All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.
We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.
What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.
Theodore Roethke
People tell me I am creative. Maybe. Maybe not.
When it comes to mistakes, sin, I have a very limited, boring,and predictable repertoire;
And prolific; Fortunately the list of excuses and is short, not to mention worthless in the on anyone that still might try to pass them off.
I never realized how I overused "Simul justus et peccator". Everyone's better off since I had to cross that one off the list; especially those who saw in me more "Simul" peccator et peccator" than anything.(apologies to any Latin grammarians).
But I know two people who are very creative, and outdo me in the Faith and humility department even on a bad day.
See, "Little Miss" can be wrong...and will try that "Livin on a prayer thing" I'm Glad someone's in touch with God's sense of humor.(btw Opra eez enkripted, but will give paswrd for a chee.....never mind)
Well it's not Spin Doctor or Twisted Sister(shock value only works once..twice, at most...then I need something useful), plus I'll probably lose half the cool points I earned, but here are a few of my program notes, and some of the soundtracks I am using trying to change the script of my life:
"But the man who has true faith and true humility demands nothing from God or anyone else. Of all the things he could request, he begs for only one thing—not life, not strength, not resolve or willpower, but mercy. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. That is his only prayer—that his Creator have mercy on him; that his Savior pity him; and that the Spirit breathe into him once more the faintest whisper of God’s undying compassion. And in return, this man of faith and humility offers nothing except his entire being—all that he is and all that he has--to God for the good of all men. Such an offer he makes, not to buy God’s affection, but knowing that all he has is not his own, but the Lord’s—which he has only tainted or ruined or abused or wasted by his prodigal living. And so “mercy” is his only prayer. And “have mercy” is his gasping breath."
From:True Faith & True Humility
from Conversi ad Dominum by fr john w fenton
Look inside for the elusive goldmine
Broken glass and a little cheap wine
is all that I can find.
And bundles of contradictions,
my heart full of loose connections,
hands across my eyes.
I cannot disguise I'm everyman's daughter.
who do you think that I am?
It don't matter long as we can understand.
I am hurting someone.
I am hurting someone just like, just like you.
Insulting the wounds of others,
my sisters, my brothers,
my vision's way too good.
I carry the inward aching.
Like you, I too am naked.
I don't look that good,
but this is flesh and blood. I'm everyman's daughter.
Look at all the blood we've spilt.
I can't deal with all this fundamental guilt.
I am hurting someone.
I am hurting someone just like, just like you.
I am. I am. I am everyman's daughter.
Everyman's Daughterst
Over the Rhine
recording: Good Dog Bad Dog
photo:artofgold
I will remember
every dream about you
I will remember
I could not doubt you
All my first impressions
of my new possession
I will remember
I will remember
Every shadow
every shiver
every breath of borrowed air
somehow
I feel now
Every whisper
taken prisoner
every brush of cloud
and furrowed brow
I feel...
All the rest is history
I will remember
every sliver of you
I will remember
every door we slip through
every curving hour
every dying ember
I will remember
there is no other
Every color of our sorrow
every fallen angel's graceful bow
I feel now
Every broken word unspoken....
I feel...
All the rest is history
Every kiss and curse
every burning thirst...
Every sound we make
is a new prayer prayed
disappearing disappearing
I hold on now
Every shade of white
in the thieving night
that we steal to grow inspired
I know right now
This last day....
But I will remember
every dream about you
I will remember
I could not doubt you
I will remember
No other lover
WORDS AND MUSIC :OVER THE RHINE
ALBUM: AMATEUR SHORT-WAVE RADIO
Today is the first day of the rest
Of our lives
Tomorrow is too late to pretend
Everything's all right
I'm not getting any younger as long
As you don't get any older
I'm not going to state that yesterday never was
Bloodshot deadbeat and a lack of sleep
Making your mascara bleed
Tears down your face
Leaving traces of my mistakes
(When I say)
If I promise to go to church on Sunday
Will you go with me on Friday night?
