Blue Eyed Ennis: December 2009

New Year Resolution

I have never been a fan of making New Year resolutions for myself. This humourous aphorism by Samuel Beckett sums them up in my my experience

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
A New Year's Poem

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rimes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer- From Prsion = New Year Quote

With every power for good to stay and guide me,
Comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I'll live out these days with you in thought beside me,
And pass, with you, into the coming year.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) from prison, New Year 1945

with these thoughts

I wish you all a Blessed New Year

Looking forward

Next year we are going on a cruise on Royal Caribbean’s newest and most luxurious ship, The Independence of the Seas.

This will be our first time on a cruise and I am very excited and looking forward to the experience.
We sail from Southampton England to Madeira,Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Vigo in Spain and back to Southampton- in all ten days.
When I look at the size of the ship in these pictures it is quite scary!

Blue Moon on New Years Eve

The last time a blue moon coincided with New Year's Eve was in 1990.

The next opportunity will come in 2028.

Is this a celestial sign of a better decade to come?

It will not be literally blue; the term "blue moon" actually refers to when there are two full moons in a given calendar month, an astronomical rarity that occurs just seven times every 19 years, hence the famous phrase "once in a blue moon."

Photo: December's first full moon, as seen from Phoenix. Credit: Rob Schumacher / Associated Press

I shall be singing this with my arms around my partner Colin tomorrow night- looking up at the moon ( Two minutes into the video you get the Spanish words as seen below with the English translation)

A luna esta en el cielo
con todas las estrellas
brillando muy illuminante

The moon is in the heavens
with all of the stars
shining so brightly

Almost there

Well we are nearly at the end of 2009.

I am not a fan of reviews of life at this time of the year; way too big an undertaking so I take little steps forward and ask God to guide me.

However, as I was browsing the internet looking for something to say at the edge of the year I came across this excerpt from a Television series called the Ascent of Man which featured Jacob Bronowski as the presenter. It is over thirty years old.

I remember watching this series and was mesmerised by it then and nothing has changed that 30 years on.

The man is an awesome presenter and some people may remember this particular excerpt which was immensely moving and still is.I was particularly struck this time with the opening shots where a plane is flying over.

All of us alive in the last decade will know the ominous portent that this signalled for mankind on 9/11 in 2001 in New York, the consequences of which we are still living with.

The quotation at 4 minutes is a very profound one and although the excerpt is talks about science I feel that it can be applied on a much broader front to all our human arrogance in dealing with evil in the world.

The Holy Innocents

Today we remember an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18

Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi.

Like much of Matthew's gospel, the incident is introduced as the fulfillment of passages in the Old Testament read as prophecies: Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.""

The infants, known in the Church as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs.

There are so many innocent children that have been slaughtered since Herod.
I wrote the following poem a couple of years ago in memory of the children murdered in the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War but the poem is not just for these children. It is in memory of all children caught up in wars. The poem accompanies the painting of Guernica by Picasso.

THINKING OF GUERNICA AT CHRISTMAS TIME

On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities were perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's new war machine, Guernica was pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. Residents were cut down as they ran from the crumbling buildings.

Guernica, O little town, how still your people lie,

painted in distress on a black and white canvas,

surreal images are splayed before the living eye.

No one would ever wish to meet in the flesh,

these bodies dying and impaled there.

Picasso’s painting dowses barbaric death,

it’s almost bearable in aesthetic grey.

Streets are smeared in grief;

babies split apart from mothers on their knees,

their lifeblood spilt in dreamless sleep.

Asymmetric death strays and hangs across the eyes.

Nausea fills the shocking air.

It bellows out from savage angles,

in the brokenness of all living things,

a single artificial light glows above the genocidal day.

Open mouthed horses and bulls are falling heavy,

fierce and sorrowing in the dark streets shining.
Dead weights of stricken baby and mother

are gathered in by untimely killing,

in flaming wanton fire and black smoke billowing.

Fierce intense shapes are cut out as growing blood splatters,

spared of colour, looking strange and battered.

Through a window angels keep agonised watch

as children’s sweet heads are laid down

in lullabies of death, fragmented in angular abstraction.

