Confluence of theological concepts ala Anne Rice

I am reading Anne Rice's Of Love and Evil. It is interesting to see her turn back to her fascination with the darker things after having returned to Christ. In previous posts I think I commented on missing that element in her works on Jesus' life.

This title makes it clear that despite leaving the Church, her faith is still strong and still strongly Catholic, with some interesting twists including perhaps a touch of the charismatic.

I'm not finished with it yet, but it is essentially a tale of redemption from past evil. A man experiences some attributes of heaven before being brought back to earth to help restore unbalanced situations and to grow in love through acts of heroism. I think she might be playing with the idea of how purgatory works, perhaps coupled with reincarnation. The hero isn't actually reborn, but the concept is similar.

One interesting question if this IS a conceptualization of purgatory is the spiritual temptation that continues to plague him while on missions. Clearly not a Catholic concept.

The book seems to be written with plans for a prequel. I'm looking forward to it. While not high literature, it is theologically thought provoking in an easily digestible format.

Reaching for completeness

From Of Love and Evil:

"You can't know how mysterious it is to us, the way that humans love, yearning for completeness. Each angel is complete. Men and women on Earth are never complete, but when they reach for that completion in love, they reach for Heaven."

--Anne Rice

One-winged angels

We are all of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.

--Luciano de Crescenzo

Not rock to bread, but bread to Body

Sunday's readings included Matthew's account of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert, starting at verse 4:1:

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”

I've read this passage a number of times throughout the years, without noticing the Eucharistic overtones. On Sunday I finally saw the connection but only through the last line, when I thought about Christ being THE Word, our bread, the bread of heaven.

Last night in reading it again, another piece of the Eucharistic message came through, in the words of the tempter himself.

He is jealous, Old Hairy Legs. He disdains humanity but also envies us. We humans co-operate with the Father in creating new eternal souls, something the angels can never do. Their numbers are finite, ours increase until the end of time. He doesn't like that, and yet he also looks down on our incarnation, our embodiedness. And so he tries to speak to what he perceives as fleshly weakness; Christ's hunger.

At the same time the devil seems to be hoping to lure Him into an action for which it is not yet time. He says "Go ahead, turn a stone into bread."

Jesus, of course, says no. He says that He will not turn rocks into bread, He will instead transform bread into Himself. He knows we cannot live on bread alone, not even bread that was miraculously changed from lifeless stone.

We need more.

We need bread become Word. We need Eucharist.

It awes me to continue finding these Eucharistic messages throughout the Bible, waiting to be unveiled.

(Click here for more ponderings on Satan's jealousy of humanity.)

Hope becomes reality

Falling in love is when hope becomes reality.

--DiDi

Take off your shoes

Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. And only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What more can I want?

From The Handmaid's Tale:

Pleasure is an egg. Blessings that can be counted, on the fingers of one hand. If I have an egg, what more can I want?

What should they regard as too obscene?

From That Hideous Strength:

Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists: indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. ... Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. ... What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment.

La Sacre de la femme -- Eve

I stumbled upon part of the poem below in a book on Rodin at a friend's home recently, and have had trouble finding it in English. The translated text below is a mix of a partial English version I found online, and a translation provided by iGoogle. (The robo-translated piece is the second section, in case you can't tell.) The original French follows for those who can read it.

Eve offered the blue sky of the holy nakedness;
Eve blonde admired the dawn, her sister rosy.

Flesh of woman! clay ideal! O wonder!
Sublime penetration of the spirit
In the silt that ineffable Being kneaded!
Matter where the soul shines through his shroud!
Mud where we see the fingers of the divine sculptor!
August dust drawing kisses and the heart of man
So holy that no one knows, as love triumphs,
As the core is thrust into this mysterious bed,
If this pleasure is not a thought,
And we can not, at which the senses are on fire
Hold beauty without embracing God!
Eve let his eyes wander over nature.

And beneath the green palms to tall,
Eve around above his head, the eye
Seemed to think, the blue lotus is collected,
The fresh forget-me remembered; roses
Sought his feet with their lips half-closed;
A breath came out of brotherly gilt lilies;
As if that would have been sweet to be like them,
As if those flowers, all with a soul
The most beautiful woman in flourished.

###

Ève offrait au ciel bleu la sainte nudité ;
Ève blonde admirait l'aube, sa soeur vermeille.

Chair de la femme ! argile idéale ! ô merveille !
Pénétration sublime de l'esprit
Dans le limon que l'Être ineffable pétrit !
Matière où l'âme brille à travers son suaire !
Boue où l'on voit les doigts du divin statuaire !
Fange auguste appelant le baiser et le coeur,
Si sainte, qu'on ne sait, tant l'amour est vainqueur,
Tant l'âme est vers ce lit mystérieux poussée,
Si cette volupté n'est pas une pensée,
Et qu'on ne peut, à l'heure où les sens sont en feu,
Étreindre la beauté sans croire embrasser Dieu !
Ève laissait errer ses yeux sur la nature.

