HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

Hero has a New Hobby (Facebook crosspost)

No, not beer drinking....Ant Farming (besides, as she says "Beer is a drink for the commoners, and her palate would never stoop that low). If you want to know what is behind this "private joke", ask her.  This rates right up there with the "beanbag chair" story, the "oatmeal story", and the "Hero can do anything if she has a pair of rubber gloves" story.

Since we're not young....

From selections from Twenty-one Love Poems:

III

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time

for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp

in time tells me we're not young.

Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,

my limbs streaming with a purer joy?

did I lean from any window over the city

listening for the future

as I listened here with nerves tuned for your ring?

And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.

Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark

of the blue-eyed grass of early summer, 

the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.

At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.

At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.

I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,

and somehow, each of us will help the other live,

and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

     ADRIENNE RICH (b. 1929)

photo the long way by stephmel (away)

The hesitant hour

Home is behind, the world ahead
And I have many paths to tread;
Through shadow, to the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight.

Mist and shadow, cloud and shade,
All shall fade! All shall fade!

 

Tolkien

Fellowship of the Ring, chapter 3

PHOTO:sleep baby sleep by Amsterdamned!

 

Still Looking

Eva, originally uploaded by Lothian's Foto's.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice


Eliot, Ash Wednesday

"for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at..."

for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at, originally uploaded by IzzY212.

Did I mention I finally went digital-Nikon D60 SLR

Taken with a 55-200mm F/4-5.6G Nikon Lens

PS:I know they are Lilacs, not roses, but I like the Eliot quote, and they did tell me they liked being looked at.

I OFFICIALLY RESIGN FROM THE CULTURE WARS

The Last Straw:

WOMEN SAVED BY SALVATION, THROUGH OBEDIENT WOMBS

 

IF THIS IS TRUE, I AM IN BIG TROUBLE
I CAN'T EVEN CONTROL WHEN I GET MY PERIOD?!?
(editorial comment..Apologies to the Male reader;I know that word makes you squeamish....)

On Sunday, Dr. Bruce Ware delivered one of the finest, most succinct presentations of the Complementarian point of view that I have ever heard. His address was the second of a Complementarian series of sermons being hosted by Denton Bible Church (the first address is here). The message is deeply biblical and powerfully delivered. The audio is available from DBC’s podcast, or you can listen to it below.

The substance of Ware’s address consists of ten reasons “why we should affirm that God designed there to be male headship” in the original created order. In essence, Dr. Ware explains how Genesis 1-3 teaches male headship as a part of God’s pre-fall creation. Here is a summary of the ten reasons:

1. The order of creation, with the man created first, indicates God’s design of male headship in the male/female relationship (Gen 2; 1 Tim 2:13).

2. The means of the woman’s creation as “out of” or “from” the man bears testimony also to the headship of the male in the relationship (Gen 2:23; 1 Cor 11:8).

3. While both man and woman are fully the image of God (Gen 1:26-28), yet the woman’s humanity as “image of God” is established as she comes from the man. Adam names her “isha” (woman) because she was “taken out of ish (man)” (Gen 2:23; cf. 5:3).

4. The woman was created for the man’s sake or to be Adam’s helper (Gen 2:18, 20).

5. Man (not woman) was given God’s moral commandment in the garden; and woman learned God’s moral command from the man (Gen 2:16-17).

6. Man named the woman both before and after the entrance of sin (Gen 2:19-20, 23; 3:20).

7. Satan approached the woman (not the man) in the temptation, usurping God’s design of male-headship (Gen 3; 1 Tim 2:14).

8. Although the woman sinned first, God comes to the man first, holding him (not her) primarily responsible for their sin (Gen 3:8-9; Rom 5:12-19; 1 Cor 15:22).

9. The curses on the man and woman indicate the fundamental purposes for which each was created, respectively (Gen 3:16-19).

10. The Trinity’s equality and distinction of Persons is mirrored in male-female equality and distinction (1 Cor 11:3).

Read the rest HERE

____________________SCHISM__________________

 

 

...but is the eternity that awaits you

In case you didn't read the short story "Day Lilies" in it's entirety, or you missed
the point, or you are wondering why the story and certain lines reached out and
grasped me and wouldn't let go, here it is from another angle.

Maybe you are a poetry person, and you need it distilled down even further.

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone away
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you

RSThomas

photo: decemberstephme

Things I usually will only post on FaceBook

That's because precisely 11 people have access to it, and every one of the 11 have seen me at my best and at my worst.
I realized something not long ago...somewhere, somehow I have lost my voice...and the reasons are too complicated, too personal, and don't belong here.

