What Grandpère Grows In His Garden

Photo by FotoSearch.


It's long past due for me to commend Grandpère for his gardening prowess. At the present time, we are enjoying bell peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant, Creole tomatoes to die for, corn, and blueberries, fresh from his garden. We are savoring some of the sweetest and best-tasting blackberries I have ever eaten, picked in the wild by him and my grandson.

In addition, we eat fresh fish and shrimp that he catches, and fresh crabs and, in season, fresh crawfish that we buy. I tend to take this bounty for granted, because we have enjoyed it for such a long time, but I should not.

I thank God and my hard-working husband for providing the sumptious feasts. In addition, Grandpère does most of the cooking.

I'm ashamed that I don't have my own photo and had to borrow one online.

Feast Day Of Justin Martyr

Padre Mickey in Panama is the man to see for the commemoration of the early Christian saints. He has a lovely post about Justin Martyr.

PRAYER

Almighty and everlasting God, who found your martyr Justin wandering from teacher to teacher, seeking the true God, and revealed to him the sublime wisdom of your eternal Word: Grant that all who seek you, or a deeper knowledge of you, may find and be found by you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Visitation Of Mary

The Visitation by Domenico Ghirlandaio - Musée du Louvre, Paris


Image from The Web Gallery of Art

Coming in the midst of our present time of war and grief are stories of new life springing forth. During the time preceding the Visitation, the angel Gabriel was about his business of carrying messages from God announcing impending births, first to Zechariah, telling him that his wife Elizabeth was to give birth to a son, and then a few months later to Mary, giving the news of her pregnancy, although she knew not man.

Soon after learning that she was with child, Mary set off to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who, in her old age, had conceived her child, John The Baptist, the herald of Mary's child, Jesus, Our Savior.

Where was Joseph during this time that Mary visited her cousin? Hard at work at his carpentry in Nazareth, I suppose.

The reading from the Gospel for the feast of the Visitation includes The Magnificat, Mary's song of praise, one of the most glorious prayers in all of the history of Christianity.

In the Old Testament Book of Samuel, we read of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who also conceived in her old age, after giving up hope of having a child. She prayed in thanksgiving and praise to God after the birth of her son, who became a judge and a prophet. Hannah's prayer prefigures Mary's prayer.

1 Samuel 2:1-10

Hannah’s Prayer

Hannah prayed and said,
‘My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in my God.
My mouth derides my enemies,
because I rejoice in my victory.

‘There is no Holy One like the Lord,
no one besides you;
there is no Rock like our God.
Talk no more so very proudly,
let not arrogance come from your mouth;
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
and by him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble gird on strength.
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.
The barren has borne seven,
but she who has many children is forlorn.
The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honour.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
and on them he has set the world.

‘He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness;
for not by might does one prevail.
The Lord! His adversaries shall be shattered;
the Most High will thunder in heaven.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;
he will give strength to his king,
and exalt the power of his anointed.’


Luke 1:39-55

The Visitation

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’


PRAYER

Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of your incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping your word: Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.


I highly recommend that you visit In A Godward Direction, Tobias Haller's blog, to listen to his musical composition: Setting of the Magnificat from "Mountain Vespers" by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, sung by the members of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory.

It's lovely.

And isn't Ghirlandaio's painting beautiful?

Supporting The Troops

Yes, I'm obsessed. Yes, I'm depressed. I don't seem to be able to get away from the subject. The killing and the maiming go on without ceasing, and my neighborhood paper continues to supply me with material.

Yesterday, again in the Baton Rouge Advocate, was an account of a Memorial Day tribute on the U.S.S. Kidd, a destroyer which is docked permanently in Baton Rouge.

A retired captain and now state appellate court judge told an audience of about 200 people Monday that supporting the troops needs to be more than lip service.

J. Michael McDonald, who served three years during the Vietnam War as an intelligence officer and then 27 more years in the U.S. Navy Reserve, said he’s worried that American attitudes are turning not just against the war in Iraq, but against the troops themselves.

