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.