HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

Trying Something/ And an announcement on where this Blog is going-Crossposts with my Facebook and New Microblog:Haunted, too

The Something New:Crossposts with my Facebook and New Microblog (It is formatted for things like iphone, itouch and other portable devices:"Haunted, too"

And the announcement about this Blog-See Below

CROSS-POST FROM FACEBOOK-TRAVEL JOURNAL

Post...In which my traveling companion, Velveteen Rabbit, gives a medical update....on the Lame (and a bit clumsy) Lady...

Like the Skin Horse told me" "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"It doesn't happen all at once... I asked "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.

But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

 
So even though it looks like she is wearing a technicolor socks, and is a bit worse for wear, doesn't appear to be broken...it's just one of those things bound to happen when it's you REALLY love and are REALLY loved back...It's more important to be with your bros on their 50th birthday...so damn the risks of traveling alone with a shabby, wobbly body, loose joints, and eyes that are ready for a complete overhaul, and having to rest more hours than you party, ....no regrets...the trip was worth everything.

Dr. Rabbit, signing off...

PS:I still intend to resume posting on Haunted by the Holy Ghost, but my life of late has been complicated by Life, illness, death, family changes, changes on the Marriage Schism front, health front and other things I just have not been ready to post about, except to close friends and family...but I have been writing and have many drafts that frame the issues in a larger context, and appropriate for this Blog-WHICH WILL LIVE AGAIN, I PROMISE-

At the right time I will be publishing those, and that time may be very soon.

via-Haunted, too

The Something New:Crossposts with my Facebook and New Microblog (It is formatted for things like iphone, itouch and other portable devices:"Haunted, too"

And the announcement about this Blog-See Below

CROSS-POST FROM FACEBOOK-TRAVEL JOURNAL

Post...In which my traveling companion, Velveteen Rabbit, gives a medical update....on the Lame (and a bit clumsy) Lady...

Like the Skin Horse told me" "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"It doesn't happen all at once... I asked "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.

But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

 
So even though it looks like she is wearing a technicolor socks, and is a bit worse for wear, doesn't appear to be broken...it's just one of those things bound to happen when it's you REALLY love and are REALLY loved back...It's more important to be with your bros on their 50th birthday...so damn the risks of traveling alone with a shabby, wobbly body, loose joints, and eyes that are ready for a complete overhaul, and having to rest more hours than you party, ....no regrets...the trip was worth everything.

Dr. Rabbit, signing off...

PS:I still intend to resume posting on Haunted by the Holy Ghost, but my life of late has been complicated by Life, illness, death, family changes, changes on the Marriage Schism front, health front and other things I just have not been ready to post about, except to close friends and family...but I have been writing and have many drafts that frame the issues in a larger context, and appropriate for this Blog-WHICH WILL LIVE AGAIN, I PROMISE-

At the right time I will be publishing those, and that time may be very soon.

...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?

safeguarding

We Have Seen...

from today's post at  Glory to God for All Things by fatherstephen:

"All theology finds its proper root in this true knowledge of God.

 It should never be mere speculation based on a rational system of thought –
but rather the unfolding of the mystery made known to us in the risen Christ.
The hunger for this true knowledge of God is the very core of the Christian life:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

The safeguarding of saving knowledge (true participation in the life of God) is the purpose of all doctrine. Every dogmatic statement of the Church has as its sole purpose the safeguarding of true participation in the life of God. Dogma is not an argument over ideas, but a statement that guards the Apostolic witness (which is living and true)."

misbehaving over at facebook....be back later... 'K?

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,
Alive as you or me,
Tearing through these quarters
In the utmost misery,
With a blanket underneath his arm
And a coat of solid gold,
Searching for the very souls
Whom already have been sold.

Arise, arise, he cried so loud,
In a voice without restraint,
Come out, ye gifted kings and queens
And hear my sad complaint.
No martyr is among ye now
Whom you can call your own,
So go on your way accordingly
But know you're not alone.

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,
Alive with fiery breath,
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death.
Oh, I awoke in anger,
So alone and terrified,
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried.

Lyrics by Bob Dylan

And wait for me at the end of these my twisting paths, for it is Thee that I love and none other.

At the End of These My Twisting Paths

Lord, thou knowest this heart of mine.
Thou knowest the clashings that at sundry hours rage therein.
Thou knowest my contradictions,
pulled this way and that, I am torn within my breast.
Thou knowest the things that give me life
and the things that wound me unto death,
all that is my joy and all that that is my sorrow Thou knowest,
the strength that is mine,
and the weariness that on certain days is more than I can bear.

