Feast Day Of St. Ignatius of Loyola

St Ignatius Loyola by Peter Paul Rubens

From James Kiefer at the The Lectionary:

Iñigo de Recalde de Loyola, youngest of thirteen (one of my sources says eleven) children of Don Beltran Ya'ñez de Loyola and Maria Sa'enz de Licona y Balda, was born in 1491 in the family castle in the Basque province of Gu'ipozcoa, in northeastern Spain, near the French border. As befitted a boy from an aristocratic family, he spent some time as a page at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Spain. Here, by his later testimony, he was involved in gambling, wenching, and duelling.

He became a soldier and was wounded in the leg in his first battle. During his convalescence, [h]e asked for tales of knightly adventure, but instead was given a "Life of Christ", written by a Carthusian monk. He read it, and his life was transformed. He went on pilgrimage to Montserrat (near Barcelona), where he hung up his sword over the altar, and then spent about a year at Manresa near Montserrat first working as a nurse and orderly in a hospital there, and then retiring to a cave to live as a hermit and study "The Imitation of Christ", by Thomas a Kempis, a book urging the Christian to take Christ as example, and seek daily to follow in His footsteps. It is probably during this year that he wrote his Spiritual Exercises, a manual of Christian prayer and meditation.

He became a preacher, but was told that in order to preach, he needed an education.

Back in Spain, he spent ten years (1524-1534) getting an education at Barcelona, Alcala', Salamanca, and Paris, beginning by going to elementary school to learn Latin grammar, and ending with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Paris.

He founded the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, beginning with ten men, including Francis Xavier.

In 1537 the Jesuits (now ten in number) gathered in Venice and (having found that renewed war in Palestine made journeying there impossible) offered their services to Pope Paul III. Ignatius and some of the others were ordained to the priesthood, and they were assigned various tasks. In 1540 they became a formal organization, with the usual monastic vows, plus a fourth vow of personal obedience to the Pope.

Hmmm. The Jesuits seemed a bit free-wheeling, even back in ancient days when I was a student at my Jesuit University. Perhaps, even then, they allowed themselves a bit of leeway in the personal obedience to the pope vow.

I owe the Jesuits a huge debt, because they put me on the way toward ending my racist ways. Racism was all I knew before my university days, because that's what I was taught. The Jesuits taught me differently.

Also, we were required to take a number of theology and philosophy courses, which I did not take too seriously back then, but, in spite of my bad attitude, a little learning rubbed off as I was studying for the tests, even as I forget the great bulk of the material once the test was over.

I really liked the courses in logic and ontology, so I absorbed and retained more of what was taught in those classes. I do believe that I learned a bit about how to think and reason, and I am appalled by the absence of logical reasoning that abounds today. Geometry was the only math I ever liked, and I think it's because it's based on logic, rather than numbers.

On a personal note, my family was poor when I attended the university, but even as I thought my clothes were few and not really good enough, I was somehow voted one of the ten best-dressed co-eds while I was there. How that happened is still a mystery to me. After that, how could I complain at home that I did not have nice enough clothes? One old philosophy professor, who was a brilliant teacher in his prime, but during my time should have been retired, never called me by my name after that, but called me Miss Best Dressed. As I write this, he reminds me of someone else I know.

A prayer of Ignatius Loyola:

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest;
to give, and not to count the cost,
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labor, and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will.

PRAYER

O God, by whose grace your servant Ignatius, enkindled with the fire of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and may ever walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

READINGS

Psalm 34:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:31 - 11:1
Luke 9:57-62

Image from Wikipedia.

An Immoral Philosophy

From Paul Krugman, behind the wall at The New York Times:

When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.

....

But President Bush says that access to care is no problem — “After all, you just go to an emergency room” — and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.

On philosophical grounds?

Strange to say, however, the administration, although determined to prevent any expansion of children’s health care, is also dead set against any cut in Medicare Advantage payments.

So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?

I ask you.

Well, here’s what Mr. Bush said after explaining that emergency rooms provide all the health care you need: “They’re going to increase the number of folks eligible through Schip; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a — I wouldn’t call it a plot, just a strategy — to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care.”

Or as certain Republican congressmen are already saying, it could lead to the dreaded "socialized medicine".

And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.

Isn't Krugman wonderful? He has a way of getting right to the nub of it, doesn't he? This is life in the Bizarro World of Bush.

Krugman's title for this column is well-chosen - "An Immoral Philosophy".

Ingmar Bergman Died Today

May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

His movies made me think about serious things, life and death, God, when I was still young. "The Seventh Seal" was unforgettable. "The Wild Strawberries" was unforgettably beautiful. Even when I didn't understand fully all the symbolism in his movies, they left a deep impression.

Kris Rasmussen, at Beliefnet has an appreciation, in which he gives us his favorite quote from Bergman:

"It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God... Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation."

Oh, I like that.

Link from Jim Naughton at the Episcopal Café.

