EINSTEIN. A quote I find . “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Someone said that Einstein in professing a relation to God was rather like someone claiming to love pizza but to have no use for tomato or cheese or crust or toppings...still in relation to God perhaps something remains.
THE SONG OF THE LITTLE WORLD. TALIESIN. (see end notes) . The beautiful I sing of, I will sing. The world one day more. Much I reason, And I meditate. I will address the bards of the world, Since it is not told me What supports the world, That it falls not into vacancy. Or if the world should fall, On what would it fall? Who would uphold it? The world, how it comes again, When it falls in decay, Again in the enclosing circle. The world, how wonderful it is, That it falls not at once. The world, how peculiar it is, So great was it trampled on. Johannes, Mattheus, Lucas, and Marcus, They sustain the world Through the grace of the Spirit.
Taliesin
END NOTES This from a 14th century Welsh manuscript attrobited to the sixth century bard Taliesin who in one text says lthat his origin is "in the region of the summer stars." our image is an old photo of some yellow leaves remaining in early December and reflected in a pond
(p. 386, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax by Michael N. McGregor) our image is from the first production of Philip Glass's opera Circus Days and Nights , from Lax's work, in Malmo Sweden. here is just a bit from Lax's poem cycle "Circus of the Sun"
'"By day from town to town we carry Eden in our tents and bring its won- ders to the children who have lost their dream of home..."
We posted a detail of a woodblock print of the waterfall in Nikko Japan by Kawase...Here is another print of a waterfall and this time of Niagara which will be more familiar to many. Familiar but it seems to me worth looking at for its achievement of a sense of the dynamic movement of water and of the mist joining sky to water...I remember the guide on the boat "Maid of the mist" as we came suddenly to a clear and wide view of the Falls exclaiming "This is Niagara!" some of that sense is realized within this print it seems to me.
And to that I add not a photo of a visit 20 years ago...friends,Andrey and Karina Cherniak and to my right Ilya and Marina Grits...and then a photo I took of the Falls.
THANKSGIVING . THANKSGIVING In photo from left Mark Lerner,me, Dennis Labeau,Li Diao, David,Paula and Rachel Kossey. Sue Talley reminds of this poem from Levertov. "The world is not with us enough O taste and see the subway Bible poster said, meaning The Lord, meaning if anything all that lives to the imagination’s tongue, grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh our deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince, living in the orchard and being hungry, and plucking the fruit.
SOME LIGHT FROM HERE AND THERE I scroll back through images I have posted here over the years looking for one to represent Thanksgiving... not exactky ... just these strike me somehow to share so...
1)A girl I saw in New York's "Chinatown" district at the moment a brief sudden storm opens her umbrella...
2) From a print by Fritz Eichenberg three figures in a breadline...poor people...patient ...one thinks unaware of the light shining on and to them.
3) reflection in the water looking down from a bridge in Sleepy Hollow near here.
4) art of Gustav Dore shows a moment at the end of a journey on which Dante and his final guide St Bernard stand at tge edge of infinity...
Perhaps the lights can go into some sense of the wonder of things , which the Denise Levertov poem Primary Wonder spoke of, from which a thankfulness can arise in spite of and through and from all...
I guess I was thinking of a half remembered place in Goethe Faust part 2 with a waterfall and a rainbow ...I will not look it up...this is enough...the leaves can be for us a rainbow completing water and rock maybe?
PRIMARY WONDER Denise Levertov "Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; cap and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, You still, hour by hour sustain it.
DENISE LEVERTOV 1923-1997"
END NOTES Image to left is Denise Levertov to right "Creation of World" by Natalya Rusetska
Thanks to Jane Killingbeck for pointing out this poem. It seems specially appropriate to the holiday season and maybe most especially to Thanksgiving Day in the United States this week.
H.G.WELLS RIGHT AND WRONG ON ALVIN LANGDON COBURN'S NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHY Historian H.G.Wells wrote in his introduction to a folio of 20 pohpotpgraphs of New York City by Alvin Langdon Coburn(1882-1966) published in 1911 that "100 years from now people will have these photograhs but I wish Mr Coburn could show me photographs of New York 100 years from now." He was right indeed that we have the photographsm and here is one--of Brooklyn Bridge. But perhaps wrong if he had an expectation of a city grown radically beyond what those photos showed... and if this is so it must attest, not to any lack o f new construction but, to Coburn'shaving captured an essence of the City rather once and for all.
