What the Lord Hath Made Crooked (Part 6 of 10)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

Hand cramp. Let's give this beast another college try:
In the following passage, Dorothy is writing in response to discouragement: both that og which she finds roots internally and that which finds roots externally. The only thin is to be oblivious, as Peter is, and go right on. And so on I go...

Upon rationalizing general grievances regarding the cleanliness of the communities served by the Catholic workers, Dorothy suspends (or, perhaps detracts/) her thought. In correction, she writes,

"But what am I talking about? Why am I justifying myself and my family? I am ashamed of myself for getting indignant at such criticism. It just goes to show how much pride and self love I have. But it has been hard lately. Not only outside grumbling, but grumbling from within, the criticism, the complaints, the self doubting and questioning, the insidious discontent spread around by a few *- these trials are hard to bear. However, the thing is to bear these trials, these unavoidable trials. Patiently, to take them lightly, not to let them interfere with the work. The very fact that it is hard shows how weak I am. I should be happy, however, to think that God believes in me strong enough to bear these trials, otherwise I would not be having them. Father Lallemant says that we must beware when things are going too smoothly. That is the time when no progress is made.

Oh dear, I am reminded of St. Teresa, who said, "The devil sends me so offensive a bad spirit of temper that at times I think I could eat people up."

"The best thing for being [discouraged]," replied Merlyn "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails you. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."

- (taking a page out of Art's book) The Once and Future King, T.H. White 

Catholic Church'ing?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 18 August 2015.

Dorothy Day

Okay, here goes. Just about everything is in agreement with what you've said. But before I started typing everything out like I said I would, lots of things started coming to mind. I knew I just needed to just get it all down.

I'm actually starting (mostly) with the first "Haunted by God" illuminated letter.

I want to first address the question of communicating as widely as possible. This is something I may have worried about earlier, but I've come around. I have a somewhat obvious realization about the four of us (and actually the 6 of us if we open it up to Father and Max): we are all Roman Catholics--post-Vatican II ones--and a fairly representative ideological slice at that. Due to this, our communications are a participation in the Body of Christ, the Church.

Inasmuch as God does not desire "that any should perish" (2 Peter 3:9), all people participate in this reality. Furthermore, due to the fact the Spirit "blows where it wills" (John 3:8) and that Jesus has "other sheep that do not belong to this fold" (John 10:6), we must think of the reality of the Church in the widest sense, indeed--as with all things Catholic--"according to the whole." So I agree with you when you quote Dorothy Day's words: "Many who serve Him officially have never known who He was, and many who do not even know His name, will hear on the last day the words that open to them the gates of joy." St. Augustine says something similar in his City of God.

That said, I don't think it is presumptuous to assume that we have a privileged position due to our closeness to the Church and the Sacraments instituted by Christ. Christ seems to be speaking directly to us as Catholics when he says, "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more" (Luke 12:48).

If you more or less agree with what I've written here, I'm going on to the similarly banal, obvious point that we, as Catholics, should do everything we can to stick together as the Body of Christ. Lots about that in the daily readings in recent days, perhaps most clearly in St. Paul's beautiful exhortation in Ephesians 4:1-6:

Unity in the Body. 

I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love,
striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:
one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

And I'm not good at this. I am a big burner of bridges and have a polemical side to my personality. Of course, plenty of our saints have suffered from this as well, and God has used it to build the Church. As I've said before, we're always building one of three buildings: the Church, the Pyramids, or the Tower of Babel. All too often, I've been building the latter two: pressing others into service and/or collaborating with others, both for prideful reasons. As we know from these stories and from our own personal experiences, both lead to scattering of minds, confusion of tongues, cacophony: the opposite of the unity proper to the Body of Christ.

So, long story short, I agree that we should keep cc'ing (Catholic Church'ing?).

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 6 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

More Dorothy Day:

Is suffering and death, and the strength to bear them, all there is in this struggle? This search for God would be a pretty grim affair if this were all, and transcendence too high a goal for simple folk. 

Let us remember other elements too. 

“What is it that I love when I love my God,” St. Augustine cried out in his Confessions. It is a certain light that I love and melody and fragrance and embrace that I love when I love my God–a light, melody, fragrance, food, embrace of the God-within, where for my soul, that shines which space does not contain; that sounds which time does not sweep away; that is fragrant which the breeze does not dispel, and that tastes sweet which, fed upon, is not diminished, and that clings close which no satiety disparts–this is what I love when I love my God." 

