Pooh wisdom (6)

"Well! We keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we'd be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren't looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really."

-- Winnie the Pooh, from The House at Pooh Corner

Words must glow and burn

Too much of our orthodoxy is correct and sound, but like words without a tune, it does not glow and burn; it does not stir the heart; it has lost its hallelujah. One man with a genuine glowing experience with God is worth a library full of arguments.

--Vance Havner

Pooh wisdom (5)

"We'll be friends forever won't we , Pooh?" asked piglet
"Even longer" Pooh answered.

Pooh wisdom (4)

“Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.”

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 40

1. As honey drips from the honeycomb of bees, and milk flows from the woman who loves her children, so also is my hope upon You, O my God.
2. As a fountain gushes forth its water, so my heart gushes forth the praise of the Lord, and my lips bring forth praise to Him.
3. And my tongue becomes sweet by His anthems, and my members are anointed by His odes.
4. My face rejoices in His exultation, and my spirit exults in His love, and my nature shines in Him.
5. And he who is afraid shall trust in Him, and redemption shall be assured in Him.
6. And His possessions are immortal life, and those who receive it are incorruptible.
   Hallelujah.

Pooh wisdom (3)

“"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called”

Pooh wisdom (2)

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh," he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you."”

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 30

1. Fill for yourselves water from the living fountain of the Lord, because it has been opened for you.
2. And come all you thirsty and take a drink, and rest beside the fountain of the Lord.
3. Because it is pleasing and sparkling, and perpetually refreshes the self.
4. For much sweeter is its water than honey, and the honeycomb of bees is not to be compared with it;
5. Because it flowed from the lips of the Lord, and it named from the heart of the Lord.
6. And it came boundless and invisible, and until it was set in the middle they knew it not.
7. Blessed are they who have drunk from it, and have refreshed themselves by it.
   Hallelujah.

Pooh wisdom (1)

'If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.'

-- Winnie the Pooh.

Co-existing with the void

From The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Chapters 2 and 3):

"Between knowledge and desire there is often an abyss. ...Certainly Christians know that they do not have a direct line to Christ. But still... "

The chapter talks about ways in which Christians try to cross over the abyss by focusing on one of 3 poles: the scriptures, the sacraments, or Christian ethics. This roughly maps to the ICCEC's concept of converging the three streams (sacramental, evangelical, and charismatic). Focusing on any one of these three brings the picture out of balance, and actually makes it harder to know God. Chauvet continues:

"Faith lives only from the space between the three poles. It is precisely this space which concretely mediates the distance between God and us, our respect for God's difference. This space is uncomfortable because it constantly maintains an emptiness. But this emptiness, which the imaginary unceasingly strives to fill, is what lets Jesus truly be the living One and respects his lordship. It is also what gives Christians room for 'play' by allowing individuals to breathe freely within the faith of the church, instead of submitting them to the uniform mold of one ideology. "

"The tension between liturgy and ethics which we have noted in Judaism is, as it were, doubled in Christianity. It is tempting to assuage the discomfort by either absorbing the liturgy in ethics ('What does Mass matter? The important thing is charity.') or ethics in the liturgy (''I'm square with God: I go to Mass every Sunday and go to confession regularly.') In both cases one becomes a 'dualist' Christian who separates the sacraments from the lived experience. However the good health of faith depends precisely on this discomfort. This is to say that the tension is not to be abolished but managed. "

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 19

7. So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies.
8. And she labored and bore the Son but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.
9. And she did not require a midwife, because He caused her to give life.
10. She brought forth like a strong man with desire, and she bore according to the manifestation, and she acquired according to the Great Power.
11. And she loved with redemption, and guarded with kindness, and declared with grandeur.

Hallelujah.

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 14

1. As the eyes of a son upon his father, so are my eyes, O Lord, at all times towards You.
2. Because my breasts and my pleasure are with You.
3. Turn not aside Your mercies from me, O Lord; and take not Your kindness from me.
4. Stretch out to me, my Lord, at all times, Your right hand, and be to me a guide till the end according to Your will.
5. Let me be pleasing before You, because of Your glory, and because of Your name let me be saved from the Evil One.
6. And let Your gentleness, O Lord, abide with me, and the fruits of Your love.
7. Teach me the odes of Your truth, that I may produce fruits in You.
8. And open to me the harp of Your Holy Spirit, so that with every note I may praise You, O Lord.
9. And according to the multitude of Your mercies, so grant unto me, and hasten to grant our petitions.
10. For You are sufficient for all our needs.
    Hallelujah.

