Jacob's Ladder

Liu Xiaobo

2010-12-11T11:30:00.001-09:00

Liu Xiaobo is serving his fourth prison sentence for the non-violent expression of his conscientiously held beliefs in free expression, democracy and government accountability. He is the author of Charter O8, which calls on the Chinese government to move towards democratic freedoms and to end the repression of citizens with dissenting viewpoints.

On December 10th, 2010 in Oslo, Norway, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia.

Below is the preamble to Charter O8.

This year is the 100th year of China's Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A "modernization" bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a "modernization" under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.^[8]

Gipta

2010-12-07T22:15:00.001-09:00

A poem I wrote last Saturday.

Gipta
gipta (Old Norse) n. good fortune, grace, blessing

1.
from my window
I see only
the white of the snow
the darkening afternoon sky
the subtle infinite grays of winter

inside
within the narrow burrow
of warmth and light
my fingers are dirt-stained
repotting root-bound plants

I bury the tangled skein
of white tendrils in moist earth

I am warmed by the good green
gift of mute leaves
pulsing with incarnate sun.

2.
in 1125
Einar Sokkason
still fragrant with
the golden oil of baptism
set sail from Greenland to Norway
with a live polar bear
in the hold of his ship
a christening present
for the king.

the great white bear
(no easy feat to capture or confine)
roared from below the deck
blinded by the glare
of never-ending summer sun
flashing through
the gaps in the decking

soothed by the long shadow
of a towering iceberg
that drifted close
on that frigid sea.

3.
the chronicler said no-more
except that Einar Sokkason
sailed home
the next spring
with bales of wool cloth
steel axeheads rope salt
and a new bishop.

about his gift
to King Signud Jorsalfari
nothing more is known.

perhaps some winter night
the white bear
pacing the stockade
of the royal menagerie
forced open a gap
in the rough-cut fence
and escaped.

hidden
by snow and darkness
invisible
except for huge paw prints
soon drifted over
one day perhaps
it reached the edge
of the frozen ocean.

4.
adrift in the open boat
of each passing year
clinging to the surface
of this blue-green orb
holding on to the gipta
of another season
my heart beating as fiercely
as that white bear's
pulsing in this blessed moment
with grace and life
I rejoice
that even when I am
white ashes or black earth
I will not return
to the green land
empty-handed.

December 4, 2010

My Privilege is to Have No Privilege (continued)

2010-12-05T14:38:00.004-09:00

My Privilege is to Have No Privilege
   The sign of how much I love God
   is how much I love those I love the least.
   Dorothy Day
even in heaven
hers was a minority viewpoint

she knew her Dante --
that to contemplate
the just punishment
of the wicked in hell
adds to the joy of the blessed

not her idea of paradise.

so without fanfare
Dorothy Day,
(joined by the usual suspects)
quietly moved into a slum neighborhood
in the infernal regions
rented a rundown storefront
taped a sign in the broken window
'House of Hospitality'.

She passed out the (inevitable) penny newspaper
to any of the demon-harried evildoers who would take one
walked a daily picket line
protested stiffling heat insatiable thirst
bad working conditions
eternal torment

worked the soup-line
listened patiently to the piteous groans of the damned
poured endless cups of coffee
scrounged cookies and day-old bagels
from a disapproving archangel.

she was last sighted
in the crowded dining room
hunched over a table
showing a weeping Francisco Franco
photos of his grandchildren.

December 5, 2010

More on the American Martyrs of El Salvador

2010-12-03T11:05:00.000-09:00

Colleagues recall commitment of churchwomen slain in El Salvador
By Laura Dodson

Catholic News Service

MELBOURNE, Fla. (CNS) -- Dec. 2 marks the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, lay missionary Jean Donovan and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, the four churchwomen of El Salvador who were savagely brutalized and killed for spreading the good news and teaching people to read and pray.
"I can't say this to anybody because they wouldn't understand," Sister Dorothy wrote to her former missionary partner, Sister Martha Owen, in October 1980. "I want you to explain why I have to stay."

El Salvador was experiencing civil unrest, repeated military coups and finally civil war. Amid the death squads and countless disappearances, the four churchwomen attempted to bring life to the communities they served.

"Dorothy had a true and genuine concern for people," Sister Martha said. "She was always open to both sides of an issue -- trying to bring light, not heat, to the issue. The preferential option for the poor was in her heart even before we went. She felt the needs of the poor so deeply within herself that she identified with them. She was willing to sacrifice anything. She offered herself for the violence to stop."

Sister Martha had shared a one-room hut with Donovan.

"Jean had a call there and tried to follow that," she said. "She was easy to be around. She was involved with the young people and totally committed to the kids. Jean was everybody's sister and daughter and maybe God had exactly that in mind."

Maryknoll Sister Margaret Dillon recalled the decisive moment in the lives of fellow Sisters Maura and Ita. During a retreat in Nicaragua of U.S. religious at Thanksgiving, Sister Maura, who had been working in Chile, discerned, "God wants me to be in El Salvador," and then turned to Sister Ita, who had experienced several months of the unrest there, and said, "We will go back together."

Father Gregory Chisholm, a Canadian missionary serving in Pucallpa, Peru, was a member of a delegation of six who flew into the San Salvador airport that fateful December day and was greeted by Sister Dorothy and Donovan, who were awaiting the arrival of Sisters Maura and Ita.

"They were very nervous," Father Chisholm said. "They told me to go with the Canadians because the situation was 'very tense.' Dorothy said, 'Pray for us.' We got into a minibus -- the same vehicle in every detail as the sisters'. Out of a ditch came military guys who stopped us and when we said we were there for the bishop, they started cursing us.

"We told them, 'We're Canadians!' and they told us, 'Get out of here,'" the priest recalled. "We learned that 45 minutes later, they stopped and killed the nuns. On our return trip to the airport, we passed by their burnt-out minibus."

"Sister Dorothy was my mission partner in 1974," Sister Martha said. "We went down together to study the language. We were raising the consciousness level of the poor and middle class -- bringing them an understanding of their dignity and their rights.

"We taught the people how to say their name in public. They were so frightened they wouldn't look at you," she continued. "We made the people catechists -- teaching first Communion classes, Liturgy of the Word sessions, they distributed Communion and developed lay leadership."

"Once war broke out, the catechists were seen as an underground guerilla movement," she added. "There was a disconnect totally between a better economic situation and being committed to the poor. Faith does have consequences in the real world."

The sisters helped the poor to find food and build shelter. They also taught the farmers about runoff and implemented health care programs. The people distributed food, which became a form of leadership development that gave a sense of dignity and self-worth.

"Teaching people to read, teaching people to think, gives them a tool to further develop their sense of consciousness and depth of prayer," Sister Margaret said. "They can read the Bible and know their dignity. It became good for the folks, but subversive to the powers that be."

"The greater sense was the service we could provide -- whatever that might be -- not living in harm's way, but for something. We weren't fighting against the government but for the church and God's reign of peace, justice and love," she said. "It's a life wish."

Sisters Dorothy, Maura and Ita and lay missionary Donovan are remembered every year in the little towns where they served and at the chapel built at the site where their bodies were found. Fellow sisters planned to travel to El Salvador to be with those honoring their lives Dec. 2.

Presente!

2010-12-02T08:18:00.002-09:00

Today is the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of four American pastoral workers in El Salvador. I remember with gratitude Sr.Ita Ford MM, Sr.Maura Clarke MM, Sr.Dorothy Kazel OSU and Jean Donovan.

I wrote the poem (below) twenty years ago while in El Salvador with a delegation from St.Joseph's Parish in Seattle.

At the Checkpoint
for Ita Ford and Maura Clarke

We stand by your graves, dear sisters,
while a soldier checks our papers
and a policeman circles our truck
thumb on the safety of his M-16.

The girls riding with us
squat on gunny sacks of potatoes
and sing of the blue sky,
of the 'sombrero azul Salvadoreno'
blue, like the shirts of the police,
blue, like the little village of tombs and crosses
where the army blocks the road
leading out of Chaltenango.

Our blue sky
was black night for you, dear sisters,
at the checkpoint where you stood
before other soldiers.
The stars,
like grace or truth or life itself
blazed overhead
as the light left your eyes
and you were flung
into the pit.

Beloved sisters, dead these ten years
the blue of your eyes
bright as tears at a wake
or a wedding
are the sheltering sky
the 'sombrero azul'
stretched over us this morning.

Chalatenango, El Salvador
August 1990

My Privilege is to Have No Privilege

2010-11-29T22:11:00.000-09:00

Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Dorothy Day. I am grateful for her unceasing opposition to war and the fear and the lies that make war possible; for her daily commitment to the poor and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and for her luminous and humble faith in Jesus Christ.

May the Church that she served with such dedication and loved with such devotion, soon raise this holy woman to the altars as a canonized saint.

All you holy men and women, pray for us!

The Consolation of Beauty

2010-11-03T12:23:00.001-08:00

In the midst the noise and clamor of elections, political conflict and contention and wars and rumors of war, I'm thinking this morning of Paolo Veronese's painting, 'The Wedding Feast of Cana'. Not of the entire painting -- it's a world too large to take in except in person standing before it, but a little detail, of a group of musicians playing their instruments. There they are, silent, of course, in the painting, doing what is at once the more enduring and the most transitory of human activities, making music.

Each note calls the listener to be in the present moment, which is the very threshold of eternity itself. Looking at that little band of musicians I am reminded of the consolation of beauty, however transient, and of the humble witness of countless artists (most of whom are anonymous) to the necessity of grace and beauty in all of our lives.

Father, Forgive Them

2010-11-01T12:09:00.003-08:00

Terrible news this morning from Baghdad. Yesterday, Islamic fanatics forced their way into the Syrian Catholic church of Our Lady of Deliverance during the Divine Liturgy. They murdered the celebrant, took the congregation hostage and apparently began to shoot into the crowd. When the police and army stormed the church, the gunmen reportedly threw grenades and set-off explosives. Over 50 people were reportedly killed, including two priests and another 75 were wounded.

On this All Saints Day, I recall with gratitude the anonymous martyrs of Our Lady of Deliverance and their pastors. While it is difficult to imagine a situation in which simply going to church on Sunday is an act of heroic virtue, that is exactly what these martyrs did yesterday. Martyr comes from the Greek word for witness, and these anonymous men and women (and children) were witnesses to the seemingly impossible truth that love is stronger than hate, that good can overcome evil, that violence does not have the last word and that life has triumphed over death in Christ Jesus.

That is the meaning of the cross that is so prominently displayed over the entrance to the church; that is the meaning of the eucharist they gathered to celebrate. Despite all the attempts (even by Christians who should know better) to make Jesus into just another tribal deity, his eucharist is the place where we remember that true religion calls us to life with each other, to forgiveness and reconciliation, to peace, even when confronted with the reality of mindless, brutal violence.

The eucharist was only interrupted yesterday, not ended. It will continue to be offered at Our Lady of Deliverance church and everywhere that the followers of Jesus gather in his Name. The eucharist that was so cruelly interrupted yesterday was offered not only for Christians but for all people, everywhere. It was offered even for the enemies that Jesus commands us to love. Hanging on the cross, Jesus looked out at those who were putting him to death and he prayed, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."

Let us who are able, continue to celebrate the Divine Liturgy together and remember in prayer and solidarity the hard pressed and persecuted Christians of Iraq; their Shia and Sunni neighbors who suffer deadly, senseless attacks daily and all who suffer violence and persecution. Let us eat and drink the bread and wine of peace in Christ's Body and Blood and refuse to dine at the table of hatred and fear and revenge. And strengthened by the Body broken and the Blood poured out for all, may we find the compassion to pray for the conversion of our misguided brothers who kill and destroy in the name of God.

Gracias a la Vida (again)

2010-10-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago in the Sunday gospel reading, Jesus healed ten lepers. Only one of them, a Samaritan, returned to thank him. Fr.Thomas Weise (our former pastor -- recently reassigned to Petersburg, Alaska) preached on the importance of gratitude and his own spiritual practice of keeping a journal in which he jots down what he is grateful for at the end of each day. Since then I've been trying to be intentional about being grateful to God for the major and minor gifts and blessings that I receive from his hands daily.

