A Word On Wednesday, Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - Alexander Pope

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The Dying Christian to His Soul

Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

The “Free” Man, Tuesday, October 25, 2011

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This from The Republic, seems a pretty good description of much of what is going on, and admired today in this country and the West. It comes down, as shown in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which seems a rather feckless purposeless gathering only for the sake of gathering. We need better, not sure we deserve it.

“And,” I said, “he doesn’t admit true speech or let it pass into the guardhouse [of his soul], if someone says that there are some pleasures belonging to fine and good desires and some belonging to bad desires, and that the ones must be practiced and honored and the others checked and enslaved. Rather, he shakes his head at all this and says that all are alike and must be honored on an equal basis.”


“That’s exactly,” he said, “what a man in this condition does.”


“Then,” I said, “he also lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing; now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied with philosophy. Often he engages in politics and, jumping up, says and does whatever chances to come to him; and if he ever admires any soldiers, he turns in that direction; and if it’s money-makers, in that one. And there is neither order nor necessity in his life, but calling this life sweet, free, and blessed he follows it throughout.”


“You have,” he said, “described exactly the life of a man attached to the law of equality.”

Plato; Allan Bloom (1991-10-02). The Republic Of Plato: Second Edition (pp. 239-240). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

Where Your Treasure Is . . .

On Monday, in the October Magnificat magazine, there was a wonderful meditation by Fr John Tauler, O.P, a 14th century Domincan, on detachment and eternal life. Here’s a quote:

“From this detachment is born kindness, and also separation from all worldly things; so that one now receives freely from God’s hands and with entire thankfulness, joy or sorrow, or whatever else, may befall him in the inner life or the outer: everything helps him to eternal happiness. Such a man has the grace to feel that whatever happens to him has been eternally foreseen by his heavenly Father, and in the very way it does happen, and, viewing all things as God does, he rests in peace of mind, no matter what occurs.”

The phrase that really struck me was, . . .”whatever may befall him in the inner life or the outer.” That’s the hard one, the inner life. Things don’t always go my way, and I find it easier to accept the external circumstances while still arguing and rethinking those circumstances in my mind. It’s hard to let it go. Fr Tauler tells us, and I really welcomed this reminder, that to be detached we need to accept the things that befall us and, even harder, be truly grateful for it. I remind myself that, whatever happens, if it weren’t for God’s grace in my life, I wouldn’t be here to be grateful for them. No matter how much they irk me at the moment.

A Word on Wednesday, Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Mass at Dawn
I dropped my sail and dried my dripping seines
Where the white quay is chequered by cool planes
In whose great branches, always out of sight,
The nightingales are singing day and night.
Though all was grey beneath the moon’s grey beam,
My boat in her new paint shone like a bride,
And silver in my baskets shone the bream:
My arms were tired and I was heavy-eyed,
But when with food and drink, at morning-light,
The children met me at the water-side,
Never was wine so red or bread so white.

Roy Campbell

Limiting our Horizons, Tuesday, October 18, 2011

After a tooth extraction and implant on Thursday last week, it’s been a rough few days.  That procedure was a bit rougher than I expected, especially the after effects.  Luckily, the procedure itself went very well to all appearances and I think I’m finally able to lay off the Vicodin in order to sleep at night.  While recovering at home on Friday afternoon, I finished reading, and began rereading Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.  I’d like to do one or two posts on my impressions, but that may be a couple of weeks down the road, at best.  I need to try to understand what’s he’s saying more completely.

Reading Chesterton is like having literary fireworks go off in your face.  His style is so very distinctive, and his ideas come so fast and furiously (to borrow a phrase that’s much in the news recently), not to mention that they are so original, that you have to stop and really think about what it is he’s saying.  It’s very easy to be blinded by the fireworks.   Here’s a mild example:

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human.

 The materialist, rationalist view that is being so actively promoted these days as the only “reasonable” way to look at the world, with those who dare to disagree being branded mean spirited or even fascist or racist, is really a very closed way of looking at things.  It absolutely cannot tolerate dissent, all in the name of rationality and diversity.  It’s nonsense, and only the fact that it has so pervaded and weakened our educational system allows this view to go on so unchallenged.  People are, tragically, no longer educated to think these kinds of things through, much less think in a way contrary to the herd.

Anyway, back to Chesterton and my ice pack.

The Early Church Fathers, Sunday, October 16, 2011, St. Cyprian

Peter speaks there, on whom the Church was to be built, teaching and showing in the name of the Church, that although a rebellious and arrogant multitude of those who will not hear or obey may depart, yet the Church does not depart from Christ; and they are the Church who are a people united to the priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor. Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if any one be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain who creep in, not having peace with God’s priests, and think that they communicate secretly with some; while the Church which is Catholic and one, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the cement of priests who cohere with one another (Letters 66 [A.D. 253]).

Founders Friday, Friday, October 14, 2011

Cover of Dwight D. Eisenhower

Today, not exactly a quote from the Founding Fathers, but certainly a quote following in their footsteps.

"Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master."

Dwight D. Eisenhower