depth of feeling

The passion of it, the continual passion of it in this man who, fools said, didn't 'feel'. I have never yet found a man of emotion against whom idiots didn't raise this cry.

- Ezra Pound, 'Henry James', in The Little Review, August 1918

piety as wealth

But since man must needs fall short of what is worthy, I ask of you - as approaching it most nearly - piety, the wealth which is common to all and equal in my eyes, wherein the poorest may, if he be noble-minded, surpass the most illustrious. For this kind of glory depends upon purpose, not upon affluence.

- St Gregory the Theologian, Last Farewell 8

two nativity conceits

The All-Knowing saw that we worship things that were made: He put on a body that was made, that in our custom He might take us captive - and by a body that was made, drew us to the Creator.

....

The frankincense - which had served demons - worshipped Thy Birth. It grieved them with its vapour. It exulted when it saw its Lord - instead of being the incense of delusion, it was an oblation before God!

St Ephraim

body, mind; flesh, spirit

The contrast is not between body and mind, but between flesh, i.e., all man's physical and mental faculties as they exist in his enslaved self-loving state, and spirit, which witnesses within him to all that his existence was, and still is meant to be, capable of loving God in the same way that God loves him.

- W. H. Auden, Augustus to Augustine (a review of Cochrane's Christianity and Classical Culture)

the human image of God

I have seen the human image of God, and my soul is saved.

- St John of Damascus, Homily on the Defence of the Ikons

to build new self-consistent worlds

You will probably be tempted, by your habit of mind, to ask - what does all this prove? It does not, in the scientific sense of the word, prove anything. The function of imaginative speech is not to prove, but to create - to discover new similarities, and to arrange them to form new unities, to build new self-consistent worlds out of the universe of undifferentiated mind stuff.

- Dorothy L. Sayers, Creative Mind

a sweet and lively instrument-

The Divine Word. not with harp and lyre, but rather tuning as His instruments, by the Holy Spirit, this whole world and the little world of man, both soul and body, makes music before God. A sweet and lively instrument Our Lord makes of man, and one like Himself: for certainly He is also God's instrument of music, all-harmonious.

- Clement of Alexandria, Protieptikos

spiritual roots and social order

... men today are divided between those who have kept their spiritual roots and lost their contact with the existing order of society, and those who have preserved their social contacts and lost their spiritual roots.

Christopher Dawson

Beauty is momentary in the mind

Beauty is momentary in the mind,
The fitful tracing of a portal,
But in the flesh it is immortal.

Wallace Stevens, 'Peter Quince at the Clavier'

Take care also, that no mouse

An Instruction to priests before the divine and
holy service. By our Father among the Saints,
Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in
Cappadocia, how it behooves a priest to serve
with a deacon.

Give heed to thyself, O priest,
to all that thou wouldst teach.
Guard the ministry which thou
hast received, that thou mayest fulfill
it. For not to an earthly ministry
art thou committed, but a
heavenly; not a human service, but
an angelic one. Haste thou to present
thyself before the Lord not as
an husbandman who is ashamed,
but as one who rightly divideth the
word of His truth. Never stand at
the assembly while bearing enmity
toward anyone, lest thou drive the
Comforter away. On the day of the
assembly quarrel not, neither argue,
but rather pray and read in
private until the hour of the service.
Guard thyself from evil
thoughts, insofar as thou art able.
Moreover, stand with fear before
the holy altar, without looking
around at anyone else, and do not
abbreviate thy prayers with haste.
Make no distinction of persons,
but rather look to the King Who is
present before thee, lest, being a
respecter of persons, thou givest
the Holy Body where it ought not
to be given. Make thyself worthy
of the rules concerning priests,
and do not serve together with
such as reject those rules. Watch
therefore, how thou standest; how
thou ministerest; how and to
whom thou givest [Communion];
and how thou keepest [the Holy
Gifts.] Take care that thou not forget
the Lord’s command: Give not
that which is holy to the dogs. Do
not be seized by fear of men; do
not betray the Son of God into the
hands of the unworthy. Be not intimidated
by the mighty of the
earth, nor even by him that
weareth a royal diadem; be not
afraid in such an hour. Watch how
thou givest the Gifts to them that
wish to receive Them in their
homes. See thou, I have nothing.
See that thou not give [the Gifts] to
such as are forbidden by the divine
canons [to receive Them] for they
are reckoned as pagans, and woe
to those who give them [Communion]
before their conversion.
Take care also, that no mouse or
any such thing touch the Divine
Mysteries. Do not by negligence
let them get wet or mouldy, nor
may they be handled by those not
in holy orders. Keep these rules
and others like them, and thou
wilt save thyself and those in thy
charge. (From the Sluzhebnik of the 5th
year of the Patriarchate of Joseph).

