Jesus’ life was a life of obedience. He was always listening to the Father, always attentive to his voice, always alert for his directions. Jesus was “all ear.” That is true prayer: being all ear for God. The core of all prayer is indeed listening, obediently standing in the presence of God.
–Henri Nouwen
An internationally renowned priest and author, respected professor and beloved pastor Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) wrote over 40 books on the spiritual life. I was always impressed that Nouwen, having taught at both Harvard and Yale divinity schools and reaching an international audience with his books, moved to Canada and spent ten years as pastor at the L’Arche community in Richmond Hill, Ontario, living with people with “intellectual disabilities”. He was a truly humble person.
So did anyone watch The Horse Soldiers over the weekend? I did and it was as excellent as I remembered.
I also watched a bad Woody Allen movie and caught up with Longmire, finishing season two. Longmire is the A&E show that takes place in Wyoming (but is mostly filmed in New Mexico) about a 21st century sheriff (named Walt Longmire) in a small town and his deputies and Native American friends and enemies. It is pretty good and I like everyone in it. Season three has just started.
Some of you will remember Bailey Chase (far right) from Buffy, season four. How could you forget him?
On Saturday I went to the annual book sale at the Ethical Society, which I have blogged about before. It is such a good sale! I bought two bags of books! What is wrong with me? One of the volunteers brought me a cart from the kitchen to pull around with me, so I wouldn’t have to carry them around. This was nice, but I could tell he wanted to engage me in a conversation, and I wanted none of that. It is bad enough having to overhear/listen to those Prius-driving ethical humanists while they engage in conversation with themselves. Oy.
Just a sample of my $23 purchase–but you can never have too many copies of Leaves of Grass, right?
I also went to a used bookstore where I cashed in a gift certificate a friend gave me for my birthday. I had never been to this store and I have to admit that it always looked vaguely sinister to me from the outside–but I was wrong. They had a lot of good books for sale besides science fiction. And the proprietor did not look (too much) like this guy:
I will definitely go back! You really can’t judge a book (store) by its cover! Haha.
On Sunday I was back at church for Trinity Sunday. The Old Testament lesson was the creation story from the Book of Genesis–the whole story–Genesis 1:1-2:4–which is a long reading, but, boy, is it good. Luckily it was Shirley from the Lay Reader A-Team who read it. High fives all around. If you were not in church on Sunday, I suggest you go read it on your own. Brilliant.
Hope you fathers had a nice day. The OM took several naps.
In honor of Father’s Day, here is a picture from an article in the old Globe Democrat circa 1965 of our pater doing what he loved best–playing war games in our dining room back in the day.
and surveying his vast collection of painted soldiers.
Good times. You can see that the collecting gene prevails in the family. Have a good week!
Today is Memorial Day and also John Wayne’s birthday!
You can watch war movies all day on TCM. Twelve O’Clock High (1949)–one of my favorites is on tonight, followed by another great one, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Or you can choose to watch John Wayne movies.
Either way, have a good day and take some time to remember the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces.
Here is a great rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1861 to the tune of “John Brown’s Body”:
Have you ever read all the lyrics to this wonderful hymn? Well, here they are:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah.
Our God is marching on.
And here is a special prayer from the BCP for today:
ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead; We give thee thanks for all those thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence, that the good work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.
What could be better than Julian of Norwich and the Moody Blues on Friday?
It was Julian’s day on the Episcopal Calendar yesterday. I am a big fan. She is “venerated” in the Anglican and Lutheran churches, but has never been officially beatified by the R.C. church. Oh, really, you say?
Anyway, she was born in England about 1342 during the time of the Black Death. When she was thirty years old, she became gravely ill and was expected to die. Then, on the seventh day, the medical crisis passed, and she had a series of fifteen visions, or “showings,” in which she was led to contemplate the Passion of Christ. These brought her great peace and joy.
