It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults.

~Frederick Douglass~

Waiting and Hoping...

From the rain and sleet of the Southside of Chicago...




Blessings and goodwill.

The Other Side of the Holiday

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world,
which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime,
and falling in at night...

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

The Bath
Laura Gilpin

I stand here bathing her
while she sleeps
in a far place beyond my reaching.

I bathe her
as I have been taught to do:
first the eyes, then the forehead,
the face, the neck.

And as I work
I talk to her--in case she hears me
(believing that hearing is the last to go).

I tell her--I don't know why
but I tell her the time, the day,
the season, what the weather is doing,

lifting each arm to wash and dry it,
laying it down again at her side,
then the chest, the abdomen, each leg.

She offers no resistance,
except that of gravity,
the earth pulling her
down while I lift,
as though something between us
is being weighed.

Then I turn her to wash her back
talking to her about what seems to matter
in this life--though I make no promises.

Only this morning
the promise of spring was in the air
and I tell her that.

Time to Lighten Up for the Holidays...

The History of the Church of England

Wisdom from Tobias

The surest way to become a sect is to establish something other than Christ as the focus of your unity or identity.*

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

*like a covenant, the episcopate, the chair of Peter, a confession, national boundaries, a political agenda, a program, a locale, a tradition, a language, a culture, whatever

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”

Self Pity (D. H. Lawrence)

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

We have no reason to mistrust
our world, for it is not against us.
Has it terrors, they are our terrors;
has it abysses, those abysses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.
And if only we arrange our life
according to that principle
which counsels us that we must
always hold to the difficult,
then that which now still seems
to us the most alien
will become what we most
trust and find most faithful.
How should we be able to forget
those ancient myths
that are at the beginning of all peoples,
the myths about dragons
that at the last moment turn into princesses;
perhaps all the dragons of our lives
are princesses who are only waiting
to see us once beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible
is in its deepest being something
helpless that wants help from us.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

For As Long As Space Endures


For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I, too, abide
To dispel the misery of the world.

- Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva

Holy health and safety at Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire

"Erosion"

"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

--------Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Henry Nouwen on Prayer

“When we say to people, “I will pray for you,” we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and are touched by God in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed into God’s own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God’s heart has become one with ours.”

The Ten Illusions of Humans
by Neale Donald Walsch
in Communion with God
[excerpt]

1. God has an agenda. (need exists)
2. The outcome of life is in doubt. (failure exists)
3. You are separate from God. (disunity exists)
4. There is not enough. (insufficiency exists)
5. There is something you have to do. (requirement exists)
6. If you do not do it, you will punished. (judgment exists)
7. The punishment is everlasting damnation. (condemnation exists)
8. Love is, therefore, conditional. (conditionality exists)
9. Knowing and meeting the conditions renders you superior. (superiority exists)
10. You will not know that these are illusions. (ignorance exists)

There are all sorts of books which describe how to meditate and what formulas to pronounce during these meditations. I do not deny that they are beautiful, useful, and effective. But there are two words which are never mentioned, words which for me are the most powerful of all, words which clarify, which harmonize, and which heal, and these words are "thank you".


Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

This is TOO funny!!! ("Aspergicrophone")

It can regularly spoil a joke to need to explain it. In this case the Monsignor [Failblog FAILS! in calling him a "cardinal" - this is clearly NOT a cardinal] confuses the microphone that he has just been speaking into with the aspergillum (seen 0:20), a similarly shaped object used for sprinkling with Holy Water.


Lifted from LITURGY WORSHIP , a wonderful place to visit and to go for resources.

Biblical Caketops (Courtesy of Tobias)

Click to enlarge or vist my link to "In a Godward Direction."

To what can our life on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
alighting on the snow.
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.

Su Tung-po

A Special Place in Hell

The former No. 2 official of the Catholic church in Chicago admitted that he knew 25 priests broke the law by sexually abusing children but did not report them, according to depositions made public Tuesday.

Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Raymond E. Goedert's statements show "the lengths they went to to protect their reputation and the priest at the peril of the child," said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents men who have sued the archdiocese over alleged childhood molestation.
Raymond E. Goedert says he and other priests relied on "common sense" to deal with abuse.




"I knew the civil law considered it a crime," Goedert said in the deposition. "But I'm not a civil lawyer. I think we just relied on -- a lot on our -- we knew it was wrong, what was done. And we used our common sense and prudence with the help of people -- expert in the field to assist us in resolving these cases."

Goedert, the past president of the national Canon Law (Catholic Church law) Society, said families of the victims were not seeking to get the police involved and have the priests criminally charged -- they simply wanted to prevent any other children from being victimized. So while now the church calls police when it learns of credible allegations of abuse, in those days --the '70s and mid-80s -- it did not.

"I simply would not talk about it to anyone except those who had a right to know because of their position in the diocese," Goedert said

"Grasping at things can only yield one of two results:
Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear.
It is only a matter of which occurs first."
Goenka

"The Love of Morning" (Denise Levertov)

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.

Episcopal Prayer before Communion

"Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal."

