John K

where we're headed

2008-02-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.

-- John Maynard Keynes

Waste?

2007-12-26T15:38:00.000-08:00

I didn't become a mathematician because mathematics was so full of beautiful and difficult problems that one might waste one's power in pursuing them without finding the central question.

-- Albert Einstein

Gilson paragraph

2007-12-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it will not be out of place here to dissipate a misconception recently become current and likely to become more so with the general growth of interest in mediaeval philosophy. The Middle Ages that first appeared over the historical horizon was the Middle Ages of the romantics, a stirring, picturesque and brightly coloured world where saints and sinners jostled familiarly in the crowd, a world which expressed its deepest aspirations in architecture, sculpture and poetry. And that, too, is the Middle Ages of symbolism, where realities dissolved into the mystical meanings with which they were charged by artists and thinkers, so that the book of nature became a sort of Bible with things for words. Bestiaries, Mirrors of the World, stained glass, cathedral porches, each in its own way expressed a symbolic universe in which things, taken in their very essences, are merely so many expressions of God. But by a very natural reaction the study of the classical systems of the thirteenth century led historians to oppose to this poetical vision of the mediaeval world, the scientific and rational conception that presented itself in the writings of Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and St. Thomas Aquinas. And this was entirely justifiable, in this sense at least, that from the thirteenth century onwards the universe of science begins to interpose between ourselves and the symbolic universe of the early Middle Ages; but it would be wrong to suppose that it suppressed it or even tended to suppress it. What really then took place was this: first, things, instead of being nothing more than symbols, became concrete beings which, above and beyond their own proper nature, were still charged with symbolic significances; and then, next the analogy of the world to God, instead of being expressed only on the place of imagery and feeling, was now formulated in precise laws and definite metaphysical conceptions. God in fact penetrated more deeply into nature as the depths of nature became better known. For a Bonaventure, for instance, there is no joy like the joy of contemplation of God as mirrored in the analogical structure of beings; and even the more sober mind of St. Thomas expresses, nevertheless, the same philosophy of nature when he reduces the efficacy of second causes to nothing but an analogical participation in the diving efficiency. Physical causality is to the act of creation what beings are to Being, and time to eternity. Thus, under whatever aspect we consider it, there exists in reality but one mediaeval vision of the world, whether it expresses itself now in words of art or now in defined philosophical concepts: that, namely, which St. Augustine drew with a master-hand in his De Trinitate, and which is directly referable to the words of the Book of Wisdom (xi. 21): omnia in mensura, et numero, et pondere disposuisti.

-- Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy

What Then?

2007-11-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

I made a post of this poem a long time ago, can't remember when. It's been sort of haunting me recently... so here it is again.

What Then?

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

All his happier dreams came true -
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

'The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought';
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'

-- W. B. Yeats

Pärt article (from The Evangelist, the seasonal newsletter of St. Matthew's Church, Newport Beach)

2007-10-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

While the Music Lasts
Some thoughts on the art of Arvo Pärt

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or the music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

-- T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages

Arvo Pärt is arguably the greatest living composer of serious music. Born in Estonia on September 11th, 1935, and raised amidst the dreariness of Soviet occupied Europe, he made a name for himself while studying composition at the Tallinn Conservatory. The powers-that-were did not appreciate his overly Western sounding music, and early in his career he received official censures from the state. He eventually left Estonia in 1980 and currently lives in Berlin, where he composes under the friendlier auspices of the German government and people.

Pärt’s music is popularly described as ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual’ minimalism. While hackneyed descriptions of this kind are likely to raise the eyebrows of most sensible people, they are surprisingly appropriate in the case of Pärt. He himself is a deeply religious man, and his conversion to Russian Orthodoxy in 1975 marks a kind of artistic conversion and the beginning of his defining work. In the words of his wife: “if you want to understand my husband’s music, read the Church Fathers”.

His style is a characteristic blend of ancient and modern forms. Whether recalling the stately plainchant of the Middle Ages, the transcendent polyphony of Josquin, or the immaculate fugues of Bach, centuries of musical tradition shape his compositions. He exemplifies what T.S. Eliot called the ‘historical sense’. Pärt writes “not simply with his own generation in his bones”, but a “sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together.” [1] He looks to unite the past and the present in artistic expression, to transfix the timeless moment in time.

Probably best known for his choral works, Pärt places great emphasis on language and texts. “Words write music”, he often says. Language has the power to shape ideas, enlarge sentiments, and color life in general; it also carries a spiritual dimension (think of the words in the Liturgy). These somewhat imperceptible aspects of language animate Pärt’s music. A good example is his setting of the Kanon Pokajanen, the 8th century Greco-Slavonic canon of repentance. To quote Pärt himself:

The Kanon has shown me how much the choice of language predetermines the character of a work, so much so, in fact, that the entire structure of the musical composition is subject to the text and its laws. [2]

The words must be allowed to find their own sound, according to him. In so doing, the text will find its own sound, just as the meaning of the text is a function of the meaning of the words. One might take the last movement of the Kanon (the Prayer after the Canon) as an illustration. The text begins by dwelling on subjects such as sin and the crucifixion. It ends in a more heavenly way, imploring admittance into the Lord’s “pasturage” and the nourishment of his “Holy Mysteries”. The choir is made to mirror this progression, beginning the prayer with gentle, unhurried, almost reluctant vocal lines that gradually ascend to harmonies of the most ethereal beauty. In this way, the music and the text come to form an organic whole. The sacred words are made incarnate, as it were, in the music. Beyond the mere utterance of the words, the timelessness of the text is translated into the present in the form of art.

This theme of timelessness can also be perceived in the use of ‘musical silence’. To quote Pärt again:

My music was always written after I had long been silent in the most literal sense of the word. When I speak of silence, I mean the ‘nothingness’ out of which God created the world. That is why, ideally, musical silence is sacred. [3]

Pärt’s scores are interspersed with moments of ‘nothingness’ or silence. In such moments he allows notes to ring-out to their fullest extent, giving the music a kind of spatial quality (his Te Deum is a nice example, where oftentimes what the violins are playing is not nearly as important as what the violins are not playing). It is like the intermittent sound of plainchant echoing through the walls of a spacious Medieval cathedral; the music, in a sense, leaves the present moment and unites with the illegible stones, sepulchers, and those individuals whom they commemorate.

However, it should be remembered that silence by itself is meaningless, being simply the negation of sound. What Pärt emphasizes could be called a musical form apprehended in moments of silence or stillness. The temporal succession of thoughts and feelings that accompany the act of listening is momentarily suspended in the stillness, leaving the music spread-out before the mind like a geometric object. Time seems to stand still in the form of the music. T.S. Eliot, who discusses frequently the subject of timelessness in his poetry, explains this phenomenon as follows:

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now [4]

On perhaps a deeper level, it could be said that silence is to music what ‘aridity’ or ‘darkness’ is to the spiritual life. God in his essence is so far beyond human understanding that sometimes the most appropriate way to approach him is through the negation of worldly things, the senses, or even reason. The soul must be purged of temporal considerations to the point of aridity. This is the so-called via negativa, famously articulated in the 5th century writings of Pseudo-Dionysius.

