A journal of byzantine digressionS
-
Discerment and FOMO
O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,attingens a fine usque ad finem,fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,reaching from one end to the other,mightily and sweetly ordering all things:Come and teach us the way of prudence. In the Serenity Prayer, we ask God…
-
The Egyptians are mine too.
The Propers for the Twenty First Sunday After PentecostPlease note: an entry in the People’s Missal Project Missa In voluntate tua Domine THE HOLY PROPHET, JOB the Longsuffering, appears very unexpectedly in this Mass. I turned the page and my eyes nearly popped out. But I think he provides the fullest context for these texts but, as…
-
3 Rules that Always Apply
This is the text of a presentation on ¶1789 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. These are just notes, but the talk was good! My paragraph comes in the section of the catechism dealing with the human conscience. Very briefly – for the sake of this presentation – the conscience is that part of…
-
ENOUGH Already!
The Propers for the Twentieth Sunday After PentecostPlease note: an entry in the People’s Missal Project Missa Omnia quae fecisti nobis AS WE KEEP SAYING, GOD IS IN CONTROL, but you know what, sometimes that sucks. The 20th Sunday may remind us (if we’re honest) that it’s 2020. This may not be the worst of times, but…
-
The Danse Macabre (2020)
All hallows eve enchanted darkA stroll I took in chillTo see the children on their larkAnd thus a pipe to kill The sunset orange watching passAnd night on coming strongWhen deep from Mission hill and grassI heard a haunted song Then followed I this tunèd curseUntil i found the sourceAnd deep beneath Dolores firsI saw…
-
Victory or Rosary?
TODAY IS THE FEAST OF Our Lady of Victory or, no, it’s the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Or the commemoration of the miracle at the Victory of Lepanto, or something. It is the evolution of this Feast that has me thinking this morning. How we talk of military victories and spiritual victories…
-
Prayers Before Work
FROM THE OFFICE of Prime in the older breviary, these prayers asking for the intercession of the saints and God’s blessing on the day’s labors happen just before the Monks go out to their various chores. They make a good morning boundary between “work at home” and “home at home”. Pope St Pius X gave…
-
Heart and Soul, I Fell in Love
The Propers for the Seventeenth Sunday After PentecostPlease note: an entry in the People’s Missal Project Missa Iustus es, Domine MIND, SOUL, & HEART, yes, and still Judaism and Christianity are also about the body. We forget the body, spiritualize the whole thing and walk by the wounded man on the way to Jericho. The Collect today…
-
Open Letter: California Emerging
To:The Honorable Gavin Newsom, Governor of the great state of CaliforniaSacramento, CA Honorable Sir, BANNING GASOLINE VEHICLES is a great step in reducing California’s carbon emissions. However, it is not the first step we should be taking. While well-intentioned doing so would only be a pat on the back for the wealthy in our state…
-
Based Church
ONE THING DRIVEN HOME BY COVID-19 is many of our social structures are not only outdated but also irrelevant, and dangerously fragile. Yes, certainly racism lives under the surface of many of our societal functions recent demonstrations have attempted to reveal that to the masses. But recent actions of the government have also revealed how…
-
Go before me.
The Propers for the Sixteenth Sunday After PentecostPlease note: an entry in the People’s Missal Project Missa Miserere Mihi, Domine DROPSY. IT’S PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU THINK. I’ve heard folks preach about this as Epilepsy, but it’s actually edema – swelling. The word, dropsy, does not come from “dropping” but rather from the Greek word that is…
-
The Gift
ONCE UPON A TIME, back in the days when you could go to see Santa Claus in the department store and he would give you presents that were not just sticky candy, two best friends, Jimmy and Billy, went to their local Belks before Christmas. They stood patiently in line and, when their turns came,…
-
A New SF Calendar
ONE FORGETS IN WHICH of her books she did this, but Starhawk commented on how Lunar Calendars all have regional names and she suggested one for SF. Legit, I’ve read almost all of her books except the most recent couple, I can’t remember which one this was. But it was back in the 80s before…
-
Not trickle-down
The Propers for the Fourteenth Sunday After PentecostPlease note: an entry in the People’s Missal Project Missa Protector noster GOD IS IN CONTROL. This is the message of this Mass. Yet this idea can quickly become one of victim-blaming. If God is in control then he made some poor and he made me rich, so all is…
-
Sock it to me, God
The Readings for the 23rd Sunday, Tempus per Annum (A) Jeremiah 20:7-9Romans 12:1-2Matthew 16:21-27 AYEAR AGO I weighed 300 lbs. This was a symbolic weight for me as sometime in the 1980s, in my mid20s, I had said to someone, “If I ever get to 300 pounds you can shoot me.” At the time I…
Orthoparadoxy 