HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

And my heart must bend like a rainbow....

The Heart, the Mind and Fences

    In order to be right about anything, the mind has the need
    to find someone or something that is wrong.
    In a sense, the mind is always looking for an enemy
    (the person who is “wrong”), since without an enemy,
     the mind is not quite sure of its own identity.

    When it has an enemy, it is able to be more confident about itself.
    Since the mind also continually seeks for certainty,
    which is a by-product of the desire to be right, the process of finding
    and defining enemies is an ongoing struggle for survival.
    Declaring enemies is, for the mind, not an unfortunate character flaw,
    but an essential and necessary task.

    Unfortunately, being right is not what people really need,
    even though a great deal of their lives may be taken up in its pursuit.
    Defense of the ego is almost always a matter of trying to be right.

    Interestingly enough, Jesus never once suggeted to His disciples
    that they be right.
    What He did demand is that they be righteous.
    In listening to His words we find that we spend almost all our energy
    in the wrong direction, since we generally pursue being right
    with every ounce of our being,
    but leave being good to the weak and the naive.

    People fight wars, commit genocide, and deprive others
    of basic human civil liberties, all in the name of being right.
    There is little doubt that if a further nuclear war ever takes place,
    it will be because the person pushing the button
    believes himself to be right.
    About something.

    Religion, at the level of the mind, can be a terrible thing,
    causing wanton destruction to individuals, families,
    and even entire nations, all in the cause of being right.
    Almost every religious system can, and in most cases,
    has operated solely at this level at some point in its history.
    This is the level of religious awareness that can cause
    the servants of the King of Peace to wage war on those
    who think thoughts different from their own;
    it bestows on those who have been commanded to forgive their enemies
    the right to annihilate their foes.


    The heart is quiet rather than noisy, intuitive rather than deductive,
    lives entirely in the present, and is, at every moment, accepting
    of the reality God gives in that moment.
    Moreover, the heart does not seek
     to distance or dominate anything or anyone by labeling.

    Rather, it begins with an awareness of its relationship
    with the rest of creation (and everything and everyone in it),
    accepting rather than rejecting, finding similarity
    rather than alienation and likeness rather than difference.

    It knows no fear, experiences no desire, and never finds the need
    to defend or justify itself.
    Unlike the mind, the heart never seeks to impose itself.
     It is patient and undemanding.
    Little wonder, then, that the mind, always impatient
    and very demanding, manages to dominate it so thoroughly.

Bread & Water, Wine & Oil.

Archimandrite Meletios Webber

h/t to Fr Freeman

photo-nevertorun

You cannot be too gentle, too kind

You cannot be too gentle, too kind.

Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other.

Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy

 in the heart of him who receives. All condemnation is from the devil.

Never condemn each other.

We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves.

When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a swamp that nothing in another

 can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others.

 Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace.

Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows

of slander, insult and outrage and will shield your glowing hearts against all evil.

            - St Seraphim of Sarov

h/t MIND IN HEART

photo:bobbiwhiteman

…What, what will give me back my faith?

Father Zosima from Dostoevsky's "Brother's Karamazov":

“…What, what will give me back my faith?
Though I believed only when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking about anything…
How, how can it be proved? I’ve come now to throw myself at your feet and ask you about it.
If I miss this chance, too, then surely no one will answer me for the rest of my life.
How can it be proved, how can one be convinced? Oh, miserable me!
 I look around and see that for everyone else, almost everyone, it’s all the same,
no one worries about it anymore, and I’m the only one who can’t bear it.
 It’s devastating, devastating!”                                                               
“No doubt it is devastating.
One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.”

“How? By what?”

“By the experience of active love.
Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly.
The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God
and the immortality of your soul.
And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor,
the undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul.
This has been tested.
It is certain.”

PHOTO:MUCH LOVE

ABOVE PHOTO:ANGER IN WINTER

...maybe you're asking the wrong questions?

