Maccabees and the current climate

There has been much hue and cry about the events taking place in the Church lately. Some say that the Pope has gone too far. Others say not far enough and leave us wondering how much worse it can be. Yet others don’t even realize that anything is going on. Most all descry the suffering and hardship we are set to endure. Where is God in all of this?

Right where He has always been, loving and caring for us. But where are we? Whose side are we on?

In 2 Maccabees Chapter 6, the Jews are facing yet another persecution. Chapter 6: 1-2 says, “Not long after this, the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their fathers and cease to live by the laws of God, and also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and call it the temple of Olympian Zeus.” Evil things were carried on in the temple. Verse 6: “A man could neither keep the sabbath, nor observe the feasts of his fathers, nor so much as confess himself to be a Jew.” Verses 7-9 continue, “On the monthly celebration of the king’s birthday, the Jews were taken, under bitter constraint, to partake of the sacrifices; and when the feast of Dionysus came, they were compelled to walk in the procession in honor of Dionysus, wearing wreaths of ivy. At the suggestion of Ptolemy a decree was issued to the neighboring Greek cities, that they should adopt the same policy toward the Jews and make them partake of the sacrifices, and should slay those who did not choose to change over to Greek customs. One could see, therefore, the misery that had come upon them.”

But has God forsaken His people? Certainly not. The writer says in Verse 12 – 13, “Now I urge those who read this book not to be depressed by such calamities, but to recognize that these punishments were designed not to destroy but to discipline our people. In fact, not to let the impious alone for long, but to punish them immediately, is a sign of great kindness.” Verse 16 says, “Therefore he never withdraws his mercy from us. Though he disciplines us with calamities, he does not forsake his own people.”

God was giving the Jews a chance to repent and turn their hearts back towards Him. No matter what they suffered or even if they faced death, if they persevered in love and obedience to God, their ultimate reward would be great. 

A scribe named Eleazar was being forced to abandon the laws of God by eating “swine’s flesh.” But rather than having his life spared if he did this, he chose death “welcoming death with honor rather than life with pollution.” His friends urged him to pretend to acquiesce so that he could live and no one would know. But it wasn’t just about his own life. He worried that it would look to everyone, especially the young, that obeying God wasn’t important. In Verses 24 – 26 he says, “Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life,’ he said, ‘lest many of the young should suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year has gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age. For even if for the present I should avoid the punishment of men, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty.” He concludes by saying, “Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.”

So that’s it. Whether it is the Church or the government, there is a higher law. Which side will you be on? 

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Winner of the 1962 National Book Award The Moviegoer was Walker Percy’s first published novel. It’s the story of a man just shy of his thirtieth birthday wondering what the meaning of his life is. The time is after the Korean War in which Jack “Binx” Bolling was wounded. He is now a stockbroker in a family business but struggles with insomnia and dreams. His ordinary life seems unreal to him and he finds himself more drawn to the fiction of movies. He imagines himself reacting to real life situations in ways the actors and characters in the movies would. His aunt still clings to the Old South while other family members and friends try to deal with an America turned upside down by World War II and Korea. Some have succeeded while others are torn between the two societies. It’s as if they are all suffering from PTSD, before it had that name. But in many ways, don’t we all feel some kind of alienation in our lives in a post-modern age that leaves us without a soul? Jack’s “big search” is amorphous. Is he looking for God? Is he looking for a past that never was? A future that will provide him with something other than emptiness? He finally settles on going to medical school and marrying his fiancé Kate, as well as reconnecting with his family. But will this be what he was looking for or will it continue to be a life, as Thoreau puts it, of “quiet desperation?”

Walker Percy (28 May 1916 – 10 May 1990) and his wife converted to Catholicism in 1947. His first essay as a Catholic writer was published in 1956 in Commonweal. “Stoicism in the South” condemned segregation, racism being anti-Christian. His religious beliefs would inform his writing throughout his life. Characters in his six novels were inspired by his family members and his own experiences as a doctor living in the South. Born in Alabama, Percy lived for over forty years in Covington Louisiana near St Joseph’s Benedictine Abbey. Late in his life he became a secular oblate of the monastic community and is buried at the abbey.