It is so easy for me to overlook the obvious -- what a gift it is to be in this season and this place. So this night I am grateful for the new snow on the mountains that I can see from my window, for the sound of the waterfall across the channel, for the cold, clear night and the brilliance of a full moon and a sky crowded with stars.

An End and A Beginning

2010-08-24T10:14:00.002-08:00

Its usually difficult for me to remember where I was or what I was doing twenty years ago. However, on this day in 1990 I celebrated the feast of St.Bartholomew (San Bartolome) apostle and martyr, in Arcatao, El Salvador. Or rather, I managed to arrive for the last twenty minutes or so of Mass after a five hour walk from San Jose Los Flores to Arcatao. Our delegation, from St.Joseph's in Seattle, caught a ride in Chaltenango (which was under government control) and crossed the lines into the contested zone just before dawn. Our ride dropped us off in San Jose and we began walking the remaining seven miles as the sun came up.

San Bartolome was (and remains) the patron saint of the Catholic parish in Arcatao and on his feast day, Bishop Alles and the Jesuits who served the people in rural Chalatenango province had gathered to celebrate the feast day, even in the midst of the civil war in El Salvador (which, thanks be to God, was in its final year, but no-one realized that at the time.) Just as the streets of Chalatenango were crowded with government soldiers, the plaza of Arcatao was filled with rebel fighters who had come in out of the countryside to take part in the fiesta.

At the time the village (like most of the villages and hamlets in the war zone) had been badly damaged by ten years of war. We passed through entire villages that had been burned and abandoned. In the villages that had been resettled by refugees (like Arcatao) many houses were still empty. Some had been overgrown by by the tropical vegetation. Many were still missing parts of their roofs that had been destroyed by morter or artillery fire. We saw too many children and young people who were missing limbs and getting around on crutches, who had lost limbs to the landmines that had been sown by the rebels along the sides of roads and on forest trails to intimidate and demoralize the government soldiers.

Pax Christi this morning brought this poem to my attention.

The End and the Beginning
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded the corpses
can get by.

Someone has to trudge
through the sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who’ll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds

What's Impossible to Ignore

2010-08-18T23:04:00.000-08:00

Today is the funeral in Anchorage of Senator Ted Stevens, who died tragically last week in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska, along with four other passengers. The senator is rightly remembered with gratitude by Alaskans for his unflagging dedication to what he understood to be the best interests of our state and nation. Even the public radio system was championed by Stevens in the scramble for federal funding, despite the oftentimes critical scrutiny that public radio gave to the senator's political positions and conduct during his years of public service.

The one and only time I ever met Senator Stevens was on February 25th, 1985. To be precise, we didn't actually meet one-on-one as I was one of about fifty people protesting his support of the US backed wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatamala. He was hosting a legislative reception at the Alaska State Museum -- we had a picket line set up in front of the museum urging people to boycott the reception. This is what we said to the press that day:

Alaskans for Peace in Nicaragua and Central America are protesting Senator Ted Steven's support for the Administration's Central America policy at the State Museum, where the Senator will be hosting a reception for legislators.

We have chosen the Museum reception because his presence in the State Museum makes a mockery of the values a museum exists to uphold.

A museum upholds artistic expression -- Senator Steven's supports brutal regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala that kill and torture artists, poets, writers and journalists.
A museum preserves and values culture, especially Native and minority culture. Senator Stevens supports military aid to the Guatemalan army, which, since 1979 has massacred 15,000 Native people and destroyed over 600 Indian villages, in what has been described by human rights agencies as "the ongoing genocide of the Indian people of Guatemala".
A museum hosts men and women of integrity, compassion and vision -- Senator Stevens has hosted [on Capital Hill] Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, the extreme right wing ARENA party leader who has been linked to the assasination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and death squad killings in El Salvador.
A museum promotes understanding and dialogue between diverse peoples and nations -- Senator Stevens has consistantly supported the undeclared war being waged by the United States against the people of Nicaragua and the killers and torturers of Somoza's National Guard, the 'contras'. On February 28th, he will join the Administration in attempting to persuade Congress to restore military aid to the 'contras' and keep the undeclared war going.

For all of these reasons, it is inappropraite for Senator Stevens to appear as a host at the State Museum and we are called upon to register our protest.

When I remember Senator Stevens today, I know that I'm supposed to join in applauding his many (and genuine) achievements for the state of Alaska and its people. But its impossible to ignore his unwavering and unapologetic support for some of the most heinous human rights violators in the hemisphere and I can't forget the hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans who were murdered and tortured by soldiers and police trained and equipped and paid for by our government in the 1970's and 1980's. Too many of our representatives (including Senator Stevens) voted again and again to fund years and years of death and destruction in Central America.

Gaudium et Spes Revisited

2010-08-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

(This is an expanded version of what I wrote on July 25th )

If I’m granted the health (and the time), I hope someday to make the pilgrimage to the shrine of St.James in Santiago de Compostela in

Spain

. This ancient pilgrimage, often referred to simply as the ‘Camino’ (literally, ‘the road’) has as its destination the city of Santiago de Compostela. The shrine built over the grave of St.James the Apostle is the goal and destination of the pilgrimage and for over a thousand years, Christians from all over Europe have made pilgrimage to this church and city on the very far northwestern corner of

Spain

Although I haven’t yet walked the Camino, last month I walked along another kind of camino, not in

Spain

, but here in Juneau. My part in that pilgrimage began just after noon on a Saturday that I was spending at home. A neighbor and I had spent the morning cutting and stacking firewood (in the rain, of course, this being Southeast Alaska). We knocked off at noon and I invited him in for a cup of tea. I had just changed into dry clothes and was putting the kettle on the stove when the phone rang. I picked up the phone to learn the terrible news that our young friend, Daniel Melville, only 18, had been killed the night before in a car wreck about a mile from the Shrine of St.Therese. I literally dropped everything, made my brief apologies to my neighbor and left immediately.

And so, as all of us have done, if we are old enough, I set off, without any preparation or planning, to accompany my friends in person and in prayer on their own particular camino of grief and sorrow, of absence and tears, of deep mystery and silence.

As I was driving out to their house, it struck me how solid and permanent the channel and the mountains on either side of it appeared in comparison to our short lives as human beings. Which is true enough, but then I recalled too that the mountains and even the continents themselves are pilgrims, moving on their own long camino through time and space. By comparison, our camino is so brief, yet what a blessing it is, this life that God has given us and those with whom we share our lives.

We make pilgrimages such as the one to Santiago de Compostela, as an embodied reminder that each of us is walking along the camino that the Lord has called us to. As a Christian I believe that the camino, if we remain faithful to that journey, leads to the compostela, to the 'field of stars', which is an image and sign of that eternal communion with God and with each other that is the goal and destination of our earthly pilgrimage.

It is easy to believe that this life that we have been given is permanent and fixed but nothing could be farther from the truth. As pilgrims on the camino, our lives are provisional: none of us knows when and where and how we will arrive and enter the 'compostela' forever. Our awareness of how fragile and provisional our hold on this life is could lead to cynicism and harden us against joy in the gift of life that has been given us, but that is always counterfit consolation and a false road. Yet we must not be complacent either: everything passes away. For that reason, I so appreciate the truth of this poem by the Polish poet Stansław Baranczak.

If Porcelain, Then Only the Kind

If porcelain, then only the kind
you won't miss under the shoe of a mover or the tread of a tank;
if a chair, then one not too comfortable, lest
there be regret in getting up and leaving;
if clothing, then just so much as can fit in a suitcase,
if books, then those which can be carried in the memory,

if plans, then those which can be overlooked
when the time comes for the next move
to another street, continent, historical period
or world:

who told you that you were permitted to settle in?
who told you that this or that would last forever?
did no one ever tell you that you will never
in the world
feel at home in the world.
From Postwar Polish Poetry, Selected and Edited by Czesalw Milosz, University of California Press, 3rd Edition, 1983

I love this poem because it is a reminder that as a pilgrims on this earth I must strive to travel light, be ready to make other plans, make other arrangements, because I am only a sojourner here. For me as a pilgrim, the central questions of my life are these: how do I let go of my possessions and what possesses me? How do I confess my sins? Forgive those who have injured me? Make peace, even with my enemies? How do I strive to be the friend of each person I meet along the way, so that we might all reach the 'compostela' together ?

I’m grateful to have been able to walk alongside my friends Ken and Beth, Catherine, Sam, Henry and Tom during these days. The days since Daniel’s death have been filled with much sadness, but so much love as well. And because even our imperfect love roots us in God, who is Love, even in sorrow and grief, I believe that our pilgrimage is one of hope and even joy.

In faith and confidence, I look forward to that day when we will all reach the ‘compostela’ and be together once again with Daniel and all of our dear ones forever.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

Overpowered By Memory

2010-08-03T20:27:00.000-08:00

This last week has been a very sad one as we have mourned the death of the young son of dear friends. I found myself on Saturday reflecting on the idea that grief and loss can be an occasion that brings human beings together (even as it can be an occasion of anger and division). Which brought to mind the unexpected encounter at the very end of the Illiad between Achilles and Priam. Or rather, I remembered a red figure Greek vase with that scene painted on it. So I sat down and slowly re-read Book 24. What struck me was the tenuous but genuine solidiarity in grief between these two enemies, and how a shared grief might be the starting place of at least a truce and perhaps even reconciliation and peace. (Although in the case of Greeks and the Trojans the war continued to its awful conclusion.)

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before --
I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.

Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire
to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand
he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory
both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,
and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.
Translation by Robert Fagles

St. Martha, pray for us!

2010-07-29T16:45:00.001-08:00

Today is the memorial of St.Martha. We encounter Martha and her sister Mary three times in the gospels. Once, when Jesus comes to visit Martha and Mary in their home in Bethany. A second time when their brother Lazarus has died. And a third time at the empty tomb. (In the Eastern Church tradition Martha and Mary are included among the myrrhbearing women who came to anoint the body of Jesus and discover that Jesus has been raised from the dead.)

In John’s gospel we encounter Martha at the tomb of Lazarus. She runs to meet Jesus and is not afraid to speak bluntly to him.

“Lord, if you had been her my brother would not have died. Even now I know that God will grant you whatever you ask of him.”

Jesus assures her that her brother will rise again and Martha replies:

“Yes, I know that he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.”

It is then that Jesus tells her “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever has faith in me shall live, even though he dies, and no-one who lives and has faith in me shall ever die. Do you believe this?” Martha replies:

“I do, Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who was to come into the world.”

At the tomb Jesus commands, “Take away the stone!” And Martha, ever practical, warns Jesus, “Sir, by now there will be a stench; he has been in there for four days.”

But stench or not, they remove the stone and Martha received back her brother, still bound up in the grave clothes.

In Luke’s gospel we encounter Martha offering Jesus hospitality and asking Jesus to tell her sister Mary to help her with the serving. Jesus gently reminds her that one thing is necessary, to be present to him and that her sister Mary has chosen the better part. St.Augustine, commenting on this incident points out that each sister chooses to be present to Christ: Mary by be attentive to him in contemplation and Martha in loving service and hospitality. He notes that while contemplation is truly the better part (after all, we will spend eternity contemplating the divine mystery revealed to us in Christ), we have only this life time to welcome Jesus in our hospitality to the poor and stranger.

Dorothy Day said: "If everyone were holy and handsome, it would be easy to see Christ in everyone. But it was not Christ's way for himself. Ask honestly what you would do when a beggar asked at your house for food. Would you give it on an old cracked plate, thinking that was good enough? Do you think that Martha and Mary thought that the old and chipped dish was good enough for their guest? It is not a duty to help Christ -- it is a privilege."

But for me, even more significant than receiving Jesus as a guest is knowing him as a friend. In the gospel of John the evangelist wrote: "Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus." Martha was a friend of Jesus, and Jesus loved her. He enjoyed being with Martha and her sister and brother. They spoke to each other frankly as friends do. They laughed together and cried together. Somehow, in Jesus, the Word through whom everything that is came into being, wants to be friends, not only with Martha, but with each of us.

St. Martha, pray for us.

