From a Bargain Book at Borders

MY POEMS ATTEMPT

 All

 of what

 I would want my child to know

 my poems attempt.

We are infants before each other, are we not,

so vulnerable to each other’s words and

movements.

A school I sat in cured me of hurting others.

I have come to see that all are seated at His table, and I

have become His

servant.

Sometimes God is too shy to speak in public

and He pinches me.

That

is my cue –

to fill in the blanks of your

understanding

the best I

can.

Rabia of Basra (c. 717 – 801)

Progressing the Church into the Modern Age

I read a book review sent to me by Albert. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/books/review/book-review-absolute-monarchs-a-history-of-the-papacy-by-john-julius-norwich.html?pagewanted=all How long are those critics of the Roman Church going to lament the Church's failure to bring the Church into the "modern age"? It gets to be a tired argument, especially from those not immersed in the spirit of Catholicism. From the book review:


“It is now well over half a century since progressive Catholics have longed to see their church bring itself into the modern age,” he writes. “With the accession of every succeeding pontiff they have raised their hopes that some progress might be made on the leading issues of the day — on homosexuality, on contraception, on the ordination of women priests. And each time they have been disappointed.”

What is the modern age? Where do the "progressives" want the Church to go? The following is a description of "modern" culture written by David Bentley Hart in a recent issue of First Things.:

" Late Western modernity, especially in its purest (that is, most American) form, certainly values the available and the plentiful, but not necessarily the intrinsically pleasing. As far as the actual senses are concerned, ours is in many ways a culture of peculiar poverty, evident even—perhaps especially—in its excesses. The diet produced by mass production and mass marketing, our civic and commercial architecture, our consumer goods, our style of dress, our popular entertainments, and so forth—it all seems to have a kind of premeditated aesthetic squalor about it, an almost militant indifference to the distinction between quantity and quality.
...
Today it often seems as if truly aesthetic values have been moved out of the social realm altogether, into ever smaller private preserves. Certainly they are not central to our concept or experience of the common good, even though we may occasionally make a public pretense of caring about such things. Our culture, with its almost absolute emphasis on the power of acquisition, trains us to be beguiled by the bright and the shrill rather than the lovely and the subtle. That, after all, is the transcendental logic of late-modern capitalism: the fabrication of innumerable artificial appetites, not the refinement of the few that are natural to us. Late modernity’s defining art, advertising, is nothing but a piercingly relentless tutelage in desire for the intrinsically undesirable."

Is this where the progressives want the Church to go? For a change we should put away our addiction to immediate gratification. Let's look at the Church seeking the beautiful in it with gratitude for the gift that it is and with an appreciation for the monumental battles it has waged against the excesses of human nature and still managing to retain its essence.

Carrying a Heavy Load?

Of course we all reflect on our youth and the freedom from cares we enjoyed then. Taking on life's responsibilities, however exciting it might be at first, eventually can weigh us down. When it does, we begin to look forward to the day we can slow down or retire. When that time arrives our bodies begin to malfunction, our parents, if we are lucky enough to have them with us, need us and even our adult children might need our help. I think in the passage below Moses expresses very well how we might feel.

from Numbers chapter 11

The children of Israel lamented,
“Would that we had meat for food!
We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt,
and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks,
the onions, and the garlic.
But now we are famished;
we see nothing before us but this manna.”


When Moses heard the people, family after family,
crying at the entrance of their tents,
so that the LORD became very angry, he was grieved.
“Why do you treat your servant so badly?” Moses asked the Lord.
“Why are you so displeased with me
that you burden me with all this people?
Was it I who conceived all this people?
Or was it I who gave them birth,
that you tell me to carry them at my bosom,
like a foster father carrying an infant,
to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers?
Where can I get meat to give to all this people?
For they are crying to me,
‘Give us meat for our food.’
I cannot carry all this people by myself,
for they are too heavy for me.
If this is the way you will deal with me,
then please do me the favor of killing me at once,
so that I need no longer face this distress.”

Poor Moses! When he arrived (or will arrive?) in heaven, he'll be glad to realize what a future generation of Israelites heard first hand from Jesus, that the yoke is easy and the burden light.