If you live with me, I'll die for you
And this compromise
I hereby solemnly swear to tell
The whole truth
And nothing but the truth is what
I'll ever hear from you now;
"Trust" is a dirty word that comes
Only from such a liar
But "respect" is something I will earn..
If you have faith
"Church On Sunday" by Greenday
photo Foolish Things by 6261'
By now many have read this headline and have rolled their eyes,
shaken their heads, and repeated the cliches that i have heard a
thousand times (which is impressive, since I have only been Orthodox
for 8 months).
Many are nothing but racial slurs, and I won’t repeat them, the others have to do with endless petty squabbles, no one’s in charge, they are still living in the 4th century, rude and don’t know how to behave out in the real world....
I must admit, I was a bit embarrassed at first reading the short
press release on the EWTN site. It did sound like bad manners, or at
that least someone should have done their homework before giving the
Church of Estonia a seat at the table.
And I read and prayed, and read some more. And then I read a few other
news releases, most saying the exact same thing, except one name kept
showing up. A name I recognized. Someone who’s writings I have been
reading for quite some time; someone I have grown to deeply respected
and love; and in an article dated 28 May 2007 Bishop Hilarion of
Vienna and Austria made a prediction. Though stated much more
eloquently, basically he said this meeting was a train wreck waiting to
happen......not because of any of the cliche reasons mentioned above,
but because of something that happened months before; a result of a
general misunderstanding (still?) of how the Orthodox church works.
And it does work, and works well, for almost 2,000 years. The Headline said:
You can read the interview with Bishop Hilarion, if this is a
subject that interests you. But unless you have a dog in this fight, I
find that most people would rather not put in the effort it takes to come to the conclusion, that the Church is a Mystery.
...A reason I write any on this with fear and trepidation, and why this post may disappear tomorrow.
Once you get a glimmer of how things work (and that’s all you can get, I know people who want to nail things down and hate the M word, will be tempted to say this is impossible to remedy and might as well cut and run. It is impossible for us, but not for God.
After reading the story behind the story that will probably never be told, (it’s too complicated for a short press release), though I pray fervently every day for unity, I found myself almost grateful that they walked out in protest. Nothing against Estonia, they were just a catalyst for something much larger and more important.
It was about impatience, frustration, assumptions, and most of
all, that the East not being forcefully pressed into the mold of the West (which I am not critcizing....that is just as much a Mystery to me), even if
it would streamline the move toward unity....and even if there needs to be changes made on the Orthodox side, which may be, and is possible.
And it may sound like the committee, and Cardinal Kasper, and Constantinople were on Terra firma, after all an Ecumenical council, one we recognize, did give Constantinople the place of "first among equal", as the "New Rome", so to make things more complicated it appears we can't even abide by what we claim to agree but it is more about what "first among equals" means...there has been no similar development in the East as in the West on that office; To identify the Orthodox Church,is a matter of who She is in communion with, as it's not Rome, Constantinople, or Moscow (I know about the whole embarrassing "Third Rome ", Where the Bishop is (the local Bishop, holding guarding the True Faith, which is Union with Christ) there is the Church. Each local Church is this way is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. And it is only in as far as she is in Union with Christ she is in perfect union with every other Bishop and his flock who holds the same faith.
Should there be a system that creates a single voice for the Orthodox Church, to make the process of reunion, and help settle issues that She has never been confronted with before? If it is, then it will be done under the guidance and seal of the Holy Spirit, who has led us this far by faith......and had never failed. But when? Timeliness to accomplish things are a whole other ball of wax. Father Reardon likes to joke the orthodox church has two speeds-the fast track--it may be done in less than 200 years, and the slow track....things that we are "still" working on.
Father Freeman is right, by all standards, we are a miserable failure, held together "moment by moment, on the love and forgiveness of each by all and of all by each. Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other or the whole thing falls apart."(Glory to God for all things, The Church as Failure.)
