bizarre abbot suger quote of the day

Abbot Suger of San Denis.

On why Suger needed to enlarge the church:

"For the narrowness of the place forced the women to run toward the altar upon the heads of the men as upon a pavement with much anguish and noisy confusion."

Which Church Father Are You?

Origen of Alexandria.

According to this quiz (via Diane at Bringing Home the Word), I am Origen, which is cool philosophically, though I am concerned about his taking "make yourself a eunich for Christ" way too literally... I mean, at least with Abelard, it wasn't his idea...

You’re Origen! You do nothing by half-measures. If you’re going to read the Bible, you want to read it in the original languages. If you’re going to teach, you’re going to reach as many souls as possible, through a proliferation of lectures and books. If you’re a guy and you’re going to fight for purity … well, you’d better hide the kitchen shears. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

prayer requests

I'd just like to link to two prayer requests: B's for John Haynes, and Paula's for Laura.

updated links

From a thirteenth-century German manuscript. A monk is picking out a piece of parchment. He will then stretch it on a frame and scrape it smooth with a knife (see background). Then he will add links to his favorite blogs.

Jeff has wondered about the absence of a link on my page to his remarkable blog. The reason behind this absence has to do with a conspiracy involving the CIA, the MI5, the Illuminati and a handful of albino monks. That, and a flood of biblical proportions as well as an odd position of Jupiter in relation to the constellation Anthrax. That, and I'm lazy and afraid of html.

But I should share these great blogs with anyone who may stumble across mine. I also noticed the links to Fay's blog (which she has renamed Chaldean Thoughts) and Habakkuk's Watchpost didn't work, and I think I fixed that.

Jeff's blog, Aun Estamos Vivos, containing his reflections on religion, politics, and society, is one of the most thoughtful and well-written blogs you will find out there. Cura Animarum is a great spiritual blog, also very intelligent and worth reading. I have recently discovered Musing from the Big U, by another Catholic graduate student, a composer. You may have come across Gabrielle in the comment box, and it's about time I listed her blog, The Lost Fort, full of lovely medieval tidbits.

I'm sure I'm forgetting other wonderful blogs and I promise to be better about adding them in the future. Until then, enjoy these links (and the beauty of my cat -- see below).

stealing an idea...

I am too busy/lazy to post right now, so I will just steal an idea from Crystal and post a couple of photos of my cat, Mishea. She actually has beautiful blue eyes, but they always come out a bit luciferian in photos. The lump under the blanket is yours truly.

Good Friday

I will be offline until Sunday. Have a prayerful Triduum, everyone.

St Tutilo of Gall, the NYPD, and the Stasi

Sacramentary, possibly from the monastery of St Gall, ninth century.

First things first: today is the feast day of the ninth-century monk St Tutilo of Gall. Here's what the Catholic Forum has to say about him:

Large, powerfully built man. Educated at Saint Gall's monastery in Switzerland where he stayed to become a Benedictine monk. Friend of Blessed Notkar Balbulus. A renaissance man before the term was coined. Excellent student, he became a sought-after teacher at the abbey school. Noted speaker. Poet and hymnist, though nearly all of his work has been lost. Architect, painter, sculptor, metal worker, and mechanic; some of his art work continues to grace galleries and monasteries around Europe. Composer and musician, playing several instruments including the harp. No matter his talents or works, he preferred the solitude and prayers of his beloved monastery.

Well, any friend of Notkar the Stammerer is a friend of mine. Besides (can't you tell seeing how talented he was?) he was Irish.

Also, imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis and I saw a film this past weekend that made quite an impression on us, The Lives of Others, which won the Oscar for best foreign film this year. Crystal has already posted on it (cave spoilers). The story, sent in East Germany in the 1980's, could easily have been sentimental or contrived, but a great screenplay, excellent directing, and exquisitely subtle acting made it very powerful.