Wasily Kandinsky 1866-1944 for Thanksgiving? Here are two... In Autumn in Murnau (in the south of Germany a world somehow between the real and the ideal and a journey into color... in Composition VIII the eye travels through what at first seems a clutter which somehow becomes musical and rests in circles or rises from some circle which seems a portal to a source of harmony...
The old scripture Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God " made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart" In its time? Does that mean 'in its prime.'? or, no Its Time is now....wait a moment passed is it still beautiful? now too it is its Time... everything's.... yours mine all the "ten thousand things" but that means ... perhaps the meaning as far as we can know it ends in Thanksgiving? which is down the road to Murnau and underlying is the play of things of Composition VIII maybe....and... and that is the end of our Sunday sermon. hope it wasn't too long...
"I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD" Khrystyna Kvyk . Today Jusr this sacred art,icon,from Khrystyna Kvyk a young artist from Lviv which points us to that before and after and within and beyond...as the letters in the center Alpha and Omega say. END NOTE "And all our days of strife, all earthly toil are still a part of God's eternal Peace" Und alles Drängen, alles Ringen Ist ewige Ruh in Gott dem Herrn. Goethe
Again I look at a nocturne from the new style wood block prints (shin hanga) and I like this by Kawase (the family name put first in Japanese style, Hasui is his artist's name).... a sleepy village a light .... rain and water...I have cropped a bit to make a larger image here of the central part and so the rain can be seen more clearly perhaps,,,, but still the light warm and beckoning... Again I look at a nocturne from the new style wood block prints (shin hanga) and I like this by Kawase (the family name put first in Japanese style, Hasui is his artist's name).... a sleepy village a light .... rain and water...I have cropped a bit to make a larger image here of the central part and so the rain can be seen more clearly perhaps,,,, but still the light warm and beckoning...
SIMEON L FRANK. . This photograph of the philosopher is from London in 1950....via Fr Peter Scorer of blessed memory but generally also available online. I have not posted anything of Frank for a while so... here is something... " 'the head of the soul' says Plotinus 'is in heaven while its feet are on earth.' And precisely this unity, linking unembraceable infinity, fullness, actual transparence, and the unity of absolute being, with the limitedness, darkness, disunitedness, and changeability of empirical being-- constitutes the essence of the human soul."
this we all know of course but we want to not miss the word 'unity'.
AUTUMN IN URAYASU. Hasui Kawase 1883-1957 . In 1931 when this print was made Urayasu, now included in the urban expansion of Tokyo, was a fishing village and here it so remains in an image we may offer for today's nocturne. the boat will be gone now, concrete and high rises will be in Urayasu. and with the boat, the mechanic at the garage when I got my car an oil change, told me what I knew that it could go at any time. The Bible tells us that God made "all things beautiful in their time..." well but something remains here.... sky and water and a delicate color...and there the boat still serene with its sail touched by the gentlest breeze...
now fading and thinning out but for a moment it was like a rich brocade ...bright and complex... as Simeon Frank points out in a passage from his book "God With Us" we are already eternal beings grounded in the eternal if we allow ourselves that self-knowledge... Thinking from the passing beyond our knowledge of the brother of a friend in recent days... He had a zest for life and so a zest for the eternal...
SWAN . "The track of the swan through the sky Never leaves traces-- Its path is soon forgotten" Dogen.
Just a photo from a lake near here....
The words of the Japanese poet might open to this from Emile Besson(1884-1975) "The promise of our Savior is true, God is among us until the end , but we seek him neither on the stage or in palaces or to places of renown. He is the unknown the nobody ... lost anonymously in the crowd. Let us love our brothers and sisters as ourselves and we shall find Him. He may be working along side of us in one of those crushing mills of human personality. He may be that man at the subway entrance who lets himself be pushed aside by an impatient commuter. He may be that passerby there leaning on the parapets of the Seine or the one walking along the dams. He is humble and has only meager means. Under his nondescript clothing he hides the splendor of Mount Tabor and the salvation of the world..."
