HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

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

WHY DON'T I LISTEN TO MY WORLDLY WISE DAUGHTERS MORE OFTEN.....

Mom.....

Winning an argument (or thinking you have won an argument) on the internet is like winning a medal in the "special olympics"......it may make you feel good, but....

Sorry guys

THIS PLACE IS NOT AS ABANDONED AS IT LOOKS

STANZAS,  by nikaa.

Another photo from my favorite photographer and friend, niika, who inspires me to keep my camera ready and loaded in case I  ever get out of this room/house again.

November in my soul has also been inspiring with his  wordless, but strong reentry into blogdom through photography.

If you look carefully, you may notice my "Winter Reading" changes every few days....I am reading, but not able to write much right now...which begs the question of  the sanity of the decision to register for the writing workshop at "The Glen" again this year?

Again, much is riding on another new medication; not so much "if" it will work (it has a long,track record of success)  but rather  "if you can survive taking it" it will work. 

Why is so much of so-called "modern medicine, more akin to  Medieval Trial by Ordeal?

Obviously, my reading has been, a bit too heavily weighted in  soteriology.

Funny/ ironic-I have read more Luther since becoming Orthodox than I ever read in all my years as a Lutheran.

A New Blog added to my list of Orthodox writers worth reading; EARL DONALD THE BEWILDERED, authored a someone I first encountered in the com boxes at THE OCHLOPHOBIST and other top notch Orthodox blogs.  His prose are thick with metaphors and poetic, but his thinking and ideas are refreshing transparent.  Check it out.  His name is  Maxim (makes me think of "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again...The first line from one of my favorite books—Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca),

...Probably because both, Ken Follett's " The Key to Rebecca" and Michael Ondaatje's  'The English Patient', have passed through my Winter Reading list.  Until recently, I  never knew that Count Laszlo Almasy, the English Patient, was based on a real life historic character.

note to self:any advice you give to your children, is usually advice you need to give to yourself.

Writing;

Some say it's a gift, an obsession, a craft, a symptom of narcissism, a waste of time, and even a curse (the last one is about the only one we can all agree on).

Whatever it is, it's not freely chosen. Only other writers will understand that.

This doesn't violate "free will". We can not write, but there are consequences.

People ask "if you don't write, what's the worst that can happen? Will all those words just build up in your head and explode one day?

The answer is "Yes"

I have had to wipe down the walls more than once.

And we won't talk about having to lock the characters in your novel, or short story in a trunk, or try to kill them off so they will quit bothering you.

And being struck with the perfect metaphor for that poem you have been working on for years, and all you have to recored it is a dollar bill and the stub of an eyeliner pencil.

Both of my children have the same curse, gift, need to write. And having a few years, and a bit more experience, I tried to give some advice the other day....and later realized, I still have not taken it to my own heart. So I am writing it here as advice to myself, to refer back to, Whenever I start getting crazy about things like writing, art, and wanting to leave something worthwhile behind when I leave this earth.

Or if I  start entertaining delusions that there is someone out there who won't make it through the day with out some bit of wisdom I have to impart.

Or I am afraid that If my memory lapses are the beginning of something more serious, and I feel frantic because I may not get to say everything that I want to say, and it may all disappear one day.

 

Concerning life,  experience, writing and being stalked by words, stories, and novel characters...

If you have the curse, you know exactly what I mean when I say stalked. These things will wake you from a dead sleep, if they let you sleep, make so much racket in your head and don't stop unless you give them some attention, and just when you think you have them domesticated, they spring up when your back it turned, red in tooth and claw.

If you don't have the curse.....we forgive you if you just think we are all just plain nuts...because we are.

You have to stop sweating it, thinking there is an expiration date on anything you have to say, no matter how urgent is seems.

