Blue Eyed Ennis

We Cannot Measure How You Heal

2012-02-12T18:38:00.001+01:00

We cannotmeasure how you heal

oranswer every sufferer's prayer,

yetwe believe your grace responds

wherefaith and doubt unite to care.

Your hands,though bloodied on the cross

surviveto hold and heal and warn,

tocarry all through death to life

andcradle children yet unborn.

The painthat will not go away,

theguilt that clings from things long past,

thefear of what the future holds

arepresent as if meant to last.

But presenttoo is love which tends

thehurt we never hoped to find,

theprivate agonies inside

thememories that haunt the mind.

So some havecome who need your help,

andsome have come to make amends,

Your hands which shaped and saved the world

arepresent in the touch of friends.

Lord, letyour Spirit meet us here

tomend the body, mind and soul,

todisentangle peace from pain

andmake your broken people whole

John L. Belland Graham Maule

from The IonaCommunity

Tune: YeBanks and Braes

Embracing The Leper

2012-02-12T13:26:00.000+01:00

My other post on today's Gospel is here

The encounter of St Francis of Assisi with a leper acted as a significant turning point in the life of St Francis. See Brother Dan's reflection at Dating God here.

The ‘leper’ is a symbol of any person we reduce to being a non-person;

"Who or what are the lepers in my life?" What is it that I fear to embrace? What is it I despise?

The people in the time of Jesus and St Francis thought leprosy was a punishment for some profound and hidden sin.

What do I think is so evil I don't want to be in its presence in case it is contagious?

These days we are also asked to embrace our own dark leprous aspects, that are made of our own shadows projected from the darkness within.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

There are so many aspects of our personalities that can often take a lifetime to keep in check. We prefer to remain on the outside of ourselves, we see so many aspects of ourselves as untouchable, too scabby and distasteful to be seen.

But paradoxically as St Francis realised, only by facing and embracing these shadows can it lead to the release of God's power and creativity.

It is true that encountering the shadow self often does release chaos into our lives. and for Francis it is significant that it was after the meeting with the leper that he looked around and saw that the leper had disappeared that he later went on to hear the message from God to rebuild his church.

Image via Wikipedia

Francis met three lepers that day on the plains of Umbria: the physical leper, the dark leprous side of himself and the face of the suffering Christ on the cross.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Christ in the gospel today knew he would be excluded the moment he touched the leper because it was forbidden by law and so he was sending a clear message that the law needed breaking.

In this parable Jesus defies the rules but in fact, both men broke the laws - the leper was not to approach, Jesus was not to touch or even speak to the leper.

When the leper spoke to Jesus it was from a faith that asked for recognition.
It is significant that Jesus heals the leper by touching him.

The Gospels contain plenty of evidence of healings without a physical touch from Jesus. In touching the leper, Jesus deliberately defiled himself according to Jewish custom. In touching the leper Jesus is symbolically telling us that God is willing to get down in the gutter, down in the ditch, where we all are.

When Christ and Francis met the leper they took on everything we fear and hate and shone the spotlight of God's own love on it , touching it and healing it with an outpouring of compassion.

As a result of his actions Jesus was excluded from societal norms was treated as an outsider, and ultimately broken.

“Jesus understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich, the thirst that can lead people to drink from muddy waters.

He penetrated the outward shell of things and understood that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and whatever happens to oneself happens to another.”

-Oscar Wilde

What in myself and my church needs to be broken open ?

What issues in myself and my church that are "untouchable" need to be touched, released and healed?

I find that Richard Rohr's reflection in his book Everything Belongs which touches on themes of identity, and boundaries very relevant too.
An edited extract is below :

“Julian of Norwich said… ‘Firstthere is the fall, and then there is the recovery from the fall. But bothare the mercy of God.’ Maybe you can’t believe that until the second halfof life.

“How did we ever lose that kindof wisdom? Especially when it is almost everybody’s experience?…Jesusreminded Julian that his crucifixion was the worst thing that happened in humanhistory and God made the best out of it to take away all of our excuses. As they were for Jesus, ‘our wounds become honors.’ The great andmerciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing itwrong! [See end of Mark 2]

“On a very practical level, theproblem is that contemporary Westerners have a very fragile sense of theiridentity, much less an identity that can rest in union and relationship withGod.

Objectively, of course, we are already in union with God, but it isvery hard for people to believe and experience this when they have no strongsense of identity, no boundaries, and no authentic religious experience.

People who have not experienced core are trying to create identities and let goof boundaries. For them, it might be helpful to explain that prayer inthe early stages is quite simply a profound experience of that core: ofwho we are, as Paul says, ‘hidden with Christ in God.’ (Col. 3:3)

“Those who rush to artificiallymanufacture their own identity often end up with hardened and overly defendededges.

They are easily offended and are always ready to create a newidentity when the current one lets them down. They might become racistsor control freaks, people who are always afraid of the ‘other.’ Oftenthey become codependent or counterdependent, in either case living only inreaction to someone or something else.

To them, negative identity iscreated quickly and feels sort of like life. Thus many people, even[especially] religious folks, settle for lives of ‘holier than thou’ or livesconsumed by hatred of their enemies. Being over and against is a loteasier than being in love.

“Many others give up theirboundaries before they have them, always seeking their identity in anothergroup, experience, possession, or person. Beliefs like, ‘She will make mehappy,’ or ‘He will take away my loneliness,’ or ‘This group will make me feellike I belong’ become a substitute for doing the hard work of growing up.

It is much easier to belong to a group than it is to know that you belong toGod.

Those who firm up their own edges and identity too quickly withoutfinding their center in God and in themselves will normally be the enemies ofecumenism, forgiveness, vulnerability, and basic human dialogue.

Theiridentity is too insecure to allow any movement in or out and their ‘Christ’tends to be very small, tribal, and ‘just like them.’

If your prayer isnot enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not anoccasional ‘threat,’ you probably need to do some growing up and learning tolove.
You have to develop an ego before you can let go of it. Maybethat is why Jesus just lived thirty years before he startedtalking.

Rembrandt the Leper

Too often, young adults full of Yeats’s ‘passionate intensity’about doctrine and dogma and which group is going to heaven use God to shore uptheir non-selves. Such traditionalism is actually avoiding the traditionof transformation through death and rebirth.

“Others let go of their edges tooeasily in the name of being tolerant and open-minded, but even here‘discernment of spirits’ is necessary. There is a tolerance in truecontemplatives because they have experienced the One Absolute, their own finiteminds, and the passing character of all things.

This is the virtue ofhumility or maybe even patience. But there is another tolerance todaywhich is simply a refusal to stand up for anything. To this kind oftolerant person, there are no boundaries worth protecting.

The toleranceof the skeptic is largely meaningless, creates little that lasts, and isunfortunately characteristic of much progressive and humanistic thought today.

“Traveling the road of healthyreligion and true contemplation will lead to calmly held boundaries, which needneither to be defended constantly nor abdicated in the name of‘friendship.’

This road is a ‘narrow road that few travel upon’ thesedays (Matt. 7:14) It is what many of us like to call the ‘the Third Way’: the tertiumquid that emerges only when you hold the tension of opposites.

“The gift that the truecontemplatives offer to themselves and society is that they know themselves asa part of a much larger Story, a much larger Self. In that sense,centered people are profoundly conservative, knowing that they stand on theshoulders of their ancestors and the Perennial Tradition.

Yet truecontemplatives are paradoxically risk- takers and reformists, precisely becausethey have no private agendas, jobs, or securities to maintain.

Theirsecurity and identity are founded in God, not in being right, being paid by achurch, or looking for promotion in people’s eyes.

These people alone canmove beyond self-interest and fear to do God’s necessary work. Look athow many saints, theologians, and especially woman foundresses of [religious]orders were corrected, threatened and even persecuted by the church duringtheir lifetimes.

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, sowe should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

“People who have learned to livefrom their center in God know which boundaries are worth maintaining and whichcan be surrendered, although it is this very struggle that often constitutestheir deepest ‘dark nights.’

Both maintaining and surrendering boundariesironically require an ‘obedience,’ because they require listening to a Voicebeyond their own.

If you want a litmus test for people who are living outof one’s True Self, that might be it: they are always free to obey, butthey might also disobey the expectations of church and state to obeywho-they-are-in-God. Think of St. Paul, St Francis of Assisi, Thomas a Becket, Joan of Arc,Thomas Merton, or Dorothy Day. Scary stuff, this contemplation.

