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!

God walks among the pots and pans

I've started blogging occasionally at This Ignatian Life. The blog explores the lived traditions of Ignatian spirituality, and current bloggers range from Jesuit scholastic Paul Lickteig to David Bayne who worked with street children in Argentina and Lisa Kelly, a mother and missionary. My first post is up:

"....what I did get was a place to pray. As I spackled and sanded yesterday afternoon, my mind wandered back to the First Week of the Exercises, meditating on the ways in which my life is dinged and damaged, and the world likewise. Much like the laundry room of my First Week, this 5 foot square space encouraged meditations on failure and redemption.


My impromptu orationis angulus has vanished. The walls are done, the drop cloth folded up, the paint brushes are drying by the basement sink. What remains, though, is a potent composition of place, a modern riff on Isaiah’s image of clay and potter: Yet, LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand. I can smell the paint, hear the scritch of the sandpaper, see the flecks of paint on the window, feel the smoothness of the sanded patch. I imagine God at work, perched precariously on a ladder, working cheerfully even in this cramped and awkward space."

Read the whole thing here.

Delicta graviora

It was 10:30 in the morning as I crossed Market at 7th and slid between the line at the food cart and the walls of the Free Library. The woman was heaped on the walkway to the library. Her green aluminum cane made a sharp contrast to the sun washed red brick of the entryway. She slumped, asleep, over her belongings, exhausted already by the heat that had just begun to rise. Her lined face, pink with heat, was turned to passersby. She looked like my mother, sleeping restlessly in pain.

I stood there for a fleeting moment. I wanted to reach out and hold her. I wanted her to bring her to a cool, safe space to sleep. I wanted to ask what she needed. I wanted to help. And yet...I did none of these things. I walked on down 7th, headed to a cool, dry archive where two librarians would bring me the books I desired, without my lifting more than a finger.

We wrangle over translations and whether we are sufficiently reverent with the body of Christ when we receive in the hand. We issue lists of grave sins, such as "the taking or retaining for a sacrilegious purpose or the throwing away of the consecrated species" and meanwhile here lies the body of Christ crumpled and abandoned on the sidewalk. And I walk past. This is what I will have answer for to Christ when he asks, when I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? This is delicta graviora. It’s not on the list.

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Photo from dgphilli.