Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House, by Billy Collins

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
 
I got this from my sister's facebook page

Claude Monet

I just finished reading Claude and Camille: a Novel of Monet by Stephanie Cowell.  I enjoyed this peek at the life of the Impressionists in Paris in the 19th century and the love story between Claude Monet and his lover, later wife, Camille Doncieux.  Now I have to look at some of his art just for fun.

Another book I re-read

Re-reading books for me has been very rewarding lately.  This morning I finished (I confess, this was an audio book) Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees.  I love this story about Taylor Greer who leaves her home in Kentucky, travels west in her jalopy of a car, acquires a new name and a child along the way, and ends up living in Arizona.  The book covers the themes of child abuse, immigration, friendship, and honor quite nicely without ever taking you to a place that makes you feel you are being preached to.  Kingsolver's matter of fact writing style is truly enjoyable.  I also recommend her Poisonwood Bible, Lacuna, and the sequel to The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven. 

The A-Ha Moment

I have been struggling with the 19th annotation retreat since October, wondering what I was doing, and what I was supposed to be getting out of it.  This morning I had my a-ha moment.  I was reading a homework assignment on the graces of the Principle and Foundation, the First Week and the Second Week of the Exercises and realized with a start that indeed I have received those graces. 

The section I was reading came from "The Graces of the Third and Fourth Weeks" by Dominic Maruca as reprinted in Notes on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, edited by David L. Fleming (St.Louis: Review for Religious, 1983).  It read, in part:

     When considering the Principle and Foundation, the exercitant should have received a dual grace: (a) since God is the Lord of history it is His prerogative to demand that we serve Him at each specific moment of history, cooperating with Him in directing the course of history; (b) since we are dependent creatures, we are relieved of the oppressive burden of autonomous agents serving rather as instruments of the Source of all being and activity.  This balanced dual grace enables him to be both accountable and yet not overanxious.  Moreover, he has acknowledged the relativity of all things; no thing is made absolute: neither wealth nor penury; neither health nor distress; neither honors nor disapproval; neither longevity nor a short life-span.  He is truly free and fearless and yet conscious of his responsibility to utilize the means and opportunities which God provides.
        In dwelling upon the enigma of sin in history, he has been assured that the process of alienation from God began long before he came on the scene and that it will continue long after he has taken his leave.  He has considered how this outcast state was compounded by subsequent sins of man which have woven a tangled skein of sinful structures in which we all find ourselves enmeshed as part of the human race.  ... In accepting God's judgement upon this past personal sinfulness, however, he has experienced God's healing forgiveness and been freed from oppressive guilt and the frustration of sheer futility.
           With a sense of gratitude toward Jesus Christ, his liberator, he has felt the inspiration to enlist in a corporate enterprise, to enter into the mystery of how Christ is continuing his work of liberation through the joint efforts of many brothers.  This grace of the Call of the King has several dimensions: the earnest desire to promote the Kingdom on a grand scale is balanced by the realization that his own person - body and soul - must be the immediate focus of his zealous concern, since the roots of all evil are lodged within himself.  
            Next, by entering into the mystery of the Eternal Council of the Holy Trinity, he has felt a sharing of God's own concern and compassion for mankind, which he views as wandering about lost in its own blindness and powerlessness.  ...
...The graces of the 1st and 2nd weeks are not something which were communicated en bloque; rather, each exercitant has realized them to some extent, depending on the lived experiences of his relating to the living God and his involvement in the course of human events.  His actualization of these graces, however, will continue in a spiral-like fashion as he is progressively blessed and burdened with a new lived-experience of sin and redemption.  Grace is an evolving, relational organic reality which God is continually communicating to each person.


This means, in a nutshell, that this morning I realized that I have been called to follow and to ministry, that I must take compassion not only out into the world, but also into my own home.  That I am truly a graced, forgiven sinner and that Jesus is an intimate friend.  