Although many of his family members and ancestors committed suicide, Percy did not consider this in his final battle with cancer. His Catholic faith prepared him for suffering and death according to God’s will. In fact, he enrolled in the Mayo Clinic’s experimental cancer drug program and made frequent trips to the clinic in Rochester Minnesota. In a letter to his best friend historian Shelby Foote he described the frustration of the travel and debilitating nature of the drugs on his body: “Hospitals are no place for anyone, let alone a sick man.” However, instead of giving up, his biographer Patrick Samway says he “had a revelation when he saw children with cancer waiting in the lounges. He knew then and there that he would continue the treatment at Mayo as long as he could, so that the results of his treatment might someday be of value to others.” Here is a man, not a saint, living a life and death of nobility, submitting to God’s will and giving of himself for others, showing how we act as children of God, the body of Christ.

St James the Greater

Yesterday was the feast day of St James the Apostle (7/25), also known as James the Greater. He was the brother of St John, the sons of Zebedee. Jesus tagged them with the nickname “Boanerges”, Sons of Thunder, possibly because of James’ fiery nature.

James and John, along with Peter, were privileged to witness the Transfiguration and they were with Jesus in the garden before He was arrested. Around 44 A.D. James became the first Apostle to become a martyr. Herod Agrippa had him beheaded in Jerusalem and his head is buried beneath the altar in the Chapel of St James the Great in the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St James. Legend has it that his body was transferred to Santiago de Compostela in Spain because he preached the Gospel there, but there is no evidence that he ever was there. Nevertheless, he is the patron saint of Spain.

What we know for sure about James is that when Jesus called him and his brother, they left their fishing boat and followed Jesus for the rest of their lives. This is an action that we should model in our own lives. St James, pray for us.

Shakespeare's Sonnets: XII

The clock measures the passage of time minute by minute from day to night, from summer to winter (“summer’s green all girded up in sheaves”), from youth to old age, and inevitably, death. Nothing can defy “Time’s scythe” except to leave children behind.

Sonnet XII

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,

Then of thy beauty do I question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

                And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence

                Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

 

 

St Mary Magdalene

Have you ever felt that you’ve done something so wrong or that your life is so bad that you can never be forgiven? Then you might want to consider St Mary Magdalene whose feast day is Thursday, July 22.

Mary Magdalene has often been confused with Mary of Bethany (Mary, Martha, Lazarus) and the woman who was a great sinner in Luke Chapter 7. Although there is no Biblical evidence, she has also been portrayed as a repentant prostitute. This might be because she was from a town called Magdala that was known for being disreputable. We do know from Luke Chapter 8 that Jesus cast out seven demons from her. “Seven demons” might mean possession or severe physical or mental illness. In any event, Jesus healed her.

She could have been a woman of some wealth since she was part of a group of women who followed Jesus and the Apostles and helped provide for their needs from their means. Her devotion to Jesus was such that she and the Blessed Virgin, along with St John were there at the crucifixion, most of the others having run away. And she was the first witness to His Resurrection and spread the news to the Apostles. (St Thomas Aquinas called her the “Apostle to the Apostles.”)

Whether Mary Magdalene had committed some great sin, she – and all of us - needed God’s forgiveness and the healing grace of Jesus. Penitent sinners can look to Mary’s life for guidance on how to love Jesus more and how to stand next to Him in every situation in life. Jesus is always ready to forgive us. St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was famous for his paintings of ballet dancers, but he also created sculptures, drawings, portraits, and even photographs. Raised primarily by his widowed father and several unmarried uncles, Degas too remained a bachelor. Known as one of the creators of the Impressionist group, he nevertheless disliked the appellation, calling himself “a realist.” He was often critical of the Impressionists for painting outside, but was close to painters Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet and cooperated with other artists to organize an exhibiting society. It was the press that named them the Impressionists.

