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Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in
+Seraphim's LiveJournal:
| Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 | |
| 7:55 pm | Pentecost in Harlem Friends, Friends, Reading the Gospel today at Pentecost(a week later on eastern than on western calendar this year) Liturgy at Emmaus House in Harlem New York, "The poor serving the poor". The first liturgy there since the time of the founder Fr.David Kirk. Now if you have not discovered the new facebook site "Taste and See" go there and perhaps press 'like' and more important bookmark it and open from "Notes" the memoir of Mother Maria Skobtsova which Dr.William Samsonoff brought over from Third Hour Magazine in 1947. it is an important and wonderful document. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Taste-a after Liturgy and coffee hour,went with Dana and Sue Talley to see Men in Black 3. I enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone ... yours +Seraphimn  . |
| Friday, June 1st, 2012 | |
| 10:41 am | Pines. + TAS Friends, There is something about these pine trees as seen, and then in this image, which I like--perhaps it tis the many branches to the right which seem like a forest of their own standing sideways. and do visit, and press like! and bookmark! TAS (Taste and See) a site based in facebook started by some friends of mine and which I find delightful and refreshing: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Taste-a yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 | |
| 10:45 am | Reality Friends, Last weekend going to New Skete I took with me F.H.Bradley's "Appearance and Reality" to dip into having often felt its musical quality and also the satisfaction in being able to remember little since Hugh Kenner said that it has no single memorable paragraph though it shaped the prose style of no less than T.S.Eliot. Its thought is idealistic in an intuitive rather than systematic way perhaps rather as someone said like someone brilliantly throwing darts at a pub dart board. This too is pleasing isnt it? anyway now this bit I think may not be memorable in detail but is it not a nice thought(or anyway to my simple sort of mind) that while everything, Time and Space and up and down and in and out of life is in itself a mere appearance and we ourselves maybe 'such stuff as dreams are made of' yet it is Real in its fullness in which no singularity is lost. Do you find it pleasing? for you who do, here it is...  .and to end with a view of the way down from Mount Equinox taken on Saturday and I am yours +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, May 28th, 2012 | |
| 2:59 pm | ZENITH Friends, Here is a place near New Skete which I like and you may too so posting this photo from Saturday... Yesterday Olga Meerson reminded me of a poem by Osip Mandelstam and then also of a reverie I had written(unpublished in a manuscript called 'Shimmering') which included a sort of version of this poem. perhaps my version takes it further towards abelards quata qualia and the meadow of fra angelico and from eucharist towards grail and Time beyond time. but the two (of course only one that of Mandelstam is by a real poet the other but a reverie.) also share. and the photo? gives us a meadow at Zenith mnaybe. here is the Mandelstam (Pevear translation) (1)See the gift-cup, like a golden sun, hung for a splendid moment in the air. Here only the Greek tongue should resound: The whole world held up like a simple apple. The solemn zenith of the divine service, Light in a round temple under a dome in July, So that with a full breast outside time We sigh for that meadow where time does not run. And the eucharist lasts like an eternal noon – All partake, all play and sing, And in sight of all the divine vessel Streams with inexhaustible delight. and here is what I did... (2) "0, like a golden Sun-- A moment of Splendour! The whole world an apple At the Liturgy of the Zenith! In the shimmering light, Brighter than High-Summer! In the roundness Rounder far than the cupola's! Here outside Time our lungs can fill! And there, see! in that meadow There is every movement. Quick now! All is speed but No haste or (No, never!) Rush of Time! Liturgy of Eternal Noon! Communion and Play and Music! And there is the Grail, Vessel and Vessels Supremes and Supreme Sabbath and Sabbaths! Now seen by all, Pouring ever for and into all All from all yet 0nly fulness remains. 0f Joy the fulness All from all, for and by all, For it is the Zenith! Fulness of Joy!" Today these, +Seraphim  . |
| Sunday, May 27th, 2012 | |
| 9:31 pm | Liturgy at New Skete Friends, I am just back from two days at New Skete in Cambridge New York. Memory of good days and talk and silence and light and the sense of being with brothers and sisters... here is a photo from liturgy today taken by William Samsonoff. it is washing of hands (ablution).the acolyte holds the basin. Fr Christopher of New Skete and I. Brother Stavros. On the altar a chalice caught in a ray of light for a moment blazes like the Grail... +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, May 25th, 2012 | |
| 8:49 am | GOING TO NEW SKETE. Friends, This is an icon at new skete. Jesus is holding not an american football I think but a loaf of bread... I am going up to New Skete Monastery in Cambridge New York for the weekend, with Boris Pitel and Peter Von Berg and look forward to meeting other friends there, perhaps driving over to Vermont to do Mount Equinox tomorrow if weather permits, Sunday lunch at Michael and Siri Allisoins. Michael is with NASA and is happy at the recent private launch from cape canaveral. Heinlein may have had it right that private enterprise might be the way out of the gravity well, when public and political will fails.(and who besides Newt Gingrich said anything about space?) anyway will certainly have some good photographs, Boris being with us, and be back with you very soon... +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 | |
| 1:52 pm | Pond. + A Curious Sort of Book. Friends, Ducks by the pond today. does not the flattened depth of the photographic plane give an impression that they are facing a body of water perpendicular to them? else, received from amazon the detective fiction reviews of charles williams 1930-1935 it seems an interesting book but the buyer should know, apart that it is not an inexpensive book, that half of it is essays and apparatus by the editor, Jared Lobdell, concerning golden age detection and also its relation to Williams own writing. A brief dipping into this shows Lobdell giving rather short shrift to the 'farceurs' Michael Innis and Edmund Crispin whom I always enjoyed. I agree with him that it is a pity that Williams was not given Harley Quinn to review but in fact he was not, and there we are.. Nor are Williams reviews full length but seem at least for the most part to be groups of one or two paragraph notices of writers for the most part forgotten by all except specialists in period detective fiction, well with others we do know such as J.D.Carr, Ellery Queen, and...ah here is something interesting...Sax Rohmer. "there are some few absurd books of my own which exist only because one evening,having finished one of Mr Rohmer's,I said to myself:'I also will write a novel.'" so... today these ,yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 | |
| 1:29 pm | BEFORE PENTECOST Friends, This photo I find on line of St Michael's tower on the tor at Glastonbury, looking up to the sky, seems to go with these lines by R.S.Thomas which in turn seem to go with the time before Pentecost. There is no body in the stained window of the sky now. Am I too late? Were they too late also, those first pilgrims? He is such a fast God, always before us, and leaving as we arrive. I remember at Glastonbury standing here and looking up ,the sky was blue that day I think, and feeling it is an image of the Church that is and is coming, rooted in the earth and ,as the Tor may in some way represent, at its center, and open to the sky.... +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, May 21st, 2012 | |
| 11:21 am | New Skete Collage + A Place of Luck Friends, Here is a collage made by Bill Samsonoff from Liturgy at New Skete Monastery in Cambridge New York. I will be viisting there next weekend...  .and one more item, a fish whose little world is in front of a chinese restaurant I had lunch at yesterday. He swims over coins thrown in I suppose as a sign that the place is a sort of mine of Luck...  .these two items today, yours +Seraphim |
