jim henson

Every month, I update my sidebar to reflect the monthly devotion and monthly virtue. For August, the virtue is diligence. After some reflection, I decided the best picture to illustrate diligence was Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The definition of diligence is steadfast application, assiduousness and industry. The reason I chose Mother Teresa to represent this virtue is because she was the very definition of Christian steadfastness. She worked for decades among India's dying poor, running a hospice for those who had no one to be with them in their last hours on earth.

Only after her death did we discover that she suffered from a dark night of the soul for most of her life. For decades she did not hear the voice of God, she did not sense His presence and, at times, she even doubted whether or not He was there at all.

And yet, she kept on. She cared for the poor and for the sisters in her care, she traveled and gave controversial speeches to powerful people and greeted those who came to see her. She met with her confessor and poured out her heart to him in letters.  She steadfastly worked for Christ.

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." — Mother Teresa

This is a beautiful song by Laura Story called Blessings. It talks about the purpose of suffering in this life.

Sunday Snippets is brought to you each week by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing.

This week's theme was the hot weather we've been having.  Music Monday featured Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City.  Art and Beauty Tuesday featured Summer at the Taco Bell, Rt. 22, Hillside, NJ by Valeri Larko.  Poetry Wednesday featured one of my own poems, This Time.

I highlighted a budget food blog, Budget Bytes and the newly restored Cyclorama in Gettysburg.

Finally, I highlighted a very important article by Mark Shea on Catholic Social Justice and the Economy.

 

Mark Shea, a popular Catholic blogger, has written a very pertinent piece on Catholic social justice and the economy.

In it he says, basically, that among many who consider themselves serious Catholics, there are those who talk a lot about the efficacy of sacrifice for women experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, but nothing about the sacrifice the rich must make to serve the poor.

He quotes a reader who initiated the conversation:

We are a religion demanding that the now-pregnant mother of three others must be willing to risk her life during her pregnancy, or to carry to term the product of a rape.

But the 8 digit earning executive gets a pass in his responsibility to continue to create jobs because his taxes are nudged up a wee bit since that's the way the market works. This wealthy man could not possibly be expected to do such oddly heroic things as hire workers when his jets are getting extra taxes.

His enormous excess personal wealth must remain intact and this is held as morally acceptable and in some quarters morally commendable.

If a minor increase in taxes plagues those with excess luxury so much that they do not do what is right and just with their means, they are not living Christian lives.

Pope Benedict had this to say about economics and the Christian: (emphasis mine)

The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone. Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country's international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.

Many of us have born the burden of a job loss brought on by a company paying a bit too much attention to "international competitiveness" and not to the larger picture.  The companies that survive (and they are few and far between) are those who look at the dignity of their workers and the integrity of their organization instead of short term (Pope Benedict says "sometimes very short term") profits for the few at the top.

The Uneasy Marriage of Religion and Politics
The difficulty in this country is one of melding religion and politics.  So far, in the United States, there has never been a political party that has followed all the teachings of the Church.  To be with the church on life issues, but not on poverty and social justice issues may be a "conservative" stance, but it is not the Church's stance. To work for issues of social justice while ignoring the pre-born is also not the Church's stance.

It presents a conundrum for thinking Catholics before every election, but our lives should reflect both life and social justice issues.  We should not just pull a lever (or fill in one of those damnable bubbles) every year (or every 4 years) and feel we've done our duty by the Church.  We need to write our representatives on both sides of the aisle and insist that they do what is best for the country, which includes a safety net for the poor and respect for all life.

A political party which hijacks one issue over another while ignoring an entire group of its constituents in need does not deserve to be held up as the only party for "real" Christians. Such Pharisaical attitudes were precisely the kind of thing Jesus spoke out against. Having the outward trappings of faith without the real concern and love for others is no faith at all.

We are in a crucial time in this country We need to pull together to make sure that all of us have a means to make an honest living and all of us have access to the basics: food, clothing, shelter and dignified healthcare.

No one political party will save you. Only God has done that.  We need to show His love to the world.

I wrote this poem after listening to "Summer in the City" during one of the hottest days of the year. It is called "This Time."

This summer
in this city
brings me back to troubled times
announced in hushed tones
on black
and white
tv; it formed the soundtrack of our lives.

This time it's so hot
that money melts
quicker than we can make it;
quicker than the company
can decide
to put enough aside
to throw our way
like the the biblical rich man
to the dogs.