The movie centered on the omnipresent spying on East Germans by the Stasi, the state police. Everyone was watched, there were hundreds of thousands of informers, and the slightest expression of dissent was enough to make one a target of suspicion. After watching the film I went home and read the Times, learning that the NYPD had infiltrated and spied on activist groups inside and outside the country before the 2004 GOP convention in New York. We're not talking about bomb-throwing anarchists or Al-Queda:

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.

I was upset about Bloomberg bringing the convention here in 2004 so that Bush could use New York's suffering as a background for his war-mongering, I was upset that New Yorkers were not allowed to protest during the convention or in Central Park, and I was upset about the arbitrary arrests during that week. But this takes the cake.

I'm not saying the NYPD is like the Stasi. I'm just reporting the news. I report, you decide. And also, near the end of the film, you see how East Germans now can request and examine the Stasi reports on them. New Yorkers don't have that privilege. Ain't that grand?

St. Tutilo, pray for us.

feast of the Annunciation

Duccio di Buoninsegna, from the Maestà, 1308-1311.

The day is almost over, but I thought I'd throw this up. Here's the passage from Luke 1, in the beautiful Latin of the Vulgate:

in mense autem sexto missus est angelus Gabrihel a Deo in civitatem Galilaeae cui nomen Nazareth ad virginem desponsatam viro cui nomen erat Ioseph de domo David et nomen virginis Maria

et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit have gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus

quae cum vidisset turbata est in sermone eius et cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio

et ait angelus ei ne timeas Maria invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum ecce concipies in utero et paries filium et vocabis nomen eius Iesum hic erit magnus et Filius Altissimi vocabitur et dabit illi Dominus Deus sedem David patris eius et regnabit in domo Iacob in aeternum et regni eius non erit finis

dixit autem Maria ad angelum quomodo fiet istud quoniam virum non cognosco

et respondens angelus dixit ei Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te et virtus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi ideoque et quod nascetur sanctum vocabitur Filius Dei et ecce Elisabeth cognata tua et ipsa concepit filium in senecta sua et hic mensis est sextus illi quae vocatur sterilis quia non erit inpossibile apud Deum omne verbum

dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum

tenebrae

"Kerzen" by Gerhard Richter.

I was asked to write some Lenten reflections for my parish bulletin, and I wrote them on the Tenebrae service:

This will be my third Lent at Ascension, and like the last two years, I will attend the Tenebrae service on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Lent is a time of reflecting on what is bare, what is somber, what is dark. It is, of course, a time of exquisite hope as we await Easter, but hope almost on the edge of desolation as we consider the bleakness of Good Friday and the cross. For the Easter fire to blaze out and give us light, we must have darkness first. Tenebrae is Latin for darkness, and the prayer service that bears that name enacts in many ways that last stripping from ourselves whatever amount of ephemeral vanity that has clogged our life during the previous year. It is performed in a darkened church lit only by candles that are extinguished one by one as each reading is recited. In the end, there is no light, and we leave the church with silence and darkness settling on us, paring us down and emptying us out, preparing us to be filled that much more powerfully by the joy of Resurrection we experience when Easter finally arrives.

Last year I put together the booklet for the service and this year I went over the texts once again in order to correct typos. I was struck by the beautiful starkness of Psalm 22, which is read on Good Friday and has been seen as prefiguring the Passion: “I can count every one of my bones.” The harsh physicality of that line sends chills up my spine. “These people stare at me and gloat; they divide my clothing among them: they cast lots for my robe.” Of course, the Psalm begins with the words Jesus spoke on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Good Friday service continues with cries of penitence as we read Psalm 51: “My offenses truly I know them; my sin is always before me.” Still, though we brush against despair, in the darkness of that day lay the promise of healing and the possibility of redemption: “Indeed you love truth in the heart; then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom. O purify me, then I shall be clean; O wash me, I shall be whiter than snow.” This is what Lent is about: “A pure heart, create for me, O God.”