Just guessing:
I predict that before you are clear enough to write about these things, though the thought of this breaks my heart, it will be at least #8 on the list of things you never thought you would survive. I think the two of you (all my children) know it, too.
But don't think about that now; live in that joy, that is sometimes called "bight sorrow", and keep learning to Be...especially now that you have done all that hard work to figure out what happiness isn't, and whether happiness is or isn't the color of the day, Joy always is in season, though it has it's own colors.
People spend lifetimes and don't learn what you know already: The difference between happiness and joy.
You may curse the teachers of these lessons, but you will be the ones who will see visions, dream the dreams, possess the only true Light that can banish darkness forever; And it may not be the one people always want, you have The Answer to sustain you in a world that is becoming a sea, a maelstrom of questions. I don't envy the complicated lives you will have to navigate, but I do envy the Joy I see in you; that is until I realize, and you all remind me just by Being, that it is there for me, too. And it always will be.
Don't judge me by the way things seem; things are not always the way they seem;
Know that I know the way things really are; the way things appear, as a good Thomist would put it, are accidents and don't always reflect what they really are; I have Everything that is needful, and always will; things may not always appear that way, but that is the way things have always have been, the way they are, and the way they always will be.

Remind me, and have faith, even if I don't.
And I and others will do the same for you.

We have to be each other's memorys sometimes.
We have to believe, have faith for each other, too, at times.

I want to take the pressure off you, and Sarah if she's got this same urgency about words and stories; this feeling that you have to write, have to help others by telling your story, right now.
I know how that feels...but I am relieved I haven't said all I meant to say yet...there would have been a lot of words to eat.
I used to worry about time, too; It was going way too fast.
Time is funny; you always have more than you think you have, because you have forever.
And if you don't have time to tell your story, if it is a Story that needs to be told, it will be...maybe not by you, but it will be told.

Write...I know it's your lifeblood.
And maybe you or others will use that to tell your Story.
But stop feeling responsible for The Story, that Answer you have, the thing you think might help others, will only get better, stronger, more believable with time, just as it always has...like the book and movie you read and watched when you were younger...you are part of The Never-Ending Story.

I am going to be Bill Maher (only better read, better looking,better at telling a joke, and slightly better behaved in public;-ok maybe we are on the same plain when it comes to "playing well with others").
For one day I get to make up a "New Rule"-

No one gets to write about anything unless they have outlived their own version of their "survival tale" at least 3 times over.

Let's pretend we're Lutheran for a minute, or longer if that's the way thing's turn out:
What does this Mean?

It means: if you haven't been through at least 3 more things worse than the initial "worst thing" that ever happened to you that threw you into a tailspin, and you are still crawling out of the mud (or off the bathroom floor), brushing yourself(or your teeth) off, go back and sit down with your family for the next meal, determined to get it right this time, but not knowing for sure if you ever will; believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is possible, but not probable, and it stopped being about the odds a long time ago; in the face of it all, you have chosen to survive over being a "survivor of ________"; when the quantity of falls and resurrections amaze you more than the quality of your falls- how far down you fell, or how far back you climbed each time, has become the measure of the meaning of life; if you have gotten this far...take a look around you...and describe what you see; why is it that you are still standing, still breathing, when so many others aren't?
I guarantee that one of the things you will see; and this is where waiting to see what it is that remains solid under your stumbling feet, that you are surrounded by people, seen and unseen, who have pulled you up at least some of those times against your will, against all hope, and they are still beside you, ready to do it yet again.
.
...then I think it is safe for you to speak, safe from giving false hope, of having others build on shifting sands that you have not fully tested yourself; then you have something worth saying...if you still want to say anything, if words still have any meaning; The profound thing hoped to say so long ago, is so simple, it's almost not worth saying again; but you should say it anyway, though the meaning will only be discovered in the living of it; ...Thank you; Glory to God for all things.

photo:don't look back in anger

by missHanna

photo:And that's me, enslaved by the books

by AnnuskA Hjärta

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

It's worth your time

A recommended link to a VANITY FAIR Story this month from Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments by Wilfred McCoy

Ignore most of the comments that were left at Touchstone; as usual, people forget that being human is about relationships, not politics, and missed the most important lessons here.  At most, the comments are irrelevant and at worst, unkind, bordering on hubris, wondering how they missed the part they and Arthur Miller all belong to the same species: Human.
Your time is better spent reading the whole story at VANITY FAIR, and skipping MC. commentors, who prove why Christ admonishes us against judging others: none of us stand a chance in the inhumane smugness that lies at the heart of each one of us. 
If they have been in similar situations as Miller and acted more nobly, then good for them.  If their only experience with raising a mentally disabled child is watching a lifetime movie of the week, their words would be better put to use in asking for forgiveness for us all