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Mary Sarton

This deserves to be highlighted

"One of the tragedies of institutions is that they so often betray their mission to preserve their structure."

---Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Single Flower

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

~Buddha~

“There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost “

Leonard Bernstein

"I'm no longer quite sure what the question is,
but I do know that the answer is Yes.”

Flannery's Angel

by Charles Wright

Lead us to those we are waiting for,
Those who are waiting for us.
May your wings protect us,
may we not be strangers in the lush province of joy.

Remember us who are weak,
You who are strong in your country which lies beyond the thunder,
Raphael, angel of happy meeting,
resplendent, hawk of the light.
.

"Flannery's Angel" by Charles Wright, from Sestets: Poems

"Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given. For you wouldn't be able to live with them. And the point is to live everything, live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along some day into the answers."

Rilke

What Life Is All About
Author Unknown




Life isn't about keeping score. It's not about how many friends you have. Or how many people call you. Or how accepted or unaccepted you are. Not about if you have plans this weekend. Or if you're alone. It isn't about who you're dating, who you use to date, how many people you've dated, or if you haven't been with anyone at all. It isn't about who you have kissed. It's not about sex. It isn't about who your family is or how much money they have. Or what kind of car you drive. Or where you're sent to school.

It's not about how beautiful or ugly you are. Or what clothes you wear, what shoes you have on, or what kind of music you listen to. It's not about if your hair is blonde, red, black, brown, or green. Or if your skin is too light or too dark.

It's not about what grades you get, how smart you are, how smart everyone else thinks you are, or how smart standardized tests say you are. Or if this teacher likes you, or if this guy/girl likes you. Or what clubs you're in, or how good you are at "your" sport. It's not about representing your whole being on a piece of paper and seeing who will "accept the written you".

But life is about who you love and who you hurt. It's about who you make happy or unhappy purposefully. It's about keeping or betraying trust. It's about friendship, used as sanctity, or as a weapon. It's about what you say and mean, maybe hurtful, maybe heartening. About starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip. It's about what judgments you pass and why. And who your judgments are spread to.

It's about who you've ignored with full control and intention. It's about jealousy, fear, pain, ignorance, and revenge. It's about carrying inner hate and love, letting it grow and spreading it.

But most of all, it's about using your life to touch or poison other people's hearts in such a way that could never occurred alone. Only you choose the way these hearts are affected and those choices are what life is all about.

"It is one of our perennial problems, whether there is actually a God.
From the Hindu point of view, each soul is Divine.
All religions are branches of one big tree.
It doesn't matter what you call Him, just as long as you call.
Just as cinematic images appear to be real, but are only
combinations of light and shade, so is the univrersal variety a delusion.
The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught
but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are
profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation
is only a vast motion picture and that not in,
but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality."


- George Harrison -

Eucharist

There Are Hundreds Of Paths Up The Mountain

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn't matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.

Hindu teaching

Leonard Bernstein:

"I believe in people. I feel, love, need, and respect people above all else ... One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the whole mountain disappear for me.”

The Path

Chet Raymo has an engaging book out, entitled "When God is Gone Everything is Holy"

De Chardin

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

The Cosmic Hand

(CNN) -- New photographs released by NASA have captured images of a vast stellar formation resembling a human hand reaching across space.
NASA's Chandra Observatory captured this hand-shaped image of an X-ray nebula.

NASA's Chandra Observatory captured this hand-shaped image of an X-ray nebula.

The image, taken by NASA's space-based Chandra Observatory telescope, shows an X-ray nebula 150 light years across.

It shows what appear to be ghostly blue fingers -- thumb and pinky clearly discernible from index, ring and middle digits -- reaching into a sparkling cloud of fiery red.

NASA says the display is caused by a young and powerful pulsar, known by the rather prosaic name of PSR B1509-58.

"The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand," NASA says.

The space agency says B1509 -- created by a collapsed star -- is one of the most powerful electromaginetic generators in the Galaxy. The nebula is formed by a torrent of electrons and ions emitted by the 1,700-year-old phenomenon.

The finger-like structures are apparently caused by "energizing knots of material in a neighboring gas

Happy Easter!

"Those who live by the Spirit of Love will know joy and harmony in the everlasting Dance of the Cosmos."

------Psalm 87,
Trans. by Nan C. Merrill

Thoughts from This Year’s Holy Week (2009)

On Thursday of this Holy Week, I was humbled to have my feet washed by Padre Roger, for whom I have deep respect. I felt a little of what the apostles must have felt: to have someone you hold in esteem stoop down for this menial task just seemed wrong. As I watched him wash the feet of the rest of the twelve parishoners chosen for this rite, he seemed almost joyful at this chore, in a way showing us this is what his priesthood is about.

In his comments about the foot-washing, Padre reiterated what Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” No hundreds of laws or regulations or toeing the line. Just go and do what Jesus did. Live how He lived.

Live what you believe.