... among some of the great Greek and Latin Fathers, men, like him, steeped in the Greek and Roman cultural inheritance, there were those who, like him, observing the mast and its sail-yard, pondered the matter deeper. They saw that the ship, the mast, the voyagings, the odysseys and argosies, the perils and ordeals that were part and parcel of the classical tradition, could and should be taken as typic of the Church's voyaging. They had a perception of the vessel of the ecclesia, her heavy scend in the troughs of the world-waters, drenched with inboard seas, to starboard Scylla, to larb'rd Charybdis, lured by persistent Siren calls, but secure because to the transomed stauros of the mast was made fast the Incarnate Word.

All this: the barque, the tall mast, the hoisted yard, the ordeals of the voyage, has in various ways filtered down through the centuries. It could not very well be otherwise for, after all, there is but one voyager's yarn to tell.

True, many, I suppose most, of the formative theologians and pastoral figures in the Church appear to have had a decided disinclination to admit or at least to employ the foreshadowings and analogies other than those found in the sacred Hebrew deposits.

But in the long run and certainly for us today it is impossible not to see the validity and rightness of Gregory of Nazianzus, of Basil of Caesarea, of Gregory of Nyssa, of Clement of Alexandria, of Ambrose of Milan and of various other less known figures in perceiving that much in the Odysseus saga (and other classical deposits) had correspondences in the voyaging of the Christian soul and in the argosy of the Son of God.

... saw, none the less, amidships the image of the same salvific Wood. And not the yarded mast only, but the planking and timbers composing the vessel, so of the chief timber, the Keel.

- David Jones, An Introduction to The Ancient Mariner in The Dying Gaul and Other Writings

What would the church's practices have to look like?

What if the church unwittingly adopts the same liturgical practices as the market and the mall? Will it then really be a site of counter-formation? What would the church's practices have to look like if they're going to form us as the kind of people who desire something entirely different - who desire the kingdom? What would be the shape of an alternative pedagogy of desire?

Because our hearts are oriented primarily by desire, by what we love, and because those desires are shaped and molded by the habit-forming practices in which we participate, it is the rituals and practices of the mall - the liturgies of mall and market - that shape our imaginations and how we orient ourselves to the world. Embedded in them is a common set of assumptions about the shape of human flourishing, which becomes and implicit telos, or goal, of our own desires and actions. That is, the visions of the good life embedded in these practices become surreptitiously embedded in us through our participation in the rituals and rhythms of these institutions. These quasi-liturgies effect an education of desire, a pedagogy of the heart. But if the church is complicit with this sort of formation, where could we look for an alternative education of desire.

James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (2009)
p 25

Edwin Muir

I was born before the Industrial Revolution, and am now about two hundred years old. But I have skipped a hundred and fifty of them. I was really born in 1737, and till I was fourteen no time-accidents happened to me. Then in 1751 I set out from Orkney for Glasgow. When I arrived I found that it was not 1751, but 1901, and that a hundred and fifty years had been burned up in my two day's journey. But I myself was still in 1751, and remained there for a long time. All my life since I have been trying to overhaul that invisible leeway. No wonder I am obsessed with Time.

Many of us will have sympathy for such a feeling of being out of sync....

The Transfiguration

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well,
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed
Till earth and light and water entering there
Gave back to us the clear unfallen world.
We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness,
But that even they, though sour and travel stained,
Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance,
And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us
Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined
As in a morning field. Was it a vision?
Or did we see that day the unseeable
One glory of the everlasting world
Perpetually at work, though never seen
Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere
And nowhere? Was the change in us alone,
And the enormous earth still left forlorn,
An exile or a prisoner? Yet the world
We saw that day made this unreal, for all
Was in its place. The painted animals
Assembled there in gentle congregations,
Or sought apart their leafy oratories,
Or walked in peace, the wild and tame together,
As if, also for them, the day had come.
The shepherds’ hovels shone, for underneath
The soot we saw the stone clean at the heart
As on the starting-day. The refuse heaps
Were grained with that fine dust that made the world;
For he had said, ‘To the pure all things are pure.’
And when we went into the town, he with us,
The lurkers under doorways, murderers,
With rags tied round their feet for silence, came
Out of themselves to us and were with us,
And those who hide within the labyrinth
Of their own loneliness and greatness came,
And those entangled in their own devices,
The silent and the garrulous liars, all
Stepped out of their dungeons and were free.
Reality or vision, this we have seen.
If it had lasted but another moment
It might have held forever! But the world
Rolled back into its place, and we are here,
And all that radiant kingdom lies forlorn,
As if it had never stirred; no human voice
Is heard among its meadows, but it speaks
To itself alone, alone it flowers and shines
And blossoms for itself while time runs on.

But he will come again, it’s said, though not
Unwanted, unsummoned; for all things,
Beasts of the field, and woods, and rocks, and seas,
And all mankind from end to end of the earth
Will call him with one voice. In our own time,
Some say, or at a time when time is ripe.
Then he will come, Christ the uncrucified,
Christ the discrucified, his death undone,
His agony unmade, his cross dismantled -
Glad to be so – and the tormented wood
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner or young Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.

save us from men who plan

Say now little children:
Sweet Jill of our hill hear us
bring slow bones safe at the lode-ford
keep lupa's bite without our wattles
make her bark keep our children good
save us all from dux of far folk
save us from men who plan.
Now sleep on, little children, sleep on now, while I tell out the
greater suffrages, not yet for young heads to understand:

from David Jones, The Tutelar of the Place

Time itself governed by order

Setting forth from eternity, time returns again to the bosom of eternity, wearied by its long journey...