The ‘negative way’ had an enormous influence on the spirituality of the Eastern Church -- and by default the spiritual life of our composer. It was not until the late Middle Ages that vernacular translations of Pseudo-Dionysius brought the via negativa to the full attention of the West. Following this trend, the 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross wrote about the ‘dark night’ of the soul. According to him “the soul departs from all created things, in its affection and operation, by means of this night and marches on toward eternal things.” [5] Once this dark, arid place has been reached the soul is like a clean slate, ready to receive God’s grace in its simplicity and power. St. John quotes often from Scripture in reference to spiritual aridity: “in a desert land, without water, dry, and without a way, I appeared before You to be able to see Your power and Your glory.” [6]

Returning to Pärt, we find in his music strains of the via negativa. Musical compositions are oftentimes so fraught with technical considerations (e.g., instrumentation, theory) that the beauty of an individual note or a melody is lost in the commotion. Pärt begins with a clean slate of silence -- he even named one of his instrumental compositions Tabula Rasa -- and allows himself only the simplest of tools to work with: scales, triads, voices. The composer calls his style ‘Tintinnabulation’, after the bell-like sound made by the tonal triad. He thinks of it in the following way:

Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements -- with one voice, with two voices. I build with the most primitive materials -- with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of the triad are like bells. [7]

Pärt’s music should not be separated from his Christian principles, as illustrated above. His art is brilliant on many different levels, but this would be nothing without the spirituality of the composer. Indeed, art itself is a function of the spiritual faculties of the artist. It is called, in the precise language of St. Thomas, a ‘virtue’ of the practical intellect: a kind of habit of the intellectual soul or spirit [8]. The soul of the artist subsumes both the efficient and the formal cause of his art. If the soul is redeemed and animated by grace, then it will readily produce art that bears the same mark [9]. It is not surprising, then, that Pärt often spends years in silence, prayer, and contemplation before composing. He wants his soul to be properly ordered before creating. As the soul draws nearer to God, artistic creation becomes more a reflection of divine creation. The Christian artist is ideally a type of mystic, and his art is evidence of his participation in the life of God.

Christianity is thus a creative force to Pärt. Following the quotes above, he looks to make music out of silence in a way that is analogous to God’s act of creation ex nihilo, and just as the creation was brought forth through the Word (St. Augustine goes so far as to say the Word is “like the art of Almighty God” [10]), his art consists in creating through the sacred words and traditions of the Church. Everywhere his music bears similar imprints of the Christian soul. He is fond of comparing, for example, the melodic voice and the triadic voice that constitute Tintinnabulation to theological notions such as sin and divine forgiveness (respectively). The former voice is a picture of the temporal world, and the latter voice is a picture of the eternal world, both intersecting at the "moment in and out of time".

In some sense listening to Pärt is like not listening to music at all, but “you are the music”. That is, you belong to a different, eternal world and the music is hinting at your true identity. This power of art to fuse the timeless with time, ultimately, points us towards the Incarnation. It is not always easy to apprehend the ‘Word made flesh’ -- the most important instance of the timeless fusing with time -- in everyday life. Noise, commotion, and above all sin tend to get in the way. Pärt, in his uniquely artistic way, encourages us to break this tendency. The Word incarnate in his music is a picture of the Word incarnate in us.

Recommended Recordings

Instrumental: Tabula Rasa / Fratres / Symphony No. 3; Gil Shaham (violin), Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi (conductor); Deutsche Grammophon, 1999.

Vocal: Te Deum / Silouan’s Song / Magnificat / Berlin Mass; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Tõnu Kaljuste (conductor); ECM New Series, 1993.

[1] T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent.
[2] CD liner notes, ECM recording of Kanon Pokajanen.
[3] CD liner notes, Deutsche Grammophon recording of Tabula Rasa.
[4] T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.
[5] St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night.
[6] Ps. 63:2-3.
[7] CD liner notes, ECM recording of Tabula Rasa.
[8] Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 57.
[9] Ibid., Q. 55, A. 2, unumquodque enim quale est, talia operator.
[10] De Trinitate, book VI, X.11, ars quaedam omnipotentis atque sapientis dei.

Art in the 15th century

2007-08-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

Art was still an integral part of life during that age. Life was shaped by strong forms and held together and measured by the sacraments of the church, the annual sequence of festivals, and the divisions of the day. The labors and joys of life all had their fixed forms: religion, knighthood, and courtly Minne provided the most important of these forms. Art had the task of embellishing the forms in which life was lived with beauty. What was sought was not art itself, but the beautiful life. In contrast to later ages, one did not step outside a more or less indifferent daily routine in order to enjoy art in solitary contemplation for the sake of solace or edification; rather, art was used to intensify the splendor of life itself. It is the destiny of art to vibrate in concert with the high points of life, be it in the highest flights of piety or in the proudest enjoyment of earthly moments. During the Middle Ages art was not yet perceived as beauty per se. It was for the most part applied art, even in cases where we would consider the works to be their own reason for being. That is to say, for the Middle Ages, the reason for desiring a given work of art rested in its purpose, rested in the fact that artworks are the servants of any one of the forms of life. In cases where, disregarding any practical uses, the pure ideal of beauty guides the creating artist himself, this happen to a large part subconsciously. The first sprouts of a love for art for its own sake appear as a wild growth on the production of art: princes and noblemen piled up objects of art until they became collections; this rendered them useless: they were then enjoyed as curiosities, as precious parts of the princely treasury. The actual sense of art that arises during the Renaissance has this foundation.

-- Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages

Folk Piety

2007-07-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

A powerful religion permeates all the affairs of life and lends color to every movement of the spirit, to every element of culture.

In time, of course, those things come to react upon religion, and indeed its living core may be stifled by the ideas and images it once took into its sphere. The "sanctification of all the concerns of life" has its fateful aspect.

[...]

Now, no religion has ever been quite independent of the culture of its people and its time. It is just when religion exercises sovereign sway through the agency of literally written scriptures, when all life seems to revolve round that centre, "when it is interwoven with life as a whole," that life will most infallibly react upon it. Later, these intimate connections with culture are no longer useful to it, but simply a source of danger; nevertheless, a religion will always act in this way as long as it is alive.

-- Jacob Burckhardt, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen

Rhineland, October 6-17

2007-07-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

Trap for logicians

2007-06-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

-- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Scripture and Tradition

2007-06-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

Thirdly, there survives definite evidence that the meaning of the Bible was consciously sought in relation to its context in Christian institutions. If the Bible supplied a critical background for all Christian teaching, as in fact it did, it had in turn a background of its own, by reference to which it could itself be criticised. This second and remoter background was the continuity of Christian practice, or, as we might say nowadays, the cultural history of Christianity from the most primitive times. The Fathers did not distinguish very clearly between practices which were really primitive and others of somewhat later introduction. They had little or none of the modern sense of evolutionary development, and saw no reason for a clean-cut separation in thought between the character of an institution in its rudimentary germ and that of the same institution in a fully developed form. Their expositions of cultural history are therefore not reliable; they always need to be checked. But since they recognised in the Bible itself something which the Church had instituted -- at any rate, before the New Testament could begin to shape the thought of the Church it had itself had to be put into shape by the Church -- it is wholly to their credit that they also recognised the need for comparing its witness with that of the other great formative contributions of the apostolic and subapostolic Church to spiritual order and discipline -- that is, in particular, the sacraments, the creeds, and the episcopate. The Bible was the fullest, the readiest, and the most authoritative witness, simply because its evidence was expressed in words, and littera scripta manet. But it did not stand alone, nor could the Church, in expounding its Bible, reasonably bring the exposition into conflict with the testimony of its other great primitive heritages. They were all alike regarded as tradition.