Degas liked to portray people at their work, such as the men in A Cotton Office in New Orleans, as well as washerwomen, jockeys, and his famous dancers. His most famous sculpture was Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The girl is a wax figure with real hair and a cloth tutu. Most other artists worked in bronze but Degas’s statutes were never cast in bronze in his lifetime. In the 1880s Degas took up photography and photographed many of his friends, including a double portrait of Renoir and Mallarme.

Because his well-to-do family went bankrupt in the 1870s, Degas worked tirelessly to produce and sell his paintings. His dancer paintings were very popular and he produced a great many of them. He believed that an artist should not have a personal life and devote himself only to work. Despite his success, he drove most of his friends away with his argumentative nature and his anti-Semitism. He stopped working around 1912 and spent much of the rest of his life wandering around the streets of Paris, almost blind. He died in 1917.

Fortunately for us, his work survives in museums and in private collections that are sometimes loaned out for special exhibitions. Below are some of the more famous works. Enjoy!

Erle Stanley Gardner

Tomorrow is the birthday of Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason novels.  Born in 1889, Gardner studied law on his own after high school and passed the bar in California in 1911. He worked off and on as an attorney until 1933 when his first Mason book The Case of the Velvet Claws was published. The rest, as they say, is history.

His writing career began in 1923 when he had his first story published in a pulp fiction magazine. He wrote stories for many of these magazines, setting for himself a goal of 1,200,000 words per year. These were written in his spare time, mind you. He then began to write different series of books involving mystery and the law, using seven pseudonyms. The eighty Perry Mason novels were published under his own name.

Radio gave Perry Mason a voice, that of John Larkin. When producers wanted to bring Mason to television as a soap opera, Gardner refused, so they thinly disguised him and gave him the name Mike Karr, played by John Larkin, on the soap The Edge of Night. When Perry Mason came to television in 1957, he was portrayed by Raymond Burr. (John Larkin appeared several times on the show as unrelated characters.) The show was successful, running for nine seasons, with Gardner appearing as a judge in the final episode.

We have a number of the Perry Mason books (maybe 25 or so, nothing near 80). Are they great literature? No, but they are fun and entertaining. Just how does he win every time and how does D.A. Hamilton Burger keep his job, losing to Perry every time? As for the tv show, we have all nine seasons. It’s my favorite tv show and I watch one every weekday with my morning coffee (watching another one Friday nights when we can stay up later). 

By 1937 Gardner moved to a ranch in Temecula California, living and writing there until his death in 1970 (just five days after the death of William Hopper who played detective Paul Drake for the entire run of the tv show). Proving how popular Perry Mason was, CBS produced 30 movies from 1985 to 1995. Raymond Burr had died in 1993, so the last two years were done with lawyers other than Mason. Barbara Hale who played Della Street in the original series was also in these films with her real-life son William Katt playing Paul Drake, Jr. in the first nine movies. Is that enough coincidence?

Gardner founded The Court of Last Resort in the 1940s. Quoting Wikipedia, The Court was “an organization that was dedicated to helping people who were imprisoned unfairly or couldn’t get a fair trial.” Over the years he spent thousands of hours, along with friends in the legal and forensic fields, researching and helping people get the legal help they needed to rectify injustices. He wrote a book about this in 1952, which was then made into a tv series of the same name. How does one person have the time and talent to write so many books and help so many people? I don’t know, but I wish we could bottle it.

Mid-Summer Memories

Many, many – many – years ago I read this poem and liked it so well that I remember it to this day. The poet used words in such a way that you could feel the summer heat, smell and taste the juicy fruit and long for the times when you could be free to do whatever you pleased. Ah, summer when you were a kid. The poet says “The summer which never maybe was” but I remember them vividly: walking the block to the beach with the hot sand and cold ocean, sitting in a lawn chair listening to my favorite AM station singing along to all the songs, riding my bike anywhere and everywhere, trips to the library. Adult vacations can’t come anywhere near the pleasure of being alive and out of school in summers of childhood.

I hope this poem by John Tobias will bring you pleasant memories. Enjoy!

