, or third time that these charges have been brought against me."

Edith Sitwell, from Selected Letters 1919-1964, eds. John Lehmann and Derek Parker (Vanguard Press, 1970), p. 253

The Flying Bum

2011-09-12T21:03:00.003-04:00

by William Plomer (1903-73)

In the vegetarian guest-house
All was frolic, feast and fun,
Eager voices were enquiring
‘Are the nettle cutlets done?’
Peals of vegetarian laughter,
Husky wholesome wholemeal bread,
Will the evening finish with a
Rush of cocoa to the head?

Yes, you’ve guessed; it’s Minnie’s birthday,
Hence the frolic, hence the feast.
Are there calories in custard?
There are vitamins in yeast.
Kate is here and Tom her hubby,
Ex-commissioner for oaths,
She is mad on Christian Science,
Parsnip flan he simply loathes.

And Mr Croaker, call him Arthur,
Such a keen philatelist,
Making sheep’s-eyes at Louisa
(After dinner there’ll be whist) –
Come, sit down, the soup is coming,
All of docks and darnels made,
Drinks a health to dear old Minnie
In synthetic lemonade.

Dentures champing juicy lettuce,
Champing macerated bran,
Oh the imitation rissoles!
Oh the food untouched by man!
Look, an imitation sausage
Made of monkey-nuts and spice,
Prunes tonight and semolina,
Wrinkled prunes, unpolished rice.

Yards of guts absorbing jellies,
Bellies filling up with nuts,
Carbohydrates jostling proteins
Out of intestinal ruts;
Peristalsis calls for roughage,
Haulms and fibers, husks and grit,
Nature’s way to open bowels,
Maybe – let them practise it.

‘Hark, I hear an air-raid warning!’
‘Take no notice, let em come.’
‘Who’ll say grace?’ ‘Another walnut?’
‘Listen, what’s that distant hum?’
‘Bomb or no bomb,’ stated Minnie,
‘Lips unsoiled by beef or beer
We shall use to greet our Maker
When he sounds the Great All-Clear.’

When the flying bomb exploded
Minnie’s wig flew off her pate,
Half a curtain, like a tippet,
Wrapped itself round bony Kate,
Plaster landed on Louisa,
Tom fell headlong on the floor,
And a spurt of lukewarm custard
Lathered Mr Croaker’s jaw.

All were spared by glass and splinters
But, the loud explosion past,
Greater was the shock impending
Even than the shock of blast –
Blast we veterans know as freakish
Gave this feast its final course,
Planted bang upon the table
A lightly roasted rump of horse.

Nescopecks?

2011-09-01T21:16:00.002-04:00

(Once again, inspired by the Trousered Ape!)

*

I now reside in Arlington,
Where every Sunday's full of sun
And writer's work is never done.
Please join me here in Arlington!

I used to work in Roxbury,
A place of tenement and tree
Where Carmelites have a nunnery.
Hail, blessed, wounded Roxbury!

I've never seen Hyannisport.
I wouldn't sell that small town short.
Some folks drink liquor by the quart
When they sail off Hyannisport.

I was baptized in Somerville:
Lived there two years, for good or ill.
I couldn't reach the windowsill
During my time in Somerville.

The Trappists live in Spencer, Mass.,
Where rabbits scamper through the grass.
Their church has wonderful stained glass!
I should revisit Spencer, Mass.

Fr Robert Barron

2011-08-28T07:44:00.000-04:00

Christianity -- like baseball, painting, and philosophy -- is a world, a form of life. And like those other worlds, we first approach it because we perceive it as beautiful. A youngster walks onto the baseball diamond because he finds the game splendid, and a young artist begins to draw because she finds the artistic universe enchanting. [...] No kid will be drawn into the universe of baseball by hearing arguments about the infield-fly rule or disputes about the quality of umpiring in the National League. And none of us will be enchanted by the world of Christianity if all we hear are disputes about it.

via A Maryknoll Book of Inspiration (Orbis Books, 2010), reading for August 28, p. 257

André Louf, OCSO

2011-08-25T04:12:00.001-04:00

For our heart is already in a state of prayer. We receive prayer along with grace in our baptism. The state of grace, as we call it, is, at the level of the heart, a state of prayer. From then on, in the profoundest depths of the self, we have a continuing contact with God. The Holy Spirit takes our heart in tow and turns it toward God. All the time, in fact, he is calling within us and he prays Abba-Father, with supplications and sighs that cannot be put into words, but never for a moment cease within our hearts.

This state of prayer within us is something we always carry about like a hidden treasure. Somewhere our heart is going full pelt, but we do not feel it. We are deaf to our praying heart, we fail to see the light in which we live. For our heart, our true heart, is asleep and it has to be waked gradually -- through the course of a whole lifetime.