This time, the violence is horrifically new
and yet, pit-of-the-stomach familiar.
All in HD
24 hours a day
for our eternal
entertainment.

This time, we are walled away,
each alone in our
climate-controlled cubicle
complete with computer
that goes everywhere we go
to distract us
from reality.

It is happening again,
but this time,
I don't see

a revolution.

 I saw the newly restored Cyclorama in Gettysburg today with a friend.  They've moved the original circular painting to the new visitor's center and it has been restored.

I was amazed at the beauty of the artwork, both 2 and 3 dimensional.  In the foreground of both of these examples, you will see 3-dimensional reconstructions (the fence and the cannon with surrounding grounds and foliage) that blend seamlessly into the painted background.

During the show, you see the sky change color as the sun rises, watch and hear bombs explode all around you as the battle is explained.

My only complaint is they usher you out fairly quickly, but they do give you some time to walk around and see the painting after the explanation is over.

The museum is included in the price and between the 2 attractions, it takes the better part of a day to complete.

There's lots to see here to keep you coming back.

I was impressed with this picture in terms of its realism but I wasn't going to use it until I decided to use Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City as yesterday's Music Monday.  I thought this picture went perfectly with the idea of Summer in the City with its depiction of the scene we often see when looking for a rest from a long summer drive.  I think maybe the thermometer under the Citgo sign should read a bit higher than a mere 99 though!

Oh yeah, and, notice the cheap gas prices!!

I've discovered a great blog--Budget Bytes.  They post great, inexpensive recipes *and* the cost per recipe and per serving.

I think this is a great idea!  Not all of us have the money to go out and buy expensive ingredients and few of us want to eat the same thing every day.  Budget Bytes wants to prevent both.

It has a section on stocking your kitchen.  This section is very basic and limited, which, when cooking on a budget, is nice to see.  Each item, from individual types of spices, to plastic storage containers, is listed by category and by price.

The website recommends portioning out your recipes to avoid overeating and further stretch your budget.  They have a variety of recipes including desserts and drinks.

Stop by and take a look.

Happy cooking!

This song always struck me as the epitome of what it was like to spend a hot summer in a highly populated area. This summer, it seems even more apt.

I always loved the way they used the suggestion of traffic noises throughout.

The lyrics are descriptive too: hotter than a match head!!

Stay cool everyone!

Sunday Snippets is brought to you each week by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing.

This week I talked about Aaron Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man--very July and very American.  We looked at Jeff Ward's painting, Eagle-Owl, a beautiful brown and black eagle done in a painterly style.  For Poetry Wednesday we looked at Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat.

I talked about weeds in light of last week's Gospel reading, put up some more pictures of Pen Mar Park, and reviewed Stephen Fry's documentary on manic depression.

Finally, I wrote a piece on expression of doubt in religious education.

Matt Emerson writes a very insightful article on doubt and religious education called Teaching to the Tests of Faith.  In it he talks about how his sophomore religion class dealt with the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. He decided to take his cue from President Obama's quotation of Psalm 46.  While the President only quoted parts of it, Emerson went over the whole thing with his class with the lights out to give them a sense of the sacred.

The psalm has in it the famous line, "God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in times of distress." When Mr. Emerson asked his students if that was true for them they began to express their doubts and a very important discussion then occurred.

Rather than shoot down their misgivings about the efficacy of prayer and even the existence of God, Emerson let them express their doubts.  The fruitfulness of the discussion lead him to ask whether or not religious education, at least for that age group, should be shifted away from answers to questions.

I wholeheartedly think it should.  As a member of the generation who "didn't learn anything" in my years in Catholic school, I have long been a proponent of exposing children to the richness of the faith from an early age.  Emerson implies that this was done for these children.  They did all the right things, participated in the liturgical life of the Church and still they expressed grave doubts.

I have come to realize that this is normal.  The over-focus on filling children with answers "while they are still in (Catholic) school" or religious ed leaves them feeling misunderstood and not listened to.  Certainly by the time a child is junior high or high school age, religious educators should be carefully chosen mentors to help them express their doubts and questions and work through them.

Religion is about the "big questions."  We need to stop being afraid of our children asking them and of asking them ourselves.

This is a favorite poem of mine that I wanted to share. I wish I could find the version my son had on tape when he was a kid.