Let Everything That Breathes Give Praise to the Lord

2010-07-27T16:42:00.001-08:00

"Shade and Darkness" by William Turner

I know its completely unreasonable to expect the weather to match my ups and downs but I'd feel better if was raining today. And not a pleasant, warm, joyful summer rain but something more suited for October or November, a steady, cold rain on a dark and gloomy afternoon. Something properly Turneresque, as sad and melancholy as my mood since Saturday. Instead, inevitably, the sun has come out, the sky is blue and the puffy white clouds are drifting south past my window.

I am, churlishly no doubt, singularly ungrateful for this lovely day.

Fortunately for us all (and for my salvation) the world does not exist to indulge my wants and desires (churlish or otherwise). Instead, I have been graciously planted here to learn how to be a singularly grateful person. During these days of such sadness for my friends and their heartbreaking loss, I've been praying the Office of the Dead, morning and evening, rain or shine. Remarkably, (considering my inner disposition), I have found myself receiving solace, not where I would expect to encounter it, in Psalm 130 (De Profundis) but in Psalm 150, (which is the very antithesis of how I am feeling). It is the final psalm of morning prayer from that Office (which is, as it would happen, is also the final psalm of the psalter itself).

Praise God in his holy place,

praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his powerful deeds,

praise his surpassing greatness.

O praise him with sound of trumpet,

praise him with lute and harp.

Praise him with timbrel and drance,

praise him with strings and pipes.

O praise him with resounding cymbals,

praise him with clashing of cymbals,

Let everything that lives and that breathes

give praise to the Lord.

Sts.Joachim and Anna, pray for us

2010-07-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

God of our fathers, you gave Saints Joachim and Anna the privilege of being the parents of Mary, the mother of your incarnate Son. May their prayers help us to attain the salvation you have promised to your people.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Memory Eternal

2010-07-24T22:08:00.003-08:00

I learned early this afternoon of the accidental death sometime yesterday evening of Daniel M., the youngest son of our dear friends Ken and Beth M., their daughter Catherine and sons Sam and Henry.

There are never any words sufficient to such a day, but yet I believe that the love that unites us and binds us together will never pass away and that the Love that has brought each of us into being holds him still in a life which is changed, but not ended.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord.
And let perpetual light shine upon him.

May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Cultivating the Garden of the Heart ( With a Chain Saw)

2010-07-23T06:54:00.003-08:00

I love this little wood engraving by Ade Bethune that she entitled "Cultivating the Garden of the Heart". Peaceful, bucolic even, with a gardener gently planting a bed of flowers.

But I think that's more towards the end rather than at the beginning of the cultivation process, actual or spiritual. Before anything much resembling a garden, in the lower yard or the heart takes shape, lot has to happen first, which might involve chainsaws.

I'd never connected chainsaws to growth in the spiritual life but I do now after five hours of cutting and hauling last evening. They are loud, crude and dangerous tools but they get the job done. We have (or had) a stand of mountain ash trees up against the house that the arborist informed us had to go away because some big sections of the trees threatened to break offi on a windy day. And relevant to the community garden which is evolving in our lower yard, the trees block out a lot of available light (which on our little island of Douglas is at a premium anyway.) Lovely old trees that we have come to cherish. But its a quick and surprisingly easy decision to take out a beloved stand of trees when absolutely necessary.

All of which suggests that determination, (and ruthlessness) are a necessary dimension of the spiritual life as well. I recall a certain first century rabbi in Palestine recommending to his disciples, "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!" and so forth.

It's amazing how quickly a crew of guys with chainsaws can take down a stand of trees that were blocking the sunlight from reaching the community garden. Would that I could cut away so easily those attachments and habits that keep the garden of my heart shaded and dark..

,

How Much Trouble Can You Get Into in a Garden?

2010-07-22T16:36:00.000-08:00

In about an hour a group of folks from the Douglas Community Garden are going to show up at our house with chain saws to cut down the mountain ash trees that grow alongside our house (they shade the up and coming garden and the arborist has warned us that the trees are simply waiting for the opportunity to break in a windstorm and come crashing through the roof of the house. So they have to go, I'm sad to report.

The good news is that the lower yard of our house is becoming a community garden. I like to think that would somehow please Dorothy Day, departed this life almost thirty years ago. And she would appreciate the comment made by one of the community gardeners, during a discussion about the need for organizational structure: ' It's just a garden. I mean, how much trouble can you get into in a garden?'

St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

2010-07-22T15:52:00.000-08:00

I think that in order to understand who St.Mary Magdalene is and what she teaches us about Christian discipleship, it is necessary to understand who she isn't. For almost a thousand years of our history, Christians in Europe believed that MaryMagdalene was a repentant prostitute, so much so that her name became associated with prostitution. More recently, the authors of the novels the Last Temptation of Christ

and the Da Vinci Code, speculated (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the gospels) that she was married to Jesus.

I think that Mary Magdalene’s actual significance for Christians is two-fold. She, along with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the other women, stood at the foot of cross during the passion and death of the Lord. In the gospel of John she is the first witness to the resurrection, and is the person sent to announce the good news of the resurrection to the apostles.

We see this in the iconography of the first 1300 years of Christian art.

Mary is shown at the foot of the cross, lamenting with the other women over the dead Christ,

with the myrrhbearing women at the tomb of Christ,

and in her unique encounter with the Risen Lord in the early morning on Easter Sunday.

She was depicted holding her jar of ointment with which to anoint the body of Jesus,

or with a red egg, a symbol of the resurrection in the Christian east.

In the middle ages, the Crusaders brought back to Western European eastern devotion to another Mary, St.Mary of Egypt, a repentant prostitute of the th century who lived a life of austerity and penance

in the Judean desert. She was depicted clothed in her own hair, oftentimes holding a rough cross, often in tears. By the time of the Renaissance and her story and her image were superimposed on that ofMary Magadalene, who was reimagined as the repentant prostitute.

What does she mean for us? In the Christian East, Mary is called “Apostle to the Apostles”, that is to say, she was sent (apostle means “one who is sent”) to announce the Good News of the resurrection of Jesus

to the apostles. She arrived, in stages, at belief that the Lord, who had been dead, was now alive. The first stage was when she came upon the empty tomb and ran off to announce to Simon Peter and the beloved disciple that the tomb was empty --- not yet believing that the Lord was risen but that someone,had removed the Lord’s body and hidden it.

Grieving the disappearance of the Lord's body, she returned to the empty tomb to weep there. Something prompted her to looked inside again, where she encountered the two angels, who asked her, "Why are you weeping?" She then met Jesus who she confused with the gardener. He too asked her, " Why are you weeping?

Mary was literally surrounded by evidence of the resurrection but she was still at the threshold of faith in the Risen Lord.

Which is perfectly understandable, at least from my own experience. The signs of the saving death and life-giving resurrection of Jesus are in front of me at every moment, yet I struggle with disappointment and discouragement and go back to weep at the empty tomb, wondering where Jesus has been hidden and where I might be able to find him. In those times in my life I need to hear the Lord speak my name. I need to listen for his voice like Mary so that I can believe and proclaim the Good News that the Lord is alive and in our midst.

St.Photini - pray for us!

2010-03-05T23:42:00.001-09:00

The third week of Lent begins on Sunday. In the East, this will be the Sunday of the Cross, in the West, the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman (at least in those parishes with elect preparing for baptism.) I love the readings for the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays of Lent that are taken from John's gospel: The Woman at the Well; The Man Born Blind and the Raising of Lazarus.

Although each of the stories are so familiar they are mysterious and very challenging spiritually. I especially love how Jesus begins his transforming dialogue with St.Photini (the Samaritan Woman) by saying to her, "Give me a drink." The Fathers (especially St.Augustine) see in that request the thirst that God has for us. He is thirsty for our faith. Staggering, isn't it? Jesus wants a drink of the water from my well! Its not all that abundant, its brackish and murky, and mixed with all the debris that's fallen in over the years(just like my faith), but He's thirsty for it anyway.

Reading St.Augustine's commentary on why Jesus told her to summon her husband was a great discovery too. Profound mystagogue that he is, St.Augustine tells us that by summoning her husband, he was telling her, in effect, go get your master. (Yes,certainly an unequal and sexist model of marriage, but St.Augustine believes that Jesus has an important point to make to her and to us.)

I have no husband/master she replied, and Jesus told, that's right, you have not one husband, but five! That is, St.Augustine explains, her true master were her five senses. Of course, St.Photini (lit. enlightened) is not simply a historical figure (although, despite the allegorical name that tradition gives her, there is no inherent reason why she couldn't be) but she also represents all of the elect on their way to baptism as well as the baptized who are the Church.

Jesus, at the well, (the place in the Old Testament where so many marriages were contracted) wants to be her husband/master instead of her senses. Its humbling to consider of how much my likes and dislikes [sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch that I either attract me (or disgust me) ] stand in the way of my ability to love my neighbor (and so demonstrate my love for God.)

I don't want whether someone is pleasant looking or ugly; has an attractive or an irritating voice; does or does not smell nice or has smooth, clean hands or rough, dirty ones to make any difference in how I regard them or see in them my neighbor or make me more or less partial to them, but I know that in so many little ways, I lead with my senses (and sensibility) and not with openhearted charity and a generous spirit.

What a liberation to be freed from the mastery of the senses as she was and to say 'yes' to Jesus and allow him to lead and command and direct my life.

.

Silence, Solitude and Prayer

2010-02-26T23:10:00.002-09:00

Its been quite a while since I've been able to write anything for this blog -- I hope that my handful of readers will forgive me. Not that I haven't been writing, far from it, but its almost exclusively been for my work at the diocese.

I've been fortunate this week to be in the studio with my friend and student Sharon Henthorn-Iwane who has traveled to Juneau from Berkeley to stay with me and my family while studying here for eight days. We have begun an icon of the Holy Family, which is a beautiful way to spend the first week of Lent. Time in the studio (even though I've barely left the house for the week is an opportunity for silence and prayer (and a bit of solitude, too).

Coming this weekend is the Sunday of the Transfiguration, the great image of our own transformation, transfiguration and deification in Christ, the very heart of what is expressed in every canonical icon. So I'm grateful to have these days of solitude to pray, paint and share with Sharon what has been shared with me about the icon and iconpainting.

(Icon of the Transfiguration by Leonid Ouspensky)

The Gift of Tears

2010-01-19T08:50:00.000-09:00

Less than 24 hours after the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12th, I received, as the Diocesan Coordinator for Catholic Relief Service, an email from a staff member of the CRS West Coast office . She asked us to do everything we could to mobilize the clergy and faithful in our dioceses: first, to lift up the victims of the earthquake in prayer and secondly, to be as generous as possible in financially donating to the relief effort.

She concluded her message by sharing with us the following:

“ I had the great privilege to spend a couple weeks in Haiti a few years ago and was struck over and over at the incredible faith and Spirit in the Haitian people. I was also struck, despite having lived, volunteered and visited in many countries at the depth of their suffering. May the Spirit give the grace and strength they need, once again, to face this suffering and recover as a people.”

Later that morning, she wrote again by email, to thank us all for responding so quickly to her appeal and then wrote something that moved me deeply: “I have been weeping all morning.”

You have to understand, that at least on the face of it, Catholic Relief Services is all about action; shipping container loads of food and medical supplies from here to there; water and irrigation projects; fair trade and microfinance loans; primary education for girls and their mothers, etc... As an agency, CRS is very good at getting things done, quickly and efficiently, especially in emergencies and disasters.

But I think that the essence of what CRS is all about was beautifully symbolized by the tears shed by my colleague. The important work of relief and development that CRS does in partnership with Catholics of the Church in the United States is the direct result of our hearts having been moved by sufferings of others who we, by grace, have come to recognize as our brothers and sisters.

Our Christian tradition understands tears as a gift, not only the tears of contrition but also the tears of solidarity in grief and sorrow, when we mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep.

Our tears are not a substitute for action but symbolize, I think, the wellspring of compassion that is the source of solidarity itself. Compassion. The word itself has deep Christian roots, and has come into English from the Old French compassiō, which means, literally, “to suffer with”. Motivated by love of God and love of neighbor, compassion calls us to share the sufferings of others and to respond generously with consolation and all necessary aid.

