Theology is not a school of thought but a gymnasium of life.



Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland



CHAPTER IX



`You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!' said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into Alice's, and they walked off together.



Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and thought to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made her so savage when they met in the kitchen.



`When I'm a Duchess,' she said to herself, (not in a very hopeful tone though), `I won't have any pepper in my kitchen at all. Soup does very well without--Maybe it's always pepper that makes people hot-tempered,' she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, `and vinegar that makes them sour--and camomile that makes them bitter--and--and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn't be so stingy about it, you know--'



She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. `You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.'



Charles Lutwidge Dawson, the Oxford mathematician who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll, sent the handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell on this date in 1862.



Greetings to all White Rabbits, Mock Turtles, Mad Hatters, and March Hares.

Name This Martian Robot



NASA will launch two robots to Mars next year and you can help name them. The Mars Exploration Rovers are scheduled for launch on or near this coming June, when Mars and Earth are relatively close in their orbits. The landing craft are expected to touch down on Mars in January 2004 and deploy the robot rovers shortly thereafter. Rovers have the capability to crawl about 100 meters each day of their planned 90-day mission. The mission's scientific purpose is to seek out and inspect interesting rocks and terrain that could give clues to the past of Mars.

I spent Saturday in Manhattan and had planned to attend Mass at The Church of Our Saviour for the Feast of Christ the King. Father George William Rutler, an influence on my life since my college days at Villanova University, is pastor there and the subtle brilliance and reverent beauty of his preaching is a blessing.



I'd gone north to New York for an exhibit of Spanish art at the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, The Ages of Mankind: Time to Hope, which was even more engrossing and moving than I'd expected and I lingered there, staying long enough that I needed to modify my plans and attend a later Mass. I made my way south to 50th Street and went with hundreds of others, native and visitor, through the bronze doors of Saint Patrick's Cathedral and felt, like them and as always, at home in that cavernous space that is never cold, but alive with humanity and faith, luminous with His Presence.



The Feast of Christ the King, but the director of music chose also one of the great hymns of Isaac Watts, a blessed reminder that our King is also our Good Shepherd. We sang to the anonymous tune Resignation. And a fitting memorial. The gifted and devoted Isaac Watts died on this date in 1748.



My Shepherd Will Supply My Need

"The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because the fetal tissues become more cohesive and difficult to dismember. This problem is accentuated by the fact that the fetal pelvis may be as much as 5cm in width...A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus..."



(Warren Hern, Abortion Practice, p.134)



And we look again at the child.

The admirable Terry Jones writes: The Acts of Cecilia has the following: "While the profane music of her wedding was heard, Cecilia was singing in her heart a hymn of love for Jesus, her true spouse." It was this phrase that led to her association with music, singers, musicians, etc.



The Feast of Saint Cecilia is celebrated on 22 November.



Here are the concluding lines, the Grand Chorus, of A Song For Saint Cecilia's Day by John Dryden.



As from the pow'r of sacred lays

The spheres began to move,

And sung the great Creator's praise

To all the bless'd above;

So when the last and dreadful hour

This crumbling pageant shall devour,

The trumpet shall be heard on high,

The dead shall live, the living die,

And music shall untune the sky.

She's the dew upon the petals

of a blossom in the spring.



Ganns Deen, bursting with happiness, posts a poetic tribute to Cathy, his new bride.



A unity of love and purpose, in Him, shown forth to others, Lux in Domino.



Ephesians 5: 8-10: For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

There's discussion here and there of the accuracy of Rep. Nancy Pelosi's self-description as a "conservative Catholic." Her fervent promotion of the abortion license and her sympathetic embrace of the anti-Catholic Frances Kissling suggest that such a description of the Member of Congress from San Francisco is something less than accurate. It also suggests a facility at dissimulation that Alger Hiss might have envied.



Both Rep. Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi (1962) and Kansas Governor-elect Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius (1970) are graduates of Trinity College in Washington, DC., a foundation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but differ in mind and go their different ways, as if Christ Himself were divided (Cf. 1 Cor.1, 13). Such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature.