By virtue of this necessity of returning upon itself, time may be seen to be rooted in eternity, and eternity to be expressed in time. All that is moved is subject to time, but it is from eternity that all contained in the vastness of time is born, and into eternity that all is to be resolved... Thus the universe is ordered by time, but time itself is governed by order.

Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia
Megacosmos, chapter 4

poetry: dealing with things

The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power... not a power of drawing out in black and white an explanation of the mystery of the universe, but the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them and of our relations with them. When this sense is awakened in us, as to objects without us, we feel ourselves to be in contact with the essential nature of those objects...

from Matthew Arnold in Maurice de Guerin (Lectures and Essays in Criticism)

Love is always reciprocal

The attitude of God becomes clearer if we understand what is mysterious about love - all love is always reciprocal. Love is possible only because it is miraculous, because it immediately engenders reciprocity, even if the latter is not conscious, refused or perverted. This is why every great love is always a crucified love. It produces a gift equal to its own grandeur, a royal gift because it is free. In awaiting a fiat of equal vastness, love can only suffer and be a pure oblation...

Evdokimov, Les âges de la vie spirituelle

We two will not save the Church

"We two archimandrites if Iur'ev and Pustynsk monasteries will not save the Church, if it contains some defect"

(Saint) Filaret of Moscow to Innokentii Smirnov
Florovsky, Ways vol 1 p.205

A Priest's Blasphemous Thoughts and Despair - Russian New-Martyr Kronid

(from ORA ET LABORA)

“One evening while standing in the Church of Sts Zosima and
Savvaty during the Vigil,” Archimandrite Kronid related about
himself, “terrible, horrible thoughts of disbelief, doubt, and
blasphemy suddenly and unexpectedly appeared in my head, like
lightening. This happened so quickly and suddenly that they,
like lightening, burnt me with hellfire. Then such thoughts
poured like a river through my consciousness. I was dumb from
fear and horror. Something indescribable and inscrutable,
horrible and strange took place in my soul. These thoughts did
not leave me after I went from church to my cell. These
sufferings were indeed nothing of this earth, but of hell. I was
deprived of food and sleep. Then days, weeks, months passed; a
year, two, three, four passed, but these hellish thoughts
continued to flow involuntarily, continuing to haunt me. I could
find not a place of relief from the anguish and sorrow; I, the
sinner, in my despair, even asked the Lord for death. This
mental warfare was indescribably difficult. Imagine the state of
someone in battle, when two worlds are within you: one world is
bright, of faith and hope in God and the burning desire for
salvation; and the other, a world of darkness, instilling only
destructive and blasphemous thoughts and disbelief. This
unbearable warfare visited me especially when celebrating the
Divine Liturgy. Standing at God’s Altar before the Holy of
Holies and pronouncing the prayer for the action of the Holy
Spirit to consecrate the Holy Gifts, I was at that very same
moment continuing to be overcome mentally by defiled thoughts of
disbelief and doubt. Therefore my tears of repentance knew no
boundaries. Even Hierodeacon Jonathan, who was concelebrating
with me, seeing how bitterly I wept, considered me deranged of
mind. He, of course, thought this out of ignorance. He did not
know what was happening in the depth of my soul. My only
consolation and joy was, in my free minutes, to open the book of
The Lives of the Saints to read about Niphont, the wonder-worker
of Cyprus, who suffered similar thoughts for the course of four
years. Destructive thoughts attacked me with special force on
the twelve great Feast Days. My nerves came undone by all this,
and thoughts of despair and depression pursuit me everywhere.
Losing control of myself, I was forced to hide from myself
knives, forks, rope, and all other sorts of objects and weapons
that could be used for suicide. I lack the words to describe
everything, and the tears of horror and the suffering I endured.
There were moments at night when I was unable to gain control of
myself and ran out of my cell, went to the cathedral, and ran
around it, sobbing, unable to wait the minute when the cathedral
would be opened and I could weep out my grief and unbearable
hardship at the relics of St Sergius. I now remember the words
of an ascetic: ‘Seek out for yourself an Elder and director not
so much of holiness, but of experience in the spiritual life.’ I
was able to test this advice on myself first of all. When in my
great sufferings I turned to one spiritually respected person
and told him of my mental grief, he listened and said: ‘What’s
wrong with you? Lord be with you, how can you give way to such
thoughts?’ I left misunderstood by him, neither alive nor dead
from desperate sorrow. I did not sleep all night. In the
morning, as soon as I had gotten onto my feet, I went, according
to my responsibilities, to painting class, and on the way I came
upon the leader of the painting studio, Hieromonk Micah. Seeing
me upset, he cried out with astonishment: ‘Father Kronid! What’s
wrong with you? You’re unrecognizable! Your face has a special
air of suffering, full of sorrows, unwittingly expressing you
spiritual suffering. Speak, what’s wrong with you?’ Then I told
him of all my inner sorrows and thoughts. He listened with tears
in his eyes, with a special feeling of compassion and Christian
love, as if he himself were enduring these pains with me. He
said: ‘Relax, Father Kronid. This great warfare, this unbearable
enemy, happens to many people. We are not the first. Many, very
many suffer from it. I myself suffered from this warfare for
seven years and reached such a state that once, going to the
Dormition Cathedral for Vespers, I could not even stay there due
to thoughts of disbelief and blasphemy. Running out of church, I
went to the cell of my spiritual father, Hieromonk Avraamy, all
the while shaking and unable to speak. The Elder asked me a few
times: ‘What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? Tell me.’
After many tears all I could say was: ‘Batiushka, I’m
perishing!’ Then the Elder told me: ‘You are not delighting in
these thoughts and are not pleased by them, are you? Why are you
so intolerably alarmed? Relax! The Lord sees your spiritual
martyrdom, and He will help you in all things.’ Then he read the
prayer of absolution over me, blessed me, and sent me away with
peace, and from that day, with God’s help, they have completely
disappeared. They do sometimes appear occasionally, but I pay
them no mind, and they disappear, and I calm down quickly.’
Father Micah’s words were like precious balm poured upon my
soul, and from that time I have received a significant lessening
of this mental warfare.”