“By contrast, probably the mostobvious indication of non-centered (‘ec-centric’) people is that they are,frankly, very difficult to live with. Every one of their ego-boundariesmust be defended, negotiated, or worshipped: their reputation, their needs,their nation, their security, their religion, even their ball team.

They convincethemselves that these boundaries are all they have to worry about because theyare the sum-total of their identity. You can tell if you have placed alot of your eggs in these flimsy baskets if you are hurt or offended alot.

You can hardly hurt saints because they are living at the center anddo not need to protect the circumference of feelings and needs.

Ec-centric persons though, are a hurt waiting to happen. In fact, theywill create tragedies to make themselves feel alive. I am told thatpersonnel work now represents 80 percent of the time and energy that Americancompanies have to expend.

You might even say that a certain degree ofcontemplative seeing is actually necessary for the effective life of aninstitution or a community.

“Toward the end of his life,[psychologist] Carl Jung said that he was not aware of a single one of hispatients in the second half of life whose problems could not have been solvedby contact with what he called ‘the Numinous’ and we would call God (Letters,1973, 1:377).

An extraordinary statement from a man who had no great lovefor institutional religion.

I believe that we have no real access to whowe really are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find thesafety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, allthat we are, more than we are, and less than we are. Onlywhen we live and see through God can ‘everything belong.’

All othersystems exclude, expel, punish and protect to find identity for their membersin ideological perfection or some kind of ‘purity.’ The contaminatingelement always has to be searched out and scolded.

Apart from taking upso much useless time and energy, this effort keeps us from the one and onlytask of love and union.

As the Hasidic masters taught their students,‘Rake the muck this way. Rake the muck that way. It will still bemuck. In the time you are brooding, you could be stringing pearls for thedelight of heaven."

R.I.P Whitney Houston

2012-02-12T10:58:00.001+01:00

BBC reports and links here

I Will Always Love You

My Love is Your Love

I Look To You

Love

2012-02-11T13:02:00.002+01:00

Love it or Loathe It, Valentines Day Is On The Way ... Love to All ...

Have a great weekend..... Enjoy............

Images above and below from Tumblr

May thefaith that gives us hope, the love that shows the way, and the peace thatcheers the heart be ours, this day and every day.

Amen.
from Prayers of Comfortand Hope

The Weepies : World Spins Madly On

Ella Fitzgerald : Always

Alsion Krauss + Union Station When You Say Nothing At All

Julio Iglesias :Forever and Ever

Agua Dulce Agua Sale

A Little Look At Love

2012-02-10T12:17:00.000+01:00

Resurrection Fern from here

Look at love…
how it tangles
the lover and the beloved

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad?
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how unknown merges into the known

the beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be?

Rumi

Winter Weeping by kind permission of Tina Negus

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love

except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry

this candle against the wind.

- Wendell Berry

God cares, for some wonderful reason, despite all of our smallness and silliness. Divine love does not depend on our doing nice or right things. Divine love is not determined by the worthiness of the object of love but by the Subject, who is always and only Love. God does not love us if we change, as we almost all think; but God loves us so that we can change.

No matter what we do, God, in great love and humility, says, “That’s what I work with. That’s all I work with!” It’s the mustard seed with which God does great things. Our life experiences, “good and bad alike,” are invited to the great wedding feast (Matthew 22:10). They are the raw material that God uses to prepare the banquet.

~Richard Rohr
June 2010

Heart speaks to Heart : Benedictine Monk David Steindl Rast

On Poets, Prophets and a Tribute to Wislawa Szymborska

2012-02-09T17:48:00.002+01:00

The Poetic Speech of Prophets : by Walter Brueggemann

"The overriding reality of the prophets is that they are characteristically poets. Poets have no advice to give people. They only want people to see differently to re-vision life.

Everything depends on the poem and the poet for our worlds come from our words. Our life is fed and shaped by our metaphors.

The enemies of the poem are the managers of the status quo.

The poets want us to re-experience the present world under a different set of metaphors and they want us to entertain an alternative world not yet visible.

Image from here

Poets speak porously. They use the kind of language that is not exhausted at first hearing. They leave many things open, ambiguous, still to be discerned after more reflection.

Very often people who hear poets want an explanation, which means to slot the words into categories already predetermined and controlled. Such an act however is the death of the poem...

Good porous language does not permit itself to be so easily dismissed. It intends to violate and shatter the categories in which the listener operates.

These poets not only discerned the new actions of God that others did not discern but they wrought the new actions of God by the power of their imagination, their tongues, their words. New poetic imagination evoke new realities in the community.

We lose vitality in our ministry when our language of God is domesticated and our relation with God is made narrow and predictable... Predictable language is a measure of a deadened relationship in which address is reduced to slogan and cliché.

It is always a practice of prophetic poetry to break the conventions in which we habituate God."

Image via Wikipedia

On February 2nd the great Polish poet and Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, Wislawa Szymborska died from lung cancer at the age of 88 in Krakow.

Sadly it escaped my posting then, so it's a good time to pay tribute to her with some of her poems.

In the New York Times Book Review, Stanislaw Baranczak wrote, “The typical lyrical situation on which a Szymborska poem is founded is the confrontation between the directly stated or implied opinion on an issue and the question that raises doubt about its validity. The opinion not only reflects some widely shared belief or is representative of some widespread mind-set, but also, as a rule, has a certain doctrinaire ring to it: the philosophy behind it is usually speculative, anti-empirical, prone to hasty generalizations, collectivist, dogmatic and intolerant.”

Coming of age inPoland under Stalin, Wislawa Szymborska embraced and supported the regime andits ideals. Her first collection(Dlateyen Zyjany) was delayed from its planned publication in 1949 in order forher to "edit" the pieces to meet the Socialist requirements of thecensors.

Szymborska wrote inpraise of Stalin, Lenin and the idealized socialist life. She joined the UnitedWorkers Party, and was activein the effort to defame Catholic Priests before the Socialist Courts thatallowed the priests to be condemned to death. "Dlatezen Zjjary" wasfinally acceptable to the censors and published in 1952.

Like many Polish intellectuals initially close to the official party line, Szymborska gradually grew estranged from socialist ideology and renounced her earlier political work. Although she did not officially leave the party until 1966, she began to establish contacts with dissidents.

I have always been intrigued by this part of her life and would love to have known more about how she felt about those early years

The first poem is also a great one for Valentine's Day...

True Love

 True love. Is it normal
 is it serious, is it practical?
 What does the world get from two people
 who exist in a world of their own?

 Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
 drawn randomly from millions but convinced
 it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
 For nothing.


 The light descends from nowhere.
 Why on these two and not on others?
 Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
 Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
 and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

 Look at the happy couple.
 Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
 fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
 Listen to them laughing - its an insult.


 The language they use - deceptively clear.
 And their little celebrations, rituals,
 the elaborate mutual routines -
 it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!


 It's hard even to guess how far things might go
 if people start to follow their example.
 What could religion and poetry count on?
 What would be remembered? What renounced?
 Who'd want to stay within bounds?

 True love. Is it really necessary?
 Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
 like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
 Perfectly good children are born without its help.
 It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
 it comes along so rarely.

 Let the people who never find true love
 keep saying that there's no such thing.

 Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

More of her poems from Nobel Prize website ;this is one titled Utopia

and a great one here called  On Death; Without Exaggeration

Image from here

A Note

Life is the only way

to get covered in leaves,

catch your breath on the sand,

rise on wings;

to be a dog,

or stroke its warm fur;

to tell painfrom everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chanceto remember for a moment
a conversation heldwith the lamp switched off;

and if only onceto stumble on a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,
mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark in the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing
something important.

Notatka, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak from the collection Chwila (Moment, 2003)

My own image

The End and The Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't straighten themselves up,
after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa-springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush sometimes
someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew what was going on here
must give way to those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.

Above poem taken from Waging Peace from here.

                                 Duchamp self portrait

I'm not sure whether I agree with her views on the soul here but it certainly makes me think !!

A Few Words on the Soul
translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.
It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

I like the following poem as it examines the ability of humans to be self conscious and accountable and is a playful one particularly when considering whether the primacy of conscience although attractive as an option, can ever be that pure.

Her writing often lays open questions ( though not answers), about human motives.

This poem deals with the examination of conscience which includes questions on which act is right and which is wrong and the ability of humans to be self reflective.

It also cleverly alludes to the concept of original sin and the role of evil as personified in the snake.

In Praise Of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

I was particularly taken with this extract (from billyanddad.com) : " I read a poem she didn’t recite on her 60th birthday, inscribed “for 60th”: “No Title Required,” she writes about the poet sitting under a tree and watching a butterfly and reflecting how each moment has a “fertile past” and is as woven into the “tapestry of circumstance” as even the most renowned moments.