The preface of Fourth Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs and Occasions , entitled, ‘Jesus, the Compassion of God’ states with such simplicity and beauty:
You sent Jesus Christ your Son among us as redeemer and Lord. He was moved with compassion for the poor and the powerless, for the sick and the sinner; he made himself neighbor to the oppressed. By his words and actions he proclaimed to the world that you care for us as a father cares for his children.

The mystery and the scandal of the Incarnation is that in the person of Jesus, God came to enter into our suffering. In Jesus, God identifies completely with all those who suffer and invites us to meet him in the poor and the powerless and in all those whose sufferings cry out to heaven.

One of the challenges of this disaster in Haiti, which is already so desperately poor, is that it reveals to those of us who make up the privileged minority in this world the misery and deprivation that is the daily reality of the majority of the brothers and sisters with whom we share this planet.

Confronted by so much suffering, we might be tempted to turn away in despair; become cynically apathetic and close our hearts in on ourselves and those closest to us. Or stand on the sidelines and criticize the real (and inevitable) shortcomings of the Church, of governments and humanitarian institutions and effectively do nothing.

But we are members of the Body of Christ. As St.Paul said to the Church in Corinth so many centuries ago, “When one part of the Body suffers, the entire Body suffers.” We are called to compassion because we are one Body in Christ. As his Body, Jesus, the Compassion of God, who loves and suffers with every person, invites each one of us to be his compassion in this world and so to enter into active solidarity with all those who suffer.

I am grateful that my colleague shared her tears with us as she invited us to open our hearts to the suffering people of Haiti.

Open our eyes to the needs of all; inspire us with words and deeds to comfort those who labor and are burdened; keep our service of others faithful to the example and command of Christ.
Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs and Occasions IV.

The Essential Decisions of the Heart

2009-12-22T09:47:00.001-09:00

When I was growing up there was a small community of Poor Clare sisters in our neighborhood. From time to time we would join them for early morning Mass (even though as cloistered religious we never saw them). During the eight days (or octave) of Christmas, we were able to go to Mass as a family every day.

Two things stand out in my memory: the delicious cinnamon rolls that the extern sisters put out after Mass and the saints whose feast days we celebrated during the octave. Except for the Holy Innocents on December 28th, I could never figure out exactly how (if at all) they figured into the Christmas story but there they were: Stephen on December 26th ,John the Evangelist on the 27th ,Thomas Becket on the 29th, Pope Sylvester on the 31st (and nobody on the 30th , which I figured must have been a slipup on the part of whoever put the calendar together).

Their feast days didn’t seem to have a whole lot of connection to Christmas – so I consulted a copy of the Lives of the Saints that we had around the house. Not the one intended for kids but the one that my Mom kept in my parent’s room that was much, much cooler – it had belonged to her grandmother and was lavishly illustrated with wood engravings by one of Gustave Dore’s lesser but equally imaginative artistic disciples. Most of the illustrations were not so much portraits of particular saints but luridly vivid depictions of their final torments.

Unfortunately, her book (despite its other attractions) didn’t explain how these saints were connected to Christmas (or even what good king Wenceslas was doing out on the feast of Stephen – I looked that up too.) It was only a few years later, when I was starting high school that I read another book, (this time, with no illustrations) the journal of a German Jesuit named Alfred Delp.

He wrote a series of meditations in 1944-45 during the last Advent and Christmas of his life while he was in prison in Berlin.

After reflecting on the figures gathered around the manger at Christmas, he wrote:

So many figures come to mind when we are thinking about the feast of Christmas. All of them have a very special message for us. The innocents of Bethlehem even have a place in history. The others are so intimately associated with the mystery of contact which is the essence of this feast that they throw a penetrating light on our question and supply a valid answer. It is still the same question – how is the human soul prepared and fitted for this great encounter – and further, how can we help make it ready? What are the essential decisions of the heart for establishing a real and living contact with God?

Now that made sense to me. Christmas isn’t about simply looking backwards in history but about “establishing a real and living contact with God.” Those saints associated with Christmas, by historical circumstance, are there for a reason. Jesus in the manger is surrounded not just by the shepherds and angels but by men and women throughout history who had a life-changing encounter with the incarnate God.

Martyrs like Stephen and Thomas Becket, in very different contexts, witnessed to the living presence of Jesus that made sense of their lives and deaths. John the Evangelist wrote a gospel that is an invitation to make those “essential decisions of the heart” that lead to faith in Jesus. And Sylvester was charged with the difficult task of beginning to prepare the pagan world of Rome for the encounter with Christ when the Church was given legal toleration.

This Christmas season is yet another opportunity to begin or to deepen our “real and living contact with God”. By so doing, we are invited to join the company of these saints who are linked to the feast as we progress in holiness in the hope of becoming saints ourselves.

Who knows, maybe leaving December 30th empty wasn’t a slip-up after all.

Originally published in the Inside Passage December 11th, 2007.

Even Now

2009-12-13T17:51:00.004-09:00

Even Now

Turn to us, Lord, if only for a moment.

On this December morning
I see in the distance from the moving ship
black forms and white breakers:
not a reef,
but four whales
working their slow way
from Port Fredrick
out into Icy Strait.

So far from their winter home,
I can just make out the plumes
of their blood-warmed breath
which hang in the air for a moment
before they vanish into the falling snow.

Their slate-black bodies
arch briefly above the waves
then languidly plunge again
beneath the indigo waters.

In a few moments
they are almost too far away to see,
then, are just a memory.
Now, only this ship, the movement of the current,
and the veiled shapes
of the mountains in the distance
remain visible.

Yet I know that you still swim
beneath these dark waters.
Your great hearts are beating
and the wet air
roaring into your lungs
fans the furnace
of your massive invisible bodies.

So far from my home,
I remember the acrostic
carved into the pale marble of a baptistry,
(white stone laid down beneath some ancient sea) ,

Even now, what I hope for,
I already possess.

Hoonah, December 11,2009

St.John of Damascus - pray for us!

2009-12-04T08:04:00.000-09:00

Today is the feast day of St.John of Damascus, Doctor of the Church and courageous defender of the icons. His defense of the icons was simple: he contrasted the dualistic rejection of matter with the Christian revelation in which God saves humanity in and through matter, by becoming incarnate.

Icon by the hand of Fr.Andrew Tregubov

Money Doesn't Talk -- It Swears

2009-12-03T07:07:00.001-09:00

Twenty-five years ago today, a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India, released a toxic cloud of phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride and other deadly chemicals that officially killed some 3,700 people on the spot and injured almost a half a million other people. Unofficial estimates are that 8,000-10,000 people died within 72 hours and 25,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.Another 100,000 to 200,000 are estimated to have permanent injuries.

The disaster didn't have to happen. Union Carbide disregarded even the most rudimentary safety precautions. They located their pesticide manufacturing plant, (which contained giant tanks of toxic chemicals) in a densely populated neighborhood. They cut corners on safety equipment, worker training and safety procedures to save money. Its difficult to imagine that Union Carbide would have even considered locating such a plant in a neighborhood in Pittsburgh or Tacoma. Of course, the Indian national and state governments, (in the name of economic development) allowed the corporation to operate virtually unregulated.

Twenty-five years later, the plant is abandoned, but there are still an estimated 300 tons of toxic chemicals on site which are reportedly leaking into the groundwater which supplies hundreds of thousands of Bhopalis with their drinking water. Union Carbide blamed the disaster on sabotage. Dow Chemical, which purchased Union Carbide, refuses to take responsibility for the disaster cleanup. There have been no criminal prosecutions of those responsible for what happened in Bhopal although there is an Indian arrest warrent out on Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide at the time. He is currently living in his home in Long Island, New York.

Presente!

2009-12-02T07:38:00.002-09:00

Today is the memorial of Jean Donavon, and Srs.Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, martyred in El Salvador on this day in 1980. Not on the Roman calendar (perhaps someday) , but in our hearts, always.

At the Checkpoint

for Ita Ford and Maura Clarke

We stand by your graves, dear sisters,

while a soldier checks our papers

and a policeman circles our truck

thumb on the safety of his M-16.

The girls riding with us

squat on gunny sacks of potatoes

and sing of the blue sky

the ‘sombrero azul Salvadoreno’

blue, like the shirts of the police,

blue, like the little village of tombs and crosses

where the army blocks the road

leading out of Chalatenango.

Our blue sky

was black night for you, dear sisters,

at the checkpoint where you stood

before other soldiers.

The stars, like grace or truth

or life itself

blazed overhead

as the light left your eyes

and you were flung

into the pit.

Beloved sisters, dead these ten years

the blue of your eyes

bright as tears at a wake

or at a wedding

are the sheltering sky

the ‘sombrero azul’

stretched over us this morning.

Chalatenango, El Salvador

August 1990

World AIDS Day

2009-12-01T09:33:00.000-09:00

On this World AIDS Day we remember with love Paula's cousin Michael and all who have died of AIDS and who are living with AIDS and HIV around the world.

Pope Benedict said this today in Rome.

“My thoughts and prayers go to everyone suffering from this disease, especially to children, the poor and those who are rejected. The Church never ceases to strive to combat AIDS through her institutions and personnel dedicated to that task.

I call upon everyone to make their contribution, with prayer and tangible assistance, so that people affected by the HIV virus may experience the presence of the Lord Who offers comfort and hope. Finally, I trust that, by increasing and co-ordinating efforts, we may manage to halt and eradicate this disease”.

Catholic Relief Services has proposed five intercessory prayers for today.

God of compassion, many step away from people with HIV out of ignorance, or fear or denial.to step toward our brothers and sisters who have HIV, those who are an ocean away and those on the sidewalks down which we walk. Help us stand in solidarity with their suffering, in recognition of their worth. We pray…

Bless us with compassionate hearts.

God of the poor, AIDS does not discriminate by race or religion or economic class. But people do. Help us to respond to the cry of the poor for HIV medications and health care, for food, for education, for communities of support. We pray…

Bless us with compassionate hearts

God of the orphan, there are villages in Africa where all of the adults have died of AIDS; only their children remain. Help us to create a global village that will raise these children in love and hope into a secure future. We pray…

Bless us with compassionate hearts

God of justice, our nation has the power to fund a large percentage of the efforts that will slow the spread of global HIV. Strengthen our call for a U.S. response that is wise and immediate and generous. We pray…

Bless us with compassionate hearts

God of our inmost hurts and heartbreaks, AIDS reaches us where we live. Be with us as we call to mind the people we have loved, known or encountered who are living with or who have died from AID. We pray…

Bless us with compassionate hearts

'Extreme Humility' icon of Jesus by the hand of Fr.Andrew Tregubov

Memory Eternal!

2009-11-16T16:18:00.001-09:00

Twenty years ago, early in the morning of November 16th, 1989, government soldiers belonging to the elite US trained Atlactl battalion, broke into the Jesuit residence at the University of Central America. (The Atlactl already had a sordid and murderous reputation -- troops of the battalion were responsible for many atrocities, most notably, the massacre of approximately 1000 civilians in the village of El Mozote in 1981)

The soldiers woke up the Jesuit Fathers who were asleep inside, ordered them outside and shot them to death. The killings took place during the conflict between government forces and the revolutionary guerilla fighters of the FMLN. Earlier in November 1989 the guerillas launched a nationwide offensive which provided the military the cover it needed to kill the priests. The Jesuit fathers were murdered because for many years they had repeatedly denounced the injustices that fueled the civil war in El Salvador and advocated for a negotiated resolution of the conflict. Although the government tried to blame leftist guerillas, it soon became clear that the killings had been ordered by military commanders at the highest levels.

The killers also murdered their housekeeper and her teenage daughter. They killed them because the army wanted no witnesses to remain alive.

Those martyred that night were:

o Ignacio Ellacuria SJ, 59

o Ignacio Martin-Baro SJ, 50

o Segundo Montes SJ, 56

o Amando Lopez SJ, 53

o Joaquin Lopez y Lopez SJ, 71

o Juan Ramon Moreno SJ, 56

o Julia Elba Ramos, 42

o Cecilia Ramos, 15

On the lawn where the bodies of the dead Jesuits were found, their gardener, the husband of Julia and the father of Cecilia, planted eight roses. Six red roses, one for each of the Jesuits, and two white roses, for his wife and daughter.