Not Very Smart

On Countdown James Moore, author of Bush's Brain, says:

"You can have an advanced degree from Harvard and not be very smart.". (Perhaps not an exact quote, but close) To whom is he referring? Surely not George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

One commentator on the show, Jonathan Alter, speculated that Gonzales may be gone within a week. James Moore says it could take a lot longer. I agree with Moore. As I said before, Gonzales is the boy with his finger in the dike. If he goes, the entire edifice could begin to erode.

UPDATE: If Gonzales goes, will Bush be successful in finding another loyal lackey to risk everything to be his Attorney General?

Going To Church

For the two Sundays before yesterday, I missed going to church, one Sunday because I had a sleepover for five grandchildren, and the next because I was out of town visiting family, who are not churchgoers. Yesterday, I had only two grandchildren, and I managed to get it together and get myself there. It was good to be back. I miss the Sunday service, especially the Eucharist. I miss the music and the singing.

We have a new songbook of non-traditional hymns called "To The Glory Of God". In the schedule for the service, it is referred to as NSB for New Song Book. Since our organist was on vacation, and we had guitars and a wonderful old banjo for accompaniment, we used the NSB, even though we don't yet have enough of them to go around the congregation. My pew was one of those without the NSB, therefore I could only sing the hymns which I knew, or the choruses as I picked them up.

Our rector has a very soft voice, and I miss some of the words of the sermon each Sunday. Other members of the congregation have told me that they don't hear all of his words either. Once we have our parish web site up and running, I hope to persuade our priest to let me to type up his sermons and post them on the web site.

Our youth Sunday school will kick off in August with "A Cajun Man Swamp Tour". Only in Louisiana.

In the adult class, we will be using Simply Christian; Why Christianity Makes Sense, by N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, UK.

UPDATE: I'd say this is one of the most boring posts I've ever done. It looks as though the well has run dry.

This Is Rich, From Frank Rich

From Frank Rich, at the New York Times, behind the wall (sorry about that - but the NYT should be sorry, not me):

THERE was, of course, gallows humor galore when Dick Cheney briefly grabbed the wheel of our listing ship of state during the presidential colonoscopy last weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts. A once-durable staple of 21st-century American humor is in its last throes. We have a new surrogate president now. Sic transit Cheney. Long live David Petraeus!

....

And so another constitutional principle can be added to the long list of those junked by this administration: the quaint notion that our uniformed officers are supposed to report to civilian leadership. In a de facto military coup, the commander in chief is now reporting to the commander in Iraq. We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says.

....

Though General Petraeus wrote his 1987 Princeton doctoral dissertation on “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam,” he has an unshakable penchant for seeing light at the end of tunnels. It has been three Julys since he posed for the cover of Newsweek under the headline “Can This Man Save Iraq?” The magazine noted that the general’s pacification of Mosul was “a textbook case of doing counterinsurgency the right way.” Four months later, the police chief installed by General Petraeus defected to the insurgents, along with most of the Sunni members of the police force. Mosul, population 1.7 million, is now an insurgent stronghold, according to the Pentagon’s own June report.

....

Well, anyone can make a mistake. And when General Petraeus cited soccer games as an example of “the astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad last month, he could not have anticipated that car bombs would kill at least 50 Iraqis after the Iraqi team’s poignant victory in the Asian Cup semifinals last week. This general may well be, as many say, the brightest and bravest we have. But that doesn’t account for why he has been invested by the White House and its last-ditch apologists with such singular power over the war.

I hope that I have not gone beyond "fair use" in my quotes. If I have, I'll hear about it, if anyone takes note of my wee blog. If anyone finds a link to the whole article that is not behind the wall, let me know, and I will post it.

Just yesterday, I read this from the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD - A key aide says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's relations with Gen. David Petraeus are so poor the Iraqi leader may ask Washington to withdraw the overall U.S. commander from his Baghdad post.

But then we will lose our "surrogate president".

Iraq's foreign minister calls the relationship "difficult." Petraeus, who says their ties are "very good," acknowledges expressing his "full range of emotions" at times with al-Maliki. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who meets with both at least weekly, concedes "sometimes there are sporty exchanges."

It seems less a clash of personality than of policy. The Shiite Muslim prime minister has reacted most sharply to the American general's tactic of enlisting Sunni militants, presumably including past killers of Iraqi Shiites, as allies in the fight against al-Qaida here.

An associate said al-Maliki once, in discussion with President Bush, even threatened to counter this by arming Shiite militias.

So. According to Maliki the relationship is "difficult", Petraeus says it's "very good", and Ambassador Crocker says they're only having "sporty exchanges". What are we to make of this?

I'm struck nearly dumb, but I'm glad Frank Rich can still speak.