On Good Friday, Father Stan invited the assembly to come forward and, according to ritual, either touch or kiss or kneel before the image of the cross. He invited everyone to bring their joys and sorrows, the high points and low points of their lives to the cross, where they can be made a part of this redemptive act. “Bring who you are.”
As we sang, I watched hundreds of people do just that.

Believe what you live.

All through this very busy week of practices and rehearsals and services, I have found little grottoes of quiet time in which to reflect. It occurred to me over this week that my thinking is backwards, as usual------ something I probably share with a bunch of people.

I keep trying to say what it is I believe in, and act accordingly.
-------All Backwards!!------ To really know what I believe in, I have to note how I live. I cannot live a lie----at least, not for very long. It drains too much energy. If I think God is just and compassionate and forgiving, It is a result of living that way. If my actions don’t match that concept, it’s not part of my creed. If I wake up each day concerned that my fellow human beings are treated with compassion and justice and forgiveness, then it just follows that is what I believe God is.

“I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.”





This past year, I have been trying to figure out what I put faith in. After book reading and quiet time, I thought, “Why don’t I ask the people who are around me, ‘What do you think is important to me? What do you think I believe in?’”

It was a sudden cold fear that stopped me from asking that question. I don’t know if I could live with their answers. It was that cold fear I brought to the cross on Friday.

Have a very Love-filled Easter !!

That first green night of their dreaming,
asleep beneath the Tree,

God said, "Let meanings move,"
and there was poetry.


-Muriel Rukeyser

Please don't think I've gone crazy, but Wordsworth is beginning to make sense to me!!

Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

by William Wordsworth

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth

(verses omitted)


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

"God dazzles us with an excess of truth."
------Olivier Messiaen

"In a time of such ugliness, the only true protest is beauty."

Ah! Whither should we fly, or fly from whom?
The Lord is still the same, today, for ever,
And his protection here, and everywhere.
Still shall thy servants wait on Thee, O Lord,
And in thy saving mercy put their trust.

As with rosy steps the morn,
Advancing, drives the shades of night,
So from virtuous toil well-borne,
Raise Thou our hopes of endless light.
Triumphant saviour, Lord of day,
Thou art the life, the light, the way!
As with rosy steps. . . da capo


----from Handel's "Theodora", an oratorio set in the time of the early Christian persecutions.

I believe that at every level of society—familial, tribal, national, and international—the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.

–Tenzin Gyatso, XIVth Dalai Lama

Theology

(1.) The art of telling stories about the Divine.
(2.) The art of listening to those stories.

Have a Giggle!

A "Lord's Prayer" Transliteration

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best--- as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You're in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.

-----Eugene H. Peterson
"The Message"

God is both experience and potential.
We come from the womb of God.
We are not simply made "by God."
We are made "of God."

My Proposal: A New Sin (Hardly Original)

The last thing I want to do, especially during this season of Lent, long used to make people feel flawed and failed, is to lay a new source of guilt on anyone. But bear with me, as I propose a new sin---solely for the purpose of having people steer away from treacherous waters.

I propose a new sin, one that should be the "ultra-cardinal" sin. That sin is FEAR. After "loving God and one's neighbor", "BE NOT AFRAID" is Jesus' top command. He says it often enough to His disciples. Experts say it appears throughout the Bible, including variations, between 200 and 300 times. It is said to Mary at the Annunciation,to the shepherds at the Nativity, to the women at the tomb on Easter Morning.

Here is a quote that says it better than I can:

“Be not afraid” does not mean we cannot have fear. Everyone has fear, and people who embrace the call to leadership often find fear abounding. Instead, the words say we do not need to be the fear we have. We have places of fear inside us, but we have other places as well----- places with names like trust and hope and faith.
We can choose to lead from one of those places, to stand on ground that is not riddled with the fault lines of fear.”
-----Parker J. Palmer

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal have mercy on us
&
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages, amen.

Very Funny and Litugically Astute

Desire change. Be enthusiastic for that flame
in which a thing escapes your grasp
while it makes a glorious display of transformation.
That designing Spirit, the master mind of all things on earth
loves nothing so much in the sweeping movement of the dance
as the turning point.


SONNETS TO ORPHEUS: II, 12 (stanza 1)
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Br. David Steindl-Rast

A Prayer from Antonin Artaud.

O for skulls of burning coal
singed by lightning from on high,
and you, lucid one, to keep us real
and sanitize us when you stop by.

Deliver us afresh to skies
of within whose chasms fall like showers;
shoot us through with dizzy surprise
where your nails plant their aching fires.

Feed us, give us this day our daily
intersidereal kerfuffle.
With lava of stars for blood, shall I
need anything more for my survival?

Cut us loose. Separate us with
your hands of burning coal that showed
the way to where one dies beyond death,
out there on the burning road.

Make our brains stagger at the heart
of the self-knowing they inter.
Let the ravishing of our minds start
with the claws of the new whirlpool we enter

Mandatum

The Great Commandment is not "Thou shalt be right.", but thou shalt "be in love."

A Timely thought for Employers These Days

"Remember to be kind to those who work for you.
Endeavor to remain aware of the quiet world that lives behind each face."

----John O'Donohue