[...]

Basil, archbishop of another Caesarea, in Cappadocia, was the father of Eastern monasticism, as Benedict was of Western. He it was who by his efforts accomplished as much as any one in reconciling conservative theology to the more penetrating doctrine of Athanasius and the Nicene Creed. His recognition of the doctrinal pre-eminence of the Bible is amply expressed in a passage in which he is maintaining the consistency of his own teaching with that of previous theological leaders: but, he continues, "this does not satisfy me, that it is the tradition of the fathers: they too followed the sense of Scripture, taking their principles from those passages which I have just quoted to you from Scripture" (de Spir. sanct. 16). Yet he too, and in the same treatise, makes a great point of the importance of evidence drawn from cultural sources. "Of the subjects of conviction and preaching maintained in the Church," he writes, "our possession of some is derived from the written teaching, but our reception of others comes by private transmission from the apostles' tradition: both these kinds have the same force for religion." He goes on to enumerate a wealth of instances of "unwritten customs", including the following: making the sign of the cross, turning to the east in prayer, the full text of the consecration prayers in the liturgy, the benediction of the baptismal water and the oil, and the very use of chrism and finally the actual formula of the baptismal creed (de Spir. sanct. 66, 67). None of these things, he observes, is prescribed in Scripture, but all possess apostolic authority. And though we should be less ready than he was to ascribe them all without qualification to the actual ordinance of the apostles, he was so far right in appealing to them as that the same Church which formed the canon of the New Testament was engaged concurrently in establishing such customs.

-- G.L. Prestige, Tradition: the Scriptural Basis of Theology (from the Bampton Lectures for 1940)

Being a Christian

2007-06-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

It is almost universally assumed to-day that becoming a Christian means in essence the adoption of a new set of beliefs or the initiation of a new mode of behaviour. A Christian would be defined as one who "believes in Christ" or "worships Christ" or "tries to follow Christ's teaching." Now it is far from my purpose to belittle either Christian dogma or Christian ethics. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that to define the essence of Christianity in terms either of belief or of practice involves the neglect of two principles that are fundamental to all sound theology. The former of these is that the act of God precedes and is presupposed by the acts of man: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us"; "Ye have come to know God, or rather to be known of God". The second is that what a being is precedes what it does; our actions are a consequence of what we are, 'operari sequitur esse'. It will follow from this that the Christian should be defined not in terms of what he himself does, but of what God has made him to be. Being a Christian is an ontological fact, resulting from an act of God.

What, then, is this act by which God makes a man into a Christian? It is, the New Testament assures us, incorporation into the human nature of Christ, an incorporation by which the very life of the Man Christ Jesus is communicated to us and we are re-created in him. "I am the vine; ye are the branches"; "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature," or "there is a new creation"; we have been "grafted into" Christ like shoots into a tree. The Christian is a man to whom something has happened, something moreover which is irreversible and which penetrates to the very roots of his being; he is a man who has been re-created in, and into, Christ.

-- Eric Mascall, Christ, the Christian, and the Church

Malleus Arianorum

2007-06-19T14:03:00.000-07:00

It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous, that there are as many creeds as opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us; because we make creeds arbitrarily, and explain them as arbitrarily. The Homoousion is rejected, and received, and explained away by successive synods. The partial or total resemblance of the Father and of the Son is a subject of dispute for these unhappy times. Every year, nay, every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries. We repent of what we have done, we defend those who repent, we anathematize those whom we defended. We condemn either the doctrine of others in ourselves, or our own in that of others; and reciprocally tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's ruin.

-- St. Hilary of Poitiers (300-367 AD)

Good old days

2007-05-26T19:51:00.000-07:00

Somebody had told me that humble travellers in Holland could doss down in police stations, and it was true... They even gave me a bowl of coffee and a quarter of a loaf before I set off. Thank God I had put 'student' in my passport: it was an amulet and an Open Sesame. In European tradition, the word suggested a youthful, needy, and earnest figure, spurred along the highways of the West by a thirst for learning -- thus, notwithstanding high spirits and a proneness to dog-Latin drinking songs, a fit candidate for succor.

-- Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time for Gifts

My new life

2007-05-21T19:23:00.000-07:00

Ascension

2007-05-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

"At that time: Jesus appeared unto the eleven disciples as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief adn hardness of heart." (Mark 16:14)

The weakness of disciples at this time was to become power unto all of us, (if I may be permitted to say such a thing,) in all that concerned their slowness to believe in the Lord's resurrection. In consequence of their doubts, the fact of the resurrection was demonstrated by many infallible proofs. These proofs we read and acknowledge. What then assureth our faith, if not their doubt? Mary Magdalene, who soon believed, did less for me than Thomas, who doubted long. Because of his doubting, he was asked to touch the scars of the wounds, and thus was healed any wound of doubt in our hearts.

-- St. Gregory the Great

Uncle Walt

2007-05-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game,
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun
       by my side.
 
The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the
       sparkle and scud,
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout
       joyously from the deck.
 
The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a
       good time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-
       kettle.

-- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Easter V

2007-05-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

The waters saw thee, O God, even the waters of Baptism, and were afraid with holy fear: Clouds of apostolic witnesses poured out waters of refreshment, the air thundered with their eloquence, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Thy lightnings shone upon the ground, even unto the lowest depths of the world; the earth was moved and shook withal.

-- Matin Responds for Nocturn I, Rogation Sunday

We note how grievous an outrage against God it is not to believe in the resurrection. If we shall not rise again, then did Christ die in vain, then is Christ not risen. For if he rose for us, and if he had not us to rise for, then certainly, he is not risen. In him the world, in him the heavens, in him the earth rose again. For there shall be a new heaven, and a new earth...

-- St. Ambrose, De excessu fratris Satyri

Easter III

2007-04-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

To carnal men, the one rule of understanding is his ordinary experience; seeing is believing. What men are accustomed to see, that they credit; what they are not accustomed to see, that they deem incredible. But God often worketh wonders, (that is, things contrary to what we are accustomed,) because he is God. Every day many men are born that previously had no existence at all; and this is a greater miracle than that a few, who did exist, have been raised from the dead. Yet this wonder is not recognized as such; on the contrary, it is disregarded because man is accustomed to it. Christ rose again from the dead; that is a fact. He had a body: he took flesh, he hung upon the cross, he gave up the ghost; his flesh was laid in the tomb. After that, he shewed his flesh as alive again, he lived again in the flesh. Why wonder, why deny it? God wrought this.

-- St. Augustine, Sermon 147 de Tempore

The Programmer's Night Song

2007-04-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

(After Goethe)

The fluorescent tubes
Are dim.
In all the cubes
You cannot glimpse
One screen aglow.
Even the Spanish cleaning lady's dined.
One last trash can lined,
She too will go.