Silently in Guernica, the wondrous gift of life was taken,

leaving human hearts agape in open wounds.

Picture this deepest world of sin in sway.

In these dark streets the hopes and fears

of all the years, met something less than Christ that day.

Author’s note: Picasso’s original painting (in Madrid) is 11 feet x

26 feet. Pressure is increasing for it to be returned to Guernica.

Copyright remains with me the author: Philomena Ewing
from my second volume of poems Siempre Siempre Siempre Published by Palores Publications 2008.

Oh Happy Day

This is just full of joy and you have to sing along.

This gospel song is sung at both Easter and Christmas.

Go on turn the volume right up and just do it !! At one minute 33 seconds let it really rip !!

Merry Christmas everyone and may the peace and joy of Christ be in your heart now and forever.

Father Richard Rohr

Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest is someone I would like to see and listen to if he ever came to Cornwall or thereabouts.

He is in London in the New Year for a seminar and somewhere on my blog I have another piece from him.

This has been a difficult year for losing dear people from our lives and this short little reflection from Richard Rohr is full of wisdom and gives hope to those of us who are left behind.

This short clip is taken from a trailer for a much longer new film on DVD called ONE
.(looks interesting too).

Click here for a link to further information about this film

The Twelve Days of Christmas True Meaning

People often think of The Twelve Days of Christmas as the days before Christmas. Yet Christmas is a season of the Christian Year that lasts from December 25 until January 6 -the Day of Epiphany - when the church celebrates the revelation of Christ as the light of the world and recalls the journey of the Magi.

From 1558 until 1829 Catholics in England were not allowed to practice their faith openly.

During this era someone wrote 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' as a kind of secret catechism that could be sung in public without risk of persecution.

The song has two levels of interpretation: "the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of the church."

Each element in the carol is a code word for a religious reality.

The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ.
The two turtle doves are the Old and New Testaments.
Three French hens stand for faith, hope and love.
The four calling birds are the four Gospels.
The five gold rings recall the torah (Law) the first
five books of the Old Testament.
The six geese a-laying stand for the six days of
creation.
Seven swans a-swimming represent the sevenfold gifts
of the Spirit.
The eight maids a-milking are the eight beatitudes
Nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the spirit
(Gal.5).
The ten lords a-leaping are the Ten Commandments.
Eleven pipers piping stand for the eleven faithful
disciples.
Twelve drummers drumming symbolize the 12 points of
belief in the Apostles Creed.

There you have it, the HIDDEN meaning of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and the secret behind the song.

Catholics also wore rings with 10 bumps on them so they could do their rosary and not be caught with the beads in public.

(Thanks to the blog Clerical Whispers for this intriguing piece and Peter Chou for this beautiful graphic)

Babies

There is a film coming out soon called Babies.

It will follow the development of 4 babies from 4 different countries.

This is the trailer for the film and it grabs you in the heart right from the start.

Siempre Adelante !

Loving God,

Send us Your Spirit of courage

- that we might consult not our fears, but our hopes and dreams;

- -that we think not about our frustrations but about our unfulfilled potential;

- and that we concern ourselves not with what we tried and failed,

- but with what is still possible for us to do.

Siempre Adelante. Nunca para atrás!

Always forward! Never turn back!

Amen!

Thanks to the Franciscan Friars in the Province of Santa Barbara USA for their prayer and logo from their lovely named blog Friarside Chats !

Complete Person

This is a quotation by Rumer Godden

The Donkey Waits

What Are You Waiting For?

Click on the link below TO TAKE YOU TO AN ADVENT CALENDAR from the blogsite called Busted Halo.

What Are You Waiting For? - Busted Halo

From Drop Box

A Prayer During Advent

Be silent.

Be still.

Wait before your God.

Say nothing.

Ask nothing.

Be still.

Let your God look upon you

That is all.

God knows.

God understands

God loves you with an enormous love.

God only wants to look upon you with love.

Quiet.

Still.

Be.

Let your God love you.

Edwina Gateley

Family Love

Being part of a family and enjoying the everyday antics and laughter of young children is a lovely way to celebrate the gift of life.

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis