Isaiah on the Trinity

I've been thinking about this passage from Isaiah (9:6):

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

I've seen or heard it countless times, but never before realized that it so clearly presents the Trinitity.

Awesome when that happens...

Are you out there, Dr. Craven?

A blog that I loved (True West) was taken down a week or two ago, and I'm wondering if Dr. Ken Craven is still reading this, and if so, if all is well? I am missing reading his thoughts...

From Lying Awake:

Sister John opened a fresh notebook and began to write. Adoration welled up through the pain, closing of the gap between lover and Beloved. The force of his pesence curved eternity in on itself; it was not her love rising after all, but his love pulling her toward him. She fell upward into brilliance, where all suffering was released.

In the fire of his embrace, all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God reamined.

I am

The cloister bell, the voice of Christ.

He spoke again:

I am

She tried to obey but was frozen in beauty, like a fly trapped in amber. She could not move.

Nothing exists apart from me.

Self had been an illusion, a dream.

God dreaming.

Nearly joy

From Lying Awake:

"Suffering borne by two is nearly joy."

Milk indeed

My beloved DiDi had some thoughts on milk and meat, one of which was particularly lovely.

She pointed out that Jesus instructed us to feed both sheep and lambs, and that spiritually young questioners are like baby lambs who need to be fed tenderly.

As babies, we are cradled and given milk at the soft breast. There is nothing more gentle than the suckling of a baby. She called what we do in feeding God's lambs "the caring and gentle guiding to the breast".

Lovely, no?

Hypostatic Reunion

Mass yesterday was powerful.

Weekday evening masses attract a small group, and BP's homilies in this setting tend toward the dialogic rather than the didactic. They are intimate; more family dinner than holiday feast.

It was in this setting that I sat, having just received the Eucharist, savoring His body melting into the precious blood in my mouth, and willing my taste buds to perceive beyond appearances.

It was then He made me to know that in coming to me, in entering my mouth, He experienced joy.

It was a holy reunion. Holy completion.

His body and blood were reunited with eachother, and with the Spirit residing within me. His body rejoining His body. A hypostatic reunion of the human and the divine.

It swept me off my feet, and to my knees.

And it is still sweeping me now.

(John 6:56)

Meat indeed

A woman in my discipleship group raised a question the other day, about how to respond to the query of if all roads lead to truth, why is Christianity any better? The question was posed graciously, perhaps by someone trying to satiate a hunger for truth with the pablum of new age spirituality.

It is a fair enough question. Reasonable.

All truth does come from God, and from Jesus more specifically, given that He -IS- truth.

I gave her the response that I use; agreement with the central premise of religions containing truth, but pointing out that each contains varying degrees and I want the most possible.

And then she asked the harder question: should she specifically raise the name of Jesus Christ.

That one is a toughee.

We are to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, and that means strategy. For some people, the concept of a "God" is embraceable, but the concept of Jesus just too much to handle. If we are wise about what will help these people grow closer to Him, we must discern that, and tell them enough to allow them to take another step forward. Then we pray for them, and rest in the hope that our Lord will water the seed and bring more opportunities as it germinates.

This all got me thinking about the scriptural concept of milk and meat. Some people are spiritual babies. They can only digest what they can digest. To such as these, we must provide milk. For now. Our God incarnate, Jesus the Christ, is meat.

This struck me as funny. In-carn-ate. Meat. I love all the humor our Lord included in His Word.

Tsunami please...

More on the spirit coming forth rather than falling...

I thought about how some people seem to be channels, to be conduits of the Spirit's power. The physician/surgeon who leads our healing ministry at church is one such soul. People love to receive prayer from her because the Holy Spirit's presence is often very tangible.

You can feel it.

In certain charismatic settings the Spirit often acts powerfully. Our teens recently attended the Joshua Revolution in Niagara Falls, and came back with stories about people being knocked off their feet. I've seen it happen at retreats myself; people falling as if a wave strikes and takes them all down in a swoop. And I wondered about that. Why there and then?

I think He can and does choose times and places to fall, particularly when they have been set aside for the purpose of worshiping and experiencing Him.

But I think it may also have to do with those who are praying, even if they are not aware of what they are doing.

I think that some people, like our healing team leader, are able to draw the Spirit up and out of themselves, to unleash it on the people there for prayer. In a larger setting, like at Joshua Revolution, a bunch of people with these gifts are all in place, and so it happens on a broader, grander scale.

He probably also chooses to fall at these moments. I'm not discounting that. But I can't dismiss this new idea, this idea that He is rising up from them, and then from many of the attendees as well, till He swells like an ocean wave, and crashes in among them...

Let's pray for a tsunami.

Yet

by Switchfoot

(Listen here.)

All attempts have failed
All my heads are tails
She's got teary eyes
I've got reasons why

I'm losing ground and gaining speed
I've lost myself or most of me
I'm headed for the final precipice

But you haven't lost me yet
No, you haven't lost me yet
I'll sing until my heart caves in
No, you haven't lost me yet

These days pass me by
I dream with open eyes
Nightmares haunt my days
Visions blur my nights

I'm so confused
What's true of false
What's fact or fiction after all
I feel like I'm an apparition's pet

But you haven't lost me yet
No you haven't lost me yet
I'll run until my heart caves in
No, you haven't lost me yet

If it doesn't break
If it doesn't break
If it doesn't break
If it doesn't break your heart
It isn't love
If it doesn't break your heart
It's not enough
It's when you're breaking down
With your insides coming out
That's when you find out what your heart is made of

And you haven't lost me yet
No you haven't lost me yet
I'll sing until my heart caves in
No, you haven't lost me yet
Cause you haven't lost me yet

Let God Arise!

I am exulting in the action and presence of the Spirit in recent weeks. Since confirmation He has showered me with His presence and power.

My church is both liturgical and charismatic, offering validly consecrated Eucharist, healing prayer teams, and everything in between. While my own leanings have been toward the sacramental end, I have had quite a bit of exposure to charismatic worship and prayer.

What I have traditionally seen in charismatic settings is for the one who prays to "call down" the Holy Spirit, asking it to fall.

But we may have this backwards. Or if not exactly backwards, we may be missing a vital opportunity:

We should be asking the Spirit to come forth from us. To come out from the temple. We should be asking for it not to simply fall, but also to arise.

Such a fundamental thing to overlook; that we are God's temple, and that He dwells within us. We say it and believe it without actually understanding it. We forget that He is there, and that He wants to act in and through us. He loves working through His creation. He formed us in His own image and likeness, to do His work.

He wants to breathe on the world as He breathed on the disciples, sending out His Spirit through our very breath...

More on this to come.

Always

by Switchfoot

(Listen here.)

This is the start
This is your heart
This is the day you were born
This is the sun
These are your lungs
This is the day you were born

And I am always
always
always
yours.

And I am always
always
always
yours.

These are the scars
Deep in your heart
This is the place you were born
This is the hole
Where most of your soul
Comes ripping out
From the places you've been torn

And it is always
always
always
yours.

But I am always
always
I'm always
I'm always
yours.

Hallelujah!
I'm caving in
Hallelujah!
I'm in love again
Hallelujah!
I'm a wretched man
Hallelujah!
Every breath is a second chance

And it is always
always
always
yours.

And I am always
always
always
yours.

Fear this

Time for true confessions. There is a reason you haven't heard from me in a bit; I am afraid.

