HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

Intimate Absence

There are legitimate experiences of absence within this ever-present world of God's grace,
but they are forms and modes of love.
Such were the experiences of the prophets of the Old Covenant, of the Son of God on the cross and in the darkness of his descent into hell;
Such are the experiences of all those who, in their several vocations, follow the Son.
These are the redemptive paths of love as it traces the foot-steps of sinners
in order to catch up with them and bring them home.

~ Hans Urs von Balthasar

 

 

photo: Untitled / Wintertales by nikaa

"Reality would burn. And I do not like it much"

 

 

 

Because you're not what I would have you be

I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

Seeking mirage where desert blooms, I mar

Your you. Love, I would like to see

Past all delusion to reality

Then would I see God's image in your face,

His hand in yours, and in your eyes his grace.

Because I'm not what I would have me be

I idolize two Ones who are not any place,

Not you, not me, and so they never touch.

Reality would burn. And I do not like it much.

And yet in you, in me, I find a trace

Of love which struggles to break through

The hidden lovely truth of me, of you.

 

 

From: The Irrational Season By Madeleine L'engle

 

 

Photo-key to heart By nikaa

October, again.

October-the month, that began the Year that has lasted almost 5.

"And everyone around me is disappearing It's been a long year

And all this mess around me is finally clear

So can I have a moment Just to say hello

Can you let your anger go?

 

is it finally clearing?

I don't know, but I can see farther than just the next few hours,

and maybe even beyond tomorrow.

 

So can I have this moment

just to say

Hello,

Again. 

 Isabella

 

Been a Long Day

IN A DARK TIME

In a Dark Time 

 

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

 

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

 

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

 

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

BUT WHY DID CHRIST HAVE TO DIE...?

But why does the Father desire this death?

Why is it necessary?

The answer to this question constitutes the third theme of our service, and it appears first in the "praises," which follow each verse of Psalm 119. They describe the death of Christ as His descent into Hades.

"Hades" in the concrete biblical language means the realm of death, that state of darkness, despair and destruction which is death. And, being the realm of death, which God has not created and which He did not want, it also signifies that the Prince of this world is all powerful in the world. Satan, Sin, Death -- these are the "dimensions" of Hades, its content. For sin comes from Satan and Death is the result of sin -- "sin came into the world, and death through sin" (Romans 5:12).

"Death reigned from Adam to Moses" (Romans 5:14), the entire universe has become a cosmic cemetery, was condemned to destruction and despair. And this is why death is "the last enemy" (I Corinthians 15:20) and its destruction constitutes the ultimate goal of the Incarnation.

This encounter with death is the "hour" of Christ of which He said that "for this purpose, I have come to this hour" (John 12:27)... And now this hour has come and the Son of God enters into Death.

The Fathers usually describe this moment as a duel between Christ and the Death, Christ and Satan. For this death was to be either the last triumph of Satan, or his decisive defeat. The duel develops in several stages. At first, the forces of evil seem to triumph. The Righteous One is crucified, abandoned by all, and endures a shameful death. He also becomes the partaker of "Hades," of this place of darkness and despair... But at this very moment, the real meaning of this death is revealed.

The One who dies on the Cross has Life in Himself, i.e.,

He has life not as a gift from outside, a gift which therefore can be taken away from Him, but as His own essence.

For He is the Life and the Source of all life.

"In Him was Life and Life was the light of man."

The man Jesus dies, but this Man is the Son of God.

As man, He can really die, but in Him, God Himself enters the realm of death, partakes of death. This is the unique, the incomparable meaning of Christ's death.

 

 

The Very Rev. Alexander Schmemann

From "Holy Week: A Liturgical Explanation for the Days of Holy Week" published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press

OF THE KINGDOM OF THE KINGDOM

   

If you will let people be wrong,

   
most of whatever love is
   
may begin. Justice will hang
   
all of us yet. Waft mercies
   
the guilty may walk on when
   
truth grows absolute. The trees
   
from which we shall dangle then
   
are everywhere. And since
   
not all trees can be cut,
   
all men may hang. But once
   
let love in, mercy out, ah, then
   
a bird song may defend us,
   
a mote -- can you dream it? -- heal!

Photo:Samantha*May- beyond the darkness 
Poem: John Ciardi From "In Fact:

 

…..and you ask me, Lazarus, why I listen for the sound of my own breath?--because it stopped; stopped dead; for days and eternity---so, yes, hearing startles me, and always will

"I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail"

 

Diving into the Wreck

      
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean            
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and et
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget      
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived her
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done 
and the treasures that prevail.    
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently                                    
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

 

photo "I Doubt if it be us"/"Framing the Peripheral Realities"/"Fragment"

by nikaa

Why on earth am I pretending?...I'm here again, the stars befriending

   "Here beneath the stars I'm landing
   And here beneath the stars not ending
   Why on earth am I pretending?
   I'm here again, the stars befriending..."