 

But what remnants that are left, what words I can still manage to string together keep showing up on my Facebook.
Some days they just explode.
Kind of like fireworks.
My daughters keep getting requests from their friends to "friend me", well, because everybody likes fireworks.

But, being the wise women that they are,  they have been keeping me on a tight leash, knowing the struggles I am having finding my voice again after almost everything in my life has been shaken to the foundations.

They also know the power of words can connect us to  the Grace and Power of The Word, The Logos, the source of Life.
They also know that life without words, without voice is the absolute opposite of the Abundant, Joy-filled, life that God created us to live-in communion with Him and with each other.

 

The last several months, I have found  silence easier, but it's not out of self-control, wisdom, or any other high minded ideal. It's probably more because I am sorely lacking in those virtues.
Keeping silent may cut down on falling into sin or just general foolishness, but if you use silence as a way to avoid risk, you may also miss the the whole purpose of The Logos.
It's also one of those gifts that cannot be hoarded, buried, or hidden or only brought out for special, or scripted occasions.
If Faith comes through hearing, if no one speaks, chooses silence out of fear or selfishness, we rob each other of the  Grace, Truth and Faith that we are meant to give one another by proclaiming the Gospel, we withhold the fullness of Christ, because the Gospel is not a formula or words or dogma, The Gospel is a Person.

It takes me forever to make connections, as I have confessed here many times.
Well, here's another one.
Every Mass since I became Orthodox closes with the reading of the Last Gospel: John 1:1-14 (multiply 3 Masses/week by about 75....I'm slow, I admit it)

Because of The Word, I exist, I continue to exist, I have been pulled from the devouring darkness back into the Light,  I am able to KNOW God and move towards  union with Him.
Christ not only restored us to our Father, He made it possible for us to be restored and reconciled to one another, in fact our relationship to God is so entwined with our relationship to each other, one is not possible without the other.

So as the words of the Liturgy, prayer, scripture bring us into communion with God, words have power to bring us into union with each other.

By His Incarnation, everything that He assumed by taking on Flesh, has removed boundaries of of what is Holy and what is not.
Words, speaking, communicating, relationships are all included.
Every moment is open to Grace, every touch, every movement, every word (words of joy, words of lament, words of comfort, words or praise, in short, words that tell the STORIES of salvation, especially your salvation....I haven't found any list of exclusions yet) can be sacramental.

photo Once Upon a Time by artsyevie

So, silence does have a place in our lives, but if we choose to avoid words out of fear or risk, fear of trust, fear of....death, we have chosen to spurn one of the most powerful gifts that God has given.

all other photos by nikaa

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE...A Few More Words From Elaine Neil Orr

More from the short story Day Lilies by Elaine Neil Orr's

photo by ☮hanna

There were two truths about herself that Ellen had told her friend.
She wanted phone calls about awards and she did not want anyone else in her community to be named Ellen.
She had grown up a white girl in West Africa where other girls had names like Tunji and Deli or possibly Esther and Ruth.
Her parents had been missionaries.

Now in her American life, if she went to a party and was introduced to another woman named Ellen, she left.
Or even if she wasn’t introduced but just heard that some other woman at the party shared her name, she left.
Her reasons were obscure; she could hardly explain to her husband. Once she had tried:

“I came to the U.S. when I was fifteen. I felt so lost.
At night in bed, I would say to myself, ‘I’m Ellen and I grew up in Nigeria.’ I would say it over and over.”

“Right,” he had commented.

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

“You felt lost so you said your name to yourself at night. Ok.”

And then he had turned on the television, signaling to his wife that she was being self-absorbed.....

****

Ellen grieved over years of tedious arguments with Martin when now she could see that neither of them had been right or wrong.
They had only been so different in their habits and desires. Since her father’s death, dreams dragged through her nights like heavy,
twined cables under the Atlantic.

She had a dream of her own death in which no one noticed her absence.

Ellen needed some things to keep her afloat and in the world. Her name, for example, or a certificate of merit that would say:
Look. You have performed splendidly. Many people love you.

"How are you going to manage with only living people as guides, people swayed by the heat or a deadline, people who believed time ran out? "

I love it when I find sentences and groups of words that are like little treasures.
I found myself writing down almost every other one in this short story By Image Journal's Newsletter's Artist of the Month, Elaine Neil Orr.

