Ora et Labora

My friend, in a recent conversation, related, with some ennui, that his life amounts to "church" and "work" -- he works as a musician and as an usher in a theatre.

Later, I thought, he had described the perfect life -- ora et labora -- the ideal of the monastics.

Can life get any better?

Listen to monk's Chant.

A more charged up chant.

Hyacinth

Our friends, when they came for dinner recently, brought us a hyacinth, which is now blooming. Beautiful flower! And, it has a long pedigree for beauty. I ran across the following in the Odyssey, describing how Odysseus was prepared to meet the King of the Phaecians:

Athena, the gray-eyed goddess, made him more robust and taller; and she gave him thicker hair, which flowed down from his head in curls and clusters that seemed much like the hyacinth in flower. Just as a craftsman who has learned his secrets from both the gray-eyed godeess and Hephaestus frames silver with fine gold and thus creates a work with greater plenitude and grace, so did the goddess now enhance with grace the head and shoulders of Odysseus. Then by the sea he sat apart, a man handsome and radiant. [Hom. Od. 6.225]

(quoted from the book All Things Shining, by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, p. 77.) The authors point out that the Greek word for "grace" is charis, the root of our word charismatic. They point out that a charismatic person is literally "one who has been favored by the gods with a gift of grace or talent. The charismatic person lights up a room, as, for instance, the great Russian ballet dancer Nureyev was said to do."

As the U2 song "Grace" says, "Grace finds beauty in everything, finds goodness, makes beautiful ugly things . . ."

Philip Rieff (in his book Charisma) says that more and more today, the true charismatic is the "unrecognized one," that is, recognized only by a few who can see. Charisma represents the grace of the divine, the true life of God, expressed in truth and adherence to order and goodness, and opposed to the modern conception of charisma as, so often seen, a loose life "graced with" celebrity. (I make no judgment but its worth asking which charisma Nureyev represented. Maybe both.)

The hyacinth in my house now reminds me of charis, grace, that adorned the head of Odysseus, and that I pray might grace my head (and the rest of me)!

Listen to Debbie Boone, "You Light Up My Life"

Listen to U2 "Grace"

Another version of "Grace" (with images of a true charismatic, Mother Teresa)

Mozart's Charism

Where did Mozart's genius come from? Inside him, as the modern way of thinking would have it? From outside, as the Greek world, in tune with the gods, saw things?

A way to think of it is that music played Mozart. Hans Gadamer explains that it is the game that plays the player. This makes sense because the "rules of the game" are what make the game, and give all the players their roles. The best players "go with the flow," behaving in sync with the game being played. Truth and Method, p. 101 ff.

Does this explain Mozart's charism? I've given the game away with the word, since "charism" means grace, which is bestowed by the god, the muse.

We can all agree that Mozart's music reflects something of the Divine. And we can name the muse that inspired him in various ways, including "Holy Spirit," that One who "played" on the waters of chaos, and who inspires men to acts of goodness and order in all ages. We can all be players in that game if we choose! Mozart? . . . roll the dice!

Listen to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, Adante.

Listen to Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, 2d Movement.

Listen to Mozart's 4oth Symphony.

Possessed?

In this Sunday's gospel, Mark 1:21-28, Jesus casts out demons. Does this story have meaning for us today? In other words,

"How possessed are we?"

I read in Sunday's Tribune a good quote about possession. Written by an economist trying to counsel consumers, he cautioned, "Many people today purchase what they don't need, spending money they don't have, for something they want only to impress someone they don't like."

That sounds like possession to me.

This from Vox Nova:

"Our society is possessed, Christians as much as anyone. We are possessed by violence, possessed by sex, possessed by money, possessed by drugs. We need to recover forms of collective exorcism as effective as was the early Christian baptism’s renunciation of ‘the devil and all his works.’” – Walter Wink, from Engaging the Powers

Christ's teaching is, let ME possess you, not the demons of sex, consumerism, violence, victimage, craven imitation, . . . . And what I am possessed with is to keep my eye on another, on my Father, to walk in lockstep with Him.