Prayers of lamentation continue throughout the three days, and every day the church is darkened a little more after each prayer is read and the candle is put out. There are also, however, prayers of joy, and we finish the Holy Saturday service with the praise of Psalm 150: “Oh praise him with resounding cymbals, praise him with clashing cymbals. Let everything that lives and breathes give praise to the Lord.”

When the service is over, I will quietly get up and leave the church. I will walk out into the cool morning air, the rays of the sun shining eastward down 107^th street and, glad and somber, prepare myself throughout the day for the Easter vigil Mass. In the end the Tenebrae service, like Lent itself, is not about darkness, but about the underlying light that remains even in the darkest times.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig

I can't imagine a better way to celebrate St Patrick's Day (apart from Mass and a pint of Guinness afterwards) than the way I did last year. So, here it is:

I am going to leave you with the incredibly moving prayer "The Lorica of St Patrick" (St Patrick's Breastplate). If not written by Patrick himself, it was certainly inspired by him. Its litany-like repetitions are hypnotic. The beginning "I arise today" makes it personal, giving the idea that each believer can say he begins every day with the armor of faith. It expresses an early medieval concern with temptation, heresy, and magic, but it also shows a stunning appreciation of the beauty of creation ("light of sun, brilliance of moon"). The climax of the poem situates Christ in every relation to the believer, first in each physical direction and then in all encounters with others. It is magnificent. Happy St Patrick's, every one.

The Lorica of St Patrick

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession
of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me,
God's host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices,
against inclinations of nature, against everyone who
shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.
I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose
my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul.
Christ to protect me today
against poison, against burning, against drowning,
against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the
Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

And the winner is...

It's a tie... Bede the Venerable and Eusebius of Caesarea are both now our patron saints of historians! Bede had held a commanding lead, but Eusebius came from behind and even pulled ahead. As the buzzer sounded, Bede hit a jumper and tied the game.

With thirty-seven votes cast, our two historians each managed to capture twelve votes. I find the symmetry of Western and Eastern, Latin and Greek, very pleasing and ecumenical. One thing -- Bede is considered a saint by the Roman Church, but Eusebius is not. A commentator on Gabriele's blog said Eusebius was a saint in the Orthodox Church, but I have yet to verify this. Does anyone have any information on that?

Thank you all for your participation.

Vote for Patron Saint of Historians

UPDATE: The polls are closed -- here are the results.

Congregation of the saints at the last judgment, German, fifteenth century.

All right, it's time to vote. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell everyone that we are going to vote to decide who will be the patron saint of history. This is the first time I've used the poll, so I hope it works. There is information on all the candidates in the previous post and its comments thread.

Patron Saint of Historians?

The Venerable Bede, who for some reason is not the patron saint of historians.

I am shocked and dismayed to learn that there is no patron saint for historians. There are patron saints of accountants, old clothes dealers, undertakers, nail makers,
and roller skaters, but none for historians. The site I was using referred me to teachers, writers, archeologists, and translators. Okay, for teachers they list, among others, a couple of favorites: St Catherine of Alexandra, who, though a young women in a patriarchal society, converted many through her logic and erudition, and the wise and capable Pope Gregory the Great. As a teacher, I will take that into account. Historians teach, and they also write. Interesting and few choices for writers: St Francis de Sales, the apostles Paul and John, and St Lucy. St Lucy is wonderful, but I have no idea why she's a patron of writers. I love the Gospel of John and the Revelations of John the Divine, but they are two different people and neither one is the apostle.

There are three patrons of archeology, but none for history! I like that St Helen is one -- as the discoverer of the True Cross (of which I have a sliver) she really was the first Christian archeologist. But, to paraphrase Frank O'Hara, I think I would rather be an archeologist, but I am not. What's left? Translators. I have worked and occasionally still work as a translator. Who is their patron saint? Our old friend Jerome, who was, pace Talmida, a great translator and is also the patron saint of grumpy old men.