I am afraid while at the same time blissfully at peace.

Is that possible?

Here's the fear:

What if being happy robs me of the ability to ponder and write about the wonder of Him?

My level of comfort and joy are high and my creative juices correspondingly low.

It could be troubling, if it weren't for His assurance. He keeps telling me that this is a season of experiencing rather than thinking. Of incarnate revelation rather than word.

He told me that the winds of change were blowing, and with typical hubris, I thought that meant something else entirely.

The winds continue to blow and I to be pushed along by them, trying to simply enjoy the ride and be faithful in response. I pray for you, beloved reader, that His spirit is gently carrying you as well.

Merry Christmas...

Quote du jour

"Perhaps strange is needed."

Christmas came early...

It has been a rollercoaster of an advent... my mind is pretty thoroughly blown.

First was a prayer encounter with my daughter, followed by a definitive negative test for the disease we have been praying about. Second was a miraculous healing which has left me stunned and breathless. I'll write about the former in another post.

On Tuesday afternoon, my DiDi fell and broke bones in multiple places on either side of the left foot near the ankle. I helped schlep her around to urgent care, a local hospital for x-raying, and finally to an orthopedic specialist for casting etc. Given all the driving and waiting which took place from about 2:30 till about 9:30 that night, we had not been able to keep it iced or elevated at all, and the pain was excruciating. She was given some heavy duty pain killers, but I stayed the night so that she would not be alone and the pain remained terrible.

I went to check up on her Wednesday late afternoon and she was so overcome by pain that she could barely speak and was close to vomiting. The pain medication was not working.

I have never seen one I love struggle with this degree of pain before, and watching it was indescribable. The sense of helplessness was overwhelming. I did the little that I could, clucking around propping pillows and refreshing ice bags, bringing cups of water and trying to make DiDi laugh through the pain.

Yesterday was day three. I went to check on her to make sure she had ice for her ankle because the pain was so bad that she couldn't even answer the phone when I called. When I got there she was able to talk, but was ashen faced and grimaced by merely lifting her foot so that I could adjust the pillows beneath it. Replacing the ice packs was like torture.

As we talked, DiDi asked me how much faith I have, and told me that I needed to anoint her foot and pray because He had not yet removed or lessened the pain. I had been praying on and off since her fall for healing and for release from the tremendous pain, but of course agreed to pray for her then as well.

I heard a word about how I was to proceed with the prayer, and followed it. Diane flinched from even the very light touch of the anointing oil.

My primary focus was on reduction of the swelling so that the pain would be reduced, and so part of my prayer centered around asking that He disburse accumulated fluids and return blood to farther up in the leg. I prayed that the bones be healed, but my heart was hurting for her pain and that's where the bulk of my prayer centered.

I also asked that He build up my faith and heal my unbelief, that none of my failings would stand in the way of her healing.

After I closed in prayer, Diane asked that I get her a pair of socks. I assumed that her feet were merely cold, not thinking much more about it. When I handed them to her, she swung her legs off the bed to the floor, and began putting them on, on both feet. Then it hit me; she had not worn a sock on the broken foot since the accident occurred.

Remember: even lifting the foot off the pillow had been excruciating just a very short time before.

Once the sock was on, she asked for her boot/cast, and slipped that on as if it were nothing more than a slipper. (The last time she'd put it on was more like a torture device.) All of this was amazing enough, because a few minutes before the lightest of touches had caused her to grind her teeth in pain. But what was more amazing was that she then stood up, looked at me, and said let's go downstairs!

I can't put in words the shock and confusion I felt while watching this.

DiDi has been miraculously healed before, and so she had been waiting for -when- He would do it again for this injury.

I, on the other hand, have never witnessed a dramatic healing like that before, and stood there dumbfounded, stupidly trying to talk her out of it and telling her to lie back down and get the foot elevated! The joy in her face and the expression in her eyes stopped me though, and she realized that I didn't really get it. She patiently led me downstairs to the kitchen, periodically looking at my slack-jawed, dumbfounded expression and laughing.

I was stunned into speechlessness, (which is miraculous in itself.)

I couldn't believe it. This was the same women who lurched from the pain of using crutches to get next door to the bathroom an hour earlier.

It was stunning. I'm still stunned. I've never seen anything like it.

I know that our Lord works all things to the good for those of us who love Him, and I'm not sure of all the things that He had up His sleeve in allowing DiDi to fall the way that she did. But I do know that one of the reasons was so that He could use her to help build my faith. He demonstrated that He WILL unleash His healing power in remarkable ways if we step in and are obedient, which I already believed. The part that shocked me was that He would use ME as a vessel for such a dramatic work.

I've never seen anything like it. I am stunned.

I write this to encourage you all. When you pray for someone to be healed, your prayers may also have the secondary purpose of allowing Yeshua to give someone else this very very special gift.

Best Christmas present ever...

Peace be with you. Be encouraged that your prayers are powerful, powerful things.

Continued prayer...

Just got word that the latest screening test for my daughter was also positive. So we now have 2 positive and 1 negative.

Your continued prayer is very much appreciated.

News flash

Latest news:

Vicar general canceled due to funeral, and have had prayer answered re. my daughter's diagnosis. Thank you for any prayers you were able to send up on our behalf!

How can I keep from singing?

I continue to be amazed and awed at the wonder of love as it has unfolded over the past few weeks. My deep, soul deep friendship with DiDi, Bella Dolce, is watering and nurturing me, and I am unfolding and stretching and reaching for the sunshine...

I didn't realize that I had been like a dormant seed, waiting for a lightning strike to set a blaze and release me into fruitfulness at her care.

I didn't know that I so needed the love of a woman. I always thought the healing would come through a man.

It is beautiful, and our joy is infectious. We are watching other women in our congregation begin to unfold as well, touching and hugging eachother more, laughing and seeking eachother out.

Yeshua is doing a mighty mighty work through this gift of friendship.

His mercy and caring and generosity are beyond comprehension, beyond all imagining.

How can I keep from singing?

My week in summary

So much happening, and so little time to capture it all...

A few highlights:

I was confirmed by our Bishop at yesterday's mass. The Holy Spirit was manifest; I pray for obedience to His will and attentiveness to His gifts. Now on to find out if there are any problems with validity if the Bishop calls you by the wrong name...

Last week my daughter was told that she screened positive for a serious disease. Still waiting for additional test results. Please pray that the previous test was a false positive, or was simply a sign of previous exposure.

On Thursday I meet with the Vicar General of our Roman Catholic diocese to discuss the problem of unorthodox teaching at the local seminary. So far my objections have been dismissed. Prayers appreciated for God's will to be done in this.

I am walking in joy and love, unplanned, unanticipated, undeserved, and indescribable.

Shakespeare on love (16)

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ!
to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Sonnet 23

Shakespeare on love (15)

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
a choking gall and a preserving sweet.

Romeo and Juliet, I:I

Shakespeare on love (14)

By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy.

Love's Labour's Lost, IV:III

Freedom OF

I've been meaning to throw this out to you for a few weeks, and now seems the time given the connection to Thanksgiving.

I've been wondering when the shift occurred from freedom OF religion to freedom FROM religion. Does the frantic fringe have any recollection that the separation of church and state was instituted to protect religion and faith rather than the other way around? Do they see that the very tyranny the founding fathers sought to protect against is happening now, to Christians?