Background Music

Sometimes
the need to say I love you
is so strong
that it becomes the score against which
every word I speak is played

--Chantelle Franc

The church's teaching on BC

I've been feeling like a frayed chord over the past few days, and my husband commented that one thing he missed about my not using birth control pharmaceuticals was the leveling off of moods. That made me realize another reason they aren't a good idea; using them removes an opportunity for men to grow in mercy, patience, and generosity.

Shakespeare on love

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

--William Shakespeare

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 11

1. My heart was pruned and its flower appeared, then grace sprang up in it, and my heart produced fruits for the Lord.
2. For the Most High circumcised me by His Holy Spirit, then He uncovered my inward being towards Him, and filled me with His love.
3. And His circumcising became my salvation, and I ran in the Way, in His peace, in the way of truth.
4. From the beginning until the end I received His knowledge.
5. And I was established upon the rock of truth, where He had set me.
6. And speaking waters touched my lips from the fountain of the Lord generously.
7. And so I drank and became intoxicated, from the living water that does not die.
8. And my intoxication did not cause ignorance, but I abandoned vanity,
9. And turned toward the Most High, my God, and was enriched by His favors.
10. And I rejected the folly cast upon the earth, and stripped it off and cast it from me.
11. And the Lord renewed me with His garment, and possessed me by His light.
12. And from above He gave me immortal rest, and I became like the land that blossoms and rejoices in its fruits.
13. And the Lord is like the sun upon the face of the land.
14. My eyes were enlightened, and my face received the dew;
15. And my breath was refreshed by the pleasant fragrance of the Lord.
16. And He took me to His Paradise, wherein is the wealth of the Lord's pleasure.
    I beheld blooming and fruit-bearing trees,
    And self-grown was their crown.
    Their branches were sprouting and their fruits were shining.
    From an immortal land were their roots.
    And a river of gladness was irrigating them,
    And round about them in the land of eternal life.
17. Then I worshipped the Lord because of His magnificence.
18. And I said, Blessed, O Lord, are they who are planted in Your land, and who have a place in Your Paradise;
19. And who grow in the growth of Your trees, and have passed from darkness into light.
20. Behold, all Your laborers are fair, they who work good works, and turn from wickedness to your pleasantness.
21. For the pungent odor of the trees is changed in Your land,
22. And everything becomes a remnant of Yourself. Blessed are the workers of Your waters, and eternal memorials of Your faithful servants.
23. Indeed, there is much room in Your Paradise. And there is nothing in it which is barren, but everything is filled with fruit.
24. Glory be to You, O God, the delight of Paradise for ever.
    Hallelujah.

The apple and the tree

It occurred to me over the weekend that there is a connection between Solomon's sensuality and his lineage; how could he not be a lover with King David as his father?

Absence

Absence is to love what wind is to fire;
it extinguishes the small and rekindles the great

--Comte DeBussy-Rabutin

St. Augustine on throwing ourselves without fear

From Confessions, VIII:1:

"Throw yourself on him. Do not fear. He will not pull away and let you fall. Throw yourself without fear and he will receive you and heal you.

I was blushing because I kept on hearing the whispering of those vanities, and I was suspended in hesitation. And again she seemed to say: Deafen yourself to the murmuring of your members so that they may be mortified. They speak to you of delights but none like the ones the law of the lord your God tells you of."

Love and Wisdom

It is impossible to love and be wise

--Francis Bacon

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 7

1. As is the course of anger over wickedness, so is the course of joy over the Beloved; and brings in of its fruits unhindered.
2. My joy is the Lord and my course is towards Him, this path of mine is beautiful.
3. For there is a Helper for me, the Lord.

Mark of love

No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny
without leaving some mark on it forever.

-- Francois Mauriac

Awaiting a return to communion...

From Vision: The Scholarly Contributions of Mark Searle to Liturgical Renewal (pg168-169 on infant baptism):

"By baptism we have been fitted into a pattern of surrender and exaltation, of self-abandonment and deliverance, of dying and being raised. But such a pattern, far from being alien to the life of the child, is intrinsic to it. Having experienced the trauma of separation from the womb, the child is confronted with the task of learning to live as both autonomous and yet dependent, caught between the desire for communion and the need to accept separation, instinctively struggling to satisfy its own immediate needs yet learning to wait in trust for what it really needs. 'The nerve to separate,' says Fowler of the many experiences of separation and nonfulfillment in the infant's life, 'depends upon the assured return to communion.'"

Hosea 2:14-15

14 "Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her.

15 "Then I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the valley of Achor as a door of hope.
And she will sing there as in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.

