A Place I Want To Visit In England

Rievaulx Abbey

"Pour into our hearts, O God, the Holy Spirit's gift of love, that we, clasping each the other's hand, may share the joy of friendship, human and divine, and with your servant Aelred draw many to your community of love; through Jesus Christ the Righteous, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever."

Prayer attributed to Aelred of Rievaulx

Aelred was born in 1109 at Durham, and was sent to the Scottish court for an education that would ensure his future as a noble and courtier. He succeeded, to the extent of being made Master of the Household of the King of Scotland. Nevertheless, he found success at the court of an earthly king unsatisfying, and at the age of 24 he entered the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire. Bernard of Clairvaux encouraged him to write his first work, The Mirror of Charity, which deals with seeking to follow the example of Christ in all things. In 1147 he became abbot of Rievaulx, a post which he held until his death of kidney disease twenty years later at the age of 57.

From James Kiefer at the Lectionary.

I love ruins, especially ruins of sacred spaces. I'll never forget my visit to Glendalough Abbey, St. Kevin's monastery, in Ireland. While I was there, I experienced a sense that I was on holy ground and an almost physical presence. Over the centuries, many prayers were prayed there, and perhaps what I felt was the lingering presence of the prayers and of all the saints who prayed there.

Earlier in the week, I wanted to post on the Feast Day of Aelred, but I didn't have time. I wanted to send blessings and good wishes to Prior Aelred of St. Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan, on the feast day of his namesake, but I didn't do that either.

Prior Aelred, if you happen to pass by, a belated Blessed and Happy St. Aelred's Feast Day!

UPDATE: I visited Rievaulx Abbey in March 2009. It's a lovely and holy place.

R. I. P. Andrew Wyeth

From the New York Times:

Andrew Wyeth, one of the most popular and also most lambasted artists in the history of American art, a reclusive linchpin in a colorful family dynasty of artists whose precise realist views of hardscrabble rural life became icons of national culture and sparked endless debates about the nature of modern art, died Friday at his home in Chadds Ford. He was 91.
....

Because of his popularity, a bad sign to many art world insiders, Wyeth came to represent middle-class values and ideals that modernism claimed to reject, so that arguments about his work extended beyond painting to societal splits along class, geographical and educational lines. One art historian, in response to a 1977 survey in Art News magazine about the most underrated and overrated artists of the century, nominated Wyeth for both categories.

He was popular, therefore he could not possibly be a good painter?

As John Updike said, “In the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, the scorn was simple gallery politics; but resistance to Wyeth remains curiously stiff in an art world that has no trouble making room for Photorealists like Richard Estes and Philip Pearlstein and graduates of commercial art like Wayne Thibauld, Andy Warhol, and for that matter, Edward Hopper.”

I'm not ashamed to say that I liked his paintings, especially "Christina", pictured above.

Wyeth had seen Christina Olson, crippled from the waist down, dragging herself across a Maine field, “like a crab on a New England shore,” he recalled. To him she was a model of dignity who refused to use a wheelchair and preferred to live in squalor rather than be beholden to anyone. It was dignity of a particularly dour, hardened, misanthropic sort, to which Wyeth throughout his career seemed to gravitate.

Misanthropic? Not at all. Wyeth painted Christina with dignity. How is that misanthropic?

I liked the much reviled Helga paintings, too. The writer of this piece calls them "soft core renditions". What are the chances that he is not an admirer Wyeth's work? I can think of thousands of nude paintings over the centuries, which are now called great art, but seem hard core compared to the Helga paintings.

R. I. P. John Mortimer

From the New York Times:

John Mortimer, barrister, author, playwright and creator of Horace Rumpole, the cunning defender of the British criminal classes, died Friday morning at his home in Oxfordshire, England, said his agent, Katherine Vile. He was 85 years old and had been ill for some time, Ms. Vile said.
....

But as a barrister in Britain, Sir John came to be known in the 1960s as a defender of free speech and human rights for taking up cases that he said were “alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance.” He became a Queen’s Counsel just in time to tackle some of the civil rights cases that arose in Britain in that decade, all the while writing fiction, non-fiction, drama and comedy.
....

His memoirs, including “Clinging to the Wreckage” (1982), “Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life” (1994), drop dozens of names of the theater and movie people he spent time with. There are trays upon trays of cocktails in his stories, and interviews late in his life note the presence of what was described in one as a “comfortably large Guinness that he is drinking for his health even though it is still a long time until lunch.”

I've always longed to be "she who must be obeyed", like Hilda, Rumpole's wife, but alas! I never succeeded. Grandpère would not cooperate.

Mortimer was a gifted man who lived life with gusto.

Please Pray For Keith And Barbara

BillyD said...