| Saturday, May 19th, 2012 | |
| 8:35 am | A a small homage to "Instant Light." Friends, Will be in the City today so just a photo before setting out. These flowers set in shadow and soft light seemed to me pleasant to look at and so I will share them. Have suggested a polaroid, which this is not, by the framing of it but have sort of worked it to have that look and perhaps it can as such be a homage to director Andrey Tarkovsky's love of polaroid photography, he always carried such a camera with him and the book Instant Light gathers his shots. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, May 18th, 2012 | |
| 10:23 am | Kaleidoscope of Leaves. Erasure of Pagan Illusion . Friends, Dark leaves and light...yin and yang of Spring if you will...  .now for those who don't mind Frost Like Ashes, and you know who you are by now if you read this regularly, I listen to "Pale Shadows" you can find the lyrics online. they are in a sense harsh "Let me grasp Mjolnir.. .crush the head of Thor..." a little harsh on neopagan sensitivities perhaps? But I suppose the point is that gods (or archetypes either) are not something to play with, to play at odinism for example, or goddess worship, is to be in illusion. and who has not played with serious things ? with "pale shadows on the sun"? I suppose this band gives in sound a bit of shock to break through illusion. "only the hand that erases can write the true thing." the metal sound erases...maybe ... or represents the erasure of illusion we daily need. so just this one more from FLA. And turning the glass of our yin yang kaleidoscope of leaves we see another image... today these,yours +Seraphim  . |
| Thursday, May 17th, 2012 | |
| 9:59 am | ARSENY TARKOVSKY Friends, Arseny Tarkovsky is perhaps my favorite Russian poet, I do not mean that I think he is greater than Tsvetaeva or Akhmatova or Blok (well, or Pushkin, come to that) just my own preference. but it is always a happiness for me to find a poem translated into English which I hadnt seen before and here is one, and my impression is that it is a rather good translation: I LEARNED THE GRASS AS I BEGAN TO WRITE By Arseny Tarkovsky Translated by Philip Metres; Dimitri Psurtsev I learned the grass as I began to write, And the grass started whistling like a flute. I gathered how color and sound could join And when the dragonfly whirred up his hymn, Passing through green frets like a comet, I knew A tear was waiting in each drop of dew. Knew that in each facet of the huge eye, In each rainbow of brightly churring wings, Dwells the burning word of the prophet— By some miracle I found Adam’s secret. I loved my tormenting task, this intricate Placing of words, fastened by their light, Riddle of vague feeling and a simple answer To the mind. In “truth” I thought truth appeared. My tongue was true, like a spectral analysis, And words gathered around my feet to listen. What’s more, my friend, you’re right to say I heard one-quarter the noise, saw half the light, But I did not debase the grasses, or family, Or insult the ancestral earth by being blithe, And as long as I worked on earth, accepted A gift of coldest spring water and fragrant bread, Above me unfathomable sky still stood, And stars tumbled around my head.  .Now while we are thinking about Arseny Tarkovsky I find this singing of the poem "Now Summer has passed..." which I love and which was read in the film Stalker by his son Andrey. Here is the poem and the singing of it by Sofia Rotaru.( Read more... ) Today these, and I am yours +Seraphim |
| Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 | |
| 11:37 am | BETWEEN Friends, Since the Rangers have game 2 with the Devils tonight this userpic... Not having a working television I will be unable to watch it sadly but... But today one more from Innisfree of the other day. Perhaps any garden is but somehow Innisfree(Dutchess county NY one) is a mix of things suggesting the fantastic with the quite ordinary of scenery. In this case the inner and the outer world? or the Narnia story where Narnia is entered through a gate in a school wall. We somehow live in-between dont we , night and day, inner and outer... I think of the Frost Like Ashes lyrics of Lord of Darkness("He who made the Pleiades and handcrafted dark Orion ") (concerning this song a word from the writer of it ( Read more... ) standing in the cool dark of part of the remains of the Beck mansion within the garden (1982 torn down to save maintenance and remove it from garden which is the real monument of Walter Beck) in the dark looking out into the bright green world... but always between also ..look on line for Gospel of Thomas on making the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner...find my eye caught also by this which I had forgotten, the disciples ask Jesus how their ends will be ""Tell us, how will our end come?" Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. " today these... yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 | |
| 10:16 am | Friends, Well the Rangers won handily didn't they? Else, A photo from Innisfree Garden(Dutchess County north of here a bit)taken last Saturday, perhaps it can convey an effect...and thinking about Abhishiktananda(Henri Le Saux) as will hear Yann Vagneux on him on Saturday. Here is a quote I find which can be good also for this time before Pentecost: "Christian sannyasa will not, however, be an order in the canonical sense of the word, since its essence cannot be codified in any law or standardized in any institution. It is first of all a spirit whose manifestation and unforeseen appearance present a permanent challenge to human wisdom. Yet, at the same time, like the prana or vivifying “breath” of the Upanishads, it spreads everywhere and penetrates everything with its life, free of all constraint, yet transforming and renewing all that it touches, as much the man in whom it reveals itself as the group among which it is manifested. It is like that “living water” to which the Saviour delighted to refer, welling up in the depths of the heart, like that mystic river of water which is to gush forth at the time appointed by God from beneath the very threshold of the sanctuary—as the prophet Ezekiel foresaw in his final vision (ch. 47)—and from there to spread abroad, bringing life and healing to the whole land of promise. Swami Abhishiktananda." Today just these, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, May 14th, 2012 | |
| 12:14 pm | A Martin Brodeur Moment + Small Flower Friends, Tonight the Rangers begin their series with the New Jersey Devils! For fans of both great teams I offer this pleasant moment from the 1994 series between them. Note especially the play of the Devils' hall of fame goalie Marty Brodeur who no doubt will offer more of the same tonight. and here is a photo of a small flower in front of my door last night.  .Thinking of the smallness of it... "Holy Spirit, Spirit of compassion, you breathe upon us what is fragile. You transfigure our impossibilities into trust, the confidence that you are at work in each one of us. Frere Roger. Prior of Taize." yours +Seraphim |
| Sunday, May 13th, 2012 | |
| 12:38 pm | The Woman Called "Light.". Friends For the sunday and for mothers' day too maybe this image, of Jesus talking with the woman at the well from the 12th century Jruchi Gospel from Georgia, can fit. And some words: (1) "The Samaritan woman is an example for us. She was an ordinary woman, merely performing her daily chores. And God appeared to her, called her and told her about spirit and truth. This means that none of us have the right to say: "I'm too much of a sinner, too insignificant and much too unworthy to hear and understand the word of Christ." Christ's good news is directed to each one of us, to everyone in his time. The Word of God is like a sword, penetrating deep into our hearts, to the very depth of our being. Just feel this power and it will give to you eternal life, the living water which the Lord promised to this Samaritan woman." Fr.Alexander Men. (2)and this from Met.Anthony Bloom "The Gospel has not given us the name of the Samaritan woman. But the Tradition of the Church remembers, and calls her in Greek - Photini, in Russian - Svetlana, in the Celtic languages - Fiona, in Western languages - Claire. And all these names speak to us of one thing - of light.Having met the Lord Jesus Christ she has become a light shining in the world...Each of us may meet our God at any turn in our life, when we are about our most homely tasks, if our hearts are turned in the right direction, if we are prepared to receive a message, to listen; indeed - to ask questions!" (3)and thirdly now in my own voice I remember a teacher asking us"what does it mean 'the hour comes and now is when those who worship will worship in spirit and in truth...'"' it is of course from this dialogue of Jesus and the woman and it is the point that stays with me perhaps most, if not exactly as a zen koan(as the teacher offered it) at least as a sense of the doubleness of life... coming yet here. that which shall be and that which is. the necessary and the good of simone weil and Plato perhaps relate? now we are getting a bit afield but that what we seek is here and now by the well we go to every day but also it is something more.""Yet I know that good is coming to me— that good is always coming" George Macdonald... it is all in John chapter 4. +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, May 11th, 2012 | |
