Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming

Winter Rose becomes a Catholic, is freed from original sin and is filled with sanctifying grace.

AMDG

The Antepenultimate Stretch~We Hope

Last Sunday, we walked another 1.8 miles for a grand total of 11.1 miles. This is a good ways more than 2/3 of the way. I'm getting kind of excited. Sunday's walk was past the busiest area so far. Tessa walked with us again and we started here.

You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them. They will still be blurry, but it's a cheap phone, a shaky old photographer, and a overcast day.

This was on the northwest corner, across from us. JJ's Discount Appliances-Doors-Windows-Flooring-and something that looks like Lawns, but surely that can't be right. 

On the northwest corner, Rodgers Funeral Home with many tombstones in front.

When Tessa was little, we were on the way to Mass one Sunday and she said, "Oh, that's so sad. Look how many people have died in that house.

I've always thought I'd like to have this house and now it's for sale. 

Of course, it's on a US highway and across the street from this.

 If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've seen that horse before here.  

Here's a better picture of his friend. After eating Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, he didn't have much use for granny's mattress.

That was just outside the second largest town in Tate County.

That business on the left used to be a great restaurant called The Copper Kettle. When it became Dr. Ba-Ba-Barbeque, I meant to get a picture of it, but I never had time to stop.

Then we passed these.

Your tax dollars at work.

About here, we met with a pretty strong headwind, and walking got to be less of a lark and more of a challenge.

The yellow-brick, uh, grey concrete road begins.

The days' journey ends.

Where we hope to be later today if it doesn't rain.

Look promising?

AMDG

St. John of the Cross

Many people complain about Vatican II for many reasons. I, personally, have one big beef with the council which is that as a result of something or other they changed the calendar and they took away my Saint! Until I was 15 the feast of St. John of the Cross was on my birthday. I thought that this was great because Janet is a diminutive of John, so he was obviously supposed to be my patron saint. I can't say that I had a great devotion to him, or even knew much about him except that he had something to do with St. Theresa of Avila, but, still, he was my Saint. I'm not sure how long it took for me to notice that a change had been made, but I think I finally found out one day when I was at daily Mass and they were celebrating St. John's feast day on December 14. NO! How could this be? Well, there you have it. It is. So, while I usually follow the new calendar, on my birthday I follow the old and I'll celebrate today, too.

I still don't know a whole lot more about John of the Cross, except that his brother Carmelites didn't appreciate his reforming spirit and imprisoned him in a dark 6'x10' cell and beat him in public. St. John drew the picture above after he had a vision of the crucified Christ, and Wikipedia tells me that this was the inspiration for Salvador Dali's Christ of Saint John of the Cross. (I also found the details about his imprisonment there.)

I've read a bit of St. John's poetry and have always planned to read more, but somehow never have. This is a quote of his found in this morning's Office of Readings.

Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.

AMDG

Questions

Are we reed pipes? Is He waiting to live lyrically through us?
     Are we chalices? Does He ask to be sacrificed in us?
Are we nests? Does He desire of us a warm, sweet abiding in domestic life at home?

These are only come of the possible forms of virginity; each person may find some quite different form, his own secret.

Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God

The first two years I homeschooled my children, I didn't come up for air. I read some books about homeschooling, but there wasn't much out there and I didn't have the internet!!!! Of course, there wasn't anything to speak of on the internet anyway. I didn't meet many other homeschoolers, or spend any time with those I did meet. Then, I attended my first homeschool conference. The first night, I picked up a catalog from one of the vendors and stayed up a good part of the night reading that catalog, which was much more than a list of books. One article described seven different theories of homeschooling and their positive and negative aspects. When I read it, a light went on in my head--or maybe and explosion went off in my head. I realized that I had been using six of the seven methods. No wonder I was overwhelmed. So, I got it down to about three, and things were better after that--not that I was ever the world's best homeschooler.

When I read that article, I discovered a principle that helped in many areas of my life. I've made the same kind of mistakes with my prayer that I made with my teaching methods. In the past 40 years or so I've come across a lot beautiful prayers, a lot of wonderful ways to pray, a lot of inspiring saints that I would like to emulate, but try as I may, I can't do it all. Loading up my morning prayer with one great prayer after another is like trying to put a couple of dozen eggs into a pint basket. Things are going to break and get messy. Trying to work in too many different kinds of apostolates (not that I am one to put myself out much) is going to draw me away from my primary apostolate, which is my family.

Therefore, Miss Houselander's questions really help to simplify the jumble we can make of our lives. What is it that we are made of? What did God create each of us to be? A nest would make a lousy chalice. You can't make a warm, protective home in a reed. So she suggests that we occasionally step back and envision ourselves the way that we were when God created us, the shape that we had before we acquired all the things that clutter up our lives. Thankfully, the Church year sets aside times for us to do this.

Along with this discovery of who we are made to be individually, she adds this reminder of the purpose which underlies all of our lives.

     The purpose for which human beings are made is told to us briefly in the catechism. It is to know, love, and serve God in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.     This knowing, loving, and serving is far more intimate than that rather cold little sentence reveals to us.     The material which God has found apt for it is human nature: blood, flesh, bone, salt, water, will, intellect.     It is impossible to say too often or too strongly that human nature, body and soul together, is the material for God's will in us.