A. Louf, from Teach Us How to Pray.

Quoted by Miriam Pollard, OCSO, in her book The Laughter of God: At Ease with Prayer (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc.), 1986, pp. 25-26.

Assignment

2011-08-24T09:49:00.002-04:00

(see Trousered Ape)

Write me a poem on
Parthenogenesis,
Using the word as a
Thrice-uttered rhyme.

Love to, I would, but I've
Places to go to, and
People to see, so I
Haven't the time.

*

Oh, well, maybe I do have the time --

O rare parthenogenesis!
You've happened once in history.
Without the flesh's intimate bliss
(O rare parthenogenesis!)
A child's born, perfect as a kiss,
And holy as a mystery.
O rare parthenogenesis,
You've happened once in history.

However

2011-08-23T10:27:00.002-04:00

... the first moment of true prayer occurs in the experience and awareness of one's limitations. We do not know what our real needs are, and we must learn them all over again each day. In this sense, prayer has the value of pedagogy, it is the great pedagogy of God. While evasion and distractions draw us away from the road to real happiness, prayer brings us back to what is most authentic in man's quest for happiness. "The truth will set you free." Prayer makes us free; it preserves what is most fragile and most precious in us: the integrity of our desire, that desire which, in final analysis, is nothing but the need for God. This is what prayer preserves in us, and must teach us every day, this need for God, which is the distinctive, most profound trait that separates man from the animals. Man is the only being who turns to God to obtain what is lacking for his own fulfillment.

Bernard Bro, OP, via Magnificat magazine, meditation for the day, Tues. 23rd August 2011

Winehouse

2011-08-20T20:47:00.004-04:00

"Maybe she couldn't think of a word that rhymed with Connery." ~ Roger Moore, on being mentioned in the lyrics of Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good"
*

Miss Winehouse, at the height of her brief fame,
Was searching for a famous proper name
(And one that rhymed quite easily, if it could)
To jazz up her song "You Know I'm No Good."

A recognizable actor, dashing, strong --
A metrosexual just wouldn't belong.
He'd have to be well-built and debonair;
He'd have to dress with style and speak with flair.

She didn't mention old Sean Connery
Although he's been an Oscar honoree,
And many ladies think he's simply heaven --
At least, he was, when he played 007.

She chose the next James Bond, also a codger,
To make her lyric vivid. Bravo, Roger!

5 Catholic facts

2011-08-17T06:41:00.002-04:00

about Elvis Presley. From the blog of a British priest, 2007.

Two Marian poems

2011-08-15T00:51:00.001-04:00

A poem from October 1995: Magnificat anima mea Dominum.

And a 2000 (?) poem called You have given life.

Magnificat

2011-08-15T00:30:00.002-04:00

(trans. dylan/TD)

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit exults in God my savior,
because he has regarded the humility of his handmaid.

For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed,
because he who is mighty has done for me great things,
and holy is his name:

and his mercy is upon the progeny of the progeny
of them that fear him.

He has shown the power of his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart:

he has deposed the mighty from their seat;
he has raised the humble to high places:

he has filled the hungry with good things;
he has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped Israel his servant;
he has been mindful of his mercy --
as he spoke to our forefathers --
to Abraham and to his seed for ever.

Ten posts in one evening

2011-08-11T19:32:00.000-04:00

So let me explain! I went to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, and found one of my "deleted" blogs, and so I harvested some material that I wanted to save. And to share.

Carlo Carretto

2011-08-11T19:24:00.002-04:00

Carlo Carretto.

On openness to change, on respect for Church hierarchy. From his book Summoned by Love (Orbis, 1977), pp 137-8.

All convinced Christians should feel that they belong to a true community of prayer.

If the parish is alive, the community is there already; if dead or on its last legs, the thing to do would be to make a fresh start, with like-minded people forming a community based on friendship and fellow-feeling, and so up, to a pooling of resources and the breaking of bread together.

And here I want to say a few words.

We must get rid of our fears.

Certain organisations believe themselves to be the unique repositories of newness.

If a community has not been born in their house, they do all they can not to recognise it.

They do the very opposite of what the Apostles did.

When the Apostles heard that there was a group of pagans who used to meet in Christ, they did not take offence, they did not impose a boycott, they sent Barnabas.

And Barnabas, 'on arrival, saw that God had bestowed grace -- and was delighted' (Ac 11:22).

Is it right to panic every time something new comes to birth in a parish?

Are we to believe that the Spirit rests uniquely on the man in charge?

And an equally sharp word must be said in the other direction: to those group-Churches which spring up without any contact with parish priest or bishop -- as though this were almost a matter of principle.

It is all too easy to lose sight of one of the fundamental aspects of the Church, and indeed the one which the Acts of the Apostles lists as the first: 'They persevered in listening to the Apostles' teaching'

And this is a serious matter, certainly not in accord with the Spirit of Christ.

