Prelude to Memorial Day - Coming Home

(Wiki Commons)

I don't trust the embedding for this Eyeblast video with our format, so I am directing you to Mark Shea's blog for it. I'm a sucker for unrehearsed welcome home appearances of our service men and women. You will be, too. Trust me. Go here.

SLOW down please, how do you expect to receive your Validation?

From the person who created the award winning short film, VALIDATION Kurt Kuenne does SLOW. Catch how Kuenne weaves the magic of photography to create a legacy in this video and watch how he uses mimetic desire to demonstrate our contagious nature, can't you relate?

Watch Slow (Director: Kurt Kuenne)

This morning during mass I heard the words from Hebrews 13:2 "Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels," and I thought of the short film, Validation and our need to be hospitable showing brotherly love to all as you never know if you are entertaining angels.

And if that wasn't enough our cantor sang just before the reading of the Gospel; "Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart, and yield a harvest through perseverance." We must always look to keep the faith especially when we are so apt to get caught up in some mimetic entanglement as if we were staring in the lead role of some soap opera or a B-movie.

Positive Mimesis & Validation Guy

This may be the best 15 minutes of your day. [ht: Mark Shea via Anchoress]

Gary Sinise - Ace

A cool actor, in my book, just got cooler. Turns out that Gary Sinise is a Catholic convert. [ht: Mark Shea]

And besides supporting the troops, he's a big time supporter of Catholic Education, and has begun an organization called Operation Iraqi Children.

Aña and Mike Tie the Knot

A super duper batch of photos and a vvery proud pop: Gil Bailie shares wedding pictures of his daughter, Aña's and her new husband, Mike Orsi, here. Joy, blessings, and "Here's hail! for the rest of the road," from the Mass'keteers!

The Beauty of Nuptiality and Wonder of a Trinitarian Existence

tip to Gil Bailie in the final session of the Emmaus Road Iniatitive of the 2007-2008 season.

The Annunciation
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)

Now in this iron reign
I sing the liberty
Where each asks from each
What each most wants to give
And each awakes in each
What else would never be,
Summoning so the rare
Spirit to breathe and live.

Then let us empty out
Our hearts until we find
The last least trifling toy,
Since now all turns to gold,
And everything we have
Is wealth of heart and mind,
That squandered thus in turn
Grows with us manifold.

Giving, I'd give you next
Some more than mortal grace,
But that you deifying
Myself I might deify,
Forgetting love was born
Here in a time and place,
And robbing by such praise
This life we magnify.

Whether the soul at first
This pilgrimage began,
Or the shy body leading
Conducted soul to soul
Who knows? This is the most
That soul and body can,
To make us each for each
And in our spirit whole.


Let us gaze once more on the first stanza:

Now in this iron reign
(this constraint found in a sacramental marriage)
I sing the liberty
(the paradox of that sacramental sensibility - freedom joined in obedience)

Where each asks from each
What each most wants to give
And each awakes in each
What else would never be,
(perfect description of nuptiality and Trinitarian existence)

A Thing of Beauty & Holiness - Our Calling as Catholics

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.writes in The Universal Call to Holiness: Jubilee and Eucharist

The teaching that all are called to holiness was one of the most important truths of the faith re-stated during the Second Vatican Council. The Council taught that holiness is the vocation of all the baptized,... All holiness, as the third Eucharistic prayer states, comes from the Father through his son, Jesus Christ, by the working of the Holy Spirit. To be holy is to participate in God’s life through the gift of sanctifying grace.

Extract of Mother Teresa's words in the movie "The Legacy"

"God Speaks in the silence of the heart...and we listen. And then...we speak to God from the fullness of our heart. First we listen...God speaks...and then we speak and God listens. And that connection is prayer...is...oneness with God. A soul of prayer: the fruit of prayer is deepening of Faith, and the fruit of Faith is Love, and the fruit of Love is Service, and the fruit of Service is Peace. That is why we need to pray to have a clean heart...and if we have a clean heart we can see God. And when we can see God naturally we will begin to love one another. That means we see and we look, and then we give our hands to serve and our hearts to love... and that's the beginning of holiness."

Distracted to Death

I watched the Indianapolis 500 Race today - born and bred Hoosier that I am - from the wilds of Northern Virginia. For a more innocent age, the Indy 500 served as an annual attraction of great magnitude every Memorial Day weekend. But today, as commercials demanded my attention (and the race continued in a small screen, upper left), I felt bitterness and pity for the citizens of this not-so innocent age.

Modern life is one vast misdirect: rings of hypnotists each with an even more fascinating object swinging before the eyes of persons to keep us from dwelling on … on ... what? The inevitability of the end of one’s life. Prime time TV: watch the melodramas of this and that desperate soul – they are all more “real” than your, than my, puny and insignificant life. Right?

"THE ONE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS!" proclaims a stupid bumper sticker. And my guess is that 95% of people reading it agree: it is stupid.

But we are still mesmerized by a vast hoard trying to convince us -- and largely succeeding -- that life THIS side of death is not meant to be spent thinking about ETERNITY. Think instead of your sex appeal, your sexual identity and/or conquests, your teeth, your fashion statement. Of, if you are combative, your enemies, their plans, your counterplans, revenge ... ANYTHING not to think about what will happen after you die.

J. R. R. Tolkien is often accused of painting the innocence of his brain-children, hobbits, as impossibly naive, agrarian, and communitarian. Actually, Tolkien knew they were suspicious, largely ignorant, and prejudiced. But he knew, too, that modern society was a sad, deplorable parody for the way human beings were meant to live. By contrast, the Shire was far preferable, humane, and not "distracted to death."

As one who has had a brush with the big C - a "transitional cell carcinoma of the renal pelvis" - I resent the time I have wasted, the priorities I have misaligned, the squandered energy, money, and love - when I could have been living, moving, and having my being more in accord with what the Catholic faith considers vital as preparation for Eternity.

In my reprieve, I am rethinking many, many matters. Why wait? Why not join me?