- Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Paintings, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections, Saints, Short Stories
Feast of the Maid
He was feeling low that day, with all the regrets and bad decisions and missed opportunities of a lifetime revolving before him like a carousel, pulling him into that silent despondent cave where he sometimes found himself, with warmth and light and hope far outside, seemingly unreachable. Those moments felt like eternity, and eternity troubled him. The phone rang and he answered it, providing the lengthy greeting that was by now so natural for him to recite, the greeting ending with “How may I help you today?” The voice was female, faint, and warbly. “I need some help.” “I’d be glad to help you, ma’am. Is there something in particular…
- Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Lectio Divina, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections, Saints
Holy Week
The days have unspooled quickly in this early part of springtime. My interior life has been not in turmoil but in flux, an almost palpable ebb and flow, and through all my misgivings and doubts and ragings and grim, silent musings, I have felt like some sort of antenna, unmoored but still grounded, with invisible signals popping and whizzing around me during my hours. A good friend, who roves across much of the same rocky spiritual landscape I do, recently mentioned in passing how he just might be holding onto a hope that he will one day believe again. That sentiment sang in me like a tuning fork when a…
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Until This Instant
I was not angry since I came to France Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald; Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill: If they will fight with us, bid them come down, Or void the field; they do offend our sight: If they’ll do neither, we will come to them, And make them skirr away, as swift as stones Enforced from the old Assyrian slings: Besides, we’ll cut the throats of those we have, And not a man of them that we shall take Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so. Henry V, Act IV, scene vii by William Shakespeare A friend sent me a text…
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The Feast of Saint Joan of Arc
“Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of human history, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen.” Louis Kossuth A thank you to Ann Barnhardt for posting her tribute to the Maid today. There has never been anyone like the Maid. ~ S.K. Orr St. Joan of Arc Novena Opening prayer: Eternal Father, you gave us Saint Joan of Arc through your infinite love and mercy for us. We humbly ask that you send down your Holy Spirit upon us, as Your Spirit is the intermediary…
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Memorials
I walked the road the other morning alone, leaving Jinx and Bluebelle to romp in the backyard while I strolled the mountain lane, and I noticed how the gravel at the edges of the road had been ground down by the tires and tires and tires until it resembled nothing so much as gray aquarium rock. If I had one of those glass boxes full of water and marine life and topped with a humming light — I’ve never in my life owned an aquarium, and usually only think of them when I read Loren Eisley, who spent a childhood making and stocking his own — I would scoop up…
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Despair, Sleep, and Heavenly Mother
Bruce Charlton has posted a really good essay over at his blog, one of those posts that stopped me in my tracks. I commend it to you. I’ll include here the checklist Bruce wrote to assist in spiritual re-encouragement, and then a couple of thoughts. 1. Reality is ultimately created by God – and continually being-created by God; and I participate in this creation (as a sub-creator) insofar as the world is understandable to me. I look around and remind myself of this. 2. The world is Not dead, mechanical or random; the world is alive and conscious: this is a world of beings. Every ‘thing’ is actually a being, or part…
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The Pages of the Days
Jinx and I were on the road this morning while it was still dark. Dark in terms of “the sun hadn’t arisen yet,” but not in terms of a lack of light. God held the full moon above us — I believe the almanac named this one a Cold Moon, but in Texas, since it’s occurring in August, it’s a Comanche Moon — and the shadows the dog and I threw on the road were black and stark and eerie. Adding to the atmosphere were a witchy mist floating in the hollers and the calls of screech owls and hoot owls haunting the humid air above the dark fields. During…
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Consider the Birds of the Air; Consider My Random Thoughts
The day was muggy and hazy, ushered in by rain and a good, belligerent breeze. Everything got a good watering, but by mid-afternoon, the sun pushed through the canopy of clouds and microwaved everything into a steamy glare. The breeze remained, though diminished from the morning hours, and made things tolerable. Jinx offered his opinion that the paucity of birds is due to the Coopers hawk who is still hanging around. Thinking on his approach, I realized that the non-seed eating birds like doves and robins have been as scarce as the feeder birds. About noon, I saw the hawk gliding through the back yard, about twenty feet off the…
- Church Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Lectio Divina, Prayers, Quotations, Reflections, Saints
The Feast of Saint Joan of Arc
Five hundred and ninety years ago today, a devout 19 year-old virgin from an obscure French village was fastened to a pillar in the village square of Rouen and burned to death by Church authorities, their actions born of political intrigue, spiritual blindness, worldly greed…and great evil. Young Joan hears her voices For deeply personal reasons, I have a special devotion to the Maid, and have maintained an intimate relationship with her through prayer and meditation for some years now. There is no one like her. And her presence in the living world of today is real and undeniable. I am celebrating the Maid’s feast day on this last Sunday…
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For The Maid
One of the more tedious things I encounter when reading blogs is a blogger mentioning or quoting someone, then adding the disclaimer, “Now of course, I don’t agree with everything he/she writes, but this specific thing was profitable…” This sort of thing strikes me as terribly unmanly. If one doesn’t have the courage to quote or share the work of a particular individual, one should probably just keep quiet. The whiny “Don’t judge me because I quoted someone or read a book by someone who doesn’t dot all of the eyes or cross all of the tees” is a sort of false-humility-cum-virtue-signaling, and I dislike it strongly. It’s the sort…