HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

yet even at the grave we make our song: yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints,
where sorrow and pain are no more,
neither sighing, but life everlasting.

Thou only art immortal,
the creator and maker of mankind;
and we are mortal, formed of the earth,
and unto earth shall we return.
For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying,
Dust thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return..
All we go down to the dust;
yet even at the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints,
where sorrow and pain are no more,
neither sighing, but life everlasting.

Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee,
a sheep of thine own fold,
a lamb of thine own flock,
a sinner of thine own redeeming.
Receive him into the arms of thy mercy,
into the blessed rest of everlasting peace,
and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

photo;and the light circles round it.    8/25/07, originally uploaded by gary isaacs'  photos.

Memory Eternal: For my Mother who fell asleep in the Lord on Monday

 

Unveiled thy whole creation lies,

all souls are thine; we must not say

that those are dead who pass away,

from this our world of flesh set free

we know them living unto thee.

Not spilled like water on the ground,

not wrapped in dreamless sleep profound,

not wandering in unknown despair

beyond thy voice, thine arm, thy care;

not left to lie like fallen tree;

not dead, but living unto thee.

From "hymn God of the living" byJohn Ellerton

photo above:Table of cultures, originally uploaded by Matzepeng.

Reflections on the Liturgy...just showing up

Five times does the priest turn round towards the people,
to denote that our Lord manifested Himself five times
on the day of His Resurrection,
as stated above in the treatise on Christ's Resurrection (55, 3, Objection 3)

But the priest greets the people seven times:
namely, five times, by turning round to the people,
and twice without turning round, namely.
When he says, "The Lord be with you" before the "Preface,"
and again when he says, "May the peace of the Lord be ever with you"
and this is to denote the sevenfold grace of the Holy Ghost.
But a bishop, when he celebrates on festival days,
in his first greeting says, "Peace be to you,"
which was our Lord's greeting after Resurrection,
Whose person the bishop chiefly represents.

There is  nothing is there by chance, nothing is done "just becausse we always did it that way".  When we start saying things like that, we are losing something needful, no matter how minor it may seem.

Every move, every action, every word  has a purpose.
It's a goal for how to live life we strive for but never reach.
Another reason to treasure those holy and perfect moments when every sense is hit by wave after wave of God in All, and All in God.


One of the things I love about the liturgy is that if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, everything needful in life is there. In the past, I thought there was no harm in little changes here, a little tinkering there.....sure, some things didn't go over as well as others; but I had no idea, and I am afraid worship committees I served on, were clueless that we were literally messing with perfection, the greatest gift and means given by God to fulfill all our longings, lead us safely through this sojourn; It is the place that all we need do is knock, ask, and seek with humble hearts, and Everything was there, already, in plain sight; We needed only be faithful in our coming before God; We work out our Salvation in fear and trembling, but we do not have to worry about blazing a new path, discerning "God's Will" for our lives, and rarely do I find myself on the horns of a dilemma.....Salvation is the easiest thing in the world, and the most difficult thing in the World. But it is complete, and he pours out His Grace and we lack for nothing as long as we place our trust in Him. 

Several years ago I remember reading "Fr. Stephen Freeman's Apophthegmata", an ongoing feature on the Fr. Kimel's Blog, Pontifications: that 95% of Orthodoxy was just showing up.
At the time, in my previous denomination, there was a split between quality and quantity in liturgy; so the "just showing up"  didn't make much sense.

But then I started showing up, just simply showing up...as close to 100% of the time as I could, and things started happening.

But now it makes all the sense in the world. 
I am changed, almost imperceptibly, every moment I spend gathered before God as part of the Church....and that includes the time spent in prayer at home. There is no "in between" time, or "preparation time".