Preaching? Moi? but no it is almost all quotes except the image so I am seeing and hearing ,not speaking.... but let it be our meditation for this last Sunday too then :)
END NOTE do the branches above the swan seem to inscribe a rune?... perhaps the 'dagaz' which it seems means dawn?
This is a 1912 image from Yosemite National Park. While Coburn is a,indeed almost THE, photographer I love it has been for a limited number of his works and the cloud photographs are among those I have rather overlooked and now looking at this of a cloud I see again a value for me in these posts and perhaps sharing them to you, you may see something too... Shelley wrote...
" I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die..." Shelley "The Cloud"
things that pass and things that are eternal are one as it may be...
RIVER OF LIGHT . The photograph ,"Fifth Avenue From St Regis(Hotel) is by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) and is dated from 1904-1915 variously. It can go perhaps with the print we posted the other day of the City in the 1920s by Yoshida Hiroshi. But in titling this 'river of light' I am thinking somewhat fancifully of a river flowing from Eden above into the universe that exists moving through all things...but that sort of association may be at least partly excused by the photographer's use of soft focus and as in his work in general painterly rather than documentary approach to his work... that will be St Patrick's Cathedral on the left... on the right the tower may be old St Thomas or possibly the 5th Ave Presbyterian but that is to be documentary...
"The inscription of Abercius who as a 72 year old man left his home in what is now Turkey and travelled to Rome about the year 150. Here is are the words he wrote then for his tomb. What is striking and not always noted is his choice of allegorical and symbolic language not to conceal but expecting to be understood and to represent his life "1. The citizen of an eminent city, I made this (tomb) 2. In my lifetime, that I might have here a resting-place for my body. 3. Abercius by name, I am a disciple of the chaste shepherd, 4. Who feedeth His flocks of sheep on mountains and plains, 5. Who hath great eyes that look on all sides. 6. He taught me . . . faithful writings. 7. He sent me to Rome, to behold a kingdom 8. And to see a queen with golden robe and golden shoes. 9. There I saw a people bearing the splended seal. 10. And I saw the plain of Syria and all the cities, even Nisibis, 11. Having crossed the Euphrates. And everywhere I met brothers and sisters in agreement. 12. Having Paul as a companion, everywhere faith led the way 13. And everywhere wasset before me as food the fish from the spring 14. Mighty and pure, whom a spotless Virgin caught, 15. And gave this to friends to eat, always 16. Having sweet wine and giving the mixed cup with bread. 17. These words, I, Abercius, standing by, ordered to be inscribed. 18. In truth, I was in the course of my seventy-second year. 19. Let him who understands and believes this pray for Abercius."
In an unsystematic and incidental way the imagery covers a great range of Christian life in the first period(or of course in any period). So there is reference in images to the Bible(6) the Eucharist(13,16), Baptism(13), the Church at Rome itself(8) the Sacrament of receiving the Holy Spirit(9),the universally identical life of the Churches(10-11) evident belief in the special nature of the birth of Jesus(14), and in prayer as exchanged not only among the living but among all living and those beyond this life(19) and an early use of the Fish as symbol of Christ.
But what is most striking to me and why I come back to the inscription now as one might to an old song which touched the heart, is the sense of a man who lived in a world touched magically by fairy dust perhaps in which he walked among symbols and Realities beyond the only visible... simple and innocent maybe but wise in seeing things whole. rather as George Macdonald cites so often Novalis " this life is not a dream but it may and perhaps ought become one" and Shaekespeare gives Prospero the words "we are such stuff as dreams are made of" which doesnt mean that we are ephemeral so much as that dreams are such stuff as we are made of, doesn't it?... .... .
Such Wilderness as This. A new poem by Melissa Chappell Upon hearing a radio report concerning the Death March of Bosnian men and boys in July of 1995. Such wilderness as this— leaves a cartographer bemused— all balsam light disintegrating into root and ruck a ruse echoing where there are no stones to wake from silence
no oil of cedar hindering restless time and disbelievers still no names to bones
what dead throng there, so deep in haunted seas
forgive those who deny as they warm themselves by the treacherous fire
forgive us who write poems of elegies and justice while we cry crucify
In such wilderness as this the night which lays beside our kind shall linger as one moon follows another and the field turned once is turned again
a sword shall pierce her own side
Melissa Chappell
posted with permission of author the event was the killing of about 8300 Bosnian Muslim men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica to Serbian units but of course the theme of the poem is not of the war of that time but of the deep tragedy of our human condition and whole history.