How dark the darkness...

Happy random set of circumstances day?

I am back from Thanksgiving festivities, and wondering about something.

Why do we still celebrate Thanksgiving in the US? Isn't it a violation of the separation of church and state? After all, thankfulness requires two parties; the person giving thanks and the person being thanked.

I don't understand, therefore, how this can remain a federal holiday, given the fanaticism of the freedom from religion crowd.

I wonder how many years of it we have left...

To adore and obey

I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey.

-- C. S. Lewis

A gift of sweetness

I woke again in the middle of the night, this time for a different sort of rescue.

I did something strange, in half wakefulness. I reached over, put my hand on my husband's head, and told him that I was going to give him some sweetness. I woke knowing that that was what I was supposed to do. It was not that I was to -be sweet to him-. I was to bestow a gift of sweetness within him.

I was to impart it.

Bestow it.

I was instructed to do it, and I did.

I fell back asleep quickly and forgot about it. But he came downstairs this morning smiling, and reminded me. He obviously liked it, and thought I was -being- sweet, which I was not, and I needed to explain it.

Astonishingly, he was not dismissive, though I did give him an out straight away, saying that I didn't expect him to believe it.

He asked how it was that I -knew-, and so I tried to explain the certainty that you feel when the Holy Spirit is directing you to action. In response, he said that he believed me, because the way I had said that I was giving him sweetness sounded exactly the way I described it. As gift. As a bestowing upon and within.

This has never happened to me before, in all the hundreds of times I've prayed for people. I told him that as well, and he was tickled.

He is in an open state.

Holy Spirit, come. Keep him in that place. Bestow on him many gifts. Shower him with your love.

No other fount I know

I have been thinking about blood, and in particular about menstrual blood.

One of yesterday's hymns was Nothing but the Blood of Jesus, and so of course, being me, I had to connect the two.

I thought about how Christ's baptism sanctified all the waters of the world, and wondered if his pierced side did the same for our blood, setting it apart and making it holy.

Women, in the cycle of life giving, pour out His blood in a perpetual flow of love and glory. A perpetual blood letting for the life of the world. A shedding of fecundity. A constant fount of blood and water, pierced like his side.

No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Flower lined

While reading a Psalm I realized that sometimes the pit you need to be rescued from is beautiful and lined with flowers.

Have I already said this?

Our experience of unfulfilled desire mimics the pain of God. Through it we understand the frustration He must feel at not being able to give to the beloved one. Through it we participate in His suffering.

The soul feels what the mind cannot

My staunchly secular and rigidly rational husband had another nightmare last night. I pulled him from it's clutches when his moans of fear woke me.

In the dream he encountered an evil woman, deeply evil, who had the ability to know the thoughts of others. He looked through a white book she had authored, filled with grotesque drawings in raised purple. He realized that he was the only one who could see what she was, and as he thought this, she began to repeat it and move toward him. He tried to escape, crying out "No, no, no!"

It was at this point that I woke him.

I often rescue him from darkness in the night.

I find it interesting that this secular man, so certain of the boundaries of the rational world, can realize the existence of evil only in sleep. There can be no denying of it then. He feels it.

Male and female, He created them

I have been thinking about women, and the love of women in particular.

There is a feminine character to love, and a masculine. I can't speak much about the latter given that it would be mere observation. But I am getting a deeper understanding of the feminine.

It amazes me that God always wants to show us more. To take us deeper. Just when you think you understand, He takes your hand and leads you further. It is breathtaking.

When women love, they want to give fully. They want to give all. They want total consummation, total gift, total consumption. They give heedlessly, recklessly, without counting the cost.

Our God, in His wisdom, knew this, and made us to be complementary. Male and female He created them, because the swooning giving of two women would be too abandoned. Too unmeasured. We need a masculine reserve to achieve balance.

The feminine gifts soften the masculine reserve. The masculine strengths protect the feminine vulnerability.

He is so wise...

Why settle?

Happiness. I've been thinking about the idea of happiness.

We strive for happiness, thinking it the summit. The ultimate accomplishment. The ultimate state of existence. The ultimate goal.

But happiness is flabby compared to joy.

Flaccid.

In contrast, joy is blood-filled and pulsing.

But joy is always accompanied by at least a soupçon of pain; a whisper of loss or absence or some harder thing.

And so we content ourselves with mere happiness, to avoid it.

Turns out I don't particularly want to be happy.

Why settle?

To give and to receive

My BP has spoken of people who have a charism of love. In the past I have thought that this meant a capacity for giving love. And it does. But my beloved DiDi has shown me that it is much more. She has tremendous ability to give love, but also to receive it. She is all open arms and heart. I pray that I may also be both.

Be still?

God has been showing me how He provides realizations of Himself through other people.

This sounds so tame, when what I mean is so untame.

So wild. So excruciatingly joyful. So wonderfully heartbreaking.

He says to be still and know that I am God. Know that I am God.

Know me. Just as Adam knew Eve.

He sends us people so that we may know them and so come to know Him. Through mess and sweat and tears and blood. Through heart-pounding, pulse-racing, soul-wrenching love.

Through joy and grief, sometimes combined.

Through highs and lows and hurts and restorations.

Through passion, we know Him.

Lord, you are a mystery... It hurts to know you.

Please pray for time

Beloved reader,

It has been less than a week since I have written, yet it feels like an era has passed. Funny how time can twist and change shape based on what is unfolding.

There is so much that I am like a thimble trying to catch a torrent. I have no time to capture it, let alone process it and then form it the way He would have me.

Please pray for me. I hope to post a few drops soon. Pray for time.

Always yours,

Eva

Bashert

I was recently introduced to the Jewish idea of soulmate called bashert, at a theatre production of the rather bizarre "Clean House". After poking around on the web, I found the following description from an article on JewishJournal.com:

"A Jerusalem rabbi once told me that when we're born, God whispers the name of our beshert -- our soulmate or destiny. The cleft above our lips, he said, is where God places a finger, to silence our ability to reveal the secret."

Rather lovely I think.

Sacred scaring of the hard nosed

I've been thinking about Dr. C's comment re. the difficulty of some to accept the mundane as sacred, and will be writing more on that soon. I think the problem is connected to their abandonment of sacramentality as a whole. (Apologies if that was obvious...)

Both sides now

My beloved DiDi is teaching me many things. I am in awe.

Today I realized that she somehow stands on both sides of the veil.

It is as if it runs through the center of her, so that one eye sees the things of this world, and the other eye simultaneously sees the things of the Other.

I am in awe.

So sing!

"The reason people no longer believe is because believers no longer sing!"

--Friedrich Nietzshe

What is not said

Some of my favorite parts of the scriptures are things that are not stated. For example, what happened between the Holy Spirit and Mary once Gabriel left. More recently, I've been thinking about Lazarus, and what it must have been like after he was returned to life.

Reflections on a teapot

I've been talking to my BP about Thomas Howard's idea of everything meaning everything, as it relates to the reawakening of the Christian imagination. I thought it might be good to offer an example of the concept in an easily digestible form, and was given an image of a teapot. So here goes.

Let's say that you were shown an old metal teapot. The empirically minded would note that it is made of scuffed metal and has a wooden handle. They could see that it has been used and looks old. If they open it they can see the stain of yesteryear teas, and perhaps even catch it's scent if they dare dip their noses.