Speaking of doctors, please pray for my brother Keith and his wife, Barbara. Keith fell and broke his hip today - the same day that Barbara found out she has rectal cancer. They're operating on Keith tomorrow, but don't know about Barbara yet.

Oh dear, BillyD! That's hard. Both in the same day! Prayers for healing, comfort, and strength through the difficult days ahead.

UPDATE: BillyD has left a new comment on your post "Please Pray For Keith And Barbara":

Thanks for the prayers. Keith's surgery is scheduled for five o'clock Mountain Time this evening, and is expected to last about four hours. They're putting some sort of rod into his femur.

Actual Writings On Hospital Charts By Doctors

A baker's dozen for you:

1. She has no rigors or shaking chills , but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night.

2. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.

3. Discharge status: Alive but without my permission.

4. Healthy appearing decrepit 69 year old male, mentally alert but forgetful.

5. The patient refused autopsy.

6. Patient's medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a 40 pound weight gain in the past three days.

7. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home.

8. Patient was alert and unresponsive.

9. Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.

10. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized. (Wow!)

11. The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.

12. The pelvic exam will be done later on the floor.

13. Large brown stool ambulating in the hall.

Could be sleep deprivation.

They Found Them!

From the Washington Post:

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

Civil division trial lawyer Helen H. Hong made the disclosure at a court hearing provoked by a 2007 lawsuit filed by outside groups to ensure that politically significant records created by the White House are not destroyed or removed before President Bush leaves office at noon on Tuesday. She said the department plans to argue in a court filing this week that the administration's successful recent search renders the lawsuit moot.

Hong's statement came hours after U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ordered employees of the president's executive office -- with just days to go before their departure -- to undertake a comprehensive search of computer workstations, preserve portable hard drives and examine any e-mail archives created or retained from 2003 to 2005, the period in which e-mails appeared to be missing.

I laughed when I read this story. It is decidedly not funny, but I laughed. The Bush maladministration finally complied with court's orders and spent $10 million of our money to find the "missing" emails. Are you wondering if any person or persons tried, without success, to make them disappear permanently? I know I am.

The dispute over recovery of the missing e-mails was provoked by the disclosure four years ago that the White House, in switching to a new internal e-mail system shortly after Bush's election, had abandoned an automatic archiving system meant to preserve all messages containing official business. Under the new system, any of the 3,000 or so regular White House employees could access e-mail storage files, enabling them to delete messages.

An internal White House report noted in 2005 that e-mails from specific periods appeared to be missing, including key moments related to the invasion of Iraq and to a federal probe of the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's classified employment with the CIA. White House officials called that study flawed after congressional investigators released it.

What an amazing coincidence! My goodness! What could the Bushies possibly want to hide in their email correspondance previous to the invasion of Iraq and the outing of Valerie Plame? Nothing there, folks. Move along.

Regarding the congressional investigation, the investigators did not have access to the "missing" emails when they produced their "flawed" study.

Five more days.

" Please Keep Praying!"

JCF has left a new comment on your post "Please Continue to Pray For Sue And Fr. Ed":

Update (I'm posting on this thread, as it's linked to "The Three Legged Stool", where Sue&Ed are also being prayed for).

I saw Sue at home today.

Yesterday, she got put in a cast almost to her hip. As you might imagine, it's none too comfortable (and she's having trouble sleeping). Pain at the worst, itching when not in pain.

DESPITE this, she's in good spirits. She very much appreciates the prayers! And, for you animal lovers out there---and I know there are many in Episcoblog-Land---she's benefitting from the "ministry" of her 3 cats: Jasper, Sapphira and Zechariah (all of whom have found places on her hospital bed to love *g*).

I also saw FrEd today, at the (usual) Wednesday evening Mass. He seems slightly more together, too (the last couple of Sundays, between you and me, he came pretty close to biting a bothersome person's head off: the man's been at his limits!).

Please keep praying! [I asked Sue when she'd be back at church, and encouraged her to shoot for Shrove Tuesday, and pancakes. But maybe as early as Candlemas? "DV"]

Original prayer request here.

"We Never Know...."

We never know which interactions will be our last ones. And so every single moment we are called to compassionate presence. There is not a one of us that doesn't know this. But how easy it is to live out of the grudges, the impatience, the frustration. How very human.

From LJ at Wild and Precious. LJ's father died this past Monday. She wrote a beautiful account at her blog of her dad's last days - what those days were like for him and what the days were like for her and her mom.

LJ's words above resonated powerfully for me, especially these, "We never know...so every single moment we are called to compassionate presence." Amen!

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep the hearts and minds of LJ and her mom in Christ Jesus.

Racism Is Dead In The US?

Some say that the election of Obama shows that racism is dead in the US. Others say that is not true. Count me in the "others" category.

Video from TPM TV.

Thought For The Day - From The Lord

But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."

1 Samuel 16:7