For, if we want the bishops to be ever more trusting and open to what is new, 'lest the Spirit be quenched' now blowing consistently everywhere, we must encourage the various groups spontaneously springing up, to have faith in the bishops and involve them too in the great work of rebirth and communion as the post-Conciliar Church emerges from the pre-Conciliar one.

And this, not for the sake of obtaining the customary approbations or of being paid unctuous compliments, but of faithfully doing what Christ wishes us to do.

Without the bishop there is no Church, and we are certainly not doing God's will by unduly prolonging abnormal situations.

Cardinal Pellegrino has put it nicely: 'We are travelling together', and this approach seems to me a perfect modern commentary on what the Fathers used to say and what St Augustine said so well : 'With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop.'

Do not despair

2011-08-11T19:19:00.001-04:00

Do not fall into despair because of your stumblings.

I do not mean that you should not feel pain because of them, but that you should not consider them incurable.

For it is better to be wounded than dead.

There is indeed a healer : he who on the cross asked for mercy on those who were crucifying him, who pardoned murderers as he hung on the cross.

Christ came on behalf of sinners, to heal the broken-hearted and to bind up their wounds.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he says; for that reason he has anointed me in order to proclaim good tidings to the poor. 'He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind' [Lk 4.18], and to strengthen the bruised by forgiveness.

And the Apostle says in his Letter, 'Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners' [1 Tm 1.15]. And his Lord also testifies, 'I am not come to call the righteous, for they who are in good health have no need of a doctor; only those who are sick' [Mk 2.17].

from Daily Readings with St Isaac of Syria, ed. with an introduction by A. M. Allchin (Templegate, 1990), p. 62

Hymn

2011-08-11T19:08:00.000-04:00

Frederick William Faber (1814-63), alt.

There's a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good;
there is mercy with the Savior;
there is healing in his blood.

There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than in heaven;
there is no place where earth's failings
have such kindly judgment given.
There is plentiful redemption
in the blood that has been shed;
there is joy for all the members
in the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of the mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

Hymn

2011-08-11T19:05:00.003-04:00

Edwin Hatch (1835-89), alt.
from Poems of Grace: Texts of The [Episcopal] Hymnal, 1982

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love what thou dost love,
and do what thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
until my heart is pure,
until my will is one with thine,
to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
till I am wholly thine,
until this earthly part of me
glows with thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
so shall I never die;
but live with thee the perfect life
of thine eternity.

The Poets

2011-08-11T18:58:00.000-04:00

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82)

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,

Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
With drops of anguish falling fast and red
From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill?

Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
Have something in them so divinely sweet,
It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;

Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

Sonnet to the Virgin

2011-08-11T18:46:00.000-04:00

by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daylight strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

Love of neighbor

2011-08-11T18:42:00.001-04:00

Love of Neighbor

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat -- the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

~ C. S. Lewis, from The Joyful Christian : 127 Readings (Touchstone, 1996), pp 197-8

St Francis of Assisi

2011-08-11T18:37:00.001-04:00

St Francis of Assisi (1181 or 82 - 1226).
Cantica. Our Lord Christ: of order.
Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82).

Set Love in order, thou that lovest Me.
Never was virtue out of order found;
And though I fill thy heart desirously,
By thine own virtue I must keep My ground:
When to My love thou dost bring charity,
Even she must come with order girt and gown'd
Look how the tree are bound
To order, bearing fruit;
And by one thing compute,
In all things earthly, order's grace or gain.

All earthly things I had the making of
Were numbered and were measured then by Me;
And each was ordered to its end by Love,
Each kept, through order, clean for ministry.
Charity most of all, when known enough,
Is of her very nature orderly.
Lo, now! what heat in thee,
Soul, can have bred this rout?
Thou putt'st all order out.
Even this love's heat must be its curb and rein.

The Proud Heart

2011-08-11T18:33:00.001-04:00

by Countee Cullen (1903-46)

That lively organ, palpitant and red,
Enrubied in the staid and sober breast,
Telling the living man, "You are not dead
Until this hammered anvil takes its rest,"
My life's timepiece wound to alarm someday
The body to its need of box and shroud,
Was meant till then to beat one haughty way;
A crimson stroke should be no less than proud.

Yet this high citadel has come to grief,
Been broken as an arrow drops its bird,
Splintered as many ways as veins in a leaf
At a woman's laugh or at a man's harsh word;
But being proud still strikes its hours in pain;
The dead man lives, and none perceives him slain.

Meme of gerunds

2011-08-09T04:20:00.000-04:00

(Hat tip: Salome Ellen)

*

Making: coffee and a blog-post

Cooking: nothing!

Reading: re-reading some Henri Nouwen, believe it or not

Wanting: greater perseverance

Looking: at the computer screen

Playing: with words!