"Imitate Me."

Listen to the Beatles, "Here Comes the Sun."

Listen to George Harrison, "My Sweet Lord"

Listen to "Your Will" by Darius Brooks.

Listen to "I Belong to your Heart" by Sam Cooke.

Here is My Love!

I remember hearing a Christian radio commentator say that a cardinal sign of love is that the lover wants to tell others about his beloved. There is an exuberance, an expansion of soul, a desire that wants to publicize the beloved, to say, "Here is my love. Here is nobility."

We can learn about Love from this experience of the nobility of love. Those who want to "know Christ," will do so through love, the same Love that Christ invites us to share in and to share with others. To see love as nobler than we are, as something to be grateful for, and to which we owe allegiance, care and concern, can perhaps help us keep from sullying it, demoting it to the ordinary.

Then it will be fitting to evangelize!

Listen to Jackson Five, "I'll Be There"

Listen to Marvin Gaye, "There Ain't No Mountain High Enough"

Listen to Stylistics, "You are Everything"

Listen to the Beatles, "And I Love Her"

Listen to the Beatles, "Darling"

The Bridge of Love

Thorton Wilder's book The Bridge of San Luis Rey, tells the sad story of innocent suffering. It ends with the pregnant phrase "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

I came across this quote as I thought about the senseless loss of life of my nephew who died of a drug overdose last week, and whose funeral I attended. What a vast gulf between a body lying in a casket, and the 23 year old young man alive just a few hours before! I thought of a failure of love that may have contributed to his death, a love that is imperfect in each of us and that may be rejected just as easily as withheld. My speculations about "what went wrong" sank into sands of uncertainty.

What hope is left? For Bobby, faith's hope for life in Christ's death and rising. For those of us left in this life? That this boy's deceased life might give birth to more love among us. Rather than focusing on a broken past, the family wants the memory of this boy to sprout something positive, something living, and vibrant, something looking like love. The bridge to that end, as Wilder recognized, and Christ proved, is love itself.

Listen to Susan Boyle, "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables.

Listen to the Webb Sisters sing "If It Be Your Will" by Leonard Cohen

Listen to Jeremy Riddle, "Sweetly Broken"

Listen to "I'll Stand By You" by the Pretenders

Listen to MercyMe, "Bring the Rain"

Listen to MercyMe, "Hold Fast"

Listen to Matthew West, "Strong Enough"

Listen to Laura Story, "Blessings"

Listen to Rachael Lampa, "My Father's Heart"

Listen to "On Eagles' Wings"

Listen to Chris Tomlin , "I will Rise"

Listen to Simon and Garfunkel sing "Bridge Over Troubled Waters"

Listen to Bill Withers, "Lean on Me"

How Wonderful That You Are!

A friend whom I had not seen for a while asked me a practical question when she approached me working with a colleague: "What do you need?" I responded, "Oh, some paper," since I didn't have paper. That wasn't my first thought, however. What I wanted to say, but couldn't find the words for, was "How could anyone want for anything when you are around?"

I would have embarrassed her had I said this, so I'm glad I didn't, but I recalled it when I read, from The Betrayal of Charity, Matthew Levering, (Baylor University Press, 2011), p. 143:

"Quoting Etienne Gilson's remark that 'the most marvelous of all things a being can do is to be,' Joseph Pieper attempts to describe the basis of love: 'For what the lover gazing upon his beloved says and means is not: How good that you are so (so clever, useful, capable, skillful), but: It's good that you are; how wonderful that you exist!'" [citing J. Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, 170]

As much as I feel this way about my friend, the experience challenges me to cultivate the same attitude of gratitude toward all my "special others" -- my family, friends, neighbors, and even those I happen to meet in my life - all of whom I need to love more.

I thank God for the "special loves" in my life that reveal how Love embraces us, making us able to love, and I am challenged to love better those who merit more of my love. May I experience all who enter my life with the thought, "How wonderful that you are!"

I know the love to which I am called is not measured by my feelings of euphoria, but by kenosis and self-sacrifice. Love is not about me. To follow Jesus' command to love is the way of His cross, walked without or against emotion, sometimes in anguish. Yet there is also joy in trying to serve the Lord by loving others.