All of these things are real and true and give insight about the pot.

An expert on teapots could look at the workmanship and tell more about it. More facts could be collected.

But what happens when you see it, and know it to be your grandmother's?

When you look, you see the dent on the side and it's flame-darkened bottom. You picture it sitting where it always did, on the back of the old gas-burnered stove. You see the black stick-match holder mounted on the wall nearby, and smell a brief sulfurous blast when one is struck.

You remember the cabinet in which a box of Red Rose rests, and the drawer filled with the tiny Wade figurines you played with year after year.

You remember orange pekoe being offered as a treat, and wishing that you actually liked it.

You remember taking grandma's tea-and-dry-toast cure, and wanting just a touch of butter.

You remember the sound of her coming through the swinging door from the dining room, where Jesus' painted eyes followed her as she walked.

You remember how she poured for sorrows and joys, for calming and reviving, for waking up in the morning, and for restlessness at night.

You hear her voice telling the teapot story again; how she received it as a wedding gift some 30, then 40, then 50 years before.

You remember clearing out the house when she died, and having to throw the old pot away...

These memories add more than mere facts to the reality of a simple teapot. The associations and interactions and emotions provide context.

They give the object meaning.

The Enlightenment would have us strip things down to the essential facts, to isolated collections of details theoretically comprising a whole. None of which have meaning, only existence.

In the enlightened view, the teapot means teapot. There is nothing more. Just the facts.

In Thomas Howard's view, the teapot means love, and comfort, and contentment and safety. It means stick matches and squeaky doors. It means pillowy hugs and powdery old lady scents. The teapot means grandmother, and love.

Going beyond that, it means the technological evolution of man; the forging of metals and hewing of wood for our purposes. It means the alchemy of molecular change and the ritual of seed, seedling, sapling and tree. It means the interaction of man and nature and God.

What if we could see all the interconnections of things all around us? What if we could see them stretching out like spider webs dew-sparkling in the early sunshine? What if we could see the beauty and the wonder and the majesty behind the exterior of every single thing?

I can only imagine...

The why of things

I am one of the people who love the why of things.

--Catherine the Great

So much more to discover

One of the most wonderful things about knowing God is that there's always so much more to know, so much more to discover. Just when we least expect it, He intrudes into our neat and tidy notions about who He is and how He works.

-- Joni Eareckson Tada

False evidence

From the radio this morning:

Fear is false evidence appearing real.

Final notes from Chance or the Dance? Ch. 8

"...it is in the nature of union to produce fruit, or, conversely, that the fruit owes its life to a prior union. Further, he might observe that it is in the nature of that union to be ecstatic, and he might thus conclude that joy is somehow written into the sources of life. And he will undoubtedly see that there are pain and agony involved and will have to come to terms with what he can see only as an intrusion or an ambiguity--that pain is somehow bound up in the whole process of joy. ... And he will see at work over a long, long span of time the difficult notion that reward or fulfillment commonly follows rigor and renunciation and austerity... and is not available on demand."

"It will occur to him that one of the oddities of love (erotic, paternal, filial, social) is that its motion is outward and away from itself, and that it experiences this motion as joy"

"...life issues from death--that spring rises from winter, and the oak from the dead acorn, and dawn from the night, and Pheonix from the ashes.

These are old moral saws. Nothing new here. Bromides. But then there is nothing new anywhere. The business of the poet and prophet has always been to take the saws and astonish and delight us into a fresh awareness of what they mean by discovering them suddenly in this image, and in this, and this. And the rest of us may see it all either as a pointless jumble of phenomena, or as the diagram of glory--as grinding tediously toward entropy, or as dancing toward the Dance."

On depths and heights

From prayer time this morning; some thoughts for my friend who fights to be where He wills her.

When we give to Him all the achings of our heart, when we cling to obedience despite every inclination to do otherwise, when we pour out our sorrows and yearnings while laboriously struggling for the good, He brings out of it a soaring joy.

Your heart may burn from the pain, but your spirit will soar with His Spirit and witness sights that can only be seen from those great heights.

Lord, keep me there.

Keep me in the depths so that I may experience your heights.

On not opening it now

More from Chance or the Dance, Ch. 7:

"We are all familiar enough with the mystery that attends the private. ... sometimes the mystery suggested an ecstatic rather than a horrible revelation. The tall knight who appeared to us in the gusty wood and who lifted us to his saddle--where was he taking us? Not yet, little one; trust me. You shall see. There are many dangers ahead, but if you will be strong and brave and patient, you shall see. Wait. Or the beautiful and kindly lady with the shining face who beckoned us silently with a finger to her lips. She would not tell us her secret, but we knew it was worth waiting for. All these situations called to something in us that was intensely aware that secrecy, or privacy, is in the cards, and that it is a higher consciousness that bows to this and waits for the time and the permission, than that which shouts, 'Open it now! I want it now! I shall have it at once!'"

Jam tomorrow

Today
I hunger for you
hunger for you
today.

--Chantelle Franc

Forgive the confusion: recent posts reordered

Gentle Reader, I ask your forgiveness for any confusion about the reordering of recent posts on Chance or the Dance? I often schedule posts in advance, and discovered that I had numbered entries which posted out of order. I have therefore changed the post dates so that they appear correctly.

Chance or the Dance? Excerpts from Ch. 7 (Sex) Part 3

"The view that is being put in this book, however, is that the rush into the fenced-off place is a desecration and not an emancipation. It proceeds upon the assumption first that the idea of the private, the set apart, is a legitimate one, and that on the one hand it is not only worthwhile but necessary that some things be set apart, and that on the other, there are some things whose very nature demands such a setting apart. Second it would suspect that the human imagination has not been mistaken in handling the sexual phenomenon as one of the things to be set apart in the exclusive place.

It would suspect this because it would see the body as the image of the person, and the person as a thing vast and mysterious and not to be raided. ...The human imagination has set the sexual rite into this veiled sanctum. It does not occur in the marketplace, or at the table, or in the drawing room. Not even the parody of it (whoredome) occurs there. One goes behind closed doors. But the closed wooden doors are themselves only the sign of the closed doors behind which the human imagination keeps the phenomenon. They are not the closed doors of embarrassment, or of shame, althogh some eras have acted as though they were. Rather, they are like the veil into the holy place: up to here you may all come, but I must go alone beyond here, in unto this personhood whose being is to be opened under this particular modality to me alone. (And of course the physical actualitites of the rite so exactly correspond to this awarenes of entry into the secret place byond the veil that they hardly need pointing out.)"

"...those who honor the shrine begin to participate in an exchange and a communion whose nature eludes those who traffic in holy things. ... But... those who honor the shrine move, by their very attendance on the rubric, toward some great and unimagined Unveiling when the ecstatic secret is opeoned to those who have learned that no churl will see the Holy Thing; to those who have learned that it is not by pushing into a thousand shrines that one becomes able to pass through that final Veil, but rather by brave and single attendance on the one shrine committed to one; who know that an unveiling is a real unveilling only to the extent that what is veiled is set apart from the other things around, and that one's appreciation of the reward is in some ratio to what one has experienced of patience in waiting for it; and to those who have recevied the ecstatic communion entrusted to them as an image of some final Communion when the knowledge of all beings will be ecstatic; who, by their participation in the rite (or by their wait for it--those who for one reason or another are denied the foretaste here) have apprehended the knowledge of other beings as a high and holy thing, not to be flung open at random."