These words are not easy for me to write in what may be a public forum, but I feel quite different today.  Renewed in spirit.  

Also, last night during the bereavement group I am co-facilitating, I realized that I truly am called to ministry.  I am a minister.

Meditation

A Meditation on Rembrandt's Head of Christ

What he sees he takes in.

Every human sorrow

        fuels the fire that burns

        low and steady

        in his open heart.

He looked at the leper like this,

        imagining the man's life

        before he changed it.

He looked at the centurion and saw 

        what it must be for a father 

        to watch his child die.

He looked at the woman by the well,

        and saw her five husbands, and sent her home

        with a promise; at the woman caught

        in adultery, and did not condemn her;

        at the woman weeping at his feet - knowing

        she knew him, who walked the dusty earth 

        unrecognized - and honored her extravagance.

One might live long

        just to be looked at once this way,

        judged, forgiven, and blessed,

        taken in, recognized - a prayer answered

        in eyes that meet longing and assuage it;

"Lord, remember me

        when you come into your kingdom."

--Marilyn Chandler McEntyre - Drawn to the Light: Poems on Rembrandt's Religious Paintings (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)

We used this poem as an opening prayer for our class one week and I wanted to share it. 

Morning Prayer

Sitting in my chair this morning, I looked out the window.  The sky was gray dark with clouds, but the sun was peeking through, touching the treetops with gold. 

Lovejoy in Scotland

Another book in my quest to re-read all the Jonathan Gash Lovejoy series is The Tartan Sell. When a delivery of a priceless antique goes wrong, ending in murder, Lovejoy realizes that he is the next target. Lured by the promise of a hoard of antiques on an estate in northern Scotland, he uses the opportunity to leave his home in East Anglia. Of course, nothing is ever easy with Lovejoy. He escapes in a traveling circus heading north, but what he finds in Scotland is not what he expected at all. How will he make the best of his situation?

Women, scams, and danger follow Lovejoy wherever he goes.

Funeral In Blue

Tragedy has come to a friend of Hester Monk and Callandra Daviot.  Dr. Kristian Beck’s wife has been murdered along with artist’s model Sarah Mackeson.  When Dr. Beck is arrested for the murders, Monk steps in to find out who really killed the women.  Travel with Monk through the streets of Victorian England as well as Vienna, Austria as he searches for Elissa’s murderer. Glimpse the world of compulsive gambling and understand the uprisings in Europe against oppression.

Praying

Praying


It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
- Mary Oliver

The Purpose of a Blog??

I believe that the purpose of this blog should not be just to write book reviews.  However, I hesitate to write anything that could be too personal, or would reveal information that might hurt another, so I am struggling.  Please bear with me while I type and learn. 

A Novel of Intricately Woven Deceit

I just finished reading Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki.  The story follows the Pakistani/Bangladeshi family of Parvez and Shona Khan and their lives in England.  Shona learned the art of the lie from her mother at an early age; now as an adult with adult sons she is faced with the web of deceit that seems to have hopelessly entangled their lives.  Her father has two wives, she is having an affair, and one of her sons has a relationship that is dangerously close to revealing all.

I recommend this book.

The Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Guinea Pig Diaries began this series of quirky books about his obsessions with The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World.  His quest? to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica from beginning to end.  Sometimes informative, sometimes funny, always interesting, he takes us from a-ak to Zywiec with his self-effacing, humorous look at knowledge.  His search leads him to meeting Alex Trebek, an appearance on Crossfire, taking on a debate team, and finally to being a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?  Interwoven in his reading adventures is the more personal quest of achieving parenthood,and other stories of his family and friends.  I highly recommend any of his books.

The Highly Ineffective Mystery

I just quit on The Highly Effective Detective by Richard Yancey.  The main character is a bumbling fool, not funny like the reviews all say.  After about 100 pages, I could not take it anymore.  I am teaching myself to quit on books I don't like, so I quit on this one.