Catholic Ponderer

I felt the touch by Virgo Maria this morning. I saw a brown, almost gray cross on a bright blue, stained window. I woke with a feeling of motherly care, love and joy.

Whats up?

As a hobby I translate GM Hopkins poetry to Swedish. It’s an impossible task and I will never be able to satisfyingly complete this project. His poetry is far to interlinked with the English language and how he perceived things in his time… But this is why I enjoy it so much. It’s not about accomplish something. It’s about being close to my favorite poet.

Poems and texts are living things and you should keep changing them and letting them evolve until you grasp what was meant to be said. This is my way of keeping his poetry alive. At least for me.

I used to be quite keen on writing my own poetry, but I haven’t for more than a decade. In my previous post on this blog, I finally wrote one… Well this wasn’t much of a poem to start with. It was more one of those things, when you need to formulate something and you don’t now beforehand what will come out.

I guess this one reflects the strange mood I’ve been in lately. I think it’s a response to all that has happened to me and my family this past year. My mothers disease, which have been really hard for us all in the family, (she’s better now) and I guess all other things that has happened, like my conversion, what I’m good at and what I’m not good at, people I met and a lot of thoughts on where I’m heading in life. To me life seems to be an on going lesson in humbleness. I guess thats why I’m where I’m at. I Don’t know if there’s any reminiscence left of this in the text though.

I find that poems have a habit of taking their own turns after a while. There are things that triggers the writer so he/she writes a text. The produced text triggers change to conform to that someone else will read it. This is what I find most interesting. Hopefully this process eventually end up in a text that triggers a reader. Text as interaction.

The title “Comforter, where is your comforting” in my poem is a quote from one of GMH’s “terrible sonnets”. The question - as I interpret it - is not whether there is a comforter, but when, how and where the comforting will come.

Some people misinterpret his late poems as being a record of lost faith. To me this is not grasping the texts at all. Then they would have lost their worth. Hopkins saw Gods beauty and presence in everything, not just in his wonderful descriptions of a God charged nature, as in his most famous poems, but also in patterns of urine in the snow, over a little child’s first communion, the death of five nuns in a shipwreck, in music and paintings, in Duns Scotus and a lot more that we will never know about; until his naked and bare stripped poems from his depression, at the end of his life. His poems do not deal with lost faith at all, as I see it. Rather the opposite. In all of his poems the world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Sometimes it’s like Christians can’t be depressed misfits or rational humans with ups and downs… It’s like we are supposed to be those cheerful, innocuous proper groups of people overfilled with joyful feelings from an ever happy and harmless Holy Spirit.

Measure-The-Presence-Of-Christ-By-The-Smile-On-Your-Face kind of folks… Otherwise someone comes along and tells us that we are doubting our faith.

Well, I was feeling moody late one night, pondering Hopkins, me and my mum, thinking about my faith and my world. Then I wrote this poem and posted it here on the blog. The next day, on the same day we celebrated John the Baptist btw, Ann from Poetry, Prayer and Praise made a reference to John 3:30 in a comment. This clarified a lot to me of what it was about.

And as I spoke earlier of living texts, well, I just had to change the text in the poem.

People often speak of the importance to “kill your darlings” when you write a text. Well, sometimes you have to incorporate them.

So here’s the new and improved comforter poem.

I hope someone will find it enjoyable. It’s alive and kicking.

Comforter. Where is your Comforting?

Sometimes I strip myself to the bones and take a dip in the Mourn & Displease. The Lord steps back and it seems as I’m left with my own.

What else to do, when you’re tired of struggling than to keep on, on your knees? What’s left, when you’re emptied and flown?

The more destitute the better, less makes room for more. Known attainments are not to start off with. You must increase. Let me decrease.

Should I embrace the dead end, even of my efforts? Should I let thrown be thrown? Am I here for comforts? Is this a gift of sun breeze - and ease?

Or not?

Found a photo from Port Meadow in Oxfordshire that I first thought was the actual poplars that Hopkins wrote about in his poem Binsey Poplars. The Binsey poplars where felled in 1879.