Come. Lord Jesus!

2009-11-16T06:56:00.003-09:00

As I have gotten older, I have come to better appreciate the final two weeks of the Church year, which are a long meditation on the second coming of Christ at the end of history (which, paradoxically, is beyond our capacity to enter into imaginatively except through allegorical images and metaphors). In the liturgy for these days we cry out 'Maranatha!' (Come, Lord Jesus)

Why?

Not, I am certain, as world-despising dualists asking for our spirits to be liberated from the prison of the flesh or some other neo-Platonic notion. Rather, I think that as we confront the radical contingency of this world, (that's where getting older enters in), Jesus, and his enduring love, mercy and compassion is revealed as the only truly fixed point in our lives.

As I meditate with the Church during these days on the contingency of our lives, of my life , I think of this poem by the Polish poet Stanslaw Baranczak.

If Porcelain

If porcelain, then only the kind
you won't miss under the shoe of a mover or the tread of a tank;
if a chair, then one not too comfortable, lest
there be regret in getting up and leaving;
if clothing, then just so much as can fit in a suitcase,
if books, then those which can be carried in the memory,
if plans, then those which can be overlooked
when the time comes for the next move
to another street, continent, historical period
or world.

who told you that you were permitted to settle in?
who told you that or that it would last forever?
did no one ever tell you that you will never
in the world
feel at home in the world.

translated by Frank Kujawinski

from Postwar Polish Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz

Friend, Where Is Your Wedding Garment?

2009-11-13T16:36:00.001-09:00

This month, when as a Church we meditate on the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell, I have found myself drawn to the Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22:1-14)

You know the story. A king invites a variety of important people to the wedding feast of his son. The people he invites refuse his invitation, so he invites other guests. At the wedding banquet the king notices that one of the guests is not wearing a suitable wedding garment. He asks him, “Friend, where is your wedding garment”, but the man has nothing to say. So the king has him expelled, to the place where there is ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth.’

(In the 14th century Russian icon fresco that illustrates this parable, the other guests have tied him up and are in the process of depositing him in the outer darkness.)

We are familiar too with how to interpret this parable. The king is the Father. The king’s son is Jesus. The wedding feast is the Kingdom of God and we are the invited guests. It seems harsh and arbitrary that the king would expel one of the guests because he violated the dress code. But digging a bit deeper, Church Fathers like St.John Chrysostom and St. Augustine saw the garment as a metaphor for the moral life of the Christian, and argued that at the wedding banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven, now and in eternity, charity was the only acceptable garment.

The Fathers in the first centuries of the Church (and there were some Mothers too) interpreted sacred scripture in a symbolic and metaphorical manner that might seem foreign to us, but they also lived in a world filled with poor people and slaves whose lives were short and harsh. At every opportunity they exhorted the Christians they pastored to be compassionate and generous with their poor neighbors. They made charity and almsgiving the heart of prayer, holiness and of the sacramental mysteries.

During the month of November and during the first weeks of Advent, the Church traditionally looks forward, with longing and anticipation to the Second Coming of Jesus. Why? Because the coming of the reign of God is the complete and final accomplishment of the generous love, compassion, justice and mercy of God.

The day and hour of our fulfillment in Christ (as a world and as individuals) is unknown to us. But Jesus is already present and active in our midst. Having put on Christ at baptism, we have already been clothed in the wedding garment of charity. But nothing is ultimately decided. It remains our decision, throughout the course of our lives, whether or not to chose to put on or take off that garment of charity. Each Sunday, presented with the mystery of the Lord’s Body and Blood, each of us chooses to say ‘yes’ to being Christ’s embodied love and mercy in the world.

At the end of our lives, the king will say to each one of us, ‘Friend, where is your wedding garment?’ and we hope and pray that our works of charity, justice and mercy, however meager, in a world where half the world goes with without the necessities of life, will cover our collective and individual neglect of the poor and their needs.

Remembering the Wall

2009-11-10T08:09:00.002-09:00

Last night I had a fascinating conversation with my son, who, having listened to the discussion this week about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, requested a shorthand history of the Cold War and the end of communism. (He was born in 1992, a year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, so I might as well have been talking about the Trojan War...) For him, of course, the enduring image of the Cold War is its end -- jubilant Germans attacking the wall, first with sledge hammers and then using cranes to dismantle it.

For me, there is another image, burned into my memory, of Soviet and American tanks and their anxious crews confronting each other at the border crossing during the tense days just after the Wall was erected by the East German government. Everyone wondered if war was imminent. (Mercifully, the world weathered this and subsequent crises without bloodshed.)

As I explained the dynamics of the Cold War to him, he was incredulous that the Soviets and the Americans were ready to go to war and actually threatened to destroy each other's cities with their arsenal of nuclear weapons.
He struggled to believe that both sides had created enormous conventional armies prepared to fight tank battles on the plains of Germany and everyone was afraid that Berlin, deep in the heart of the German Democratic Republic, might prove to be the flash point for World War III.

Several times, he asked how I could have been anti-communist (as I certainly was) and yet have sovociforiosly opposed my government's unjust and immoral wars in places like Vietnam, Angola and El Salvador. Not to mention its insane nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, a competition that threatened to destroy the planet in the contest to determine whether Volga sedans or Dodge Darts would be the car of the future (it turned out that in the actual future, everyone would be driving a Toyota!)

The world is a much, much better place without the Soviet Union -- it was, as a certain American President once said, 'an evil empire', but as our country fought the Cold War we became a national security state that came to resemble more and more what we ostensibly rejected in our enemy.

Put Not Your Trust in Princes Nor in Sons of Men

2009-11-08T16:35:00.002-09:00

Yes, I know, as the psalmist says, "Put not your trust in princes nor in sons of men", but just this once, a brief nod of approval to the pro-life members of the House who stood firm on the Stupak amendment to the national health care bill that passed by a bare five votes last evening. I am assuming that they made this offer to the President and the Speaker of the House: remove federal funding of abortion completely from the health care bill or we will not vote for it. (I assume this because both the President and the Speaker strongly supported the amendment, even in the face of angry disagreement by the pro-choice members of their own party.

This legislation has a long way to go, of course, with all sorts of possible twists and turns, and who knows how many opportunties to gut it of any protection for unborn children, but at least for now, with abortion funding off the table, it can be debated on its actual merits (or lack thereof). Perhaps this marks a small but important step in separating abortion, which is all about taking life (albeit by medical professionals), from health care, which should be about saving or extending life and health.

All Saints/All Souls

2009-11-01T17:34:00.002-09:00

My sister Nancy died forty-one years ago and while I remember with perfect clarity the every detail of her death and all of the subsequent years afterwards, sadly, I don't remember very much else about her. But one beautiful memory of being with her (and my other two sisters) was All Saint's Day 1966.. Because my sisters and I went to Catholic school, All Saint's Day was a school holiday. We went to morning Mass at the Poor Clare's monastery in Aptos. The sisters, to celebrate the feast day with us (even from behind the grill) put out coffee, hot cider and donuts for after Mass, which we ate and drank with the two extern sisters and with the massgoers who didn't have to rush off to work (or in our case, school).

And because we lived about a quarter mile away from the Pacific Ocean, after Mass, the four of us filled our pockets with Halloween candy and headed the hill to the beach. Like the rest of the locals, we stayed away from the beach during the summer months, hoping to avoid the tourists and surfers who came to 'our' beach, but by November, they were long gone. Instead, by All Saint's Day, storms had covered the beaches with all manner of fascinating debris (especially enormous snags of driftwood that piled up here and there along the hightide line). We ran along the logs, climbed in and out of the cavities within the piles of debris and scowered the beach for interesting objects. But mostly we found a place to sit and watch the surf pound up the beach, ate our Halloween candy together. I don't remember saying much to my sisters, who were caught up in a lively conversation which couldn't really include me. But I did enjoy just sitting there with them, looking out at the water wondering about dinosaurs; where sand came from; and how it was possible that this ocean I looked out onto from this beach encircled the whole world.
So there we were,-- thanks to that our rejoicing in the saints, that 'great cloud of witnesses, -- the four of us, together on that empty, windswept beach, enfolded in that heartbreaking horizon and the roar of the breakers, until my little sister started complaining about the cold and we turned around and trudged up the hill towards home.

News from Home

2009-10-27T20:11:00.023-08:00

Osip Mandelstam

With a glass of
boiled water
not yet cold
by a small stove
not giving out
much heat
he was sitting
and saying over
those green words
Laura and laurel
written in Avignon

when out of the somber
winter day entered
Death in green clothing
having traveled
by train or on foot
ten thousand kilometers to
this end,
and moving aside to give him
a place at the fire, the poet
made him welcome, asking
for news of home.

Denise Levertov
The Jacob's Ladder

Paula and I spent the weekend leading a retreat for the Alaska Jesuit Volunteers at Meier Lake outside of Wasilla. We were surrounded by birches and aspens, and while walking out by the lake I thought about the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada, but also of Siberia. The leaves were all off the trees and the weather was becoming colder daily. I thought of the long journey Mandelstam made across Siberia in the autumn of 1938, and how he died in a Vladivostok transist camp waiting to be shipped north to Nagayevo and the gold mines of the Kolyma basin.

This evening I came across this poem from 1960 by Denise Levertov, this sober meditation on death and a memorial to the poet, the detail of whose fate, fifty years ago, was still unknown.

His last message a scrawled note to his wife on a piece of scrap paper, asking her to send warm clothing.

We Can

2009-10-23T11:20:00.005-08:00

When I think of our wedding anniversary I am reminded of last week's gospel reading and the marvelous encounter between Jesus and the two disciples, James and John. They, of course, ask Jesus for a blank check -- "Give us what we ask of you" and Jesus invites them to ask. So they boldly ask him to give him a place of honor, one on each side of him, 'when he comes into his glory.' Jesus asks them, ' Can you drink from the cup which I will drink from and be baptized with the baptism that I will be baptized?' And the two disciples answer, "We can!"

Which sounds a lot like what we said twenty-seven years ago today, just as clueless and uncomprehending as James and John. We too, want to sit on either side of Jesus when he comes into his glory -- actually, if we believe that marriage is a true sacrament of Jesus' presence, we are already sitting at his right and left side at the heavenly banquet. Yet we have said yes to the cup that Jesus drank from, and to the baptism that he was baptized with, that is, to the daily and always difficult dying to ourselves and living for each other that is at the heart of the married life.

Of course, when we said "we can!", we had no idea of what we were saying yes to: if we had, I'm not sure that we'd have been able to say yes, it would have been too overwealming a commitment to make. Fortunately, we've been given so much grace, grace that has held us up and carried us through every difficulty and enabled us to continue to say 'yes' to each other even after we realized that, in fact, we could not ever do what we so naively agreed to.

Happy anniversary, Paula! I'm ready for another twenty-seven years (or more, I hope!) with you on this journey we started together back so long ago when we were so young and I still had red hair.

Like the Vessels of the Altar

2009-10-19T11:27:00.001-08:00

I've been on retreat for the past three weeks -- an on-line retreat, which is a new experience entirely. The topic is "Living the Hours" . Not only Catholics or Orthodox but people of various faith traditions have been invited to enter into the monastic hours of Vigils; Lauds;Prime, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. As I said in one of my posts, when it comes to praying the hours I'm strictly by-the book (in this case, the breviary), but I've appreciated the opportunity to reflect with others on a variety of intriguing and challenging questions about prayer at different times during the day.

One of the conferences on the hours proposed a 'mysticism of dishwashing', quoting the Rule of St.Benedict, which enjoins the monk responsible for the goods of the monastery to treat the pots and pans like the sacred vessels of the altar. Thiat is one of my favorite passages from the Rule because it is a call to recognize the sacred in the most mundane and ordinary objects and experiences of the day.

