Sunday, February 2, 2014

BE HAPPY



Poem for Today -  February 2, 2014
 


HAPPINESS

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life

            to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss
             the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile
             as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out

             along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees
             with their women and children
             and a keg of beer and an accordion.


Carl Sandburg

Saturday, February 1, 2014

EVENING PRAYER

Poem for Today



EVENING

Here dies another day
during which I have had
eyes, ears, hands
and the great world round me;
and with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?


Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Friday, January 31, 2014

IT STARTS WITH PAIN ....
IT ALWAYS DOES....

Poem for Today - January 31, 2014


THE MITE

I am the least
Of living things,
A cell, a seed,
A spiral chromosome,
A tendril in the sea.

I know how mystery began,
And why the roots
Of purpose feed on pain.


© Boynton Merrill, Jr.
On top a picture ofa yellow mite.
 I found it  in  Wikipedia. Check it out.
"Historically, mites have been difficult 
to study because of their minute size. 
But now, ARS scientists 
are freezing mites in their tracks 
and using scanning electron microscopy
 to observe them in detail.
 Here a yellow mite, Lorryia formosa, 
commonly found on citrus plants, 
is shown among some fungi. 
False color. Magnified about 850x."

Thursday, January 30, 2014

BITTERNESS

Poem for Today - January 30, 2014



A BITTERNESS

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never play 
        without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever 
        a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright
as your bitterness.
I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none 
       the wiser and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless,
peaceful flowers of the hillsides.


© Mary Oliver, page 43
in New and Selected Poems,

Volume One, Beacon Press,


Boston, 1992

Questions: 

Did Mary Oliver think this as a silent eulogy for someone she knew - and died?

If this were me - and I read this - what would I do next? 

Does this sound true for someone you know? I've lived with priests who fit the description of the person in this piece - and I didn't know what to do. I felt very  sad. Wooooooo! I often wondered, "What happened to them that they turned out like this?"


Wednesday, January 29, 2014

MAN CAVE 

Poem for Today - January 29, 2014



THE CAVE

Sometimes when the boy was troubled he would go
          To a littIe cave of stone above the brook
And build a fire just big enough to glow
          Upon the ledge outside, then sit and look.
Below him was the winding silver trail
          Of water from the upIand pasture springs,
And meadows where he heard the calling quail;
          Before him was the sky, and passing wings.

The tang of willow twigs he lighted there,
          Fragrance of meadows breathing slow and deep,
The cave’s own musky coolness on the air,
          The scent of sunlight ... all were his to keep.
We had such places -- cave or tree or hill . . .
          And we are lucky if we keep them still.


© Glen W. Dresbach

“The Cave” 
by Glen W. Dresbach:
 from Glen W. Dresbach’s 
Collected Poems. 
the Caxton Printers, Ltd. 
CaldwellIdaho.

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS



INTRODUCTION

The title of my sermon  is, St. Thomas Aquinas. In this sermon I just want to give 10 comments about St. Thomas Aquinas - hopefully interesting ones.  So this is what I came up with from my homework last night in preparing this short 2 page talk.

1) Today - January 28th, we celebrate the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s not the anniversary of his death, but the date of the publication of his Summa. He died March 7th, 1274 - about 49 of age.

2) He was a quiet Italian boy whose parents planned on him being a Benedictine - an abbot - probably in Monte Cassino.  Nope! He ends up a Dominican - with parents dead against that idea. He studies in Naples, Paris, Germany and teaches in Paris and Rome, etc.

3) During his last few days of life he could be seen on a donkey heading for the Second Council of Lyons. He bangs his head on the branch of a fallen tree - gets brutally sick and dies a short time later. I like that scene. It sort of follows the same path as Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem Palm Sunday - and then dies the following Friday.

4) He wrote 2 massive works - two Summa’s - or Summaries of what he was thinking and what he was teaching. First the Summa Contra Gentiles [1265-1264] and  then the Summa Theologica (1265-1274).  