 

Image is also the annual Sponsor of the Glen Workshop

Elaine Neil Orr

Elaine Neil Orr tells the truth about the way modern westerners think. Perhaps because she was raised in Nigeria, she has some critical distance from the American mind. Though the language of psychology allows us to sanitize and dissect our pride, fear, hunger, and self-absorption, the ancient demons have not been eradicated. They live with us even in our quietest moments, among the gentlest and most cerebral of people. In her fiction, Orr paints this phenomenon unsparingly, with a wry, light touch. Her prose is a pleasure: energetic, surprising, and perfectly matched to the mind of her characters. The result is at once comic and devastating. In her story “Day Lilies,” we can laugh at the main character’s narcissism, but her mind is drawn so carefully, her foibles presented with such honesty, that we can’t really distance ourselves from her.

Like Chekhov, Orr isolates small, emotional movements so as to illuminate their cataclysmic significance. Her subject is the ethics of love, not just as an emotion but as a choice that transforms us, a force that can break the spell of contemporary self-obsession.

Read Elaine Neil Orr's Day Lilies, featured in Issue 54

EXCERPT:

As she sat in her office chair looking out the window, she remembered her father’s hands, always
so beautifully groomed, the nails cut across but  tapered slightly at the edges and the skin under
the nails the color of opal. How sad she had been in his last hours as the skin turned lavender, almost blue. 
But somehow her witness of that change had brought an intimacy with her father that Ellen had not experienced before, this though she had been in love  with him all of her life. She had never known exactly how to say, I am fourteen; can you tell me what to do now? In the weeks before his death, she did not say, my father, how can I  help you? I am sorry for the distress I caused you when I left my husband. She had never said, Dad, you sometimes frightened me with your requirements.

When she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder, she did not turn around.

“You were so focused as a little girl;
you would stick your tongue out between your teeth when you played.”

“I guess that explains the braces later,” she answered,
remembering how he was the one who took her to the orthodontist....

“You were already where you wanted to be when you were little, suspended in eternity.
Why do you ask so much of yourself now?”

Ellen stood and turned to face her father.
For some reason, she imagined he would be wearing his tan jacket and a blue shirt underneath it.
But no one was there. Only the door she had closed behind her.

She sat again in her chair.
Holding her knees with both hands, she was coming to know what the ancients meant by angels.
They meant beings who are closer to the living after they die than they were before, messengers who still desire to make something right.

Since his death, her father had already spoken to her twice....

Six months since the stroke and Ellen no longer questioned her father’s presence. Sitting in her office she was becoming grateful for his death. Not that she did not weep often and literally hold herself and rock in a sadness larger than the ocean she had crossed as a girl.

At the moment, however, she was annoyed.

Why did you leave?” she asked. She did not mean why did you die? She meant she wasn’t through with the conversation at hand. “What do you mean I ask so much of myself? You asked so much of me. Remember! I need some absolution. 
I think I lost something. Was I too ambitious? I don’t know. Tell me.”  Her voice was rising and she wondered too late if her colleague in the next office could hear her.

Ellen let her eyes rest in the branches of a tree outside her window. Perhaps she sat for fifteen minutes, maybe only two or three. And then she felt a movement, like a shift in a lock, unloosening something in her most interior self.
Ellen breathed deeply. Her shoulders relaxed. “He’s telling her to ease up.” Now she was almost whispering. “Maybe I could ease up on my students. They have their losses too. Maybe we still have time.” Her father had said she lived in eternity.

Ellen began to wish she had had a grandfather, someone she had known as a girl and who had
died before her father. James and Ben were her  grandfathers’ names. But they were dead before she was born, and growing up as she had in Africa, she might not have known them anyway.

Ellen realized that what she had needed for a long time was an ancestor.
How are you going to manage with only living people as guides,
people swayed by the heat or a deadline, people who believed time ran out?

No wonder Nigerians revered their ancestors.
How much can the living know? The idea swelled up in her, large and green.
It was preposterous to wish for people dead. What was more preposterous was to be so alone when the dead—your “late” father, as Nigerians would say—could provide so much perspective.....



Read the entire short story HERE

click right HERE to find out about  Elaine Neil Orr's  memoir, Gods of Noonday: A White Girl’s African Life   

 

 Image: Art Faith Mystery: A Quarterly Journal,

and is also the sponsor of the annual Glen Workshop

To read more about Image and its suite of programs,
check out our brochure (below). (PDF file)

photo by marcus counihan