The judge may be worried that attitudes are turning "against the troops themselves", but in fact, as I see it, Americans are doing a good job of distinguishing between the powerful people who took us into the Iraq War and the troops who lay their lives on the line every day to fight the war. We're not making the same mistake as in the Vietnam War of blaming the troops.

He told those gathered at the USS Kidd Veterans Memorial and Museum on Monday that he remembers having students at Brown University throw rocks at him in 1969.

He said he had friends who were spit on in airports. He also recalled a newspaper story from the time where a returning veteran was told that he deserved his war injuries.

I believe the good judge may be conflating two wars here, Iraq and Vietnam.

“If someone tells you they don’t support the war, but they support the troops, ask them, exactly, how,” McDonald suggested. “If they can’t tell you, they’re not supporting the troops.”

Now I realize that I do not have the judge's credentials. I have never served in the military. I have never fought in a war. However, I'll take a stab at telling the judge how the leadership who sent the troops to war could have supported the troops. Wouldn't the major responsibility to support the troops have rested on the shoulders of those who decided to send them to war?

The judge should be asking the question about supporting the troops of the Bush maladministration, those who ordered the troops into the misbegotten and catastrophic war, and the Congress who enabled them.

Here's what supporting the troops would have meant:

In the first place, supporting the troops would have meant refraining from sending them to attack a country which had not attacked us and was not a threat to us.

Once the leadership decided to go ahead with the war, based on a pack of lies, supporting the troops would have meant sending sufficient numbers of them to keep order once the dictator was toppled.

Supporting the troops would have meant supplying them with enough body armor and armored vehicles to protect them.

Supporting the troops would have meant supplying them with safe food and drinking water, instead of spoiled food and contaminated water served up by the maladministration's best friend, Halliburton.

Supporting the troops would have meant giving the very best medical care to the wounded - and not in hospitals with moldy walls and ceilings, and the best follow-up care to restore them to physical and mental health, sparing them long waiting periods for further care.

Supporting the troops would have meant getting checks to the disabled quickly and sparing them from having to deal with tangled masses of red tape.

Supporting the troops at the present time would mean bringing them home from the killing fields of this unwinnable war, beginning now.

There. I'm sure that this is not an exhaustive list. I'm sure that we failed the troops in ways that I have not mentioned.

Maybe I'm done on the war for a while, but don't count on it. Folks keep saying stupid things and riling me up.

UPDATE: I reworded this post and shortened it some and mailed it to the Advocate. I think it's probably still too long, and they won't publish it, but we'll see. 6-1-07

Leopard Leaps Into Bed

From the Associated Press via Yahoo News:

JERUSALEM - A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.
ADVERTISEMENT

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

This is more MadPriest's style, but, since I've been sad the past couple of days, I felt in need of a little levity. MadPriest, you can steal this and save it in your cats folder, if you ever get that back up on your blog.

Cindy Sheehan says, "It's Up To You Now."

Please, read this statement by Cindy Sheehan from Yahoo News:

..."I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California.

"I'm going home for awhile to try and be normal," she said.

....

"It's up to you now."

....

But she said the most devastating conclusion she had reached "was that Casey did indeed die for nothing ... killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think".

....

"I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," Sheehan wrote.

"Camp Casey has served its purpose. It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?"


Cindy's right. She's lost her son and her marriage. She's sacrificed enough. It's up to us.

The Democrats were afraid to take action so near to Memorial Day. They were afraid to look bad. The Fourth of July, another patriotic holiday, is not far away. Will that be another excuse for inaction on their part? Who or what are they afraid of? The American people want out of Iraq by a solid majority. Is it the press? Is it Republicans? Do they think they look good now that they've caved in?

It's not about looking good or looking bad. It's about throwing away more human lives in a misbegotten and disastrous war. Congress has the purse strings. It's time they do their jobs. It's time for us to call them to account.