-- Anon.

When You are Old

2007-03-30T18:35:00.000-07:00

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-- William Butler Yeats

Ballard St.

2007-03-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

2007-03-05T13:03:00.000-08:00

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

-- William Butler Yeats

Ballard Street

2007-02-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

St. Martina, V.M.

2007-01-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

According to the story which for centuries hath been told of her, her martyrdom occured about the year 225... the Emperor Alexander commanded her to sacrifice to imaginary gods, and on her refusal, subjected her to unspeakable brutalities, such as scourgings, putting her at the mercy of savage beasts, torturing her with fire, and other such like terrible sufferings; and at last caused her to be beheaded. Scholars in general reject the account of her passion as untrustworthy; but the story is nevertheless known to contain the memory of what early Christian maidens underwent for God: and hence on this feast of Saint Martina, as on those of other virgin Saints whose life-story is not certainly known, there is honoured the might of Christ who perfecteth into strength invincible the weakness of them that trust in him.

-- Anglican Breviary, for the Legend, Feast of St. Martina (Jan. 30)

Love bade me welcome

2006-12-29T17:52:00.000-08:00

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

-- George Herbert

Jolly Old St. Nick

2006-12-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

In the West he is reverenced as the patron of children, because of his concern, as shewn by his reputed miracles, to protect their innocence, and because of the reputed prodigies of his own precocious devotion; whereof it is related that as an infant he kept the fasts prescribed for adults, and hence never suckled more than once on Wednesdays and Fridays, and that always after sunnset, according to the Canon Law of that day.

-- Anglican Breviary, for the Legend, Feast of St. Nicholas B.C. (December 6th)

Proportion of Iniquity

2006-12-01T07:54:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting at the Mitre was on Saturday the 15th of February, when I presented to him my old and most intimate friend, the Reverend Mr. Temple, then of Cambridge. I having mentioned that I had passed some time with Rousseau in his wild retreat, and having quoted some remark made by Mr. Wilkes, with whom I had spent many pleasant hours in Italy, Johnson said (sarcastically,) 'It seems, Sir, you have kept very good company abroad, Rousseau and Wilkes!' Thinking it enough to defend one at a time, I said nothing as to my gay friend, but answered with a smile, 'My dear Sir, you don't call Rousseau bad company. Do you really think HIM a bad man?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, if you are talking jestingly of this, I don't talk with you. If you mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him; and it is a shame that he is protected in this country.' BOSWELL. 'I don't deny, Sir, but that his novel may, perhaps, do harm; but I cannot think his intention was bad.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that will not do. We cannot prove any man's intention to be bad. You may shoot a man through the head, and say you intended to miss him; but the Judge will order you to be hanged. An alleged want of intention, when evil is committed, will not be allowed in a court of justice. Rousseau, Sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.' BOSWELL. 'Sir, do you think him as bad a man as Voltaire?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.'

-- James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

Johnson on his Dictionary

2006-11-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

Dr. Adams found him one day busy at his Dictionary, when the following dialogue ensued. "ADAMS. This is a great work, Sir. How are you to get all the etymologies? JOHNSON. Why Sir, here is a shelf with Junius, and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welch gentleman who has published a collection of Welch proverbs, who will help me with the Welch. ADAMS. But, Sir, how can you do this in three years? JOHNSON. Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. ADAMS. But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. JOHNSON. Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."

-- James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

Religion in society

2006-11-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Talking on the subject of toleration, one day when some friends were with him in his study, he made his usual remark, that the State has a right to regulate the religion of the people, who are the children of the State. A clergyman having readily acquiesced in this, Johnson, who loved discussion, observed, "But, Sir, you must go round to other States than our own. You do not know what a Bramin has to say for himself. In short, Sir, I have got no further than this: Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test."

-- James Boswell, Life of Johnson

Addendum

2006-11-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint--
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

-- T.S. Eliot, Dry Salvages

All Saints' Day

2006-11-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

The Angel of the Lord tarrieth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the Lord, ye that are his saints; for they that fear him lack nothing. The lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good.

-- from Psalm 34, Benedicam Dominum

Johnson...

2006-10-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

I regretted that I had lost much of my disposition to admire, which people generally do as they advance in life. Johnson: "Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, --judgement, to estimate things at their true value." I still insisted that admiration was more pleasing than judgement, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. Johnson: "No, Sir, admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being enlivened."

-- James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

Back home and back to school

2006-09-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Reflections on the Revolution in France

Deo Gratias

2006-09-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm at L'Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes (actually, the town library in Sablé, a couple miles down the river). The food alone is enough to make one become a monk.

Haddon Hall

2006-09-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

The English Castle par excellence, not the forbidding fortress on an unassailable crag, but the large, rambling, safe, grey, loveable house of knights and their ladies, the unreasonable dreamcastle of those who think of the Middle Ages as a time of chivalry and valour and noble feelings. None other in England is so complete and convincing.

Nikolaus Pevsner

O, the vision of the cross at Haddon

2006-09-11T03:10:00.000-07:00

Today I found an odd stone slab in the churchyard of All Saints' Church in Bakewell, Derbyshire. The church itself is one of the most intriguing country parishes I've come across; if only there were more time to explore. The "Bakewell Cross" is perplexing from an empirical point of view, depicting the Crucifixion on one side and the Norse gods Odin and Loki on the other (at least that's what one book said). It's tall, black and looks out of place amongst the other headstones.

The nearby Matlock library has a book recording the following legend about the cross. Henry VII's elder son and heir to the throne, Prince Arthur, used to spend long periods of time in the Peak District, visiting his friend Sir George Vernon at Haddon Hall -- gorgeous Mediaeval country home/castle nearby. One day Arthur was strolling along the River Wye (just as I was... a rather idyllic place), and decided to take an afternoon nap on the grassy knoll at the foot of the cross. In his reverie there appeared to him a 'tall thin female dressed in white; her features sunken and wan, her lips of an ashy hew, and her eyeballs protruding, bright and motionless'. The wraith stared silently at Arthur for a few minutes, then said

"Unhappy royal Prince, mourn not thy fate which is not thine! One earthly pageant awaits thee, yea, it is at hand; and then, ah! then thou wilt drop into the lap of thy mother -- ah, thy mother earth! Forth comes to Britain's shore thy lovely, smiling bride -- ah! bride and widow of a royal boy!"

He awoke frightened and puzzled, then made his way back to Haddon. Upon returning he encountered one of his ministers, come to bring the news that his bride-to-be, Catherine of Aragon, had arrived in England and he was expected to return immediately to London and be married. So Arthur left Derbyshire, was married at St. Paul's, then died soon after. His last words, purportedly, were "O, the vision of the cross at Haddon".

We all know what became of Catherine afterwards, her unhappy marriage to Arthur's lecherous brother, Henry VIII, etc.

What seas, what shores, what islands

2006-09-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in Oban (pronounced oh-bin), gateway to the Scottish Hebrides. Queen Victoria described it as "one of the finest places we have seen". Today I climbed to the dilapidated, ivy-covered castle of Dunolly, ancient seat of the MacDougall Clan. They were enemies of Robert the Bruce, and much of the castle's damage is from when he came through and brought them into submission.