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity

During that summer

When unicorns were still possible;

When the purpose of knees

Was to be skinned,

When shiny horse chestnuts

(hollowed out

Fitted with straws

Crammed with tobacco

Stolen from butts in family ashtrays)

Were puffed in green lizard silence

While straddling thick branches

Far above and away

From the softening effects of civilization;

 

During that summer-

Which may never have been at all;

But which has become more real

Than the one that was-

Watermelons ruled.

 

Thick pink imperial slices

Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues

Dribbling from chins;

Leaving the best part,

The black bullet seeds,

To be spit out in rapid fire

Against the wall

Against the wind

Against each other;

 

And when the ammunition was spent,

There was always another bite:

It was a summer of limitless bites,

Of hungers quickly felt

And quickly forgotten

With the next careless gorging.

 

The bites are fewer now.

Each one is savored lingeringly,

Swallowed reluctantly.

 

But in a jar put up by Felicity,

The summer which never maybe was

Has been captured and preserved.

And when we unscrew the lid

And slice off a piece

And let it linger on our tongue:

Unicorns become possible again.

 

 

The Elements of Style

One of my favorite books is The Elements of Style. Yes, it’s a grammar and writing reference book, but I love it. It has been one of my best friends over the years. It’s useful, easy to read, and it helps to prevent me from looking like an idiot. If I do, it’s my fault, not that of Strunk and White.

William Strunk Jr. (1 July 1869 – 26 September 1946) wrote his “little book” in 1918 for his students at Cornell University and it was published by Harcourt in 1920. E. B. White (11 July 1899 – 1 October 1985), one of Strunk’s students, was asked by Macmillan and Company to revise and update the book in 1959. Millions of copies have been sold over the years.

White also produced a second edition in 1972 and a third in 1979, the one that I have. I prefer not to use the later ones as they start to get into politically correct gender usage. Whether it’s the Bible or a grammar book, I understand that the word “man” includes men and women in most cases. Your mileage may vary.

Among my favorite sections are uses of apostrophes (how many times have I been tempted to change a sign on a street or in a store that uses an apostrophe incorrectly in a word that is plural, not possessive), “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused,” and the advice to keep the adjectives and adverbs to a minimum.

Am I sounding like a geek yet?

In addition to this gem of a book, E. B. White was famous as an essayist, short story writer, and writer of novels for children, such as Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. 

White says, “Writing good standard English is no cinch.” Ain’t that the truth. But this book makes it easier.

Shakespeare's Sonnets: XI

Wisdom and beauty are called on by nature to produce more like them. They are “her seal” and she wants the young man to “print more” like himself. Otherwise, “folly, age, and cold” result. 

Sonnet XI

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st

In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,

Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;

Without this folly, age, and cold decay:

If all were minded so, the times should cease

And threescore year would make the world away.

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:

Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;

Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

                She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,

                Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

 

Happy Birthday Gustav Mahler

Composer Gustav Mahler was born this date in 1860. 

Oh no, you’re not going to write about that incredibly depressing guy who wrote about dead kids, are you? Well, yeah, but give him a chance. There’s a lot more to him than songs about death. He wrote about all aspects of life, the happy as well as sorrowful, and death is a part of life.

As with most people, Mahler experienced his share of love and his share of loss. And, being incredibly talented, he expressed his feelings through his music, touching people deeply. Growing up in Christian Bohemia, but being Jewish and speaking German, Mahler felt out of step from the beginning. He had to battle antisemitism almost his whole career, even having to “convert” to Catholicism to get the post of director of the Vienna Hofoper. He primarily made his reputation as a conductor, working all over Germany and Austria, and even conducting the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic. During summers, the off-season, he did most of his composing.

Most of his composing was confined to songs and symphonies. While conducting hundreds of operas in his career, the only opera he co-wrote was Die drei Pintos (the three pintos). This was an unfinished opera by Carl Maria von Weber and Mahler completed the sketches and orchestration.

Many of his compositions incorporated folk songs he heard in the streets as a child. He also discovered the German folk poems Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) and spent a dozen years setting these to music. The knock against him being depressing came from the symphonies and the song cycle Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the death of children). The poems are by Friedrich Rueckert, not Mahler.