ANGELS Natalya Rusetska . The artist who works at the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv ,says "My art is about the eternal, the timeless..." we may think of Plotinus's vision of beings as radii joining at the center of the dance of life... "Behold the fount of Life, the fount of Intellect, the principle of Being, the cause of goodness, the root of soul." Perhaps this for our brief Sunday meditation ....
WHERE RIVER AND EARTH AND AIR AND SUNSET FIRE MEET . The City seen from 25 miles north on the Hudson River. Of course in its reality and detail it is ordinary and mundane as any place yet at times and just now as it seemed it is lent a certain glory.... .
New York in 1928. Hiroshi Yoshida 1876-1950 . Yoshida visited New York two years before construction of the Empire State Building began in 1930, and in the year when construction of the Chrysler building began and was completed in 1930, so at the beginning of the skyscraper time...
Perhaps living 30 miles or so north of here ,I might wish he had done something like an addition to the art of the Hudson River School but this has its own quality doesn't it?
THE FJORD GIRL. THE MOUNTAIN. THE CHINESE POET. . Yesterday I came upon and shared a painting by the Norwegian Hans Dahl of a girl seated by a fjord looking out towards a misty mountain,,,Dahl it seems did a number of such paintings with variations and here is a continuarion of the series ,as it were by his son, Hans Andreas Dahl working in water color--his father's in oil. where is the mountain further up the fjord and ethereal in the mist up the fjord in yesterday's painting?
May we think of the poem by Li Bai:
"The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains."
Or only the observer remains... the girl of these works... or it can be you or I now the mountain internalized? ... for reference I have added yesterday's girl seated... and then another by the elder Dahl where she is standing and the mountain still there or almost there but even more on the edge of reality...
NOTE: Hans Dahl 1849-1937 Hans Andreas Dahl 1881-1919(of tuberculosis)
and FINALLY The mountain shimmers and vanishes wait! now the fjord girl -- gone too you and I remain... and the fjord .
Shared with Public GIRL LOOKING OUT OVER A FJORD Hans Dahl 1849-1937 . I like Japanese woodblock prints for looking at here but this goes better with my reading of Jon Fosse's new novel Vaim. and in itself is a well done landscape,,, girl, sailboat far out on the fjord, mountain... what more could one wish?
It has a certain sense of mystery also...of solitude and mist so that the mountain barely seems real... In Vaim a character says "I've even thought my tombstone should say "All was strange"...butI've decided I want just a simple cross on my tombstone." girl,boat, mountain and there is light as Dahl gives us...
BOAT AND WATER, DREAM AND REALITY Two quotes from Jon Fosse's VAIM. now available in English translation. (1) "...my whole life, reality is in the dream the way the boat is in the water, I think, or maybe the other way around, the water is the reality and the boat is the dream, because a boat is probably always a dream of something or another..." (2) "and the sjark Eline glides away from the shore in the calm water and its like a kind of peace comes over everything”
and our picture is of a small Norwegian fishing boat of type Sjark. ..... See also my collection of quotes in the area of theoloigy from Jon Fosse. I have now added these as you will see near the beginning: https://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com/1362178.html
TWO FOR THE DIAS DE LOS MUERTOS (for All Hallows Eve=Halloween,All Hallows,and All Souls) What form does an Angelical being appear as? here are two I like..of no doubt innumerable like the bright or dark and alarming or gay costumes of children ... 1. Painting by Kimberly Ramey of an Angelical being. and 2. a photo of an Angelical entering a church in San Miguel de Allende from James Nicholls who did a set on the Dias de los Muertos there . Happy Halloween to all!
WHITE CLOTH AND WHALE . A leisurely lunch with some of the usual suspects at Sapori Restaurant nearby as I have said before my idea of a high class restaurant because it has white tablecloths.... From left we are Fr Michael Roshak ,myself, Frank Purcell, Olga Ptach.