| 11:43 am | "MADE OF STARS."  .From http://www.randomly.com/jackie/ Essays of Jackie Jones Jernigan This one more in remembering and thinking of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.3){kind=small} jackiejj."I wonder if I am going God-crazy, moving inside myself, listening to that Other, gentle nudge as I walk through the dining room at my mother's on Christmas morning; as I sweep pine needles off her porch; as I rattle the windchimes in the back room. It is the gentlest feeling, a breath: this here I am, and it adds Grace and meaning to the smallest act: I sweep the porch, and it is enough, a holy moment. Tonight, sleepy, I made up all the makeshift beds and piled up the remains of stocking stuffers, and now I am warm in bed, writing peacefully; everyone is going to bed now, rustling; and the stars are out. . . As long as I am open and receptive, I shall be healed all my life, and "all things will be new," every day. Wait: for God to greet you. People are visitors. God alone stays. What if our world isn't fallen? Question: God, do I have anything to fear from You? Answer: I only love you. It is not what I do but how: flowing. What joy, even in this darkness where I live alone without anyone—but here is God, at the edge of time, and in this remotest place God and I will sing together. We had a special church service on Sunday afternoon to bless animals. The choir sang about whales and donkeys and "all God's creatures." Dogs barked downstairs, and we laughed up in the choir loft when two cats got into a hissing fight. The choir master had borrowed two long white banners of elaborate paper cuttings, which had been hung from the rafters on each side of the nave. I wondered who had balanced on a ladder to hang them: they were at least fifteen feet long. What a lot of effort, I thought, for one service. Someone would have to pack them up again, and ship them back to California. Then, as if it were a lesson, I suddenly pictured a woman sitting calmly on the marble chancel floor, rolling the white banners carefully, enjoying the stillness of the dim church, the rainbow light from the stained glass windows. I am made of stars and made of God, but I am also myself, whirled through, in the atmosphere of, God—something dances in me, delighted; something partakes of me, a constant communion. When I go quietly up to the rail, and with the best of good manners take wine and bread—our outward and visible signs and wonders—the inward and spiritual Grace in me showers up like a fountain of light." Jackie Jones Jernigan. ........................................ As you see this is from the selection of Jackie's essays. Read first my entry yesterday if you have not. I have posted it because when I was reading these yesterday I was struck by their depth ,resonance, truth for Jackie, truth for all of us... and maybe some others who might not otherwise have found them will feel and be touched by this same inner truth. +Seraphim  . |
| Thursday, May 10th, 2012 | |
| 10:51 am | OR I COULD LIVE IN OUTER MONGOLIA: a post for and made special by Jackie Jernigan, Friends, Jackie Jones Jernigan jackiejj was a real friend on andthrough livejournal. We met I guess shortly after she began her journal in late 2003. In 2005 she published through Lulu Press a volume of 100 of her entries titled Miserable on Purpose you may still find it at lulu.com and I am posting two of those little essays here and you may well realize that you would enjoy to order and have the book. I am guessing that some time after that ,2008 maybe? our correspondence both through comments here and in private email, tailed off. the last personal email I have is dated in late 2007. her entries on the journal became less frequent and sporadic and my checking of my friends page declined and now it is very insufficient. for one thing I play mafia wars which takes time and I do a lot of things outside of the internet and so on... Yesterday I learned from her daughter in law Tara Jernigan, when I inquired, that she had a stroke last Summer which led to discovery of cancer and to her death in this January. I am ,you will imagine, rueful at the lost years of contact after 2008, by a certain inertia no doubt on both parts but I feel more the blame or in any case the wish that I had been more proactive and not lost these years of acquaintance... and also I feel what you will too I think reading these two essays, the loss of a unique and special mind and heart and voice... Enjoy!  .( Read more... ) She always in our correspondence talked of making a book, I think a novel based on her life. and she did one of those nanwrimo things which I did not read except maybe some excerpts but it was not very serious I think... but the novel from her life, or the memoir would have had good things... one point was among the (wheat?)(corn?)(other?) fields at night a sense of the presence of God which remained a key moment. if the website I link is measure, her writing for her episcopal church bulletin also stopped or became less A few more notes on Jacky. These two essays certainly show her whimsical ,inquiring mind. On facebook looking back and finding her last entry before almost the end of it, I see... "I have a new book about Jupiter, and a new pitcher of cold tea." she found the beautiful in what is ordinary... delighted in thought of far away on the other hand and of the fantastic... gardens and dreams and rain on the roof and shadows in the night making mysterious forms and ortgan music and her place in the local church choir. doodles on the program during the rector's sermon...love of her son and daughter...old books and photo graphs and science fiction...and Carl Jung. imagining new houses, possible and fantastic... and now I suppose having moved to one both real and yet lacking no fantasy and from which she can come and go and stay, still too . yet beyond the barrier which as she said the speed of light is for us... but after my signoff let it be words from Jackie to close this for now... +Seraphim "As long as I am open and receptive, I shall be healed all my life, and "all things will be new," every day. Wait: for God to greet you. People are visitors. God alone stays." |
| Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 | |
| 11:33 am | O VENTURE OF DELIGHT!  .Friends, today two photos I took of dandelions yesterday and the Roy Campbell translation of St John of the Cross "en noche oscura".At best a poet doing a translation augments his own abilities adding the range of the original to his own and making a new poem including the original and this may be what is achieved here... thought to post this since we have been speaking of Roy's work and not everyone may have this at hand... Songs of the Soul in Rapture at Having Arrived at the Height of Perfection, Which is Union with God by the Road of Spirtual Negation Upon a gloomy night, With all my cares to loving ardours flushed, (O venture of delight!) With nobody in sight I went abroad when all my house was hushed. In safety, in disguise, In darkness up the secret stair I crept, (O happy enterprise!) concealed from other eyes When all my house at length in silence slept. Upon that lucky night In secrecy, inscrutable to sight, I went without discerning And with no other light Except for that which in my heart was burning. It lit and led me through More certain than the light of noonday clear To where One waited near Whose presence well I Knew, There where no other presence might appear. Oht that night that was my guide! Oh darkness dearer than the morning's pride, Oh night that joined the lover To the beloved bride Transfiguring them each into the other. Within my flowering breast which only for Himself entire I save He sank into His rest And all my gifts I gave Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave. Over the ramparts fanned While the fresh wind was fluttering His tresses, With His sternest hand My neck He wounded, and Suspended every sense with its caresses. Lost to myself I stayed My face upon my lover having laid From all endeavour ceasing: And all my cares releasing Threw them among the lilies there to fade. today just this, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Sunday, May 6th, 2012 | |