The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive is a documentary by Stephen Fry, one-time comedy partner of Hugh Laurie (lately the star of House.)  Fry talks with both American and English sufferers of bipolarity about the effect of their illness and examines his own history and his current symptoms to decide whether or not he should resume treatment.

He discusses the (apparently American) trend to diagnose this disease rather early and muses about the link between his own creativity and mania.

In part 2, he searches for the answer to his apparently worsening symptoms by talking to people such as American actor Richard Dreyfus, who has been on lithium since the 1970's.  When he goes through a depressive episode during filming, he talks openly about it rather than his usual coping mechanism of hiding in his house and searches out a family whose grown daughter had resisted medication and hospitalization because of the fear of stigma.

He faces his fear of ECT and psychiatric hospitals by researching both and speaks to a doctor who keeps her symptoms at bay through diet and a lower stress lifestyle.  Another woman maps her moods.

Fry also takes us through one of his rather manic moods where he shops with a therapist along to rein him in. Then he meets with a young lady whose depression and its effects are making her feel suicidal.

While some portions of this documentary are difficult to watch, it is a well done, in-depth look at the illness and its treatments.

Today's painting is Eagle-Owl by Jeff Ward.  I love the painterly style of this piece.  You can see the brush strokes, like feathers, all over this owl.  It's so fluffy, you just want to reach out and touch him.

The whole picture is done in shades of brown, black and white, the background almost an extension of the owl itself.  The feathers seem to be blowing in the cold wind; the owl is fluffing himself up against the cold.

July just seems to lend itself to Aaron Copland. Today's Music Monday is Fanfare for the Common Man, written by Copland and commissioned by conductor Eugene Goossens for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to stir patriotic spirit after America's entry into the second world war.

You can hear the percussion mimicking the startling roar of the guns in the opening measures and then their echo fades slowly away.

 Here are some more pictures of Pen Mar Park in Maryland.

The Appalachian Trail, which runs from Maine to Georgia, goes through this park, right behind the music and dancing pavilion.
This flag stands right behind the sign overlooking Maryland and Pennsylvania.
 Here is a view of the trail going north towards Maine.  The park ends not too far down this path.
This railroad is still in use and runs approximately parallel to the Appalachian trail.  We saw an automatic oiling pump on part of the track that apparently oils the trains as they go by.

Today's Gospel reading is the parable of the sower. The sower (God) sows the good seed but when harvest time comes, weeds have grown up among the plants, sowed by the enemy. The servants want to separate the weeds from the good plants, but the owner refuses, not wanting to throw away good with the bad. He tells them to wait until the harvest time.

God always gives us a second chance. He wants to give us enough time to grow. Only at harvest time will God see whether or not we have yielded a crop of good or bad. In this parable, Jesus is counseling us to be patient with ourselves and with others--with the evil that is in the world. The fact that both good and evil grow together is all part of what this transient world is all about. We are to have patience with others and with ourselves.

Also, sometimes, what we may think is a weed, may not be. It is for God to judge, at the end of time, not for us. As Romans 8:28 reminds us, "All things work together for good." God uses the weeds in our lives for the greater good.

Brother Charles at Praise and Bless tells us that this parable can go even deeper than that. God sees both our good and our selfish intentions and will harvest out the good and forgive the bad.

Also in today's Gospel is the parable of the mustard seed. The mustard seed, in ancient Palestine, grows into an invasive, weedy plant. How is the Kingdom of Heaven like that? God does not work in organized little boxes. Jesus came to shake up the status quo, both then and now. His love is a radical love--stopping at no one, no race, creed, gender or status. God has no ulterior motive--he is love.

This even further, illustrates the point of the first parable. What we think may be something to be weeded out of our lives, may have been planted there on purpose.

 Our weed may indeed be a mustard seed.

Sunday Snippets is brought to you each week by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing.

This week we really did wind up Vivaldi and we talked about the colorful Girl with Two Caged Doves by John Frederick Louis.  Our poem was Let it Go by e.e. cummings.  I also posted about the media feeding frenzy surrounding Casey Anthony and some beautiful local scenery in nearby Maryland.

The Casey Anthony trial and its resulting mass hysteria has prompted me to think of mercy.

I admit to being carried along by the auto-accident-like atmosphere of the whole thing. It is very difficult once you get hooked on a news story like this one, which plays out way beyond its normal news cycle, to stop feeding into the media hype. It has become something horrific on the side of the road that we don't want to focus on, but can't seem to look away from.