Listen to "You've Got a Friend" by Carole King.

Listen to "Do You Love Me?" from Fiddler on the Roof.

Listen to "My Love is Warmer Than the Warmest Sunshine," by Petula Clark

Listen to "I Can't Stop Loving You," by Ray Charles.

Listen to "Dance Me to the End of Love," by Leonard Cohen.

Listen to "The End", by the Beatles

He's Not "Sinning Against His Talent"

I read an inspiring article about Tony Bennett, age 85, in today's Tribune. He tells the story of the source of his singing talent:

"My uncles and aunts and nephews and relatives, they were hard-working people and it was during the Depression, and they would make a circle around my brother, sister and myself and we would be their entertainment," he recalls.

"No one had any money ... and they felt for my mom raising three children and working for a penny a dress as a seamstress. Amazing. So they all fell for her. So they all would have so much fun with us as we were children, they would say, 'Look at Tony, he makes us laugh the way he does things.' Also they said, 'See the way he paints.' So right away - I'll never forget this - at a very early age I realized because I loved them so much for being nice to my mom that I said: 'This is who I am. They say I sing very good and paint' and it created a passion in me. And that passion has never gone away. With each year it's stronger. Even though I'm 85, it's stronger than when I first started. I never want to retire, you're just looking at a wall."

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/01/16/2030949/tony-bennett-to-sing-duets-for.html#storylink=cpy

Bennett said that he was warned early on by Pearl Bailey not to let success get to his head, "like helium", but he did, taking cocaine. It was a chance conversation with Woody Allen's manager about Lenny Bruce, that brought Bennett to a crossroads:

"He told me he used to handle Lenny Bruce, the great (comic) philosopher who was also a heroin addict. I said, 'I knew Lenny. What did you think of him?' He said one sentence that changed my life. He said, 'He sinned against his talent.' And when I heard that sentence, I realized that that's what I was doing. And I stopped everything.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/01/16/2030949/tony-bennett-to-sing-duets-for.html#storylink=cpy

All of us have talents, discovered and to be discovered. When we discover them, we are free to use them, practice and perfect them, as Bennett has done. In fact, that is what freedom is!

In this week's reading from Ch. 7 of Jesus of Nazareth, at p. 204, the pope's discussion about the prodigal son brings home this point. The errant son "no longer wants to be subject to any commandment, any authority. he seeks radical freedom. He wants to live only for himself, free of any other claim. . . . Is it difficult for us to see clearly reflected here the spirit of the modern rebellion against God and God's law?"

The supposed road to freedom through cocaine, heroin, or any other addiction or idol, is really the road to slavery and death. For, as the Pope notes, man's "very nature contains direction and norm, and becoming inwardly one with this direction and norm is what freedom is all about." A passion need not lead to addiction or idolatry if it is formed to an "inward direction and norm." Then the passion can stay alive and grow, properly pruned and watered.

As Tony Bennett testifies, each year his passion for singing grows stronger. "I never want to retire." Why should he? He is living freely, practicing his singing craft, sharing his art. Even though he sings his hits time and again, he says, each time he sings, the song is fresh. This, I think, is because he sings it freely. He's found the answer to the question in the song below, "How do you keep the music playing?" Don't sin against your talent. Keep it free. And the answer allows him to say, "My music will 'never end'!"

Listen to "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?", sung by Tony Bennett.

Listen to another version of "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?", sung by Tony Bennett and George Michael.

Listen to "Because of You,"sung by Tony Bennett, his first big hit (1951).

Listen to "As Time Goes By," sung by Tony Bennet.

The Call that Lies Behind Beauty

When we hear a call, what calls us? The Greeks answered, "Beauty." The Greek word for Beauty, kalon, has as its root, kalein, to call. This makes sense since the attraction we experience in seeing, or hearing, or touching, a beautiful thing, has a source: the beauty itself that lies within and behind the beautiful object, and calls, attracts us. In effect, the beautiful calls us, and we experience it as attraction.