It's all part of the continuous growing into Christ, lived out through the life of the Church, 
I am grateful to be in a Parish that does not neglect the gathering together;

I am grateful Father gently and firmly reminds us of the importance of our coming together. 
I know my family and friends probably get tired of having to schedule things around Mass, and Vespers, and other gathering together of the Church; but the ground lost when I don't 'show up" is much more perceptible and immediate that the slow, struggling forward movement I do eventually see when I do show up.



The Liturgy teaches me about God, about doctrine, about history, tradition, how to pray, how to act, how to love, but most of all The liturgy teaches me how to live 


Today is the day of Salvation. We live in the Fullness, of Christ. His gift of Salvation is whole and complete and He desires we live abundantly, wasting nothing He has given. ...... 

This is how I strive to live.....everything, no matter how small, becomes Holy when we offer it to Him. 
We are given a finite number of days, movements, thoughts, words, and opportunities to move closer to perfect unity in Christ. How extravagant God is in mercy and how careless and rarely aware how much we let slips through our fingers without notice; His 
Mercy is infinite, but this time on Earth is not. How much have I lost that I will never get back....yet He keeps on pouring out mercy upon mercy. 
What things seem so important, that they so easily catch my eye and cause me to turn away, if only for a moment?. 
What did I lose in those moments? Has it every been worth what I paid for it? 
"The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and a broken and contrite heart He will not despise.".

Photo Flickr:Golden, originally uploaded by Matzepeng.

A gift you couldn’t have the wit to choose.

“Wakened by birdcalls, I stroll down our lane.
I touch the infinite sky, the barbarian sun.
I’m tousled by a breeze that smells of rain.
I do believe this day has just begun.
My legacy from History is Now:
I’ll take it – in the air, in the mouth, in the dandle-bed,
In the savor, in the spending, in the Times, in the apple bough,
In that dream I first dreamed when I was eleven,
A stifled cry, then joy! I am not dead! –
For reality is vintage and delicious
Especially when you taste it while it brews
Because it comes as love comes, heart-skip sudden,
Yet long as a lifetime in a once past wishes,
A gift you couldn’t have the wit to choose.”

A Legacy

by Daniel Hoffman

Photo/Flickr:ELYSIUM  by nikaa

Memory is Holy

 

“All true art tirelessly teaches that the whole world
rests upon the individual.
That is its central point, whether it remains caught up with it
or sets forth from it towards society or metaphysical space.
The individual, with his own face and proper name,
will always be the great subject matter of art.

“When people challenge me and ask what is the place of art in
that sphere of death and horror,
I reply: who can redeem the fears, the pains, the tortures,
and the hidden beliefs from the darkness?
What will bring them out of obscurity and give them
a little warmth and respect, if not art?
Who will take that great mass which everyone simply calls
the `dreadful horror’and break it up into those tiny, precious particles?”

Photo/Flickr:INTERMEZZO by nikaa

The Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld was born in 1932 in Romania. Eight years later the Nazis seized Czernowitz, his home town, killed his mother and deported Appelfeld and his father to a concentration camp in the Ukraine. He escaped and remained a fugitive for three years before joining the Red Army. Read some of the details in The Story of a Life, his emblematic chronicle of 20th-century horrors narrated by a voice as quiet and oblique as the voices in his novels.Even when his narrative is dry and factual, a mist clings to his words. I can’t think of another novel in which so much is left so eloquently unsaid as Badenheim 1939.

Jean Amery, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Primo Levi – have chosen suicide, and who is to condemn them? Appelfeld not only went on living but thrived. His friend Philip Roth has written that Appelfeld possesses the “playfully thoughtful air of a benign wizard,” and I observed the same quality. In the Radov Lectures he delivered at Columbia University in 1991, published as Beyond Despair, Appelfeld says:

History is holy....Is written down for ever, and nothing is ever lost.