The wisdom of Solomon

I was re-reading some of the Odes of Solomon and had a thought about him. Isn't it interesting that Solomon is held up as the Bible's exemplar of wisdom, and is also identified with the intense sensuality and romance of the Song of Songs?

What does this tell us about God's view of wisdom?

Capax Eros?

I wonder if one of the reasons God called David a man after His own heart was David's capacity for passionate love, as demonstrated by his rash pursuit of Bathsheba.

A joyful heart

A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love

--Mother Teresa

Friendship set to music

Love is friendship set to music.

--Edward Pollock

Watermelon in the sun

I am as ripe with loving you
as a watermelon in the sun
which at the gentlest touch of a knife
cleaves open in a burst of juice and seed.

--Chantelle Franc

Intense love

Intense love does not measure, it just gives

--Mother Teresa

C.S. Lewis on Longing Transforming Obedience

From The Weight of Glory:

Those who have attained everlasting life in the vision of God doubtless know very well that it is no mere bribe, but the very consummation of their earthly discipleship; but we who have not yet attained it cannot know this in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except by continuing to obey and finding the first reward of our obedience is our increasing power to desire the ultimate reward. Just in proportion as the desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 3

The Odes of Solomon are a collection of early (ca. 70-140) Christian poems or hymns extant primarily in Syriac.

Ode 3

1. ... I am putting on the love of the Lord.
2. And His members are with Him, and I am dependent on them; and He loves me.
3. For I should not have known how to love the Lord, if He had not continuously loved me.
4. Who is able to distinguish love, except him who is loved?
5. I love the Beloved and I myself love Him, and where His rest is, there also am I.
6. And I shall be no stranger, because there is no jealousy with the Lord Most High and Merciful.
7. I have been united to Him, because the lover has found the Beloved, because I love Him that is the Son, I shall become a son.
8. Indeed he who is joined to Him who is immortal, truly shall be immortal.
9. And he who delights in the Life will become living.
10. This is the Spirit of the Lord, which is not false, which teaches the sons of men to know His ways.
11. Be wise and understanding and awakened.
    Hallelujah.

Another beatitude

Desire may be the unspoken beatitude.

Luke 7:37-50

Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner."

Jesus said to him in reply, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Tell me, teacher," he said. "Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days' wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?" Simon said in reply, "The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven." He said to him, "You have judged rightly."

Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." He said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." The others at table said to themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" But he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Meeting God through our bodies

From: Sacred Mysteries: Sacramental Principles and Liturgical Practice (chapter 3)

"In our religion we hold dear that the divine became one with the human in the person of Jesus, and so we cannot separate the bodily aspects of worship from non-corporeal aspects. We worship God through the mystery of the fullness of who we are as human beings. We are not angels without bodies. We are women and men of flesh and blood and we meet God through our bodies."

"Touch and taste and sign and sounds and fragrance can be intoxicating, enrapturing."

"The five senses, potent and enticing as they are, have the power to draw us beyond words and thoughts, to beauty, love, and even action. It is these very human sensations that open us to the foundational mysteries of our worship, because they are windows into the foundational mysteries of our lives as human beings."

Love Song

Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me,
so that it doesn't touch your soul?
How can I raise it high enough,
past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it,
among remote lost objects,
in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us,
me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

--Ranier Maria Rilke

Ephesians 3: 14-19

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father,
15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
16 that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self,
17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love,
18 may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet (III)

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive,
filling it with sublimity and exaltation
And those who come together in the night
and are entwined in rocking delight
do an earnest work and gather sweetnesses,
gather depth and strength for the song of some coming poet,
who will arise to speak of ecstasies beyond telling.

What I want to be when I grow up...

"Now, however, I think we need less catechesis and more profound mystagogia. ... The difference between catechesis and mystagogia is that catechesis is prose and mystagogia is poetry. Mystagogia deals less with teaching but rather unfolds the symbols of our celebration in a more poetic mode, gradually forming the deeper affections of our heart."

I -thought- I wanted to be a catechist or an apologist. Turns out I want to be a mystagogiaist.

Robert Frost on Love

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired"

--Robert Frost

Playing at being a saint (II)

I have been thinking about martyrdom, and my desire to die in some glorious way for God.

And I laugh at that desire given that I am so quick to shrug off the crosses He has chosen for me. The idea of a quick death, by fire or stoning or evisceration, is one I can imagine gritting my way through in the knowledge that His glory lay before me, so very close at hand.

But this long drudgery of life is something else altogether. This cross of love which lasts perhaps for the entirety of my earthly habitation, I am eager to forgo.