“...It would be easy to judge Arthur Miller harshly, and some do. For them, he was a hypocrite, a weak and narcissistic man who used the press and the power of his celebrity to perpetuate a cruel lie. But Miller's behavior also raises more complicated questions about the relationship between his life and his art. A writer, used to being in control of narratives, Miller excised a central character who didn't fit the plot of his life as he wanted it to be. Whether he was motivated by shame, selfishness, or fear—or, more likely, all three—Miller's failure to tackle the truth created a hole in the heart of his story. What that cost him as a writer is hard to say now, but he never wrote anything approaching greatness after Daniel's birth. One wonders if, in his relationship with Daniel, Miller was sitting on his greatest unwritten play...”

from: VANITY FAIR Reporter Suzanna Andrews September, 2007

Arthur Miller's Missing Act
For all the public drama of Arthur Miller's career—his celebrated plays (including Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, his social activism—one character was absent: the Down-syndrome child he deleted from his life.

Days out of joint, stretching forward without end...

An insightful meditation on Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel over at Father Freeman’s bog, "Glory to God for all Things:A Day at a Time

“...Such moments - even such a day - is like the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment to “take no thought for tomorrow.” It is not that tomorrow is unimportant but that it always threatens to capture us and take us away from today. There is a sense in Solzhenitsyn’s novel that one day is much like another. I could well imagine that would be so under such conditions. There is not really a tomorrow to consider - not without tempting insanity.

But there is also something insane about the tomorrows of our own existence - insane in its original meaning - not healthy. Tomorrow, when imported to today pushes aside the possibility of peace and recollection and replaces it with anxiety and a that cannot be a place to live...“
(my emphasis).
Read the rest here

Illustration:
Dante starts his journey to eternity
Salvador Dalí

Metaphors, crypto-Nestorianism and The Feast of the Sacred Heart ?

The archives at  OCCIDENTALIS has an excellent post concerning the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

We do have the Feast of the Sacred Heart in the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate, and it's based entirely upon the excellent liturgical texts from the Breviary and the Missal, not upon the excesses of the popular devotion (popular devotion can be crazy, whether its Orthodox or Catholic).

TO READ THE REST:click  here and scroll to the bottom of the page to the entry marked: Cor Jesu, amóre nostri vulnerátum
Dated January 6, 2007

___________________________________________________________

The Hymn for Lauds on the Feast of the Sacred Heart from the Roman Breviary

Cor, arca legem continens
Non servitútis veteris,
Sed gratiæ, sed veniæ,
Sed et misericórdiæ.

Cor, sanctuárium novi
Intemerátum fœderis,
Templum vetusto sanctius,
Velumque scisso utílius.

Te vulnerátum cáritas
Ictu paténti vóluit,
Amoris invisibilis
Ut veneremur vulnera.

Hoc sub amoris symbolo
Passus cruénta et mystica,
Utrumque sacrifícium
Christus sacérdos obtulit.

Quis non amántem redamet?
Quis non redemptus diligat,
Et Corde in isto seligat
Æterna tabernácula?

Jesu, tibi sit glória,
Qui Corde fundis grátiam,
Cum Patre, et almo Spíritu,
In sempitérna sæcula.  Amen.

Author: Unknown, 18th cent. Meter: Iambic dimeter. Translation from the Marquess of Bute’s Roman Breviary. There are seven translations. Liturgical Use: Hymn for Lauds on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The translation below  and one by Rosa Mulholland—“O tender Heart, strong ark which doth enshrine,” are found in several hymnals. Both are in the Annus Sanctus.



O Heart of Jesus, ark divine
That doth love's Latter Law enshrine,
The grim Old Law of servitude
Thou didst annul upon the Rood.

O Lord, thus thou Law's temple art;
Its Holy Place, thy Sacred Heart;
Whose rended veil doth well unfold
A worth beyond Law's shrine of old.

