Reflections
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My wife and I took a leisurely drive through some of the small hamlets just north of our little farm. The day was sunny and mild, and the car seemed to pilot itself, looping back and forth on the curves and switchbacks, through the fields of strawberries and tobacco, past the Black Angus, cropping grass with the placid patience of monks who have nowhere to go except to Compline. Great beauty surrounded us on the drive, but so did extended swaths of rusted poverty and squalor. The weathered gray boards of barns stood guard next to the peeling-painted houses with their spare-tire planters and last year’s Christmas lights draped along…
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Easter Monday
Reading this morning in Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, I felt as if the old monk were aiming some of his words directly at me across the centuries. In his eighth letter, he tells the person to whom he’s writing: I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer; many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering… And in his ninth letter, discussing a mutual acquaintance, he tells his correspondent: She seems to me full of good will, but she would go faster than grace. One does not become holy all at once. … These two subjects, verbosity in prayer…
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He Is Risen Indeed
I slipped into sleep last night watching the fire-patterns in the stove, methodically releasing my hold on old hurts and old grudges that had been bedeviling me all evening. Reading earlier in the afternoon in Holy Week: The Complete Offices in Latin and English, I had latched onto a section from the Second Nocturne in Holy Saturday, a selection from Psalm 26: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord. How often are men exhorted in this day and age to “do manfully?” The rarity…
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Holy Saturday, Night
We walked together, Jinx and I. At dawn and in the warmth of the day and at its close. We marveled at the same colors and listened to the same songs. And now we are with Mrs. Orr and Dixee, all of us in the same room, a fire’s flames curling up behind the stove’s glass on the night of the day known as 4-3-21. A countdown day. The dogwoods will not blossom tomorrow after all. Perhaps later in the week. The buds are larger and fuller, but they are not ready for Easter. They have their own timetable, they listen to their own music, singing in the sap that…
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Later On Good Friday
The word “blessing” is grossly overused and misused these days, but my use of it here is absolutely precise: today was a blessing. I had the day off and was determined to spend it in reading, prayer, and contemplation. I did so. I prayed a full rosary in three stages, said all of the offices (so far) for The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I worked on my Latin exercises (I’m trying to learn to say all of the major prayers in Latin), did a bit of work on some poems in progress, and wrote some prayers in my prayer book. I read a pretty sizable chunk of…
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And About The Ninth Hour…
It is now three p.m. here, the ninth hour of the day if reckoned by the timekeeping of the earthly days of our Lord Jesus Christ. Either He died as the holy apostles have told us, or He did not. It was either accomplished for us, or it was not. His followers are either the most wretched of all men, or we are not. This is not the hour for arguments or syllogisms or debate. This is the hour when I am compelled to whisper, “Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Lord, increase my faith. Lord Jesus, receive my…
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Late, Maundy Thursday
Jinx and I just went out into the back yard for his final restroom break of the night, and we were surprised to step out into snow. The porch and grass were covered in white powder, but it is clearing because the stars were shining down , one of the last of those cold, clear nights that I will miss when the weather finally warms and the air is less crisp, less sharply defined. I think I’ve neglected to mention recently that I am growing potatoes this year. In old automobile tires. This is a technique I’ve heard about for years, one that has been recommended to me by many…
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Thursday In Holy Week
It’s a shame that we’re going to have some snow today, along with freezing temperatures the next two nights. The blooms and blossoms around our little farm are particularly zestful right now, with the peach trees, dogwood, redbud, forsythia, pear trees, daffodils, and various bulbs all in full glory. It would have been a spectacular Easter Sunday morning, but will probably be somewhat muted. Ah, well. The good Lord knows what He’s doing. Today marks what would have been the 100th birthday of my wife’s beloved father. Pawpaw was a remarkable person, a self-made man in every sense of the term. Forced to leave school at age eight in order…
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Wednesday In Holy Week
I overheard someone at work refer to one of their mutual acquaintances as having “a missionary’s heart.” The phrase got me to thinking about missions and my experience with missionaries. In my experience in the Protestant world, few things are more heavily lip-serviced and more lightly performed in real life than “missions.” Pretty much every church has a bulletin board or display with photos and profiles of “their” missionaries. There are regular fund-raisers, coinciding usually with the missionary and his/her family making a personal appearance before the congregation to give a report on how things are going in their particular mission field. I also saw a fair number of “mission…
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Tuesday In Holy Week
My sister sent me happy news, an announcement that my nephew, her youngest child, will be getting married next month. She reports that he and his betrothed are happy with each other and ready to take this step. While I am genuinely happy for my nephew, I have mixed feelings about the situation. The world is different, as it always is, age to age. Marriage doesn’t mean what it once did, and among young people it seems to have taken on an aspect of gladiatorial combat. And the watching world is either ho-hum or avidly watching with gleaming eyes, not wanting to miss a single extraction of pain. I pray…