Home

After groggily dragging myself to work coughing, and hacking for three days, I decided that today I would give up and stay home. Here, it feels like the most southern of southern days. I wish I could describe what I mean or capture it in a picture, but it would be impossible. The curtains are billowing, and the rain steadily beating down, and there is greenness pouring in at all the windows. Every year about this time the grass wages a war on my husband and more or less defeats him. He can spend hours and hours and hours on the riding mower, and then the rains come down and grass grows up, and up, and up, and more than obliterates everything he has accomplished. Everything in the yard looks wild and scraggly and determined in its effort to grow as fast as it can in every direction.

As I pad through the house barefoot in a cotton dress, I feel somehow connected to the woman who lived here a hundred years ago. The woman whose husband built my home. She had a cistern where I have my back porch, and a smithy on the other side of the driveway, and raised 12 kids who slept in the loft that has become my attic. By our standards, she must have had a hard life, but she lived her life here, in our home, and she knew this land in a way that I never will. She didn't have to jump in the car every morning and drive for an hour to live her life someplace else.

Sitting here, alone, on this day stolen from my day-to-day life, I yearn to stay here, to stay at home. I want to get up every morning thinking about what I am going to do in my house and my yard, and the rest that I will take here in the still evening. I want to be able to pray without watching the clock and have time to sit and listen to the birdsong in the morning, when it begins with a few scattered notes and builds to a great crescendo. I hope that this will happen some day before I'm too much older, but for now, it doesn't seem to be possible. I think there are other things that I'm supposed to be doing. I hope that I can learn with St. Paul to be content in any and situation, and for the most part, I'm happy with my job, but still, whenever I think on whatever is true, honorable, pure, lovely, and gracious, I think about being at home.

This is the original cabin that was built on our property in the late 19th century.  When Fonzie Scott, who built this cabin, built our house, he moved the cabin to its current location and built a barn around it. Those vines are all very green and leafy at the moment.

AMDG

For Amy

A cheering up song.



Children should move to other cities.  AARGH! That was supposed to say, they SHOULDN'T move.

AMDG

Two Pictures

About a year ago, I was at Saturday morning Mass and I glanced down at the seat in front of me where I saw this picture on the cover of Magnificat.

When I went home, I immediately emailed someone who subscribes to Magnificat  and asked him to look and find the name of the artist (Marianne Stokes) so I could find the picture online, and I put it on my desktop at home and at work. I love the color, and if you look at it enlarged, you can see that all the fabric, even that thin veil has a pattern in it. Most of all, though, what attracts me is the way that Mary and Jesus are looking at you.

I was thinking about the painting yesterday while I was praying, and it occurred to me that Mary is not just revealing the infant Jesus to us, she is modelling for us what we are all called to do. She isn't worried. She isn't arguing, or pushing. She doesn't put herself forward. She doesn't insist. She just reveals the Truth, and leaves it to us to decide whether to accept Him or not. And He just waits patiently for us. 

Then, when I looked up from my prayer, I saw this picture on the wall.

Now I know that artistically this isn't the greatest picture in the world, but I love this one because I bought it when my son about this age, and it reminded me of us. I remember this time in our lives as one that was filled with peace. He was perfectly content to just rest in my lap, and I was perfectly content to just be there with him. When I was holding him, I could just relax and not worry about anything else, and, of course, he felt completely safe and loved. 

In comparison to this, I was thinking about how lately I have had a hard time concentrating while praying. My mind is filled with distractions and always running ahead to everything I have to do when I get up from my prayers. So, I think this picture is a lesson to us all, too. If we want to be like Jesus, we have to emulate Him, not just in His prayer, and good works, and suffering, but in this simple act of becoming small and resting in Mary's lap, and trusting her to take care of things. 

Yesterday when I first thought of writing this, I didn't occur to me that I would be posting it on Mother's Day, but I guess it's pretty appropriate. So I'll close with the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Deigo.

Hear and let it penetrate into your heart, my dear little son: let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you: let nothing alter your heart or your countenance. Also do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else that you need?

May the Lord bless all Mothers, and help us to be like His, and may we all learn to rest in the crossing of her arms.

AMDG

Depression

I don't know if any of you read Hyperbole and a Half, a blog with drawings which is usually very funny. The blogger, Allie, has been gone for a while and came back a few days ago with some posts about depression. The first is here and the second here. I've experienced this twice. The first instance lasted about 6 months but wasn't as bad; the second was shorter in duration, but really terrible. If you have never been depressed in this way, you think of depression as something that happens because of events in your life. You are depressed because you lost your job, or you're fat, or your marriage is bad. You think that if your circumstances change, you will be happy. Once you experience what Allie is talking about here, you know that wasn't depression at all. You don't have any reason for feeling (or really not feeling) the way you do, but you can't imagine ever being happy again even in the best circumstances. Anyway, it's worth reading because when you do come across people who are depressed, it's good to know what she writes about.

I may add something here later, but I have to work.

And please pray for this young woman.

AMDG

Blessed John Henry Newman on Music

 Is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No, they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of Angels, or the Magnificat of Saints, or the living laws of Divine Governance, or the Divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter,--though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them.

Oxford University Sermons, 1826-1843

I found this quote in The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet, by Thomas Dubay, S. M.. Fr. Dubay says that, "Melody and harmony lie at the border of the material and immaterial," which I was glad to read because I have always thought that music is the closest thing to spirit that we can experience with our senses.

AMDG

Who Celebrates?

We came across this passage in our reading of the Catechism this morning. It's in the section named Celebrating the Church's Liturgy and the subsection named Who Celebrates?

1136 Liturgy is an "action" of the whole Christ (Christus totus). Those who even now celebrate it without signs are already in the heavenly liturgy, where celebration is wholly communion and feast The celebrants of the heavenly liturgy

1137 The book of Revelation of St. John, read in the Church's liturgy, first reveals to us, "A throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne": "the Lord God." It then shows the Lamb, "standing, as though it had been slain": Christ crucified and risen, the one high priest of the true sanctuary, the same one "who offers and is offered, who gives and is given." Finally it presents "the river of the water of life . . . flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb," one of most beautiful symbols of the Holy Spirit. 

1138 "Recapitulated in Christ," these are the ones who take part in the service of the praise of God and the fulfillment of his plan: the heavenly powers, all creation (the four living beings), the servants of the Old and New Covenants (the twenty-four elders), the new People of God (the one hundred and forty-four thousand), especially the martyrs "slain for the word of God," and the all-holy Mother of God (the Woman), the Bride of the Lamb, and finally "a great multitude which no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes, and peoples and tongues." 

1139 It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the Church enable us to participate whenever we celebrate the mystery of salvation in the sacraments.

It reminded me of this.

Paul gave me the address of a website once where you can look at the entire Ghent Altarpiece magnified beautifully. Unfortunately, I've lost the address. Maybe if he looks in, he will tell us what it is.

UPDATE: Okay, my daughter gave me the link. Thanks, Lisa.

This is only the centerpiece of 5 panels, so more adorers are coming in from the right and left.

AMDG