But as a minister privileged with holding in his hands the sacred vessels of the altar, that passage from the Rule was also an invitation for me to meditate on the ways in which the mundane and ordinary experiences of our lives are caught up and offered to God in sacred vessels that we use at the altar. They are sacred, of course, because they contain within them the bread and wine that we offer to God at Mass and which is transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus for our sanctification. The paten and chalice hold within them the Lord who has united himself completely with what Gaudium et Spes speaks of as our "joys and sorrows, hopes and anxieties, which makes all of our human experiences a sacred and holy encounter with the God who became fully human and who has united forever divinity with humanity in His Person.

Gracias, Mercedes

2009-10-05T23:40:00.002-08:00

Mercedes Sosa died early Sunday morning, October 4th at the age of 74. Who can listen without being deeply moved to the live recording of her singing "Gracias a la Vida" (Thanks to Life) in Buenos Aires when she returned from exile. She was fighting back tears, you can hear it in her voice, as she sang out the last verse and the audience began to cheer.

With Violetta Parra, Mercedes Sosa was one of the leaders in the "Nueva Cancion" of Latin America, that combined socially conscious lyrics and indiginous and folk musical traditions, instruments and languages. Musicians like Mercedes Sosa, Suni Paz, Victor Jara and Violetta Parra rejected what they regarded as North American and European cultural imperialism, which they believed alienated Latin Americans from their own authentic cultural roots, experience and consciousness.

They were men and women of the Left and during the dark decades of the national security state in Central and South America, were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and if they were fortunate, were driven into exile. Mercedes Sosa was arrested performing on stage in 1979 by Argentine authorities and was only released and allowed to go into exile because of international protest and pressure. Others, who were not so fortunate, were killed or made to "disappear." Performances of nueva cancion were prohibited, nueva cancion records and tapes were banned and destroyed. The Chilean junta even went so far as to ban possession and the playing of the charango, a tiny guitar-like stringed instrument that utilizes the shell of an armadillo as the body.

And of course, "Gracias a la Vida" was outlawed. But the generals might has well have tried to prohibit people from eating or drinking or making love. In the end, the dictators and generals will only be remembered, if at all, for their crimes, while Mercedes Sosa will be rememberd for this song (and so many others) and for the courageous way she gave a voice to so many people who had no voice. Not a bad legacy to leave behind.

The angels and the Bicycle Riders

2009-10-03T08:44:00.000-08:00

Sometime after we got married, my wife and I compared notes about what we'd been taught about guardian angels (yesterday was the memorial of the guardian angels). When she was a little girl, the sisters told her a story about a little girl who carelessly walked off the sidewalk into the street. A car, which didn't see her, was speeding right for the little girl, but just in time, her guardian angel pushed her out of the way to safety.

I told her that I'd heard the same story. Except in the version that I heard from the sisters, the little girl who wandered out into the street was not rescued at the last minute by her guardian angel. No, she was struck by the oncoming car. But, while she lay dying, her guardian angel helped her to make a perfect act of contrition.

I think our sisters were Irish.

I also recalled a story told to me by K., who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Congo during the mid-seventies. Somehow we got on the subject of guardian angels, and he told me about an experience he had there, This is how I remember what he told me:

'You know, we were both taught to pray to our guardian angel for help when we were kids, but I'm not sure how seriously I took guardian angels or really believe in them until I had this experience in the Congo. I was walking from my home village to another village some distance away. It was an all day hike and I'd gotten a late start but I had been to this village before and I was confident that I knew the way. Somehow I got got on the wrong trail and I became hopelessly lost, although it took me several hours to realize that I had lost my way. I was completely alone, it would be dark soon and there were wild animals nearby. So I prayed. I don't remember if I prayed to my guardian angel, but I prayed for help.

I heard a sound behind me, and my first response was fear. But there, behind me, was a young Congolese man riding up the trail on a bicyle. He stopped and said hello and asked where I was going. I told him, and he laughed and told me that I was going the wrong way, but that he knew how to get to the village and that he would take me there. So, pushing his bicycle, he walked with me until we reached the trail for the village. This is the right, take this, the young man said. The trail had grown narrow and they had been walking up a little rise, so that the young man was behind me. I turned to thank him, but he was gone.'

In the sight of the angels I will sing your praise,O Lord

2009-09-28T17:35:00.003-08:00

It's the eve of the feast of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, archangels, right on the heels of the memorial of St.Lorenzo Ruiz and companions, martyred in Nagasaki almost four hundred years ago and celebrated on September 28th.. They underwent unimaginable torture for the sake of the gospel, sustained no doubt by the invisible but real support of the angels. Michael, whose name means, "who is like God?" (a fittingly mocking response to the divine aspirations of the Evil One) protects us from the snares of the devil. I'm sure that by his intercession St.Lorenzo and his companions were strengthened in their resolve to die rather than to renounce their faith in Christ. The words of Gabriel in greeting to Mary "Hail, full of grace" were on the lips of the Nagasaki martyrs as they prayed the rosary during their final torments. And Raphael, who guided Tobias on his journey, surely accompanied Lorenzo and his companions on their journey to everlasting life.

Thanks To That Crackpot

2009-09-26T22:35:00.003-08:00

I've begun reading 'Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France", which are the wartime journals of Agnes Humbert, an art historian at the Musee de l'Homme and the member of an early group of resisters. In her journal entry for June 20th, 1940 she wrote:
"I turn the knob on the wireless set, which is tuned to London. By a pure fluke I find myself listening to a transmission in French.
A voice announces an appeal to be made by a French general. I don't catch his name. In a delivery that is jerky and peremptory -- not at all well suited to the radio -- the general urges all Frenchmen to rally around him, to carry on the struggle. I feel I have come back to life. A feeling I thought had died for ever stirs within me again: hope. There is one man after all -- one alone, perhaps -- who understands what I feel in my heart: 'It's not over yet.'

I hurtle outside and across the garden like a lunatic, charging up to the captain -- to whom I have not so far spoken a word -- panting and breathless. I couldn't care less, I just have to tell him the news: 'Captain, captain, a French general -- I don't know his name -- has just spoken from London: he says that the French army must regroup around him, that the war will go on, that he will broadcast again to give orders!

The old captain looks up wearily: 'That'll be de Gaulle, the general. Oh yes, he's the right one, that de Gaulle. Oh, we know all about him, don't you worry! It's all a lot of nonsense. Me, I'm a reservist anyway. All I want is to get back to my business in Paris. Me, I have a family to feed... he's a crackpot, that deGaulle, you mark my words.'

It is thanks to that 'crackpot' that this evening I decided not to put an end to everything after all. He has given me hope and nothing in the world can extinguish that hope now."

Reading this journal entry reminded me of why I continue to revere the memory of Charles de Gaulle. For me, he is the embodiment of hope. Not courage (although he was fearless) nor patriotism (although he was the greatest of French patriots) nor defiance (although he set himself like iron against Hitler's New Order), not even leadership (although he was one of the great leaders of the 20th century).

In July 2002 my son Miguel and I were fortunate to be able to travel to France for my cousin Norbert's wedding. We spent a week in Paris and the day before we left for the wedding we visited the Musee de l'Armee at the Hotel d'Invalides. Having read with appreciation de Gaulle's 'War Memoirs' I was interested to see that the museum had recently opened a new exhibit on France in World War II, a story that was inextricably bound up in de Gaulle's own refusal to accept France's defeat. One of the artifacts on display was the microphone from the BBC studio where on June 18th,1940, he made his appeal to the French people.. Standing in front of that microphone, I remember being deeply moved, I suppose by the tangible connection to that moment in history and to his enduring act of bravery and resolute hope.

In this unforgettable broadcast he said:

The leaders who, for many years, have been at the head of the French armies have formed a government. This government, alleging the defeat of our armies, has made contact with the enemy in order to stop the fighting. It is true, we were, we are, overwhelmed by the mechanical, ground and air forces of the enemy. Infinitely more than their number, it is the tanks, the airplanes, the tactics of the Germans which are causing us to retreat. It was the tanks, the airplanes, the tactics of the Germans that surprised our leaders to the point of bringing them to where they are today.

But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!

Believe me, I who am speaking to you with full knowledge of the facts, and who tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that overcame us can bring us victory one day. For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone! She has a vast Empire behind her. She can align with the British Empire that holds the sea and continues the fight. She can, like England, use without limit the immense industry of the United States.

This war is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country. This war is not over as a result of the Battle of France. This war is a worldwide war. All the mistakes, all the delays, all the suffering, do not alter the fact that there are, in the world, all the means necessary to crush our enemies one day. Vanquished today by mechanical force, in the future we will be able to overcome by a superior mechanical force. The fate of the world depends on it.

I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who might end up here, with their weapons or without their weapons, I invite the engineers and the specialised workers of the armament industries who are located in British territory or who might end up here, to put themselves in contact with me.Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on the radio from London

Generosity of Heart

2009-09-24T22:18:00.005-08:00

The Pharisees approached and asked, "Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?" They were testing him.He said to them in reply, "What did Moses command you?"

They replied, "Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her."
But Jesus told them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.

But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife),
and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate." Mark 10:2-9

Hardness of heart. Fatal to married life. Gradually the hearts of one (or both) grow harder and harder towards each other, as they become increasingly annoyed and irritated and begin to read, read unjust or uncaring motives into each other's actions. The hardness of heart might not even rise to the level of conflict or argument, just a steadily mounting indifference, one to the other until the stony heart of their marriage stops beating altogether.

The cure to hardness of heart? Generosity and gratitude. A generosity towards the other with all of her or his faults and failings that is only matched by gratitude for this beloved man or woman who is "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh". A will to generosity which alone leads us to unity, to being one flesh, one spirit, one heart.

Let Sleeping Immortals Lie

2009-09-23T09:07:00.001-08:00

The Venetian painter Tintoretto, in addition to all of the other problems of color and composition that he had to contend with in his paintings, had to resolve a fundamental (and ultimately unresolvable question) in 'The Origin of the Milky Way' -- how, exactly, do the Olympian immortals sleep? Zeus, who had conceived the hero Herakles with the mortal Alkmene by disguising himself as her husband, desired to make his son immortal. Because Herakles was still an infant, the most efficatious way to confer immortality on him was to have his wife Hera nurse the child. (You would think that Zeus would have the power to confer immortality on whomever he so chose, but apparently not). Here was his dilemma.

Zeus could not approach his consort and ask her to nurse little Herakles, being well aware of Hera's undying emnity towards the illicit objects of his affections and their offspring. So he approached her while she was sleeping and held little Herakles to her bosom. The milk spurting from one breast fell to earth and created lilies (apparently cut off of the bottom of the painting sometime before the National Gallery in London acquired the painting in the 1890's). Milk from the other floated heavenward and created the Milky Way.

Hence, Tintoretto's problem: how to position a sleeping Hera in the heavens? Tintoretto created a bedchamber in the clouds, with pillows and canopy, supported by four artfully positioned winged putti and attended by Hera's peacocks. A weightless Zeus holds the infant to the breast of his equally weightless wife, while stars drift heavenwards (and presumably, milk falls down to earth) with all of the figures surrounded by that amazingly vibrant cerulean blue that is so charactoristic of the Venetian painters.

Unfortunately, depending on the sources you read, despite the best efforts of his father, in the end, Herakles, otherwise endowed with godlike strength, missed out on immortality (at least until the apotheosis at the end of his life when he finally to his place at the banquet of the Olympians.)

Postcards

2009-09-21T23:25:00.006-08:00

How difficult it it is to establish the names
of all those who perished
in the struggle with inhuman power.

the official statistics
reduce their number
once again pitilessly
they decimate those who have died a violent death

Haroldo Conti, Argentina, disappeared 1976
and their bodies disappear in abysmal cellars
of huge police buildings.

Anatoly Marchenko, Soviet Union, died on hunger strike 1986

eyewitnesses
deafened by salvoes
are inclined toward exaggeration

accidental observers give doubtful figures
accompanied by the shameful word "about"

and yet in these matters

accuracy is essential

we must not be wrong
even by a single one.

we are despite everything
the guardians of our brothers

ignorance about those who have disappeared
undermines the reality of the world.

