Writing from the other side of my brain

My brain has two sides...the science side and the not science side? As Crash and the Boy would say, "Awkward?" I'd rather think it's more like the optical illusion where you see two different people, depending on where your focus is. Look at me one way, I'm a scientist, squint and I'm another thing entirely (if only I knew what to call it!) Whoever I am, I write.

In 2006, Bora Zivkovic put together the first edition of Open Laboratory, a print collection of the best science blogging of the year. Now in its 4th year, the 2009 edition, guest edited by scicurious at Neurotopia is going to press soon. A record 760 posts were nominated, winnowed down to fifty by scicurious and her panel of judges. The exciting news? One post of mine (The Pressure to Preserve) from the blog my other persona writes will be included....and I got this lovely blog button to display!

Si quaeris miracula

Si quaeris miracula...

"If thou seekest miracles..." So starts the responsary for St. Anthony of Padua, invoked by Catholics for 700 years as the saint who could see that lost things were found. I like the traditional prayer -- composed by a contemporary of the good friar -- far better than the bouncy rhyming versions that seem more popular in this century:

Tony, Tony,
look around.
Something's lost
and must be found!

This morning, when I sat down to work on the book, I went to pull out the current version of the outline for the book, which I've scribbled notes all over and which I did NOT have a copy of. (Yes, I know. There are two kinds of users, those who've lost data, and those who will. Back-up.) No, I didn't re-file it. No, I didn't accidently clip it to any of the research notes I'd been working on on Friday. (Can you hear me getting more frantic?) After I found myself searching the recycling bin, I got a grip and decided that it would either resurface or not, but that I could better spend this time writing rather than rummaging. If it didn't resurface, the jottings were all in my brain, I shouldn't worry. (Right.)

I settled down to write, and did have a productive day. But as I headed out to a doctor's appointment late this afternoon, abandoning the debris of the day on my desk, I thought of my mother, who would have said, "pray to St. Anthony." (She, too, did not favor the rhymes.) Part of me thought it silly to pray to find the outline, by no measure -- even in my own life -- is it a tragedy or rises to the level of necessitating divine intervention. Still, when last I met with Patient Spiritual Director, we had a conversation about praying for one's own needs, as well as the needs of others. Any grace that might come my way as a result, was not depriving anyone else. Perhaps I could practice what was preached. So I briefly turned my thoughts to St. Anthony and asked that he might intercede with the Lord God in retrieving the outline from whatever dimension it might have fallen into, and headed out the door to see my doctor.

An hour later, I'm back in my study, shifting gears from writing to course prep. As I pick up the folder with my notes for the current chapter, what do I find neatly placed underneath it? The outline. I swear I picked that folder up multiple times. All I can think is that it must have been stuck to the bottom of the folder...but I offered a brief thanks to Anthony nonetheless!

And today is Tuesday - which is the traditional day to petition St. Anthony in Padua (not that I knew that before I sat down to write this....).

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Why is St. Anthony the patron of lost items? It would seem a disgruntled novice left the monastery, taking with him St. Anthony's psalter. Not only was the book itself valuable, but it contained St. Anthony's handwritten notes for his conferences and sermons (sound familiar). After fervent prayer for the psalter's return, the contrite novice brought it back.

And while I'm at it -- why Tuesday? It's the day they brought his body back to Padua, where he had wanted to be.

Responsary of St. Anthony

If, then, thou seekest miracles,
Death, error, all calamities,
The leprosy and demons flee,
The sick, by him made whole, arise.

Ant: The sea withdraws and fetters break,
And withered limbs he doth restore,
While treasures lost are found again,
When young or old his help implore.

All dangers vanish from our path,
Our direst needs do quickly flee:
Let those who know repeat the theme:
Let Paduans praise St. Anthony. (repeat antiphon)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. (repeat antiphon)

V. Pray for us, O blessed Anthony,
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Liturgical Garb

On the way to Mass this afternoon, Crash announced a first -- he tied his own tie. Woot! I asked which one he selected. "The blue and red stripe. I thought the pink might not be quite right for Christmas season. So, when do you wear pink liturgically?" "Infrequently!" (Twice a year to be precise.) I couldn't resist telling him about these liturgically correct sneakers -- designed by the Ironic Catholic. The laces are pink, of course!

Meanwhile, check out the new Pray Tell blog by St. John's. logoi contributes - her first post is takes up what principles you might apply to make liturgy engaging for the youngest members of the assembly or, what's not quite right with the Santa vigil!

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Liturgically Correct Shoes by IronicCatholic

Column: In Quiet and In Trust Lies Your Strength

I've been contemplating this single line from Isaiah since well before Christmas. It appears neither in the current Roman Catholic lectionary, nor in any dating back at least 500 years. Yet the early Fathers had much to say about this single verse - there are at least six extant pieces of exegesis from a range of commentators, including Jerome and John Chrysostom.

