Tantum Ergo

April 8, 2011 Leave a comment

“When Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being “in Christ” or of Christ being “in them” this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them: that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts –that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by the bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion…There is no good in trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.” C. S. Lewis

I will never understand why the Bible/Baptist churches teach that the communion wafer and grape juice are just symbols or tokens of Christ’s sacrifice and not the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. It is these same churches that preach that Christ dwells within the believer. Why cannot that same Christ dwell in the bread and wine?

The Holy Spirit came down as a dove. And, God moved His people with a cloud and pillar of fire. Manna. The burning bush. The Temple. These all were obviously physical manifestations that required the eyes of faith to rightly see that God was in them. The same applies to the bread and wine.

“But Jesus didn’t give an inch. “Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has eternal life and will be fit and ready for the Final Day. My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you. In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me. This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats this Bread will live always.””

St John (6:32-58)

“Well, if [the Eucharist] is just a symbol, to hell with it.”–Flannery O’Connor, when discussing Catholicism with writer Mary McCarthy

(Flannery) “O’Connor was often critical of what she considered Protestant shortcomings. “A Protestant habit is to condemn the Church for being authoritarian and then blame her for not being authoritarian enough”. She had a healthy respect for fundamentalist Protestants, and she was alarmed at the liberal theology she heard coming from some Protestant camps. “One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so and that religion is our own sweet invention”. She understood the difference between cheap grace and costly grace. “What people don’t realize,” she wrote to Louise Abbot, “is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross”.”From this web page.

Read more.

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Mordorian Madness

April 7, 2011 Leave a comment

 

Dear Government,

 Even if you were to shut down due to a budget crisis our national debt never shuts down.  In fact, our national debt continues to grow and mushroom. Soon, Middle Earth and the lives of men will be destroyed. This fact pleases The Dark Lord Sauron but not us Hobbits.

Destroy the Ring that controls you!

Sincerely,

Bilbo T. Baggins

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The Writing on the Wall

April 5, 2011 Leave a comment

Ob-a-Man is running for re-election.  This UberMan has never stopped campaigning (except while making hops and malt into Obama beer:  PrezFez.  He must be getting ready for another beer summit.).

It is said that he will gather one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) to finance his campaign.  (This money, put into the hands of the common folk, would do much to stimulate the economy.  Ob’s ego is stimulated enough.)

 Obama, the Enabler:  “We can Win the Future… if you just keep buying the lottery tickets I’m selling!”; “Carpe pecunia!”

 (Obamany:   Asking your husband if you can spend more money than you as a couple will ever have in your life and telling him that your household will be better off for it! “Honey, let’s make the kids pay our bills. Today, we live!)

Obama:  LOL, COL (cry out loud).

Mene Mene Tekel Upsharin

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Driftless By Design

April 3, 2011 Leave a comment

When John gave her the ring he hoped that marriage would follow soon after. It did. Mary said yes. His unspoken question was answered with her unspoken assent on the same day. She simply nestled her head against his neck in silent agreement. They were married in June of that year, 1957.

The couple spent much of their time together in nature. There were yearly camping trips to lakes, mountains and forests. Twilight and sunrise often shared the light of their campfires. By way of nature’s vast expanse, the couple became closer. For them, there was never a thought of sitting in front of the television set night after night, pining for something more. They chose what they wanted: the panoply of the natural world; the broad-shouldered earth.

Wisconsin’s Governor Dodge State Park became the site of an annual destination for the couple. The state park, located only three and a half hours from their home, is demarcated in southwestern Wisconsin. It lies within driftless area of the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The Mississippi, Chippewa, Kickapoo and Black rivers flow through this area, dissecting the uneven landscape and forcing the weaving of man-made roads.