Friend cleaving to friend

This from my beloved DiDi.

... in friendship are joined honor and charm, truth and joy, sweetness and goodwill, affection and action. And all these take their beginnings from Christ, advance through Christ and are perfected in Christ. ... And thus, friend cleaving to friend in the spirit of Christ, is made with Christ but one heart and one soul ...

--Aelred of Rievaulx

Chance or the Dance? Excerpts from Ch. 7 (Sex) Part 2

"Oddly, the rite of life, this most common and most mysterious thing, describable both by plumbing and mystic terms, appearing as both ridiculous and noble, slimy and sublime--this was not only the rite of life, but of knowledge. That is, the act which generated life was at the same time the act which signaled the high point of knowledge between two beings. It suggested that the nature of that knowledge between the one mode and the other was fruitful. The old term was 'know'. Adam knew his wife. "

"Then, finally, it finds its perfect form in the enactment by the two unveiled images, the images of male and female, of the energy that strains toward total union. That is, the thing that I want passionately to know, while I am aware that it appears only under this fleshly image and is itself more than that image, I can only know via the greatest possible experience of that image.

Here the distinction between spirit and matter disappears, as it does in the Sacraments. For here I experience the oddity that flesh is the mode under which I apprehend the truth of the thing. It is the epiphany of the thing. There is, in the sexual rite, a sense of struggle. It is the mad straining of the two images to get through to the very center of the thing (and this is not merely a pun; according to the view being put here, the anatomical placing of things would be itself a perfect image of what is at work in the situation, so that the fact that the final rite occurs at the 'center' of the bodies is to be expected.) There is, ironically, in this most soaring of all satisfactions a radical sense of incompleteness. The ecstasy accompanies the exploration, an exploration that never quite finds that ultimate elysium where the union is unimaginable to us, but toward which union we strain again and again, and which very attempt we find to be ecstatic."

"...the human body is available for any number of activities (sports, medical inspection, work), but when it is taken into the service of the sexual rite, a univrse of significance comes upon it, like God into the Mass, and immediately the participants are less than the thing in which they are participating, and it is theres to oserve the rubric with awe. The equipment is no longer merely object; it is image. Taken into the rite, it is transformed. As in poetry, courtesy, ceremony, or any of the ritual ways in which we shape our experience, so here the imposing of a form upon mere function paradoxically elicits the true significance of that function from the raw material. ... A doctor may probe it strictly as a complex of organs and tissue; a gymnastics coach may maniuplate it as a pattern of muscles. But the sexual exploration of this mass of tissue and muscle puts the bread and wine on the altar: the real presence of the person must now be reckoned with."

On Mary Magdalane

I recently had a Facebook exchange with a former parishioner who is a 1970's-style feminist (I'm the new kind) about Mary Magdalene. Her position was that the Catholic church conspired to label Mary as prostitute. I'm not clear on the perceived motivation. The topic came up because I played Mary at a recent All Saints festival. Here is my response to her query of whether or not I had fallen for the lie:

The Mary I portrayed is one compiled from scattered gospel accounts. She was:

Sister of Martha and Lazarus. Delivered from seven demons. Forgiven sinful woman. The one who sat at His feet rather than wash dishes. The one who had the most intimate exchange with Jesus of any person in the accounts; being allowed to wash, kiss, and anoint His dusty feet. The one who watched His blood pour out, and the one to whom He first showed Himself after resurrection.

She holds a place of great honor within the church, and within my heart.

The Biblical accounts don't say that she is a prostitute, only that she was sinful. But the idea of prostitution does not raise red flags for me, given it's importance in explaining God's relationship with us. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures we are likened as unfaithful wives or worse; sometimes even as prostitutes (as in Hosea). Jewish and Christian history is the story of the Bridegroom and the tarnished bride to be who becomes spotless.

Mary Magdalene is the culmination of this pattern, distilled into a beautiful woman. She demonstrated the most love of anyone in the gospels, and that love came in part out of her past brokenness, her sinfulness.

I relate all to closely to this to find it objectionable. It is too beautiful.

Chance or the Dance? Excerpts from Ch. 7 (Sex)

"The viewpoint that is being described in this book has nothing to do with Victorianism, if by that we mean a frightened or a reluctant view toward sexuality. Indeed, it would probably have to be located at the other end of the spectrum from that, in that it understands sexuality to be perhaps the supreme image in human experience of the way things are. It is at once an ebullient and an austere view."

"Anthropologists have never found the tribe to whom it makes no difference at all what man spends the night with what woman, and to whom the idea of my wives and his wives, or at least my concubines and his, has no content whatever; where sexuality exists on a par with breathing and defecating--one of the random functions of the human body, without the complicating ideas of intimacy and warrant with which the rest of humanity has set it about."

"The sense of humanity, in other words, has been that this blissful and procreative function is wildly charged with significance that reaches in all directions form the mere bed in which the two bodies happen to lie. We live in an epoch whose doctrine is that humanity may have been sadly mistaken and that the edge of the bed is as far as one can carry the significance. But this is a doctrine hardly borne out by the emotional experience of armies of outraged cuckolds and jilted lovers down through the centureis. In any case, we shall have to have scriptures weightier than Playboy to bring about the apocolyptic shift in sensibility that this idea asks. For it asks, in effect, that we scotch the whole corpus of poetry, myth, ritual, and drama by which the human imagination has, from the beginning of history, spoken of its apprehension of experience. I know of no serious work of the human imagination which proceeds upon the idea that there is nothing but dalliance in sexuality."

No explanation necessary

"When one is in the sphere of the beautiful, no explanations are needed"

--Constantin Brancusi

Enthralled by ice and Mystery

From Climbing the Sphinx (included in The Best American Spiritual Writing, 2007):

"Forever in a state of becoming, ice is never static. Whether forming or melting, this fluid newness holds me enthralled. Ice is like lava or fire--the longer you look, the more you feel yourself on the cusp of revelation. To stare into this frozen skein of light and shadow is to rub up against Mystery itself."

--Fred Bahnson

On hope for faithfulness

From The Head of Barley:

It's hard to know what to say about the marvels
Inside the soul. Even those of us who have broken
Many promises can still hope for faithfulness.

--Robert Bly

(and being reassured, I hope.)

Message from a dirt tosser

I hope that you will all give yourself the gift of reading a recent post by Dr. Ken Craven on his blog, True West:

Underground Missive #2

He has a true gift of insight, language, and voice.

On endless 'progress' and unfettered freedom

I'm reading The Best American Spiritual Writing (2007), edited by Philip Zaleski, a collection of essays on many subjects from wide ranging periodicals.

The current essay is called "The Ends of Science" by Eric Cohen (originally appearing in First Things), and points out the empty darkness of the sciences which currently fight so hard to deny the existence of something More.

A few quotes for your consideration:

"On the isle of progress, the priest is replaced by the scientist, who conducts secret expriments to help his fellow citizens. This is the new charity."

"...the original sin of the scientific Enlightenment--still haunts modern science: Perpetual progress is not the same thing as perfection. Infinite progress also means infinite discontent, as man is left in a state of eternal becoming with no end. 'Indefinite perfectibility,' Condorcet's dream, is an irreconcilable contradiction."