| 12:21 pm | THE LONG WATCH Friends, I am reading Dorothy Day's diaries.and am struck that she knew that she had a contract (as each man does, said Saul Bellow and that we know its terms) and she lived so determinedly to keep those terms which were not those of Merton or Lax or of course of our Roy Campbell of recent days. her autobiography 'The Long Loneliness' and there is loneliness like a current in the stream of the diaries, as when she writes to a priest of her inner stress and he replies cheerily with notes on his own life. Or she is reproved for seeming indifferent to others after a meeting and concludes she must work to hide her fatigue (cf Bob Dylan after concerts notoriously etc but he has a different contract). But also her virtue can lie in this relentless examination of conscience and considerable awareness also of its pulling oneself up by the bootstraps impossibility. yet still... not all allow themselves to look as unflinchingly as possible at these inner things nor to try so hard and long to serve others. The saints I suppose ,or those with that in their contract...what a mercy at least at moments to see beyond the valley of ones own contract and be free from the burden of self and this at times , music,Wagner rather than Mozart, or through a bay window hundreds of gulls seen wheeling and circling 'almost dancing in the air'. yet much is borne feeling weight as the silence of a retreat feeling 'what Conrad called the horror of infinity'...Raisa Maritain said it is for Adam to tell the stories that Eve inspires, but Peter Maurin was the dreamer of their circle in Catholic Worker and it was for Dorothy to dispose what he proposed...to make the communes and see them not work very well "it is one thing to dream of utopias another to try to work them out" as she says. She had joys in serving and in listening to Tristan and Isolde and tried to answer to (Ruskin she found the phrase in)'The Duty of Delight.' On a limited impression of Dorothy I would think of her life as 'The Long Watch' ,a contract kept, though one wishes perhaps for more freedom more flexibility in thought and more detachment and seeing into other valleys less certainties... less opinions... (but there's the trick the first without loss of faith and the second without loss of service) well there was some of all that. some freedom and joy... some things received as well as much given. BUT what about you and I, that is the challenge of this line of thought, what is our contract...are we aware of keeping watch?...and to what purpose? and with what freedom in the midst of not failing in that? these thoughts ... these challenges of a life lived without turning back. and perhaps if she is recognized as a saint in the narrow sense of one canonized by the church as paradigmatic for all, it will not be least for this disclosure of the inner structure of keeping ones watch, meeting ones contract which her life as it seems to me does disclose in a special way. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, May 5th, 2012 | |
| 4:13 pm | CINCO DE MAYO. Dorothy. Friends, Set out to visit Innisfree Gardens but not open until May 7. Reading Dorothy Day diaries. in common with Roy Campbell is a sold out quality of not turning back, a kind of courage and largeness in this, (though it be the largeness of the ideologue in some aspects) almost all else is different if Campbell is a lightning flash as Edith Sitwell said, Dorothy is a river...happiness and sadness are acknowledged and a diary serves to retain the joy and release the sorrow and loneliness of things...is it not so with blogging? anyway having failed to reach garden with the dragon and turtle and owl rocks on the point in the lake...I celebrated cinco de mayo(a mexican american and north mexican holiday ) by stopping at a fantastical peter max style texas mexican place and having two burritos and a photo ,a bit illicit since they do not want interior photos...I hope rosemary would forgive me (it is rosemary's texas taco on rte 22)just this once. I have worked it so as to make it hardly a photo at all but a homage to the place without showing it really and if you will to the day... yours +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, May 4th, 2012 | |
| 10:22 am | THE CARMELITES OF TOLEDO Friends, After fruitlessly querying everyone for the poem The Carmelites of Toledo a couple of years ago, I find it is in my library in volume 2 of Roy Campbell collected poems. a book I had forgotten I had in my disordered library and not grasped the contents of. It is a poem I love and only read before in the part included in an old edition of his translattions of St John of the Cross. Background that in 1936 in Spain ahead of the Nationalist forces beginning their rebellion, the Red Terror came to Toledo. Roy and Mary Campbell were living there and close to the Carmelites and the superior Fr Eusebio was their spiritual father and they had stayed at the Campbells house. They were all murdered in the terror, among the over 5000 priests,monks and nuns killed in that terrible war, by the republican forces. I will give first these key verses:  ."clothes of light' are the bullfighters vesture and the martyrs are seen as going into the bullfight, Roy describes being himself beaten back by the rifle butts and, in a humility found not absolutely common in his work ,sees himself as a harlequin. Are not these powerful lines? The whole is here.( Read more... ) What followed was the defence by cadets of the Alcazar against the Reds, you will not have read of it in history textbooks I think. Perhaps today hardly of that war at all..it was a defence of the Alamo for the Nationalist movement and in its third month the City was relieved by the arrival of the Nationalist army from Spanish Morocco. You will not read much in Campbell about the White Terror which claimed first as many and finally ,if nothing else because they were victorious, more victims than the Red. But certain moments remain ,as they do from all the horror and shame of human history, and maybe this poem is worthy memorial to one. Among other features of note in the poem, the seeing of the martyrs as a dynamo... *a note on the events of the poem( Read more... ) In this and as a whole and lifted from its context even perhaps it belongs in all memory of Christian martyrdom. so today this +Seraphim  .Alcazar under bombardament 1936. |
| Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 | |
| 5:06 pm | Roy Campbell--Inkling. Friends, Well the Rangers won game 3 in ice hockey so that is a happy thing... I am waiting for the diaries of Dorothy Day to read in tandem, but today received Unafraid of Virginia Woolf a biography of Roy Campbell , the South African-British poet and adventurer by Joseph Pearce. It seems an excellent book and I am looking forward to reading of his friendship with Dylan Thomas, and their under the influence of drink, famous feat of eating a bowl of daffodils, of his relation to Garcia Lorca(about whom he wrote well), about his punching Stepehen Spender ,who had called him a 'talking bronco', and so on... However I already find, through using the index, a corrective to the story of his relation to the Inklings , Lewis,Tolkien,Williams and others less well known in that context at least. A correction perhaps worth sharing since quite a good many people are interested in that circle. The story as I knew it, and you may have too , is of Tolkien bringing Campbell to a meeting of the Inklings and the latter being rebuffed with disdain by Lewis, on the grounds of his falangist or some would say fascist sympathies in the 1930s, and Tolkien saying that Lewis' problem was not that Tolkien's friend was a fascist but that he was a Catholic. The relationships happily are more interesting and extensive than that and I find the following. ( Read more... ) Finding a picture of horses on line I put a Campbell poem for good measure at the end "Horses of the Camargue." Again these notes because I am thinking Joseph Pearce's book is not widely read and yet this is a circle many people including many here , can be interested in... The Inklings were more than just the three Williams,Tolkien, Lewis, well Owen Barfield, Hugh Dyson, Nevil Coghill , Lord David Cecil, and so on all important in their various works... and Roy Campbell too. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 | |