On another note, it seems much too expensive to visit Iona... even from here.

ON REVISITING DUNOLLY CASTLE

THE captive Bird was gone;--to cliff or moor
Perchance had flown, delivered by the storm;
Or he had pined, and sunk to feed the worm:
Him found we not: but, climbing, a tall tower,
There saw, impaved with rude fidelity
Of art mosaic, in a roofless floor,
An Eagle with stretched wings, but beamless eye--
An Eagle that could neither wail nor soar.
Effigy of the Vanished--(shall I dare
To call thee so?) or symbol of fierce deeds
And of the towering courage which past times
Rejoiced in--take, whate'er thou be, a share,
Not undeserved, of the memorial rhymes
That animate my way where'er it leads!

William Wordsworth

Thomas Jones

2006-09-05T03:47:00.000-07:00

One of my anscestors, Archbishop of Dublin in early 17th century... inscription over his tomb at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

DOMS
Thomas Iones
Archiepifcopus Dublin
Hyberniae Cancellarius
bis e Iufuciariis unus
Obiit 10 Apr: AD 1619

County Kilkenny

2006-08-30T05:07:00.000-07:00

A wise old owl lived in an oak;
The more he saw, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that Wise Old Bird?

Taken from a playground mural in the village of Ballyragget (where I had a pleasant afternoon nap)

Gleanings from my adventures in the South Downs

2006-08-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

Inscription on oldest bell in Alfriston Church, cast by William Wodeward, London, c. 1390.

WOX AVGVSTINI SONAT IN AVRO DEI. Translation, The voice of Augustine sounds in the ear of God.

Odd ledger in Vestry of Selmeston Church.

Here lyeth ye body of Henry Rochester
Dyed May 28 1646
Apostrophe AD
Omnes.
This life that's packt with ielovsles and fears
I love not. That's beyond the lists of fears.
That life for me. For here I cannot breathe
my prayers ovt. There I shall have breath
to say Ovr Father that's in heaven wth me
Where chores of sancts and innocents there be
Christianos.
No sooner Christened but possession
I took of the heavenlie habitation.

A few places I'll be Aug-Sept

2006-08-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

St. Mary the Virgin in Bexley, Kent, the parish where my great-great-great-great-great uncle the Rev. Henry Piers was vicar.

Dover, Kent

Cobh, County Cork

The Hebrides

Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire (addendum: I may not have time to make it here)

Lincoln College, Oxford

Solesmes (near Le Mans on the river Sarthe)

Ballard Street...

2006-07-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

eloquence

2006-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

"Catholic theology followed a fairly well defined direction. Its path was not from the outset as broad and straight, like an arterial road, as it afterwards became. At the beginning it branched and wandered like a country lane, and pursuing the first tracks that men made round and across their own intellectual holdings, served to link together the scattered habitations of thought. But steadily the lane grew straighter, as the various more important settlements came to be more clearly established and the extent and requirements of the whole area were more thoroughly surveyed. Great awkward corners were then found to exist, at which a number of top-heavy, badly loaded heresies met with disastrous road accidents. It was necessary to improve the highway, and so at last the ordered simplicity of the conciliar definitions was brought into arterial working. The progress made was never arbitrary, nor was its general tendency irregular. It represents simply the first stages in the formation of that "steadfast and consistent Christian philosophy", the philosophia perennis, which has grown and continues to grow through reverent and rational reflection on the Gospel, and presents, as Mr. Alfred Noyes has written, a central point of view enabling men, from the height of a great historic religion, to see life steadily and see it whole (The Unknown God, pp. II, 370). A road like that is not to be regarded as an illegitimate accretion on the jungle, but as a main trunk, if not the one main trunk, of the communications of civilizing thought."

-- G.L. Prestige, Bampton Lecture I, TRADITION: OR, THE SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF THEOLOGY: A PROLOGUE

Emperor Julian

2006-06-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

A man after my own heart... too bad he was an apostate.

"One of his most intimate friends, who had often shared the frugal simplicity of his table, has remarked, that his light and sparing diet (which was usually of the vegetable kind) left his mind and body always free and active, for the various and important business of an author, a pontiff, a magistrate, a general, and a prince... The predecessors of Julian, his uncle, his brother, and his cousin, indulged their puerile taste for the games of the Circus, under the specious pretence of complying with the inclinations of the people; and they frequently remained the greatest part of the day as idle spectators, and as a part of the splendid spectacle, till the ordinary round of twenty-four races was completely finished. On solemn festivals, Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus; and after bestowing a careless glance at five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher, who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public or the improvement of his own mind."

-- Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall vol. 2

comment on anti-US riots in Afghanistan

2006-05-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

“Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster…
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”

-- King Lear, Act I, Scene iv

more TSE

2006-05-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

-- T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (in The Sacred Wood)

WS and TSE

2006-05-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

-- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday I

Measure for Measure

2006-05-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

From Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare:

ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 32–4.)

Thou hast nor youth, nor age:
But as it were an after dinner’s sleep,
Dreaming on both.

This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications that are before us; when we are old we amuse the languour of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.

to appear in my church's newsletter

2006-05-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

THE FIRE AND THE ROSE:
Some Thoughts on Pentecost and the Church

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

-- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. On this day in 33 AD, as recorded in the second chapter of the Book of Acts, the disciples of Jesus received the Holy Ghost and experienced the miraculous “tongues of flame”. The multitude, gathering about to witness the spectacle, heard the disciples declare the works of God in the many different languages of the Roman world. After a sermon from St. Peter, those in the audience who “gladly received his word” were baptized and received the Holy Ghost themselves (verses 38, 41). Thus the Church, the Body of Christ, was created through the incorporation of its members via the action of the Holy Ghost -- recall the Prayer Book definition of the Church as “the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head, and all baptized people are the members”.

The above story illustrates the sacramental nature of the Church and God’s action in it. God uses the “stuff” of creation -- water, fire, rocks, flowers, cows, what have you -- in his interaction with us. The Church accordingly views the material world as an “outward and visible sign” of a deeper, spiritual reality. During the Middle Ages, there was a custom on Pentecost Sunday in which acolytes would crawl into the rafters of churches, wait until the portion of the liturgy when Acts 2 was read, then drop rose petals on the unsuspecting congregants, thus reenacting the descent of the tongues of flame. In various parts of Italy and Sicily Pentecost is still called Pascha Rosatum or “Passover of Roses” after this practice. Here we find the Church again in its sacramental embrace of the world, connecting with God in an outward and visible way through material things. The symbols of the fire and the rose, however quaint in the above instance, seem to likewise convey an “inward and spiritual” significance for the Church.

Consider first the case of fire. We have, for example, the symbolism of fire in the Old Testament, where the rites called for sin-offerings to be burned-up on the altar of the Tabernacle. Here fire is understood in a purgatorial sense, symbolizing the eradication of sin. The sinful desires of the flesh are to be burned-up inside of us in order to make room for the Holy Ghost. In the words of St. Gregory the Great, on Pentecost the Holy Ghost “changed the carnal minds of men, filling them with love for himself. Thus, whilst there appeared outwardly cloven tongues like as fire, inwardly their hearts began to burn.” Fire is a sign of love penetrating and transforming the heart. A heart sufficiently corrupted by sin will require a more thorough and painful purging; the purgatorial fires will be that much hotter, as it were. This is the Church’s “intolerable shirt of flame”, to quote Little Gidding again.

