For those who read French
This lovely piece. While I read French I dare not compose in it--the offense to native French ears would probably precipitate an international crisis.
Around St. Blog's: October 2002 Archives
Okay, my site meters are off the scale for a Friday. Usually we are slumping toward the weekend, but not today.
I decided to do some careful investigation to determine the source of this phenomenon, and whatduhyaknow? I found the source. No one source is sending people my way, it must be some other phenomenon. I call it the LAZYBONES principle. You see, it turns out that very few of the blogs I normally visit had posted for Friday as of 12:00. Thus all of the traffic that would normally be drained off into normal, happier channels ends up in my blog. I am happy, but never have I seen so many silent people trudging through so gloomily, desperately searching for fodder for mind and soul. For some tidbit, no matter how small with just (as Pooh would have it) a smackeral of interest.
So I hereby declare that everyone who is listed in my left-hand column who did not post as of noon on Friday (with the exception of the Clergy, because this is my blog and I can be arbitrary any way I like) is a Lazybones. I don't know what this means or what its consequences are, but I am certain that they are VERY serious. In the words of John the Baptist, "Repent." And "Rend your hearts, not your garments." You have left literally tens of readers without recourse, they have been forced to my blog and my endless maunderings over the new Rosary Letter. Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? No, I don't want to hear those usual excuses--having a life, other things to do--all blogsters have a responsibility to the huge mass of readers out there. So, I will be watching, please avoid future ratings of Lazybones, or some action will have to be taken. Something dire, something portentous. Perhaps I will have to post from an incredibly lengthy set of meditations on Medieval mystical poetry, written in the York or Kent dialect (the meditations I mean, not the poetry--although this probably is too.) Please do not force my hand!
Do yourself a favor go to Kairos's site and read the entry "The Kairos Protocol" (direct linking a little cranky this morning). Good advice for all of us, though I don't find myself getting too passionate about most things. However, occasionally, I will run across a person or two who will insist that Jacobean Rhetoric is not the end-all be-all of prose and poetry--even though he is supposedly a member in good standing of the Glorious 17th century Poets Society. No, I don't carry a grudge or long remember even the most trifling slight to my favourites, or see red or speak harshly.. . . I don't need the protocol, why ever would you ask?
But thanks to the miracles of modern technology and the intrepid attention to trivia of Mr. Rothwell of The Contrarian, you can once again be astounded (if I choose the correct state of being) by the multifaceted talents of the amazing Ms. Florence Foster Jenkins. If you have not heard the Swedish Jackdaw, the Columbian Crow, the Romanian Raven, or whatever nom de chante (or perhaps ignomen chanteuse) she may have had, now is your golden opportunity. Do not miss it!
Moteminders
Stumbling about in my usual politically oblivious fog, I came upon some amusing and piquant remarks at Disputations that I must assume are aimed at either a website (I saw reference to such at Bill Cork and I think Gregg the Obscure) or movement to which I have little or no access. You may find his comments enlightening or infuriating, I've seen both reactions.
T.S. O'Rama never fails to post fascinating and thought provoking things. My mind bubbles with all sorts of thoughts all the time and occasionally one struggles to the high-surface tension top of the liquid and explodes with amazing display, usually over some triviality. Not to break that sequence, I must comment on this comment Mr. O'Rama offers.
Perhaps the answer is this: everything but humility. If the Medjugorje messages said, "humble yourselves before your family & neighbor" instead of the unceasing requests to pray, perhaps that would be off-limits as a demonic strategy.
I think I would say, put no good thing beyond Satan's power. That is, if praying the Rosary will keep you at the same level of prayer and cause you not to advance, that is a victory for him. He would encourage you to be very devout in your prayer of the Rosary. If humility seems good, he can make it a marketable commodity, and suddenly people who were full of humility are measuring themselves against others and against a false standard. Satan can use all morally good and neutral things to ill effect. We can be tempted to spend hours round-the-clock before the Blessed Sacrament, indeed a good thing, to keep us from supporting our families and doing our duties in our married vocations. So Jesus told us not to judge by appearances or by what was said ("wolves in sheep’s clothing.") but "by their fruits you shall know them."
Now this becomes an extremely tricky business. Take the matter of the forthcoming canonization of Josemaria Escriva. I have read elsewhere that he encouraged practices that would certainly seem to overstep the bounds of what modern sensibilities could entertain or accept. But do a majority of cooperators engage in these? (Did he indeed encourage any such thing or are these scurrilous rumors? I do not have enough facts at my disposal to say for certain.) What are the fruits?
That is why I simply await the full investigation of anything--apparitions, sainthood, acceptable practices and prayers. Presumably both greater numbers of people and people with a great deal more experience examine these things before they are approved. I think we fall into a trap making assumptions about what Satan can and cannot do and we do better to err on the side of accepting what is traditionally taught. These new apparitions may not make their meaning known for some time. It took a long while before we knew and understood the full revelation of Fatima. Lourdes was not well accepted immediately in its time, and we may not yet have truly absorbed all that is there for us.