Maybe that is why it was especially designed for me. Quick martyrdom would perhaps not be the purging fire my spirit needs. It may be that my stiff necked-ness requires a more sustained and lengthy purification.

Lord give me the humility to accept it.

Theology of Desire Resources (I)

http://www.epm.org/artman2/publish/course_materials/A_Theology_of_Desire_SYLLABUS.shtml

Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet (II)

"Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments."

C.S. Lewis on Comfort

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

Readiness for Ritual (III): on Intimacy

"In a theological frame of reference, the symbolic orientation of God-imagery at this stage produces a 'God who is the abundance of human intimacy.' God is felt to be the invisible 'third', the radiance going beyond the sum of gifts of those who love. In moments when two human beings come together in a fated intimacy, there is an overflowing sense of fullness to the joy and hopes which these persons share. The strategic point for pastoral ministry here is the conviction, generated by good preaching and good theology, that God is not put off by our delights but gratified in gracing us with the amplitude of joy. The old saw of Irenaeus that 'the glory of God is man fully alive' finds non chauvinist expression in the recognition that 'man' fully alive is 'man and woman' mutually enlivening one another's joy. To use Erikson's terminology, the abundance of delight which is the fruit of such mutual sharing in intimacy becomes the motivation for a generativity that concerns itself with not only the children of one's family, but the children of the whole human family."

Job 14:7-9

7 At least there is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its new shoots will not fail.

8 Its roots may grow old in the ground
and its stump die in the soil,

9 yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth shoots like a plant.

C.S. Lewis on Sex in Heaven

From Miracles:

'The letter and spirit of scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be a sexual life; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternatives either of bodies which are hardly recognisable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast. As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer "No," he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don't bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing which excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fullness awaits us we anticipate fasting. In denying that sexual life, as we now understand it, makes any part of the final beatitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of sexes will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendour. Sexuality is the instrument both of virginity and of conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away the weapon they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them."

Jeremiah 20:7, 9

You have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced;
you have overpowered me: you were the stronger.
.
.
.
But if I say, "I will not remember Him
Or speak anymore in His name,"
Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire
Shut up in my bones;
And I am weary of holding it in,
And I cannot endure it.

Sacramental sexuality

I've been pondering sexuality for the past few years.

Yesterday it struck me that love making while not formally sacrament is at least extremely sacramental. It is our most intense experience and expression of human love. Through it we most closely encounter and commune with the beloved. It it we give and receive love, actively and uniquely.

God speaks to us of this in the Song of Songs, and I am exploring how we are to respond. It is taking me surprising places...

Quotes from Shantaram (VIII) on Curses

May you have ten daughters, and may they all marry well.

--Indian curse

Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet (I)

From Letters to a Young Poet:

This prose was read as poetry during the opening prayers at St. Bernard's orientation last night:

"I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you win then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

--Ranier Maria Rilke

Playing at being a saint

How God must laugh...

For a few years I have been enamored of the idea of stigmata. I'm guessing that part of this is spiritual pride which of course renders me even less worthy of receiving such a gift. From the little I hear about it, it is a silly desire; the stigmata is messy, painful, and embarrassing. I'm certain it is the -idea- of it that I want, and not the reality.

(Just like the idea of carrying my cross is good and noble, while I try to shrug off the reality. More on that in another episode.)

But God is so generous, and humors me like the child that I am.

Some months ago I tripped over nothing and fell quite hard, landing primarily on one knee and my left hand. It was a strange landing; because I was carrying something, the back of my hand hit the ground rather than my palm. I was worried about it for a bit but it quickly healed.

What is left is an interesting scar. It's at the base of the top of my hand, near the wrist bone. It's shaped like a hurricane, with a smooth eye surrounded by discolored skin in an uneven oval.

It looks like a scar might look if I had a roofing nail pounded through my hand. (And yes I know that Jesus would not have been nailed using roofing nails.)

I take this to be a gift from God, and a reminder. It reminds me that I am pretentious to want such a gift of holiness when I am so unworthy and ill prepared. And it reminds me that He knows this and yet sent it as acknowledgment that my desire was heard.

I imagine Him smiling down at me; a child playing at being a saint instead of a princess.

C.S. Lewis on Pleasure

"Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility... But aren't there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them 'bad pleasures' I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean 'pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.' It is the stealing of the apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory... I have tried since... to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different... Gratitude exclaims, very properly, 'How good of God to give me this.' Adoration says, 'What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscation's are like this!' One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun... If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.