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him?""

Is there anything more "God-like" than being mindful of another?

If you can change someone else's life by a single word, a deed, a glance...or by walking with them for a few moments as they travel through the valley of shadow... then you have done  more than than most men have done in a whole lifetime.

Nothing, and no one is more important than the one who is standing right in front of you...or as Fr. Stephen says:

"No where been commanded to change the world or to save civilization"...

"C.S. Lewis, in his The Abolition of Man, wrote of “men without chests,” describing a certain breed of modern man which had jettison his heart, having substituted false science and a devalued subjectivity for the eternal verities that had once linked human beings together in a common culture.

He wrote his work in the immediate years following World War II. Nothing in our educational system has reversed the trends of which he complained. We have not regained our chests – not as a culture.

However, we have no where been commanded to change the world or to save civilization.

 These are things that are measured on a much larger stage of history and longer period
than a single life.
It is not the diagnosis of our disease that is so important as it is the medicine of our healing.

The heart which must again fill our chests is not some missing part of Western Civilization
but the heart of flesh that is our inheritance in Christ.

It is an imperishable healing that alone can give us what we lack."

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h/t to father stephen

What Is Man – That Thou Art Mindful of Him?

The inner quality of catholicity-A passage from Archpriest George Florovsky’s work entitled “The catholicity of the Church.”

The catholicity of the Church

A passage from Archpriest George Florovsky’s work entitled “The catholicity of the Church.”

The inner quality of catholicity

The catholicity of the Church is not a quantitative or a geographical conception. It does not at all depend on the world-wide dispersion of the faithful. The universality of the Church is the consequence or the manifestation, but not the cause or the foundation of its catholicity.

The world-wide extension or the universality of the Church is only an outward sign, one that is not absolutely necessary. The Church was catholic even when Christian communities were but solitary rare islands in a sea of unbelief and paganism. And the Church will remain catholic even unto the end of time when the mystery of the “falling away” will be revealed, when the Church once more will dwindle to a “small flock.” “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). The Metropolitan Philaret expressed himself very adequately on this point: “If a city or a country falls away from the universal Church, the latter will still remain an integral, imperishable body” (Opinions and Statements of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, Concerning the Orthodox Church in the East, St. Petersburg, 1886, p. 53.). Philaret uses here the word “universal” in the sense of catholicity.

The conception of catholicity cannot be measured by its wide-world expansion; universality does not express it exactly. Καθολικη from Καθ σλου means, first of all, the inner wholeness and integrity of the Church’s life. We are speaking here of wholeness, not only of communion, and in any case not of a simple empirical communion. Καθ σλου is not the same as Κατα παντóς; it belongs not to the phenomenal and empirical, but to the noumenal and ontological plane; it describes the very essence, not the external manifestations. We feel this already in the pre-Christian use of these words, beginning from Socrates.

If catholicity also means universality, it certainly is not an empirical universality, but an ideal one; the communion of ideas, not of facts, is what it has in view. The first Christians when using the words ‘Ekklisía Katholikí (Εκκλησια Καθολικη) never meant a world-wide Church. This word rather gave prominence to the orthodoxy of the Church, to the truth of the “Great Church,” as contrasted with the spirit of sectarian separatism and particularism; it was the idea of integrity and purity that was expressed. This has been very forcibly stated in the well known words of St. Ignatius of Antioch:

“Where there is a bishop, let there be the whole multitude; just as where Jesus Christ is, there too is the Catholic Church” (Ignat Smyrn. 8:2).

These words express the same idea as does the promise:

“Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:19-20).

It is this mystery of gathering together (μυστηριον της συναξεως, Mystírion tis sinákseos) that the word catholicity expresses. Later on St. Cyril of Jerusalem explained the word “catholicity” which is used in the Creed in the traditional manner of his Church. The word “Church” means the “gathering together of all in one union;” therefore it is called a “gathering” (εκκλεσια, Ekklisía).