So I think we need to do something about this for the sake of historians everywhere. Everywhere there are brave women and men sneezing from archive dust, battling through dense bibliographies, and learning Estonian because the one book they need to read is only available in that language. We need someone to pray to. Bede seems an obvious choice. St Gregory of Tours is an option, despite his cruelly impenetrable and barely coherent Latin. I will be taking nominations and then we will put them up to a vote.

Fra Angelico

I'm just too busy to post anything. The Franciscans told me today that it was the feast day of Blessed John of Fiesole, otherwise known as Fra Angelico. Enjoy the painting -- it was one of my favorites from the Prado in Madrid.

There's a lovely story about Fra Angelico by Antonio Tabucchi for those who can read Italian.

the martyrdom of Saint Agatha

A traditional representation of St Agatha, with a martyr's palm and a dish containing her breasts.

It seems whenever I decide to write about a certain saint, Crystal scoops me. Check out her page for some information on the legend as well as for an interesting interpretation of St Agatha by the contemporary Canadian artist Jennifer Linton. I would just like to jot down some reflections on the legend and representation of today's saint.

St Agatha is one of a number of early Christian virgin martyrs who was killed after refusing marriage or sexual advances from pagan Roman officials. In her story, she is forced into a brothel and when she refuses to accept customers, she is tortured and her breasts are cut off. The sadistic eroticism is explicit in this tale and is part and parcel of the efforts of the Roman official, Quinctianus, to demand sex of her and then force her to work in a brothel. The amputation of her breasts are the finishing touch of male assault on her body, a long, drawn-out act of rape. St Agatha, however, is not vanquished, and reclaims her own body, reminding Quinctianus that a woman's breasts are more than objectified erotic objects: "Cruel man, have you forgotten your mother and the breast that nourished you, that you dare to mutilate me this way?" Or, in the fifteenth-century English of the William Caxton, the first translator of the medieval Golden Legend:

Over felon and cruel tyrant, hast thou no shame to cut off that in a woman which thou didst suck in thy mother, and whereof thou wert nourished? But I have my paps whole in my soul, of which I nourish all my wits, the which I have ordained to serve our Lord Jesu Christ, sith the beginning of my youth.

This story seems very profound to me, and St Agatha's ability to reinterpret Quincianus' narrative by a more thorough knowledge of her own body as well as her understanding that faith preserved her physical integrity (she does not claim that her body is harmed but that her soul is whole, rather she claims "I have my paps whole in my soul") shows her to be very powerful.

St Agatha is often represented in devotional art with her breasts on a plate, and we moderns may either giggle like schoolchildren or turn away horrified. Are these images truly that morbid, or are we disturbed because we are uncomfortable with our own physicality? Martyrs usually bear the symbols of their martyrdom as trophies -- St Catherine of Alexandra carries the wheel with which she was tortured or the sword with which she was murdered; St Lucy holds a plate holding two eyes, since her eyes were gouged out by her tormentors. Sometimes St Agatha is just represented with the pair of shears or tongs that were used to remove her breasts. They are symbols, and the saints are represented as healed and whole -- "whole in their soul," as Agatha might say.

Renaissance and especially Baroque art change this equation and play with the human drama involved in the story. In the "Martyrdom of St Agatha" by Sebastian del Piombo (c. 1485 - 1587), we are presented with the very brutal scene in which the tongs are applied to Agatha's breasts. She is nude to the waist, and the erotic element seems very clear. Is Agatha allowed to redeem herself in this painting?

In Tiepolo's eighteenth-century version, there is another twist on the iconography. In his painting, there is a dish with two breasts on it, but it is not merely symbolic, for we see Agatha press a bloody cloth to her chest and we realize the intense physicality implied in the traditional representation of the saint.

In another representation, we see a portrait of an aristocratic lady, possibly by Sebastian del Piombo, in which the dish with breasts, the shears, a halo, and a martyr's palm had been added at a later date. In a weird way, a realistic portrait has been given the timeless symbols of a martyr's icon.

cor bestiae devoravimus

Samarkand, great city of the Silk Road in Uzbekistan.