Our waiter was named Zacheriah...sounds like a name from a character in Moby Dick doesnt it?... We spoke in fact of Moby Dick. What is a key moment for you? Frank said perhaps the hiring of Ishmael and Queequeg by the owners of the ship Pequod, Captains Bildad and Peleg...two in some ways quite different men it seems, Bildad the devout Quaker, Peleg the more worldly pragmatic who nonetheless agree in hiring the men and seem then as working as one, if not exactly good cop/ bad cop yet or as aspects of one mind, yet a bit of this and as one.
and for me perhaps the moment was when Captsin Ahab nails a gold coin tro the mast for the first man to sight the white whale, Moby Dick, through whom he intends to strike out at the archetypes beyond of human fate which have maimed him. ... If I were to add one more it would be the crows nest on watch where Ishmael sees the water calm far below but in fact turbulent in its reality below...
and a good lunch...and talk also with Zacharaiah whose religipous background in family includes Muslim Jewish and Christian and who is now on his own journey into an infinite sea as are we all come to that...
Shared with Public FROM "AUTUMN DUSK WITH FIREFLIES' by John Chico Martin. . Chico Martin is a poet and I am posting here an excerpt from a theological work of his which is also I think a prose poem and one which I like as poem but beyond that which I see (as in another way I see the work of Jon Fosse) as a way somehow forward for writing about God...for theology if you will.
This writing is based on the book 'Wisdom of Soilomon' and on the concept of Theosis ("becoming-as-divine" in his rendering). This is section 20 of the work. I use as illustration to the final sentences here where one of three guests has set a cup on the table, Chagall's scene of the visit of three travelers who were it seems angelical... it is also used in Christian theology of which Chagall was well aware and whose sense he may include. Anyway here is Chico Martin: "The ultimate divine image that the created order reveals is necessarily other than that which is known. Wisdom tells us, for instance, that justice rather than oppression distinguishes its goodness. Wisdom also directs us for instruction to the structure of the world, where we observe ongoing physical and biological processes. As the goodness of art depends upon the necessity of its making, the goodness of creation depends upon the continuous bringing into existence of that which does not yet exist. Christ continues to reveal himself,and the happiness of the soul cannot arise from grasping at the non-existent. One guest among the three has set a cup down on their table, and ordinary fireflies are suddenly ablaze. Becoming-as-divine will take surprising form." John Chico Martin
THREE. MY Computer Revived (2) Light Improbable by Melissa Chappell and (3) A book to back-order . 1. Picture. It seemed my computer had died which would be sort of sad, at the least as Pooh would say "Oh bother!" An old friend from work at Pace University Library, Deshwarn Brown, found what needed to be done and here we are today and there we are after at Capri Restaurant. 2.second image is of a poem I like very much by friend Melissa Chappell who is a, in my opinion , very good poet and a Lutheran Pastor. and . 3.Jon Fosse of Norway last year's nobel winner has a new novel which you can order now on amazon and receive in early November or kindle edition already. It is a start of a new trilogy by a novelist whose work and whose rather mystical thought and faith I greatly admire. these today to share
THE PORT OF TOMO Koitsu Tsuchiya 1870-1949 . (and a thought on the Ship of Solomon) Woodblock print set in the old port town of Tomo or Tomonoura in western Jaspan. The boat seems ready to sail out towards dawn but there seems to be no-one on board. Shall we make the trip? NOTE there is precedent for a wonderful crewless ship in the Ship of Solomon. "When King Solomon learned through a vision that his descendant, Galahad, would be a marvelously good and pure knight, he and his wife made a ship for this descendant to find... The ship was fashioned of the best and most durable wood, covered with rot-proof silk, and stocked with wonderful items:" did it travel any ordinary sea or the sea of Time? .