The park offers two lakes: Cox Hollow and Twin Valley Lakes. The couple’s favorite campsite, near Cox Hollow Lake, is nestled among oaks, white pines and hickory trees. Through a clearing at the edge of their campsite the couple viewed a gently sloping field blanketed with goldenrod and sunflowers. At one time Mary told John that the Monarch butterflies that silently fluttered among this dappled setting were faeries. John told Mary that the Hummingbirds that hovered in their camp sought only the sweetest of nectars – his Mary.

The road trip to Governor Dodge was easy. The ride became a time to talk about nothing and about everything, a means to embrace the other. As was their way, they would pack on Thursday evening. Then, On Friday morning they would drive up in hopes of getting their favored spot before the weekend campers arrived.

When they arrived at Governor Dodge they paid their campsite fee, found their site and unpacked the car. Everything would be in its place within an hour. They prepared well.

Their first afternoon was usually spent sitting on the grassy hillside looking down on the sandy beach of Cox Hollow Lake. The scattered oak trees blocked the high afternoon sun, while a cool lake breeze ascended up the hill. These surroundings made it easy for John and Mary to nap, even though children whooped and wailed when splashed with lake water. Later in the afternoon the air would become filled with the cacophony of weekend visitors greeting each other.

When dinner time came around John and Mary had cooking down pat: Coleman stove, cast iron skillet, freshly caught walleye fried in butter with tear-prompting onions and brought-from-home herbs sizzling alongside. Dessert was an ice cream bar bought at the camp store just up the hill from the lake. And, a cup of Thermos coffee.

The undiluted sprawling sky above Governor Dodge State Park provided the couple with an open air observatory. At night they would drive out to an isolated ridge road that passed through an open field. They would park in the grass, get out and sit on the hood of their car. It seemed to them that the darkened heavens published dot-to-dot pictures: Ursa Major with its asterism The Big Dipper affixing north.

John and Mary would trace the points of light with their fingers. Occasionally, the celestial array of distant lights became cloaked by screeching bat swarms flying in high speed pursuit of blood thirsty mosquitoes. Mary liked the bats, but only for this reason.

After midnight, the couple would return to their campsite. They would make one final inspection of their food storage. They knew that robbing raccoons were on the prowl. When they were both ready, they quickly entered their tent hoping to keep the uneaten mosquitoes on the outside with the bats. Once inside, they replayed their favorite memory.

© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Filed under marriage, Short Story, sketch Tagged with , , , ,

The Junction of Loneliness

April 2, 2011 Leave a comment

Bright Light at Russell’s Corners (1946) by George Ault (1891-1948): elements of disquiet within meticulous order. The Poetry of Darkness.

The personal life of American painter George Ault was overwhelmed with tragedy: the suicide of his brother Harold in 1915, the death of his mother in a mental hospital in 1920, the death of his father in 1929, the loss of family fortune in the stock market crash, also 1929, and the suicides of his two remaining brothers soon after.

John Ruggles, Ault’s friend, once recalled that Ault “painted to make order out of chaos.”

Woodstock, New York. 1949. The hard-drinking Ault was dark, melancholy and brooding. He saw himself as fiercely independent, setting himself apart from other artists.

His paintings evoke mystery, darkness, smallness, quiet. And, loneliness.

Of his later paintings, such as January, Full Moon; Black Night; August Night; and Bright Light at Russell’s Corners (pictured), The New York Times once wrote:
“The setting is the same in each case—a solitary streetlight, the same bend in the road, the same collection of barns and sheds—but seen from different vantage points. In them, Ault has summoned up the poetry of darkness in an unforgettable way—the implacable solitude and strangeness that night bestows upon once-familiar forms and places.”
From this article.

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Aaron Copland – The Promise of Living

April 1, 2011 Leave a comment

*******
The Tender Land.

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Antonin Dvorak – Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” – 3rd movement

April 1, 2011 Leave a comment

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Ping Revelation

March 29, 2011 1 Comment

Over the years my position on what I consider some major life issues has changed. This is one of those issues:

Born into an Evangelical/Baptist home I soon came to understand that communion, as it is called in the Bible Church, is to be celebrated about once a month. I was told that the church didn’t want to wear out its meaning by having the Lord’s Supper every week.  Later, I would understand this to mean that the Free Churches wanted to be different from Catholic churches.