Desire as Purgation

I've been thinking about the idea of desire as purgation. Some of the mystical accounts of purgatory describe the state as the pain of being near enough to God to feel wretched from the distance which remains between you. I'm wondering if the experience of unfulfillable desire in this world could be that process beginning here and now. And I'm wondering if part of my mission is to help spread this understanding.

C.S. Lewis on Friendship

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

Quotes from Shantaram (VII) on Love-Induced Beauty

"And there was something new and very different in her manner: a warm, unhurried softness in her smile; a willing laugh that won the laughter of others; and a lightness of spirit that looked for and often found the best in those she met. For weeks, months, I'd watched those changes shift and settle in her... After a time, I began to see how deep the well of her loving was, and how much her happiness and confidence depended on drawing that love into the light, and sharing it. And love was beautiful in her. It was a clear sky she gave us with those eyes, and a summer morning with her smile."

Quotes from Shantaram (VI) on Killing Love

"They lied to me and betrayed me, leqaving jagged edges where all my trust had been, and I didn't like or respect or admire them any more, but still I loved them. I had no choice. I understood that, perfectly, standing in the white wilderness of snow. You can't kill love. You can't even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can't kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it's a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die."

Quotes from Shantaram (V) on Our Greatest Fear

"At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabaker. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowwning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep."

Quotes from Shantaram (IV) on Why We Crave Love

"One of the reasons we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep in to the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you."

Wish me luck

Tonight at 6:00 is my first class! May the time be consecrated for the glory of God.

Quotes from Shantaram (III) on Time

"I think... a little bit almost quite very soon, and not long."

--Prabaker

Quotes from Shantaram (II) on Truth

"There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn' t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart."

Quotes from Shantaram (I) on Voices

"The voice is more than half of love."

--Afghan matchmaker

Readiness for Ritual (I)

From Alternative Futures for Worship, by Cowan, Philibert, and Kilmartin:

"It is the work of poets and artists to inhabit the middle world between tacit hungers and articulate categories. But that is what the world of symbolism is all about. At the tacit dimension meaning feels like a hunger in the gut--for love, for significance, for meaning. We too easily domesticate the questing and yearning for the deep experiences of faith by naming the components with static categories. Often poets have been better at celebrating the shadow world between hunger and healing than have an older cast of theologians."

What is Mysticism? (IV)

From Practical Mysticism, Chapter 1:

The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reach of the senses. The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active man is a mystic when he knows his actions to be a part of a greater activity. Blake, Plotinus, Joan of Arc, and John of the Cross—there is a link which binds all these together: but if he is to make use of it, the inquirer must find that link for himself. All four exhibit different forms of the working of the contemplative consciousness; a faculty which is proper to all men, though few take the trouble to develop it. Their attention to life has changed its character, sharpened its focus: and as a result they see, some a wider landscape, some a more brilliant, more significant, more detailed world than that which is apparent to the less educated, less observant vision of common sense.

Readiness for Ritual (II): on Symbols

This chapter has much to say about symbols within liturgy. And about the need for imagination in keeping it alive. Some examples:

"We meet God through symbols"

"Symbols have the power to transport us out of the here and now into an originating past as well as into a fulfilling future."

"Ritual symbols characteristically respond to deep imaginative needs and intentions which are not easily transformed directly into common language."

"The word symbol seems to have been used in ancient times for an object much like today's passport. When a messenger bearing important information was sent to an authority or official, he was given a piece of a broken tablet which would identify himself as authorized when that piece was placed together with another matching piece in the possession of the official. Originally a Greek word, symbol (sum-ballein) meant to pull together aspects which have either been broken apart, sundered, or which have yet to find a synthetic fullness in being united."

"Another obstacle is the adults failure to utilize the full scope of memory and imaging in theological thinking and ritual expression."

"For the fully alive adult is someone who, thought a lesser degree than children, scans the environment, taking in more stimulation than can be dealt with immediately. Even adults seek fuller meanings. As we will argue later, adults who do not know the playful nature of ritual and ritualization--the exploratory range of deep, questing interactions within the formal structure of repeated rites--will become dead to the enlivening potential of their cosmic surroundings as well as thoroughly bored with the ritual dynamics of their community. For these reasons it will be important to keep in mind how fluid a notion play is for Erikson and how integrally it functions in the elaboration of his theory of the "ontogeny of ritualization."

Worn out and more to come

I am all registered for my first class ("Worship and Sacraments") at St. Bernard's seminary next week. I have all 6 books in hand, a 60 page PDF to read, and something online called "Moodle" to explore for more reading. I'm in for it indeed.

Look's like God is going to have to pull another rabbit out of His endless hat if I'm going to make this work.