"Like everyone else, the scientist must decide which ends to pursue, which gods to serve, which demon will 'hold the very fibers of his life.' And these are exactly the questions that the scientific method cannot answer. Divine salvation may be an illusion but so is believing that science can tell us how to live in the world it dissects and describes, and how to live well in a world where scientific power is so readily, so seductively, so dangerously at our disposal."

"Science is power without wisdom about the uses of power."

"...science can conduct the most ghastly experiments on animals (with godlike power) while also worrying as a guild about the effect of modern civiliation on the animals of the earth, seeing man as more beastly than the beasts he destroys, or at least worth no more than the animals he uses. It is why science can devote so much energy to curing disease while believing that death is nature's way of improving itself."

"Our faith in science eventually gives way to our need for faith. We choose the hope of perfection over endless progress and unfettered freedom but only after trying for as long as possible to have everything without contradiction."

Still reading... perhaps more to come on this topic.

Acedia and the love of nothing

The quote below came in a comment from a blogger I enjoy, Dr. Ken Craven. It's focus is on tolerance, but it reminds me of a world stripped of imagination.

"Acedia... sloth [the sixth deadly sin]. In the world it calls itself tolerance, but in hell it is called despair. ... It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for."

--Dorothy Sayers

Sensory satisfaction

Still collecting notes from Chance or the Dance?

One snippet on pg 84 led me to wonder if, because meaning has been stripped away from us, perhaps sensory satisfaction now attempts to replace spiritual satisfaction.

The Dance awaits, breathless with hope

From Chance or the Dance?

"The old myth would have seen all these phenomena as images--images of some paradox that lay at the heart of things: that freedom for a thing is that state in which it appears at its highest performance (its perfection, in other words), and that this is a state that lies on the farther side of rigor and austerity. And it would have seen all these images as suggesting not a moral servility for that unique creation man, but rather the brilliant display, under a thousand forms, of the Dance, which goes on aeon after aeon, and which waits all breathless with hope for the Man to recogize the pattern, see his place, assent to it, and join. He may or he may not; that is his option. But his freedom is the ecstatic experience of the joyous measure whose music rings from galaxy to galaxy."

Aristotle on Friendship

Heard Peter Kreeft quoting Aristotle the other day... Not sure if I have the quote right, but here goes:

Friends are one soul in two bodies.

--Aristotle

C.S. Lewis on Praise (2)

Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.

--C. S. Lewis

Topography of you

Let me explore you.
I want to taste every scar
feel each texture against my lips
as you tell me their stories
one by one.

--Chantelle Franc

Heart's violin

I have been thinking about "speaking in tongues" and "prayer languages" (which, by the way, are not the same thing. But I'm not doing apologetics in this post).

I debated about whether to write about it here, given that it is one of those polemical topics which can scare readers or get me labeled as a charismaniac. But given the impact the topic is having on my thoughts and on my relationship with God, I guess I'll just take the leap and pray that you hop on for the ride.

I'll spare you the details of how it unfolded, other than to say that my darling DiDi's prayer brought it about. She released it. It came pouring out immediately after she prayed that I be used powerfully for healing. As I prayed for 5-6 people and situations who came up to my group with requests, I focused entirely on this newly unleashed voice. My team partner prayed with them conventionally, addressing the needs they raised. But as for me, sound poured out from my heart without stopping for processing into thoughts and words.

(By the way; it isn't a particularly pretty sound. It's full of weird non-American-English-sounds and mouth formations, along with some clicky Aftrican sounds and sibilants. Not a thing of beauty as one might hope. Nothing flowing and melodic.)

It was an astonishing prayer session. The Holy Spirit fell heavily as I received His body on my tongue, and by the time we were finished praying for everyone I felt spent as after a night of love. Not tired out, not weary or exhausted, but both filled and poured out.

It was lovely.

A few days later, I prayed for my dear friend while driving. Since I was by myself, there was no self consciousness and I didn't have to worry about volume.

And so I prayed this way, on and on, my heart soaring and aching the way it does when listening to a passionate violin concerto.

The prayer poured out as if it were music, unfettered and unformed by the word processing of my mind. My mouth became an instrument transmitting the vibrations of my heart.

My soul sang to God.

(More on this subject to come...)

Who grew first?

An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.

--A. W. Tozer

Perhaps this is one way in which God "grows"; our capacity for Him expands.

More on growing the Spirit

Thomas Howard says that is in the nature of union to produce fruit. Our procreative ability and process is an illustration of this aspect of our God.

Your patience requested

Beloved Reader,

Please be patient with me; I am very busy at present, and have had difficulty carving time for responding to comments. I hope to give them proper attention within the next day or two, because your comments are so rich.

Pax Christi,

Eva

Loan me a book

Loan me a book that I might write
a sonnet in the margins
in future years
when I am gone
read it
and remember me.

-- Suzanne DeWitt Hall

The growth of the Father

I stole a few moments to think more about whether or not the Holy Spirit expands, and He jumped in to lead my thoughts.

In the post linked above, I thought about the love growing between my dearest of friends and I, and how the Spirit seems to be making Himself known more and more obviously to us through that friendship.

If the Spirit is (as Augustine claims) the love between the Father and the Son, can it also proceed from the love of us for God and for each other? Could He expand and increase through that love?

When conveying this question to my BP, he reminded me that the Spirit is also a person, and so I brought this into my pondering.

And it occured to me that persons grow.

Bodies grow, and Jesus has a body which grew (and is growing?). We are the body of Christ, and the body and it's members grow.

And love grows.

This all leads me to think that the Spirit Himself can and does grow, and one of the ways He does so is through our love of eachother and for the Father.

But then I wondered, if the Son and the Spirit both grow, does the Father as well?

This one was harder.

He must grow, because the Trinity is one nature. If one grows, all must grow.

And yet He is unchangeing. Immutable.

It is relatively easy to contemplate the Son's growth. And we understand the way that love grows, and can apply that to the Spirit. But how is the Father's growth manifested?

How is One who is unchangeable changing?

It stumped me for a minute, until He stepped in.

And then it occurred to me; perhaps the Father's growth is not in His essence but in His production.

Perhaps it is in the very expansion of the cosmos.

Perhaps the increase of our love feeds the very force of the Father's creative power, and out shoots matter and energy and liturgy and ritual and order and beauty and passion and endurance and hot, molten, burning, unconquerable love.

And so the stars and the planets dance, and the bees and the ants dance, and the church and its liturgy dance, and we dance.

We dance.

We dance.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

-- John Keats

The soul of God, shouting for joy

Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill,
I see the soul of God shouting for joy.

-- William Blake

Excruciating beauty

God is weaving my life so as to show me how pain, love, and beauty intertwine.

He gives me excruciating beauty.

Some days I think I may die of joy and heartbreak.

on the Spirit

I've been thinking about the Holy Spirit being described by St. Augustine as the love between the Father and the Son.

If this is the case, what does it say about us, given that we are part of the body of Christ, and children of the Father?

What happens as we expand and broaden our love for Him and for eachother? Is there some corresponding procession of Spirit?

Does the Spirit increase?

More Thomas Howard on poetry

Howard's thoughts below echo recent comments by Dr. Ken Craven.

"It is the language whose first halting utterances are our efforts to describe our experience by getting images of it from other realms of experience. ... It is the language, skipping or solemn, that elevates our experience by imposing a form upon it, not arbitrarily, but because it suspects that the truest way of speaking of that experience is formally. It is the language that... disposes and arrays the common stuff of experience so that it is ritually transfigured from mere function into an instance of glory.