How do we respond to beauty? By "calling" it the beautiful, giving it a name. We call what called us, thereby making it present as it truly is, acknowledging it as something beautiful. The word "call" has these two senses.

Christians looked behind the call of Beauty, and saw its source, God. Beauty's impersonal voice has as its source a prior "call," the Word of the personal Creator God.

"When instead the origin of the call becomes the Creator God, neutrality vanishes, the origin is the Word himself. The call of self-diffusing beauty refers back to a prior call, a call that is absolute: the call that creates, proclaimed, as it were, in the intimacy of the divine silence."

Jean-Louis Chretien, The Call and the Response, at 16.

"Hence Paul's statement in the Epistle to the Romans (4:17) that God 'calls into being what is not.'" Ibid., 18.

And so, our ability to respond to God's call is given to us as well, and explains why, in Sunday's reading from John, the initiative in our vocation is God's, not our own. Our ability to respond is part of a God's gift to us in creation. What is asked for in God's call to us? To respond in recognition, in love, to God's goodness in creating us, to "name" this goodness and beauty, in essence ethical, in our lives.

Listen to Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor.

Listen to Chopin's Nocturne in D Flat Major (Youri Egorov).

Listen to Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor (Horowitz).

Shhhh!

The prelude to listening is . . . hearing. We hear in the background of our lives a bland presence of sounds . . . undifferentiated noise . . . traffic . . . squeaks and chirps of nature . . . human chit chat. But when we stop listening to what we hear . . . then maybe we can we hear what whispers from the interstices . . . the voice of the Other, the beyond, the absence whose presence is so powerful that its absence may be noticed . . . as a call . . . by those who listen.

What did Samuel hear at night? A quiet voice speaking to one who "kept the lamp lit," during a time when the voice of God was heard only seldom in the land. Mayn't that time be ours?

What do we hear when we listen? Can we answer, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening?"

Our celebrant, in L.A., for mass this past Sunday, used three words to capsulize the message in the three readings: Listen (call of Samuel), conditioning (Corinthian's call to purity), and abiding (Jesus' call in John). We need to condition ourselves to listen, for the impure are distracted from listening. And we need to pray, that is, abide in Jesus, to hear his call.

What do you hear in the sounds of everyday life? (From Explosion in the Sky: First Breath After Coma)

Listen to Chopin - Berceuse. (Maybe we need a Lullaby to fall asleep to the noise we otherwise listen to.) Info on Chopin's Berceuse.

Listen to Horowitz play Schubert's Serenade.

Everything Is Illuminated

The past sheds light on the present, gifting it with the meaning we yearn for. Without memory we lose ourselves. In the film (of the same name) based on the book "Everything Is Illuminated," Jonathan Safran Foer, an American Jew, seeks his past in his grandfather's shtetl in the Ukraine, Trochenbrod, from which in 1942, by the Nazis, almost everyone perished, except, luckily, for him. The shtetl was erased from the earth. Here from a historical website:

in 1942 . . . the first "Aktion" was carried out
followed by 2 others later on that year
the majority of the Jews in town
were brought to the forest
and were slaughtered all-together
and buried in mass graves
while the few remaining Jews
were locked in the local synagogue
and killed when it was set on fire.
In the two former Jewish towns now
there were no longer Jews to be found.

Like Jews, Christians can say with emphasis that without a past we would have no present. Without the drama of Jesus' Incarnation, Death and Resurrection, and the lives of those who followed, our present would be unrecognizable. How is it that supposedly "Christian" people could have so forgotten their past that they perpetrated such unspeakable acts against other human beings, and fellow sharers in the Judeo-Christian tradition? It boggles and sobers the mind.

The movie relates how the Nazis forced the Jewish residents to spit on the unrolled scroll of their synagogue's Torah, the most sacred book of their sacred identity. Spit or not, they were all killed by the barbarian Nazis, creatures of darkness who recognized no (Christian) past, only a future dominated by power.