The last lines read:

I’m no longer sure
that what’s important
is more important than what’s not.


“I’m no longer sure” has been underlined in pencil."

Related Articles and Sources 


In Memory of Wislawa Szymborska (billyanddad.wordpress.com)

1923-2012 - A poet's moorings (thehindu.com)

The Poetry Foundation 

Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska: 1923-2012 (omnivoracious.com)

Wislawa Szymborska: Poet who won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature (independent.co.uk)

Pavel 183 Russian Street Artist

2012-02-09T00:02:00.001+01:00

This was featured on the evening news - Some great street art by Russian Pavel 183..

For thirteen years, the Russian artist Pavel Puhov has adorned the streets of Moscow, with witty and rebellious images. But very little is known about him.

He has been dubbed the Russian Banksy - or Bankski.

Puhov hides his face, the main identification card is his work and most of the pieces touch on issues of social criticism and protest. His unique and original visual identity as Pavel 183 is on his official website, written in Russian.

The artist is allegedly 28 years old, was born in Moscow and he studied Communications and Design.

Abandoned buildings, bridges, schools and the Moscow Metro become his ‘creative playground’.

His creations, however, fail to stand the test of time as the city authorities and street cleaners eliminate them as soon as they appear. Thus, photographs often become the only way they can be captured for posterity.

His background in graffiti is self-taught and his creative process is summarized, according to his own words, as "First, I think, then I see and then I show what I see."

His last work was carried out on the snow, it is a lens frame is completed with a light pole. You can identify work with his signature "183".

Another work, entitled “Arsonists bridges” with the image of a rebel with a torch. At night, they lit a real fire here to add realism. Pavel said ”Many of us can not achieve any success, no glory, no money, no relationship, and this work is dedicated to those who burn old bridges to create a new world.”

Sixth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass Reflections

2012-02-08T20:26:00.001+01:00

Scripture readings along with various reflections for Sunday's Mass are here

and here.

Since posting I have also added a more recent reflection titled EmbracingThe Leper which can be found here.

Other reflections on the healing of the leper using a variety of sources from website The Edge Of Enclosure can be found here.

This is an extract below from a reflection from Fr. John Foley S.J from here.

"Here are a few things to notice about this coming Sunday’s Gospel. A man walks up to Jesus covered with scales and scabs.

The man is thereby committing a terrible social blunder and he may be breaking the law too. According to the prescriptions found in the First Reading, he should “dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp” as long as the sores are on him. He should ring a bell and cry “Unclean, unclean!”

In spite of all this, Jesus is not repulsed or shocked. He is “moved with pity.” Just three words, but they tell us so much, as is Mark’s way.

Then a wonderful statement from the leper. “If you want to, you can make me clean”: a confession of faith in just a few words. How did he know it? His spiritual life had already begun.

Jesus answers, “I do want to.”

Direct, honest, so revealing of God. The whole life of Jesus consists of this desire to help people who are in trouble, even if they have only a small faith by which to receive the cure.

In an extraordinary move, Jesus stretches out his hand and touches the man. Remember, the ancients thought that this sickness was communicable, and obviously, at the very least, it was disgusting. Yet Jesus touches him with care and says, “Be made clean.”

Look at it. Our spiritual life consists of being “made clean.” We must let Jesus touch us and touch our souls. Here in the very first chapter of Mark we already see how Jesus began to extend his spiritual mercy toward the leper and toward all of us."

Another reflection here also worth a read

Gospel Mark 1: 40-45.

A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said,
"If you wish, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched him, and said to him,
"I do will it. Be made clean."
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning the him sternly, he dismissed him at once.

He said to him, "See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them."

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

World Leprosy Day 2012

A message from Mumbai India "Smiles" General Director Jaume Sanllorente:

Video from Lepra Canada

Case History of a woman with leprosy highlighting work

of Lepra Canada

Modern Day Leprosy. Medical details here

Leprosy is not a particularly easy disease to catch; it is curable. Those affected should live within mainstream society and no – limbs don’t just fall off. Not even for comic effect. Find out the truth about leprosy by reading the Leprosy Myth Busters page.
Leprosy, which is also called Hansen’s Disease, has not been eradicated from the modern world, although it continues to decrease every year. The World Health Organization estimated a total of about 200,000 cases in 2010 – 2011, most of whom live in conditions of poverty. About 12 percent of all new cases are children under the age of 15.

The 59th World Leprosy Day, was observed on Jan. 29, and here, Archbishop Zimowski of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, addressed survivors of the disease and those still suffering from it around the globe.

Another address here

Archbishop Zimowski noted the many volunteer organizations that have helped in reducing the number of cases of leprosy, especially the Raoul Follereau Foundation based in Bologna, Italy.

LEPRA Health in Action (formerly the British Leprosy Relief Association) is a medical charity that shares the WHO goal of eradicating the disease.

In this video, Chief executive Sarah Nancollas gives a response to the controversial portrayal of leprosy and leprosy- affected people in the trailer for the new Aardman Animations/Sony Entertainment film 'Pirates! Adventures with Scientists' (aka Band of Misfits).

Since this video, Film-maker Aardman has told LEPRA Health in Action they'll now change the offending scene..

After reviewing the statement below from Aardman, LEPRA Health In Action added the following observations:

“Although we are genuinely delighted that Aardman has decided to amend the film, what has impressed our organisation most is the film-makers comments about respect and sensitivity. These words underline the importance of our work in the field and the dignity of those whose lives are affected by leprosy. Aardman has recognised the impact that this scene could have on this basic human right.”

In the statement Aardman said, “After reviewing the matter, we decided to change the scene out of respect and sensitivity for those who suffer from leprosy. The last thing anyone intended was to offend anyone and it is clear to us that the right way to proceed is to honour the efforts made by organizations like LEPRA and the World Health Organization to educate the public about this disease.”

Website of ILEP, The International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations is here

Interesting article here on leprosy in biblical times...

On Prayer and Sin Eaters

2012-02-08T10:54:00.001+01:00

A CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.

So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site.

She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.

"Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?

"Morris Feinberg," he replied.

"Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?"

"For about 60 years."

"60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?"

"I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims."

"I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop."

"I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults and to love their fellow man."

"I pray that politicians tell us the truth and put the interests of the people ahead of their own interests."

"How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?"

"Like I'm talking to a wall."

ON SIN EATERS

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent is fast approaching and so it's an opportune time to be thinking of Sin and the vicissitudes of faith, prayer and doubt.

Sin-eaters were common functionaries at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century funerals in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

They would take unto themselves the sins of the dead by consuming bread and beer over the corpse.

In addition to the feed, they charged a fee for this ritual scapegoating.

Image Celtic graves Ginny Dixon from here

Like undertakers, they were needed but not much appreciated, and not infrequently reviled because of their proximity to the dead and their miserable stipend. Their place in the ceremonial landscape of death put them at times at odds with the reverend clergy.
Source: Poetry (February 2011).

One of my favourite writers is Thomas P.Lynch, a retired undertaker who hails from my birthplace in County Clare and these first three poems are his.

The third poem, "He Posits Certain Mysteries " explicitly refers to the sin eaters, and Argyle is the name of a fictional "sin eater" who features in many of his poems.

Argyle on Knocknagaroon

By Thomas P. Lynch

Because he barely heard the voice of God

above the hum of other choristers—

batwing and bird-whistle, gathering thunder,

the hiss of tides retreating, children, cattle;

because he could not readily discern

the plan Whoever Is In Charge Here has,

he wondered about those who claimed to have

blessed assurances or certainty:

a One and Only Way and Truth and Life,

as if Whatever Breathes in Everything

mightn’t speak in every wondrous tongue;

as if, of all creations, only one

made any sense. It made no sense to him.

Hunger he understood, touch, desire.

He knew the tenderness humans could do,

no less brutalities. He knew the cold

morning, the broad meadow, the gold sunset.

One evening on the hill of Knocknagaroon,

the Atlantic on one side, the Shannon

on the other, the narrowing headlands

of the peninsula out behind him,

the broad green palm of Moveen before him,

it seemed he occupied the hand of God:

open, upturned, outstretched, uplifting him.

Source: Poetry (February 2011).

Image Knocknagaroon in County Clare Ireland

Cappa magnum robe

He Considers Not the Lilies but Their Excellencies

By Thomas P. Lynch

Thin gruel, shallow graves, whiskey watered down,

the ne’er-do-well and good-for-nothing crowd

of cornerboys and gobshites were among

Argyle’s manifold perturbations.