But the Lord of Ages wisely and patiently follows out the plan of grace on our behalf, sinners that we are. In recent times more than ever before, He has been rousing divided Christians to remorse over their divisions and to a longing for unity. ... This movement toward unity is called 'ecumenical.' Those belong to it who invoke the Triune God and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, doing this not merely as individuals but also as corporate bodies. For almost everyone regards the body in which he has heard the Gospel as his Church and indeed, God's Church. All however, though in different ways, long for the one visible Church of God, a Church truly universal and set forth into the world that the world may be converted to the Gospel and so be saved, to the glory of God.



from Unitatis Redintegratio, the decree on ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, issued 21 November 1964. The prayer remains the same, growing in urgency and in fervent hope, "Ut unum sint."

During the next ten days, we mark the anniversaries of the deaths of both Anthony Johnson Showalter, who died in Chattanooga on 16 November 1924 and Elisha Albright Hoffman, who died in Chicago on 25 November 1929.



Showalter had been moved by the news that two of his former students had lost their wives within days of each other to compose a melody, and penned a refrain on the text of Deuteronomy 33:27: The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. At Showalter's request, Hoffman wrote the verses of this favorite of campground, meeting, and church.



Leaning On The Everlasting Arms



What a fellowship, what a joy divine,

Leaning on the everlasting arms;

What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,

Leaning on the everlasting arms.



Refrain



Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;

Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.



O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,

Leaning on the everlasting arms;

O how bright the path grows from day to day,

Leaning on the everlasting arms.



Refrain



What have I to dread, what have I to fear,

Leaning on the everlasting arms;

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,

Leaning on the everlasting arms.

We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of mankind does not depend on material success; nor on sciences that cloud the intellect. Neither does it depend on arms and human industries, but on Jesus alone.



Today is the memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, patroness of emigrants and displaced persons, of orphans, of immigrants, and of hospital administrators, the first citizen of the United States to be canonized. She is one of the heroic saints of New York depicted on the great bronze doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.

The Little Ghost Nebula



This beauty was discovered by Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) who, in describing his career, said of himself that 'I have looked further into space than any human being did before me.' Herschel has been described by a contemporary expert as 'the first man to give a reasonably correct picture of the shape of our star-system or galaxy; he was the best telescope-maker of his time, and possibly the greatest observer who ever lived.' His sister and collaborator Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) was the first woman scientist and astronomer to be elected to the Royal Society.

The new biography of Max Beerbohm, that witty and ironic master of his craft, by N. John Hall is an event. And an essay by Joseph Epstein is one of the pleasures of contemporary literature. So you can be certain that you'll enjoy and learn from this review in The Weekly Standard.



The Beerbohm Cult

Why Max Beerbohm is the world's greatest minor writer

On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, whose arguments in the anti-slavery newspaper The Saint Louis Observer were deeply influenced by The Second Great Awakening, was killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending his press.



Will Lamartine Thompson was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, on the same date ten years later, in 1847. The evangelist Dwight Moody, on his deathbed, spoke to Thompson about one of his hymns, saying "Will, I would rather have written Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling than anything I have been able to do in my whole life."



In keeping with the theme of exile in the last couple of entries, another of Thompson's fine hymns may be more appropriate to the anniversary.



Lead Me Gently Home, Father



Lead me gently home, Father,

Lead me gently home,

When life’s toils are ended

And parting days have come;

Sin no more shall tempt me,

Ne’er from Thee I’ll roam,

If Thou’lt only lead me, Father,

Lead me gently home.



Lead me gently home, Father,

Lead me gently home.

Lest I fall upon the wayside,

Lead me gently home.



Lead me gently home, Father,

Lead me gently home,

In life’s darkest hours, Father,

When life’s troubles come;

Keep my feet from wand’ring,

Lest from Thee I roam,

Lest I fall upon the wayside,

Lead me gently home.

So many of the results of the elections yesterday are a cause of celebration that there's an added brightness as we pause to renew our thanks for the blessings of liberty. But our political freedoms are such a rare good fortune in the history of the human pilgrimage on the earth that the theme of exile in the preceding post on Dante stays with me. The thoughts of exile are made even more somber in remembering that the Bolshevik Revolution began on this date in 1917 and in thinking of the grim cost in human misery that was its harvest.



I don't read Russian but have been told that the current issue of Russia's premier philosophy journal Voprosy Filosofii is entirely devoted to Lenin's deportation of many of Russia's leading thinkers and artists aboard the "Philosophy Ship" in 1922. The philosopher and Christian thinker Nikolai Berdyaev was among those sent into exile and later wrote about the experience in his autobiography:



When we crossed the Soviet border at sea, there was the feeling that we were out of danger; until then no one was sure they would not make us turn around. But together with this feeling of entering a zone of great freedom, I had a feeling of deep sorrow at parting with my native land ...