 

And For Bea, the Girl in Red: I have great faith in all things not yet spoken...

 

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken...hints of hope, hidden whispers in the November Wind

 

 

Child in Red 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Child in Red

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.

Rainer Maria Rilke

For Hero: Exposed on the cliffs of the heart...Now She knows...

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

Rainer Maria Rilke

How To Be a Poet (to remind myself) by Wendell Berry

   How To Be a Poet   

by Wendell Berry

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

 

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

 

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

 

PHOTOS:Back to the start by  Gabriela Camerotti 

A Day by nevertorun

Cold Hands by Gabriela Camerotti

by Hanna L.

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS

Commemorated on March 25

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS

FROM OCA

The Feast of the Annunciation is one of the earliest Christian feasts, and was already being celebrated in the fourth century. There is a painting of the Annunciation in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome dating from the second century. The Council of Toledo in 656 mentions the Feast, and the Council in Trullo in 692 says that the Annunciation was celebrated during Great Lent.

The Greek and Slavonic names for the Feast may be translated as "good tidings." This, of course, refers to the Incarnation of the Son of God and the salvation He brings. The background of the Annunciation is found in the Gospel of St Luke (1:26-38). The troparion describes this as the "beginning of our salvation, and the revelation of the eternal mystery," for on this day the Son of God became the Son of Man.

There are two main components to the Annunciation: the message itself, and the response of the Virgin. The message fulfills God's promise to send a Redeemer (Genesis 3:15): "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel." The Fathers of the Church understand "her seed" to refer to Christ. The prophets hinted at His coming, which they saw dimly, but the Archangel Gabriel now proclaims that the promise is about to be fulfilled.

We see this echoed in the Liturgy of St Basil, as well: "When man disobeyed Thee, the only true God who had created him, and was deceived by the guile of the serpent, becoming subject to death by his own transgressions, Thou, O God, in Thy righteous judgment, didst send him forth from Paradise into this world, returning him to the earth from which he was taken, yet providing for him the salvation of regeneration in Thy Christ Himself."

The Archangel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth in Galilee. There he spoke to the undefiled Virgin who was betrothed to St Joseph: "Hail, thou who art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."

In contrast to Eve, who was readily deceived by the serpent, the Virgin did not immediately accept the Angel's message. In her humility, she did not think she was deserving of such words, but was actually troubled by them. The fact that she asked for an explanation reveals her sobriety and prudence. She did not disbelieve the words of the angel, but could not understand how they would be fulfilled, for they spoke of something which was beyond nature.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" (Luke 1:34).

"And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: therefore also that which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.' And Mary said, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.' And the angel departed from her" (Luke 1: 35-38)."

In his Sermon 23 on the day of the Annunciation, St Philaret of Moscow boldly stated that "the word of the creature brought the Creator down into the world." He explains that salvation is not merely an act of God's will, but also involves the Virgin's free will. She could have refused, but she accepted God's will and chose to cooperate without complaint or further questions.

The icon of the Feast shows the Archangel with a staff in his left hand, indicating his role as a messenger. Sometimes one wing is upraised, as if to show his swift descent from heaven. His right hand is stretched toward the holy Virgin as he delivers his message.

The Virgin is depicted either standing or sitting, usually holding yarn in her left hand. Sometimes she is shown holding a scroll. Her right hand may be raised to indicate her surprise at the message she is hearing. Her head is bowed, showing her consent and obedience. The descent of the Holy Spirit upon her is depicted by a ray of light issuing from a small sphere at the top of the icon, which symbolizes heaven. In a famous icon from Sinai, a white dove is shown in the ray of light.

There are several famous icons of the Annunciation. One is in the Moscow Kremlin in the church of the Annunciation. This icon appeared in connection with the rescue of a prisoner by the Mother of God during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Another is to be found in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow (July 8). It was originally located in Ustiug, and was the icon before which St Procopius the fool (July 8) prayed to save the city from destruction in 1290. One of the most highly revered icons in Greece is the Tinos icon of the Annunciation (January 30).

The Annunciation falls during Lent, but it is always celebrated with great joy. The Liturgy of St Basil or St John Chrysostom is served, even on the weekdays of Lent. It is one of the two days of Great Lent on which the fast is relaxed and fish is permitted (Palm Sunday is the other).