"Faith" "Hope" "Love" by Czeslaw Milosz

Faith

Faith is whenever you look 

At a dewdrop or floating leaf

And know that they are there because they have to be.

Even if you close your eyes and dream up things

The world will remain as it has always been

And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river.

You have faith also when you hurt your foot

Against a sharp rock and you know

That rocks are meant to hurt feet.

See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?

We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth.

What has no shadow has no strength to live.

Hope

Hope is with you when you believe

The earth is not a dream but living flesh,

That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie, 

That all things you have ever seen here

Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.

Could we but look more clearly and wisely

We might discover somewhere in the garden

A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,

That there is nothing, just a seeming,

These are the ones who have no hope.

They think that the moment we turn away,

The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,

As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills-- 

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand.

My heart is restless until I check Facebook

I used to tell my 8th grade catechism class that "the Gospel is the fullness of reality," repeating it frequently in hopes that, if nothing else, that would stick.

Here we have Louis CK advocating, in his usual princely way . . . something along the same lines of experiencing that fullness.

One takeaway: if you're gonna stab yourself with catharsis, choose something interesting and dewy rather than sterile and insulating. 

The May Magnificat - Gerard Manley Hopkins

May is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

Fart Jokes, Vol. 1

Artur Rosman, literature/theory/theology/philosophy scholar/professor and blogger at Cosmos the in Lost ("Wherein a Catholic backwardness reigns") shared this on Facebook earlier today:

Post by Artur Sebastian Rosman.

Note the number of comments in the thread.

Some of my favorites:

- The Sound of Music
- As Tears Go By
- Black Snake Moan
- Birth of a Nation
- James and the Giant Peach
- Life Aquatic
- True Grit
- While You Were Sleeping
- The Fast and the Furious
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- 48 Hours
- Some Like It Hot
- Bridget Jones' Diarrhea (cheating, but ha!)
- That Thing You Do
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Honey, I Blew Up the Kids
- Firewalk With Me


And my contribution:

Pompeii

...but even Mongo thought that was low hanging fruit.

The Annunciation - Thomas Merton

The Annunciation

Ashes of paper, ashes of a world
Wandering, when fire is done:
We argue with the drops of rain!

Until one comes Who walks unseen
Even in elements we have destroyed.
Deeper than any nerve
He enters flesh and bone.
Planting His truth, He puts our substance on.
Air, earth, and rain
Rework the frame that fire has ruined.
What was dead is waiting for His Flame.
Sparks of His Spirit spend their seeds, and hide
To grow like irises, born before summertime.
These blue thinas bud in Israel.

The girl prays by the bare wall
Between the lamp and the chair.
(Framed with an angel in our galleries
She has a richer painted room, sometimes a crown.
Yet seven pillars of obscurity
Build her to Wisdom's house, and Ark, and Tower.
She is the Secret of another Testament
She owns their manna in her jar.(

Fifteen years old -
The flowers printed on her dress
Cease moving in the middle of her prayer
When God, Who sends the messenger,
Meets His messenger in her Heart.
Her answer, between breath and breath,
Wrings from her innocence our Sacrament!
In her white body God becomes our Bread.

It is her tenderness
Heats the dead world like David on his bed.
Times that were too soon criminal
And never wanted to be normal
Evade the beast that has pursued
You, me and Adam out of Eden's wood.
Suddenly we find ourselves assembled
Cured and recollected under several green trees.

Her prudence wrestled with the Dove
To hide us in His Cloud of steel and silver:
These are the mysteries of her Son.
And here my heart, a purchased outlaw,
Prayers in her possession
Until her Jesus makes my heart
Smile like a flower in her blameless hand.

Cud'n 'Chop's Uncle Al's Favorite Pangalactic Gargleblaster Gin Fizz Recipe

Take the juice from one bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit
Pour into a chilled highball with one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V
Melt two ounces of Arcturan Mega-gin in a cocktail shaker filled with ice
Add a dash of lemon or lime juice, 1/2 teaspoon of superfine sugar and egg white
Shake vigorously by setting on a chesterfield sofa in a space-time eddy
Strain into the highball
Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through
Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract
Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger
Stir until the Suntiger tooth dissolves
Top off with soda water

Garnish with olives, a maraschino cherry, slice of citrus fruit, cucumber (whole), and mint. Equally good for the treatment of morning terror and early morning yells of horror.

"Cry a little and convert."

Pope Francis gives a paternal warning to oft-neglected "absent but central figures":

"And I feel that I cannot conclude without saying a word to the absent ones today, to those absent but central figures: the men and women of the mafia. Please, change your life, convert, stop, cease to do evil! We are praying for you. Convert, I ask it on my knees; it is for your own good. This life you are living now, it won't bring you pleasure, it won't give you joy, it won't bring you happiness. The power, the money, that you possess now from so many dirty jobs, from so many mafia crimes, is blood money, it is power soaked in blood, and you cannot take it with you to the next life. Convert, there is still time, so that you don't end up in hell. That is what awaits you if you continue on this path. You had a father and a mother: think of them. Cry a little and convert."

 Nice pope, huh?