Worse still, the episcopal vexations:

their excellencies, eminence and graces,

red-cassocked dandies and mitered wankers,

the croziered posers in their bishoprics

with their Easter duties and Peter’s pence,

their ledgers full of mortal, venial sins—

keepers of the till and tally, bankers

of indulgences and dispensations;

their bulls and bans and excommunications,

nothing but contumely and bamboozles.

For all their vestiture, rings and unctions,

preaching to bishops, like farting at skunks, was

nothing but a mug’s game to the sin-eater,

so in earshot of them mum is what he kept.

Still, he thought there might be something to it:

a life apart from this life where the souls

long dead and gone were neither dead nor gone.

Some days he felt so happily haunted,

by loving ghosts and gods upholding him.

Some days he felt entirely alone.

Painting : Curragh Men of Ireland by J.P.Rooney from here

He Posits Certain Mysteries

By Thomas P. Lynch

The body of the boy who took his flight

off the cliff at Kilcloher into the sea

was hauled up by curragh-men, out at first light

fishing mackerel in the estuary.

“No requiem or rosary” said the priest,

“nor consecrated ground for burial,”

as if the boy had flown outside the pale

of mercy or redemption or God’s love.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do,”

quoth Argyle to the corpse’s people,

who heard in what he said a sort of riddle,

as if he meant their co-religionists

and not their sodden, sadly broken boy.

Either way, they took some comfort in it

and readied better than accustomed fare

of food and spirits; by their own reckoning:

the greater sin, the greater so the toll.

But Argyle refused their shilling coin

and helped them build a box and dig a grave.

“Your boy’s no profligate or prodigal,”

he said, “only a wounded pilgrim like us all.

What say his leaping was a leap of faith,

into his father’s beckoning embrace?”

They killed no fatted calf. They filled the hole.

Source: Poetry (February 2011).

and finally......

Possible Answers To Prayer

by Scott Cairns

Your petitions—though they continue to bear

just the one signature—have been duly recorded.

Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent

entertainment value—nonetheless serve

to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath

a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more

conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,

the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes

recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly

righteous indignation toward the many

whose habits and sympathies offend you—

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend

how near I am, with what fervour I adore

precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.

Scott Cairns, “Possible Answers to Prayer” from Philokalia: New and Selected Poems.

from The Poetry Foundation.

Love Does That

2012-02-08T10:19:00.000+01:00

One of my favourite poems.....

Own photo taken in Fez, Morocco 2011

All day long a little burro labours,

sometimes with heavy loads on her back

and sometimes just with worries

about things that bother only burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labour.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable

and brings a pear,

but more than that,

he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free

and even seems to laugh,

because love does that.

Love Frees.

~ Meister Eckhart ~

(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)

Related Links

On Love Dignity and Little Burros

Nobody Dances Perfectly

2012-02-07T14:35:00.001+01:00

A video with what are to my eyes , two perfect dancers : Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, followed by Laurel and Hardy (equally enjoyable), doing it in their own inimitable way and then a lovely reflection from Fr. Ron Rolheiser on how it's hard for most of us to dance well...

Laurel and Hardy The Gap Band

Fr. Ron Rolheiser's reflection, (Full text here) entitled On Mourning and Dancing
where he says :

"The struggle to find a way to express oneself freely and deeply and yet not cross the line into unhealthy exhibitionism is tough task for everyone. You see it done well in rare cases, Jesus and a number of great people like Mother Theresa.

They can be great without being grandiose and can give public expression to what's most intimate within them without making you cringe or feel uncomfortable or embarrassed for them. But that's a rare talent; check out any dance floor.

How someone dances is often an indication of the kind of balance he or she has been able to achieve on this. Sometimes you see a healthy dancer who exhibits no inhibiting self-consciousness and, at the same time, no excessive self-focus or self-abandonment.

A healthy dancer's movements have an easy, natural flow that draws your eyes and attention to the dance and not to the dancer. Moreover, even in the dance, a healthy dancer is still recognizably the person you know and not some impersonal, anonymous energy that is acting out in a dance. But it's hard to dance well.

More often than not someone's dance step is colored by his or her inner struggle and by where his or her internal compass has been set: Too self-aware, too cautious, too fearful, and we see a dance-step that is reticent, halting, and apologetic.

Conversely, too little self-awareness and we see a dance-step that's free and uninhibited but which manifests an unhealthy exhibitionism.

Sometimes our dance step reveals too little, just as sometimes our dance step reveals too much and we cross a line where self-expression becomes acting out and people see an unhealthy narcissism and self-abandonment in our dance step and are embarrassed for us.

And this, our struggle to dance well, mirrors another tension inside us, namely, the struggle between depression and inflation, between feeling too-high or feeling too-low.

Just as a healthy dance step is not easy to achieve so too is a healthy psyche, one within which our energies flow freely but without unhealthy narcissism or exhibitionism.

The problem is that we are forever being pulled up or down, over-stimulated in our grandiosity or undervalued in being. Both can leave us less than steady.

Only the most mature and secure of us are not unduly swayed in our moods and our actions by the affirmations and rejections we meet in our daily lives.

Inside of our families, our friendships, our places of work, our churches, and even inside of many of our simple impersonal interactions with others in public life, we are constantly meeting either affirmation or rejection of some kind (a smile, a thank you, a compliment, a warm pat on the back, a recognition of a job well done, some other gesture of love, or, conversely, a coldness, a put-down, an insult, a criticism, a slight, a snub).

Whenever this happens we are powerless to protect ourselves against how this infects our psyche and our emotions.

Lots of affirmation and we can easily find ourselves too full of ourselves and too empty of God and others.

Too much coldness and rejection and we can easily find ourselves too empty of ourselves and of God's wonderful energy inside us.

I say this with empathy. Life is hard for everyone, particularly if you are trying to live in way that respects others even as you try to honor your own energies. If you are healthily sensitive it will always be a struggle:

How do you properly honor, act out, and celebrate your own more-exuberant energies in ways that fully respect others and don't cross any moral or aesthetic lines?
Not an easy formula.

Too little allowance for exuberance and you will find yourself overly-reticent, tongue-tied, frustrated, sterile, and dealing with a lot of anger; too much unchecked exuberance and you will act out in ways that embarrass you and embarrass others.

And so we should accept this struggle as a given and not be too hard on others and ourselves.

We're human and so we need to forgive each other and ourselves for being uptight and halting in our dance steps, even as we forgive others and ourselves for the acting-out we've done on those same dance-floors.

There are very few free, fully healthy, persons in this world. Nobody dances perfectly."

Newquay Church Opens Up for Homeless

2012-02-06T19:53:00.000+01:00

BBC Video report here

A Cornish priest has opened the doors of his church to allow homeless people to sleep in it overnight because he says there is nowhere else for them to go during the cold weather.

The Reverend Chris McQuillen-Wright, vicar of St Columb Minor Church, near Newquay, made the decision following the deaths of nine rough sleepers on the resort's streets in 2011.

Twenty one people have used the shelter since it opened in November.
Mr McQuillen-Wright said the resort needed to help those with drug, alcohol and mental health issues.

He said: "They are the people who do not knock on our door.

"We need to be getting out there assessing their needs and getting them on the next step."If we had a professional worker in place we could break the long-term cycle for many people. "Just having a building open is not going to help."

Mr McQuillen-Wright, vice-chairman of homelessness charity the St Petroc's Society, said the church shelter "shows how desperate some people are".
He said there were about 120 people rough sleeping in Cornwall and the number was increasing.
"It is not the most comfortable places to come, but no-one will die of hypothermia.
"It's not ideal by any means, but we can provide four or five days for a foundation where they can get an interview for something more permanent such as hostel accommodation."

Why is there nowhere else for these people to stay ?-
We call ourselves a civilised developed country- I'm ashamed.

The Deer's Cry Celtic Prayer

2012-02-06T18:00:00.002+01:00

"The Deer's Cry", attributed to St Patrick, is known by several names: "The Breastplate of St Patrick" and "Lorica" to mention two.

It is a beautiful prayer celebrating a God who lives in us,
guiding us, sheltering us, and strengthening us:
It sings to a God who is with us and in us through his Creation.

In 1994 Irish composer Shaun Davey put a section of the Breastplate to some music in his CD "The Pilgrim".

H/T to Christine Sine for music from Godspace

Hold On

2012-02-06T13:14:00.000+01:00

On Balance by artist Joel Traylor from On Being Blog.