Thanks to Jane R. at Acts of Hope for the link to Cindy's statement.

Memorial Day - Remembering The Fallen

Picture from The Memory Hole


The US Department of Defense does not want you to see pictures like this. Photographs and videos are not permitted at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies come in. The coffins are still coming, 103 killed just this month, for a total of 3454 for the Iraq War. When will it end? When will the bodies stop coming?

From CBS News on April 23, 2004:

Under a policy adopted in 1991, the Pentagon bars news organizations from photographing caskets being returned to the United States, saying publication of such photos would be insensitive to bereaved families.

This policy still stands, for whatever reason, and serves to insulate the American public from the consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance of those who gave everything in the service of their country. We honor them for their courage and dedication to duty. We extend our sympathy to their families and friends, whether the loss is recent or from long times past. We stand with you. We mourn with you.


Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. Micah 4:1-4


Lord God, Almighty and Everlasting Father, we pray for all those who have died in wars. We pray the they may rest in peace in the perpetual light of your love. We pray for your blessing upon the families and friends of all those who have died in service to their country. Console them for their aching loss. Bring them healing of body, mind, and spirit. Give them strength and courage to go forward, and Lord God, above all else, give them your peace that passes understanding to keep their minds and hearts.

The Coming Of The Holy Spirit

The Descent Of The Holy Spirit by El Greco, The Pentecost (1596-1600), Oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Image from Joyful Heart.


Jesus Promises To Send The Spirit

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

....

‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

John 16:7, 12-15


The Coming Of The Holy Spirit

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’

Acts 2:1-11


Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love.

V. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created.
R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray. O God, Who didst instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant us in the same Spirit to be truly wise, and ever to rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

UPDATE: Yesterday in church, everything was red, red, red. The priest's vestments were red; the altar cloth was red; there were floating red balloons in the windows; the rector's wife and the organist both wore red, and we have red carpeting in our church. The Holy Spirit descended into a veritable sea of red.

Thought For The Day

What if all the closeted lesbian and gay clergy in all of the Christian denominations picked a day to have a grand coming out party? What would be the response of the powers-that-be? What would be the response of the laity?

I know that this will not happen, but it is a thought.

Feast Day of St. Augustine Of Canterbury

Icon by Monk Aidan of Shropshire.


From St. Hilarion Monastery:

St. Augustine of Canterbury, Apostle of England

The figure of St. Augustine, the great Wonderworker and Apostle of the English people, is somewhat controversial. He represented the Orthodox Patriarch of the West, the Pope of Rome, whereas the Celtic Christians were without a Patriarch and were, indeed, hostile to the concept of being placed under a Patriarch! St. Augustine moreover committed a great faux-pas when in meeting with a delegation of the anti-Patriarchal Bishops he remained seated when they approached him, rather than rising to greet them or even prostrating himself humbly before them. Due to his conduct, springing either from a protocol the Celts misinterpreted or from carelessness, he alienated them--and on this account the integration of the non-English Christians of Britain into the Patriarchate was delayed for many centuries. In the meantime, an uneasy situation prevailed. The decision of St. Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek-bred Archbishop of Canterbury who brought a comprehensive canonical structure to the English Church, and of several Church Synods, was that the Celtics could only be received after Chrismation and renunciation of error. It was felt that their Baptism rite was incomplete, their method of tonsure unsatisfactory, and their dating of Pascha, which had been superseded elsewhere in Orthodox Christendom by the pan-Orthodox method still used today in the Eastern Church, was faulty. Despite these difficulties, certain Hierarchs accepted the Holy Mysteries of the Celtics. St. Bede, in his History, proves himself to be a moderate in his ecclesiology, both accepting their essential character as Orthodox Christians and criticising their "uncanonical" mores.

St. Hilarion is an Orthodox monastery in Austin, Texas.


PRAYER

O Lord our God, who by your Son Jesus Christ called your apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless your holy name for your servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating your Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom you call and send may do your will, and bide your time, and see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.