Our Christian past must be made present to be alive. Are we living our tradition, or has the culture around us so beset us that we spit on it, or, as Milan Kundera claims (see Wikipedia article quote), see it as lost and fit only to be "illuminated in the aura of nostalgia"? On the contrary, we must strive to see our past as making reality appear for us in the present, allowing it to be experienced as it is, radiant in faith, hope and charity.

How does the past influence us? Maybe the model is the passage from Luke 2:19: "But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart." In the film, the one remaining former-resident of the town, Augustina, the boy's grandfather's wife, buried her wedding ring in the ground before she was killed. The characters in the film wonder why. Her sister, who escaped, and who, like her grand nephew Johnathan, is a collector of the shards of their past identity, said, "it was so you (Johnathon) would be created to find it." As I understand this, the gift of love given creates the future, even out of shards. This, of course, is a way of stating the mystery of our (and the Jews') faith, that a loving God re-claims the future out of the chaos of a fallen past. The creative agent is love. Only love creates.

Listen to Music from "Everything Is Illuminated"

Again, from the move, Sunflowers. (The lyrics are lines from an Alexander Pushkin poem called "To A.P. Kern." in English: In the torture of hopeless melancholy, In the bustle of the world's noisy hours, That voice rang out so tenderly, I dreamed of that lovely face of yours. That voice rang out so tenderly, I dreamed of that lovely face of yours. Then to my soul an awakening came, And there again your face appeared, Like a vision, fleeting, momentary, Like a spirit of the purest beauty. Like a spirit of the purest beauty.")

More music from the movie, "Odessa"

More music from the movie, "Inside-Outside"

Again, from movie, "War is over."

Again, from movie, "Prelude"

Listen to Theme from The Diving Bell.

The Hurt that Fills a Hollow Heart

Cal Thomas recently published (it was in the Chicago Tribune today) a poignant remembrance of his brother, Marshall, who lived his life with Downs' Syndrome, and recently passed away. You can find it here.

Mr. Thomas describes how his brother enriched his parents' and his life. "They [his parents] might have taken more vacations, owned a fancier house and driven a luxurious car, but before we valued things more than people, they valued Marshall more than any tangible thing. And that care rubbed off on me and other family members."

Mr. Thomas says that despite the hardship of caring for a disabled man who lived 40 years beyond his life expectancy, "we never regretted that decision [to keep and care for son and brother] because of the joy Marshall brought to our lives."

Mr. Thomas goes on to say, "In an age when we discard the inconvenient and unwanted in order to pursue pleasure and a life free of burdens, this may seem strange to some.

"I recall a line from the long-running Broadway musical, 'The Fantastiks': 'Deep in December, it's nice to remember, without a hurt the heart is hollow.'

"Marshall Thomas' 'hurts' filled a number of hollow hearts."

What a wonderful tribute to the true love that enlivens lives. Jean-luc Marion, in the article cited yesterday, observes that I truly love only when I gratuitously give the other space in which to appear. Since I have at my disposal no other space than my own, "I must take what is mine, take from myself, in order to open the space where the other may appear." (p166).

"It is up to me to set the stage for the other, not as an object that I hold under contract and whose play I thus direct, but as the uncontrollable, the unforeseeable, and the foreign stranger who will affect me, provoke me, and -- possibly -- love me."

This is Jesus' "command" to us, as quoted in John 13:34: "I give you a new commandment: that you may love one another, that just as I have loved you, you too may love one another."

We Christians need to wake up to what love means, for our spirits have closed on others:
"Recent US studies have indicated that when Down syndrome is diagnosed prenatally, 84% to 91% of those babies will be killed by abortion." See Physicians For Life website.

The only way to change is to follow strictly Christ's life-giving command to love, meaning to give others space out of my own. Then, as Cal Thomas' memoir shows, the joy of loving can combine with the "hurt" to fill the hollow of our hearts.

Mother Teresa aptly called attention to how this command is satisfied. She said, "It is Jesus to whom we do everything; we love Jesus." Cited in Giussani's "How We Become Christian."

Listen to Jerry Orbach sing "Try to Remember"

Listen to Ed Ames sing the same.