After a bit more research I found that Port Meadow is just beside Binsey. The Thames divide them. So it seems that these poplars where very very close, but is not the actual ones. After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

The photograph is a picture of a similar copse, in the same area, in about the same time - as in the wonderful poem Binsey Poplars (see below) by Gerard Manley Hopkins S.J.

In the photograph you can see two young schoolgirls. They are crossing a small bridge over a stream in Port Meadow sometime between 1860 to 1922. (This is the time when the photographer Henry Taunt was active and the photograph must have been taken). *

MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, all are felled;

Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering

weed-winding bank.

O if we knew but what we do

When we delve or hew–

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch her, being so slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even when we mean

to mend her we end her,

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc unselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

* The photograph can be found at The English Heritage NMR. The reference number is BB72/06698. You can see some more recent photographs of the area here: Oxfordinciter

Since I posted my last post - From the land of the OT - earlier today, I have tried to gather some more information about the Chaldean church. It is one of the ancient churches of the Eastern rite within the Roman Catholic Church. There are a couple of hundred thousand (depending on sources between 380 000 to 800 000) members scattered throughout the world. Their official website is: www.kaldu.org

As recently as in the beginning of this month a priest (Fr Ragheed Ganni) was hit by gunfire in front of his church in Mosul. Three deacons, who served as his aides, were also killed. Before opening fire on Fr. Raghhed Gani and his three deacons, the killers demanded their conversion to Islam. They are truly martyrs and our beloved pope Benedict expressed his deep and heartfelt condolences and called the tragedy a costly sacrifice which will inspire in the hearts of all men and women of good will a renewed resolve to reject the ways of hatred and violence. Read more about it here and here. This was not the first time clergy was killed in Iraq during this war.

Please pray for their souls.

In Asianews I found several articles about the horror the Christians in Iraq faces on a daily base. Somewhat a glimpse of light was the article about Hani Abdel Ahad, another priest who was released yesterday after being kidnapped for 12 days. Read more about it here.

The Assault on Assyrian Christians in Iraq

I remember a party in the early 90’s. Desert storm was on cnn 24/7. At the party an acquaintance of mine from England met someone else’s acquaintance who was from Iraq. No one had thought of this when we where inviting people. It turned out they both had brothers fighting in the war, one on each side.

Very quickly they became friends. They understood each others situation better than any of us stupid Swedes could. It was amazing to be a witness of this. Friendship comes out of brotherly love and it runs deeper than the hatred that comes out of war. Whenever I hear the expression Brothers in arms I think of this.

Please remember all the people, both civilians and soldiers, Christians and Muslims in your prayers. We are all children of God.

but currently resided in the UK, comes this interesting blog about the Iraqi Christians. Please don’t forget to pray for all the modern martyrs in the middle East as well as in China and other places around the world.

And by the way: Do you know why there is the letter I, in sin or what the twelve promises of the sacred heart was?

Check out this blog : The dream of a voyage to peace.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

In the Midrashim, the Jewish “commentaries” to the Torah, there is a story about when Moses was tending Jethro’s flocks in the wilderness: Moses notices that one kid is missing. He leaves the other sheep to go after the stray one. Moses finds the kid when it stood drinking in a pool of water. Moses understands that the kid was thirsty and that this was the reason he ran away. He puts the kid on his shoulder to carry it back.

I find this story from Shemos Rabbah (2:2) interesting: A story about the lamb and the shepherd, where water is central in the course of events. It is the same old story told over and over again. In the Midrash this is God testing Moses as a leader to see if he was compassionate enough to care for the flock. He satisfies the needs of each, according to the individual’s unique capacity as Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz puts it. Moses cared for and understood the lamb. He brought it back home without judgement.

In the house of the publicans Jesus got criticized for sharing a meal with sinners. He replies: For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. (Mathew 18:12). He transforms a sinner into an Apostle. Jesus might very well refer to this particular story about Moses when he, at this time, tells the parable of the lost sheep:

What man of you that hath an hundred sheep, and if he shall lose one of them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after that which was lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, lay it upon his shoulders, rejoicing? And coming home, call together his friends and neighbours, saying to them: Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost? I say to you that even so there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance. (Luke 15)

Returning to the herd is done by penance. The thirsty lamb was not sinful, he was thirsty. He was not judged. The water purified the lamb just as the penance purifies the sinner. The baptism, the baptized.

