compline

From a series of photos following the Liturgy of the Hours (Neither Use Nor Ornament)

“We entrust ourselves to the night as if it were a great ocean from which we can fish up all sorts of wonderful things..”
From The Music of Silence by David Steindl-Rast

"Let all mortal flesh keep silence."

Lax Post Card

Furthermore Press 1983

tiger (Lax)

drawing by Robert Lax, 1983 Furthermore Press

Tiger

A tiger

is like a

butterfly,

thought

the

tiger,

here today,

gone tomorrow

He is like a

bird - a hawk,

forever 

vigilant

He is even

a little

like an

elephant,

Ponderous

& basically

gentle

Not too

gentle,

said a 

younger

tiger

I only meant it

as a metaphor,

said the old one,

A tiger is like

a number of

things

God Pursues Me Everywhere (Heschel)

 Detail of the interior of the Abbey Church - Photo by Thomas Merton

God Pursues Me Everywhere

by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

God pursues me everywhere,
Enmeshes me in glances,
And blinds my sightless back like flaming sun.

God, like a forest dense, pursues me.
My lips are ever tender, mute, so amazed,
So like a child lost in an ancient sacred grove.

God pursues me like a silent shudder.
I wish for tranquility and rest -- He urges; come!
And see -- how visions walk like the homeless on the streets.

My thoughts walk about like a vagrant mystery --
Walks through the world's long corridor.
At times I see God's featureless face hovering over me.

God pursues me in the streetcars and cafes
Every shining apple is my crystal sphere to see
How mysteries are born and vision came to be.

- from "Human, God's Ineffable Name," by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, freely rendered from the Yiddish by Rabbi Zalman M. Schacter-Shalomi

HT: Jim Forest

Bjork - Jesus Prayer

A video of John Tavener's 'Prayer of the Heart' which he wrote especially for Bjork (an Icelandic singer/songwriter). It is a stunning setting of the 'Jesus Prayer' - "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me".

Hidden among the Stars

"Adoration of the Magi", Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

Gerry Straub has a very moving Epiphany post, "Hidden Among the Stars", over on his blog today which includes this beautiful quote from St. Peter Chrysologus:

“Today the Magi find, crying in the manger, the one they have followed as he shone in the sky.

Today the Magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the one they have long awaited as he lay hidden among the stars.

Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body.

As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.”

- St. Peter Chrysologus

A homeless God, lost in the night (The Advent Project)

Thank you to all readers who encouraged and accompanied me on the louie Advent project, pairing Merton's words (mostly from his poetry collection) with NASA photos from outer space.

As one reader noted, Merton was a "writing machine", and the photos evoked sentiments that Merton seemed to capture repeatedly.  One of my biggest problems was choosing just one poem from many that seemed appropriate.  I didn't go about this in any organized way, and many times I couldn't find again a writing that I found while perusing the huge collection of poetry.  That was frustrating

I may re-visit these photos and Merton writings, so I'm thinking of this project as a kind of "first draft".

I usually looked at the photo first, then explored Merton's poetry to find words that somehow "fit" the photo.  However, there was poem that I came upon repeatedly, but no photo ever appeared that captured the essence of the words:

The shadows fall.  The stars appear.  The birds begin,
     to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth.
A vagrant, a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his
     way down a new road.
A homeless God, lost in the night, without papers,
     without identification,
without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world
and entrusts Himself to sleep.

-Thomas Merton,  "Hagia Sophia" IV Sunset, The Hour of Compline, Salve Regina, Collected Poems, p. 369

I may have to peruse the NASA photos and see if there is one that finds this homeless and lost God.

Merry Christmas to everyone.  Thank you.

Him, Whose small heart bleeds with infinite fire

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 The Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy's hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat. At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth.
(NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Joyeux Noël, and Fröhliche Weihnachten, and a wish for Peace on Earth in the New Year. 

When the white stars talk together like sisters
And when the winter hills
Raise their grand semblance in the freezing night,
Somewhere one window
Bleeds like the brown eye of an open forge.

Hills, stars,
White stars that stand above the eastern stable,
Look down and offer Him
The dim adoring light of your belief,
Whose small Heart bleeds with infinite fire.

Shall not this Child
(When we shall hear the bells of His amazing voice)
Conquer the winter of our hateful century?

And when His lady Mother leans upon the crib,
Lo, with what rapiers
Those two loves fence and flame their brilliancy!

Here in this straw lie planned the fires
That will melt all of our sufferings:
He is our Lamb, our holocaust!

And one by one the shepherds, with their snowy feet,
Stamp and shake out their hats upon the stable dirt,
And one by one kneel down to look upon their Life.

-Thomas Merton, "A Christmas Card", Figures for and Apocalypse, p. 79

I send Love's name into the world with wings

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 A pair of one-half light-year long interstellar 'twisters' -- eerie funnels and twisted-rope structures - in the heart of the Lagoon Nebula (M8) which lies 5,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.
(A. Caulet ST-ECF, ESA, and NASA)

 [I have to admit that I am stumped by this one.  The colors of the photo are most obvious to me,  
joyous and celebratory like Xmas lights.  
After mulling over it all day, this is the Merton poem I settled on.  
But I'm still not sure if it's the right one ... ] 

When psalms surprise me with their music 
And antiphons turn to rum 
The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul

And from the center of my cellar, Love, 
     louder than thunder  
Opens a heaven of naked air.  

I send Love's name into the world with wings
And songs grow up around me like a jungle.

Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes 
Your Spirit played in Eden.  

Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise 
Shine on the face of the abyss 
And I am drunk with the great wilderness Of the sixth day in Genesis.  

 - Thomas Merton, "Psalm", Collected Poems, pp. 220-221

Merry Christmas!

gravitation which is the life and spirit of God

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, this is a close-up look at one of the brightest distant "magnified" galaxies in the universe known to date. It is one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, where the gravitational field of a foreground galaxy bends and amplifies the light of a more distant background galaxy. In this image the light from a distant galaxy, nearly 10 billion light-years away, has been warped into a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. The galaxy cluster lies 5 billion light-years away. The background galaxy's image is not only stretched by the lensing, but split into multiple apparent images, across the upper left and at lower right.
(NASA, ESA, J. Rigby, and K. Sharon, M. Gladders, and E. Wuyts, University of Chicago)

I entered into the everlasting movement
of that gravitation
which is the very life and spirit of God:
God's own gravitation toward the depths
of his own infinite nature,
his goodness without end.

And God,
that center who is everywhere
and whose circumference is nowhere,
finding me,
through incorporation with Christ,
incorporated into this immense
and tremendous gravitational movement
which is love
which is the Holy Spirit,
loved me.

And he called out to me
from his own immense depths.

-Thomas Merton, Seven Story Mountain, p. 274