If God incarnated himself in man, died and rose from the dead,
    All human endeavors deserve attention
    Only to the degree that they depend on this,
    I.e., acquire meaning thanks to this event.
    We should think of this by day and by night.
    Every day, for years ever stronger and deeper.
    And most of all about how human history is holy
    And how every deed of ours becomes a part of it,
    Is written down for ever, and nothing is ever lost.
    Because our kind was so much elevated
    Priesthood should be our calling
    Even if we do not wear liturgical garments.
    We should publicly testify to the divine glory
    With words music, dance, and every sign.

From the Poem Either/Or
Czeslaw Milosz

Photo:Flickr MEMORIES IN GOLD by nikaa

My favorite opening line from any book...missing her already...Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem sempiternam.

"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden,...."

From Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wind in the Door"

Close Second:

“It was a dark and stormy night,...."

From Madeleine L'Engle's “A Wrinkle in Time.”

Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead - New York Times:

“I have heard your prayer and seen your tears.” (Isa. 38:5)

Little Girl with Flower, originally uploaded by artofgold.

THE ANGEL STANDING IN THE SUN

Karen Fiser


Words come into your life unbidden.

They are messengers who must arrive on time.

Here forever is the turtle with grandfather's knife

plunged into its softer underbelly.

The turtle keeps struggling. The child cries

no, no, no, it wasn't expecting to be hurt

from that side, it wasn't protected.

Thinks, this must be what pain is.

At the clinic a little boy screams inconsolably

before the saw has even touched his cast,

that hurts, that hurts, that hurts,

as the doctor leaning over to me whispers,

I just want to listen to your heart.

So Anscombe looked up from the bottom of the falls,

water plummeting down the karst,

thinking finally she understood what down meant.

One morning you stand listening in the front hall,

hearing the glass shatter as it's thrown into the truck,

you must have heard it a dozen times before

but here you are, the sound of damage

moving down the street,

and you here, weeping without reason.


Karin Fiser


“I have heard your prayer and seen your tears.” (Isa. 38:5)

I would like to step out of my heart

....I would like to step out of my heart

an go walking beneath the enormous sky.

I would like to pray.

And surely of all the stars that perished

long ago,

one still exists.

I think that I know

which one it is--

which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,

stands like a white city...

Rainer Maria Rilke

From:Lament

photo: Barny_k

Cesario's been reading your blog. Quick write something..

I am working on three writing projects right now, plus reading several books.
Most of the writing isn't fit to print, so you get to hear about what I am reading (get ready for long quotes, Hero, but trust me, these are not boring...).

And there is a quiz at the end, so pay attention.

Cesario, do English major's still read Graham Greene?
Or do they just watch the movie versions like everyone else?
If you have seen Jordan's 1993 version of "The End of the Affair", you need to read the book.  He makes  "minor" changes to the plot and characters, but minor to some, are major mutilation to others.

The film's only major stumble is in allowing Bendrix's final wooing of Sarah to succeed, at least temporarily. In the novel, he chases her from one place to another, making impassioned pleas on behalf of his own (sexual) desire; but he is unable to break her resolve. In the film, the two former lovers return to Bendrix's apartment, have sex, and begin to glimpse a rather more conventional form of happiness as they plan a life together. This imagined happiness ultimately slips from their grasp; but the film's audience may see this as divine revenge against Sarah for breaking her promise, rather than (as the novel has it) a direct consequence of Bendrix's self-absorbed pursuit. In the film, Sarah emerges as a person of weaker character--a woman so desperate for a virile man than she is willing to cash in her passionate relationship with God. Consequently, her quasi-miraculous interventions are much less credible.

David S. Cunningham, Movie Review, Christian Century
                           

So read the book.
I thought you might find this part interesting.  Sarah is contemplating materialism (not the consumer type, the incarnational type), and how it makes  love possible.

From Sarah's Journal......

It was very hot today and it dripped with rain.  So I went into the dark church at the corner of Park Road to sit down for a while.  Henry was home and I didn't want to see him.  I try to remember to be kind at breakfast, kind at lunch when he's home, kind at dinner and sometimes I forget and he's kind  back.  Two people being kind to each other for a lifetime. 