Sometimes you find yourself wandering through the far reaches of Queens carrying an umbrella and a wedding dress, looking for Uzbek food.

Let me explain, though it be a long story. Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis had a knee operation a year ago and I found myself in the position of nurse (I'm sure everything would have been better had she followed my advice and let me perform the surgery at home with a corkscrew and a rubber band, but...). I asked in return Uzbek food, since I had read there were so many Uzbekis in Rego Park, Queens that the area is often referred to as "Regostan."

Things move slowly. A year later, Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis had healed from her operation and had been proposed to. She had Martin Luther King Day off and we went to Queens to pick up the wedding dress she had picked out the day before (Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis has been handling the wedding preparations with ruthless efficiency). So we decided that afterwards we would follow the "R" train out to Rego Park in eastern Queens so I could finally cash in on the Uzbek food. We went to the bridal store where I looked away from the dress, lest I be blinded, held out my credit card, and paid extra money for a bag that would keep me from seeing the dress by mistake. I then draped it over my umbrella and we set out for the Silk Road, New York City.

The restaurants in Regostan are all kosher (which I love, since I'm allergic to shrimp and I never have to worry about eating it by mistake in kosher restaurants). This is because most of the central Asians who have come to Regostan are Bukharian Jews, who trace their origins back to the Babylonian captivity, and 90% of whom have emigrated to Israel and the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Bukharian Jews, circa 1890.

The Bukharian Jews spoke their own language, a mix of Hebrew and Persian, and lived a culture that went back thousands of years.

After a bit of googling, I had settled on a restaurant called Cheburechnaya. Unfortunately, the one website that gave a subway stop gave the wrong one, and so we had quite a walk to the restaurant carrying a heavy wedding dress. We finally made our way down 63rd Drive, a commercial street with signs in Russian and English. We reached Cheburechnaya, a brightly-lit place with a big neon sign across the street from an old white wooden Lutheran church that must have been built in a very different kind of neighborhood.

We sat down at the table and looked around us. I believe we were the only non-Bukharians there. The televisions displayed Russian music videos. We carefully examined the menu (warning to Crystal and Sandalstraps and other vegetarians: strange animal parts to be featured). We started with soup. Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis had a succulent and filling oxtail soup (shurpa), and I had lagman, a soup with a Silk Road connection -- lagman is apparently connected to Chinese lo mein, and features wonderful handmade noodles and delicious broth. We also had cheburikis, pastries filled with mushrooms and cabbage.

Then it was time for the meat. The restaurant offers a number of kebabs on big sword-like spits. We ordered three. Lulya (a kind of spiced meatball), veal sweetbreads, and...



LAMB'S HEART ON A STICK!



That's right. We devoured the heart of the beast and took from it its strength. Unfortunately, it wasn't still beating when we gnashed it to pieces with our teeth, but the good thing was that, like any other part of a lamb, it tasted like lamb. It was good. It wasn't the funkiest lamb part on the menu, either.


We both enjoyed the lulya. I liked the sweetbreads, but Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis was not as enthusiastic about its texture. It is the animal's pancreas, after all ("A certaine Glandulous part, called Thimus, which in Calues... is most pleasaunt to be eaten. I suppose we call it the sweete bread..." John Banister, The historie of man, 1578. Thank you, OED). I found it very tasty. It melts in one's mouth.


I do regret we didn't try one of the salads, it would have gone well with the meat. We washed the whole thing down with gallons of green tea, had a lovely almond cake dessert, paid the ridiculously small tab, and left, a wedding dress in our arms and a desire to return for more in our hearts. The Uzbeck food adventure had been thoroughly successful.