Things we don't like

Things we don't like, especially in church life.

Pep Talk
n. Informal
A speech of exhortation, as to a team or staff, meant to instill enthusiasm or bolster morale.

Boosterism
Boosterism is the act of "boosting," or promoting, one's town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as "talking up" the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a visitors' bureau. It is somewhat associated with American small towns. Boosting is also done in political settings, especially in regard to disputed policies or controversial events.

Puffery
Puffery as a legal term refers to promotional statements and claims that express subjective rather than objective views, such that no reasonable person would take them literally.[1] Puffery serves to "puff up" an exaggerated image of what is being described and is especially featured in testimonials.

Employee motivation
Workers in any organization need something to keep them working. Most times the salary of the employee is enough to keep him or her working for an organization. However, sometimes just working for salary is not enough for employees to stay at an organization. An employee must be motivated to work for a company or organization. If no motivation is present in an employee, then that employee’s quality of work or all work in general will deteriorate.

Keeping an employee working at full potential is the ultimate goal of employee motivation. There are many methods to help keep employees motivated. Some traditional ways of motivating workers are placing them in competition with each other.

When motivating an audience, you can use general motivational strategies or specific motivational appeals. General motivational strategies include soft sell versus hard sell and personality type. Soft sell strategies have logical appeals, emotional appeals, advice and praise. Hard sell strategies have barter, outnumbering, pressure and rank. Also, you can consider basing your strategy on your audience personality. Specific motivational appeals focus on provable facts, feelings, right and wrong, audience rewards and audience threat

Pain mirrored in the pain of others

And now he fancied he had the upper hand, it already seemed easier to be compassionate and sorry for her. For it is in the nature of man to hate his own pain mirrored in the pain of others.

Bernanos, The Star of Satan

Creaturely of necessity

He has no need of
the rubric's nudge: osculator altare in medio.
for what bodily act other
would serve here?
Creaturely of necessity
for we are creatures
Our own salvation
were it possible
could be no other than the rubric's osculator

David Jones, from Kensington Mass

our debt to Lionhood

Sunt Leones / Stevie Smith

The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena
By indulging native appetites played what has now been seen a
Not entirely negligible part
In consolidating at the very start
The position of the Early Christian Church.
Initiatory rights are always bloody
And the lions, it appears
From contemporary art, made a study
Of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy
Liturgically sacrificial hue
And if the Christians felt a little blue –
Well people being eaten often do.
Theirs was the death, and theirs the crown undying,
A state of things which must be satisfying.
My point which up to this has been obscured
Is that it was the lions who procured
By chewing up blood gristle flesh and bone
The martyrdoms on which the church has grown.
I only write this poem because I thought it rather looked
As if the part the lions played was being overlooked.
By lions’ jaws great benefits and blessings were begotten
And so our debt to Lionhood must never be forgotten

the proper pleasure of ritual

A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar's head at a Christmas feast -- all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.


C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

The essential content of pure lyricism.

The general meaning of the universe is revealed in the soul of the poet in a two-fold fashion: from its external side as the beauty of nature, and from the internal side as love, and namely in its most intensive and concentrated expression - as sexual love. These two themes: the eternal beauty of nature and the infinite power of love together make up the essential content of pure lyricism.

- Vladimir Solov'ev, 'O liricheskoj poezu'

nothing like the sweetness of God.

Knowledge united to God fulfills every desire. And for the heart that receives it, it is altogether sweetness overflowing on to the earth. For there is nothing like the sweetness of God.