Hold on ( Change is Coming) by Sounds of Blackness

Bits of Buechner and a Prayer to Begin The Week

2012-02-06T10:18:00.001+01:00

I had no idea how to start posting today and them I came across a few extracts from Frederick Buechner and Fr Austin's Monday Morning Offering and voila !, they all connected and the problem was solved !!

Becoming Human

Frederick Buechner

I don't think that it is always necessary to talk about the deepestand most private dimension of who we are, but I think we are called totalk to each other out of it, and just as importantly to listen toeach other out of it, to live out of our depths as well as our shallows.

We areall of us adolescents, painfully growing and groping our way toward somethinglike true adulthood, and maybe the greatest value we have both to teach and tolearn as we go is the capacity to be amazed...

which is a power to heal us andbless us and in the end maybe even to transform us into truly humanbeings at last.

Source: The Clown in the Belfry

From Faith and Fiction, Frederick Buechner:

The ways God appears in our lives are elusive and ambiguous always. There is always room for doubt in order, perhaps, that there will always be room to breathe. There is so much in life that hides God and denies the very possibility of God that there are times when it is hard not to deny God altogether.

Yet it is possible to have faith nonetheless. Faith is that Nonetheless.

Writing strikes me as intravenous.

As you sit there only a few inches from the printed page, the words you read go directly into the bloodstream and go into it at full strength. More than the painting you see or the music you hear, the words you read become in the very act of reading them part of who you are. . . .

If there is poison in the words, you are poisoned; if there is nourishment, you are nourished; if there is beauty, you are made a little more beautiful."

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

(Frederick Buechner)

From Now&Then

Because the word that God speaks to us is always an incarnate word–a word spelled out to us not alphabetically, in syllables, but enigmatically, in events, even in the books we read and the movies we see–the chances are we will never get it just right.

We are so used to hearing what we want to hear and remaining deaf to what it would be well for us to hear that it is hard to break the habit.

But if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however faintly we may hear him, he is indeed speaking to us, and that, however little we may understand of it, his word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling.

In that sense autobiography becomes a way of praying, and a book like this, if it matters at all, matters mostly as a call to prayer.

Fr Austin's Monday Morning Offering from A Concord Pastor Comments

Quite a week behind me, Lord,

but you know all about that

so details aren’t important here…

How easily I can be thrown off balance, Lord!

Sometimes,

just when things seem so steady and secure,

I’m knocked off my pins,

weaving between surety and doubt,

wondering if what I’m sure is true is true…

Do I trust what should be trusted?

Is my faithfulness real or imagined?

Are my judgments right or wrong?

An unsettling time it was, Lord,

with worry renting space

in my head and heart and gut…

But clouds give way to light, Lord,

and troubled waters calmed

as I turned to you for peace

when peace was hard to find…

For your grace over the past week,

I thank you, Lord…

For friends who listen and support,

who understand and counsel,

who coach and challenge,

I thank you, Lord…

For your breath upon my soul,

reminding me of your presence,

refreshing joyful memories

and opening me to new blessings,

I thank you, Lord…

For your love that roots me

in you and in my ministry,

I thank you, Lord…

For making steady my faltering steps,

for lifting me up when I fall,

for showing me the path to walk,

I thank you, Lord…

Shine the light of your truth

upon the whole of my life, Lord:

show me the weaknesses I hide from

and reveal the strength I’m slow to claim…

Strengthen me in my faith

and open me to all the ways

I need to grow and change…

I offer you the week past, Lord,

with the hope and prayer I’ve learned from it

and grown in the gifts of your Spirit…

Keep me mindful of those who cross my path

having their own difficult days and weeks

and if I might comfort or challenge them,

give me the words to speak and love to share…

Such is my prayer this morning, Lord:

keep me faithful to you through this day

and through the week ahead…

Amen.

Ireland v Wales Six Nations Sunday 5th February 2012

2012-02-05T16:05:00.001+01:00

Live Commentary here for today's Six Nations Rugby Match between Ireland and Wales in Dublin at the Aviva stadium...

Ireland will be captained by Paul O'Connell
Good Luck !

Irish Rugby Anthem: Ireland's Call

Lent 2012

2012-02-05T14:15:00.002+01:00

Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday 22nd February and lasts for 40 days.

Holy Week opens up on Sunday 1st April with Palm Sunday.
The Triduum begins with :

Maundy Thursday on 5th April
Good Friday 6th April
Easter Saturday is 7th and Easter Sunday is 8th April

Look on the SIDE BAR OF MY BLOG for the logo above, Click on it to take you to a series of free resources and links for Lent 2012 which I will hopefully add to as time goes on.

or click here for these resources

Don't forget the Taize chants series which are also ON THE SIDE BAR.
Look for and click on this logo which is immediately underneath the Lent 2012 logo.

Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass and Reflections

2012-02-04T13:41:00.001+01:00

The Mass Readings for today are here.

Various reflections and commentaries on the readings are here at the Centre for Liturgy at St Louis University

The First Reading Job 7:1-4, 6-7

Image from here

Job spoke, saying:

Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?

Are not his days those of hirelings?

He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.

So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.

If in bed I say, "When shall I arise?"
then the night drags on;

I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.

Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.

SOME REFLECTIONS

The first reading is a pretty doleful description of how we can feel when we are depleted and worn out from the endless repeated cycle of work and stress.

The feeling of being unwanted, unlistened to, disregarded, unappreciated and taken for granted; when the real needs of a person are not being met over a protracted period the emptiness inside aches and hurts.
There is no gratitude here : life is a drudge and it's all a waste of time.

Image from here

" Wouldn't It Be Nice" : Nick Kershaw's great song is perhaps a modern day version of Job's lament...I have put two versions of this song : the first one is a more recent raw version....

The second is Nik Kershaw as he sang it in the 80's at the Live Aid Concert _ how time goes so quickly... the video is a bit ropy but the sound quality is fine.

Sometimes in such a negative place all we need is a touch , a physical warmth and a hug but it's often in such times that we don't ask that of others. We may expect others to notice and they don't.

But also true in this first reading is that sometimes the person who needs a hug pushes others away : their neediness and anger is projected outwards and is so off putting to others that they are wary of stepping nearer for fear of being rebuffed.

In extreme ways this can eventually lead to a person closing a part of themselves completely off. They function in the outside world while their inner life is completely at variance with what everyone else can visibly see.Their isolation increases and so too their inability to be touched.

Lay Your Hands : Thompson Twins

Fr. Ron Rolheiser's moving reflection here on the first reading is titled

Too-Bruised to be Touched - One of the Causes of Suicide where he quotes from the poet, Hafiz, who wrote this poem nearly 700 years ago entitled, We Should Talk About This Problem.

In it, God addresses a wounded soul:

There is a beautiful creature
living in a hole you have dug ...
and I often sing, but still, my dear,
you do not come out.
I have fallen in love with someone
who hides inside of you.

Fr. Rolheiser says "That's God's feeling, and perhaps ours too, when someone is in a suicidal depression."

So it is with a sense of relief we read Psalm 147 with the refrain Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.

Image via Wikipedia

So to the the Gospel, where the power of Jesus as a healer is laid wide open once again as Simon's mother -in - law is cured of a fever.

Perhaps the fever is real or it can be seen as metaphor for that "burning up inside feeling" when our real needs are not being met. Maybe the parable even deliberately uses the mother in-law for a purpose because the stereotypical mother- in -law is often the bait for cliched jokes.

Maybe there is a lesson that all of us can take away : that the outer person we see is not the inner person. Maybe the gospel links to the first reading in the sense that Simon's mother-in-law had that feeling of being taken for granted: her own self worth and realisation of the assumptions other people made of her, were based solely on her persona, not her true spirit and inner soul. Maybe she was aching just to be taken and held..

Of course Jesus recognised that head on, met her, touched her and lifted her up and once she knew she was "known" she was able to carry on doing what she always did best but now she was re-invigorated : she could now take up her previous task to serve others with a renewed sense of who it was all for. In other words she had been "taken out of herself " and those "put upon feelings " had been erased.

The phrase "they immediately told Him about her" stays with me too. What did they tell him exactly ?? That she had a fever and had been out of sorts ??

Jesus, the supreme diagnostic healer cut right through the symptoms to the cause .

I'll be There by The Four Tops : One of my favourites !! What a great song...

Maybe when we pray for others we know who we can't cure ourselves we can do just that- tell Jesus what we can only outwardly see is wrong, but pray that He can root out the other reasons we may not know about so that He can reach down into the heart of that person's inner sickness, pain, isolation and alienation and lift them up...

