Four for Friday: First Week Thoughts

Taken on the way back to the hermitage I was staying at 

at New Camaldoli after the Office of Readings.  The 

edge of dawn.

Another four links that "stuck" with me this week:

Read Brian Doyle's extraordinary piece on sin and forgiveness, then save it for Lent and read it again.  I thought of this again while listening to today's Gospel:  "I do not know how sins can be forgiven. I grasp the concept, I admire the genius of the idea, I suspect it to be the seed of all real peace, I savor the Tutus and Gandhis who have the mad courage to live by it, but I do not understand how foul can be made fair."

My own experiences sleeping with the homeless were an interesting lens through which to read Kerry Weber's brilliant piece at America Magazine, "Making Room."  It brought to mind, too, the last lines of a Hopkin's poem (As Kingfishers Catch Fire):

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam., the prior of New Camaldoli Monastery in Big Sur, offers a rich set of images in his homily for The Baptism of the Lord, from Joan Baez to Indian monks.

And finally for a start of the semester laugh -- Course Evals from the Sermon on the Mount.  Dr. Christ rocks!