And there were others in later years. It's impossible, for example, to forget the lines of anguish and pain added to the face of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who had already suffered and borne witness to so much, when he was expelled from his Russian homeland in 1974, torn from the land that he saw as a mother.



Our political freedoms come bound with a terrible responsibility and are only a part of the radical freedom to which we're called, as Berdyaev wrote in Christianity and Class War: Man's freedom is indissolubly linked with his obligations. Man's freedom is not a claim, but a duty, not so much what he demands as what is demanded of him. Man must be free. God demands and expects this of him.



We hear again the voice of the Lord Jesus in His command to Peter in Luke 5:4: Duc in altum --- Put out into the deep water. Meditation on this command has been a consistent theme of Pope John Paul II and is central to the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, in which His Holiness entreats us to respond to the loving command of the Lord: Let us go forward in hope! A new millennium is opening before the Church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ. The Son of God, who became incarnate two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, is at work even today: we need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart to become the instruments of his work.

Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta

più caramente; e questo è quello strale

che l'arco de lo essilio pria saetta.



Tu proverai sì come sa di sale

lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle

lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.



E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,

sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia

con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle.



<<<<< >>>>>



You shall leave everything you love most dearly:

this is the arrow that the bow of exile

shoots first.



You are to know the bitter taste

of others' bread, how salt it is, and know

how hard a path it is for one who goes

descending and ascending others' stairs.



And what will be most hard for you to bear

will be the scheming, senseless company

that is to share your fall into this valley."



The prophecy of Cacciaguida in La Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XVII, 55-63 (translated by Allen Mandelbaum).



Dante was sentenced to death, in absentia, by the magistrates of his city of Florence on November 6, 1315. He avoided the penalty only by continuing in exile from what he called in Inferno XXIII his birthplace and home on "the fair river of Arno, at the great town."

Augustus Montague Toplady, preacher, controversialist, minister of the Church of England, was born on this date in 1740. His great hymn, said to have been conceived as he sheltered himself during a storm amidst the rocks of Cheddar Gorge in England, was written in 1776 on the text of 1 Corinthians 10: 1-4.



Moreover, brethren, I would not that you should be ignorant of the fact that our forefathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.





Rock of Ages



Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood,

From Thy wounded side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure;

Save from wrath and make me pure.



Not the labor of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.



Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Savior, or I die.



While I draw this fleeting breath,

When mine eyes shall close in death,

When I soar to worlds unknown,

See Thee on Thy judgment throne,

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.

If you need a reminder of the glories that we've been given in the natural world, Gerard posts a couple of very fine mementoes of his All Saints Day expedition through the Maryland countryside. Or look to Buck Mountain in the Shenandoah. John Bell is providing vivid and evocative pictures to accompany his Notes From a Hillside Farm.



And here's the Giant Stellar Nursery.



There is no contradiction here. The violet sadness and melancholy that can mark All Souls Day is rightly balanced by reminders of the natural glories that God has placed before us and within which we live. The glories which, in their beauty sometimes majestic and sometimes homely, are also intimations of the day when we will be raised incorruptible and live in the presence of The King in His Beauty.



The King Of Love My Shepherd Is

Sainteros has settled into his new web home and you should spend some time there. You'll find penetrating reflections like this and gems like these:



Diamond Head Sutra



How is it, Lord,

That on this height

I find myself

So low,

Unless by grace

I am annulled?





Mania



In addition to the rain

Ten thousand yellow leaves

Elliptical, serrated

Falling on black pavement

Today is All Saints Day, the solemn feast that is among the holiest days of the Christian year. Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.



Hebrews 12:1-2: Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.



For All The Saints



For all the saints, who from their labors rest,

Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,

Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;

Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;

Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



For the Apostles’ glorious company,

Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,

Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:

Alleluia, Alleluia!



For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,

Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,

Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,

Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,

And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



O blest communion, fellowship divine!

We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;

All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,

Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,

And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,

Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,

And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



The golden evening brightens in the west;

Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;

Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;

The saints triumphant rise in bright array;

The King of glory passes on His way.

Alleluia, Alleluia!



From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,

Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,

And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:

Alleluia, Alleluia!