Good Shepherd Sunday

We've been way too serious lately. It's still Easter! Alleluia! So here's a cartoon that's a grinner, and I don't know about you, but when I 'm looking for insight into life, I automatically go to the old Sat. A.M. toons!




O yeah. And a prayer by Merton:

Good Shepherd, you have a crazy and wild sheep in love with thorns and brambles.But please don't get tired of looking for me! I know you won't.For you have found me. All I have to do is stay found.

Music and Mysticism : Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) "Quartet for the End of Time"

At the outbreak of World War II Messiaen was called up into the French army, as a medical auxiliary rather than an active combatant due to his poor eyesight. In May 1940 he was captured at Verdun, and was taken to Görlitz where he was imprisoned at prison camp Stalag VIII-A. He soon encountered a violinist, a cellist, and a clarinettist among his fellow prisoners. Initially he wrote a trio for them, but gradually incorporated this trio into his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the End of Time"). This was first performed in the camp to an audience of prisoners and prison guards, the composer playing a poorly maintained upright piano, in freezing conditions in January 1941. Thus the enforced introspection and reflection of camp life bore fruit in one of 20th-century European classical music's acknowledged masterpieces. The "end of time" of the title is not purely an allusion to the Apocalypse, the work's ostensible subject, but also refers to the way in which Messiaen, through rhythm and harmony, used time in a way completely different from the music of his predecessors or contemporaries.

1. "Liturgy of Crystal." Between three and four o’clock in the morning, the awakening of the birds: a blackbird or a solo nightingale improvises, surrounded by efflorescent sound, by a halo of trills lost
high in the trees…




Messiaen on Birdsong:

“For me, it is here that music lives; music that is free, anonymous, improvised for pleasure, to greet the rising sun, to charm one’s mate, to tell all the world that this branch and this meadow belong to you, to put an end to all disputes, bickering and rivalry, to work off the excessive energy born of love and joie de vivre, to articulate time and space and join with your neighbors in constructing rich and improvised counterpoint, to solace your fatigue and to say farewell to another portion of life as evening falls.”


5. "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus." Jesus is considered here as the love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle,…
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”



“… in the face of such hate, this honestly Christian man did not ask, “Why, O Lord?” He said, “I love you.” -----Alex Ross

St. Judas

Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.

James Wright

A Request

I try not to espouse political statements (on advice of my doctor who is disgustingly proud of getting my blood pressure below the world record) but this Sunday's posting on ADVENTUS blog has some input you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere. The link to ADVENTUS is off to the left side of this page, under "spiritual browsing."

i am a little church (no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

ee cummings "

Re: Celtic Blessings

It seems to me the Irish tend to monopolize the blessings business, don't you know?
Here's an "Old Scottish Blessing" I came across:

"May Jesus Christ MacDavid guide our flight,
and give us lodging in His peace-bright hall"

Craig Ferguson Eulogizes his Father.

This is from a while back, but I remember watching it that night in tears and in awe of what this man was doing on T.V. His guest that night was a grief counselor, talking about the death of a parent. Mr. Ferguson can be hilarious, but above all, he is honest.



Maura O'Connell: "The Blessing"

D. H. Lawrence: Creed

This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self and then go back.
That I must have courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will always try to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women,
There is my creed.

Thank You, Sisters.

Personal Moments Around Holy Week:Looking Back

Friday, Week Before:

At a practice for First Reconciliation with the 2nd graders, a student is asked to make up an example of a sin to confess. He says “I broke a neighbor’s window playing ball.”
“Did you do this on purpose?” the teacher asks.
“No.”
She turns to the whole class and says, “Remember, class, sins are not accidents. Sins are bad choices we make.”
That will be running through my head throughout Holy Week. I toy with the idea of composing a litany of my bad choices, but quickly dismiss the idea.


Palm Sunday:

Weather has always been connected to Palm Sunday for me. (Any “Palm Sunday Tornados” or “Palm Sunday Hurricanes” in your lifetime?) Palm Sunday morning was chilly but sunny, until just before our outdoor procession, when the Chicago winds really did kick in. Everything, including the outdoor sound system, had to be secured. During the passion reading you could hear the wind roaring.
Then for the next mass and the rest of the day, it was cold, windy and rainy. That evening, after vespers, the full moon kept coming out from behind the rapidly moving clouds. From sunny “Hosannas” to the bitter, cold “Crucify Him” to the eerie “It is finished”, in one day.


Holy Thursday:

9:30 in the morning: The Pastor, reenacting the Last Supper with the school children, washes the feet of a tiny preschooler who is “Peter”(shaking off Jesus: ”You will never wash my feet!”)He is so small the shortest server robe drags on the floor. The teachers had to convince him only a special person like Peter gets to wear a rope around his waist.

7:30 in the evening: The Pastor, at evening mass, escorts Mrs.Metz (the oldest active patrishoner--- still walks to church every Sat. afternoon) from the first pew to one of the chairs set up in front. He helps take off her shoes and stockings, and washes her feet. The 90-some year old holds her head high and beams with a quiet dignity.


Good Friday:

I have noticed ever since Mel Gibson’s “Passion”, the “Via Cruces” and other Passion Plays down public streets seem to be escalating and emphasizing the violent side of the story. The bloodiest drama seems to be the goal.
I know all about the importance of catharsis in cultures, but I’m just not that into enactments of Christ’s suffering. For one thing, you’ll never be able to show His inner anguish no matter how much fake blood you buy. How about reenacting the “No Greater Love” part? I guess I could get into a reenactment of “Jesus forgives the Woman Accused of Adultery”(all the accusers drop their stones and go home when reminded of their sins.) Or every family reenacting “The Prodigal Son” and welcoming back the wayward family member they have ostracized. If I want blood-and-gore, I put on my copy of “Bride of Chuckie.”


Easter Vigil

Our Easter Vigil takes a long time ----an eternity, some would say ---
no shortcuts or edits, we use all seven readings and psalms in the vigil, and this year some 30 confirmations.

The first thing I tell my choirs before we start the vigil is to take off their watches. For this rite, it’s like time is suspended.[Juan, the director of our Coro, reminds us to turn off the cellphones,too: "If God is going to call us here, he's not going to use the phone."] We move from ancient ritual to ancient ritual, using fire and water, light and darkness, and sit around the Easter fire and tell the same stories and sing the same songs our ancestors did thousands of years ago.

And like fireworks going off around the world on New Year’s Eve, “Alleluia” is sung and shouted from one time zone to another, encircling the globe with the message that good is stronger than evil, and love does not fail.