The class replaces one previously titled "Sacramental Theology". Yum!!!

And while yes, I'm feeling a bit intimidated, and a bit overwhelmed given this hateful week I've been having, my initial reading is generating excitement.

I'll post a few snippets in days to come.

Pray for me.

Augustine Weeps

I wept at the beauty of your hymns and canticles, and was
powerfully moved at the sweet sound of your Church singing.
These sounds flowed into my ears, and the truth streamed into my
heart.

-- St. Augustine of Hippo

On Horrible Mystery... (What is Mysticism? III)

From Practical Mysticism, Chapter 1:

Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent. We simply do not attempt to unite with Reality. But now and then that symbolic character is suddenly brought home to us. Some great emotion, some devastating visitation of beauty, love, or pain, lifts us to another level of consciousness; and we are aware for a moment of the difference between the neat collection of discrete objects and experiences which we call the world, and the height, the depth, the breadth of that living, growing, changing Fact, of which thought, life, and energy are parts, and in which we “live and move and have our being.” Then we realise that our whole life is enmeshed in great and living forces; terrible because unknown.

Thomas A. Kempis on Loving

He does much who loves much.

-- Thomas à Kempis

Song of the Soul and the Bridegroom (XXX-XXXI)

XXX
Of emeralds, and of flowers
In the early morning gathered,
We will make the garlands,
Flowering in Your love,
And bound together with one hair of my head.

XXXI
By that one hair
You have observed fluttering on my neck,
And on my neck regarded,
You were captivated;
And wounded by one of my eyes.

How do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

The Door of God

The door of God is humility.

-- John the Short

Song of the Soul and the Bridegroom (XXXVI-XXXIX)

XXXVI
Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.

XXXVII
We shall go at once
To the deep caverns of the rock
Which are all secret,
There we shall enter in
And taste of the new wine of the pomegranate.

XXXVIII
There you will show me
That which my soul desired;
And there You will give at once,
O You, my life!
That which You gave me the other day.

XXXIX
The breathing of the air,
The song of the sweet nightingale,
The grove and its beauty
In the serene night,
With the flame that consumes, and gives no pains.

C.S. Lewis on What God Wants

From Mere Christianity:

"Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You."

What is Mysticism? (II)

From Practical Mysticism, Chapter 1:

Real knowledge, since it always implies an intuitive sympathy more or less intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of touch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True, analytic thought follows swiftly upon the contact, the apprehension, the union...

Bernard on the Sweetness of Christ

Jesus the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see
And in Thy presence rest.

-- Bernard of Clairvaux

Song of the Soul and the Bridegroom (XXVII-XXIX)

XXVII
There He gave me His breasts,
There He taught me the science full of sweetness.
And there I gave to Him
Myself without reserve;
There I promised to be His bride.

XXVIII
My soul is occupied,
And all my substance in His service;
Now I guard no flock,
Nor have I any other employment:
My sole occupation is love.

XXIX
If, then, on the common land
I am no longer seen or found,
You will say that I am lost;
That, being enamored,
I lost myself; and yet was found.

Truth as Symphony

“Truth is symphonic.”

--Hans Urs von Balthasar

What is Mysticism? (I)

From Practical Mysticism, Chapter 1:

Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment. ... the word “union” represents not so much a rare and unimaginable operation, as something which he is doing, in a vague, imperfect fashion, at every moment of his conscious life; and doing with intensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments of that life. We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it; by an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us, just in so far as we give ourselves to it; and it is because our outflow towards things is usually so perfunctory and so languid, that our comprehension of things is so perfunctory and languid too. The great Sufi who said that “Pilgrimage to the place of the wise, is to escape the flame of separation” spoke the literal truth. Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who “keep themselves to themselves,” and stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have never truly known.

C.S. Lewis on Eternity

"A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do."

Excerpts from The Road to Cana (II)

Jesus is in the desert, suffering through all the experiences of his lifetime, and realizing that that is what each of us will have to do when we end our lives.

"In the night I awoke. Was this my own voice reciting what was written? "'And every secret thing shall be opened, and every dark place illuminated.'"

Dear God, no, do not let them know this, do not let them know the great accumulation of all of this, this agony and joy, this misery, this solace, this reaching, this gouging pain, this...

But they will know, each and every one of them will know. They will know because what you are remembering is what has happened to each and every one of them. Did you think this was more or less for you? Did you think--?

And when they are called to account, when they stand naked before God and every incident and utterance is laid bare--you, you will know all of it with each and every one of them!

I knelt in the sand.