We're neither angels nor beasts. We must be constantly aware of the rift between our bodies and souls that robs us of the integrity we were originally intended to have. We're continually tempted to abandon one for the other and therefore cripple ourselves for the purpose for which we are created. It's when we surrender both body and soul to God to let Him knit the two together (and it's a sort of blasphemy that they should be two) that we can best begin to know, love, and serve Him.

AMDG

La Guadalupana

Am I not here, I who am your Mother?

Are you not under my shadow and protection?

Am I not the source of your Joy?

Are you not in the hollow of my mantle,

in the crossing of my arms?

Do you need something more?

Let nothing else worry you or disturb you.

I have loved Our Lady of Guadalupe ever since I was a little girl. I think that this is my favorite apparition. I especially love her words to Juan Diego quoted above. As I have gotten older, her image seems to have followed me everywhere I go. 

We're probably all familiar with the story of Juan Diego and the miraculous image, but early in my homeschooling years I found out something new that I thought was fascinating. I read it in a protestant text, The Light of Glory by Peter Marshall, and in relating the incident he didn't connect it to the apparition in any way. I later I confirmed the story by reading the log of Christopher Columbus's journeys to America. Marshall says that when Columbus was returning from his first voyage, he was caught in a great storm and was in great fear of sinking. Columbus gathered the crew for prayer. He took a bean for each member of the crew and marked one with a cross, and they promised the Blessed Mother that if she would save them from the storm, the man who drew the bean with the cross would make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Estradura. Columbus drew the bean. There were two other pilgrimages promised and two other drawings, and Columbus drew one of those, too. Then the storm ceased and, as we know, they returned home safely, and Columbus made his pilgrimage. This really struck me when I read it because it seems as if in a way Our Lady of Guadalupe was invited to the new world. This happened in 1493, 38 years before the apparitions. 

Last Sunday, something really nice happened in my PRE class. There were only three students there out of ten, and I talked to them a bit about the motherhood of Mary, and then read them a book about Our Lady of Guadalupe. Sometimes something happens in a classroom and you know that it something more than whatever you are doing. I could see those children, especially one of them, falling in love with Our Lady. After class, this one was waiting for his mother to pick him up, and he came in the cafeteria where we have a large image of the tilma, and he spent about five minutes just staring at it. This is what keeps me in the classroom.

Now that I attend a parish that is more than half Mexican, I've been immersed in a much more intense devotion to La Guadalupana. There will be Mass at my parish tonight, which unfortunately I won't be able to attend, and they will sing and sing and sing, and then they will eat, and eat, and eat. I've learned a lot of songs for the feast day. Here's a video with my two favorites. We sing the first one quite a bit faster, and have a bit of trouble following the melody.

AMDG

The Second Sunday of Advent~The Reed of God

EMPTINESS

That virginal quality which, for want of a better word, I call emptiness is the beginning of this contemplation.

It is not a formless emptiness, a void without meaning; on the contrary it has a shape, a form given to it by the purpose for which it is intended.

It is emptiness like the hollow in the reed, the narrow riftless emptiness which can have only one destiny: to receive the piper's breath and to utter the song that is in his heart.

It is emptiness like the hollow in the cup, shaped to receive water or wine.

It is emptiness like that of the bird's nest, built in a round warm ring to receive the little bird.

The pre-Advent emptiness of Our Lady's purposeful virginity was indeed like those three things.

She was a reed through which the Eternal Love was to be piped as a shepherd's song.          

She was the flowerlike chalice into which the purest water of humanity was to be poured, mingled with wine, changed to the crimson blood of love, and lifted up in sacrifice.

She was the warm nest rounded to the shape of humanity to receive the Divine Little Bird.

Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God

For the past seven months I had planned to write something about this passage on the first Sunday of Advent. When I took off all of Thanksgiving week, I thought surely I would find time to do it then, but I never did. Last Sunday came and went, and I just did not have time to sit down and write. Also, I wanted to take these pictures, but I just couldn't find the things I needed. So now it's past my bedtime on the second Sunday, and I have just barely begun. 

My week has been so very un-empty. I've only been home two nights out of the past eight. This is just not what I envisioned or wanted, and yet I think that all the things I've been doing have been important. It's really making me think and pray about just what is going on. And, as I mentioned briefly before, I'm wondering if what I'm supposed to be doing is learning something different about emptiness, about prayer and about Advent. I don't really think I've learned much yet, but I think I'm getting to the point where I can surrender my ideas about what is supposed to be happening. 

While I'm trying to wrap my mind around all this, I'm thinking that I might spread out what I planned to say about this passage in one post over a longer period of time. Of course, at this point I have no idea whether or not this is going to work out, but one way or another, you will find out in the next week or so.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I want to thank my husband Bill for really going beyond the call of duty to make these pictures possible. When the only bird nest I could find (Why I don't have an empty bird nest on my 10 acres, I don't know.) was in a tall crêpe myrtle at Walgreen's, he and the very tall, very kind manager retrieved it for me. Also, Bill went and chopped down some bamboo, which, unfortunately abounds on our 10 acres, and made the reed pipe.

AMDG