| 10:23 am | Microcosmic Music Box Cover Friends, Today only some early May leaves. The colors will change and perhaps these are worth recording and retaining in that month of May which is in the mind, if as the wise say each person is an inner universe reflecting the outer then there must be seasons there too under the spheres of the inner planets...maybe this could be a standing screen in your inner house, applying folds to it or could be laquered and made the top of a tiny music box on an inner table. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 | |
| 12:58 pm | Drum. reading opposites. Friends, On Saturday I visited the Japanese garden at the nearby Hammond museum. In the garden a display of what I think was some chinese martial art with students doing katas (choreographed movements) under the eye of their instructor who kept a running chatter going about how his instructor's teacher Chow Mein ,let it be, retired in the 1930s undefeated. they were not very impressive but they had this drum on the side on a little island in the pond. it looks rather well perhaps so here it is...a drum unattended may remind us of Drake's drum left by him to be struck at need: "Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore, Strike et when your powder's runnin' low; If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven, An' drum them up the Channel as we drumm'd them long ago." Otherwise,Yesterday in discussing a good new book ,I paired Dorothy Day and Roy Campbell as a sort of yin and yang. A friend pointed out that it has been suggested, by a Campbell biographer, that they were both anarchists although Roy without political agenda. I have decided on the experiment of reading both at once, and ordered Dorothy Day's Diary published as "The Duty of Delight" and a Campbell biography "Unafraid of Virginia Woolf: the friends and enemies of Roy Campbell". I in ways deeply admire both and am thinking balancing the two may help me more deeply admire them yet...as both are at points also not simple for me. rather as with friends there are moments of annoyance. Oh come on Dorothy read Edmund Burke for a change. Oh come on Roy put a sock in it etc. suggest the same experiment to anyone else who likes them both. Or perhaps more usefully to anyone who has ambivalent feelings about two authors who are in some way ,yin and yang, opposites. today these, +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, April 30th, 2012 | |
| 10:46 am | A Review Friends, This will be to say a word on why I think the new book "Saints as they really are" by Michael Plekon, sociologist, priest and as many of you know a close friend of mine, is important. Many people ,I think, write reviews and blurbs without reading the book, or at least it has been done, how do I know that? you ask. Huh ...well...I dont know but lets move on. To some extent that is the case here, but I did read rather extensively in it before publication so if I had my copy with me now I probably could do the best job of it possible to me. I forgot it at home. well... there we are. but what I do write will not I think need recanting on further reading though I may add notes tomorrow or in the days to come. First go here and read the notes here for starters: http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P01555 And that really says it all. so that was easy. but to add a word or restate a word... It is important because it starts with the simple, and when you think about it self evident yet perpetually obscured and then made clear again, fact that religion in general and Christianity in particular is about life, it is life. and life well lived is within holiness: rising from within and yet also from beyond the personal. That is what this book and the previous ones of this series by Michael Plekon, Living Icons and Hidden Holiness, are about. To realize this is to become able to see the working and presence of the Holy in those around us, and finally of that possibility of holiness within our own life, of the working of the Holy in our life until now and of its invitation for our, your and my, future. And so naturally and by the progression of the books, Plekon tells something of his own life story directly and then also in writing of mentors, like Peter Berger, and mentors by affinity ,example and teaching such as Merton and Dorothy Day. This is what the Church is,isn't it?, the assembly called by and to the Holy and mentors to each other in holiness as also sharers of each others' happiness and sadness, infirmity and strength. Again it may be and is self evident and yet it is perpetually forgotten and I can think of no message to the churches more timely ,and not least to Fr Plekon's own Eastern Orthodox Church. It reorders all questions of agenda and all questions of the unity of Christians,if indeed it does not on a deep level dissolve them. I imagine someone saying well I do not, for example, share the political vision of Dorothy Day and am not a pacifist. This is an example of what makes holiness hidden: it is hidden by the divergence of lives and it requires of us the seeing beyond the surface to the holy. Yet also to Eastern Orthodox who in our country now, in places at least, may seem to risk to accept an invitation to be the Right at prayer, it is the appropriate example. For the churches ,not few ,which risk to be the Left at prayer we might commend the study of Roy Campbell poet and adventurer and warrior. Live with the one you find difficult until you are touched by the holiness, and see through their eyes and mind and heart. You will still be yourself a person of the left or of the right or of the middle as it were but with a gain, a softening which is also a clarification. But that which obscures is more often in daily life not ideology of any sort, but personal quirks, momentary projections and so on...In starting to realize the Holy as nearby we come to the need of passing through and also forgiving, in the other and in our response to the other, all that obscures. The Holy is not only at the Omega Point but as it was said it "is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart." From precisely this knowledge Michael Plekon is a wise man and his book a book of that earned wisdom generously shared. today this yours +Seraphim  .At 2009 Alexander Men conference in New York. L-R Michael Plekon,myself,John Bostwick of St.Norbert's , Nora Marks Dauenhauer, poet and Tlingit story teller, John and Mandy Culbreath-Frazer. this is the first photo with Michael in it which I found in my galleries but maybe it will do. |
| Sunday, April 29th, 2012 | |
| 3:37 pm | Luzzos Group Friends, It seems that last wzeek I did not post a photography of the meeting of our circle 'Transfiguration' at which Dmitry Trakovsky spoke about his upcoming film 'Arctic Cross' well here is a photograph by Boris Pitel of the outing to Luzzo's which for some of us followed . I like the atmospherics of it and among the many pictures of people hanging out in eating places which have littered this space, perhaps this one stands out. on the far side of the table second from the right is Dmitry. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, April 28th, 2012 | |