5) His method was very thorough: state a question as clear as possible.  Then present the opposing positions - each with the best arguments. Then pick the arguments apart before you present what you believe to be the truth along with the best possible arguments.

6) Some say the best book on Aquinas is called, St. Thomas Aquinas - The Dumb Ox  by G.K. Chesterton.  I’ve read the following: as  biography it’s weak; as to research, it’s also weak. However,  because Chesterton was a huge genius, he captures the essence of Aquinas, Next, for some,  the book can be a tough read. Yet, for some who read it, it becomes the best book on Aquinas and the best book of their life. It has helped lead various folks into the Catholic Church.

7) Staying with Chesterton, I like the comparison between him and Aquinas. Supposedly,  Aquinas was a big man. How big, how fat, we don’t know. Chesterton was also a big man. That we know.  G.K. Chesterton wrote, "St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance or ecstasy.” When Chesterton died, his coffin was too big to be carried through the door, so he  had to be lowered from the window like a piano. When they were trying to help Aquinas to escape from his own home and get to the Dominicans, supposedly he too was lowered out of window - but in a basket and to freedom.

8) Chesterton liked food. As a teacher and theologian, Aquinas loved to go from the stuff right in front of us - the stuff on the table - the stuff that we know from our senses. and have them bring us to God. His 5 proofs of God - go from the known to the unknown. See the earth moving, someone had to get it started. That Prime Mover is God. See a chair, know there is a chair maker. I read that the key Latin saying and principle that Thomas Aquinas used is: "Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu." (Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses). What we see, hear, taste and touch, cab move from the eyes - from the senses -  to the mind - to theology - to God. Speaking of people, how else would God come to us,  but  as a baby, Speaking of food, how else would God feed us, but by bread and wine. Jesus comes as the answer to human hunger and thirst for God.

9) Expect conflict in life! If we speak up,  if we think and then publish our thoughts, if we innovate, expect criticism. St. Thomas had some of his stuff condemned and blackballed. That’s part and parcel of the history of theology in the Catholic Church. It takes time and study - to come to the truth. This was the history of many theologians in the Catholic Church. Life: expect problems, struggles and controversy.

10) Conclusion:  In the long run St. Thomas Aquinas said, “In comparison to God, everything I wrote seems like straw.” Translation for me: Don’t take oneself so seriously.  Be able to laugh at life.



Tuesday, January 28, 2014

LIFE - A PIANO RECITAL



Poem for Today - January 28, 2014

At Becky's Piano Recital

She screws her face up as she nears the hard parts,
Then beams with relief as she makes it through,
Just as she did listening on the edge of her chair
To the children who played before her,
Wincing and smiling for them
As if she doesn't regard them as competitors
And is free of the need to be first
That vexes many all their lives.
I hope she stays like this,
Her windows open on all sides to a breeze
Pungent with sea spray or meadow pollen.
Maybe her patience this morning at the pond
Was another good sign,
The way she waited for the frog to croak again
So she could find its hiding place and admire it.
There it was, in the reeds, to any casual passerby
Only a fist-sized speckled stone.
All the way home she wondered out loud
What kind of enemies a frog must have
To make it live so hidden, so disguised.
Whatever enemies follow her when she's grown,
Whatever worry or anger drives her at night from her room
To walk in the gusty rain past the town edge,
Her spirit, after an hour, will do what it can
To be distracted by the light of a farmhouse.
What are they doing up there so late,
She'll wonder, then watch in her mind's eye
As the family huddles in the kitchen
To worry if the bank will be satisfied
This month with only half a payment,
If the letter from the wandering son
Really means he's coming home soon.
Even old age won't cramp her
If she loses herself on her evening walk
In piano music drifting from a house
And imagines the upright in the parlor
And the girl working up the same hard passages.



At Becky's Piano Recital” 
by Carl Dennis, from 
New and Selected Poems 
1974–2004. © Penguin Poets, 2004.