The Church is called catholic, because it spreads over all the universe and subjects the whole of the human race to righteousness, because also in the Church the dogmas are taught “fully, without any omission, catholically, and completely” (καθολικως και ανελλειπως) because, again, in the Church every kind of sin is cured and healed” (Catech. 18:23 (Migne P.G. 33 c. 1044)).

Here again catholicity is understood as an inner quality. Only in the West, during the struggle against the Donatists was the word “catholica” used in the sense of “universality,” in opposition to the geographical provincialism of the Donatists (Cf. Pierre Batiffol, Le Catholicisme de St. Augustin, I. (Paris, 1920), p. 212

— “Rappelons que le nom ‘catholique’ a servi à qualifier la Grande Eglise par opposition aux hérétiques … Le nom est vraisemblablement de création populaire et apparait en Orient au second siècle. Les tractatores du 4. siècle, qui lui cherchent une signification étymologique et savante, veulent y voir l’expression soit de la perfection intégrale de la foi de l’Eglise, soit du fait que l’Eglise ne fait pas acception de personnes de rang, du culture, soit enfin et surtout de fait que l’Eglise est repandue dans le monde entire d’une extrémité à l’autre. Augustin ne veut connaître que ce dernier sens.” Cp. Also Bishop Lightfoot, in his edition of St. Ignatius, v. 2 (London, 1889), p. 319. Note ad Loc.

The history of the Christian and pre-Christian use of the terms ekklisía katholikí (Εκκλησια Καθολικη) and katholikos (καθολικóς) generally in various settings deserves careful study; apparently there have been no special investigations on the subject. In Russian, reference may be made to the very valuable, though not exhaustive or faultless, article of the late Professor M. D. Muretov in the supplement to his book Ancient Jewish Prayers Ascribed to St. Peter (Sergiev Posad, 1905). See also Bishop Lightfoot, St. Ignatius, v. 2 (London, 1889), p. 310, note).

Later on, in the East, the word “catholic” was understood as synonymous with “ecumenical.” But this only limited the conception, making it less vivid, because it drew attention to the outward form, not to the inner contents. Yet the Church is not catholic because of its outward extent, or, at any rate, not only because of that. The Church is catholic, not only because it is an all-embracing entity, not only because it unites all its members, all local Churches, but because it is catholic all through, in its very smallest part, in every act and event of its life.

The nature of the Church is catholic; the very web of the Church’s body is catholic. The Church is catholic, because it is the one Body of Christ; it is union in Christ, oneness in the Holy Ghost-and this unity is the highest wholeness and fulness. The gauge of catholic union is that “The multitude of them that believed be of one heart and of one soul” (Act 4:32).

Where this is not the case, the life of the Church is limited and restricted.

The ontological blending of persons is, and must be, accomplished in oneness with the Body of Christ; they cease to be exclusive and impenetrable. The cold separation into “mine” and “thine” disappears.

The growth of the Church is in the perfecting of its inner wholeness, its inner catholicity, in the “perfection of wholeness”;

“That they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:23).

Marriage: The Great Sacrament

Marriage: The Great Sacrament

EXCERPTS FROM: A Sermon by Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra, Mount Athos delivered in the Church of St. Nicholas, Trikala, Greece, 17 January, 1971

Nobody would dispute that the most important day in a person's life, after his birth and baptism, is that of his marriage. It is no surprise, then, that the aim of contemporary worldly and institutional upheavals is precisely to crush the most honorable and sacred mystery of marriage.
For many people, marriage is an opportunity for pleasures and amusements. Life, however, is a serious affair. It is a spiritual struggle, a progression toward a goal: heaven. The most crucial juncture, and the most important means, of this progression is marriage. It is not permissible for anyone to avoid the bonds of marriage, whether he concludes a mystical marriage by devoting himself to God, or whether he concludes a sacramental one with a spouse.