Wasting: time, all too often

Sewing: not at the moment

Wishing: I could go back in time 21 years and re-do (more accurately, un-do) something

Enjoying: life in the suburbs!

Praying: the Psalms; the Rosary (an hour ago)

Waiting: for October, November, and consistently cooler weather

Wondering: should I look into becoming a secular Franciscan?

Loving: my family and dear, dear friends

Hoping: to overcome a particular fault

Marveling: at God's mercy, and at the beauty of His creation

Needing: coffee, although that is using the word "need" rather elastically!

Wearing: pajamas

Following: some incredibly inspiring blogs

Noticing: that I have hundreds of books, and limited space in which to put them!

Knowing: that God is merciful to fools like me!

Thinking: of monks and monasteries; thinking also that coffee is almost as awesome as beer

Bookmarking: too many things to count

Opening: a new day!

Giggling: at the phrase "Byzantine logothete" as I try to imagine it coming from the mouth of any of today's presidential candidates. It's something that Theodore Roosevelt called Woodrow Wilson.

Feeling: a mite groggy, but happy!

Quotation of note

2011-08-07T04:46:00.002-04:00

A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.

~ Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (p. 130)

My own perfidy

2011-08-06T20:59:00.002-04:00

My most. My most. O my lost!
O my bright, my ineradicable ghost.
At whose bright coast God seeks
Shelter and is lost is lost. O
Coast of Brightness. O cause of
Grief. O rose of purest grief.
O thou in my breast so stark and
Holy-bright. O thou melancholy
Light. Me. Me. My own perfidy.
O my most my most. O the bright
The beautiful, the terrible Accost.

~ José Garcia Villa (1908-97)

How to Know Who Jesus Is

2011-08-06T20:58:00.000-04:00

When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, his Son, in us, and loves us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it. There can never be enough thinking about it. Saint John of the Cross said that where there was no love, put love and you would take out love. The principle certainly works ...

And this is not easy. Everyone will try to kill that love in you, even your nearest and dearest; at least they will try to prune it. "Don't you know this, that, and the other thing about this person? He or she did this. If you do not want to hear it, you must hear. It is for your good to hear it. It is my duty to tell you, and it is your duty to take recognition of it. You must stop loving, modify your loving, show your disapproval. You cannot possibly love -- if you pretend you do, you are a hypocrite, and the truth is not in you. You are contributing to the delinquency of that person by your sentimental blindness. It is such people as you who would add to the sum of confusion, and wickedness, and soft appeasement, and compromise, and the policy of expediency in this world. You are to blame for communism, for industrial capitalism, and finally for hell on earth."

The antagonism often rises to a cresecendo of vituperation, an intensification of the opposition on all sides. You are quite borne down by it. And the only Christian answer is love, to the very end, to the laying down of your life.

~ Dorothy Day, meditation found in Magnificat, 9/26/2002

Peace

2011-08-06T20:55:00.000-04:00

Prayer for Peace
To Mary, The Light of Hope

Immaculate Heart of Mary,
help us to conquer the menace of evil,
which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today,
and whose immeasurable effects
already weigh down upon our modern world
and seem to block the paths toward the future.

From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against human life from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us.

Accept, O Mother of Christ,
this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings,
laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit conquer all sin:
individual sin and the “sins of the world,”
sin in all its manifestations.
Let there be revealed once more in the history of the world
the infinite saving power of the redemption:
the power of merciful love.
May it put a stop to evil.
May it transform consciences.
May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of hope. Amen.

~ Pope John Paul II

Ave mundi spes Maria

2011-08-05T05:53:00.001-04:00

Ave mundi spes Maria,
ave mitis, ave pia,
ave plena gratia.
Ave virgo singularis,
quæ per rubum designaris
non passus incendia.

Ave rosa
speciosa,
ave Jesse virgula:
Cujus fructus
nostri luctus
relaxavit vincula.

Ave cujus viscera
contra mortis foedera
ediderunt filium.
Ave carens simili, mundo diu flebili
reparasti gaudium.

Ave virginum lucerna,
per quam fulsit lux superna
his quos umbra tenuit.
Ave virgo de qua nasci,
et de cujus lacte pasci
Rex cælorum voluit.

Ave gemma coeli luminarium!
Ave Sancti Spiritus sacrarium!

O quam mirabilis,
et quam laudabilis
hæc est virginitas!
In qua per spiritum
facta paraclitum
fulsit foecunditas.

O quam sancta, quam serena,
quam benigna, quam amoena
esse Virgo creditur!
Per quam servitus finitur,
porta coeli aperitur,
et libertas redditur.

O castitatis lilium,
tuum precare filium,
qui salus est humilium:
Ne nos pro nostro vitio
in flebili judicio
subjiciat supplicio.

Sed nos tua sancta prece
mundans a peccati fæce
collocet in lucis domo.
Amen dicat omnis homo.