On the other hand, the shirt of flame is worn only for a short time in comparison with eternity. If the Church is pictured as a great conflagration of sin while on earth, what is the picture like when sin is gone? The symbol of the rose provides an answer. Take, for example, Dante’s vision of paradise in the Divine Comedy: upon reaching the Empyrean portion of heaven, he encounters the Church as a white Rose that “slopes and stretches and diffuses fragrance of praise unto the Sun of endless spring”. The ranks of the blessèd saints constitute the Rose's petals, and the offering of their worship before God is the Rose's "sweet smelling savour" (cf. Eph. 5:2). Just as the petals of a rose together make up its form and comeliness, so the Church reaches its perfection when its members are joined in an eternal consort of love and worship. In the absence of sin and self-centeredness, the Church draws together in perfect unity -- within itself and with God -- and the Rose reaches its fullest bloom. This union is the proper end of the Church, never to be fully realized while on earth.

The fire and the rose can be viewed as signs of the Church in this way, existing on earth and in heaven (respectively). As Christian signs, moreover, they necessarily transcend the level of mere symbolism; they have an ending and a fulfillment. The day will come when “the fire and the rose are one”, signs and symbols are no longer needed, and the Church sees God face to face.

Ballard Street

2006-04-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Exultet: it's almost Saturday night!

2006-04-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!

Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!

My dearest friends,
standing with me in this holy light,
join me in asking God for mercy,

that he may give his unworthy minister
grace to sing his Easter praises.

Deacon: The Lord be with you.
People: And with thy spirit.
Deacon: Lift up your hearts.
People: We lift them up unto the Lord.
Deacon: Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God.
People: It is meet and right so to do.

It is very meet and right
that with full hearts and minds and voices
we should praise the unseen God, the all-powerful Father,
and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

For Christ has ransomed us with his blood,
and paid for us the price of Adam's sin to our eternal Father!

This is our passover feast,
when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain,
whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night
when first you saved our fathers:
you freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night
when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin!

This is night
when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.

What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?
Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault,
O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Most blessed of all nights,
chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!

Of this night scripture says:
"The night will be as clear as day:
it will become my light, my joy."

The power of this holy night dispels all evil,
washes guilt away, restores lost innocence,
brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred, brings us peace,
and humbles earthly pride.

Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth
and man is reconciled with God!

Therefore, heavenly Father,
in the joy of this night,
receive our evening sacrifice of praise,
your Church's solemn offering.

Accept this Easter candle,
a flame divided but undimmed,
a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

(For it is fed by the melting wax,
which the mother bee brought forth
to make this precious candle.)

Let it mingle with the lights of heaven
and continue bravely burning
to dispel the darkness of this night!

May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all mankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.

Redeem the Time II

2006-04-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathed about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

--T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday (section IV)

Redeem the Time

2006-03-27T08:41:00.000-08:00

Our error's cause and cure are seen: see next
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed;
And thy great gain from urging his career. --
All-sensual man, because untouch'd, unseen,
He looks on time as nothing. Nothing else
Is truly man's; 'tis fortune's. -- Time's a god.
Hast thou ne'er heard of Time's omnipotence?
For, or against, what wonders he can do!
And will: to stand blank neuter he disdains.
Not on those terms was time (heaven's stranger!) sent
On his important embassy to man.
Lorenzo! no: on the long-destin'd hour,
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wondrous birth,
When the dread sire, on emanation bent,
And big with nature, rising in his might,
Call'd forth creation (for then time was born)
By godhead streaming thro' a thousand worlds;
Not on those terms, from the great days of heaven
From eternity's mysterious orb,
Was time cut off, and cast beneath the skies;
The skies, which watch him in his new abode,
Measuring his motions by revolving spheres;
That horologe machinery divine.
Hours, days, and months, and years, his children play,
Like num'rous wings around him, as he flies
Or, rather, as unequal plumes, they shape
His ample pinions, swift as darted flame,
To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest,
And join anew eternity his sire;
In his immutability to nest,
When worlds, that count his circles now, unhing'd,
(Fate the loud signal sounding) headlong rush
To timeless night and chaos, whence they rose.

-- Edward Young; The Complaint, Night II (1742)

Keeping the Eucharistic Fast

2006-03-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

I should counterbalance the last post with some Jeremy Taylor.

"These holy mysteries are offered to our senses, but not to be placed under our feet; they are sensible, but not common; and therefore as the weakness of the elements adds wonder to the excellency of the sacrament, so let our reverence and venerable usages of them add honour to the elements, and acknowledge the glory of the mystery, and the divinity of the mercy. Let us receive the consecrated elements with all devotion and humility of body and spirit; and do this honour to it, that it be the first food we eat, and the first beverage we drink that day, unless it be in case of sickness, or other great necessity; and that your body and soul both be prepared to its reception with abstinence from secular pleasures, that you may better have attended fastings and preparatory prayers. For if ever it be seasonable to observe the counsel of St. Paul, that married persons by consent should abstain for a time, that they may attend to solemn religion, it is now. It was not by St. Paul, nor the after-ages of the church, called a duty so to do, but it is most reasonable that the more solemn actions of religion should be attended to, without the mixture of anything that may discompose the mind and make it more secular or less religious."

-- THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING: IN WHICH ARE DESCRIBED THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF OBTAINING EVERY VIRTUE AND THE REMEDIES AGAINST EVERY VICE, AND CONSIDERATIONS SERVING TO THE RESISTING ALL TEMPTATIONS TOGETHER WITH PRAYERS CONTAINING THE WHOLE DUTY OF A CHRISTIAN, AND THE PARTS OF DEVOTION FITTED TO ALL OCCASIONS, AND FURNISHED FOR ALL NECESSITIES. BY JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D. Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles the First, and some time Lord Bishop of Down and Connor.

Violating the Eucharistic Fast

2006-03-20T18:51:00.000-08:00

Oh, to be RC before Vatican II...

"The recipient of the Blessed Sacrament, whether priest or lay person, must be fasting from midnight immediately preceeding reception... That which is taken as food or drink must have been taken exteriorly, i.e., from outside the mouth. Consequently, it is not a violation of the fast to swallow blood from the gums, or teeth, or tongue, or nasal cavities; it would be a violation of the fast to swallow blood flowing externally from the exterior parts of the lips, or from a cut finger, or from the nose, or to swallow tears, unless in each case only a few drops entered the mouth and were mingled with the saliva. It is not a violation of the fast to swallow small remnants of food already in the mouth after midnight, however long after, for they are not taken from outside, but are mixed with the saliva, but food (v.g. sweets, lozenges, sugar, edibles), put into the mouth deliberately before midnight and then swallowed after midnight would violate the fast, for they cannot be considered as mere remnants or food."

-- Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology, Vol. 3

St. Patrick, B.C.

2006-03-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

A day late, but oh well.