Thus willed thy love to open wide
A wound upon thy sacred side,
Through which to shew how sins impart
Wounds else unseen, hid in thy Heart.

Its blood and water (two-fold sign)
Shew priestly sacrifice divine,
First offered on the bloody Tree,
Now on our altars bloodlessly.

Though sinners, thou didst die for us!
Who can but love one loving thus?
Thou, in thy Heart, hast made a place
Of refuge for our lawless race.

my blog is broken, not broke (my editor is home)

It keeps posting that table from the book of common prayer.   It shows up eveytime I hit "new post"
I think I am being haunted by some angry anglican ghosts.   

I’ve got a bad feeling, emotion, sentiment, inkling, notion, speculation, hunch

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Warning: I am not in control of this post. It is being heavily influenced by a new Super Editing Program I just downloaded. I dare not say more. It is listening.

I hear ticking. I think my head is going to explode.

Why did my new spelling program just give me 12 synonyms for the word explode?

Hero, I am writing this just for you.
You complained I wasn’t writing anything, but just cutting and pasting quote that were causing you to do bodily harm to yourself (something about your head and a wall).
And  you better not be toying with me about coming home soon. I am going stir crazy. Actually, I have been there and back several times.

You would not believe the excuses I have used to get out of this house.

Did you know last week was National Engineer Appreciation Week? I convinced your father it wouldn’t be proper for me to let it pass without at least taking him out to dinner.  Pretty desperate.

And I think I may need a hamster intervention. I won’t go into too many details, but I think Thumblina may have an aptitude for chess.

If my head doesn’t detonate, burst, discharge, mushroom, blow up, counter-exemplify, or go boom in the near future, and my cell phone stops buzzing and beeping, and the other phone stops ringing, and the hamster stops spinning that silly wheel(which should be when the Ritalin wears off-she was chewing on an empty pill bottle that hadn’t been rinsed out). Yes, I let her play on the desk while I am on the computer. But I have stopped feeding her junk food. It is Lent.

Why the ticking, and impending brain explosion?  It started when I thought a live video iChat between Grandma and the Way Out West Gang was a good idea. It is a good idea, but I should have done it under more...optimal circumstances.

Just trying to log on should have been enough warning. After the adults spent 20 minutes getting nowhere, my sweet bro threw tossed handed the phone to his teenage son who started throwing words like Jabber, AOL, AIM, MSN, buddies and buddy lists at my little Mac mind.
I iChat. Period.
I don’t IM, I don’t Jabber, jibber, or breed unholy alliances by mixing Gchat, AOL, AIM or MSN with my .Mac  iChat.

I hit my iChat icon, and if there is anyone there, I talk to them.

I finally convinced the little whipper-snapper that we had to go .Mac to .Mac, or the deal was off. And one of us  hit the right button, because my bro’s mug popped up on my computer.

I also didn’t take into account that Grandma would react l like she was having an out of body experience.
I think Grandma thought I was doing some kind of witchcraft.

How different is it from talking on the phone?
It’s a phone call with pictures. Right?
And I have seen her talk back to her TV many times, so she has some experience with the concept.

I’m sure it didn’t help that the Internet connection we were “borrowing” was so slow, that there was an “X-file” quality about transmission. It wasn’t High Definition quality, but it wasn’t Mission Control to Apollo 8 static either.

She did say that she would like to see it again (?!).

Like a M*A*S*H* rerun.

I’ll take that as positive feedback

Are you finding this interesting, Hero; NO QUOTES.

about the editing program. shhhhhh.

I just got the Nuke of all spell check programs, Spell Catcher.  It’s in the free shareware stage and I have no idea what I am doing and it knows, so it thinks it’s the boss of me and intends to have a good time at my expense until I can reign it in.  
It does some really cool things, but it kind of like having a Great Dane on a leash; it may look like you are walking the dog, but everyone knows who would win if you wanted to go left and he wanted to go right.

A strange thing, sometimes, I swear I hear it snicker.  I also think that it may be bi-polar, or at the very least, has an attitude problem.(sixteen synonyms for the word “problem“. I can see where this is going).