Lord, thou knowest my life.
Thou knowest its heights and its depths,
the welling up of loves and the loathings that follow,
fidelity and infidelity,
seasons of flourishing and seasons of crisis,
my brightnesses and my darker moments.

All this, O Lord,
and all that is this life of mine Thou knowest,
thou who searchest the heart and its secret places.

But above all this,
Thou art the Son of Man who one day didst take Thy rest beside the well,
weak Thou wast, and worn, and thirsty,
in the garden held fast in the grip of fear,
and on the tree forsaken.

Come thou, my peace.
Come thou, my sweetness.
Come thou, my consolation.
Come thou my pardon and my love.

Come, rebuild the brokenness within.
Come, redress my fragile shelter.
Come, restore my hope.
Be thou to me one little flame in so vast a night.
And wait for me at the end of these my twisting paths,
for it is Thee that I love and none other.

h/t
From Father Mark at  Vultus Christi

"Didyme wrote this prayer. I took the liberty of translating it from the French. It is every sinner's psalm. The last two lines are extraordinary."

*Didyme/ a Postulant Prémontré in Belgium/his blog (All In French): "La beauté du Seigneur"

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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

...the only thing you can’t get is red ink.’

Recalling a recent quote I heard after while reading yet another lament for our "lost freedom", as if we really knew the first thing about freedom:

And this one was written in 1996

   " In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by the censors, he tells his friends: ‘Let’s establish a code: if a letter you get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it’s true; if it’s written in red ink, it’s false.’ After a month, his friends get the first letter, written in blue ink: ‘Everything is wonderful here: the shops are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, cinemas show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair — the only thing you can’t get is red ink.’

    Of the joke, Zizek writes:

    One starts by agreeing that one has all the freedoms one wants — then one merely adds that the only thing missing is the ‘red ink’: we ‘feel free’ because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink means is that, today, all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict — ‘war on terror’, ‘democracy and freedom’, ‘human rights’, and so on — are false terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it. In this precise sense, our ‘freedoms’ themselves serve to mask and sustain our deeper unfreedom."

From the film, Zizek!

 

no more political posts.  I used up my quota for the next 5 years.

PLAINCHANT...it is direct as the words of a child to its father, plain and simple as the evening prayer of an innocent soul

 

Let Dom Johner Be Your Advent Narrator

Dom Johnerby way of Jeffrey Tucker at NLM by way of Aristotle Esguerra at Cantemus Domino....

I don't know how he manages this, but Aristotle Esguerra at Cantemus Domino, who always seems to be ahead of the game, is posting the magnificent commentaries by Dom Dominic Johner, who wrote his encyclopedic treatment of the proper chants in the 1920s, proper by proper. Aristotle is posting them in clean HTML.

It is great experience to both read and sing these pieces from the Gregorian repertoire. The hardcopy of the book is here. I recall the first time I discovered this resource and realizing what a kick comes from singing music in our own parish that has been sung for 1000 years, and enjoying reading a learned monk's reflections on the same pieces of music. He will nearly always enlightened you, and there is a special sense of something that comes when you notice something that he didn't, which happens from time to time. It is excellent work to make all these available in short pieces week by week.

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I have grown to love the Gregorian Chant that is part of our Western Rite Divine Liturgy.  At first, on the surface, it seems to have very little in common with the Eastern Rite Orthodox Divine Liturgies I have attended. 
Time, attentiveness  and letting go of the former expectations of what Worship and Liturgy should "do", I have stopped "using" Liturgy as a way of "approaching  God", an old habit from former days, and instead first seeking to through regular personal prayer to seek Union with Christ as a preparation to join with the Whole Church through the Liturgy and watch, wait, pray for God in His infinite Mercy to approach us.
And as with all things Holy, in Paradox God never fails to bend down the Heavens to touch Earth and at the same time raise us up His earthly creation to meet Heaven.

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from the Introduction of The Chants of the Vatican Gradual

'"Liturgy, however, directs all things to God and is governed by reverence for God. The goal of plain chant, therefore, must primarily be the glorification of God and not the reaction it has on man's ideas and sentiments. Hence it depicts reverential worship of the majesty of God, wonderment over His beauty, amazement over His divine deeds for us, trustful hope in Him whose impenetrable Wisdom guides all things—and then again a fervent, even joyful, gratitude for His love.

"Plain chant, therefore, knows no exuberance of sentiment, no predominance of mood in the face of quiet and serene reasoning. For this it is altogether too intimately connected with its text.