St Isaac of Ninevah, Ascetic Treatises, 38

Hunwicke

In other words, for classical Protestantism, the Eucharist is an acted word; it is a sermon dramatised; it is intended to instruct the witnesses and draw their heart to that saving faith which justifies. But for the Catholic, it is an opus operatum; an action which by the powerful and indefectible promise of Christ is objectively (not merely subjectively and in the heart of the believer) effective. So the celebrant is not in the business of moving or instucting or edifying or converting the viewer - if such may be the the by-products, even useful ones, of the action, they are not its intrinsic purpose. The priest's intrinsic purpose is to confect and offer the Body and Blood of the Redeemer in sacrifice for the sins of men. Failure to realise this is at the heart of what is wrong with so much modern and 'relevant' liturgy; and, to judge from my own reading and experience, the error is just as pervasive and deep-rooted inside the Roman Communion as it is outside it.

http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2008/01/gabbling-mass.html

places in our heart which do not exist yet

There are places in our heart which do not exist yet, and it is necessary for suffering to penetrate there in order that they may come into being.

Leon Bloy

Intellect; Will

Can the mind attain true Christian insight unless the will is comparably consecrated? Is built-in Christian mental orientation inseparably connected with moral obedience? Is knowledge of God acquired only on the further side of commitment? This, and not intellectual adequacy alone, may be the problem behind aberrant theology in our own day.

J. V. Langmead Casserley

Consummation; Being

Thus a certain consummation was reached and a meeting of extremes. And just as physical love is the centre of our life as men and women, so the Holy Mass is the centre of our life as Christians.... The Mass and the Eucharist are not only the centre of Christian worship, they are also the very centre of Christian merrymaking.... as Calvary was the necessary consummation of Christ's life, so the Eucharist is the necessary consummation of our life in Him.

Eric Gill, Autobiography

For ultimately (and what is 'ultimately' but 'firstly'? For ultimately doesn't mean last in time but that which remains after all extraneous and irrelevant matters have been eliminated) ... a good house is simply a house; a bad house hardly a house at all. And the less a thing is good the less it is anything. The more you deprive a thing of what is proper to it, the more you deprive it of being.

Eric Gill, Autobiography

for a brief second seem to know

... it will be sufficient if I say that the first time I saw him writing, and saw the writing that came as he wrote, I had that thrill and tremble of the heart that otherwise I can only remember having had when first I touched her [Mary's] body or saw her hair coming down.... or when I first heard the plainchant of the Church (as they sang it at Louvain in the Abbey of Mont Cesar) or when I first entered the Church of San Clemente in Rome or first saw the North Transept of Chartres from the little alley between the houses... there are many occasions when, in a manner of speaking, you seem to pierce the cloud of unknowing and for a brief second seem to know even as God knows - sometimes, when you are drawing the human body, even the turn of a shoulder or the firmness of a waist, it seems to shine with the radiance of righteousness.

Eric Gill, Autobiography

to make a cell of good living

And if I might attempt to state in one paragraph the work which I have chiefly tried to do in my own life, it is this: to make a cell of good living in the chaos of our world.... But what I hope above all things is that I have done something towards re-integrating bed and board, the small farm and the workshop, the home and the school, earth and heaven.

- Eric Gill, Autobiography

Armenian Washing of the Feet

The ankle's happy, and the little collective of the toe.
The foot is very glad to be in communion with the hand.

- Dennis Silk

Part of the problem is that our temples have become more or
less public spaces. We are far from the disciplina arcana and
a sense that the mysteries are enacted exclusively by and for
'the faithful'. We even embrace the wholly counter-intuitive
notion that our liturgy is an evangelistic tool, "hey everyone,
come and look at us as we worship!" I think that to many early
Christians the idea that we should welcome folks - as opposed to
'the faithful' - welcome folks to 'share' in our worship, especially
our eucharistic worship, would be like inviting folks into the
conjugal bedroom. For them, the mysteries were something fundamentally
and deeply intimate, personal, exclusive to 'the faithful' - and not
even catechumens and penitents could get in. But now liturgy is public
and our temples more or less public and we are pressured into having
a 'welcoming attitude' - and yet we bridle at the mores of the sub -
and post - Christian world we are stuck with 'welcoming' so earnestly...
Sigh.

Sacrifice; slaughter

The other recent war article, not yet publicly delivered, deals with two
perfectly allowable metaphors that have decomposed into polluting
clichés — Sacrifice and Slaughter. True, there is an element of
sacrifice in joining the forces — sacrifice of time and prospects, of
youth and health, but a sacrificial victim is put to death, and no
soldier wants or expects simply to be put to death. And from the
commander’s point of view the loss of troops is a matter of expenditure,
not sacrifice. Similarly with slaughter, the business of a
slaughterhouse is to be efficient, hygienic, and total: there are no
prisoners, no wounded, no survivors, no wooden cross, no letters of
sympathy, no Memorial Day. In the context of war writing, most talk of
sacrifice is prate, most talk of slaughter is rant. This will be an
unpopular statement, but it needs to be made. David Jones touches
legitimately on both metaphors but eschews both clichés.