Et, sous les verts palmiers à la haute stature,
Autour d'Ève, au-dessus de sa tête, l'oeillet
Semblait songer, le bleu lotus se recueillait,
Le frais myosotis se souvenait ; les roses
Cherchaient ses pieds avec leurs lèvres demi-closes ;
Un souffle fraternel sortait du lys vermeil ;
Comme si ce doux être eût été leur pareil,
Comme si de ces fleurs, ayant toutes une âme,
La plus belle s'était épanouie en femme.

Talent for insatiability

From The Handmaid's Tale:

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

Beauty for another

From That Hideous Strength:

At the very moment when her mind was most filled with another man there arose, clouded with some undefined emotion, a resolution to give Mark much more than she had ever given him before, and a feeling that in doing so she would be really giving it to the Director. And this produced in her such a confusion of sensations that the whole inner debate became indistinct and flowed over into the larger experience... she was in the sphere of Jove, amid light and music and festal pomp, brimmed with life and radiant in health, jocund and clothed in shining garments. ... And she rejoiced also in the consciousness of her own beauty; for she had the sensation--it may have been false in fact, but it had nothing to do with vanity--that it was growing and expanding like a magic flower with every minute that passed. In such a mood it was only natural, after the old countryman had got out at Cure Hardy, to stand up and look at herself in the mirror which confronted her on the wall of the compartment. Certainly she was looking well: she was looking unusually well. And once more, there was little vanity in this. For beauty was made for others. Her beauty belonged to the Director. It belonged to him so completely that he could even decide not to keep it for himself but to order that it be given to another, by an act of obedience lower, and therefore higher, more unconditional and therefore more delighting, than if he had demanded it for himself."

The Infinite throws out the elected invention

From That Hideous Strength:

To those high creatures whose activity builds what we call nature, nothing is "natural." From their station the essential arbitrariness (so to call it) of every actual creation is ceaselessly visible; for them there are no basic assumptions: all springs with the wilful beauty of a jest or a tune from that miraculous moment of self-limitation wherein the Infinite, rejecting a myriad possibilities, throws out of himself the positive and elected invention.

On equality

From That Hideous Strength:

"Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed, because we are fallen. Just as we must all wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes, ripening for the day when we shall need them no longer. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know." ... "It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told you tht obedience--humility--is an erotic necessity. You are putting equality just where it ought not to be." ... "But you see that obedience and rule are more like a dance than a drill--specially between man and woman where the roles are always changing."

Ode to a walled garden

From That Hideous Strength:

Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man's point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women's dreams. Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way? A sentence rose to her memory. "The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god."

The Resurrection: Third Eucharist

Last week at mass the idea sprang into my mind that there is a connection between the empty tomb and the consecrated Eucharist. I wasn't sure what that meant because the connection is not immediately obvious. It only became clear after I'd taken some time to meditate about it.

In both cases, there is nothing divine present at first. All we see are the accidents of linen wrappings, of bread and wine. Then suddenly there is more. Suddenly He is present again, present in resurrected Body.

For some moments in the tomb He was there only as an empty shell, a mere husk, a hollow image of His fullness. Then suddenly, in a silent moment like that at the annunciation, the miraculous happens again. The Holy Spirit returns as Animus and the Word is re-made into resurrected, glorified flesh to dwell among us.

At the consecration it happens again. The Holy Spirit acts, carrying the laws of nature beyond their constraints into fulfillment to transform the Word once more into His bodily presence.

I've concluded that this miraculous generation takes place three times in the Gospels.

First at the annunciation, when the Holy Spirit falls upon Mary, and Christ becomes flesh for the first time.

Second, at the last supper, when the Holy Spirit transforms the bread and wine into His Body and Blood. When Jesus initiates the sacrament, and instructs His apostles to Do This in remembrance of Him.

Third, at the Resurrection, when the Holy Spirit re-animates Christ into His new bodily form.

After this, the apostles take over, following Jesus' instructions. And so it continues even now, at each mass, when the Holy Spirit descends again to perform the miraculous transformation.

I am so blessed to be Catholic, to recognize how the central reality of our faith is present through each of these key Gospel accounts and to participate as the blessed Trinity continues to re-present this reality to us at each Eucharist.

Amen credo. Amen credo.

Laughing for wonder and delight

The tragedies that now blacken and darken the very air of heaven for us, will sink into their places in a scheme so august, so magnificient, so joyful, that we shall laugh for wonder and delight.