"He washed many of the Irish folk in the laver of regeneration, ordained many bishops and clerks, and decreed rules for virgins and for widows living in continency. And he established Armagh as the primatial See of all Ireland. Besides that which came upon him daily, the care of all the churches of Ireland, he never suffered his spirit to weary in constant prayer. It is said that it was his custom to repeat daily the whole Book of Psalms, together with certain other hymns and prayers, and that he took his short rest lying on a bare stone."

-- taken from the Anglican Breviary.

an infinite list

2006-03-16T19:32:00.000-08:00

This was started by an (Episcopal?) priest as a list of what not to do, then continued by various others.

Leading A Parish In Assisted-Parish-Suicide

1. Move as far away from and have as little to do with your troublesome relatives as possible.

2. If the above is not possible, maintain as over-close and over-involved relationship with your troublesome relatives as possible. Try to adopt the position of family “expert” and “savior.” Especially assume personal responsibility for the chronic problems of the most intractable members of your family.

3. If you don’t have enough troublesome family members to keep you busy see if you can’t adopt some troubled people who need your help. Look for people no one has been able to help before.

4. Don’t let anyone tell you that the character of your relationships with the other families in your life will affect the character of your leadership in the parish family.

5. Believe that your own habitual patterns of relating to others and the habitual relational patterns of your parishioners will be completely changed for the positive by the right theology or religious experience without any further attention, work or discipline.

6. Believe that God prefers to work by extra-ordinary rather than ordinary means and that you are going to be the miraculous exception to the prevailing reality principle.

7. Firmly believe that a combination of persuasion, reason and exhortations to try harder to do better will change any situation for the better.

8. Firmly believe that the apparent lack of success of the above is due to this strategy not being tried hard enough or long enough.

9. Choose as a parish to lead a parish with a notorious reputation for confounding the best efforts of experts to help it.

10. Do not allow yourself to be convinced that there is anything worthwhile that can be learned from examining the congregation’s history.

11. Be convinced that most of the congregation’s troubles can be blamed on the diocese and nurture the congregation’s animosity toward the diocese.

12. Be convinced that none of your predecessors were spiritual enough or knew what they were doing.

13. Be convinced that none of the previous lay leaders were spiritual enough or knew what they were doing.

14. Be convinced that the only hope is a “completely new paradigm” for ministry.

15. Be convinced that preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments and building up the body of Christ in worship, fellowship and service are only the beginning of real parish life and that much more needs to be done in order to have a church worthy of the name.

16. Make sure that personality over principle is the operating norm of all aspects of parish life.

17. Emphasize caring and sensitivity over discipline and standards in all aspects of parish life.

18. See if you can make your spouse and children angry, resentful and resigned by your constant overwork and obsession with the parish.

19. Lavish trouble-makers with attention and let the most spiritually and emotionally mature members of the parish take care of themselves.

20. Have no interests or life outside your role in the parish.

21. Be someone who keeps secrets and swears other to secrecy.

22. Spend as much time as possible reading about highly successful mega-churches in contexts completely different from your own.

23. Become convinced that all that is lacking is the right mix of music or cell groups or whatever technique or concept you nominate for the position of messiah.

24. Become relentless in your rigid and desperate attempt to institute whatever technique or concept you nominate for the position of messiah.

25. Read more books on leadership and congregational development.

26. Constantly urge the key leaders in the parish to “catch up” with what you know about leadership and congregational development. .

27. Communicate by either resigned stoicism or simmering anger your profound disappointment in the congregation’s lack of responsiveness.

28. Carefully follow the controversies in the larger church and spend several hours each day obsessing about things you cannot control.

29. Put people you know to be difficult in leadership position for “pastoral” reasons.

30. Take everything as personally as possible and as seriously as possible.

31. Keep your distance from your colleagues and superiors.

32. Go to as many leadership and congregational development seminars as possible and try to introduce at least one “completely new paradigm for ministry” every year.

33. Secretively nurse your guilt over your lack of success and do not talk to anyone about it except your exasperated spouse and children.

34. Leave after three or five years at most, to find a more spiritual and responsive congregation.

35. Don’t leave after three to five years; instead, stay so long that no one can remember a time without you.

36. Because of the above, convince yourself that you are the most loyal and dedicated parish priest ever, and the parish couldn’t possibly function without you.

37. Because of the above, exempt yourself from any oversight, because, after all, “you’ve earned it!”

38. Pick a member of the parish, usually a newer, younger member, to be your “New Best Friend” ™ every couple of months.

39. Refer to them often in sermons. Take them into your confidence. Tell them secrets about other members of the congregation, whether they want to hear them or not.

40. Give your “New Best Friend” ™ lots of responsibility, so they feel involved in the parish.

41. When your “New Best Friend” ™ has accomplished what you want him or her to do, promptly find a “Newer Best Friend” ™. Kick “New Best Friend” to the curb, and repeat the process with “Newer Best Friend.”

42. Guard your feelings and family life obsessively. If you’re feeling trapped or scared, tell no one in the parish. Convince yourself you’re “sparing the parish.”

43. Completely erase from your mind that by doing No. 42, you’re actually sending the message that Christians shouldn’t turn to one another for mutual help and support.

44. Instead, express your natural frustration as a result of employing No. 42 as a simmering anger toward your parish. Nurse feelings of loneliness and convince yourself it’s because you’re so damn brilliant no one can “understand” you.

45. As a result of your boredom, frustration, or personal demons, surreptitiously seek solace and comfort not in the staples of the Catholic Life, but in extraparochial ventures like chaplaincies, community development groups, and nonprofits.

46. Jealously hide these from members of your parish, telling them only that you’re broadening the church’s mission and they’ll eventually accrue to the benefit of the parish.

47. At the same time, however, insist that while these extraparochial activities are supposed to somehow broaden the church’s mission, they are not subject to vestry advice, counsel and oversight.

48. Tell different people different things about these activities. If people start to get unnerved by the lack of consistent information, start to play people off against one another.

49. Commingle your finances with that of the parish as much as, and whenever, possible.

50. Convince yourself, a la No. 42, that you’re sacrificing yourself for the parish.

51. Exhibit a veiled hostility/offensive paternalism toward women.

52. Convince yourself you’re really fighting against women’s ordination and upholding orthodoxy.

53. Make sure the only time you praise a woman is when she’s pregnant.

54. Use offensive terms for this, such as that a couple is “doing their Christian duty” or “being fruitful.”

55. Ignore the fact that the brightest women in your congregation want nothing to do with you. Convince yourself it’s because they’re “uppity.”

56. At least seven times a day, make sure you remind yourself that no one is doing as much as you for the Church. You’re right behind Christ, carrying a cross big enough to rival His!

57. Convince your parishioners that you are the most loyal and dedicated parish priest ever, and the parish couldn’t possibly function without you (cf. No. 36).

58. Out-source the parish's work to parishioners only when absolutely necessary and insist that it is your responsibility. Your hard work and dedication will go a long way to accomplishing No. 57.

59. Organize the parish government around "lay-leaders" thoroughly schooled in the philosophy of No.57. This will greatly facilitate future manipulation, while engendering laxity, irresponsibility, and indifference amongst the so-called leaders.

60. Do everything in your power to see that your indifferent, impotent parochial leadership is similarly reflected in the ecclesiastical hierarcy. An anarchical diocese exercising little oversight or authority over your parish is the best possible situation. If your bishop is a criminal and/or a freemason, the task will be that much easier.