For it is the language that takes a serious view of experience. It is not satisfied with the idea of mere random tumble. It is not mere random tumble, it insists. There is something here. There is something to be said. There is something, oddly, to be elicited from this tumble. Take it. Grasp it. Handle it. Try one thing and another. Try to shape it. Impose some form on it. Lo... lo... when you are finally satisfied that you have imposed the right form on it, you will wonder whether that form was imposed by you, or whether it emerged from the thing itself.

This is the business of the poets. They are burdened and happy spirits who can do this--this that we all try to do. Burdened because they know that the most important thing is the most daunting thing--to seek and find and utter that significance that emerges from the union of form and content; happy because from time to time they succeed."

(from pages later...)

"There is the paradox of poetry. What seems to have been imposed rather arbitrarily by the poet... ends up seeming to rise from the stuff itself"

Full of texture and flavor and knobbiness

From Chance or the Dance?

"There is, it would almost seem left over from our childhood, the invincible desire to locate experience and grasp it and savor it in the same way that we used to need to get hold of some new toy and handle it and get our teeth into it. This is pointless, we suspect--this carousel that spins us past things and never lets us get the ring. And the faculty in us that shouts at us above the wheezing of the calliope that something is there, and that it is as full of texture and flavor and knobbiness as we wish it were--this faculty is imagination."

Creator of our desires

Oh Lord, become the master of our passions, and the creator of our desires.

-- R. Marklund

Never enough

You are
cool drink
and unquenchable thirst
you are
quiet satiety
and unapeasable hunger
you are
soft touch
and howling itch
the more I get of you
the more I want.

--Suzanne DeWitt Hall

More snippets of goodness

More snippets of goodness from Thomas Howard's Chance or the Dance?

• He calls poetry "the noblest utterance", and says that "Image making is what delights us about certain people's conversation." He says that poetry carves shapes using words. "...it is in poetry that we try to speak the language that is suggested to us by our imagination as the real language of things." He says that poetry comes through the midwifery of the poet. Poetry halts us and tells us to to look at the prosaic more closely. Through it, the clutter of daily experience becomes epiphany.
  

• On application of the imagination as part of reason: "And when we do exercise it, it is in order to bring about a heightened awareness of the experience in question. To do so is to reach across a gulf that cannot be spanned ... by the analytic faculty in us."

• He talks about the new myth, in which imagination is cast off as foolishness, and points out that in this myth, connections are stripped away, reducing things down to what they think is "truth". But this is a confusion of truth with mere facts.

• Related to this idea was one I found profound. That when you strip things of their context, of their interconnectedness and meaning, paring away to nothing but a set of facts, the thing is lessened. It is no longer itself when it is -only- and merely itself.

• "...if we scrutinize the way we do things, we shall find that we have festooned everything with formality and that nearly every act is loaded down with gestures that bespeak much more than can be discerned in the functional demands of the situation itself."

• The new myth says "Politics and commerce and urban planning and medicine and housekeeping--here is where the real stuff is."

on poetry

Thinking a lot about poetry while reading this book by Thomas Howard.

It occurred to me that poetry signifies order and harmony and serenity and joy; in other words, the supreme reality. These aspects of things are the real and true. The physical details are merely the accidents of deeper truth.

It does not mean nothing

From Chance or the Dance? by Thomas Howard, Ch1, pg 12-13:

"...it did not mean nothing that the sun went down and night came and the moon and stars appeared and then dawn and the sun and morning again and another day, which would itself wax and then wane into twilight and dusk and night. It did not mean nothing to them that the time of work was under the aegis of the bright sun and that it was the sun that poured life into the seeds that they were planting and that brought out the sweat on their forehaeds, and that the time of rest was under the scepter of the silver moon. This was the diurnal exhibition of what was True--that there are a panoply and a rythm and a cycle, a waxing and a waning, a rising and a setting and then a rising again. And to them it was not for nothing that the king wore a crown of gold and that the lord mayor wore medallions. This was the political exhibition of what was, in fact, True--that there are royalty and authority and heirarchy at the heart of things and that it is possible to see this in lions and eagles and queen bees as well as in the court of the king. To them it was not for nothing that a man went in to a woman in private and uncovered her and knew ecstasy in the experieince of her being. This was simply a case in point of what was True anyway--that there is a mystery of being not to be thrown open to all, and that the right knowledge of another being is ecstatic, and that what appears under these carnal forms is, in fact, the image of what is actually True.

A perfect pleasure

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?

--Oscar Wilde

Last day but one

If every day in the life of a school could be the last day but one, there would be little fault to find with it.

--Stephen Leacock

A story unfolds: pray for me

My BP continues his exploration and reclamation of the Christian imagination, and we've been discussing the enlightenment mania for breaking things down into discrete facts, thereby stripping them of meaning (which exists only in and through connections). Thomas Howard's Chance or the Dance? A critique of Modern Secularism is a beautifully written exploration of this topic.

As I was contemplating this during my devotional hour the other day, I pondered what the key might be to releasing people into the freedom of wonder. The story of the Emperor's New Clothes has been coming to mind for weeks, because it represents the enlightenment in reverse.

As I thought more about this, and what sort of myth this might be, a story unfolded, and I captured it in the few remaining pages of my tattered journal.

I am not a writer of fiction, let alone fable or fairy tale. But this thing tumbled out like a pent up stream, and I merely had to catch and direct it.

It was dazzling.

The magic of the experience is fading, but at the time I felt nearly fragile with concern that the beauty of it would not be conveyed, that my BP would not think that it fits with what he is doing, or worse, that he simply wouldn't like it.

But I know that it came from God.

I've been asking for the intercession of Lewis and Tolkien and Chesterton, and believe that this story was a response to their prayer. I think that if I am obedient in finishing, it may even be good. I'm not sure how it is to be used, but I think it may be good.

Please pray for me about this.

C.S. Lewis on Unsatisfied Desire

Unsatisfied desire is in itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.

--C.S. Lewis

The best part

The highlight of the retreat for me was the sacrament of reconciliation.

I'd been burdened by a particular set of sins for some time, and was mortified at having to say them out loud. But the compassion in the voice of my BP was enormous, and the weight of his hand on my head as he absolved me conferred nothing but blessing.

I am so grateful that our God reaches out to touch and heal us through the sacraments. And for our beautiful priests who serve so faithfully.

Run, jump, play

Run, jump, play, but do not sin.

--John Bosco

Peach season continues

The peach I ate was so juicy it was more drinking than eating.

Peaches are magical.

Retreat image #2: Rainbow connection

God sent me another image while praying for someone at the retreat. I initially resisted passing it on because it was so...

So...

Twee.

You see, I pictured her dancing on a hilltop, in hippie garb (Let the Sunshine In!) and there were rainbows flowing out from her head.

Yep. Rainbows.

I continued to pray, despite wondering why I was picturing something so My Little Pony.

But the image wouldn't go away so I gave in and told her about it, feeling ridiculous the whole time.

As the prayer continued, she mentioned that as a teenager she had prayed to be a light to her friends. She loved God and wanted Him to shine through her.

When I heard this, I nearly wept with wonder, because the rainbow image clicked.

He has made her to be a prism. To take in His light and refract it into a brilliant spectrum of visible color.