--Arthur Christopher Bacon

Soul Kiss

The Gospel reading for today is as follows:

Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”) And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mk 7:31-37)

Two of my beloved sisters in Christ mulled through this passage with me this morning. It is an honor and pleasure to discuss His word with them; their insights are always varied, perceptive, and interesting.

I've always loved the sacramental juiciness of this story. It reminds me of Jesus healing the blind man using mud made from spittle and dust in John 9. I wonder why He sometimes heals with a thought or a word or a simple touch, and sometimes through the use of other matter? In this case, He passes along His spit.

How strange.

My first thought was that it is like a kiss. A passionate kiss.

Spittle is transmitted one of three ways: through a sneeze, through the occasional droplet flung when speaking, or through open mouthed kissing. The first two require a perfect storm of invariably accidental events; the recipient waits with an open mouth, the provider unintentionally launches. The third however is a dance between willing participants.

The deaf mute watched what Jesus did. He felt Jesus' fingers in his ears. He saw Him spit on His hand and then reach for his mouth. He could have clamped his jaws shut, refusing the gift. He could have gone back to the multitude able to hear but still not speak. But he didn't turn his head in repugnance. He received God's kiss.

In return for his trust, what did he get?

The deaf mute's ears were opened to sound, and his mind was opened to meaning through words.

Instantly.

His tongue was freed from it's impediment, and taught to form words.

Immediately.

He did not have to learn all these things over years as we do as babies. He began to speak plainly, clearly. Our Lord implanted in him all he needed to know.

And as DiDi pointed out, the first words he heard were those of his Lord and his God, undoubtedly speaking of His love for His child and brother, the man for whom His Spirit groaned.

What gifts He gives us in response to our obedience and trust.

May I always act with similar faith.

To bring her all these things and watch her eat

I love this passage, both for the floridity of it's food list, and for it's tenderness. It reminds me of some of Chantelle's fruit poetry...

From The Cookbook Collector:

Sentimentally, he thought of Jess. Irrationally, he imagined her. Sadly, he despaired of having her. But this was not a question of pursuit. ... His fantasies were nurturing, not predatory. If he could have Jess, he would feed her. Laughable, antique, confusingly paternal, he longed to nourish her with clementines, and pears in season, fresh whole-wheat bread and butter, wild strawberries, Comte cheese, fresh figs ad oily Marcona almonds, tender yellow beets. He would sear red meat, if she would let him and grill spring lamb. Cut the thorns off artichokes and dip the leaves in fresh aioli, poach her fish--thick Dover sole in wine and shallots--julienne potatoes, and roast a whole chicken with lemon slices under the skin. He would serve a salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and just picked basil. Serve her and watch her savor dinner, pour for her, and watch her drink. That would be enough for him. To find her plums in season, and perfect nectarines, velvet apricots, dark succulent duck. To bring her all these things and watch her eat.

Cracked with the strain

While journeying home
I dream of a house
and in the house a room
and in the room a table
and on the table a wooden bowl
cracked with the strain of containing.

Fruit of all kinds;
pineapples spike the air with tropical promise
electric oranges, juice ready to burst
at the pressure of my teeth
apples and pears wafting harvest
pomegranates ripe with seed
berries fragrant and fragile
lemons shining yellow
dates dark with syrup
mango lush as a woman’s hip
peaches cleft with down
figs, densely feminine
bananas curved in arcs of invitation
grapes promising wine.

Their scents assail me
a cloud of seduction
beckoning
promising
demanding
whispering to be touched;
smooth and bare
furred and soft
rough and scratching.

Desire stunned, I gape
Breathless.
Though I didn’t know I was hungry
I want to tear off peels
and break off pieces
stuffing my mouth
in a frenzy of feasting.
And after that initial ravishment
to slowly quiet
my still-burning appetite
one fruit
one bite
at a time.

I close my eyes
and the image lingers
verdant
fervent
thirsting to be consumed.

But mine is not this feast.
Though I stretch out my hand
it is beyond my reach.
I can’t let it touch my lips
nor steal a bite
nor feel the tender flesh melting on my tongue.

Mine is to hunger.
The fruit at which I can but stare and breathe
a promise;
the gift not in the eating
but in the yearning.

While journeying home
I dream of a house
and in the house a room
and in the room a table
and on the table a wooden bowl
cracked with the strain of containing.

--Chantelle Franc

There is such a thing as excellence

From The Cookbook Collector:

There is such a thing as excellence, and I do know it when I see it, and when I find it I am fulfilled. I don't want to keep on hunting endlessly. If I'm restless, that's not because I want to be or because I can't help it. I'm not chronically dissatisfied; I've been disappointed. There's a difference. When I discover something beautiful and right and rare, I'm happy. I'm content. I am..."

--Allegra Goodman