Is this possible, Lord, to be with each of them when he or she comes to know? To be there for every single cry of anguish? For the grief-stricken remembrance of every incomplete joy?... Dear God I cannot... but I will. I will.

I sobbed aloud. I will. O Father in Heaven, I am reaching to You with hands of flesh and blood. I am longing for You in Your perfection with this heart that is imperfection! And I reach up for You with what is decaying before my very eyes, and I stare at Your stars from within the prison of this body, but this is not my prison, this is my Will. This is Your Will.

Simone Weil on the Hand of God

From Gravity and Grace:

The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment...is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.

— Simone Weil

John Bunyan on Christ

Christ is the desire of nations, the joy of angels, the delight
of the Father. What solace then must that soul be filled with
that hath the possession of Him to all eternity!

-- John Bunyan

Song of the Soul and the Bridegroom (XXII)

XXII
The bride has entered
The pleasant and desirable garden,
And there reposes to her heart’s content;
Her neck reclining
On the sweet arms of the Beloved.

Excerpts from The Road to Cana (I)

I am reading the 2nd in Anne Rice's series on the life of Jesus. This one explores the period in which his time is coming. I am moved by Rice's handling of his love for a young woman of his village, Avigail, and am comforted that he was (is?) like us in all things save sin.

I hesitate a bit to include these snippets here, in case they are merely sentimental out of context. But here goes.

In this passage, Yeshua talks with his mother about Avigail.

Mary says "This has made you miserable. I've seen this before, but never as bad as it is now."

"Is it so bad?" I whispered. I looked away, as men do when they only want to see their thoughts. "I don't know that it's been bad for me, Mother. What is bad for me? To love as I love Avigail--it has a luster, a great and beautiful luster."

She waited.

"There come these moments," I said. "These heartbreaking moments--the moments when we first feel joy and sadness intertwined. Such a discovery that is, when grief becomes sweet. I remember feeling this perhaps for the very first time when we came to this place, all of us together, and I walked up the hill above Nazareth and saw the green grass alive with flowers, the tiniest flowers--so many flowers, and all of it, grass and flowers and trees, moving as if in a great dance. It hurt."

She said nothing.

Finally I looked at her. I touched my chest with my fist lightly. "It hurt," I said. "But it was to be cherished... forever."
.
.
.
She smiled. Again she kissed me, and she leaned on my should as she rose to go. ... I stared at the reddened coals.

"How long, O Lord?" I whispered. How long?

Sweet was the love...

From The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 22:

Sweet was that love betwixt our Lord and Mary.

G.K. Chesterton on a Life of Practical Romance

From Orthodoxy:

"But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable."

Transcendent Wonder

Worship is transcendent wonder.

-- Thomas Carlyle

Song of the Soul and the Bridegroom (XIV-XV)

XIV
My Beloved is the mountains,
The solitary wooded valleys,
The strange islands,
The roaring torrents,
The whisper of the amorous gales;

XV
The tranquil night
At the approaches of the dawn,
The silent music,
The murmuring solitude,
The supper which revives, and enkindles love.

Psalm 37:4

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

C.S. Lewis on Resurrected Senses

From Transposition:

"How far the life of the risen man will be sensory, we do not know. But I surmise that it will differ from the sensory life we know here, not as emptiness differs from water or water from wine but as a flower differs from a bulb or a cathedral differs from an architect's drawing."

Song of the Soul and the Bridegroom (IX-XII)

IX

Why, after wounding
This heart, have You not healed it?
And why, after stealing it,
Have You thus abandoned it,
And not carried away the stolen prey?

X

Quench my troubles,
For no one else can soothe them;
And let my eyes behold You,
For You are their light,
And I will keep them for You alone.

XI

Reveal Your presence,
And let the vision and Your beauty kill me,
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Your presence and before Your face.

XII

O crystal well!
Oh that on Your silvered surface
You would mirror forth at once
Those eyes desired
Which are outlined in my heart!

St. John of the Cross on Finding God within

From one of my new patrons:

"What more do you want, o soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfaction and kingdom -- your beloved whom you desire and seek? Desire him there, adore him there. Do not go in pursuit of him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and you won't find him, or enjoy him more than by seeking him within you."

-- Saint John of the Cross

On Severe Mercy

C.S. Lewis to his friend Sheldon Vanauken:

"I sometimes wonder whether bereavement is not, at bottom, the easiest and least perilous of the ways in which men lose the happiness of youthful love. For I believe it must always be lost in some way: every merely natural love has to be crucified before it can achieve resurrection..."