*

Hail Mary, hope of the world; hail, O gentle one, hail, O holy one; hail, O one full of grace. Hail, O singular virgin who are signified by the bush untouched by flames.

Hail, O beautiful rose; hail, O rod of Jesse; whose fruit has loosened the bonds of our grief.

Hail, you whose womb has brought forth the Son against the leagues of death. Hail, O one unrivaled: you have restored joy to a long grieving world.

Hail, O lamp of virgins, by whom the Light celestial has shone on those the darkness possessed. Hail, O Virgin, from whom the King of Heaven willed to be born, and from whose milk he willed to be nourished.

Hail, O jewel of the lights of heaven! Hail, O sanctuary of the Holy Spirit!

O how wonderful and how laudable is this virginity! In which by the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, fruitfulness has shown forth.

O how holy, how fair, how gracious, how charming a Virgin she is regarded to be! By whom our servitude is ended, the gate of heaven is opened, and our freedom is restored.

O lily of chastity, beseech your Son, he who is the salvation of the humble, lest we for our sin, in sad judgment, be subjected to punishment.

But by your holy supplication cleansing us from the dregs (fæces) of sin, may he place us in a habitation of light!

Let every man say Amen!

Scattered thoughts

2011-08-04T21:20:00.001-04:00

In Magnificat this month, we find Ave mundi spes Maria, a hymn in which we learn, inter alia, that sin is shit. The hymn uses the very word!:

Sed nos tua sancta prece
Mundans a peccati fæce
Collocet in lucis domo.
Amen dicat omnis homo!

(in James Monti's unrhymed translation:

But by your holy supplication,
cleansing us from the dregs of sin,
may he place us in a habitation of light.
Let every man say Amen!)

"Dregs," indeed! "Fæces" is, well, feces. Fascinating. Didn't think you could use such language in a hymn to the Virgin Mary!

*

Drinking coffee at 4.30 am. Was awake, earlier, from something like 12 to 1.30. Was agitated most of the time, and felt like I wanted to hit someone really hard. I prayed -- desperately! -- which often doesn't "work," but shortly after praying my desperate prayer, I found myself peacefully in bed reading my 1991 New American Bible. Read the very bad translation of the Psalms, and some better passages of the New Testament (the Magnificat and Benedictus in Luke 1 are fairly well-rendered!). And of course, I read Wisdom chapter seven, which is my "icon." And the peace, after the agitation, was most welcome.

I also looked at the Magnificat booklet for August, where I discovered Ave mundi spes Maria.

*

Today is the feast of St John Vianney, the Curé of Ars. I knew a hospital chaplain who would affectionately refer to the unscholarly Curé as "the dumb priest," as he had difficulty with his studies, and might be a kind of patron for those who lack academic facility. You don't need to be book-smart to be a saint! And I read elsewhere that St John was subject to the most violent demonic pesterings. The devil would shake his bed!

Well, no need for the devil to go to such drastic measures with me. A bit of pique or a bit of fatigue or a bit of allurement for the eye, and I'm basically a goner. Thank Heaven that we have a Savior whose very name means "God saves"!

*

Selah.

*

This Sunday we'll be getting the reading from Kings about Elijah listening for the voice of God, and not hearing it in the earthquake, the hurricane, the thunder, the wildfire, but rather in "a still, small voice." As the NAB renders it, "a tiny whispering sound." (Someone has to tell me how a "whispering sound" differs from a "whisper.")

But this ties in to what Heather King's been saying lately. God is non-violent! Of course, he will occasionally use (in C S Lewis's phrase) "a megaphone to rouse a sleeping world." But oftener than not, his persuasion is gentler. Quieter. Subtler.

It's said that the former communist Whittaker Chambers was instantly a believer in God when one night he got lost in the convolutions of his sleeping daughter's ear. That was his "road to Damascus": the beauty of his daughter's ear, as she slept.

*

Unrelated. A fragment of a poem that I always liked:

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 sweet, how wonderful must be,
The God who made so good a thing as thee,
So fair an image of the heavenly Dove!

(attributed to Michelangelo)

August

2011-08-02T06:16:00.001-04:00

Maybe I should write a blank sonnet
in the manner of the late Robert Lowell --
topical, free, energetic, nervous,
yet not without evidence of erudition.

Maybe I should curl up with my rosary,
pondering the Woman in Wisdom chapter seven,
seeking the intercession of the Virgin,
drifting to sleep as angels finish my prayers.

Maybe I should pray Compline with the help
of the website that posts the breviary
to help the pious and the backslider --

maybe I should lie abed, dreaming of heaven
as the AC hums its husky litany
of grateful coolness in the August heat.