When I came in and sat down and looked round I realized it was a Roman church, full of plaster statues and bad art, realistic art.  I hated the statues, the crucifix, all the emphasis on the human body.  I was trying to escape from the human body and all it needed.  I thought I could believe in some kind of God that bore no relation to ourselves, something vague, amorphous, cosmic, to which I had promised something and which had given me something in return-stretching out of the vague into the concrete human life, like a powerful vapour moving among the chairs and walls.  One day I too would become part of that vapour-I would escape myself for ever.

And then I came into that dark church in Park Road and saw the bodies standing around me on all the altars-the hideous plaster statues with their complacent faces, and I remembered that they believed in the resurrection of the body, the body I wanted destroyed for ever.  I had done so much injury with this body.  How could I want to preserve any of it for eternity and suddenly I remembered a phrase of Richard's-about human beings inventing doctrines to satisfy their desires, and I thought how wrong he is.
If I were to invent a doctrine it would be that the body was never born again, and it rotted with last year's vermin.  It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another.  Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag,  but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another?
If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.  Well, the pendulum swung today and I thought, instead of my own body, of Maurice's.  I thought of certain lines life had put on his face at personal as a line of his writing; I thought of a new scar on his shoulder that wouldn't have been there if once he hadn't tried to protect another man's body from a falling wall.  He didn't tell me why he was in hospital those three days;  Henry told me.  That scar was part of his character as much as his jealousy.  And so I thought, do I want that body to be vapour (mine yes, but his?),  and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity. But could my vapour love that scar?  Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar.  We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds?  Love extends itself all the time, so that we can even love with our senseless nails;  we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve...

And of course on the altar there was a body too-such a familiar body with all the parts of a body, even the parts the loin-cloth concealed.  I remembered one in a Spanish church I had visited with Henry, where the blood ran down in scarlet paint from the eyes and the hands.  It had sickened me.  Henry wanted me to admire the twelfth century pillars, but I was sick and wanted to get out into the open air.  I though, these people love cruelty.  A vapour couldn't shock you with blood and cries.
When I came out into the plaza I said to Henry, "I can't bear all these painted wounds."  Henry was very reasonable-he's always reasonable.  He said, "Of course it's a very materialistic faith.  A lot of magic..."
"Is magic materialistic?  I asked.
"Yes, Eye of newt and toe of frog, finger of birth strangle babe.  You can't have anything more materialistic than that.  In the Mass they still believe in transubstantiation."

The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene

And if you think the 1955 version might be better, think again.  Here is an excerpt from the a article by Vaar Aragon.  He is not as diplomatic  as Mr. Cunningham,  and I am sure with a name like Vaar,  he has his reasons  for not being to fond of "Slavic Communists  with a hazy grasp of the English  Language."

   The 1955 film adaptation is widely - and somewhat excessively - despised by critics.  Its interpretation of the book’s events are crude and often sentimental.  A good example is the very end.  Maurice comes to the Mileses’ house, and finds that Sarah has died. 
He goes home and receives her last letter to him (posted during her illness) in the mail.  It describes her religious convictions in detail, and invites him to follow her.  He promises to do so, and the end credits roll. 
I think much of the film’s awkwardness can be blamed on its director, Edward Dmytryk.  It’s hard to believe that he, a Slavic Communist with a somewhat hazy grasp of the English language, could have had much sympathy with this odd love story driven mostly by dialogue and dialectic theology. 
The censors also bear some of the blame.  In the book, Maurice and Sarah use expletives, sleep together, and address God in quasi-blasphemous terms.  Needless to say, very little of that is found in the movie, and as a result it falls rather flat.
                                           

The Quiz:  What heresies of Christolgy is Sarah flirting (sorry, no pun intended) with here in this diary entry?

Leave your guess answer in the comments.

I know, I know. Jacques Barzun, Multiple Choice, and what I said before....forget it. Do the quiz.

click below for your choices