Thus my caution. Satan is a lot smarter than we are, with thousands of years of tempting and experience with human souls at his fingertips, I would venture to guess that there is almost nothing that he cannot corrupt, at least in practice. Obviously he cannot make invalid a properly consecrated Eucharist, but he can lead us to believe the lies many modernists would tell of it.
The best thing to do--set your eyes on Christ and do all that you do not for hope of heaven or fear of hell, but from pure love of God. You might be led astray, but it seems unlikely that He would allow it.
Dylan has some excellent posts this morning regarding anger and its expression. I quote from one of them below to start my own reflections, because the points hit very close to home.
I've been pondering in recent days these issues of righteous anger vs unrighteous anger, thwarting injustice with a terrible swift sword, not wanting to be martyred or crucified or even offended in the more quotidian pedestrian ways. Of course, righteous anger exists. But I've been terrible throughout my life at "calibrating" the anger -- making it fit the provocation, or even defeating the provocation by a gracious sweetness of temper -- going overboard is so much easier, and more immediately satisfying!
I guess part of what I 'm going to do is go into broken record mode. I do this not so much for my audience, whom I assume must be much less dense than me (otherwise they would be writing this and I would be reading it) but for myself, as I need the constant reminders and occasions of remembrance. I wonder whether it is possible outside of Jesus Himself to have truly righteous anger. What are the sources of anger? I see generally two--one is fear, the other is selfishness. Our righteous indignation, if we dig far enough, may have much to do with someone getting away with something that we ourselves would like to do but feel too bound by laws and rules to get away with. I am not stating this categorically, but I do know from personal experience, I am most angry when I am thwarted in some desire or design. I am most judgmental when someone isn't doing something "by the book." Which is odd, because I don't do everything by the book. However, if someone stands through the eucharistic prayer, or refuses to exchange the sign of peace, I find a mild glow of anger and judgment developing. Why should I, is this righteous anger, or is this feeling slighted? I don't know for certain, but my suspicion, for myself, is that all anger can be sinful. But anger, like love, needs consent of will, and perhaps even a demonstration before it becomes an occasion of sin.
Two of Josemaria Escriva's "Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility" are:
to argue with stubbornness and bad manners whether you are right or wrongto give your opinion when it has not been requested or when charity does not demand it.
both of which are likely to occur in an occasion of anger.
If anger springs from fear, the sinfulness is, perhaps less, but the root problem remains.
So, having concluded that most occasions of anger are for me sinful or near occasions of sin, what then can I do about the root problem? What is the root problem?
I believe, as with almost all sinful behavior the root problem is attachment to the wrong things. We prize something above Jesus Christ--self, possessions, ideas, whatever. Jesus Christ is not at the center and through our attachments we make ourselves angry people. One of the attachments that is most difficult to eradicate and probably the most sensitive with respect to anger is our self-image. When someone challenges that image of self we are likely to become furious. When they challenge our authority, our integrity, our values, we are up in arms. But, if our center is correct, they can challenge Jesus all they want to and it would be like fighting the breeze. Eventually, they will have to surrender.
Most of the great Saints did not spend their time flying into furies at every slight or action. Perhaps there were a few who did so. But anger is not one of the traits of the saints. I'm convinced that part of this is because they have become detached from their image of self. If someone accuses them of something, they accept it and move on, seeking to make amends for the fault, real or imagined, before God.
So, the remedy to anger--develop detachment. Look at your self and see it for what it really is--a small, sinful, puling, angry, unkempt, screaming brat. Okay, I know most of you are not, but unfortunately, I spend far too much time in that child's body. I used to think it a virtue. I would become angry every time my sense of justice was challenged. Now I realize that I became angry because my personal authority was being denied.
Detachment--how to cultivate it. Well, God did give me the gift of fatherhood, and there is a place I can start to focus attention. When my small son pushes at the envelop of authority, how do I react? Let's be kind and say that I need work in that area, and it is a place I can start to practice detachment.
Obviously detachment is more than practice. It is something we grow into by loving Someone other than ourselves. In that love, we seek His grace and mercy more than we seek our own ends. So by constant prayer and constant practice, we grow in will to be what God has made us.
Detachment is utterly necessary to our assumption of identity in Christ. We cannot become everything we were meant to be unless we allow God to work in us and to show us why He loves each of us. We are each His own Son. We are in fact images of Christ, and God can see than in us no matter how thick the smoke screen we try to place between us. That is the reality that God is trying to bring forth. And because all good things reside in their fullness in Christ, though each of us is an exact, if distorted, image, not one of us is a complete, full image. Thus, when His beauty is brought forth, we will be unique in our identities. I should not strive to be St. John of the Cross, St. Therese, or St. Raphael Kalinowski--God already has one of those. What I need to strive for is to become St. Steven--a unique, complete, identifiable image of Jesus Christ. And that comes through letting go of anger, prayer and grace, practice of the will, and attention to detachment.
St. John of the Cross has many words of advice for us concerning how we might eventually develop detachment, but more of that somewhat later--when I have come more to terms with some of it myself.
Dylan's Poetry Review
This morning Dylan has posted some remarkable poems, one by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the other a portion of "The Hound of Heaven" by Francis Thompson.