I Know Not

As I was walking the other night, after saying my prayers (I find that my solitary walk is a wonderful time to pray), I thought about whether I would be with my grandchildren to see them grow up, and whether I would ever cross the ocean again to visit places I love, and which of us (Grandpère or me) would leave the other behind, and I realized that I didn't have the answer to any of the questions, and these few little words came to me:

I Know Not

What is my life to be?
I know not. I know not.
And will I cross the sea?
I know not. I know not.
And will you stay with me?
I know not. I know not.
Alas, I see! I see!
I know not what my life shall be.

June Butler - 7-27-07

The nightly walk seems to be the place where my muse (if I can call her that) and I meet up.

I hope this post does not seem morbid, because neither my thoughts nor the poem saddened me. It's the reality of human life. We are born. We die. The time between the two is what differs for each of us.

At least Oscar, the cat, hasn't curled up beside either Grandpère or me - yet.

Red Hat and Purple Dress

Image from Red Hat Shopping.

Here's a little something for your Saturday morning pleasure.

Sometimes when I'd think (with no small regret) about getting old, T. S. Eliot's words from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" would come to mind:

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

But those words never really satisfied me, because I wanted something more appropriate to an aging woman. I've been searching, and I've found it!

From "Warning" by Jenny Joseph:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

Suits me better than Eliot, don't you think?

Interview With Gene Robinson

From Ruth Gledhill via the Episcopal Café"

CofE 'would shut down' without its gay clergy, says +Gene.

Andrew Collier, a freelance journalist based in Scotland, has just interviewed Bishop Gene Robinson in London. We have reported in online. This is the bit I liked best: 'I think the thing that is the most mystifying to me and the most troubling about the Church of England is its refusal to be honest about just how many gay clergy it has – many of them partnered and many of them living in rectories. I have met so many gay partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive but has also said if this ever becomes public then I’m your worst enemy. It’s a terrible way to live your life and I think it’s a terrible way to be a church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can’t even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own church? So I would feel better about the Church of England’s stance, its reluctance to support the Episcopal Church in what it has done if it would at least admit that this not an American problem and just an American challenge. If all the gay people stayed away from church on a given Sunday the Church of England would be close to shut down between its organists, its clergy, its wardens.....it just seems less than humble not to admit that.'

The hypocrisy is bad enough, but pointing fingers at another church within the Anglican Communion, while at the same time covering up similar behavior in your own church, makes it all the worse.

The greater part of Gledhill's post is devoted to the interview by Andrew Collier with Gene Robinson. I was intrigued by Bishop Robinson's personal story, especially in light of my informal "survey" here.

Robinson: 'I think most gay people sense early on that they are different even if they are not exactly sure how they are different. That was certainly true for me by age 11 or 12. You have to remember that when I was that age, gay was not a word that was being used to describe homosexual people. There was very little discussion of it. There were certainly no role models like we have today of successful and productive people who were gay, so it was not something easily admitted to oneself, never mind the world.

The personal story continues at length, too long for me to quote, but it's quite good. I urge you to read the rest at Ruth Gledhill's site.

Feast Day Of William Reed Huntington

I was going to take a pass on doing the feast day today, since we've had a rather full week of feast days, but when I saw which saint was being honored, I changed my mind, because Huntington's legacy is pertinent to the times.

From James Kiefer at the The Lectionary:

W R Huntington, although never a bishop, had more influence on the Episcopal Church than most bishops....In each of the thirteen General Conventions...of the Episcopal Church that met between 1870 and his death,he was a member, and indeed the most prominent member, of the House of Deputies. In 1871 he moved for the restoration of the ancient Order of Deaconesses, which was finally officially authorized in 1889. His parish became a center for the training of deaconesses.

....

In his book "The Church Idea" (1870), Huntington undertook to discuss the basis of Christian unity, and he formulated the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, a statement adopted first by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in 1886 and then, with slight modifications, by the Bishops of the world-wide Anglican Communion assembled at Lambeth in 1888. The statement set forth four principles which Anglicans regard as essential, and offer as a basis for discussion of union with other Christian bodies.

From the Vauxhall Society:

Lambeth Quadrilateral

The Lambeth Quadrilateral is the name given to the four key principles that form the basis for the union of various churches that make up the Anglican faith:

* acceptance of the Holy Scripture as the rule of faith;
* the Apostles' and the Nicene creeds;
* the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper;
* and the principle of church government based on bishops.

The quadrilateral was first declared by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Chicago in 1886 and were amended and adopted at the 1888 Lambeth Conference.

Why is this document no longer sufficient as the basis of unity for the Anglican Communion? Why do we need Windsor Reports and covenants beyond what's covered in the the Creeds and the Lambeth Quadrilateral?

PRAYER

O Lord our God, we thank you for instilling in the heart of your servant William Reed Huntington a fervent love for your Church and its mission in the world; and we pray that, with unflagging faith in your promises, we may make known to all peoples your blessed gift of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

READINGS:

Psalm 133
Job 22:21-28
Ephesians 1:3-10
John 17:20-26