I have a little adjusted the experimental minimalistic format of Lax's text
are we warriors for peace?
no peacelovers
does religion help? it may
politics? a minefield but worth a try
fight fire with what?
water
like good children in the garden of eden
play lovingly and at peace
power wisdom love power wisdom love power power wisdom wisdom love love
love
END NOTES 1. Photo of Lax teaching at St Bonaventure University 2. wisdom power love are , well I think AI puts it well: The phrase "wisdom, power, love" relates to St. Thomas Aquinas through his philosophy that integrates faith and reason, focusing on the pursuit of wisdom as a path to God, who is the source of all power and love. Aquinas saw wisdom as both intellectual and spiritual knowledge and defined love as "willing the good of the other," which ultimately leads to God's love and the ultimate "good of glory"
Borrowing that title, The gypsies sing to God, from Tito Losada, I am posting this from internet browsing Paco Pena on guitar, in a section of the Flamenco Mass, Misa Flamenca. The dance comes in at 2:49 and to my completely musically uneducated sense ,it seems very well done by ,is it Angel Mumoz?and perhaps you might like this too...at:
Gloria. I have the idea that in Christian prayer Glory is one of those words which correspond to the idea of words of power as in India "Jaya!" might approximate ... well but do enjoy the guitar and drums and dance if it is your sort of thing as it is mine...
Now here is a sort of nocturne woodblock print for today. It seems Kobayashi was one of the first print makers in Japan taking in principles of Western art ...his style anticipating that of those coming after called Shin(neo) hanga (print) makers. But I am not learned in such and yet I do like this evening feeling of a stroll with a moon reflected in the water and ahead a lighted room...
In Thomas Merton's correspondence with his friend the editor of New Directions James Laughlin that there were plans to get together with Kerouac and others to discuss 'basic things.' In March 1960 Merton wrote: "why not you, Lax, Kerouac, and a few other assorted people picked by the two of you, make an expedition down here and we could solve the problems of the world for two or three days, perhaps on the edge of some quiet lake... I think Lax would bring Kerouac and has already spoken of it. " I seem to remember seeing another in which it is included the idea of having a few beers also. It never took place , Ron Seitz writes of a 1963 conversation in the hermitage when Merton mentions "...ol' Jacko Keroway, eh [laughs] - you know he was supposed to stop by and spend a few days out here...what Lax told me anyway." One of history's great missed opportunities adds Seitz. I don't know if is exactly that and yet .... yes perhaps... ... Our pictures are first Reinhardt and Merton and Lax in 1958,Laughlin,Kerouac and finally one of Reinhardt's Black Painting. .......... But a last word from Kerouac perhaps... "Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared and I said...and really meant it ... 'God I love you...take care of us one way or the other' "
"THE HOUR COMES AND NOW IS" The Jewish Temple was in Jerusalem but people in the nothern area of Palastine, Samaria, had established, after a schism, a Temple at Mount Gerizim, in connection with which they had their own legends connecting it to Noah and Abraham. There was contempt by orthodox Jews for the Samaritan heretics. It is not in a way remote from current history, though now the Samaritan religion is but a tiny group, but contempt still lives in the land and indeed in all lands. A Samaritan woman asks Jesus, who in talking with her has gone beyond Jewish orthodox law already, about Mount Gerazim and Jerusalem. John chapter 4 but let Fr Alexander Men take up the story... "[Jesus replied] that the time was coming [and already was] when it would not be important whether men prayed on this mountain or that one, because God is everywhere and his love is everywhere. His heaven eveywhee. We must worship him in spirit and in truth. The true faith is not one that is linked with one place or another but the one that existx in spirit and in truth.
What does that mean? To worship the Lord with your whole heart,through love and devotion to Him and by doing good--that indeed is the spirit of truth...
The woman did not understand this very well. Bur neither have millions of other people, including educated people and theologians: how can it be if there is one law here and another there, then one must be true and the other false? But the Lord says "--only one thing is true: Love God and love man and all the rest will follow." ...... Perhaps that could be this week's sermon... the images are of Fr Alexander and then lower left by Jyohi Sathi, then one from a 12th century Gospel book in Georgia, and a contemporary one by Shinsui Ito
FROM PAPERS OF POET ROBERT LAX . from a collection of handwritten single page texts found among loose materials in the Robert Lax archive at St Bonaventure University by curator Paul Spaeth. now printed as a small book "Notes For The Next Robert Lax."
A GARY LARSON DUCK CARTOON I DON'T REMEMBER SEEING A hall of mirrors confrontation of this sort features in a number of films doesn't it, for example the Bruce Lee "Entr the Dragon" and the James Bond "Man with the golden gun".