Our "news" is now so far from anything newsworthy as to be unbelievable. We are no better than medieval mobs chasing a fellow villager and crying out for blood. We now do this for entertainment and sport!  Now some of the jurors are fleeing Florida for their lives because the public's taste for blood has been fed by the media to the point where death threats have occurred for the jurors and the Anthonys alike.

What is needed now is Mercy. Jesus stopped the mob who was getting ready to stone the woman caught in adultery by reminding them that all sin.

This trial and these people are real.  They are not characters in a movie or a "reality" tv show.  The same is true for any sensational news story that we hang onto--these are real people and they are crying out, as we all cry out, for God's tender mercies to be poured onto them like a healing balm.

Jesus came to heal and He came to cure.  He expects us to do the same. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus showed his listeners that to participate in His healing ministry was more important than outwardly appearing religious and pious.  Will we be stoning these sinners brought before us by our entertainment media, or will we be surrounding them in the soothing balm of Christ's love?

To gather the strength necessary for such a mission, Jesus spent entire nights, hours and hours, in prayer.  Perhaps it is time we turn away from our "entertainment" to the reality of God and His mercy and ask Him to come heal our broken world.

This week's poem is Let it Go by e. e. cummings.  Cummings was born in Massachusetts in 1894 and was a pioneer of modern poetry in his experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling and sound in poetry.   Here is his poem--Let it Go.  


let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

Today's painting is Girl with Two Caged Doves by John Frederick Lewis.

I love the bright colors in her apron, shirt (which you see at her waste and collar) and scarf.  The warm sun pervades the entire picture and fills it with bright happiness.  The subtle orange-red of her lips matches the red throughout the picture.

The eye is drawn to the navy blue pillow on the bed and the way the sun shines on it from the window.

The sunlight throws a pattern from the window onto the pastel pattern in her skirt.

The beautifully carved wooden door makes a compelling backdrop for the visually rich picture.

The dove in her hand seems to trust her.  In searching the picture for the second dove, I noticed the small table at her feet with the ceramic vase and round, blood-orange colored fruit.

The second dove is not completely in the frame, its wings spread as if, unlike his cage-mate, he wants to be free.

Today is the final section of Vivaldi's Gloria: Cum Sancto Spiritu.  I almost hate to post this, having mislead you into thinking that we were finished with Vivaldi!  Enjoy nevertheless.  It is a wonderful piece.



The Gloria that we used to celebrate Easter, has taken us through the month of June and into July. Let us pray that God indeed gives our United States an infusion of the Holy Spirit (Sancto Spiritu).

I wanted to share 2 views from High Rock in Washington County, MD.  High Rock is the highest point on the Appalachian Trail in Maryland.

We stopped by there today with some friends after Mass after listening to some big band dance music at a nearby park.

I came home with a dozen eggs (brown, green and blue) from my friend's chickens.

Sunday Snippets is brought to you each week by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing.

This week was an exciting week at the Well. We listened to Lincoln Portrait by American composer Aaron Copeland, looked at a historic miniature that may be the first portrait of Lincoln ever painted, Read A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes and prayed Psalm 51.

Have a great week, everyone!

Today is Friday, still a penitential day in the Church. Let's meditate on Psalm 51, the ultimate penitential psalm.

I made this slide show years ago.

A Dream Deferred


What happens to a dream deferred?


Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?


Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.


Or does it explode?

If you live long enough, you will experience a "dream deferred."  Langston Hughes was speaking of an entire people who were prevented from living the so-called American dream, but we all feel this pain sometimes in our lives.

Lincoln Portrait was written by American composer Aaron Copland and is one of the premiere pieces of American music.

Today is the 235th anniversary of the founding of the United States and this weekend was the 148th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War so I thought it would be appropriate to use this piece, which remembers Lincoln in words and music, played by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and narrated by Gregory Peck.

Sunday Snippets is brought to you each week by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing.

We finally reach the end of Vivaldi's Gloria!  Take a listen to this week's Music Monday and enjoy. Art and Beauty Tuesday was Lego street art--creative and unusual.  Poetry Wednesday was Roses by George Elliott.

This week I also talked about PTSD awareness, finding your prayer style and the radical love of the Sacred Heart.