Listen to the Letterman sing the same.

Lyrics to Finale: Metaphor To Remember: Love! You are love! Better far than a metaphor Can ever, ever be. Love! (Love!) You are love! (You are love!) My mystery (My mystery) Of love! (...) Deep in December, It's nice to remember, Although you know the snow will follow. Deep in December, It's nice to remember, Without a hurt the heart is hollow. Deep in December, It's nice to remember, The fire of September that made us mellow. Deep in December, Our hearts should remember And follow.

The Tense of the Verb "To Love"

Faith holds on to the past promise. Hope unfolds in the future. There remains the present, in which charity lives. So says Jean-luc Marion in his essay, "What Love Knows," in Prolegomena to Charity.

"[C] harity plays itself out in the present: in order to know if I love, I need not wait, I have only to love; and I know perfectly well when I love, when I do not love, and when I hate. Contrary to the certitude of faith, which requires time for perseverance. . . and unlike the certitude of hope, which will only find its reward in the last days, charity waits for nothing, commences right away, and is fulfilled without delay. Charity manages the present. . .

"This, no doubt, is the reason why charity disheartens us, worries us, and taxes us: because, when it comes to charity, no excuse, no way out, no explanation is of any avail. I love or I do not love, I give or I do not give. It is certainly no accident that all the parables of the Last Judgment hinge not on faith . . . nor on hope . . . but on charity. Have we helped our neighbor, given even from our surplus, loved the least among us? This is the only criteria, the only crisis, the only test. The judgment singles out not the athletes of faith, nor the militants of hope, but the workers of charity.

"By consequence, charity becomes for each of us the site of an individual Judgment that, in the end, includes the whole span of time that we call our life. Following the Johannine theology of the Judgment, our judgment remains immanent: we judge ourselves by freely taking a definite position before the word of Christ, with out any extrinsic condemnation, so that at each moment we choose, patiently and decisively, whether we love Christ or hate him . . . a disturbing doctrine, which puts everything in our hands; all the more disturbing in that it concerns the simplest act - to love or not to love. For our nearest neighbor - "Interior intimo meo" -- is always Christ. Thus we judge ourselves according to whether we are charitable to charity . . ."

As Marian explains, charity is now, which means, there's no time to lose!

Listen to Susan Boyle, "Make me a Channel of Your Peace"

Same by Sarah MacLaughlin.

Same by Angelika.

Donovan's from Brother Sun, Sister Moon.

What's In It For God?

In a touching and informative explanation of lectio divina in this issue of Communio, Simeon Leiva-Merikakis (a Cistercian monk of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Mass.), discusses Mark 3:13-15, which describes Jesus' call of the apostles: "And he went up the mountain and he called to himself those whom he wanted and they came over to him. And he made twelve in order that they might be with him and in order that he might send them forth to proclaim the Kingdom and to have power to drive out demons."

Br. Simeon asks, "But let us make bold for a moment . . . and ask what God's own interest might be in pursuing our creaturely love as relentlessly as we claim He does. To put it almost impertinently: What does God expect to 'get' by sharing his being with me?"

And the answer is . . .

"To delight in us, to find joy in us, to see his dream fulfilled in us: this is what was 'in it' for God, this is what God so ardently pursues! In the Incarnation and the Cross, the Word sought us out so that he could delight in us. How many of us have ever considered that giving joy to God is an essential aspect of the human and Christian vocation? And yet, without that, what would it mean to say that God loves us and that we love him in return? For, what is love without mutual joy and enjoyment between persons, at both the human and the divine levels?

"We should never lose sight of the fact that this mutual delight between human beings and God in the person of the Word Incarnate is the goal of all divine and human efforts: delight is the deepest secret inscribed in the very heart of Being itself. And it is through the doors and windows of the Gospel's words that we will find our way into the interior abode where we can be with Jesus in God."

Listen to "Gabriel's Oboe" from the movie "The Mission."

Listen to Pavarotti sing "You are My Heart's Desire."

What's It Like to Be Real?

The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams (1922) tells the story of a toy rabbit who learns what it means to become real. You can read about the story line here, and the story itself here.