The Iron of My Eyes (by Gregory David Roberts)

The Iron of My Eyes

Oh my beloved,
After dreaming night when I woke
it was a strange and worrying thing
to find you standing
at the morning's dawn-eyed window
silent,
shedding tears,
your face like a flower
the sky has bruised with summer rain.

The last teardrop crossed your lips.
You turned slowly, came into my arms
and sensed my concern,
but your smile and answering kiss
laughed,
ringing clear,
the sound like water
splashing in an oasis well.

It was not suffering, you said,
nor some fear or hurt that made you weep.
The tears that you shed
as you watched me sleeping came from
happiness,
rising sheer,
the joy like thunder
trembling in drought's red river bed.

Love-struck happiness broke your heart
you said,
with such sweet pleasure in the breaking
that your very smile,
radiant with soul-fired changes
transformed,
jewelling tears,
your light like sunrise
gleaming the dew-diamond desert.

It is a mystery to me
how this joy with tearful heartbreak sits,
but if pleasure set your tears free
then break your heart against the iron of my eyes,
woman,
and break it there again,
and again,
as often as you like.
I will pick up all the shattered pieces
one by one,
and press them to my lips,
to seal each precious fragment
with adoration's kiss.

as Falling Snow

"Love should be as effortless as breathing and as indiscriminate as falling snow."

(Hugh Prather)

Song 4:9-15

9

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes,
with one bead of your necklace.

10

How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride,
how much more delightful is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your ointments than all spices!

11

Your lips drip honey, my bride,
sweetmeats and milk are under your tongue;
And the fragrance of your garments
is the fragrance of Lebanon.

12

You are an enclosed garden, my sister, my bride,
an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed.

13

You are a park that puts forth pomegranates,
with all choice fruits;

14

Nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
with all kinds of incense;
Myrrh and aloes,
with all the finest spices.

15

You are a garden fountain, a well of water
flowing fresh from Lebanon.

Thank God for Poetry

I'm working my way through a scholarly treatise called "God and the Creative Imagination", and recently finished a chapter titled "Liturgy as Literature". The chapter was really all about poetry, and captured and summarized all that I feel about what this blog does for me.

Here are some snippets, many of which quote a variety of other writers' thoughts.

"The language of Christian devotion (that is, of private prayer, meditation and hymnody) springs from the Christian imagination that is aflame with the love of God and is therefore incorrigibly figurative--sometimes boldly and radically so."

"The language of liturgy is poetry rather than prose: it is the product of Christian imagination that has been chastened and shaped by the liturgical and doctrinal tradition."

Coleridge "...suggested that in prose the words are subordinate to the meaning and ought to express it as efficiently as possible without attracting too much attention to themselves, while the words of poetry must be beautiful in themselves, though without detracting from the unity of effect of the whole"

Coleridge describes the birthing of poetry as "that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of composition".

and says that poetry is "the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake"

He continues to say that it is "the balance in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to hold in check the workings of passion" and what is required is "an interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and of voluntary purpose".

"For Keble, poetry acts as a safety-valve for overflowing emotion: the writing and reading of poetry is cathartic and soothes--that is to say steadies or tempers--the spirit suffering the turbulence of passion."

Keble also describes poetry as "a kind of medicine, divinely bestowed on man, which gives healing relief to secret mental emotion or overpowering sorrow, yet without detriment to modest reserve, and while giving scope to enthusiasm yet rules it with order and due control"

and "the indirect expression in words, most appropriately in metrical words, of some overpowering emotion, or ruling taste, or feeling, the direct indulgence whereof is somehow repressed."

Avis himself says "The pleasurable excitement of poetry is due in part to the role of meter in harnessing powerful emotions."

and "Thoughts that defy expression, emotions that are too strong for human nature to bear, are constrained, contained and made manageable"

All I can say is: Yep.

The Begging Rain

I am reading a stunning novel called Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and while looking for other books from him, found this.

The Begging Rain

Afterwards
when I am not with you
and you are alone enough
to count the nails in your heart,
tough
and studded like a treasure-house door,
when you arrange your silences
in the vase of an hour,
balancing the bouquet with memories
of hands held,
a spike of laughter
and the colour of my eyes,

when you sit within the swell
of your heartbeat
and the purple tide of daydream
laps at the shore of all your selves,
and your skin sings, perfume-pierced,

Afterwards,
surrender to this thought of me:
as the mimosas of Maharashtra in May
long for monsoon
I long for you;
as the crimson cactus flowers of Thar
long for full moon
I long for you,
and in all my afterwards,
when I am not with you,
my heart turns toward the window of my life
and begs for rain.