Another reflection here , another perspective
written by Patricia Datchuck Sánchez in NCR from which this extract is below:

"In today’s Marcan Gospel, we’ll meet Peter’s mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever. Her glass probably seemed half-empty because sickness was traditionally associated with sin. At the very least, her illness rendered her unclean and unable to participate with her family, friends and neighbors in public events. But the difference between Job and Peter’s mother-in-law was that she had people who cared enough about her to get her the help she needed. They told Jesus about her. Job, on the other hand, had “friends” who exacerbated his situation by trying to find someone to blame for his troubles.

With these readings, we are invited to consider our own response to the inherent difficulties of life and to examine how we help others cope with their struggles. Are we pessimists with a complaint for every evil in the world, or are we what William J. Bausch has called “hope-givers”?

By way of illustration, Bausch relates a story told to him by an acquaintance: You can read the rest of the story here.

.................................................................................................................................................................

Tucked in at the tale end of today's Gospel is evidence of Jesus’ commitment to contemplation, and the discernment which came to Him from such times.

Always, the centrality of prayer and deep times alone with God are key moments in His life and ministry.

After a day of intense activity working miracles of healing, Jesus was in need of solitude with God.

Sometimes Jesus would walk by the sea shores or Galilee or find a mountain where he would be empowered to fulfil what He had to do.

God loves his creation !

If Jesus could not imagine living His life apart from prayer, then neither must I.

I rob myself of more than I can ever know when I short-change myself of deep times alone with God.

My life is superficial if I just act on my own decisions and then somehow hope that God will bless my effort.

Spending time in prayer allowed Jesus to always focus on the source for His ministry - God.

Gospel Mark 1: 29-39

On leaving the synagogue

Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.

Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever.

They immediately told him about her.

He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.

Then the fever left her and she waited on them.
When it was evening, after sunset,
they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.

The whole town was gathered at the door.
He cured many who were sick with various diseases,
and he drove out many demons,
not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

Rising very early before dawn,
he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.

Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.”

He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages
that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come.”

So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons
throughout the whole of Galilee.

Nice reflection here on the gospel

"The love of God begins with the Life-Giving Touch. In the book of Genesis 2: 7, “the LORD God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living person.”

To “form” is to touch with your hands. To mould. To design. This creation story sounds as much like an embrace as it does a history. God resting His hands on a man, giving him life.

This is not to diminish the Message of Christ, what would most often be called “The Gospel”. It is rather to redirect our attention to the catalyst for redemption, grace, the salvation of the human race.

The touch. Too few have been embraced. Not too many have had a comforting hand on their shoulder.
There are many who wish someone would hold their hand.
Starving for a regenerative, healing touch. This is what Jesus did best.
The more we touch and the less we talk, perhaps we’ll realize we are all able to heal."

Reach Out and Touch : The Diva Diana Ross performing at the Tsunami Benefit, broadcast from NBC Universal Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday 15th January 2005.

The healing power of touch has been a resonant idea in the human mind into the annals of recorded history. Often aligned quite closely with spiritual or religious beliefs, the ability of certain privileged persons in the community to heal through bodily contact or close proximity is repeated in culture after culture.

Faith healing in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, te-ate in ancient Japan, pranic healing in India, shamanistic rituals in tribal societies across the globe, the royal touch in medieval Europe; all hold as their central belief the tenet that mere physical contact between two human beings can effectively cure disease, heal wounds, and remove infirmities.

The Grasp Of Your Hand

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling
Your mercy in my success alone;

but let me find
the grasp of Your hand in my failure.

from the book, The Heart of God, Tagore

The Hymn Lay Your Hands by Carey Landry

Lay Your hands gently upon us.

Let their touch render Your peace.

Let them bring Your forgiveness and healing.

Lay Your hands, gently lay Your hands.

You were sent to free the broken hearted.

You were sent to give sight to the blind:

You desire to heal all our illnesses. Lay Your hands gently, lay Your hands.

Lord, we come to You through one another.

Lord, we come to You in our need.

Lord, we come to You seeking wholeness.

Lay Your hands gently, lay Your hands.

This is my prayer this week : the words from Sebastian temple's Offertory Hymn
Sebastian Temple

Take my hands and make them as your own, and use them for your kingdom here on earth.
Consecrate them to your care, anoint them for your service where you
may need your gospel to be sown.
Take my hands, take my hands, O Lord.
Take my hands, they speak now for my heart, and by their actions they
will show their love.
Guard them on their daily course, be their strength and guiding force
to ever serve the Trinity above.
Take my hands, take my hands, O Lord.
Take my hands, I give them to you, Lord. Prepare them for the
service of your name.
Open them to human need and by their love they'll sow your seed so all
may know the love and hope you gave.
Take my hands, take my hands, O Lord.
This reflection here

It is, alas, a fever that afflicts more than just Peter’s mother-in-law; it afflicts us all. This understanding of the reference to fever helps frame Jesus’ reaction to the affliction in Luke’s account. Jesus rebukes the fever, as does Paul in his own way.

It is, one might say, precisely this fever that Christ came to cure, and to do so, not by cooling its fervor, but by rescuing it from the human soap opera and redirecting toward the God in whose image we are made, whose living Icon Jesus is.

If the Pauline reference to the flesh and the Lucan reference to fever are allowed to converge, what we have is a picture of the human condition in which jealousy and rivalry are much more than merely two of the countless sins to which we are all prone. Rather in a sense they epitomize our situation.

René Girard’s analysis of the problems associated with what he calls “mimetic desire” explore the fever from which we humans suffer in a particularly compelling way.

Christ rebukes the fever by becoming the object of our mimetic desire, replacing the model-rival which St. Paul has found so destructively at work in the Corinthian community.

There is deeper meaning as well in the way Peter's mother-in-law responded once the fever has left her: she rose and began to serve. There is here a hint of the Resurrection and Pentecost.

This is simply what happens when we are cured of the fever of life; we arise from the preoccupations of the melodrama and begin to serve. Everyone freed from the fever is, by that fact, assigned a mission."

All of this comes together in the famous prayer that John Henry Newman prayed:

May the Lord support us all the day long,
Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes

and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,

and our work is done.

Then in his mercy may he give us
a safe lodging

and a holy rest,
and peace at last.

Friday Fish

2012-02-03T02:01:00.001+01:00

Caught in the net this week

Live at Glastonbury Festival

Pretty Amazing Grace Neil Diamond

Image Sea of Galilee from here

Invisible Work

by Alison Luterman

Because no one could ever praise me enough,

because I don't mean these poems only

but the unseen

unbelievable effort it takes to live

the life that goes on between them,

I think all the time about invisible work.

About the young mother on Welfare

I interviewed years ago,

who said, "It's hard.

You bring him to the park,

run rings around yourself keeping him safe,

cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,

and there's no one

to say what a good job you're doing,

how you were patient and loving

for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."

And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself

because I am lonely,

when all the while,

as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried

by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,

the slow, unglamorous work of healing,

the way worms in the garden

tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe

and bees ransack this world into being,

while owls and poets stalk shadows,

our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers

for everything, and the sea

is a mother too,

whispering and whispering to us

long after we have stopped listening.

I stopped and let myself lean

a moment, against the blue

shoulder of the air. The work

of my heart

is the work of the world's heart.

There is no other art.

Starfish

by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
stopped when you should have started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Prayer

Maya Angelou

Father, Mother God,

Thank you for your presenceduring the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presenceduring the bright and sunny days,

for then we can share that which we havewith those who have less.

And thank you for your presenceduring the Holy Days,

for then we are ableto celebrate you and our familiesand our friends.

For those who have no voice,we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy,we ask you to pour your love outin waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain,we ask you to bathe themin the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we askyou to keep them company.

For those who are depressed,we ask you to shower upon themthe light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderlesssea of substance,

we ask you to give all theworld that which we need most

-- Peace.

I Thank You God for Most This Amazing Day

2012-02-02T16:35:00.001+01:00

i thank You God for most this amazing day,
read by the great poet himself, e.e cummings..

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened.

Candlemas Day and More on The Presentation of Jesus

2012-02-02T14:30:00.001+01:00

This lovely image combines Groundhog day, St Brigid's Day gives us her well of life giving water from the Holy Spirit, Candlemas Day warms our hearts and asks us to share our light of faith with others and there are Intimations of Spring.

The light is getting stronger, days are visibly longer and our thoughts are for New Life.Today is the wonderful Feast of the Presentation of Jesus, the Lamb of God , to the old man Simeon and Anna the Prophetess in the Temple.

