Really?

On the bulletin board at the seminary.

This doesn't require much comment, it really has it all: Mary, Psychological Investigation, the UCC, and the $10 (unless you are under 18). If you click on the picture, you should be able to read the flyer.

AMDG

Please pray for a special intention. Most specifically please pray for wisdom, and that if I have to make a decision, and I'm almost certain I will, I will make it based on the right criteria.

Thanks

AMDG

More Newman

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. 

 He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. 

 I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. 

 Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

St. John Henry Newman

What We Did in May

This weekend, our almost-eighteen-year-old granddaughter moved in with us, so, of course, we took her to the casino.

Now, I have never been to a casino before, but I've had a certain curiosity about them ever since they were built about 20 years ago, so when the opportunity arose, I went. It came about like this. The group of priests that serve our parish also serve 3 other parishes in north Mississippi, and about five years ago, they built a new church in the casino area. A friend of mine wanted to see the church, so she suggested we go to the vigil Mass there and then go eat at the buffet at the casino, so off we went.

I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of glitz at the casino we chose. I'm wondering why the name, Sam's Town isn't on the front of the building and I'm thinking maybe they are remodeling or something. The other casinos were much fancier. Basically, what we have here is miles and miles of empty fields with casinos plunked down in the middle of them near the river. It's very odd.

So, Mass is always good, and the company was good, and the food was good enough. I wanted to go into the casino itself just to see what it was like, and I have to say that had Dante been with me, he would have gone home and burnt the Inferno and been ashamed that he did such a sorry job of envisioning Hell. I've decided for sure that if I decide to acquire a new addiction, I'm going to pick something quiet and solitary like drinking.

When Bill's father visited Memphis for the first time, he wanted to see the Mississippi. We drove down to the river, and got out of the car, and walked a bit down to the river. He took one look at the river and said, "Well, I've seen it," turned around, and walked back to the car. That's about how I feel about the casino.

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Here is a picture of my birthday present.

My birthday was in November, but as you can see, that pole is pretty high, and we had to wait until a friend with a tall ladder could come help Bill put it up (help = do the entire job himself). He is also much younger than we are and more adept at climbing tall ladders with large, heavy items. 

There had been another birdhouse like this one (This is a purple martin house.) on top of that pole before we owned the house, but by the time we got here only the front and sides were left, and I have always wanted to get a new one. This one was made by the son of a friend in what used to be my homeschool support group. I don't know if there will ever be any birds in it--there certainly won't be any this year--but I am happy just to look at it.

This is a purple martin. I've never seen one in my yard, but I see them occasionally in the hedgerows when I'm driving around.

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And speaking of birthday presents, here is something that you just might like to get for your birthday.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I can't think of anything nicer than lying down at night and snuggling up to something that shoots light into your eyeball all night long. It's almost like . . . well . . . sleeping in a casino! It says, "As seen on TV" on the box, so maybe you have all seen them before, but we don't watch TV for some reason. 

AMDG

Love is Obedience

It's odd, but this time what I went through was a double thing, two strands twisted together of black and gold. There was the bad thing, fear and darkness pressing in, and there was the glad singing of love, the "Yes I will" that is my song. I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can't, and you hate yourself because you can't, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God's help you can command your will when you can't command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn't appear to agree with us.

The Scent of Water, Elizabeth Goudge

AMDG

Obliquity

From Invisible Light: A Priest's Encounters with the Supernatural by Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson

"You see the iron gate," the old man went on, pointing. "Well, right between those posts, but a little above them, outlined clearly against the chestnut tree, beyond, was the figure of a man. 

"Now I do not know how to explain myself, but I was conscious that across this material world of light and colour there cut a plane of the spiritual world, and that where the planes crossed I could look through and see what was beyond. It was like smoke cutting across a sunbeam. Each made the other visible. 

"Well, this figure of a man, then, was kneeling in the air, that is the only way I can describe it--his face was turned towards me, but upwards. Now the most curious thing that struck me at the time was that he was, as it were, leaning at a sharp angle to one side; but it did not appear to be grotesque. Instead the world seemed tilted; the chestnut tree was out of the perpendicular, the wall out of the horizontal. The true level was that of the man. 

"I know this sounds foolish, but it showed me how the world of spirits was the real world, and the world of sense comparatively unreal, just as the sorrow of the woman behind me was more real than the beams overhead."

I just finished reading this book and really enjoyed it, but the reason I posted this quote is that it struck me as being very familiar. Anyone who has ever read C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet (and I think it's also mentioned in Perelandra), will recognize this vision of a being that seems to be oblique to the world, yet reveals its own position as the normal one while the natural world is tilted, as being exactly like Lewis's description of the eldila, the angels of his space trilogy. So is this a coincidence? Did Benson and Lewis both have this idea of the supernatural as being at an angle to our world? 

Lewis was about three years old when Invisible Light was written, and Benson was a very popular author. Lewis's father had books stacked up in piles all over the place, and Lewis was allowed to read whatever he pleased without supervision. It isn't at all unlikely that Lewis had read Benson's book, and Lewis wasn't shy about borrowing from other authors. If you think I'm wrong, read The Aunt and Amabel which you can find in a collection of stories by E. Nesbit called The Magic World.

AMDG