Bill Blisset, Seventy Years With David Jones

[Bill Blisset reminiscences in Seventy Years With David Jones in the Spring 2010 edition of Flashpoint Magazine - http://www.flashpointmag.com/]

The woes of the Church came up again. It had seemed bad enough years ago when the Caldey Benedictines were dispersed over some scandal (completely unsuspected by DJ), but now! The enemy seems to have taken all the places of power. There was some old bishop who said recently, about the liturgical upheaval, that he had been waiting all his life for it. ‘The bloody old hypocrite! All these years our acts of worship were nothing but play-acting, mummery, bowing and scraping.’ He continued: ‘I was talking about this to a priest a few months ago. I said, you fall in love with a girl, visit her often, kiss her, tell her many times and in many ways that you love her; then you visit her less and less often, give her an occasional peck, tell her that she has your esteem. “What has that to do with it?” asked the priest. It has everything to do with it: it means that what you do in religion, as in love, is the sign of what you are.’

David usually goes to the half-past eight Mass as being the least deformed, but two Sundays ago he had gone to the eleven o’clock, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, and it consisted of the priest poking around with bits of paper until suddenly the words of Consecration were spoken. ‘And then he had the cheek, in the middle of these blasphemies, to preach a bloody sermon on the meaning of the Transfiguration!’

This was vehemently spoken, then David signed and said, ‘Why must all experiments in liturgy be compulsory? Why must they replace the Mass that was known and loved and set up an unbridgeable discontinuity? Why must every one of the new experiments be so thin and truncated and incapable of making any lasting impression?’

He remembers years ago seeing Dom Gregory Dix, whose Shape of the Liturgy he thinks a great work of the spirit. There was some sort of Anglo-Catholic Congress, and a very ancient liturgy was to be celebrated. John Betjeman couldn’t use his ticket, and so David went with Penelope, hoping he wouldn’t be exposed and expelled. He remembers, as I do, Dom Gregory’s stillness and concentration; they did not meet then or ever.

Rather to my surprise, DJ disclosed that he knew the books of both Frazer and Jessie L. Weston before he knew or had heard of The Waste Land.[2] He met T.S. Eliot in the later ?20s when he came to know some literary people, and discovered the poetry of Eliot and Hopkins concurrently. The full, not the abridged Frazer is the thing to read: most of the good of it is in the notes and documentation. (This matches what he said about Spengler some years ago.) He recognized the comparative slightness and tendentiousness of Jessie L. Weston from the beginning, as well as her ‘poetic suggestiveness’.

Francois Mauriac -

Sin is the writer's element; the passions of the heart are the bread and wine he savours daily. (Literature and Sin)

This could be said of the priest, too.

Here is something, perhaps from the same text, but I cannot remember when I jotted it down thirty years ago or so...

... what the world calls happiness is often a trial without reward, a sterile sufferance, a shining but deserted isle ruled by satiety: a fatal affliction...

Ezra Pound: Canzoni: of Incense

The censer sways
And glowing coals some art have
To free what frankincense before held fast
Till all the summer of the eastern farms
Doth dim the sense, and dream up through the light,
As memory, by new-born love corrected
With savour such as only new-love knoweth -
Through swift dim ways the hidden pasts recalleth.

The Reckoning

The Reckoning

My life dates from the day of my father's death
When I lay weeping and it was not for him.
Now I am to continue this degenerescence
Until I enter his dream.

There is nothing a drink cannot settle at forty
Or money at fifty, the cure of all is death.
But all lovers can remember a moment\
When they were not alone.

C. H. Sisson

Dream Song 47

Berryman: Dream Song 47: April Fool's Day, or, St Mary of Egypt

—Thass a funny title, Mr Bones.
—When down she saw her feet, sweet fish, on the threshold,
she considered her fair shoulders
and all them hundreds who have them, all
the more who to her mime thickened & maled
from the supple stage,

and seeing her feet, in a visit, side by side
paused on the sill of The Tomb, she shrank: 'No.
They are not worthy,
fondled by many' and rushed from The Crucified
back through her followers out of the city ho
across the suburbs, plucky

to dare my desert in her late daylight
of animals and sands. She fall prone.
Only wind whistled.
And forty-seven years with our caps on,
whom God has not visited.

Arms outstreched in love toward the further shore

Beyond courage, it is also possible to live in the ancient faith, which asserts that changes in the world, even if they be recognized more as a loss than a gain, take place within an eternal order that is not affected by their taking place. Whatever the difficulty of philosophy, the religious man has been told that process is not all. 'Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore'.