I hope it is not a portent(augury, bodment, omen, presage, prognostic, harbinger, forerunner, shadow) that I am going to need that many terms to describe it’s behavior.
And why did it insist on spelling chat....chaT?  I just wanted to send a quick email and it turned into a tug of war. It wouldn’t allow me to correct the error, no matter what I did. So I had no choice but to choose another word, and, of course, it was more than happy to give me 50 suggestions.

I think it has authority issues.
I have already put the mute/muzzle on.  My lovely William from Cepstral Voices, I love your English accent, but I couldn’t stand to hear you say “curious” every time I spelled a word in an imaginative way.

I may be able to silence it, but I am not sure that I know how to disable the program.

I wonder why there are no synonyms offered for the word “disable”.

I’m beginning to wonder...maybe it’s like cyber slave trade.

Anybody catch an Amber Alert for a missing English TeachEr?

______________________________________________________

Hope this was more to your liking, Hero.

Why do I think you are going to make me delete this when you get home today?

Do you still have Laryngitis?  That means you can’t yell at me.

Tell Claudio, I think that “marble thing“ may be mixed up in all this.

“Each person comes to the Church in their own unique way...

 

From:Daniel at  energetic procession

Quote of the day from March 21st, 2005

"€œGod never ceases from the goods because He never began them."

-Saint Maximus the Confessor

 

“Each person comes to the Church in their own unique way because they are a unique person. What people often notice…is the idea of uniqueness and freedom that is so prevalent in Orthodox spirituality. They may not know or ever discover that this is because Orthodoxy takes there to be a plurality of real Goods in the Good and that God is fully both…People often do intuitively grasp this emphasis lacking in other bodies whose doctrine of God, Christology, soteriology and eschatology seem to be a single pathway to assimilation to the absolute One.”
-Robinson to Blosser

Because of the issue of realistic thinking and free-will in Christ and the Saints, this little phrase has been the key ingredient that has been inbedded in the thought of this blog. One that caused me to investigate the theology of Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Athanasius, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas, and many others with greater care.

Update: Part 1

Late night pondering that make no sense, but will register as an update on the RSS feeds and prevent my friends and family from dumping my blog from the feed readers...
I apologize for all the emails, voice-mail, and phone messages, that I haven’t gotten around to returning. Whoever was banging on my door Friday around 4PM..... I hope you didn't go away mad.  And to the person who left me a message on my cell saying "someone called me and left this call back number, but they didn't leave a name"....sorry about that.
I have been trying. Really, I have.  I know I am behind on everything. I can't even remember all the things I have forgotten to do, but I am sure you all will let me know.
Back to trying to round up something for an update...
I started entries on:

The nature of True Conversion;

Why it would make sense for the Lutheran Church to offer a Latin Liturgy (and no, it's not to foster more diversity and attract Latin Americans);

Hamsters on a plane;

The either/or/and of praying to St. Michael for protection vs. carrying pepper spray;

The murky legal waters of tapping your own phone;

Snappy comebacks for occasions when a needle and syringe fall out of your purse in a public place;

My thought evolution from debating the ethics of declawing cats ending with  “yeah do it”, for revenge on the nasty little dickens, more that anything else;

The late and naive discovery that everything said about lawyers is well deserved;

And finally, a retro-review of A Clockwork Orange, the movie, which I should not be watching in this state of mind.

As of 2:49AM not a single one is anywhere near finished.

And they are not getting there tonight.

The last few brain cells blew when I opened the email confirmation for our overnight stay in Chicago next weekend.  I am not even looking at the price of the room.  Some things are best left to the imagination. 

It's the fine print at the bottom that is going keep me awake, trying to make a decision:

Additional Charges

Valet parking: 41.00/night   
Self parking: 38.00/night   

The term “ethical” comes to mind in considering this, but I am not quite sure how.

Dear absent editor,
Microsoft Word keeps telling me not to use these: ;
but it won't tell me why.
What's up with that.

*****************************

  `He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: `and what do you think he's dreaming about?'

  Alice said `Nobody can guess that.'

`Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. `And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'

  `Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.

  `Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. `You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'

  `If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, `you'd go out--bang!--just like a candle!'