| 12:01 pm | Finding "A Profession that did not exist." Friends, we looked at Alec Guinness as Fr Brown, but there is also the detective who is not presented as a priest but acts as one. this from Peter Ely on Georges Simenon's detctive Maigret is nice. I would add to make a third coordinate Chandler's Philip Marlowe and would say with Chandler that while detective stories are good when realistic yet such a man(as the fictional detective) would not be that in real life and so the Fr Brown storiers also are really not so much about a priest detective as about a priest (though they would be poor entertainments without the trappings of detection). Interesting is Simenon on how many people appear in the wrong role in life etc. I mus t say though that of the three ,Marlowe,Brown,Maigret it is Maigret I have warmed to least but this seemed interesting so sharing: While never using the term vocation, Simenon takes time in several of his Maigret stories to let the reader in on the deeper desire that undergirds Maigret's career as detective (policier). At the root of the police career lies a priestly ambition. Chapter V of La Premiere Enquete de Maigret (Maigret's First Case)--not the first of Simenon's Maigret works in spite of its title--bears the title, "La Premiere Ambition De Maigret," the first ambition of Maigret. It seems that Maigret chose to enter the police because it was closest to the profession (metier) he had always desired, a profession that really didn't exist. "Even as a young man, in his village, he had always had the impression that a great many people (des tas de gens) were not in their rightful place, that they were following a path which was not their own, simply because they didn't know better" (La Premiere Enquete 90). And he imagined a man "very intelligent and full of understanding (tres intelligent et tres comprehensif) ... both doctor and priest" someone "who would understand at his first glance the destiny of the other person" (90). People would come to consult such a person as they consult a doctor. He would be in some way a "mender of destinies" (un raccommodeur de destins). This person would be a mender of destinies not primarily because of his intelligence--in fact he might not have to be of exceptional intelligence--"mais parce qu'il etait capable de vivre la vie de tousles hommes, de se mettre dans la peau de tous les hommes" ("but because he was capable of living the life of all men, of putting himself in the skin of all men") (90). Above all, Maigret puts himself in the skin of those who suffer, who are driven to crime by desperation, or who have lived their whole lives as victims. He has no particular sympathy with the rich or powerful. In his identification with the poor rather than the rich, Maigret shows himself closer to the priestly role of Christ than to the clerics who would have dominated the Church of Simenon's years in Liege. If Maigret is priestly, it is according to the model of the compassionate founder of Christianity. From "Detective and Priest: The Paradoxes of Simenon's Maigret by Peter Ely." But may I also add one thought. Perhaps every man and woman must create "a profession that did not yet exist"in order to fully find their work. for thought: how are you, how am I, creating a profession for the unique persons we are(as well as doing to our best ability the formal side of that work)? Perhaps by the way we may read Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades in that light? yours +Seraphim  .Maigret, in film, a pipe smoker like his author. |
| Friday, April 27th, 2012 | |
| 10:15 am | INTERVIEW Friends, This is an interview I did with written answers to questions from the Russian online journal Pravmir.ru. Here is the translation, or rather the English is the original and except for the questions the Russian is the translation by Andrey Cherniak , posted with the thought that it might be of interest in some way... ( Read more... ) The questions are as they were posed but originally there was a larger set of questions which for convenience I narrowed down and in some cases combined to these which you see... As to the dichotomy of liberal and conservative, it is usually presented in such a way(for example in politics, and fairly absurdly so in America where politcal distinctions are relatively slight) as to exclude or beat down one side or the other of the equation. It would seem to me that neither in church nor in state nor in anything else, is this the best way of seeing things... yours +Seraphim  .A bit of the Russian of interview of which we provide the English here. |
| Thursday, April 26th, 2012 | |
| 1:00 pm | LIFE AFTER DEATH (2) Proust meets Dante Friends, Further notes on life after death as a meditation after Easter. Dante comes at last , having risen to what Teilhard will call the Omega Point, the end and goal of all things within the world causing and caused, to the Celestial Rose and sees each person who ever has been as a petal of that rose. Including those whom he has met on his way through the planetary spheres where he met and talked with them,and where they also remain. As we said of person and angelical, so here we see levels of personhood one fixed beyond time ,as we know it when within our daily time or even in the visionary time of Dante's journey or of our dreams and thought... Now we are here in Time... but also we are at the end and beginning of things, beyond time as we know it. Both are ourself yet not integrated in our daily mind so that the other appears as a concept or a vision. The self I might be, might have been, the personal angel. In passing death may it not be that we achieve an integration with that self which stands at our beginning and end beyond the first stirrings of the universe? and so in 'life after death' to be as Dante said active both within sequence and growth and beyond it in the world of causes... and what of the person ,as a petal of the rose, perhaps beyond that is still another person within another level of the beginning and end, that beyond even the causes... beyond the first sounding of the word of creation and the last reverberation of its sound... Or the image of a radius(an infinite number of radii) proceeding from a center or is not this, or rather a vision which fits to this, what Marcel Proust is speaking of at the end of Time Regained? "The day on which I heard the distant, far-away sound of the bell in the Combray garden was a land-mark in that enormous dimension which I did not know I possessed. I was giddy at seeing so many years below and in me as though I were leagues high. I now understood why the Duc de Guermantes, whom I admired when he was seated because he had aged so little although he had so many more years under him than I, had tottered when he got up and wanted to stand erect — like those old Archbishops surrounded by acolytes, whose only solid part is their metal cross — and had moved, trembling like a leaf on the hardly approachable summit of his eighty-three years, as though men were perched upon living stilts which keep on growing, reaching the height of church-towers, until walking becomes difficult and dangerous and, at last, they fall. I was terrified that my own were already so high beneath me and I did not think I was strong enough to retain for long a past that went back so far and that I bore within me so painfully. If at least, time enough were alloted to me to accomplish my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of Time, the idea of which imposed itself upon me with so much force to-day, and I would therein describe men, if need be, as monsters occupying a place in Time infinitely more important than the restricted one reserved for them in space, a place, on the, contrary, prolonged immeasurably since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and the distant periods they have lived through — between which so many days have ranged themselves — they stand like giants immersed in Time." Marcel Proust THE PAST REGAINED, note that the plane of Proust's image of serial selves is within history and of Dante's beyond it. but that they fit together and indeed seem to me to demand each other. Today this, these simple thoughts making the best image I can of the life of the world to come now in the time after Easter and before the clarity beyond Pentecost... +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 | |