George Grant, Lament for a Nation

[They were holding their arms outstreched in love toward the further shore. Vergil, Aenied Book VI]

transmutes their cheerless blasphemy into a lover's word

When it was quite dark and there was no sound at all except of a difficult breathing coming up from the earth, and intermittently the half-cries of those who would call strongly from their several and lonely places, on
that Creature of Water, or on
some creature of their own kind by name, as on
gentle Margaret on
Amy, on Gwenfrewi
on Bella on Donabelle
on Aunt Birch on
Ned
long dead, on old dead Elfred, on great-uncle George, on Brigit the Kildare maid that kindled the fires for Billy of Clonmor in the hortus of Iverna. On Joan the maid that keeled the pots beyond the beige doors at Mrs Jack Horners. Or on those Bright ones to whose particular cults they were dedicate.
On God the Father of Heaven because with Him there is neither wounding nor unwounding. On God the Word because by Him we know the wound and the salve, on God the Life Giver because His workings are never according to plan and because of the balm under His wing, and because of Him even the G. O. C. In C.'s division before the Mill can shine with the spendour of order. The Sanctifier and bright Lord who is glorious in operation, the dispositioner, the effector of all trans-substantiations, who sets the traverse wall according to the measure of the angel with the reed, who knows best how to gather his epiklesis from that open plain, who transmutes their cheerless blasphemy into a lover's word, who spoke by Balaam and by Balaam's ass, who spoke also by Sgt. Bullcock.
On the Lamb because He was slain.
On the Word seen by men because He could not carry the cross-beam of his stauros.
On the Son of Mary, because like Peredur, He left His Mother to go for a soldier, for he would be a miles too.
On Mary because of her secret piercing, and because, but for her pliant fiat mihi, no womb-burden to joust with the fiend in the list of Hierosolyma, in his fragile habergeon: HUMANA NATURA.
On the Angel in skins because the soldiers asked him a question.
On the key-man, the sword-bearer, because he lied to a nosey girl and warmed his hands at a corporal's brazier.
On the chosen three because they slept at their posts.
On the God of the philosophers who is not in the fire, but who can yet make fire.
On Enoch's shining companion who walks by your side like an intimate confedrate, who chooses suddenly, so that the bearers look in vain for your body, who takes you alive to be his perpetual friend.
On Abraham's God who conditions his vows, who elects his own, who plucks out by tribe and sub-tribe and gens and family.
On the Dux Pacis
Unben Ariel Fryn
Urrol arbennig of Uru-height
sine genealogia, with neither beginning of time
nor end of days, assimilatus autem Filio Dei
MELCHISEDEC Wledig, he who
two millenia before the Abendmahl
foretokened that Oblation made on dies Iovis
noswyl dow Gwener
the day he was to suffer
pridie the Ides of Mars
about the time when bough begins to frond
and stella's aconite brights holt-edge
where men axe down the Dreaming lignum
against tomorrow's Immolation
in the first month
of the Romulean year Ab Urbe Condita
seven hundred and eighty-four.
By Levite intercalation
the Eve of the Preparation Day of
the Feast of Transit
a Dies Magna of obligation
for the gens Iudaica.
Feria V (in Cena Domini) of the Great Week.

Twenty centuries of waste land back
this summus sacredos and Rex Salem
had foreshewn, under the same signa
of Ceres fractured, of
Liber made confluent with
this, thy creature of water
yn y Caregl Rhagorol.

On all the devices of the peoples, on all anointed stones. On fertile goddesses, that covering arbours might spring up on that open plain for poor maimed men to make their couches there.
On her that wept for a wounded palm that she got by a mortal spear – that she might salve a gaping groin that the race might not be without generation.
On the unknown God.
Each calling according to what breasts had fed them – for rite follows matriarchate when y'r brain-pans stove in.

David Jones, from The Book of Balaam's Ass in The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (1974)

Nothing more to long for

After the Eucharist there is nothing more to long for, but we have to stay here and learn how we can preserve this treasure to the end.

St Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ iv.1, 4, 15

Venantius Fortunatus: On Pascha (abridged and adapted)

Hail, festival day, to be reverenced throughout the world, on which God
has conquered hell, and gains the stars! The changes of the year and of
the months, the bounteous light of the days, the splendour of the hours, all things with voice applaud. Hence, in honour of you, the wood with its foliage applauds; hence the vine, with its silent shoot, gives thanks. Hence the thickets now resound with the whisper of birds; amidst these the sparrow sings with exuberant love.

O Christ, Thou Saviour of the world, merciful Creator and Redeemer, the
only offspring from the Godhead of the Father, flowing in an indescribable manner from the heart of Thy Parent, Thou self-existing Word, and powerful from the mouth of Thy Father, equal to Him, of one mind with Him, His fellow, coeval with the Father, from whom at first the world derived its origin! Thou dost suspend the firmament, Thou heapest together the soil, Thou dost pour forth the seas, by whose government all things that are fixed in their places flourish.

Seeing that the human race was plunged in the depth of misery, that Thou
mightest rescue man, didst Thyself also become man: nor wert Thou willing only to be born with a body, but Thou becamest flesh, which endured to be born and to die. Thou dost undergo funeral obsequies, Thyself the author of life and framer of the world, Thou dost enter the path of death, in giving the aid of salvation. The gloomy chains of the infernal law yielded, and chaos feared to be pressed by the presence of the light. Darkness perishes, put to flight by the brightness of Christ; the thick pall of eternal night falls.