Julian on the west front of Norwich Cathedral
She became an anchoress–a person called to a solitary life, but one that was not cut-off from the world, but one anchored in it. Her life was one of prayer, contemplation and counseling, a life highly thought of by people of the time. Her home was a small room, or cell, attached to the Church of S. Julian, Bishop of Le Mans, just off one of the main streets of Norwich. The results of her meditations she wrote in a book called Revelations of Divine Love.
And from the time that [the vision] was shown, I desired often to know what our Lord’s meaning was. And fifteen years and more afterward I was answered in my spiritual understanding, thus: ‘Would you know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Keep yourself therein and you shall know and understand more in the same. But you shall never know nor understand any other thing, forever.’
Thus I was taught that love was our Lord’s meaning. And I saw quite clearly in this and in all, that before God made us, he loved us, which love was never slaked nor ever shall be. And in this love he has done all his work, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us. And in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had a beginning. But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning. And all this shall be seen in God without end …
I have read her wonderful meditations and let’s just say there was a whole lot of hi-lighting going on.
I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
–Henry David Thoreau
Well, I know just what old Thoreau is talking about. Do you?
I go out to see if my pumpkin plants are still where I planted them every morning and then again when I come home from work.
The OM says, ironically, “Are they still there?” But I am worried about them! My past experience teaches me that their chances are not particularly good. Pesky garden varmints enjoy digging around in this bed, but so far so good.
I love this time of year though, don’t you?
When the plants are just starting to come up and the weeds and violets and creeping vines have not taken over.
peony buds
The first rose bud
When insect life is minimal. When it is still cool enough to enjoy my time in the yard. I admit I lose interest quickly when our flyover temperatures soar. I am a fair-weather gardener.
But you know how my mind works. Thoreau’s quote got me thinking about “a hill of beans” and how that expression became a synonym for something of negligible importance or value. I wonder how that came to be the case? Anyway, this made me think of that famous scene at the end of Casablanca, when Rick says to Ilsa: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that…”
Yeats, you recall, wanted “Nine bean-rows” and “a hive for the honey-bee” in his Innisfree home.
Hmmm. If my pumpkins amount to even a hill of beans this year, maybe next year I’ll plant some beans.
Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
John 20:19
This Sunday’s Gospel reading was the scripture where Jesus does not bother to use the door which is locked anyway. He just appears to 10 of the remaining 11 disciples. This is mentioned very casually. No one really makes a big deal of it. Because they don’t, one thinks it is probably just what happened. At least I think so.
The disciples, huddled in their locked room after everything that has happened, are both afraid and ashamed of their fear and their behavior in general. We should try to remember the disciples when we are fearful and anxious. They were not paragons of strength. Far from it. Some of them were not even very smart. (Think of Peter.) They were just like us. After this visit from Jesus, however, when he breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit, they seem to have gotten their collective acts together. It took a second visit for Thomas, because he missed the first and refused to believe without “touching and seeing”.
Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
We all have our doubts, and that’s okay. Doubts, Frederick Buechner says, are “the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
Well, my mind wandered during the sermon on this scripture, but this is what I was thinking.
Meanwhile this weekend I enjoyed the spring weather by working in the yard. I also went on a birthday outing with my best Grace girlfriends. Our fearless leader and party planner Carla reasoned that, because we never have room for dessert when we go out to lunch, we should just go out for dessert. Brilliant! So we ventured downtown to a place famous for its ice cream concoctions and had sundaes. When was the last time you had a sundae? I cannot begin to remember when that was. It really was a treat.
Art Deco walls at the “Fountain”
We also went to the main branch of the downtown library which has been recently renovated.
Notice the 250th birthday cake in front and the spire of our Episcopal Cathedral barely visible behind the library.
Intrepid explorers that we are, we had a super fun time.
I also re-read “The Snow Goose” a very short novella by Paul Gallico about a lonely hunchbacked artist who participates in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 and the snow goose that watches over him. It gave me chills.