A few verses further down in Luke 15, there is another story of a lost one: The prodigal son. It also depicts the feast of the reverted:

When the prodigal son, returns home, he is welcomed in abundance, His father fell upon his neck and kissed him. He is dressed in the finest robe, a ring are put on his hand and the fatted calf is slaughtered. The older son that remained home, working on the fields, fails to see what the celebration is all about. He doesn’t understand his brothers’ remorse, his fathers’ rejoice.

They did not celebrate the achievements of the prodigal son; he did time of anguish and hard work, sharing husks with the swine; he knew he was not worthy of a grand celebration. He was full of remorse. The prodigal son had humility and expected nothing of his father; wishing merely to be a hired servant. He did not put himself above his brother; he came home to stay, to repent: This was not a celebration for the moment, they where celebrating the penance. Previously, he was living a life of the dead. Staying in his father’s house was the road to life. He was lost, but now he was found.

The Lord is my shepherd, he is my Father who brought me to life. He carried me home. I must try to live accordingly. I must be humble. The trust he has put in me is a demanding trust. This is the penance of the lamb.

I’m so thankful. I’m so happy.

Just got home after the rite of full Communion and the Confirmation. More than two years ago I suddenly and surprisingly understood that I was meant for the One Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church and today I’m in full communion with it.

Howdy Benedict XVI, I’m with you now!

The mission of Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity is to
care for “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the
blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved,
uncared for throughout society, people that have become a
burden to the society and are shunned by everyone”. They are
running orphanages, AIDS hospices, caring for alcoholics, the
disabled, the poor through out the world.

When is that point of creation for that mysterious force that we call life? I think “some weeks after conception” isn’t the right answer. I believe a human fetus is human and I do object to ending human life. I object when someone say that those children were not meant to be. According to whom? Even if you look at it in a deterministic way why would we then have to interfere if they where not meant to be? And if we where meant to take this action aren’t we accountable for it?

Sorry I stole your car. Shot your cat, littered your lawn. Well, you know… It was meant to be…

In Marie’s two recent posts on abortion she brings up this important topic from two different angles. In Bishop Refuses Rudy Giuliani Invite she considers the political aspects on the debate between pro-choice and pro-life. In the post Helping To Stop Abortion she introduces the Sisters of Life for all of us who hadn’t heard of them previously.

To me personally this is the two perspectives that I find most interesting and important. First: Are the parents free to choose what they believe is right? (as Rudy Giuliani believes) Second: How do we take care of the children that are born?

In many ways the abortion movement is acting out of misguided consideration. They believe abortion to be the answer to broken homes, sexual abuse; unwanted children so forth and sadly so on. In my opinion the best way to fight abortion is to prepare place for all the unwanted children, and to help poor family’s all over the world.

This is why I get so happy when reading about the sisters of life, but I do believe we all must address this problem. Running around and being judgmental is the all wrong approach. We should educate. We should propagate with love and act as examples in taking care of family’s with problems. I think legislation, without a change of perception, risk to just abandon young mothers, just as they are abandoned now in society’s that recommends abortion.

I have hard to see how anything good can come out of an abortion. The double negation might work in mathematics but when it comes to abortion I think it most often doesn’t solve a problem but adds another hardship for the mother to deal with. When a mother has performed an abortion I think it is very hard to acknowledge for her what actually have been done. Logic and fancy arguments are not the proper weapon to fight guilt with. We all do what we can to survive. Still according to my experience every abortion is filled with sorrow and remorse for the parents to be. Sooner or later.

Either they can accept their guilt, and that is a too hard of a burden for the most of us. You need God for that. Or they can keep telling themselves that they did the right thing, the only thing, the best thing even for the child. By going on like many pro-life people does, they are most probably just driving those parent further away, risking them to do it again or in the case of legislation abandon young women with only guilt and home remedies to get by.

Call me an idealist if you want, but acknowledge that I’m being pragmatic. Call me a pragmatic if you want, but acknowledge that I’m being idealistic: The best way to care for the unborn is to care for those who already are born. That is why I believe orders like The Sisters of Life and The Missionaries of Charity is so important. Their work goes hand in hand.

They are our front soldiers against the slaughter of the innocent.