My other posts on The Feast of The Presentation are
here

here

and also here

Jorge Luis Borges on Learning

2012-02-02T10:13:00.001+01:00

Buenos Aires: Las Calles de Borges from Ian Ruschel on Vimeo.

A gem of a little film tribute to the great Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986.)

"Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark."
Jorge Luis Borges

This video was shot in the winter of 2010 in Buenos Aires and Capilla del Señor, Argentina.

You Learn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn...
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong

And you really do have worth...
And you learn and learn...

With every good-bye you learn.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

Tune for Thursday

2012-02-02T10:11:00.004+01:00

Snoopy

Card Carrying Catholics ?

2012-02-02T00:50:00.001+01:00

The Church in the UK is set to distribute cards across parishes for Catholics to carry with them as a mark of Catholic identity and a starting point for evangelisation.

The initiative comes from the bishops' department for evangelisation and catechesis.

One million cards will be sent to 24 Catholic dioceses, including the Bishopric of the Forces and the Ordinariate, this month and next, as a reminder that all baptised are invited to know and share their faith.

On one side of the credit-card-sized resource is a space for the owner to sign, a list of six things that Catholics are called to do, and the instruction: "In the event of an emergency, please call a Catholic priest."

On the other side is a quote from Blessed John Henry Newman.

Front of card

Back of card

Why the arrows ??

What happens if you don't do the 6 callouts ?

Are they indictable offences if not done ?

Perhaps they could add : As a Catholic I am called to listen ...

I'm happy with the prayer, but I recoil in horror at the thought of serving up the card to anyone as part of an evangelical gesture.

I was happy with the "In the event of an emergency please contact a Catholic priest " until I thought how ambiguous interpretation of the term "emergency" could lead to some of scenarios that could make this one unholy nightmare for priests.

The cards are likely to get lost or stolen by pranksters who would then ring up a priest on the pretence of an emergency such as the washing machine breaking down.

See link below for real examples of weird emergency 999 calls to the ambulance service and you get the idea..

A drunk dialled 999 to complain to police that there was too much chilli sauce on his kebab, while another caller wanted help to find a pizza takeaway, a force revealed today.
The late-night caller asked if there were any pizza shops still open and when he was told that was not an emergency, replied: 'It is mate, my wife is pregnant and gagging for pizza.'
Northumbria Police was also called by a woman who claimed two spiders were attacking her in her cellar.
The force revealed the outrageous calls to highlight the serious problem of people abusing the emergency 999 system.
In other recent calls, an angry mother wanted officers to get her lazy son out of bed and into work after he reported in sick.
The drunken kebab-eater called for assistance in getting another meal from the shop claiming his original feast had been ruined with the chilli sauce.
Supt Neil Adamson, of the Communications Department, said: 'Every month, Northumbria Police receives 25,000 999 calls, of which less than half are actual emergencies which would warrant the use of 999.
'People should only use the emergency 999 number if there is any danger or risk to life or a crime is in progress.'
The North East Ambulance Service recently revealed a woman who had broken her fingernail called from a nightclub toilet for help.
Another caller wanted a crew to come to his home to fetch him a can of pop from his fridge.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/31221-999-call-for-pizza-emergency#ixzz1lB0YOjnL

A woman dialled 999 to report that the rabbit she had just bought did not have floppy ears.

What's next on the menu I wonder ??

Bumper stickers, mugs, T- shirts ??

Then we had better watch out for the tattoos on the forehead or elsewhere..

On second thoughts, don't encourage them.

What are your views ??

Hesitant Spring: Lead Kindly Light, Lead Thou Me On !

2012-02-01T17:24:00.002+01:00

A Spring Poem

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

As Rilke's poem suggests, we are not quite there yet.Spring is entering hesitantly and with subtlety. The weather forecast for the next few days is one of widespread frosty nights, but today, although bitterly cold has seen a bright sun and cloudless blue sky, which is one of the season's glorious paradoxes...

This is a lovely version of Lead Kindly Light which takes us into tomorrow's feast of Candlemas.

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I
Have loved long since, and lost awhile!

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path, Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Savior, lead me home in childlike faith, home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.

Lead, Kindly Light is a hymn with words written in 1833 by John Henry Newman as a poem titled "the Pillar of Cloud".
In some hymnals, one may find a fourth verse added by Edward H. Bickersteth, Jr.

More on St Brigid and Celtic Christianity

2012-02-01T12:48:00.000+01:00

Previous posts on the Celtic feast of St Brigid this week are here and here but I would like to add this fine one reproduced below from the Capuchin Franciscans Of Ireland

"St. Brigid lived during the Golden Age of the Celtic Irish CatholicChurch. This period, from the 7th century AD, saw monasteries become social, spiritual and political centres

They were often huge theocratic villages,associated with a clan, along with their slaves, freemen, celibate monks,married clergy, professed lay people, men and women, all living side by sideand serving in various roles.

Bronze plaque by Egino Weinert from here

In thesetimes the monastic abbots were not necessarily ordained and, as is the casewith St. Brigid, were women too.

TheseCeltic Christians took their spiritual life very seriously and sought toachieve a personal and organic union between themselves and God (a theosis);with God dwelling in them and they in Him.

They saw the true Christian life as being lived in and with Christ.

During these times the monasteries wereuniversally esteemed and regarded as the utmost expression of the Christianlife.

Today, as we seek a renewed vision and approach to boththe spiritual and the material world, we pray that we may recapture something ofthe essence of the deeply spiritual, holistic, ecologically sensitive, inclusiveand egalitarian Church which St. Brigid knew and led. Following her example, may we grow each dayinto greater wholeness of mind, body and spirit !"

This is a lovely vision of church and one that speaks deeply to my heart, apart from the slaves. (!)

Slavery was very much a part of life in Judea, Galilee, and in the rest of the Roman Empire during New Testament times. The practice continued in England, Canada and the rest of the European age of Empire until the early 19th century; it continued in the U.S. until later in the 19th century.

Sex slavery is still a global industry so there is still a lot to do to free mankind from the yokes of slavery and there is slavery to a global economic system that has the world in chains and other kinds of slavery too.

Anyone or anything that controls us owns us, and we can become slaves to them.

Some could be slaves to alcohol, money, lust, sex, pornography, smoking, sports, illegal drugs, social media, work, or fear, worry, and anxiety. Those are just some of things we can be controlled by. We can also be a slave to people; our partners, family, friends.... there are many others that can be added.

Was it St Paul who wrote that he was a slave of Christ or was that servant?
but Paul also said

"There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Welcome February 2012

2012-02-01T11:11:00.000+01:00

February 1st

The days are getting longer but it's getting colder..

Photos of trees Suzanne Tidwell

St Brigid's Day is tomorrow.The world is turning. It's nearly Imbolc time ...moving from winter to Spring.. Time for transformation... Let the light shine in...

"By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me.
The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet."
Thomas Merton

And every burning morning is a prophecy of Christ

coming to raise and vindicate

Even our sorry flesh.

 Thomas Merton

Feast of St Thomas Aquinas

2012-01-31T16:34:00.000+01:00

There is too much going on these days and I forgot to post this for last Saturday's feast of St Thomas Aquinas on 28th January.

It's a repost from last year, but I have updated it with a new two part article from Tina Beattie in the UK Guardian newspaper so here is the link to Part 1 of her article from yesterday.

The comments section is worth a look mainly for the dismissive statements on Thomas!!

Fr Robert Barron explains

Thomas Aquinas was a great scholar of the medieval period. His unfinished Summa Theologica (1266-73) managed to find a way of reconciling Faith, in the form of Christian theology, with Reason, in the form of Aristotelian philosophy.

Faith and Reason had often been considered incompatible but Aquinas argued that all human understanding was ultimately based on what had been revealed by God but that it was necessary for humans to have rational thought in order to understand God's revelations.

He felt reason could lead us to an understanding of God but maintained that this was not the only path. Those who lacked philosophical gifts but were steadfast in their faith could come to understand God's existence through divine revelation.

The greater part of Aquinas' writings are theological, but there are many strictly philosophical works within his corpus, such as On Being and Essence, On the Principles of Nature, On the Eternity of the World and his commentaries on Aristotle.

Aquinas was interested in metaphysics and the study of being. He concluded that although humans could never make a direct study of God, through the simple fact of their being they could deduce, through reason, that there must be a creator who had created them.