Today we will concern ourselves primarily with sacramental marriage.
We will consider how marriage can contribute to our spiritual life...
 It is a "great mystery" (Eph 5.32). An unmarried person passes through life and leaves it; but a married person lives and experiences life to the full.

One wonders what people today think about the sacred institution of marriage, this "great mystery", blessed by our Church. They marry, and it's as if two checking accounts or two business interests were being merged...  But what is the result? We see it every day. The shipwrecks of marriage are familiar to all of us.

A worldly marriage, as it is understood today, can only have one characteristicthe murder of a person's spiritual life. Thus we must feel that, if we fail in our marriage, we have more or less failed in our spiritual life. If we succeed in our marriage, we have also succeeded in our spiritual life. Success or failure, progress or ruin, in our spiritual life, begins with our marriage...

 

What then is the purpose of marriage?

I will tell you three of its main aims.

• First of all, marriage is a path of pain.

 The companionship of man and wife is called a "yoking together" (syzygia), that is, the two of them labor under a shared burden.

Marriage is a journeying together, a shared portion of pain, and, of course, a joy.
But usually it's six chords of our life which sound a sorrowful note,
and only one which is joyous.
Man and wife will drink from the same cup of upheaval, sadness, and failure. During the marriage ceremony, the priest gives the newly-weds to drink from the same cup, called the "common cup" [4], because together they will bear the burdens of marriage. The cup is also called "union" [5], because they are joined together to share life's joys and sorrows.

When two people get married, it's as if they're saying: Together we will go forward, hand in hand, through good times and bad. We will have dark hours, hours of sorrow filled with burdens, monotonous hours.
But in the depths of the night, we continue to believe in the sun and the light.
Oh, my dear friends, who can say that his life has not been marked by difficult moments? But it is no small thing to know that, in your difficult moments, in your worries, in your temptations, you will be holding in your hand the hand of your beloved...

It is an adulteration of marriage for us to think that it is a road to happiness, as if it were a denial of the cross.
The joy of marriage is for husband and wife to put their shoulders to
the wheel and together go forward on the uphill road of life.

"You haven't suffered? Then you haven't loved", says a certain poet.
Only those who suffer can really love. And that's why sadness is a necessary feature of marriage.
 "Marriage", in the words of an ancient philosopher, "is a world made beautiful by hope, and strengthened by misfortune". Just as steel is fashioned in a furnace, just so is a person proved in marriage, in the fire of difficulties. When you see your marriage from a distance, everything seems wonderful. But when you get closer, you'll see just how many difficult moments it has.

Marriage, then, is a journey through sorrows and joys.
When the sorrows seem overwhelming, then you should remember
that God is with you. He will take up your cross.

It was he who placed the crown of marriage on your head. But when we ask God about something, he doesn't always supply the solution right away. He leads us forward very slowly. Sometime[s] he takes years. We have to experience pain, otherwise life would have no meaning. But be of good cheer, for Christ is suffering with you, and the Holy Spirit, "through your groanings is pleading on your behalf" (cf. Rom 8.26).

• Second, marriage is a journey of love.

It is the creation of a new human being, a new person, for, as the Gospel says, "the two will be as one flesh" (Mt 19.5; Mk 10.7).
God unites two people, and makes them one. From this union of two people, who agree to synchronize their footsteps and harmonize the beating of their hearts, a new human being emerges. Through such profound and spontaneous love, the one becomes a presence, a living reality, in the heart of the other.
 "I am married" means that I cannot live a single day, even a few moments, without the companion of my life. My husband, my wife, is a part of my being, of my flesh, of my soul. He or she complements me. He or she is the thought of my mind. He or she is the reason for which my heart beats.

The couple exchanges rings to show that, in life's changes, they will remain united. Each wears a ring with the name of the other written on it, which is placed on the finger from which a vein runs directly to the heart. That is, the name of the other is written on his own heart. The one, we could say, gives the blood of his heart to the other. He or she encloses the other within the core of his being.