61. As the fruits of the above start to come home to roost, don’t take refuge in the staples of the Catholic Life like confession, prayer, communion, and counsel from your brother priests and trusted lay leaders.

62. Instead, go to a Large Group Awareness Seminar. Become hooked. Tell yourself only these people can understand you.

63. As you become more distant and weird, and parish leaders begin to put the pieces together, fall back on your politicking skills.

64. Rally your parish council - the one you’ve stacked with sycophants who won’t question you, see No. 37 - and tell them your ministry is “under attack.”

65. Turn to the parish members whom you’ve groomed to be more loyal to you personally than to the faith or the church. Turn them against those who are questioning your behavior. Tell yourself you’re protecting the parish from an insurrection.

66. If your displays of righteous anger and appeals to your years of “sacrifice” don’t quell the questions, switch to pathos.

67. Offer your resignation as tearfully as possible, explaining that you “just can’t operate in this hostile environment.”

68. When the cries of “no, no, don’t resign” are heard, inwardly smile - you’re almost home free.

69. Patiently wait, alternating between these tactics, until the brighter members of the congregation get sick of your games and simply leave.

70. Praise your loyal rump congregation, telling them how happy you are to pastor this “parish family.” Make no reference at all to how things just convulsed. Ignore the fact that many people left. Pretend they are “unpersons,” just like in 1984.

71. Wash, rinse, repeat!

72. Delve anew into parish life, having experienced catharsis from the drama.

73. In a few years, repeat the process.

74. Don’t ever allow yourself to think YOU might have something to do with why the parish membership is dysfunctional. Instead, view their dysfunction as your mission!

75. Whatever you do, don’t forget that for this parish, you are God.

ad infinitum

another TSE quote

2006-03-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

So I'm back in Huntington Beach living with my parents and commuting to LA, temporarily. Such a momentous turn of events calls for a quote from the Four Quartets:

... You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

Lenten Retreat

2006-03-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from the retreat I attended over the weekend, held at St. Dorothy's Rest, just outside Santa Rosa, CA.

Archbishop (right) ascending the steps to Lydia House.

Fr. Russell, the retreat leader, expatiating on St. Francis of Assisi. We read St. Bonaventure's "Life of St. Francis".

Nature.

Lunch.

Fr. Russell read P.G. Wodehouse during the meals.

Fr. Dart saying Mass on Saturday morning.

Back in Berkeley, Archbishop pontificating in the seminary parking lot.

Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor

2006-03-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of
the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

-- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday (section VI)

Shoulder your duds dear son

2006-02-26T21:17:00.000-08:00

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never
measured and never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut
from the woods
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the
public road.

-- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1891)

Scary old Indian aphorism

2006-02-22T20:36:00.000-08:00

As are the crests on the heads of peacocks, as are the gems on the hoods of cobras, so is mathematics, at the top of all sciences.

-- The Yajurveda, circa 600 B.C. (quoted in "Spectral Theory of Dynamical Systems" by M.G. Nadkarni)

Virgil to Dante

2006-02-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

“Why are thy thoughts thus riveted?” my guide
Exclaim’d, “that thou hast slack’d thy pace? or how
Imports it thee, what thing is whisper’d here?
Come after me, and to their babblings leave
The crowd. Be as a tower, that, firmly set,
Shakes not its top for any blast that blows!
He, in whose bosom thought on thought shoots out,
Still of his aim is wide, in that the one
Sicklies and wastes to nought the other’s strength.”

-- Purgatorio, Canto V (Cary translation)

What then is your point of view?

2006-02-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile and cunning.

-- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Footnote in Gibbon

2006-02-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

I love Gibbon's footnotes.

Text. The citizens of Nisibis were animated by the exhortations of their bishop, inured to arms by the presence of danger, and convinced of the intentions of Sapor to plant a Persian colony in their room, and to lead them away into distant and barbarous captivity.

Footnote. The miracles which Theodoret (l. ii. c. 30) ascribes to St. James, bishop of Edessa, were at least performed in a worthy cause, the defense of his country. He appeared on the walls under the figure of the Roman emperor, and sent an army of gnats to sting the trunks of the elephants, and to discomfit the host of the new Senacherib.

Decline and Fall, chap. XVIII

Vers'd in geometric lore

2006-02-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

... Oh eternal light!
Sole in thyself that dwellst; and of thyself
Sole understood, past, present, or to come!
Thou smiledst; on that circling, which in thee
Seem'd as reflected splendour, while I mus'd;
For I therein, methought, in its own hue
Beheld our image painted: steadfastly
I therefore por'd upon the view. As one
Who vers'd in geometric lore, would fain
Measure the circle; and, though pondering long
And deeply, that beginning, which he needs,
Finds not; e'en such was I, intent to scan
The novel wonder, and trace out the form,
How to the circle fitted, and therein
How plac'd: but the flight was not for my wing;
Had not a flash darted athwart my mind,
And in the spleen unfolded what it sought.
Here vigour fail'd the tow'ring fantasy:
But yet the will roll'd onward, like a wheel
In even motion, by the Love impell'd,
That moves the sun in heav'n and all the stars.

-- Paradiso XXXIII, 126-145 (tr. Henry Francis Cary, 1772-1844)

What seas what shores what granite islands

2006-02-05T20:01:00.000-08:00

Lines from TSE routinely get stuck in my head and remain there for a good 2-3 days. The latest:

"This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships."

-- Marina

What Then?

2006-02-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

All his happier dreams came true -
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

'The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought';
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'

-- W.B. Yeats (New Poems, 1938)

More Crashaw (On the Miracle of Loaves)

2006-01-29T17:39:00.000-08:00

Now Lord, or never, they'll believe on thee,
Thou to their Teeth hast proved thy Deity.

-- Steps to the Temple (1646)

My heart's in the Highlands

2006-01-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer --
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North --
The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands forever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;
Farewell to the strath and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer --
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

-- Robert Burns (1759 - 1796)

Arvo Pärt has a nice setting of this poem for countertenor and organ...

Crashaw on St. Teresa

2006-01-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His;
By all the heaven thou has in Him
(Fair sister of the seraphim!)
By all of Him we have in thee;
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die!

-- Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa (1648)

Pleasant Barbarian Saga

2006-01-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

I read the Niebelungenlied over Christmas vacation and particularly enjoyed lines such as these:

"With show of rider's talent the tilt was carried on,
For might the knights full gallant naught fitting leave undone,
As passed down to the River Kriemhild the lady bright.
Then helped was many a lady fair from charger to alight.

The king had then come over and many a stranger too.
Heigh-ho! What strong shafts splintered before the ladies flew!
Many a shaft go crashing heard you there on sheild.
Heigh-ho! What din of costly arms resounded o'er the field."

tr. George Henry Needler

Greetings

2006-01-24T15:13:00.000-08:00

I thought this might be nice as a kind of public record of some of my occasional thoughts. It'll likely become a list of quotes from TS Eliot and Dante (which is fine with me); maybe it won't even last. Anyway, why don't I start with a Russian proverb impressed upon me the other day by a venerable, old clergyman:

"God sits in the corner and waits."