"It is prayer devoid of external manifestation and false pathos; it is direct as the words of a child to its father, plain and simple as the evening prayer of an innocent soul."

Liturgical prayer and chant differ greatly from private devotion. Liturgy, according to its very name, presupposes a fellowship of spirit.

This naturally demands a restraint of the purely personal element and a renunciation of those traits which correspond to the inclinations and experiences of the individual.'"

Taken from The Chants of the Vatican Gradual by Dom Dominic Johner, translated from the German by Monks of St. John’s Abbey. St. John’s Abbey Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1940. A PDF scan of this book may be downloaded for free from the website of the Church Music Association of America.

He also included audio recordings of the chants (in Latin) courtesy of St. Benedict’s Monastery, Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Facebook status:

busy trying to see if I can rent the Roman Coliseum and some lions, or maybe a few Alaskan brown bears.

Why have the words abandoned me?

A loss for words

A loss for words drifts
through my mind like
a lazy river guided
by the contours of my mind.
Silence spreads, fills
my entire being
Why have the words abandoned
me? Why do they not
come when I call?

Poetry by: LLB , H/T to the laughing linden branch

Photo:Touchesdellafels

FACEBOOK UPDATE CROSSPOST: Chicago, the "Windy City" doesn't know jack about WIND

Windy City: Tornadoes Rip Through Chicago


90-MPH Gusts Breeze Through Chicago,
Indiana; O'Hare Airport, Wrigley Field
Evacuated  

Is there anything more useless than satellite TV when severe weather hits?

The signal was gone 15 minutes before the Tornado sirens went off in downtown Chicago...
Not to worry...that's what the Front Desk is for....to let you know if there there is a "situation" and to guide you in case of emergency.

We were staying right next to the Downtown Fire Station.  After the sirens has been sounding a good 10 minutes without stopping, I decided to look out the window (we were on the fourth floor and the "window" was the entire wall in our room.

Oh, it's raining...no it's more than rain...as a small tree tumbles down the road...then I lost sight of the road and just about everything as the rain pours down sideways and lightning hits so close the thunder causes the plate glass in the window to shake.

Does anyone in Chicago know the difference between regular sirens, (which are always going off, but always stop after a couple minutes), and Tornado Warning sirens, which go on and on and on and on?

I am not sure who came off looking more stupid;
Me for standing in front of the plate glass wall size window watching the storm,
OR the Hotel personnel who didn't seem to know what the sirens meant or  the definition of a "tornado warning"

Here in Michigan, they pretty much make sure we know that by 1st grade, and if you watch the weather even twice in a decade, you are sure to get a refresher course.

Chicago, at least those who live and work downtown, either missed that day in school, or assume that with all the high rise buildings, glass, and SATELLITE TV...no one stands a chance, or they just choose to play the odds.

When I finally got the scoop that a couple tornadoes had been sighted by checking ON-LINE, Weather.gov, and called the desk to find out what to do (see below to see the "Answer" that the desk clerk gave).  The Tornado Warning was almost over.  We wouldn't know until the next morning  that they evacuated Wrigley Field, and that trees and rooftops had ripped up by the winds not too far away...and that tornadoes has torn up a good part of Northern Indiana.

But the desk clerk remained calm and told us

"don't worry about it"
"no one has told us anything about it."...(as the siren screams in the background)

I guess those sirens were meant for someone else.

They were expecting engraved initiations, I suppose,  addressed specifically to them
or a phone call from headquarters, at the least, if they were expected to do anything.  God forbid they think for themselves, or make a decision, or assume that their job included anything as important as knowing the definition of a tornado warning, or why the heck those sirens didn't quit.

FACEBOOK CROSSPOST: I can't decide if I feel more like John Nash or Chauncey "Chance" Gardener

OR   "WT#  am I doing at a Writer's Conference?!?" 

            

 

Ron Steigler: Mr. Gardner, uh, my editors and I have been wondering if you would consider writing a book for us,
something about your um, political philosophy, what do you say?

Chance the Gardener: I can't write.

Ron Steigler: Heh, heh, of course not, who can nowadays?
Listen, I have trouble writing a postcard to my children. Look uhh, we can give you a six figure advance,
I'll provide you with the very best ghost-writer, proof-readers...

Chance the Gardener: I can't read.

Ron Steigler: Of course you can't! No one has the time!
We, we glance at things, we watch television...

Chance the Gardener: I like to watch TV.

Ron Steigler: Oh, oh, oh sure you do. No one reads!

Movie quote from: Being There