"What do you do?" a novelist was once asked. He was taken aback. "What do I do? What a strange question! I love Olga, my wife". The husband lives to love his wife, and the wife lives to love her husband.

The most fundamental thing in marriage is love, and love is about uniting two into one. God abhors separation and divorce. He wants unbroken unity.
 The priest takes the rings off the left finger, puts them on the right,
and then again on the left, and finally he puts them back on the right hand. He begins and ends with the right hand, because this is the hand with which we chiefly act.
It also means that the other now has my hand. I don't do anything that
my spouse doesn't want. I am bound up with the other. I live for the
other, and for that reason I tolerate his faults. A person who can't put
up with another can't marry...

 The woman is the heart. The man is the head. The woman is the heart that loves. In her husband's moments of difficulty, she stands at his side, as the empress Theodora stood by the emperor Justinian. In his moments of joy, she tries to raise him up to even higher heights and ideals. In times of sorrow, she stands by him like a sublime and peaceful world offering him tranquility.

The husband should remember that his wife has been entrusted to him by God. His wife is a soul which God has given to him, and one day he must return it.
He loves his wife as Christ loves the Church (Eph 5.25). He protects her, takes care of her, gives her security, particularly when she is distressed, or when she is ill. We know how sensitive a woman's soul can be, which is why the Apostle Peter urges husbands to honor their wives (cf. 1 Pet 3.7). A woman's soul gets wounded...
Marriage, my dear friends, is a little boat which sails through waves
and among rocks.
If you lose your attention even for a moment, it will be wrecked.

    •    As we have seen, marriage is first of all a journey of pain;
    •    second a journey of love; and,
    •    third, a journey to heaven, a call from God.

It is, as Holy Scripture says, a "great mystery" (Eph 5.32). We often speak of seven "mysteries", or sacraments. In this regard, a "mystery" is the sign of the mystical presence of some true person or event.
An icon, for instance, is a mystery. When we venerate it, we are not venerating wood or paint, but Christ, or the Theotokos, or the saint who is mystically depicted. The Holy Cross is a symbol of Christ, containing his mystical presence.

• Marriage, too, is a mystery, a mystical presence, not unlike these.

Christ says, "wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am among them" (Mt 18.20). And whenever two people are married in the name of Christ, they become the sign which contains and expresses Christ himself.
When you see a couple who are conscious of this, it is as if you are seeing Christ. Together they are a theophany.

And not just this, but everything in marriage is symbolic.

The lit candles symbolize the wise virgins. When the priest places these candles into the hands of the newly-weds, it is as if he is saying to them: Wait for Christ like the wise virgins (Mt 25.1-11). Or they symbolize the tongues of fire which descended at Pentecost, and which were in essence the presence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.1-4). The wedding rings are kept on the altar, until they are taken from there by the priest, which shows that marriage has its beginning in Christ, and will end in Christ. The priest also joins their hands, in order to show that it is Christ himself who unites them. It is Christ who is at the heart of the mystery and at the center of their lives [6].

All the elements of the marriage ceremony are shadows and symbols which indicate the presence of Christ.

When you're sitting somewhere and suddenly you see a shadow, you know that someone's coming. You don't see him, but you know he's there. You get up early in the morning, and you see the red horizon in the east. You know that, in a little while, the sun will come up. And indeed, there behind the mountain, the sun starts to appear.

When you see your marriage, your husband, your wife, your partner's body, when you see your troubles, everything in your home, know that they are all signs of Christ's presence.

 It is as if you're hearing Christ's footsteps, as if he was coming, as if you are now about to hear his voice. All these things are the shadows of Christ, revealing that he is together with us. It is true, though, that, because of our cares and worries, we feel that he is absent.