Silly

Jean Fouquet. Portrait of the Ferrara Court Jester Gonella. c. 1442. Tempera on wood. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

Sometimes quite by chance I come across evidence of what an unapologetically silly person I can be. Today, when trying to figure out how to use MS Access to print out reports on my charters, I came across a nonsense database I created when first learning to use the program, the "database of desire." I had wanted to have one large text field since I knew I would be typing in extensive notes on my charters, so I created a field of fake novel excerpts. Without further ado, I present them for your reading enjoyment:

She was dark, dark like the night. O! that I could know her, touch her cabbages, call her Tiny Jim…

Gretel held the ostrich egg in her hand, wondering how many people she could feed after frying it sunnyside up. What are we talking about here -- she thought to herself -- dinner-plate size? Pizza size? Hula-hoop size?

"No!" She shouted, her eyes blazing in righteous nausea….

Green, green flowed the lawnmower over her heart of bliss. Ach! Bitter was the schweingartenmeister…

How high the moon? Not high enough, he said, sadly, drinking his pesticide and gin.

The football cruised to an uptight velocity and then turned ever so slightly, as if to graze the cleavage of the Romanian cheerleader. That was the sign that blood rains would drench the field before the third quarter….

We knew then that there would be no giving up, no time for sniffling, just a moment before the shell broke on the counter, covering the kitchen floor in unbeaten ostrich egg…

The ides of march fell on a Tuesday that year, which surprised everyone in the gallery…

That was the year we were going to make it to the finals that year, but our star forward was trapped in the desert and had to eat his own foot…

My mind was floating across the idea that I would never see her again, when the shark shook me out of my musings...

Five things you perhaps do not know about me

One thing you didn't know about Emperor Frederick II -- he played basketball (the ball is in his left hand).

It seems that the only thing that will get me off my fat Irish butt and blog is to be tagged for a meme. Talmida hit me with this one. Let's see how many of you know these things (or if you care).

1. I'm getting married. Yes, it's true. I kept planning to make a formal announcement on the blog and I never got around to it. Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis and I are tying the knot next October. I proposed to her last September at the Cloisters after an elaborate ruse which successfully aimed at taking her off guard and thus confusing her to the point at which she would say yes.

2. I can play several instruments very badly. Over the course of my life I have taken lessons in piano, trumpet, guitar, saxophone, cello, and accordion (from a Bulgarian in Madrid) -- never at the same time. I have a four-track recorder (now gathering dust at my mother's house) and at one point I recorded songs, accompanying myself on guitar, bass, accordion and percussion (a plastic box of dry lentils -- ker-SHUNK). Alas, my love of music was never matched by my talent.

3. As a child I met John Wayne. He was a friend of a client of my father's, and we met him in central Utah. I may meet men who are taller and men who are fatter, but I will never meet a man as big as John Wayne.

4. When I was fourteen, I wanted to be an actor. My uncle is a playwright and theater has always been in my life. In fourth and fifth grade, I wrote the school play and as a teenager I was acting in plays my uncle produced (for example, we did a fifteen-minute version of Richard III on the city buses). An actor, however, uses his body as an instrument, and I'm afraid I have always been a bit too clumsy to be at ease on stage. The last thing I was in was a bilingual production of The Tempest in Madrid. It was good training for my voice, though, and I do fairly well at public speaking -- lecturing, doing poetry readings, or being a lector at church.

5. I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Okay that's not true... Let me try again.

5. In my past lives, I was an Egyptian pharaoh, a Roman poet, a Templar, and an Elizabethan explorer. Okay, that's not true either. I don't believe in reincarnation, but if I did have past lives, odds are I would have been one of the 99.99% of humanity that throughout history spent their time shoveling cow poop.

5. I was briefly married to Mae West. No, that's not true either.

5. I make a mean roast chicken. That is actually true. A very good roast chicken.

Who shall I tag? Well, let's say Jeff, Sandalstaps, Guillaume le Fou, and mi primo.

The engagement ring.

Prayer

Caravaggio, St Catherine of Alexandria.

Crystal has tagged me for a contemporary theology meme, which is a bit of a problem for me since I found my way back to the Church while in grad school and thus have had very little time to read things not written in or about the Middle Ages. I will give it some thought.