A tip of the hat to artandsoul who reminded me of these gorgeous lines about waiting in East Coker - one of Eliot's Four Quartets.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 7 January 2010.

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies.— Is. 30:15

I only had to go a quarter mile down Lancaster Avenue, but at 10 o’clock on Christmas Eve morning even that short stretch was already a daunting tangle of cars, punctuated by pedestrians darting from Acme to bakery, while a lone Haverford police officer struggled to keep order amidst the swirling chaos. The pre-Christmas frenzy was at its peak. I fled for home.

Twelve hours later, the same bit of road was eerily empty of cars and people. Streetlights shone down on bare parking lots, and storefronts were shuttered and dark as I drove to pick up Mike from his night’s stint as sacristan.

Tendrils of incense and the soft burble of conversation greeted me as I crept in the back door of the church. My jeans and sweatshirt a sharp contrast to the choir’s holiday finery, I slipped past the exuberant singers to help Mike straighten the pews and pick up the remains of the luminaries.

The calm and quiet within the church grew gradually deeper as lingering parishioners departed for home, musicians gathered up instruments and music, and Father Frank strode down the aisle on his way to the rectory.

Mike and I are the last to leave the church, still robed in its holy day finery, but now dim, still and soaked in silence. Soft echoes of Isaiah — in quiet and in trust your strength lies — follow me out the door.

We fly up to Christmas in a flurry of prayer and preparation: cooking, wrapping, rehearsing and shopping. No matter how contemplative a stance we seek, we remain sharply aware — much as Mary must have been — of an impending deadline. Suddenly the weeks of preparation climax in a glittering storm of music with candles ablaze, trumpets blasting, choirs exulting “Gloria in excelsis Deo!” Our tables groan with food, our houses overflow with family and friends.

And when all is said, done and sung, what do we hear? Silence. The Word has become Flesh, but cannot speak. Salvation is ours, not yet shouted from the housetop, but to be found in waiting and in calm, in quiet and in trust. I find it apt that this passage from Isaiah is never read at Mass — or in the Liturgy of the Hours. Its liturgical silence simply and eloquently underscores its substance.

Though Advent’s expectant hush has passed, St. Augustine reminds us not to give over that sense of quiet and stillness just yet: “See what God became for your sake; learn the lesson of such great lowliness, learn it even from a teacher not yet able to speak. … for your sake your Creator lay speechless, unable even to call his mother by her name.”

As I look toward Ordinary Time and the start of the next semester, I am tempted to move on to Christ preaching and teaching, to my life packed with the purposeful and practical. Isaiah and Augustine remind me not to rush on but to remain engaged with the lessons of the infant. To contemplate the mysteries of being yet unformed, speechless, of necessity trusting that needs will be met. It is an invitation to grow slowly with God, to watch the child to see the signs of what He will become.

So this year, instead of eagerly tearing into Christmas, and then sensibly tidying away the wrappings and remnants, I’m taking the season at a more deliberate pace, letting the very way these winter days unfold lead me. The days are longer, but they lengthen almost imperceptibly; a scant 40 seconds more of light each day.

As the Christmas season gently ebbs, I am listening for words yet unspoken, to a silence that stretches the dawn, and watching the stillness, catching glimpses of the dance to come. I am content to unwrap this particular Christmas gift of salvation and strength slowly.

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“But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not yet ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
— T.S. Eliot, East Coker

Repeating the Exercises

A year ago tonight I was in Boston, breaking the drive up from Philadelphia to Gloucester on my way to Eastern Point to make the Spiritual Exercises. I checked into my hotel, found a place to get my hair cut (the shortest it has ever been -- by the time the Long Retreat was over it had just about grown back to "just cut" length), and gone out to dinner. Tonight? I've written a thousand words on the book, made dinner, done the laundry and gone to a parish council meeting. The quiet of retreat seems a dim memory - but the retreat itself? I've just done it all again...

One of Ignatius' basic principles in the Exercises is that of repetition. The idea is not to simply replay an exercise, but to gradually let the focus of a contemplation narrow, to move more deeply into the affective realms where as one early director of the Exericises said, "the fruit chiefly lies." I'm off tomorrow night to see my spiritual director, and as I sifted through the last month I realized that I've revisited all four weeks of the Exercises -- in order, no less. As befits a repetition, the contemplations have been more tightly focused, and for the most part sounded themes drawn from my Long Retreat. The exhaustion of illness has kept things from becoming too intellectual -- enhancing the sense of repetition. In some ways it feels like a jazz improv version of the Exercises....unplanned, but structured nonetheless.