| 11:09 am | LIFE AFTER DEATH Friends, After Easter it is perhaps not out of line to think about life after death. One finds difficulties. The starting point Easter would insist on is surely personal life beyond death... to different minds different points will appear problematic and what we know is, beyond Easter, not much. I think many while affirming the Resurrection on that Sunday, retreat because of this towards almost a personal agnosticism in the sense of finding the question unfruitful and disturbing. C.S.Lewis worked to fill the lack in "The Weight of Glory" but it will not satisfy every mind yet is a good piece of work. We spoke, quoting Dr Tsvelik, of the impossibility of the world in a certain aspect...I do think there can be few things imaginable harder of belief than our situation as the beings we are in the place we are as we know ourselves and it...deepening knowledge of the one(of ourselves) and of the other(the world which would seem in some way,at least to our minds, holographic)may provide a way...well we cannot do much deepening in the 5 minutes of reading and writing a post but I do think the Fra Angelico round dance of persons with angelicals,one and one, may be an act of visual prophecy. the angelical and the person are one and the angelical is that beginning and goal of the person's becoming...it is that in ,or behind, or ahead of us , or all three, which is already in the land of clarity and face to face knowledge. just an interval, a quantum, removed from this...and joined in a dance...the dance is the deepening... towards knowledge. in other news have a new air conditioner in bedroom. yay! and circling back maybe...the Rangers must defeat Ottawa in hockey to advance. I could imagine given time and circumstance attending hockey games or anyway watching them all the time on TV(but I do not have a working TV)and attended one hockey game in my life or on another hand going to the Metropolitan Opera all the time but I have not been for maybe 20 years...Now I do not expect that the life of the world to come will be likely to include ice hockey and an opera hall as such, this would be absurd beyond even the absurdity of our world(or an alien construct as in Solaris?),note( Read more... ) Perhaps these things, these little longings, or senses, two of so very many, point to what I missed having and being in life, might in some other sense yet be or not or , could have been, would be, am. am not. am and yet will be. +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, April 23rd, 2012 | |
| 11:32 am | Alec Guinness as Fr Brown Friends, This is wonderful! Or likely you knew ,what I did not,that Alec Guinness played Chesterton's detective Father Brown in "The Detective". Here is a fine moment where Fr Brown(looking quite like George Smiley) points out the secret of the confessional, of the psychologist, of all knowing of others,as knowing oneself...and the line 'pity you havent outgrown it'. Flambeau in the stories and no doubt in the film leaves his life of crime and becomes a friend and helper at times to the detective. Enjoy! and an added note that I find that Sir Alec's conversion to the Catholic Church from the Church of England, in part was influenced by, as it was shortly after, this role and events around it. He had before considered the priesthood of the English Church, of course being married that was not possible later, and one sees in his roles how much like a priest he so often seems--from Ben Kenobi to of course Monsignor Quixote to George Smiley. anyway this for today, yours +Seraphim |
| Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 | |
| 12:07 pm | THOMAS Today in the Eastern Church is the Sunday of Thomas. Here are some thoughts. ( Read more... ) Today just these... a small collection with perhaps some interesting things... yours +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, April 20th, 2012 | |
| 12:51 pm | Blossoms. Remembering Stavroguin. Friends, Again some blossoms from this morning and of that brief season of blossoms flowering... let us open Wang Wei and have a bit to go with this and then perhaps a thought on it: "Peach blossoms crowd the river on both banks as far as sight. Sitting in the boat,I look at red trees and forget how far Ive come. Drifting...I see no one. Hidden paths wind into the mountain... and I see a distant mingling of trees and clouds. then coming nearer I make out houses... where woodcutters still have names from Han times and people wear Qin dynasty clothing they used to live where I do... but now they cultivate rice and gardens beyond the real world." I remember when I was teaching english in Japan (when I first went there)the english teacher at the next desk, a Mr Yamamoto who had the nickname of Stavroguin from the novel 'the possessed' by Dostoevsky, saying that when he was sad he liked to read an old chinese history (perhaps that of the four kingdoms?) of people and lands long gone and without direct trace remaining...perhaps the poetry of wang wei transports a little in this way as we also find he himself ,as here, seeking a place beyond memory and time... +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 | |
| 11:42 am | Thoughts on the Impossible Universe and Flann O'Brien with a Question. Friends, I want to think about something and would like to ask for your help and response... I will number notes to allow thought to be perhaps not entirely linear. I will conclude with a question. (1) The other day Dr Alexey Tsvelik of Brookhaven(head of condensed matter theory group) remarked after vespers at Christ the Savior that the universe can be scientifically described with great accuracy but its existence is impossible. ( Read more... ) Question then: Have we arrived here at something different from (as stated in point #2) what could be described as an 'intelligent design' argument. Granting ,as Dr Tsvelik does that those words have been poisoned for use by their employment by a range of people including some with little science, and who rely on gaps and therefore a 'God of the gaps' which we need not and I think cannot do. But using the terms as a shorthand for the Theistic position. Have we added a little to it ,or have we simply restated it without useful addition? In any case the acceptance of this line of thought would not ,even if it were distinct from the statement of the universe as accounted for by the Divine Purpose, would not be intended to conflict with that.[indeed it would seem to me to require it] but perhaps to leave a larger space for expressing the usefulness of the absurd, of Lewis Carroll and Flann O'Brien... the 'absurd' and the 'accepted mysteries'(Clissman above)as being not in conflict. To put a point to it. Perhaps science can account in an accurate way for the appearances. And setting them in the context of Divine purpose certainly can account for their aspect of 'impossibility', yet can it be that without adding in a sense of the void, on which (within that Divine purpose) the appearances rest, we are left with a model which is still not satisfying to us and which calls forth a sense of the absurd which then attests to the void and also to the Reality beyond both emptiness and form. so if you have followed this little, simple but perhaps heavily stated, thought... Your thought? +Seraphim  .Flann O Brien pictured with some of his characters painting by Brian O'Toole. |
| Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | |
| 1:03 pm | Basketball Announcer goes beyond language as we know it. Friends, This call by Utah announcer David Locke has to be an all time ... great is perhaps not the word but an unparalleled one. A utah player misses an easy shot which(with the foul already called) wouild have tied the game.Locke goes beyond language as one watcher represents it "He missed the one footer and tickled the blahbadabada! dehdehda." and then on to a lament worthy of the fallen Beowulf or something of that epic proportion. Heard this on Mike and Mike in the Morning(ESPN) yesterday and happy to find it in postable form for you... +Seraphim |
| Sunday, April 15th, 2012 | |
| 1:41 pm | Out of the Night Friends, Procession comes to church door on 71 st...I am now home the following noon and preparing to go again to the city to Peter Von Berg's party. But the time there of ahared liturgy at Christ the Savior was wonderful,the warmth of the spiritual family which is at once family and yet open to anyone... a real church and as such sign that indeed Christ is Risen! +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, April 14th, 2012 | |
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| 8:10 pm | Meeting in an Impossible World Friends, I will celebrate Easter Liturgy tonight at Christ the Saviour on east 71 st. 340 east 71 near 1st avenue. all welcome be there at 11:30 pm. Yesterday after Vespers at Christ the Saviour on 71 st this photo:  .I am listening to Dr Alexei Tsvelik on left, whom I have not met for several years, of Brookhaven Labortories Condensed Matter Theory Group. He is saying that this universe is absolutely "Impossible" and on the other hand science is able to describe it very accurately but still it is impossible. in foreground Fr Michael Meerson on left. This thought of Alexei's seems to me important... maybe to you too? photo by Boris Pitel an art level photographer but using my poor camera :) I think a conference on science and religion not to show their harmony which true though it is ,is tiresome a little?, but perhaps together, as believing scientists,artists, theologians etc, to contemplate envision the world coming into view... could be in name of Fr Alexander Men for that matter... anyway today these yours +Seraphim |