If you are looking for something to pick up and read at one sitting, I highly recommend this marvelous book.
“I believe the story. With my head, looking at the evidence and thinking logically as a person who was a research physicist for twenty-five years, I believe it. And after listening to the testimony of people – from beggars to kings — through all the ages who had concluded that the story is true, I believe it. And at the innermost levels of my heart, where the deepest truths reside but are not easily put into words, I believe it is true.
“And that is why I know that I will see my mother again someday. It’s not just wishful thinking, some little tale I’ve fooled myself with because I can’t face the cold hard facts of life. Yes, I will see Della Mae, and I am convinced that it will be a day of great victory and joy. St. Paul says that it will be like putting on a crown, and St. John says that it will be a time when every tear will be wiped away from my eyes. That’s what will happen someday to me. But what Jesus did affects me right here today also — I know that this Jesus who overcame death and the grave has promised not to leave me here twisting in the wind. He is with me every day, through his Spirit, to guide me, comfort me, embolden me, and use me for his glory and to serve his people, right here, right now.”
This morning I spent my hour “in the garden” waiting with Jesus–actually our little chapel in the near dark. There are supposed to be two people, but I was alone as was the women who kept the 4-5:00 a.m. watch before me. It is a little spooky being there alone, but I like it. I read the collects of Thomas Cranmer with meditations by my old friend Fred Barbee. Well, I think it is important to be aware of Good Friday and to try, at least in some small way, to keep it holy.
“So shall we join the disciples of our Lord, keeping faith in Him in spite of the crucifixion, and making ready, by our loyalty to Him in the days of His darkness, for the time when we shall enter into His triumph in the days of His light.”
– Phillips Brooks
Tomorrow daughter #1 is flying home (yay!) and we will spend Easter together, going to church and to brunch at my flyover faculty club and, of course, watching:
I am such a nerd. But then you know that about me.
Not only will I be watching Ben-Hur this weekend, but I will be watching this version:
Hope you all have a wonderful Easter, celebrating as you may.
P.S. Ganador del Premio Nobel Gabriel García Márquez muere a los 87 años. R.I.P.
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”
At our church we “re-enact” the Passion Drama during the service on Palm Sunday. Usually I am assigned to be a minor character like a serving girl (“You also were with Jesus the Galilean”) or the Centurion (“Truly this man was the Son of God!”), but this year I was not included at all. (My friend Carla and I joke about this because between the two of us we have been lay readers for nearly half a century, but we are no closer to being the Narrator or some named part than Joyce Meyer. Carla was a serving girl this year.)
I was a lector, however, and got to read a rousing lesson from Isaiah: “The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near…” and so on. I do love Isaiah.
Sunday night I was planning to watch The Robe on Netflix Watch Instantly, but we couldn’t get it to work, so I watched a large part of Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth instead. I highly recommend it. It reflects, of course, the Roman side of the story and does a nice job of letting them off the hook. But Robert Powell is really great and so are the supporting players. Laurence Olivier as Nicodemus is one of my favorites.
During the week I will continue to read and watch appropriate fare, i.e. I abstained from watching Dancing With the Stars and their Disney-themed episode last night. Believe me it was not much of a sacrifice.
I have signed up to participate in the Good Friday Vigil following the Maundy Thursday service. I will be “waiting in the garden” from 5:00–6:00 a.m.
Window in Christ Episcopal Church, Poughkeepsie, NY
I have done this before and it is really quite a meaningful exercise. You are alone (with one other person) in the semi-dark of the spooky downstairs chapel with nothing to do but “stay awake for one hour” (see above window) and pray and meditate on Jesus and his sacrifice. This is right up my alley and better than the very public display of look-at-me-washing-someone’s-feet that is Maundy Thursday. To each his own.
Do you have any special plans for Holy Week?
* Traditional Hymn, attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. by Paul Gerhardt and James W. Alexander–We sang it on Palm Sunday which made me happy, especially my favorite verse:
What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.