Dom Anscar Vonier, OSB

2011-08-02T01:33:00.000-04:00

This, then, ought to be our great Christian mentality:
a readiness to admire the things of God,
a readiness to admit that he does great and marvellous things,
that he is great in nature;
great in heaven,
great in grace,
that he is the Creator of earth and heaven;
that, in the words of Our Blessed Lord,
heaven is God's throne and earth his footstool;
that there is nothing in the vast universe
which is not the handiwork of God,
and that therefore it is full of endless glories,
possibilities and marvels.
We have but one thing to do --
a very easy thing at first sight --
just to admire it,
to love it for its beauty and riches,
to clap our hands in surprise at its glories
and its mysteries.

(via Magnificat, July 2011)

And speaking of sonnets

2011-08-01T02:03:00.001-04:00

Z at 365 Sonnets has written and posted his three hundred sixty-fifth! This fine poet promises a 366th, as an epilogue or "epitaph." We look forward to anything that Z has to offer, and pledge to explore with greater depth that which he has already written.

And we are glad to be reminded that he has another poetry blog, Some Turbid Night. And from that blog, a poem that would favorably impress even the sternest reader, Mélisande.

Charles Vion d'Alibray

2011-07-31T21:24:00.002-04:00

Maintenant qu'un air doux nous ramene un beau Jour,
Considere, Phyllis, cette Saison nouvelle,
Comme elle rit au Ciel, et luy parle d'amour,
C'est parce qu'elle est jeune, et parce qu'elle est belle.

Cette fleur qui blanchit les arbres d'alentour,
Ce n'est pas une fleur qui doive estre éternelle
Desja dedans son sein la terre la rappelle,
Desja le chaud hasté la brule à son retour :

Et tu perds cependant le temps de ta jeunesse
Sans suivre les advis d'une bonne Maistresse,
De Nature, qui monstre à chacun son devoir :

Ah si cette saison ne fond enfin ta glace,
Si pour te faire aimer elle a peu de pouvoir,
Qu'elle t'apprenne au moins comme la beauté passe.

*

(A paraphrase by Daniel Mark Epstein of the poem above may be found here.)

Ballad of Catholic Writers

2011-07-13T05:24:00.002-04:00

Bernard Basset was from Britain;
William Barry's a Yank:
For what these Jesuits have written,
Them I should like to thank.

I'm curious about Joyce Rupp
And her prolific pen.
You won't get Sister Rupp mixed up
With the nuns on EWTN.

I once read a book about prayer
By David Steindl-Rast.
About sin, he was cavalier,
And left me quite aghast.

Henri Nouwen wasn't sarcastic:
A kind soul, to be certain.
But when my appetite's monastic,
I'll pick up Thomas Merton.

Some theologians have a way
I find less than enchantin':
Bring back the good old days, I say.
Three cheers for Fr Manton!

Carlo Carretto lived in the heat
Of the desert fierce and mean.
He had a peace of soul, so sweet,
Almost like Bishop Sheen!

Reading books from Ignatius Press
Might save your soul from hell,
And no one's likelier to impress
Than Benedict Groeschel.

Thomas Howard and Peter Kreeft
Write prose that fairly sings,
But no lay writer's wit or craft
Surpasses Heather King's!

There are progressive writers, too:
The Chittisters and Rohrs.
They might not be heretical;
They're likely crashing bores.

My library is packed quite full
With spiritual writing.
You might find this stuff rather dull,
But I think it's exciting!

Uses of a magic wand?

2011-07-13T01:21:00.002-04:00

flaky snow.

Cooler weather! An end to the current heat-and-humidity wave.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

2011-07-08T04:46:00.005-04:00

Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. Weary, sobbing, the soul, after wandering through a world festered with aimlessness, falsehoods and absurdities, seeks a moment in which to gather up its scattered life, in which to divest itself of enforced pretensions and camouflage, in which to simplify complexities, in which to call for help without being a coward. Such [a] home is prayer. Continuity, perseverance, intimacy, authenticity, earnestness are its attributes. For the soul, home is where prayer is.

"On Prayer," from Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, ed. Susannah Heschel (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996), p. 258

A Catholic "Anything Goes"

2011-07-03T19:37:00.006-04:00

I have chosen to remove this post, only because I think I was a mite too flippant, and perhaps a bit too judgmental of the celebrities that I mentioned in the little ditty.

With apologies to Cole Porter

2011-06-27T08:50:00.002-04:00

A comic lyric, a panegyric, based on his 1934 song "You're the Top." Here.

A Silly Pastime

2011-06-01T22:53:00.004-04:00

I've been re-writing pop songs in the voices of certain famous dead poets.

Here is an excerpt of "Polythene Pam" (Beatles, Abbey Road) in the voice of Robert Herrick:

Lo, gaze upon her
     In jack-boots and kilt:
Hey nonny nonny!
     Drest unto the hilt!
She's the kind of a lass
Who doth gambol in grass:
     Forsooth, most beauteously built!

