O Cecilia!

 

I was working on a reflection for this coming November 22, the feast of St. Cecilia, for Give Us This Day. (I generally have my feet in two different parts of the liturgical year. Right now, it's Ordinary Time and Lent. Which sometimes gives me double vision.) 

As I do when I start these reflections, I noodled

around. I read the scriptures for the day (and for the days on either side). I read some commentary. And about Cecilia,"of whom almost nothing is known for certain" (according to the Oxford Dictionary of the Saints I pulled from the shelf).

There was poetry, there was polyphony (Arvo Pärt's lush Cecilia, vergine romana.) And there was Simon and Garfunkel.

Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees
I'm begging you please...

This last was an earworm (and might or might not have anything to do with St. Cecilia). Try as I might I could not banish it. Begging St. Cecilia for her intercession didn't work either. And surely this wasn't going to be a helpful earworm? Argh. I'm down on my knees...

Earworm or not, I needed to write. And write I did, Oh, Cecilia...

Simon and Garfunkel's ode to Cecilia (whoever she may be), opens with a thumping percussion. As I discovered when I was trying to figure out if the composition had anything to do with St. Cecilia, they were messing around one night and beat out this rhythm on a piano bench, recorded it and used the sample to open Cecilia. So perhaps that's where this line in the reflection came from? "I felt the pew shiver under my hands ..." God knows.

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The photo is of the mug of the day. St. Ignatius and his hot beverage hanging out on my bookshelf. Not shown, my Jerome commentary on the shelf below.

For the record, Cecilia is once again stuck in my head. Apologies if I have stuck it in yours.

Aliens in my office

Terrible things are happening in the world, and as sometimes it is more than I can take in, I am seeking refuge this morning in wonder and awe.

Today's mug comes from Rome, and features astronauts and an asteroid. Two pieces of writing are on my desk this week, both due soon. One about extraterrestrial intrusions (of the rocky sort, not the animate sort) and the second a reflection for the feast of St. Cecilia next November. You can guess which one I am working on this morning.

The piece on meteorites opens with the note that I keep three aliens in a Petri dish on my desk. Lest you imagine tiny creatures with six eyes and green skin jumping up and down in their glass prison, let me assure you that my aliens are inanimate. Well, at least I'm pretty sure they are, unless they are related to the Horta.¹

The meteorites on my desk never fail to awe me. These were once in outer space. They are old, so very old, older than earth, as old as the solar system. Windows into times and places I have never been and will never be.

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1. See "The Devil in the Dark" episode of the original Star Trek series.

MMOD: My mug of the day

 

I have so many mugs. Mugs that were gifts. Mugs that were swag. Mugs I bought because I was enamored of their shape or color or material. Mugs bought as mementos of a trip or event. Mugs bought out of desperation. (I'm thinking of one bought in South Bend so I could make a morning cup of tea that did not taste of coffee.) I still have the Sandra Boynton mug Tom bought me in graduate school during a particularly awful week, 45 years ago.

I keep a selection of mugs in the kitchen, and a few at the office. Periodically I rotate what's out. When I grab a mug for the day I often pick one to match my mood or one that speaks to the work of the day. Yesterday was a mug from the Vatican Observatory, to get me in the mood to talk about my work there with a group of 7th and 8th graders at a local parish.

I bought today's mug at the St. John's Abbey pottery when I was on retreat there for a few days in 2014. I met the potter who shaped  it. This is a traditional Japanese pottery, where the wood-fired kiln is loaded with a year's worth of ceramics, then sealed and fired for 10 days. After everything is cool, the pieces are dug out of the ashes.

I think about the shape of this mug, which feels so suited to my own hand, but also reflecting the hand of the potter. It looks delicate, thin. But cup it in your hands and you can feel its strength. Fire has turned clay to jeweled stone. The glaze pattern has a touch of cool blue at the top, yet you can see the marks of the firing on the side, like stigmata. Fire and water.

What do I feel like held in the hand of God, I wonder. Shaped by the divine potter, by water and fire. Dug out from the ashes, again and again.