The rabbit has a conversation with an old skin horse:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana [the boy's nanny] came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The velveteen rabbit gets old and raggedy while being loved by the boy. When the boy gets sick with scarlet fever, the rabbit is discarded, placed with the other old toys to be burned. Crying a real tear of sorrow brings a fairy who tells the rabbit that it can now be real for everyone, and with a kiss, turns it into a real rabbit.

An Easter story, it shows how near are incarnation and redemption. When love is born in us, resurrection is near. To love and be loved: that's what makes us real!

Listen to Stephanie Mills sing "I Never Knew Love Like This Before."

Listen to Cheryl Lynn "Got to Be Real."

Listen to Teddy Pendergrass, "When Somebody Loves You Back."

Listen to Stacy Lattisaw, "I Found Love on a Two Way Street."

The New Year's Possibility for "Positivity"

Each year I take a canoe trip in early June with my children and siblings. Over the past 13 years we have canoed many of the rivers of Michigan and Wisconsin. What always strikes us is how little frequented are these rivers, given how beautiful they are.

We often have a "mid-year" meeting of our canoe gang, at which we celebrate the beautiful experience we had the prior summer. It helps cheer up our winter, and prompts us to start thinking and planning for the next summer.

Giussani talks about the "positivity" of all experience, by which, as I understand him, he means that there is a "hidden lining" in each and every experience, even negative experiences, such that, he claims, we can say that every experience is positive. This is how the world is constructed by a God who loves us.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future . . ." Jeremiah 29:11.

The video I make each year reminds me of the positivity of the canoeing experiences we have each summer. Making and viewing the video helps me appreciate and share its "positivity" with my family and friends.

As this new year begins with all its possibility, I want to resolve to see the "positivity" in my experiences, the tinge, the tone, the "silver lining" of God's providence. It sure isn't hard to do with our canoe trips, and the video remembrances of them! It's obviously more of a challenge respecting experiences we do not want to have, but suffer anyway. To find the positive in such experiences requires faith, hope and charity, faith in God's providence, hope in its fulfillment, and love or our willing God's will for the good.

As Pete Seeger sings, positivity means sensing we are "never alone" and "not far from home" as we sail down life's river. And as Sarah McLachlan sings, positivity is the ability to see the miracle in the ordinary, the redemption from hurting others that comes from forgiveness, and the solace in moving on after being hurt. In all these experiences we ask God's merciful touch.

Listen to Pete Seeger's beautiful song, "Sailing Down My Golden River."

Listen to Sarah McLachlan sing "Ordinary Miracle."

Listen to Sarah McLachlan sing "River."

Listen to Sarah McLachlan sing "Forgiveness."

Flipped

The calendar "flipping" to a new year prompts thoughts of reform and resolution. Somewhat in that vein I watched the recent film "Flipped," which you can get at the library. It's quite a nice story about how a teen-age boy and girl and their families struggle to overcome their prejudices about each other, and how love is born when that struggle succeeds. (The trailer is here.)

The transformative power of love was also made clear in the first episode of the Waltons that I watched recently. The family welcomed a young deaf girl who was left at their home (unbeknownst to the Waltons) by the girl's mother in order to prevent the girl's father from taking her to the county orphanage. He was unaware of her deafness and thought she was retarded. The Walton family, after extending hospitality to her, took her to the doctor and learned of her deafness. The doctor explained how they could learn to communicate with her through sign language. When they did the Waltons found out she was a delightful and smart little girl. When the knowledge was communicated to the girl's father, he was no longer in the dark about his child's capacities, and took her back with love.

The transformative power of love! How appropriate for the Feast of the Holy Family to be celebrated soon. Let us in 2012 resolve to walk the walk of love. It is a challenging walk because it requires that we face ourselves and our prejudices, ask for forgiveness, and put others before ourselves. But resolving to make that "flip" as the year turns promises blessings of happier families, friends, and world. Happy New Year!

Listen to Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is."

Listen to Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."

Listen to Wilson Phillips, "Hold On"