This one may give you a migraine

This is a photo of the handwriting of St Thomas Aquinas

“Indeed, I think there are fewer people now alive who understand argument than there were twenty or thirty years ago; and St Thomas might have preferred the society of the atheists of the early nineteenth century, to that of the blank sceptics of the early twentieth.
Anyhow, one of the real disadvantages of the great and glorious sport, that is called argument, is its ordinate length.
If you argue honestly, as St Thomas always did, you will find that the subject sometimes seems as if it would never end…. Being himself resolved to argue, to honestly, to answer everybody, to deal with everything, he produced books enough to sink a ship or stock a library.”

—G. K. Chesterton, St Thomas Aquinas (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1943), p. 100.

And to think this is how we started off ......

Image above from Onward Bound Humour

This one is a review of a book by Herbert McCabe in which he says

Thomas Aquinas thought that theologians don’t know what they are talking about,” McCabe says. “He was, I suppose, the most "agnostic" theologian in the Western Christian tradition.”
Aquinas believed that the foundation of Christian morality is our friendship with God. In turn, human society, when it is functioning rightly, is a community of friends.

McCabe provocatively describes Aquinas as the first Whig (though, knowing McCabe, he might have said Marxist), declaring that he “would undoubtedly have welcomed the welfare state.”
And how’s this for a great “Did you know?”: “Aquinas says in one place that separation from God by sin has so distorted our emotional life that we do not enjoy sex enough.”

Thomas studied scripture, philosophy, theology, and natural science. He once gave thanks to God that he never read a page he did not understand! His far-reaching thought searched out priniciples and was able to synthesize the thoughts of the ancient Greeks, Muslim and Jewish scholars, and the Fathers of the Church, in the truths that they had discovered.

Thomas took a "universal" approach to the search for truth. He was not afraid to study the thought of non-Christians and was confident that God would reveal truths to those that earnestly sought them, whether they were Christian or not. This is a refreshing approach compared to many Catholics who have a "ghetto mentality." and are unwilling to admit that anything useful can be learned from non-Catholics.

That certainly was not Thomas's understanding. Not surprisingly, some Catholics in his own day, including a few bishops, condemned him for searching for truth amid the works of Plato, Aristotle, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Moses Maimonedes. Aquinas was able to discern the truth in aspects of their writings because of his own intense life of prayer in addition to his brilliance.

Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas

Grant me, O Lord my God,

a mind to know you,

a heart to seek you,

wisdom to find you,

conduct pleasing to you,

faithful perseverance in waiting for you,

and a hope of finally embracing you”.

His peers at the University of Paris referred to him as the “dumb ox,” because of his size and meek humbleness to present his knowledge in front of others. However, after a brilliant defence of a difficult thesis in class, his teacher exclaimed, “We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.”

In many paintings Thomas has a dove at his ear

This image represents the Holy Spirit talking to Saint Thomas Aquinas as he writes in the Summa Theologica on the existence of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas spent much time praying to be able to hear the Holy Spirit more clearly.

The following is taken from a short biography of St. Thomas found on the EWTN website. It underscores Thomas's own focus on Jesus as the source and summit of his life and study.

One night, in the chapel of the Dominican priory in Naples where St.
Thomas was then living, the sacristan concealed himself to watch the
saint at prayer. He saw him lifted into the air, and heard Christ speaking
to him from the crucifix on the chapel wall:

"Thomas, you have written well of me. What reward will you have?"

"Lord, nothing but yourself."

His request was soon answered. On December 6, 1273, St. Thomas
Aquinas was saying Mass for the feast of St. Nicholas in the chapel where
the crucifix had spoken to him.

Some profound experience - spiritual,
mental, and physical suddenly overwhelmed him .

He showed few external signs of the change at first; but he declared to his long- time secretary that he could write no more. "All that I have written," he said, "seems like straw to me."

What hope for the rest of us then ? :-)

Flickering Mind

2012-01-31T15:43:00.000+01:00

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) is one of my favourite poets.

Levertov’s conversion to Christianity came in 1984. In 1997 she put together her selection of poems on religious themes — drawn from seven earlier collections — The Stream and The Sapphire. In the foreword she says the book traces her “own slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith”. She put the book together “as a convenience to those readers who are themselves concerned with doubt and faith”.
These two poems portray the elusive nature of relationship with God.

Flickering Mind

Image from here

Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.

At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance,
and away—and back,
circling.

I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.

I stop
to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing
over
the river's purling
and passing

Not for one second
will my self hold still,
but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn.
Not you,
it is I am absent.

You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow,
you the unchanging presence,
in whom all
moves and changes.

How can I focus my flickering,
perceive
at the fountain's heart
the sapphire
I know is there?

Image Pier Posts Seal Beach USA from here

Losing Track

Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black
timbers of me,
a light growth of green dreams drying.

Thomas Merton 97th Birthday 2012

2012-01-31T15:41:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

Today is the 97th Birthday of the late Trappist monk,Thomas Merton.

My post from last year is here

along with a variety of intralinks to other posts and there are many others if you type Thomas Merton into my blog search box on the right side bar.

and I repost this link to a video of Fr Matthew Kelty (sadly no longer with us), reading Merton's famous prayer...

"The certainty of Christian hope lies beyond passion and beyond knowledge.
Therefore we must sometimes expect our hope to come in conflict with darkness, desperation and ignorance.
Therefore, too, we must remember that Christian optimism is not a perpetual sense of euphoria, an indefectible comfort in whose presence neither anguish nor tragedy can possibly exist.
We must not strive to maintain a climate of optimism by the mere suppression of tragic realities.
Christian optimism lies in a hope of victory that transcends all tragedy: a victory in which we pass beyond tragedy to glory with Christ crucified and risen."

-Thomas Merton (Advent: Hope or Delusion?)

Mysteries, Yes

2012-01-30T23:32:00.001+01:00

This is a repost from December but as we approach the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple this Thursday( see post here), it seems a good one to put up again as it resonates for me with these words from the Gospel :

The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,

“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,

and to be a sign that will be contradicted

and you yourself a sword will pierce
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Mysteries, Yes
By Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

I love this version of the Ave Maria (Hail Mary), but it is in Italian and so these are my efforts at a very loose translation of most of the words of the verses :

Ora pro nobis is Latin for Pray for Us but I think most of you will already know that one.

Woman of waiting
Mother of hope
Woman of smiles
Mother of silence
Woman of the margins
Mother of Love
Woman of rest
Mother of the journey
Woman of the desert
Mother of Breath
Woman of the evening
Mother of memories
Woman of this moment
and Mother of the past
Woman on Earth
Mother of Love
Ave Maria : Hail Mary

Ora Pro Nobis : Pray for us

Transcript of James Alison's Talk on Anatomy of Reconciliation

2012-01-30T22:54:00.001+01:00

Last week I posted here some videos including a presentation on The Anatomy of Reconciliation by Catholic priest and theologian James Alison here

The video was 45 minutes long and at the time I couldn't find a transcript but hey ho, today I did so here it is.

I hope people will find it useful.

It is also relevant to reflections for this week's gospel of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. See post here.

Blue Eyed Ennis

We Cannot Measure How You Heal

Embracing The Leper

R.I.P Whitney Houston

Love

A Little Look At Love

On Poets, Prophets and a Tribute to Wislawa Szymborska

Pavel 183 Russian Street Artist

Related articles.

Sixth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass Reflections

On Prayer and Sin Eaters

Argyle on Knocknagaroon

He Considers Not the Lilies but Their Excellencies

He Posits Certain Mysteries

Love Does That

Nobody Dances Perfectly

Newquay Church Opens Up for Homeless

The Deer's Cry Celtic Prayer

Hold On

Bits of Buechner and a Prayer to Begin The Week

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Ireland v Wales Six Nations Sunday 5th February 2012

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Lent 2012

Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass and Reflections

Friday Fish

I Thank You God for Most This Amazing Day

Candlemas Day and More on The Presentation of Jesus

Painting Simeon's Moment by Ron DiCianni from here

Wonderful reflection on Simeon here from which the edited extract is below:

Enter Simeon

“Is This The One?”

..............................................................................................................................................................

Anna The Prophetess

James Tissot Anna The Prophetess

Jorge Luis Borges on Learning

Tune for Thursday

Card Carrying Catholics ?

A woman dialled 999 to report that the rabbit she had just bought did not have floppy ears.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/308732-womans-999-call-to-complain-about-rabbits-ears#ixzz1lB0wqUdD

What's next on the menu I wonder ??

Bumper stickers, mugs, T- shirts ??

Then we had better watch out for the tattoos on the forehead or elsewhere..

On second thoughts, don't encourage them.

What are your views ??

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