Meanwhile, I finished adding all of Queen Urraca's charters to my database and decided to celebrate by wasting time bouncing around the internets. I hit beliefnet and came across a couple of articles on praying for a parking place. One, by Patton Dodd, was very serious and its general tone was summed up in its title: Praying for Parking is Evil. The author's point was that a God who will find you parking but won't stop the Holocaust leaves something to be desired, and seen from that perspective it's difficult to argue with him. In the end, though, it seems terribly rigid and gloomy -- we all have to be very serious about this and frivolity is morally dangerous. The specter of Puritanism rears its dour head.

The other article, by Father James Martin, is on the opposite side of the spectrum, investigating what saints are to be prayed to for finding lost items:

St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around.
Something is lost but cannot be found.

Or finding a husband:

St. Catherine, St. Catherine,
O lend me thy aid.
And grant that I never shall die an old maid.

Or even finding a parking place:

Mother Cabrini, Mother Cabrini,
please find a spot for my little machiney.

Of course, serious Christians will scowl and say that the two articles cannot be compared. Dodd's article is theological, whereas Martin's is folkloric. It goes along with memories of the Irish nuns teaching school and long-away Sundays when we were altar boys. At worst it's superstitious and at best frivolous. It helps us in no way spiritually.

Or does it? Why is the playful excluded from the spiritual? The center of my own understanding of God is apophatic (as I understand that term) -- I think God is beyond our comprehension. This does not make our ways of approaching God (scripture, liturgy, theology) invalid, but we cannot approach God without our limitations. On one hand, it is important to be rigorous and use our intelligence to clarify what we mean when we speak -- we were given intelligence for a reason, after all. Also we must make moral choices based on love of God and our fellow human beings. There is, however, a kind of arrogance in being too rigid and judgmental. We must remember how limited even our greatest flights of understanding are.

I believe many of our traditions have grown around deep psychological and spiritual needs that we have, and to reject them out of hand because they do not fit a limited understanding of scripture or theology will impoverish our spirituality. Veneration of saints is a good example. Yes, if we forget Christ because we only concentrate on saints, or if we feel that a prayer is magic spell that can compel heavenly action, we are probably wandering away from where we should go. Yet praying to saints is also a way of responding to the feeling that we are in a Church, a community, that includes the living and the dead, and that after the incarnation the distance between human beings and God has been bridged.

I love reading Aquinas and other theologians because there is something magnificent in the edifices they build when they apply reason to religion. There is something holy in it as well, but it's only a part. The core is mystery. I have an acquaintance who called mystery the perennial Catholic cop-out, but to me I can't really believe that, in the end, we can completely understand the divine with our heads. That conditions how I see intercessory prayer, a subject which creates a theological difficulty. After all, if God is perfect and how God acts is perfect, how could we move God to change the way he/she is working in the world? As Dodd suggests, what kind of a God finds parking spaces but ignores our pleas for peace in Darfur? On the other hand, what kind of God does not listen to the cries of his/her children?

The question ends, like most others, in mystery. I see intercessory prayer as hope made active before God. Hope, we are told, is a virtue whereas despair is a sin. If we do not express our hope to God, to whom will we? Like thanking and praising, expressing hope in the form of prayer is a basic way of behaving towards the divine. How it functions -- where, when, why and if God intercedes in our world to change it in the direction we hope it to change -- is a mystery. Still, it would be foolish not to hope.

This includes frivolous and playful hopes as well, which can be expressed in playful ways, such as in the rhymes above. It is true if you spend all your time hoping for the superficial, you become superficial, and if your hope becomes vain desire, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Still, playfulness is part of life and I believe the playful has its place in the spirit.

Año nuevo, vida nueva

Happy New Year, everyone. I have returned from the Western mountains, where Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis and I did little more than sleep, eat, and lay about, which was pretty much what we needed to do. Now I am ready to attack the charters with renewed vigor, and I hope that I can organize the rest of my life as well. I won't be as foolish as to state resolutions here on the blog that could come back to haunt me, but I do hope to write a bit more. We'll see.