On Beauty

From the travel journal. This isn't actually the "brilliant" piece that I was thinking of, but the piece I was thinking of was actually quite sentimental, cliche, and well....dumb. This one, while not exactly profound, is at least entertaining. And yes, it is slightly tongue in cheek. It was written in Dublin after having met a beautiful woman....

"A beautiful woman is worth waiting to see, even if only a moment's vision answers an hour's passing. Waiting for beauty has the distinct pleasure of keeping one's mind fixed on higher things for great lengths of time without danger of distraction, for beauty is a selfish and ever demanding Queen, and Hope, attendant upon all time passed in expectation, is her enforcer."

St. Peter Sonnet

So, even though I told myself (and others) that I wouldn't do this, I'm going to post one of my own poems...before anyone accuses me of self-promotion, let me immediately reply....guilty. Yeah, well, laziness has a lot to do with it too. This poem is one of what hopefully will be a sonnet sequence, each sonnet detailing a moment of grace in the life of a saint. So far I have two, this one and St. Sebastian.

St. Peter

There came an eerie tingle to his feet,
As gravity tried its strength against the beat
Of blood within his aged impetuous breast.
His robe revealed him, and his lanky beard
And hair, absurd about him, like a crest,
Shone, light transparent, and the soldiers jeered.
The pillar found its deep, predestined slot,
Plunged down a meter, jolted now erect,
The wrist-and-ankle-strangling cords stretched taut;
The silent crowd heard the joints disconnect,
And turned aside their reverend conscious eyes,
As not to see the wracked face turning red,
And therefore missed him smiling with surprise,
To see the fallen world put on its head.

Penance, purgatory and perhaps a poor performance...

Going to confession for me is still a matter of pulling teeth. In fact its one of the most difficult things for me about being a practicing Catholic. I still feel like I'm "not doing it right", that i'm either couching my sins in ambiguous terms or, making a big deal of confessing what isn't necessarily a problem. Basically its hard to be straight up and honest, and not feel like i'm putting on a performance. Also, waiting in line for confession sometimes seems the aptest metaphor for Purgatory: you're there because you want to be, but your stomach feels like lead, and it certainly isn't pleasant. Except for the end. The process of cleaning one's soul is arduous before hand and during but penance is usually a pleasure compared to the actual experience. As for the "i'm not doing it right" thoughts, they also usually plague me before hand (heck, just another excuse not to go!) but afterwards, I'm usually consoled by a bit of Chestertonian wisdom: A thing worth doing is worth doing badly.

The Nature of Love

What, with the new encyclical out, it seems to me appropriate to discuss ideas, opinions etc. that we all have concerning the nature of human love, romantic, familial, of friends, of neighbors and of course, of God. To get the ball rolling, i thought i'd quote a small poem by Robert Graves:

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape, and fly
Singing about her head as she rode by.

With this poem in mind: how should love be careless, if it should be so at all? I applaud the carelessness of the birdcatcher, because i feel he is careless about the right things. Also, should we sacrafice a days labor for an extravagant, and yet very fleeting gesture? We don't know her response. Does the worth of the gesture depend upon her being impressed? Finally, when we "love without hope" how do we distinguish between total joyful abandonement to Grace, (i.e. David dancing before the ark, rather carelessly) and foolish presumption of God's (or women's)mercy (i.e. the devil's tempting of Christ to jump from the rooftop).