Maria Magdalena Henriquez, El Salvador, assassinated 1980

an excerpt from "Mr.Cogito on the Need for Precision"
by Zbigniew Herbert Report from the Besieged City

This weekend I was in a rush to make the 2:30 afternoon flight to Hoonah and I grabbed a book of poetry by Z.Herbert and tossed it in my bag, something to read on the trip back to Juneau on the ferry.. Today I opened it and turned to the poem above, marked with a postcard from sometime in the 1980's addressed to His Excellency Erich Honecker, Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic, 102 BERLIN Marx Engels Platz GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

On the other side of the card was an appeal to President Honecker.:
Dear Excellency:
I appeal to you for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr.Rainer Herrmann, a machinist arrested in June 1985 and presently being held in Cottbus Prison. I believe that Mr. Herrmann is a prisoner of conscience, held solely for his non-violent exercise of fundamental human rights.

The postcard is a reminder of a campaign that sought the release of Mr.Herrmann by the local Amnesty International adoption group in Juneau. Members of that group passed them out to everyone who showed the slightest interest and as I recall we sent him a package or two while he was in prison, wrote him letters, had a benefit to raise money to support his family while he was in prison. As I recall, Cottbus Prison was an ugly ,dreary place, not good for one's health and we were afraid that Mr.Herrmann might die there before the end of his term. His case had a happy outcome -- he was released and allowed with his family to emigrate to what was then called West Germany, just a few years before his Excellency Erich Honecker and the German Democratic Republic as well as the secret police, the Stasi were swept away forever in 1989. I don't remember if we ever heard anything from Mr.Herrmann, not that it mattered, of course, it was enough to have been able to be in solidarity with him during his time in prison.

The outcome now seems so inevitable, but at the time we did not know that in just a few years Communism and the Cold War would disappear like a bad dream. Then and now, all the more reason to remember all those who were imprisoned, whose lives and careers were wrecked, those who were tortured, those who were 'disappeared' and murdered. Not only in the German Democratic Republoic,China and the Soviet Union, but in Indonesia, Argentina and El Salvador.

Closer to Us Than Our Own Hearts

2009-09-17T17:24:00.001-08:00

Last year I participated in the 49th Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City with my wife Paula and my son Miguel. It was a profound experience to travel to Quebec as a pilgrim.

The Congress was an experience of prayer, fellowship, solidarity and presence that bridged the liberal/conservative/traditionalist/progressive divides that so often separate us from each other. Highlights of the Congress included catechesis by bishops such as Chito Tagle of Cavite, the talks by witnesses such as Jean Vanier and Margarete Barankitse, the evening eucharistic procession through the streets of Quebec and of course, the opportunity to gather each day for the eucharist with believers from around the world.

For me as well, the Congress was also an opportunity to join other pilgrims in eucharistic adoration and to renew in my own devotional life that particular form of Western Catholic devotion. Praying with others before the Blessed Sacrament, in which Jesus, the Word of God is truly present under the signs of bread and wine, became for me an opportunity to meditate on the mystery of the Lord's unfathomable otherness and yet his intimate communion with us, being, as St.Augustine wrote so beautifully, "closer to us than our own hearts."

During those times of praying before the mystery of the Lord's contained and revealed in the host held up for worship and adoration in the monstrance, I was led to meditate on how in the eucharist the God who reveals himself so completely in Jesus is also is concealed from us as well. Not so much his subsisting within the eucharistic bread and wine itself, but the hiddeness of the unfathomable mystery of God's own self. In the eucharist, the Lord is at once revealed to us and concealed from us, knowable and unknowable, seeming contradictions that are held up, not for our understanding but for our worshipful contemplation.

The golden rays of the monstrance with the Lord its center, called to mind the image of the burning bush, where, on the holy mountain, the Word of God, that same Word that became Incarnate in Jesus, first spoke to Moses. Reverence, adoration and worship are the initial and appropriate responses to God's living presence and Moses rightly removed his shoes. Yet at Sinai (and in eucharistic adoration as well) worship and awe must give way to conversion and mission. The Lord revealed himself to Moses because He had heard the cry of his people who were slaves in Egypt. He promised to free them with his mighty arm and called Moses to be his representative to confront the tyranny of Pharoah and demand their freedom.

Since my experience at the Congress, time spent in prayer before the mystery of the eucharist has become for me an opportunity to meditate on the ways in which the Lord is both present and hidden in his people, especially in those whom the Lord sees and loves but who I do not see and do not love. The Lord whose body and blood is invisibly present in the bread and the wine calls me to see with new eyes all those who he loves but who are invisible to me, especially the materially and spiritually poor.

And That Is What I Shall Do

2009-09-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

In November 1942 Etty Hillesum wrote:

Tuesday Morning, Half- Past Nine. Something has happened to me and I don't know if it it's just a passing mood or something crucial. It is as if I had been pulled back abruptly to my roots, and had become a little more self-reliant and independent. Last night, cycling through cold, dark Lairesse Straat -- if only I could repeat everything I babbled out then! Something like this:

' God, take me by Your hand, I shall follow You dutifully, and not resist too much. I shall evade none of the tempests life has in store for me, I shall try to face it all as best I can. But now and then grant me a short respite. I shall never again assume, in my innocence, that any peace that comes my way will be eternal. I shall accept all the inevitable tumult and struggle. I delight in warmth and security, but I shall not rebel if I have to suffer cold, should You decree. I shall follow wherever Your hand leads me and shall try not to be afraid. I shall try to spread some of my warmth, of my genuine love for others, wherever I go. But we shouldn't boast of our love for others. We cannot be sure that it really exists. I don't want to be anything special, I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise. I sometimes imagine that I long for the seclusion of a nunnery. But I know that I must seek You amongst people, out in the world.'

And that is what I shall do, despite the weariness and dislike that sometimes overcomes me. I vow to live my life out there to the full.
from An Interrupted Life:The Diaries of Etty Hillesum

Remembering Hypatia

2009-09-16T09:51:00.000-08:00

(Encaustic Funerary Portrait of a Woman, 2nd - 3rd Century, Fayum, Egypt )

The life and death of the pagan philosopher and scientist Hypatia of Alexandria has become, at least since Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, an Enlightenment martyr and a case in point for the inherent conflict between faith and reason. However she was recognized for her intellect and achievements even by her Christian opponents, and all that we know of her comes from Christian sources. Her contemporary, the Christian historian Socrates Scolasticus wrote of her:

There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.

While Hypatia was most well known as a gifted teacher and interpreter of the philosophies of Plato and Arisotle, she was also a gifted scientist. She was an astronomer (the invention of the astrolabe was (alas, erroneously) attributed to her. She was the first woman we know of in the ancient world who made original contributions to mathematics and she was credited with the invention of the hydrometer, which measures the density and gravity of liquids.

Although a pagan, she had many Christian friends and admirers, including Orestes, the Imperial Prefect of Alexandria. However, Alexandria was, even in the best of times, a contentious and a violent place. Christian, Jewish and pagan factions, egged on by fanatics, periodically engaged in mob violence. In 415 Orestes and Cyril quarrelled and their supporters clashed in the streets. Hypatia, who was accused of turning the Imperial Prefect against Bishop Cyril, was pulled from her chariot by a mob of Cyril's partisans, led by Cyril's assistant, the monk Peter the Reader. She was reportedly dragged into a nearby church, brutally murdered, dismembered and her body burned.

Cyril's enemies at the time accused him of complicity in her lynching, because of the involvement of his assistant but it is more likely that Cyril had no real control over the actions of his erstwhile supporters, nor that he will or even desired her death. Still, the death of Hypatia at the hands of a mob of Christian fanatics, was, and remains, a scandal and a grave sin.

A thousand years later, the Renaissance painter Raphael painted Hypatia into his famous fresco, "The School of Athens". For the artists and scholars of the Renaissance, her brilliant career and terrible death were considered the end of antiquity and the beginning of the descent into the Dark Ages and her reappearance a sign that the dark ages were, at last, over.

Plato and Aristotle, so beloved of Hypatia of Alexandria, became over time, (during that middle period between antiquity and the modern age), the basis of so much that we have come to think of as distinctively Christian and Catholic, such as Gothic cathedrals and the theology of St.Thomas Aquinas.

A Choice of Love, A Choice of Faith

2009-09-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

On this feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, I remember with gratitude Maria Hernandenz 1939-2007. This faith-filled woman was the Director of the Office of the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador and a member of the Executive Committe of Pax Christi International.

Writing about El Salvador and her own commitment to human rights she said:

: “The situation of the Salvadorian people is terrible; all their rights are violated. There is a direct violation against the human person, a violation of rights that is endemic in society” … and: “I get my energy from my faith in God. God is my rock. He gives me the energy to fight for humanity, for peace in the world. The most important things are men and women, but ironically, they are the most aggrieved in our society. I am driven by my mission to help the Salvadorian people, who live in a defenseless and precarious state. I know that, from a religious point of view, defending human rights is also a labor of evangelism because it is the defense of human dignity, of men and women in the image of God. It is a choice of love, a choice of faith. I shall never give up”.

A Portable Wall

2009-09-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

This is a painting by a contemporary Australian artist named Cynthia Byrne who works in egg tempera. She does beautiful work and appears to work using a fresco palette that is, mostly earth and mineral colors.

Looking at this lovely painting by Ms.Byrne, I got to thinking about the novelty of a truly portable painting, (as opposed to a mural painting). Human beings have been painting mostly on walls for the past 50,000 years, beginning with the famous cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira. True enough, there have probably also always been portable painted objects (the red or black figure pottery of the ancient Greeks pottery immediately to mind), and we know that the ancients painted their sculptures too, but precious few portable paintings from antiquity have survived. But when we usually think of painting, we don't think of painted objects, but of an rectangle that resembles nothing so much as a minature wall, with a painting on it. A sort of portable mural, which can be attached to a wall temporarily, detached and carried here or there as desired. Like a wall, the painting is rectangular: in egg tempera painting the painting is rendered on rectangular plastered board which has been sanded smooth.

A wall, be it the wall of a cave or of a church has a certain solidity and the reassuring illusion of permanence. (Murals survive best when they are left alone, either because they are tucked away in a forgotten monastery like at Mt.Sinai or have been buried with sand, dirt or volcanic ash (lots of murals survive at Pompeii). Ordinarily, buildings decorated in frescos or mosaics don't survive, destoryed either by the locals recycling the bricks and marble or by invading armies or they fall victim to the changing tastes of the subsequent owners -- witness the exquisite rood screen of Chartres Cathedral (which only survives in a few fragmentary groupings of figures) which was pulled down in the 17th century to make room for something more Baroque.

In contrast to the immobility of a fresco, portability has its advantages. But a small painting has its advantages: it can be quickly secured in a saddlebag for a hasty departure or easily hidden in an attic or a barn.

However, every painting, whether on a wall or on a panel is subject to the hazards of time, neglect, fire and fashion. Never forget that the (now) famous icon of the face of Christ (from a deisis row painted by St.Andrei Rublev) was reportedly discovered in a peasant barn where it was being used (facedown) as a stairtread up to the hayloft.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Lift High the Cross

2009-09-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

This is my homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross September 14th, 2009
[The icon of the Exaltation of the Cross is by the hand of Fr.Andrei Tregubov]
Today’s feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross has been celebrated with joy each year by all Eastern and Western Christians since September 14th, 347,
when the patriarch of Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem held up for the veneration of the people the relic believed to be the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

The feast takes its name, the Exaltation of the Cross,
because on this day the cross was exalted, that is, raised solemnly before the people. It is this lifting up of the cross,
and of the One nailed to it for our salvation, which is the key to understanding the feast.

In our readings from sacred scripture the mystery and paradox of the cross of Christ is held up solemnly for our veneration and contemplation.

In the reading from Exodus, the cross is prefigured in story of the bronze serpent. The viper’s poisonous bite,
which is the punishment for Israel’s disobedience is cured when the people look at a bronze image of a viper
held up on a staff. The snake which is the instrument of punishment and death becomes the means and the sign of God’s merciful healing.

In our second reading, Jesus, who emptied himself to become human and who was raised up before the people on the cross as a criminal to suffer the degrading and humiliating death of a slave, is, because of his obedience and extreme humility,raised up by the Father, before all people, for eternity,as our Savior and the Lord of heaven and earth.