However, depressing is in the eye of the beholder, and I find most of his music uplifting. The example I’ve chosen for your listening pleasure is the Finale of the 8th Symphony. Although this was billed as “the Symphony of a Thousand,” Mahler never approved of this title, but the orchestra and chorus is quite large. The work is split into two parts. The text of the first is the 9th century hymn veni creator spiritus and the second is the last part of Goethe’s poem Faust. The theme is redemption through love. The bit you’ll hear starts out so quietly you can barely hear it, but ends on a triumphal note that makes you think you’re walking through the Gate of Heaven. Nothing depressing about this.

Oh, and the performance is Sir Simon Rattle with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Yep, those are kids in that orchestra making that glorious sound. Enjoy!

P.S. forgive the ads and the subtitles.

 

Happy Birthday Mr. Calvin and Hobbes

Who is Bill Watterson you may ask? Only one of the most famous and talented cartoonists to have graced the comics page in your newspaper from 1985 to 1995. The creator of Calvin and Hobbes was born this day in 1958. 

Calvin is a 6-year old boy with a stuffed tiger named Hobbes who comes to life when Calvin is alone. One could not call Hobbes Calvin’s alter ego because he has a distinct personality that doesn’t just do what Calvin wants. The pair are best friends who occasionally get into fights and often get into a lot of trouble. In a creative view from above, Calvin and Hobbes up in a tree are about to throw water balloons on an unsuspecting Susie below. The pair make decapitated snowmen lying about the yard. They put themselves in danger trying to fly by careering down a hill in a wagon with an umbrella.

I admire Watterson for fighting for the right to do Calvin and Hobbes as he wanted. He drew it to satisfy himself and because it made his wife laugh. It satisfied a lot of us too, being one of the funniest cartoon strips ever. I also admired his determination not to cheapen it with a lot of merchandising. If you have a shirt or cap or figurine, it’s a stolen image. We’re content with the books of the daily and Sunday strips – we have them all. And they still make us laugh every time we look at them.

Here are covers of some of the books. Pick one up and enjoy the absurd world of Calvin and Hobbes.

Happy Birthday to Nathaniel Hawthorne and the country!

An American author born on the Fourth of July. What could be better for this holiday weekend?

Nathaniel Hawthorne (4 July 1804 – 19 May 1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts as Nathaniel Hathorne and one of his ancestors was a judge during the Salem Witch Trials, known for his harshness in questioning the accused. Hawthorne added the “w” to his name, possibly to distance himself from this ancestor. After his father died in 1808 the family moved to Raymond, Maine, to be near his mother’s family. He attended Bowdoin College beginning in 1821, graduating in 1825. There he met future president Franklin Pierce and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Hawthorne contributed stories to many publications and his college friend Horatio Bridge financially helped him publish a collection in 1837 called Twice Told Tales. In 1839 he accepted a position at the Boston Custom House. He married Sophia Peabody in 1842 and they had 3 children. They first lived in The Old Manse in Concord and here he wrote stories published as Mosses from an Old Manse. His first novel The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850.

The family moved to Lenox and there Hawthorne met Herman Melville, with whom he became good friends. While in the Berkshires he wrote The House of Seven Gables. He also published more stories and another novel The Blithedale Romance. During the Pierce administration Hawthorne was appointed U.S. Consul in Liverpool. After his tenure there the family toured Europe and returned to the U.S. in 1860. He published his last novel The Marble Faun that year. Several other novels were unfinished at his death in 1864.

The portrait of Hawthorne as a young man (above) hangs in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. One of the nice things about growing up in Maine was its proximity to Massachusetts and all the historic sites there. I was able to not only visit the Peabody, but saw Hawthorne’s birthplace, the House of Seven Gables, the Witch House (all in Salem), and his home in Lenox (near Tanglewood). I’ve read most of Hawthorne’s novels and stories and seeing all these places brings them to life. How fortunate America is to have produced this man of letters.