And then there's "I Am The Walrus" in the voice of Sylvia Plath:

Semolina, Fräulein Pilchard,
Climbing the Eiffel tower, sultry slut,
Cheating wife.

Elementary penguin brandishing a knife.
Kicking Edgar Allan Poe
With a brute boot.

You do not do, you do not do,
Daddy Walrus, Herr Walrus,
I'm through. I'm through. I'm through.

And finally, the Smiths' anthem "How Soon Is Now?" as performed by the nineteenth-century Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins:

I am the stunned son, the heir, grasping, gasping for Mary's air,
Of a shyness, Christ! that is not minimal, but criminally vulgar:
Inheritor, kingdom-kith, of no one, nothing in particular.
O cease, for sake of His world-wounds five, ye mock-mouths many!
How can you damn, deride with snidest saying, the Passion-path I tread?
Humble am I, of woman-womb born, human, seeking, beseeching life-love's lift,
As everyone else in the crying, sighing, straining-with-lacklight creation.

Irrefutable, apodictic proof, this, that I have too much free time on my hands!

Poetry reading

2011-05-19T07:25:00.002-04:00

Thomas DeFreitas introduces and reads his poem "The Poets" at the Mouthful Reading Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Friday evening, May 13, 2011:

The Rosary with Fr Reed

2011-05-09T03:06:00.001-04:00

Visit the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, and pray the Rosary with Fr Robert Reed, director of CatholicTV. Fr Reed gives engaging reflections between the decades of these, the Mysteries of Light (Luminous Mysteries).

The Rosary with Msgr McFarland (3)

2011-05-08T03:23:00.000-04:00

Visit a retreat house along the seashore of Cohasset, Massachusetts, and pray the Rosary with Msgr Frank McFarland (1931-2001), late director of Boston Catholic Television, now CatholicTV. Msgr McFarland gives engaging reflections between the decades of these, the Glorious Mysteries.

The Rosary with Msgr McFarland (2)

2011-05-07T02:50:00.002-04:00

Visit Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and pray the Rosary with Msgr Frank McFarland (1931-2001), late director of Boston Catholic Television, now CatholicTV. Msgr McFarland gives engaging reflections between the decades of these, the Joyful Mysteries.

The Rosary with Msgr McFarland (1)

2011-05-06T04:44:00.001-04:00

Visit the chapel of Regina Cleri, Boston's residence for retired priests, and pray the Rosary with Msgr Frank McFarland (1931-2001) of Boston Catholic Television, now CatholicTV. Msgr McFarland -- who was not yet a monsignor when this rosary was recorded -- gives engaging reflections between the decades of these, the Sorrowful Mysteries.

A psalm for 1 May 2011

2011-05-02T04:27:00.002-04:00

BLESSED is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, * and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful.

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; * and in his law will he exercise himself day and night.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the water-side, * that will bring forth his fruit in due season.

4 His leaf also shall not wither; * and look, whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper.

5 As for the ungodly, it is not so with them; * but they are like the chaff, which the wind scattereth away from the face of the earth.

6 Therefore the ungodly shall not be able to stand in the judgment, * neither the sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

7 But the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous; * and the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Beyond all this fiddle

2011-05-01T05:57:00.001-04:00

During the month of April, I attempted to produce a daily poem. The sometimes surprising results of that exertion can be found at Hubbub and Fiddle.

As the Hubbub blog was intended solely for the National Poetry Month experiment, I have started a new blog for poems and light verse written in May 2011 and beyond. It is called The Crystal Tambourine.

Readers of this blog are cordially invited to explore both Hubbub and the Tambourine! Thank you all for your readerly indulgence.

The Christendom Review

2011-04-18T09:23:00.000-04:00

Readers of this blog may wish to check out the current issue of TCR. William Luse interviews “a troubadour for Jesus,” Bob Ayanian. Jeff Trippe writes of the joys of teaching Hamlet. There is poetry by Lee Evans and Bill Daugherty, among others, and artwork by the late Darius Lecesne. And more!

Benedictions

2011-04-16T07:09:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, Pope Benedict! Eighty-four, if I reckon aright! Ad multos annos!

And today is also noteworthy for being the feast of St Benedict Joseph Labre, an 18th-century Frenchman who tried living as a Cistercian monk but was prevented from doing so by his disposition. He was extraordinarily generous to the poor, wherever he went. I believe he walked from France to Rome, and eventually settled in the streets of the Eternal City, sleeping in the doorways of churches. What little he had, he shared or gave away. At his death, churchbells rang and children ran through the streets of Rome shouting "Il santo è morto! The saint is dead!"

St Benedict Joseph is one of the patrons of those who suffer from mental illness.