But restore the promised pledge, I pray Thee, O power benign! The third day has returned; arise, my buried One; it is not becoming that Thy limbs should lie in the lowly sepulchre, nor that worthless stones should press that which is the ransom of the world. It is unworthy that a stone should shut in with a confining rock, and cover Him in whose fist all things are enclosed. Take away the linen clothes, I pray; leave the napkins in the tomb: Thou art sufficient for us, and without Thee there is nothing.

The Divine Liturgy is the most powerful means of pastoral service

The priestly service includes many responsibilities. The priest must satisfy all the requirements of his rank. They include the duties of teaching, spiritual guidance, missionary work, and divine service, taking care of the sick, prisoners, sorrowful, and many other things....

However, God can give or not give certain talents to a priest as to anyone. A priest may prove to be a poor speaker or incapable administrator of his parish, a dull instructor of the Holy Scripture. He can be an insensitive or even too demanding a confessor. He can be at a loss socially. But this will be forgiven him and will not blot out the worth of his spiritual work, if only he possesses a feeling for the Eucharist, if his main occupation is the stewardship of the Mysteries and service at the Divine Liturgy for the mystical union of himself and his flock to the body of Christ, for the sake of being partakers of the divine nature in the words of the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:4). A priest is given no greater authority or mystical means than this service to the Mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ. This must be the life's work of the priest.... Nowhere and by no method are prayer and spiritual expoit so realized in a priest as in the sacrament of the Eucharistic sacrifice....

The most spiritually compelling priests always took great joy in their celebration of the eucharistic service and its prayers...

Summing up what has been said about the pastoral gift, we must draw the following conclusion. A special gift is given to the pastor in the laying on of hands... the joyous responsibility of renewing and enlivening souls for the Kingdom of God. This renewal can be accomplished in part through a moral influence upon the personality of those guided, through compassionate love for the guilty, through a sympathetic encounter with their personalities, but, mainly, through the Eucharistic service and joining the faithful, through it, to the mysterious Body of the Church. Anyone beside a priest can influence a neighbour. A mother and educator can commiserate. A close friend can share one's sorrows. But the leading of the celebration of the Eucharist is the responsibility of the priest. The Divine Liturgy is the most powerful means of pastoral service... A priest must always remember that he is called to bring God's mysteries into the heart of the community... [this] is the most powerful means of pastoral influence through which to breing about the moral and mystical revival of the faithful and the parish.

Archimandrite Kyprian Kern, Orthodox Pastoral Service

A, a, a, DOMINE DEUS

I said, Ah! what shall I write?
I enquired up and down
(He's tricked me before
with his manifold lurking-places.)
I looked for His symbol at the door.
I have looked for a long while
at the textures and contours.
I have run a hand over the trivial intersections.
I have journeyed among the dead forms
causation projects from pillar to pylon.
I have tired the eyes of the mind
regarding the colours and lights.
I have felt for His wounds
in nozzles and containers.
I have wondered for the automatic devices.
I have tested the inane patterns
without prejudice.
I have been on my guard
not to condemn the unfamiliar.
For it is easy to miss Him
at the turn of a civilisation.

I have watched the wheels go round in case I might see the living crea-
tures like the appearance of lamps, in case I might see the living God
projected from the machine. I have said to the perfected steel, be my sister
and for the glassy towers I thought I felt some beginnings of His creature,
but A,a,a, Domine Deus, my hands found the glazed work unrefined and the
terrible crystal a stage-paste.... Eia, Domine Deus.

David Jones, in The Sleeping Lord and Other Poems (1974)

Offertory

O Lord, our God, who hast created us and brought us into this life; who hast shown us the ways to salvation, and bestowed on us the revelation of heavenly mysteries: Thou art the One who has appointed us to this service in the power of Thy Holy Spirit. Therefore, O Lord, enable us to be ministers of Thy New Covenant and servants of Thy holy Mysteries. Thorough the greatness of Thy mercy, accept us as we draw near to Thy holy altar, so that we may be worthy to offer to Thee this reasonable and bloodless sacrifice for our sins and for the errors of Thy people. Having received it upon Thy holy, heavenly and noetic altar as a sweet spiritual fragrance, send down upon us in return the grace of Thy Holy Spirit. Look down on us, O God, and behold this our service. Receive it as Thou didst receive the gifts of Abel, the sacrifices of Noah, the whole burnt offerings of Abraham, the priestly offices of Moses and Aaron, and the peace offerings of Samuel. Even as Thou didst receive from Thy holy apostles this true worship, so now, in Thy goodness, accept these gifts from the hands of us sinners, O Lord; that having been accounted worthy to serve without offence at Thy holy altar, we may receive the reward of wise and faithful stewards on the awesome day of Thy just retribution.

Liturgy of St Basil