But we can see him in the shadows, and we are sure that he is with us. This is why there was no separate marriage service in the early Church. The man and woman simply went to church and received Communion together. What does this mean?
That henceforth their life is one life in Christ.

The wreaths, or wedding crowns, are also symbols of Christ's presence. More specifically, they are symbols of martyrdom. Husband and wife wear crowns to show that they are ready to become martyrs for Christ. To say that "I am married" means that I live and die for Christ. "I am married" means that I desire and thirst for Christ. Crowns are also signs of royalty, and thus husband and wife are king and queen, and their home is a kingdom, a kingdom of the Church, an extension of the Church.

When did marriage begin? When man sinned. Before that, there was no marriage, not in the present-day sense. It was only after the Fall, after Adam and Eve had been expelled from paradise, that Adam "knew" Eve (Gen 4.1) and thus marriage began. Why then? So that they might remember their fall and expulsion from paradise, and seek to return there. Marriage is thus a return to the spiritual paradise, the Church of Christ. "I am married" means, then, that I am a king, a true and faithful member of the Church.

The wreaths also symbolize the final victory which will be attained in the kingdom of heaven. When the priest takes the wreaths, he says to Christ: "take their crowns to your kingdom", take them to your kingdom, and keep them there, until the final victory.

And so marriage is a road: its starts out from the earth and ends in heaven.
It is a joining together, a bond with Christ, who assures us that he will lead us to heaven, to be with him always.

Marriage is a bridge leading us from earth to heaven.

It is as if the sacrament is saying: Above and beyond love, above and beyond your husband, your wife, above the everyday events, remember that you are destined for heaven, that you have set out on a road which will take you there without fail.
The bride and the bridegroom give their hands to one another, and the priest takes hold of them both, and leads them round the table dancing and singing. Marriage is a movement, a progression, a journey which will end in heaven, in eternity.

In marriage, it seems that two people come together. However it's not two but three. The man marries the woman, and the woman marries the man, but the two together also marry Christ. So three take part in the mystery, and three remain together in life.

In the dance around the table, the couple are led by the priest, who is a type of Christ. This means that Christ has seized us, rescued us, redeemed us, and made us his. And this is the "great mystery" of marriage (cf. Gal 3.13).

In Latin, the word "mystery" was rendered by the word sacramentum, which means an oath. And marriage is an oath, a pact, a joining together, a bond, as we have said. It is a permanent bond with Christ.

"I am married", then, means that I enslave my heart to Christ.
If you wish, you can get married. If you wish, don't get married. But if you marry, this is the meaning that marriage has in the Orthodox Church, which brought you into being. "I am married" means I am the slave of Christ.

Endnotes

1. I.e., "Spiritual Life", which appears below, on pp. 147-163.
2. See, for example, John Chrysostom, Homily on Colossians 12.6 "What shame is there in that which is honorable? Why do you blush over what is undefiled? In so doing, you slander the root of our birth, which is a gift from God" (PG 62.388). Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Polycarp (PG 5.724B).
3. Symeon of Thessaloniki, Dialogos 277 (PG 155.508B).
4. C. Kallinikos, The Christian Temple and its Ceremonies (Athens, 1968), 514.
5. St. Gregory the Theologian, Letter 193: "I place the hand of the one the other, and place both in the hand of God" (PG 37.316C).

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Of Walls, Crosses, Regrets, Icons, Flesh and Blood, but mostly Flesh and Blood

"....Everyone is carrying the pain around, along with the hope and grace that does, indeed, glimmer, even faintly. 
It is maybe not so sensitive and might actually be an act of self-orption to simply dump all of our own pain on anyone who happens to walk by  - we can't do that, for in indiscriminately pouring out our souls we are revealing an indifference to what others are prepared to hear.

Crosses, we call them.             


Everyone is carrying a cross.


Heavy crosses.