As a student at the Moody Bible Institute, my Personal Evangelism teacher, Mr. Winslett, taught us that Catholicism is a cult much like Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, Seventh Day Adventism and even demonism. I remember the teacher telling us that Mary, iconic Mary, was an idol. So, like many of my Free Church brethren, I became rather smug when it came to Catholics. They were beneath our Free Church ways. Besides, the Catholic Church had too much going on and the Free Church, striped of any vestige of symbol and ceremony was “Free” (and sterile) of all the trappings of Roman rigamarole. There is, of course, more history to the reformation than what I am describing here. One can read Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses for more information. But, indulge me, please, (and not as Johann Tetzel would) for the moment.

At the Bible Church I had attended you could come and get your spiritual fodder for the week. A sermon or two and a banquet here and there would deem to hold you over. Forget liturgy, we were free to stand up for a hymn, sit down for the announcements, listen to the organ during offering, stand up again for another pre-sermon hymn, sit down for the sermon and then walk the aisle – to the pulpit or out the door. Voilà, church. And, for me, church for fifty years. Throw in the opposing Continental and Analytic worldviews in modern thinking and I became sans joie d’vivre. My Sola fide needed not only to hear the Word of God, it needed to intuit God’s presence with me. And, this wasn’t happening for me at this church despite all of the contemporary emotive songs invoking God’s presence.

After this half-century of spiritual famine I came to realize that this poor diet – the Diet of Words – wasn’t sufficient for my life. And, the abundantly stocked shelves of Abundant Life Christian self-help books were of no help to me. I needed substance. Substance. Substance and Symbol.

At age fifty I began attending an Anglican church. Now, I regularly eat the Real Food and Drink of Life – the Eucharist. And, hearing the spoken Word of God, praying from The Book of Common Prayer, reciting the Nicene Creed, seeing the symbol of the cross and participating in the liturgy which points to the Great Feast of Thanksgiving (and not the sermon), my spirit has revived. I meet the Lord at this Well of Sychar where deep springs of Living Water come to the surface.

Phyllis Melanchthon (aka, Sally  Paradise)

http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html

“When Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being “in Christ” or of Christ being “in them” this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them: that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts –that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by the bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion…There is no good in trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.” C. S. Lewis

Filed under Anglicanism, Christian character, Christianity, Life As I See It Tagged with , ,

Heaven

March 26, 2011 Leave a comment

Beyond all my “Imagine,”
There, You Are.
The Ligature between God and man. The Crimson Thread.

The Living Word, unbound Substantive Reality,
Lifted from gilded pages to eternity’s masthead: Alpha and Omega,
Now walks among us with ruddy beard, white gown and purple sash,
Forever marked by love for me.

He is the True One, Unfiltered,
Full Colored, not developed black and white,
Heaven’s Endless Light both searching and present,
Light once diffused and then restored,
Among prisms of white calla lilies.

Heaven,
A hope not disappointed, no longer dot-to-dot discovered, And,
A harvest, garnering displaced ones into
The dancing embrace of the Triune God:
“That where I am, there you may also be.”

Holy, Holy, Holy. Trisagion.

Come, Lord Jesus.
Heaven.

© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christianity, Poems, Poetry Tagged with , ,

Spring Training

March 26, 2011 Leave a comment

Spring training, you called me at home.
I was waiting and wondering how long this bullpen life would go on.
Tomorrow’s better because of you.
Your impertinence
I’m sure to forgive
This interruption is mine to believe.

Bat me and field me until I’m a legend.
I am cleanup. I am centerfield.
Rank me among the leathered, the pliable,
The broken-in. And worn.
Fit to the purpose, Baseball, with your hand in mine.

The game begins again,
When Spring throws a heater.

© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

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