She was made to be like Mary, magnifying the Lord.

I'll never dismiss one of His images again, no matter how silly.

G.K. Chesterton on Joy

Joy is the gigantic secret of Christianity.

--GK Chesterton

Intensity of love

The comment below from Ike was just so jam-packed with good stuff that I asked to add it as a post.

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In his biography of Jonathan Edwards, page 497, George Marsden writes, "In the Edwardses' world, the meaning of life was found in intense loves, including earthly loves." It was the tone of their life together. They understood that God is of such a nature, creation is for such a purpose, redemption is of such a power, that intensity of love is the meaning of it all. Intensity. Passion. Wholeheartedness.

Deuteronomy 6:5 makes intense love the greatest commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Moderate love is a sin. Maybe the worst sin.

As Augustine said, "Give me a man in love. He knows what I mean."

Dance of veils

I don't tend to be a visual person, but it seems that God is speaking to me visually more often, particularly when praying for others.

During the retreat I prayed with a tender soul who our Lord has been wooing. She was tormented because she thought she couldn't hear His voice.

She loves to dance, and the image that He sent me for her was that she was dressed like a harem girl in a room hung with layer after layer of veils.

Curtains of filmy white.

She danced her way in joy, weaving in and through them, back and forth, going deeper and deeper in.

He is behind all the veils, waiting for her, smiling as He waits.

He does not hide.

He merely waits behind the veil and watches us dance.

Loss or gain?

I was on retreat this past weekend. More on that in other posts.

While driving home with the friend of my heart, we talked about sex.

Over the past months she's been getting brief hints of my Catholic understanding of sexuality, like wisps of the incense she has come to love. Yesterday we waded in a bit more deeply, though there are still more talks to come, more depths to be plumbed.

I explained the basic premise of God's design for sex as having two constitutive elements; it is both unitive and procreative. When either of these elements is missing, sexuality loses it's sacredness. It becomes disordered.

For example, when contracepting, we lose the procreative element and the ramifications are complex and wide reaching. Too broad to cover in this post.

Similarly in homosexuality, the unitive element may be there (and often isn't), but the procreative is also lost.

In the hook up culture, both elements are ditched, and all sacredness and meaning are stripped away, leaving nothing but a biological itch-scratching. Sex becomes very little different than urination or defecation.

(Appalling. But true.)

In thinking back on this conversation with my DiDi this morning, I realized that this is why masturbation is sin. It is neither unitive nor procreative, and so strips our sexuality of sacredness.

It is interesting that we view denial of our sexual urges as a loss, as if in not giving in to temptation, we are losing out. But it occurs to me that it is -in- giving in to these temptations that we suffer loss, because what we give up in those choices is so much bigger. We lose beauty and meaning and power.

On saying NO

I heard a horrifying stat the other day. It was that 1 out of 4 teenage girls in the US have STDs. 2 out of every 4 African American girls have STDs.

How can any reasoning creature look at this and continue to believe that sex education and early access to condoms and birth control is the answer?

How can anyone look at this and believe that teaching our children to say -NO- was not effective? Isn't effectiveness measured by numbers? Shouldn't rising rates of occurrence tell us something?

When are we going to wake up?

Close to you

One day recently I began singing this song in the shower. It got me thinking about how being in love changes your view of the world. The eyes of your heart are open. More on this in another post; this one will focus on the song itself.

(Yes I know; I am tragically uncool. If I were even an ounce more hip I would link to the Cranberries version of this song, but the Carpenters give it a whole lot more soul.)

Close to You

Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?
Just like me
they long to be
Close to you.

Why do stars fall off from the sky
Every time you walk by?
Just like me
they long to be
Close to you.

On the day that you were born
The angels got together
and decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair
of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue.

That is why
all the girls in town
Follow you
all around
Just like me
they long to be
Close to you.

Just like me
they long to be
Close to you.

Just like me
they long to be
Close to you.

Veiled but not hidden

One of the readers of this blog, Ike, recently commented that the Bible is difficult but not impossible. That echoed a thought which came while praying for insight into the key to unleashing wonder back into faith. He whispered that His answers are veiled, but not hidden. He does not hide His truths, but they may be veiled.

He's built perfection out of hunger

The Rumi poem in the previous post from this morning echoes the theme of a separation between truth and love.

It reminds me of an exhibit I saw a few years ago at the Corning Museum of Glass; a collection of unbelievably lifelike plants, flowers, and fruit all made of glass.

They were in cases and could not be touched but were so incredibly real that in many cases you could not tell that they were not.

So there they were, these creations of man, mimicking the wonder of God's creative power, but lacking the softness, the scent, and the fruition of His work.

Beautiful imitations. Brittle and fragile and forced, like facts without love.

The poem below says it well (and even mentions peaches).

The Ware Collection of Glass Flowers and Fruit, Harvard Museum
by Mark Doty

Strange paradise, complete with worms,
monument of an obsessive will to fix forms;
every apricot or yellow spot's seen so closely,
in these blown blooms and fruit, that exactitude
is not quite imitation. Leaf and root,
the sweet flag's flaring bud already,
at the tip, blackened; it's hard to remember
these were ballooned and shaped by breath
they're lovely because they seem
to decay; blue spots on bluer plums,
mold tarring a striped rose. I don't want to admire
the glassblower's academic replica,
his copies correct only to a single sense.
And why did a god so invested in permanence
choose so fragile a medium, the last material
he might expect to last? Better prose
to tell the forms of things, or illustration.
Though there's something seductive in this impossibility:
transparent color telling the live mottle of peach,
the blush or tint of crab, englobed,
gorgeous, edible. How else match that flush?
He's built a perfection out of hunger,
fused layer upon layer, swirled until
what can't be swallowed, won't yield
almost satisfies, an art
mouthed to the shape of how soft things are,
how good, before they disappear

How delicate yesterday

So delicate yesterday,
the night-singing birds by the creek.
Their words were:
You may make a jewelery flower
out of gold and rubies and emeralds,
but it will have not fragrance.

-- Rumi

Speaking of new eras

I am down to the last few pages of my beaten up, crammed full journal, which covered my spiritual journey from May 2007 (before this blog was born) till the present.

It will be a bitter-sweet parting. This period of my life has been a time of tremendous love and joy and discovery coupled with seasons of darkness and hard realities. Finishing the book is like closing a chapter with which I'm not quite sure I want to be done.

But my choices are few. I must either close the book, stop writing, or stop living. Those are the only options.

Thank you Lord for such a time of sweetness with you.

Thank you book, for your faithful companionship.

Delightenment

Over the next few days I'll be writing more about truth, reality, and God, because it has been a focus of discussion with my BP re. his work on the Christian imagination.

I was thinking about how the evil one loves to steal words and distort them for his own purposes ("choice" being a fine example), and how inaccurate a phrase "The Enlightenment" truly is.

We are riding the edge of the wave of reclamation, a restoration of wonder which will bring us to greater understanding of creation, and there will be a word to capture the essence of this era. I'm not sure how early in a cultural shift the name for it becomes apparent, but I want a word for it, as I write about it. I've been playing with a few, but my current favorite is "Delightenment".

I like that it begins with "delight" because a restoration of wonder and love to reason is key to deeper truth. I also like that it conveys an undoing of the distorted aspects of the enlightenment without doing away with it completely.

More as it unfolds...