Perhaps part of the Christian life involves recognizing that reality at the core of every person's life and a delicate balance of being careful not to add to the burden, but to be open, at the same time, to allowing Christ to work through us, if he chooses, to help them bear it...for just a little while. "

Amy Welborn
Teusday, March 3, 2009 Post  BRAVEHEART?

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photos by:Gabriela Camerotti

Love that is "Stronger than Death"....from: Marriage...Orthodox Perspectives-Fr. John Chryssavgis

Every sacrament is a transcendence of division and alienation.

In the case of marriage, each person must become conscious of the divine presence in the other.

Both husband and wife must pierce the curtain of distance and falsehood.

When this occurs, the marital union is stronger than death, not able to be "put asunder by anyone."

Excerpt from: Small Gems from What I am Reading Right Now:

Love, Marriage and Sexuality: Orthodox Perspectives-Fr. John Chryssavgis

(Right Sidebar)

photo:nevertorun

A Tangled Web: the one needful thing for all bloggers---my token political post

Desperately Needed for Bloggers Everyone:

a microsecond of charitable thought before hitting the send button saying anything

"......the American Constitution is not linked to a concession of absolute truth. It is the Declaration of Independence that is anchored upon self-evident truth, and the relation between the two documents is virtually unexplored in the Supreme Court. Indeed, only Justice Thomas has really thought about it seriously, hence my admiration.

Does Barack Obama believe in the truth of the human person? Not surprisingly, he values the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence-even as he argues that the deliberative democracy established by our Constitution casts suspicion upon a claim of absolute truth. The founders, Obama observes, uniformly rejected all forms of absolute authority, whether that of the monarch, the high priest, or the majority. And yet, as John Paul II told us, democracy detached from absolute truth can be little more than another form of totalitarianism. Obama has similarly observed that absolutists can be correct-as the blunt wrong of slavery illustrates. “Sometimes,” Obama notes, “absolute truths may well be absolute.”

To reconcile the pragmatism of democracy with claims of truth requires that our minds be nourished by wide perspectives discussed freely and respectfully; it requires a heart full of grace, not anger. Within our own Catholic community, we need to bear in mind one further caution from our new president: that claiming public territory outside the church requires persuasion, not intimidation or force. Translating particularistic faith beliefs into rational argument is the stuff of democracy. “I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons,” Obama said during the campaign, “but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or [invoke] God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.” 

Of course, that is the very reason Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop William Lori were so quick to remind candidate Biden of the scientific basis for the church’s life perspective. Indeed one might ask, with the church having brought forth its scientific claim in so forthright and objective a manner as it has in modern encyclicals, is it not proper for the burden of evidence now to shift to those who, for religious or nonreligious reasons, believe unfettered abortion ought to be permitted?

It is a valid question; and were the right-wing Catholic blogs not so preoccupied with demonizing me and other brothers and sisters in Christ who backed our president-elect, perhaps the question would receive some competent discussion.

See My Right Sidebar section titled: just right over there, a little bit higher >>>

--EXCERPTS/CURRENT BOOKS AND ARTICLES I AM READING

FROM: A Tangled Web: The Election & the Blogosphere....read the whole article, link to source.

Photo: looking above the tangled web BY  Azazelle

This is gonna bring me to my knees....

This is gonna bring me to my knees, I just wanna hold you close to me, originally uploaded by Lacking
Focus.

Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?)

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Remember the weak, you who are strong--you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful

Prayer to St. Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings

O Raphael, lead us towards those we are waiting for, those who are
waiting for us!  Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings, lead us by the hand
towards those we are looking for!  May all our movements, all their
movements, be guided by your Light and transfigured by your joy.

Angel guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet
of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze.  Lonely and
tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth, we feel the need
of calling to you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so
that we may not be as strangers in the Province of Joy, all ignorant of
the concerns of our country.

Remember the weak, you who are strong--you whose home lies beyond the
region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene, and
bright with the resplendent glory of God.
Amen.

photo:Preah Veaere