We find our unity, our Faith, our survival, and our Ecclesiology in the Cross, in humility. Contrary to rumor, we do have Doctrinal standards, creeds confessions, but they are not the "entrance" to the Church, nor the glue that holds Her together; that place is held by Christ, and a direct encounter with Him through the Worship and Liturgy of the Church (a poor summary of Father Fenton's excellent and informative words on Creeds and Confessions in Orthodoxy) See the link for it on his Website, Conversi ad Dominum
There is nothing I pray for more than to be able to commune at the same table as my Catholic brothers and sisters, but not at the price of overturning what has safeguarded the faith for 2,000 years (not to mention the Faith that is saving my own soul), in exchange for expediency. And I will ( By Mercy) be at that table when they finally are able to share it together, as the Whole church is present at every celebration of the Eucharist.
By modern standards may it borders on the ridiculous. It should
have fallen apart centuries ago, and looks like it may collapse
tomorrow, but today it stands, so we keep working toward unity.
How can you run an any organization like that.
Seems the “Aha” moment for Cardinal Kasper, the Vatican’s President
of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (who is still
trying nobly to nail jello to a wall), came just a couple years ago:
when he realized the Orthodox Church is not an entity in any way
resembling Roman Catholic structure, headed by an Eastern Pope (though
he very generously tried to help elect one for us---it would
make
everyone’s job easier and the process go faster).
He said: "We are increasingly conscious of the fact that an Orthodox Church does not really exist" -
(From FIRST THINGS, May, 2002;scroll down and see “Multi-Speed Ecumenism”)
“...the Orthodox Church is a family whose members freely associate together through the matrix of the Common Orthodox Faith, Whose model is the Holy Trinity, a pattern of unity in diversity. There is no such thing as authority being imposed from outside, even by some politically powerful or wealthy, secular-style organization. Authority in the Orthodox Church is not conferred in some secular, legalistic manner, as a result of financial wealth or political power, or even numbers of faithful. Authority in the Orthodox Church is granted by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love. The voice of that authority is heard through Church Councils, whether Pan-Orthodox or merely local, or through inspired individuals...
O Cardinal, you have been looking in the wrong places! Seek, and ye shall find!“
I know that’s not much help when you really need to talk to whoever is in charge of this chaotic mess, called the Orthodox Church.
Lord have Mercy on us all, and forgive me if any of my words offend. It is not my intention.
I am just trying to make a defense for what looks indefensible Maybe I should leave that to God.
“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:
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
From Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wind in the Door"
Close Second:
From Madeleine L'Engle's “A Wrinkle in Time.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead - New York Times:
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
guessanswer 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
Continue reading "Cesario's been reading your blog. Quick write something.." »
We cannot say,
“Only read the Scripture, do not look at me as an icon.”
Nobody gets that kind of free ride as a Christian.
You’re an icon whether you like it or not.
And there will be other images as well - either well done reflecting heaven itself - or poorly reflecting everything other than heaven.
But there will be icons.
God give us grace to rightly honor the windows to heaven He has opened for us, and to be a window to heaven for all who see us.
From "Bad Icons" @ "Glory to God for all things"
"...even badly marred images of Christ in other human beings can reveal the depth of the love of God if seen by the eyes of a saint."
We are badly marred images, and God knows, none of us are saints, so you might have to look a through all the cracks and scratches and smudges, and sometimes sift through the broken shards, but He is still there is us all.
But don't stop looking for heaven, find better windows if you need to, but never stop looking for Him. He is always closer than we know.
And we will try to allow Him to shine up these windows and let more of His light in.
When you start to doubt that you exist, God believes in you
Confounded by the evidence, God believes in you
When your light burns so dim, when your chances seem so slim
And you swear you don't believe in him, God believes in you
When you rise up just to fall again, God believes in you
Deserted by your closest friends, God believes in you
When you're betrayed with a kiss, you turn your cheek to another fist
It dose not have to end like this, God believes in you
Oh everything matters if anything matters at all
Everything matters no matter how big, no matter how small
Oh God believes in you, God believes in you
When you're so ashamed that you could die, God believes in you
And you can't do right even though you try, God believes in you
Blessed are the ones who grieve, the ones who mourn, the ones who bleed
In sorrow you sow but in joy you reap, God believes in you
Pierce Pettis
From the album Everything Matters, © 1998
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