World Without End

Life seems to happen more in the pattern of thunder storms than a consistent drizzle. 

I had two thoughts (worth repeating) during liturgy today. 

"Let us love one another so that we may confess Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ..."

Seems so strange, but it isn't.  "They shall know us by our love ..."  "Little children, let us love one another ... " "Love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God ..."  Love gives understanding; the Christian way is not the pursuit of knowledge in order to love.  Love in anticipation of its leading to knowledge of God.  Do you want to know God?  Then Love.  Terribly damning for me at least. 

This reminded me of how many times since the arrival of offspring I have realized that really loving hurts ... and the more you love the more it hurts: every time, all the time.  I was dancing with Mary and started crying thinking that I may dance with her on a wedding day, but they were tears of joy because that may happen but I have this moment now with her which would not be nearly so sweet if not for its necessary transience. 

And so what one remembers boils down to Life and Death and Terrible Joys, which only meet in those few moments (like Lucy's birth when I didn't know if Kelly was going to explode and that would be all, my love; or if a miracle was about to break out ... terrible, weeping joy).  And so, while walking down the aisle with arms crossed and singing "Allelulia ... I will not speak of thy mystery ... " to Life and Death and Joy I wondered if there is any other manifestation where they are all present in such fullness and such balance. 

Finally, I heard this evening that a peer in my field (basically done with the Doctorate) whom I had only met at two conferences, but both in the last year, and would have already identified as a warm acquaintance, passed away.  I had spent over an hour walking with him in the gardens over lunch and just talking about life.  How do moments like that come about between former strangers?  And why?  God have mercy.  Did I communicate Joy?  I certainely experienced it while with him, and now the whole thing comes to me as somewhat terrible though I didn't realize it then.  At the end he had said something about our generation's lack of involvement in the political divisions of our elders, and I said I thought (I believe I meant 'hoped') it was because we were more concerned with people and relationships and living and he said, no, we're just lazy.  Did that have import? 

Granted, it is not possible (or at least not advisable) to contemplate the droplets of eternity while ordering lunch every day, but shouldn't we err more on the side of over- rather than under-emphasizing the terrible weight of lives and living (and not just in theories)?  And isn't it somehow possible to order lunch in a way that acknowledges eternity?  May his soul and the souls of the faithful departed rest in Peace. 

Madison, WI Figures It Out

A study by a University of Virginia neuroscientist has found that happily married women under stress show signs of immediate relief when they hold their husband's hand, with this clearly seen on their brain scans.

...

The effect on men of hand-holding was not studied but researchers intended to do so in the future.

Read the article. 

On Mirth

Patrick O'Brian.  The Ionian Mission. 

'Wittles is up, sir, if you please.'
     It was a cheerful meal.  Jack was a good host, and when he had time to concern himself with them he was fond of the little brutes from the midshipmen's berth; furthermore he was in remarkably high spirits and he amused himself and the young gentlement extremely by dwelling at length on the fact that the country they had just quitted was practically the same as Dalmatia - a mere continuation of Dalmatia - so famous for its spotted dogs.  He himself had seen quantities of spotted dogs - had even hunted behind a couple of braces - spotted dogs in a pack of hounds, oh Lord! - while the town of Kutali was positively infested with spotted youths and maidens, and now the Doctor swore he had seen spotted eagles ... Jack laughed until the tears came into his eyes.  In a Dalmatian inn, he said, by way of pudding you could call for spotted dick, give pieces of it to a spotted dog, and throw the remains to the spotted eagles.
     While the others were enlarging on the posibilities, Graham said to Stephen in a low voice, 'what is this spotted eagle?  Is it a joke?'
     'The aquila maculosa or discolor of some authors, Linnaeus' aquila clanga.*  The captain is pleased to be arch.**  He is frequently arch of a morning.'
     'I beg your pardon, sir,' cried the midshipman of the watch, fairly racing in.  'Mr. Mowett's duty and two sail on the larboard beam, topsails up from the masthead.' 

In addition to the fun of vocabulary exercises, the exuberance over naturalistic science in its hey day, and the romance of the 'high seas' there are things that draw me to O'Brian that I cannot properly put into words.  One of them is mirth. 

It is not simply that there is mirth: it is the context, the participants, and its literary role. 

The books are about naval warfare in the 19th century, mostly between England and France.  It is bloody and to us primitive.  But it is carried out by men who (some at least) repair to their very small cabins and ply away at Scarlatti, craft poetry and dream of glory, foreign lands and home.  They are stories where the journey is the heart of it, that revels in dwelling on what these men do when stuck in a calm more than in the crack of the battle.  In the above quoted book, the story ends before the obvious, main "plot climax" is even reached, but the real story has already been told. 

What I am calling O'Brian's 'Mirth' is one of the key elements that makes all of this work together.  It is blatantly masculine, often corny, comes in the most unexpected moments and results in a most unexpected level of enjoyment.  The 'spotted dogs' is not really funny in an isolated presentation ... but because I've been engrossed in the whole book (or in this case the last ten as well), found myself laughing out loud. 

As an author O'Brian manages to make characters engaging enough for the reader to take part in their mirth (which simply makes him a good writer), but he also manages to make real mirth a part of life (which potentially makes him a good human being).  An even greater task would be to live a life that facilitates mirth in others by allowing it to well up from oneself (which would truly make one a person worth loving).  If O'Brian is showing the way, then batten down the hatches, hoist the topgallants and clear for action ... but first, a little Corelli and a little port. 

Home for the Holidays

From"The Journals of Alexander Schmemann" , Friday December 14, 1973

Home.
I love my home, and to leave home and be away overnight is always like dying--returning seems so very far away! I am always full of joy when I think about home. All homes, with lit windows behind which people live, give me infinite pleasure. I would love to enter each of them, to feel its uniqueness, the quality of its warmth. Each time I see a man or a woman walking with shopping bags, that is, going home, I think about them: they are going home, to real life, and I feel good, and they become somehow close and dear. I am always intrigued: What do people 'do' when they do not 'do' anything, when they just live? That's when life becomes important, when their fate is determined. Simple bourgeois happiness is often despised by activists of all sorts who quite often do not realize the depth of life itself; who think that life is an accumulation of activities. God gives us His Life, not ideas, doctrines, rules. At home, when all is done, life itself begins.

5:17 glowing in my blurred and stuffy vision and one of them fussing in the other room. Pillow under arm stumbling across the hall knocking over the one year old fussing. Nigh Nigh. Five minutes fussing and kicking the neighbors's wall. No: it's still nigh nigh time. Dozing to more fussing but now there's a light under the blinds. That raspy little voice: Juuuuuuse? Now snuggling on the couch, mussy hair and a warm little body in crazy striped tights. Who put you to bed in that? Quiet. The house is clean and that makes it easier to be at rest. And the windows lighten. Mukk? Stillness broken by a fridge light, click the oven light, hot water started, mukk from the fridge, and might as well get the cereal in my Foggy Head Routine. Is it foggy again; no, I can see lights. Wipe the windows and rattle them open. Crisp, Cold, clears my eyes out. Some tea for my head. Eating sounds behind me and a comfortable chair to enjoy the view. An extended pause for this is good air to be breathing.

Christ was homeless not because He despised simple happiness--He did have a childhood, family, home--but because He was at home everywhere in the world, which His Father created as the "home" of man. "Peace be with this house." We have our home and God's home, the Church, and the deepest experience of the Church is that of a home. Always the same and, above anything else, life itself--the Liturgy, evening, morning, a feast--and not an activity.

The fire and the rose are one

The sky was like embers.  This only gives you an inkling; I wanted to weep.