These lines from a Juneau Alaska writer Ishmael Khaagwáask’ Hope ,addressed to Richard: "We should appreciate good people when they walk among us, my dad would say. Worn out, reading your Selected Poems, I huddle around the fire in poetry's comfort, and try to recall everything that you and Nora wanted us to know."
It is worth anyone's reading I think though I give it just as a link Richard 1942-2014 Nora marks 1927-2017 Married in 1973
They were friends also of mine from I guess about 1990. They visited New York and we shared some summer retreats and conferences and many nights I would talk with Dick by phone across the continent perhaps about some translation he was doing of Russian or German or Tlingit Alaskan,,,or about the church, he was a lector, or many other things but I am posting this to take up the words we started with from Ishmael Khaagwáask’ Hope... a simple thought but somehow important... to value the good as we meet it...the memory,indeed the presence , of 'good people', is the Church , is what is called the communion of the saints. that and not anything else really is where it starts and ends...or doesnt end as it may be... we cited Kerouac the other day: "When God says “I Am Lived,” we’ll have forgotten what all the parting was about "
Here is a woodblock print I find with an Alaskan setting... I wonder where exactly in Alaska or is it a generalized imagined Alaska, old Russian Mission church and all ? Perhaps it is inspired by Sitka?
Thinking then of Alaska I find my copy of a book of poetry, "Glacier Bay Concerto" by Richard Dauenhauer (1942-2014) and leafing through it find that he had inscribed it to me with the words: noting that I am now retired...
"one could do worse than be Bishop of Nothingness!..."
Besides being a lector in the Orthodox church in Juneau he had practiced Zen over the years so that no doubt underlies... well today this.
COMPLETE LYRICS OF 'IM SHIPPING UP TO BOSTON' . COMPLETE LYRICS OF 'IM SHIPPING UP TO BOSTON' In 2004, Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys was invited to go through the archives of folk music legend Woody Guthrie. Casey discovered a handwritten fragment with lines "I'm a sailor peg. And I lost my leg. Climbing up the top sails". and they are the song...
and while for me the primary association of the Murphys and this signature song is with Notre Dame football (Notre Dame 28-7 over Boise State today) because of its use in a video from Notre Dame perhaps you may just if it is your sort of loud nonsensical thing join me in seeing it at a festival in Spain.
"I'm a sailor peg, and I've lost my leg Climbing up the top sails, I lost my leg [Chorus] I'm shipping up to Boston, whoa I'm shipping up to Boston, whoa I'm shipping up to Boston, whoa I'm shipping off to find my wooden leg"
................................... one might add that the band has close connection with the Labor Union movement .AFL-CIO, you will find on youtube songs favoring the poor and also Amazing Grace as the Irish in Boston have of course Christian tendencies...but this is the sound however in any case this particular lyric strikes me as rather wonderful though if Woody had developed it the sound would have been different. :)
DE NOCHE . One more from the little series of several posts on the complex meaning and experience of the dark, perhaps appropriate in one aspect to the time of the equinox. Pictures are screen caps from the linked Taize song arranged by Jaques Berthier.
De noche iremos, de noche que para encontrar la fuente, sólo la sed nos alumbra, sólo la sed nos alumbra. --- By night, we hasten in darkness to search for living water, only our thirst leads us onwards, only our thirst leads us onwards.
ROSALIA: sings ST JOHN OF THE CROSS "Although it is night!" . Rosalia (1992-) is a Spanish singer between Pop and Flamenco which she studied although atypically not a gitana, not a gypsy, Here she sings her version of the St John of the Cross poem about faith with the refrain "although it is night". First here is the youtube of her version, then translation link and finally a thought or two... 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5LESCkxT2I... Oleee! 2. Here is Roy Campbell's translation of St John's poem itself https://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com/1453106.html 3. Does not Rosalia'a passionate commitment to the text go to show that what is called mystical thought is really for anyone to know and express in their own way whether a 16th century monk or a 21st century singer or you or I too? Campbell's translation is highly regarded it seems and it in interesting that so too is his of Charles Baudelaire a very different sort of Catholic poet. But it is Saint John who was his special love and he worked in saving boxes of the saints manuscripts in Toledo when the Reds set fire to the monastery there after killing the monks. but back to the poem.... I do also think that there is that which does not despair in us people if we will be aware of it as our inner light aunque es de noche...
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