In the gospel, Jesus, who became sin for our sake, reveals to his secret disciple Nicodemus that the Son of Man must be exalted, he must be raised up before the people, like the bronze serpent in the desert, for the life of the world.

Why must he be raised up?

Because the Father sent Jesus, not to condemn the world, but to save it. The great paradox of the cross
is that God saves us, not by imposing his will on us but by emptying himself, by entering completely into our darkness and despair, by freely making himself weak and vulnerable,a savior pinned to the cross, unable to save even himself.

And so Jesus was devoured by death and swallowed up by the grave.

The Fathers of the Church likened Jesus on the cross to a baited hook dangled before the Prince of this world, who, like a hungry shark greedily gobbled it up to its ultimate destruction.

Each of us was marked with the cross at our baptism. The priest, in the name of God’s holy Church said,
“I claim you for Christ Jesus”. Marked indelibly with his cross, we belong no longer to the ruler of this world
but to Christ. Each one of us has been incorporated, body and soul into the mystery of the cross.

Today we celebrate with joy our participation in the life-giving mystery of the cross. Each of us, despite our weakness, our littleness, our sinfulness and our many limitations, are marked forever with the holy cross.Each day God lifts up each one of us marked with the cross before the people he so earnestly desires to save
as an invitation to accept his love and mercy. Marked and sealed with the cross, our daily task is to be
that sign of Christ’s love, mercy and forgiveness to those around us so that through our embrace
of the mystery of the cross, everyone who encounters Christ in us, might believe and have eternal life.

Los San Patricios

2009-09-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

Today is the anniversary of the San Patricios, the Irish immigrant soldiers who fought on the Mexican side during the Mexican American war. Reviled in the United States at the time as traitors and deserters but remembered with gratitude even today in Mexico, September 13th is the anniversary of the hanging of 30 San Patricios by the American army in 1847.

During the Mexican war over 200 Irish Catholics serving in the the invading army deserted to the Mexican side. Discriminated against by Americans who despised them because they were immigrants, Irish and Catholic, the San Patricios identified with the Mexicans, whose churches had been looted and destroyed by the invaders and who were treated by the occupying Americans in much the same way that the occupying British had treated their subjects in Ireland.

The Irish deserters were welcomed by the Mexicans, who made them citizens on the spot, promised them landgrants and allowed them to serve and to fight under the green flag of Ireland as Los San Patricios.
Their leader was John Riley, from Clifton, County Galway, where the Mexican government recently erected a monument in honor of him and the San Patricios. (Left)

Eduardo Galeano, in Memory of Fire, his three volume meditation on the history of Latin America, wrote this about the San Patricios.
"They brand with hot irons the faces of the Irish deserters and then hang them from the gallows. The Saint Patrick Irish Battalion arrived with the invaders, but fought alongside the invaded.
From the north to Molino del Rey, the Irish made theirs the fate, ill fate, of the Mexicans. Many died defending the Churubusco monastery without ammunition. The prisoners, their faces burned, rock to and fro on the gallows. "

The Mexican flag flies each year over Clifton on September 13th, in honor of the San Patricios.

Living in a Chinese Painting

2009-09-11T23:32:00.000-08:00

It was stormy yesterday -- the wind blew furiously and it rained all day long. As I looked out my window a dimly recalled word came into my head -- 'shanshui', which in Chinese literally means mountains and water. Despite the wet, cold weather, that little phrase warmed my heart for a long moment, like a long-forgotten but beloved name, which is it is. 'Shanshui' is the word for landscape and 'shanshui hua' is Chinese landscape painting, which was such a solace and comfort the year after my sister died.

I don't remember exactly how, but I had stumbled upon 'The Tao of Painting' in the library, and checked it out continuously for a year and a half. It was a great heavy square of a book, in two volumes, bound in green cloth. I would open it up, find a mountain or a clump of trees or a waterfall and just sit quietly with the painting. (Although they weren't even actual paintings, but woodcuts of paintings intended as examples in the "Mustard Seed Garden Painter's Manuel"for 17th century would be Chinese landscape painters.) Not that mattered at all -- what mattered to me was that there on the page was an ordered, balanced, harmonious world that did not require words, because I had none. While I was in the presence of that beauty, I was able to feel, from time to time, the quickening of joy. When we moved I was required to return the book (albeit with great reluctance) .

I remain grateful that my parents, distracted as they were by their own grief, noticed the consolation I found in Chinese painting. Somehow they found a copy of the 'Tao of Painting' which they gave me that second Christmas without my sister and which I have to this day.

A Glimpse into the Inferno

2009-09-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

I wrote this in my journal a week or so after 9/11

September 11th was all about images:apocalyptic images of fire, smoke, terrifed, confused people and collapsing buildings; heartbreaking images of the dead and missing; incomprehensible images of twisted steel girders and debris six stories high; disordered images of hijackers and terrorists; compassionate images of ordinary people assisting and comforting each other and heroic images of ordinary firefighters, cops and rescue workers evacuating the towers, returning again and again to the burning buildings and dying in the collapse.

Four times zones away from New York and Washington DC, the event here in Alaska was necessarily mediated by images. There was and remains no other way to experience the events of that day and their aftermath except through images.

The image of the exploding, burning and then collapsing tower has for me an apocalyptic character. Apocalypse as a horrific and shocking revelation, one that is literally beyond my (and I would argue, our ability) to comprehend. Yes, we know the facts of the event, the lethal intersection of the plane, the hijackers, the thousands beginning another routine, even banal but blessed day but the ultimate meaning is elusive and mysterious and remains so, despite the many attempts to impose order on the chaos confronting us.

In this sense, most of the images of the attack and the destruction are anti-icons, a terrifying glimpse into the invisible but real inferno of anger, fear and hatred in the depths of the human heart made visible in fire and smoke and utter destruction. The misguided brothers at the controls of those planes were not only terrorists and mass-murderers, but iconoclasts, blasphemers and idolators. For they destroyed, literally, the image of God, in the persons of the thousands who died. They did not act in the name of the living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of Jesus, and yes, of Muhammed. but of a god who was only a deluded phantasm of their darkened imagination, an abomination resembling none other than Moloch, the fiery idol before whom the wretched Canaanites burned their own children.

Lost in a Dark Wood

2009-09-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Amid the statues of angels and saints on the outside of Chartres cathedral are images of philosophers and poets like Aristotle and Virgil. They were pagans but medieval Christians believed that inspired by the Holy Spirit, they revealed, in a limited, natural way, Christ and the gospel. It was Virgil, after all, who guided Dante, 'lost in a dark wood' up the steep mountain of repentance in the Purgatorio, until, at the very gates of paradise, the poet had to turn back and return to the first circle of hell.

Yes, I know, Dr. Salvador Allende was a Marxist, albeit one who was democratically elected. He had his faults and failings, not the least of which was appointing Augusto Pinochet head of the armed forces in the forlorn hope that Pinochet could be trusted to defend democracy instead of destroying it. But he had his virtues too. Allende's very first act when he assumed power in 1970 was not to arrest all of his political opponents but to sign an executive order insuring that the poor kids who lived in the slums got a glass of milk each day to strengthen their bones and teeth. For him the larger issues of the Cold War were obscured by the tin and cardboard shacks where so many of his fellow citizens were forced to live.

Allende was the first of thousands to be killed in the coup that overthrew his government on September 11th, 1973.

Marxism is rightly discredited: how can people be forced into paradise? But from the confines of the dark woods of a world where half of the people in it try to live on less than $2 a day, there are far worse guides than a doctor who became president of his country to give milk to poor children.

Distraction

2009-09-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

I get distracted when I pray. Like everyone else. Sometimes the distractions are simply that, inattention that leads to my not being present at all, but occasionally the distraction isn't so much wandering off but a deeper kind of attention. That happened this morning when I was praying these lines from the canticle from Isaiah.

'Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust in the scales;behold, he takes up the isles like a fine dust.'

As these words were coming out of my mouth, a photograph of Osip Mandelstam popped into my head. I didn't even remember it, actually, I just saw it as if I was looking at it in a book. It's a grainy photo discovered in his arrest file when the archives of the Lubyanka were opened in the 1990's. He was arrested in 1933 after writing a poem that criticized Stalin, released and then rearrested in 1938 during the Great Purge. But there he was, with his arms folded, staring into the camera with a look that says, at least to me, that he understood that lies and evil have no power to create anything that lasts and that in the end, those who try to build a society or a nation with violence and hatred, will come to nothing. Then I thought of that exquisite line he wrote:
Homer. The sea. All is moved by love.
And couldn't help pondering the events I will be remembering tomorrow: the 1973 coup in Chile and the attacks on the World Trade Centers in 2001. Pope John Paul II said it best. 'Only love is creative'.
Mandelstam died in a Vladivostok transit camp in the fall of 1938 while waiting to be sent to the Kolyma camps. Memory eternal!
Below is my favorite poem by him.
Insomnia. Homer. Taut sails.
I've read through half the list of ships:
This spun-out brood, this train of cranes
That once ascended over Hellas.
A wedge of cranes to foreign shores,-
Your kings' heads wreathed in spray,-
Where are you sailing? Were it not for Helen,
Achaeans, what would Troy have been to you?
Homer. The sea. All is moved by love.
Where should I turn? Here Homer is silent,
While the Black Sea clamors oratorically
And reaches my pillow with a heavy roar.
1915

Through the Clouds

2009-09-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

The ladder which [Jacob] saw is the Church, which has its birth from the earth but its "way of life in heaven."
Venerable Bede

[Illumination from "The Ladder of St.John Climacus"]

During yesterday's short flight by small plane from Juneau to Hoonah I was climbing a differnt kind of ladder which took me and my fellow passengers literally from earth to the heavens and back to earth again. Its so easy, (especially where I live, which is not on the road system), to be oblivious to miraculously mundane intersection of science, history, engineering,culture and economics that make it possible to get in a airplane and go from here to there, (weather permitting) in a little over 20 minutes.

In that brief time, our pilot took us across islands and open water, climbed up over miles of banked up clouds and slipped under them to land in a village that is otherwise only accessible by a three and a half hour ferry trip (twice a week). I was traveling there with David Sulley, the national director of Catholic Home Missions, four engineers from the State of Alaska department of Transportation on their way to survey the site of an expanded ferry terminal; a shipwright and the captain of a troller on his way to hook up with his crew and head out to fish the rest of season on the outer coast.(Good luck and Godspeed!)

Dave and I had a little opening in our schedules and in the weather so we went out to Hoonah so so that he could meet the people who make up our mission there. Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the mission parish in Hoonah. We met with some of them, looked around, observed a brown bear, made our goodbyes and got back on the plane which soared over the mountains and the water, climbed up over the clouds, swung wide around the weather and put us back in the same place we'd left in the morning. I occured to me as we were walking across the runway to the terminal that we had just participated in a journey that our ancestors would have marveled at as miraculous if they had witnessed it.

The Ladder is the Cross of Christ

2009-09-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

The ladder fixed to the ground and reaching heaven is the cross of Christ, through which the access to heaven is granted to us, because it actually leads us to heaven. Chromatius of Aquileia

I'm hoping in this blog to reflect from time to time on those mysteries, persons and events that unite us to God.

Jacob's Dream (Byzantine Mosaic from Monreale, Sicily

2009-09-09T01:46:00.000-08:00

Jacob's Ladder

2009-09-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

Today I noticed a beat-up aluminum ladder propped up against a house and I began to ponder ladders and the spiritual life. There is Benedict's ladder of humility, which is an entire chapter in his Rule, as well as John of the Ladder, the great spiritual master of Sinai. And inevitably, there is Jacob's ladder, uniting heaven and earth, that he saw while he slept in a dream of angels ascending and descending.

As I pondered Jacob's Ladder, which unites heaven and earth, I recalled another image: the ladders that are lashed together to bridge the crevasses on the way up to Mt.Everest and the ladder which I guess a Chinese expedition years ago installed on the final step before the summit. Its almost impossible to imagine how much foresight and physical effort was needed to haul those ladders up the mountain and to fasten them into place.

Fortunately, God from his holy mountain, does not require me to haul the ladder into place before I begin to ascend it. Instead, he already lowered the ladder to me and set it into place.
All I have to do is start climbing.