To readers of phos hilaron

2011-03-29T07:10:00.000-04:00

Some of you may know that I had a little blog where I would gather quotations of interest from the Eastern tradition of Christianity. I called the blog phos hilaron (O Joyful Light in English). I have closed that blog, and exported the archives to my wordpress site, The Reluctant Draggard.

Happy St Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T06:13:00.000-04:00

Dubbed into Spanish, it switches to Irish Gaelic at about 1 minute, 20 seconds into the clip. Here is Hill Harper in the 1998 film The Nephew. Happy St Patrick's Day!

Dusty Springfield

2011-03-14T16:59:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling a bit retro. Here is "The Look of Love."

Morrissey

2011-03-14T16:40:00.000-04:00

"Everyday Is Like Sunday":

It's incredibly dreary, but it's been going through my head all day today. Maybe blogging the YouTube will help exorcise the earworm.

Testing

2011-02-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

This post is just a bit of filler. Don't know when I'll be back with a regular post. In the meantime, check out the Draggard.

Memento quia pulvis es

2011-01-03T01:48:00.000-05:00

"Remember, man, that thou art dust
And unto dust thou shalt return":
All men must die, and die I must;
So let my heart with pure love burn

Until that unknown dreadful day
When I return unto the clay
And my soul's judged at Mercy's throne --
May I live not for self alone.

December

2010-12-24T07:06:00.002-05:00

Festivities bestow
upon this twelfth-month night
a whisper of the brisk miraculous:
all but the evergreens stand bare,
relieved of their burdens
(though a few trees harbor "winter-hardy leaves");
moonlight assuages the cumulative ill
of the dying year, and an old star guides
wise and foolish alike toward rebirth.

TD
1990

Aeronwy Thomas

2010-12-23T05:56:00.000-05:00

A video of Dylan Thomas's daughter Aeronwy (1943-2009) reading her poems:

Adam's Carol

2010-12-20T21:05:00.009-05:00

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.

trans. TD
stanzas 1 and 2 c. 1997
stanza 3 2010

O Holy Night

2010-12-20T20:45:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia gives us the history and text of Placide Cappeau's poem, which became Adolphe Adam's Christmas carol.

Limericks, slightly naughty

2010-12-18T23:00:00.006-05:00

(inspired by Stephen Fry's use of the phrase "gormless arse")

An arse that was oafish and gormless
Wrote verse that was rhymeless and formless.
He'd recite tuneless ditties
In the towns and the cities
And the welcome he'd get, it was warmless.

His vers, it was rather too libre;
Panache it lacked -- no joie de vivre.
But at night, when alone,
He would pick up the phone
And chant limericks through the receiver.

He'd call strangers and foes, even friends,
With his latest of lyrical trends --
Like a drunkard of Rome
If he found you at home
He'd bend your poor ear at both ends.

Vigil

2010-12-18T06:14:00.008-05:00

(after John Ashbery's "Finnish Rhapsody")

A bright planet hung low in the heavens, a glowing star hugged the horizon
As the poet swilled black coffee, as the rhymester gulped his java undilute.
It was Saturday, early morning, the vigil of the Lord's day, oh-dark-thirty;
Squirrels and birds were silent, no chipmunk or sparrow chattered,
Beneath the black expanse, under obsidian skies.
The learned astronomer, sage scientist of galaxies,
Forsook his wonted telescope, left behind his usual observations
And slept in a bed of bliss, slumbered on a mattress of joy,
With his bride of one-and-twenty, with a lovely young woman as his wife.

Public squares were vacant, urban centers deserted,
Save for some bums and ruffians, except for the stray thug or vagrant:
Lights shone in no shop window, the glass of the storefronts was dark;
Banks were not open for business, no commerce in financial institutions.
A cold wind kissed the asphalt, a glacial gust embraced the thoroughfares.
In the distant countryside, in a far-off rural precinct,
Monks were chanting their canticles, friars intoned their psalms.

The restless man in his study, the insomniac in his library,
Indited a curious lay, composed a strange poem,
Of dulcet tenor surreal, of sweet and dreamlike breath:
An exercise in futility, a vain performance to be sure,
But one which the angels applauded, which garnered the praise of the cherubim.

Fragment

2010-12-12T17:29:00.001-05:00

A reefer of banana slugs,
A shard, but not a clump --
Eheu fugaces! Coffee mugs!
Fried chicken! Camel-hump!

The agitating branches stir
Far from the madding crowd;
We climb the towers of Barchester
With whispers soft and loud.

A handsome devil, charming man,
Abandons kith and kin --
His own reflection's biggest fan,
He sees the blue moon spin.

The bald Horatian classicist
Drinks shots of stinging Scotch;
Bitterly fifty, never been kissed,
He coughs and winds his watch.

The murdered crow is loath to fly,
The slain sparrow indites
Profuse hendecasyllabi
Beneath the northern lights.