| Friday, April 13th, 2012 | |
| 11:26 am | we call this Friday Good Friends, Approaching Easter (in the 'East') or in Eastertide (in the 'West') we consider how many were crucified or who suffered deaths as hard or who suffered long illness and helpless decline or who died at all. and yet how just one time death itself may seem ... (or be known by another way of certainty...the certainty which is trust) seen to have broken down at what in any case is now and ever the central moment of history... the dispelling of all illusion... Peace and Trust and knowing of Trust to all today.. +Seraphim |
| Thursday, April 12th, 2012 | |
| 12:58 pm | Friends, It is Thursday ,after Easter, but before in the Eastern Church , in any case a solemn day of the Supper, that was and as Jesus said will be "anew". I thought to post the Orthodox hymn "Of thy mystical supper" but find nothing that is not concert style, rather than liturgical, on youtube, and in english... so let us go with this which is a little to one side of the Supper and yet perhaps resonant, in a complex way, to a depth... I say in a complex way because of the significance of the Grail as I would synthesize it from the literature and secondly because of the matter of how it was felt by Wagner. As to the first (my thought) the Grail is the created Cosmos,all the worlds, as vessel, and likewise the person as microcosm as vessel. In the point which is the Grail the worlds are joined. It is not then the literal vessel of the Eucharist of the Last Supper even if for example the chalice in Seville is that, but that is not the Grail from which Galahad,drinking, passed beyond the worlds we know. This is all implicit of the Eucharist but more properly of the Eucharist considered as the new Supper of Eternity. It is the chalice of that supper and of the point where faith becomes knowledge. You may feel it differently... and Wagner? what was the Grail to him? well first let us set aside as a secondary a possible subtext of racial purity. Then there his his use of von eschenbach for whom Grail is stone. the lapis exilis. the exile stone? the first building block of the unive he synthesizes it by having the chalice carved from an emerald. Then there is Buddhist 'compassion' via Schopehauer.. On the whole I would say the inner intuition of the work, which can even go beyond an author's sechematic understanding, is Christian and perhaps very profound... I do not know it well enough to really go further...or with any authority to go that far. Anyway the music... +Seraphim |
| Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 | |
| 5:03 pm | "Little lights in the night..." Friends, Here is a quote from Brother Roger of Taize which I think somehow shines... “Certain summer evenings in Taizé, under a sky heavy with stars, we can hear the young people through our open windows. We remain astonished that they are so numerous. They search, they pray. And we say to ourselves: their aspirations for peace and trust are like these stars, little lights in the night.” --Brother Roger, Letter 2005, 'A future of peace' +Seraphim  . |
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| Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 | |
| 11:31 am | Friends, Budding branches at dusk yesterday. after many years revisiting 91/2 mystics by Herbert Weiner, commend it highly but for myself maybe ,what was for me I had then...but this from a section of the Zohar holds for me. and for you? "Rabbai Abba said 'scarcely had the holy lamp(Simeon ben Yohai) finished saying 'life' when his words were stilled. I wanted to write more but heard nothing. I did not lift my head the light was so great I could not see and I was shaken and I heard a voice saying "Length of days and years of life" and then I heard another voice "He asked of you life and you gave to him even length of days forever and ever". On this day the holy lamp Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai departed to attend the great wedding feast above and all the worlds came together." Today in the Eastern Churches the Bridegroom Matins. Perhaps it fits... and the word life spoken below... touches life above... +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, April 9th, 2012 | |
| 11:42 am | Voice of Stone Friends, It is the time of Easter and in the Eastern Church of Holy Week. Yesterday was, for the East, Palm Sunday. A mysterious festival and event. what does it mean? yet it is ,what few things are, in all four Gospels. A friend in in Moscow says it is not(especially in John) triumphal as a feast of the secular power of the Church, rather it is said that if the voices hailing Jesus as King were silent "the stones would cry out." He adds-- the stones do cry out, in Jerusalem and even today, but to our ears at least the voice of stone is not loud , is itself silence beyond silence. I think of what city is he King? the Jerusalem that is coming? Cubic cosmic city of John's vision... Plato's Republic... or the city beyond the city , the New York of Reznikoff suddenly seen in a clear light as paradise for a moment which erases sadness and despair... voice of stone. inner city. coming city. these thoughts today... +Seraphim  . |
| Sunday, April 8th, 2012 | |
| 8:04 am | NEW DAY Friends, Today is Palm Sunday in the Eastern Churches ,as this year the calendar provides a double exposure as it were, and Easter in the Western and larger part of Churches...this is a flower in a shaded place yesterday...may it be the best of days for you, touching depths and with new resonances...not simply of our familiar surfaces and experiences and habitual thoughts,be they even ones best thoughts,for our best thoughts have become inner cliches have they not of which we also are tired, but a further and new beginning... +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, April 6th, 2012 | |
| 10:50 am | FRIDAY "'If only everyone could realize that God remains alongside us even in the fathomless depths of our loneliness. God says to each person, "You are precious in my sight, I treasure you and I love you." Yes, all God can do is give his love; that sums up the whole of the Gospel.' Brother Roger of Taize  . |
| Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | |
| 12:51 pm | A Good Life Friends, Here are blossoms as I see them this morning through the branches of a still bare tree... then without connection thinking about this of Robert Lax(from Episodes) " a good life all in all except for those last few moments in front of the firing squad" thinking of the good life of a lady who died ,I think near 90, in her apartment in the City, godmother of a freind. she fell it seems and overnight tried to struggle across the floor towards the telephone passing into a coma from which she did not emerge...the sign of the cross inscribed within the worlds...and yet all becomes all and it is a good life ...all flowing into all... transfigures... yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012 | |
| 12:06 pm | S.Z.Setzer : The Mystic with a system to play the horses. Friends, I have been revisiting a wonderful book. Nine and a half mystics by Herbert Weiner, a classic which Elie Wiesel calls somewhere an endless source of dreams...Weiner meets with various people here and in Israel in his search for the living reality of Kabbalah. It was an important book for me which revisiting decades later I have a number of thoughts on but...hey you dont need them now. or, well there is probably not another time so for anyone interested here. ( Read more... ) Read the book yourself and then we could talk about it? anyway here is from a first section on an old bachelor living on the lower east side of the City... read it through and see how this mystic comes to set out to provide his simple needs with a horse playing system. For this alone S.Z.Setzer is one of my alltime heroes and I recommend him to Fr Plekon if he does another study of 'hidden holiness' ... well anyway this for your interest.  .Otherwise ...moving through the first of the double exposed Holy Weeks (our Eastern one being next week) I would like to think this odd double exposure enriches rather than confuses... I suspect for most people it does neither since they are so fixed in their own position that the other is but a rumor... else itching back. eczema. well... soldiering on in Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers, I will not finish it in lent but will have read a good bit (now about 400 pages done) letting Heidegger go ... that's my lent. yours +Seraphim |