And Catherine of Siena assures us that “all the way to Heaven is Heaven, because He said, I am the Way.”

This is all to say, by restructuring your perspective on your suffering (and this goes for all of us), I think you'll soon discover that these burdens are blessings. In one of Day's most moving passages, she refers to our slow and painful procession toward death (what St. Paul called "the body of death") as "a life in the womb."

A life in the womb! What a fine perspective!

I have such a fondness for this particular outlook on our journey that it reminds me, and I frequently need to be reminded, that every moment of every hour of every day we are still growing, still learning, still failing, still succeeding in these failures, sprinting decades backward only to crawl one scoot forward. And all our lives, this is how it will be. Do babies give up when they toddle over, subjecting themselves from that first fall forward to a life of self-willed paralysis? Of course not.

That's silly to ask, even rhetorically. But what are we now if not babies in the womb caught in the amber of preparation for that glorious day when we are "released from bondage," the moment we "at last burst out into glorious day?" And how many are there among us who impose that spiritual paralysis upon ourselves after falling but once from our elevated state of grace in the garden?

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 5 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

Dorothy Day from a Symposium on "Transcendence" sponsored by the Church Society for College Work, 1968 (continued):

All men are brothers, yes, but how to love your brother or sister when they are sunk in ugliness, foulness, and degradation, so that all senses are affronted? How to love when the adversary shows a face to you of implacable hatredness, or just cold loathing? The very fact that we put ourselves in these situations, I think, attests to our desire to love God and our neighbor. Like Daniel, we are men of desires. And Daniel was rewarded by God because he was a man of desires. I believe because I wish to believe, "Help Thou my unbelief." I love because I want to love, the deepest desire for my heart is for love, for union, for communion, for community. How to keep such desires, such dreams? Certainly, like Elias, who, after making valiant attempts to do what he considered the will of God, fled in fear, all courage drained from him, and lay down under a juniper tree and cried to God to make an end of his misery and despair. 

The grace of hope, this consciousness that there is in every person, that which is of God, comes and goes, in a rhythm like that of the sea. The Spirit blows where it listeth, and we travel through deserts and much darkness and doubt. We can only make that act of faith, “Lord I believe, because I want to believe.” We must remember that faith, like love, is an act of the will, an act of preference. God speaks, He answers these cries in the darkness as He always did. He is incarnate today in the poor, in the bread we break together. We know Him and each other in the breaking of bread. 

Catholics do not generally ask for miracles. Spiritual graces, yes, they ask for these, but when it comes to asking for relief from pain and suffering, it is almost as though they thought, “Why should I refuse what is the common lot of humanity? Why should I ask to be spared when I see the suffering of the family next door?” Suffering borne with courage means to the devout mind a participating in the suffering of Christ and, if bravely endured, can lighten the sufferings of others. It is not a cult of suffering. It is an acceptance of the human condition. (...) 

[In reference to victim souls and martyrs] The importance of the liturgical celebration itself implies a correlative importance in what we do, after the liturgical celebration, in daily living.” Certainly we can say that the worship offered by a Martin Luther King resulted in his great mission and in the courage with which he expected his own martyrdom.

These people worked on the plane of this world, but it was the spirit that animated the weak flesh. Henri de Lubac wrote: "So long as we talk and argue and busy ourselves on the plane of this world, evil seems to be stronger. More than that, whether evil distresses us or whether we exalt it, it alone seems real. The thing to do is to enter upon another plane, to find that fourth dimension which represents the kingdom of the spirit. Then freedom is queen, then God triumphs and man with him."

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 4 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

Easier (as with most matters that require our patience and daily devotion) said than done. How are we of weary eye and soul to transcend sensory experience, to recognize the divine image in its lowliest form? We begin, I think with step one.

• Step 1: Acknowledge that Seymour Glass' Fat Lady is indeed Christ Himself

• Step 2: Acknowledge that there isn't anyone out there who is not Seymour's Fat Lady

• Step 3: Read aloud the following:
• Carlton Farthington is the Fat Lady.
• Don Gilber is the Fat Lady.
• That student who talks over me every single day in class and blatantly disregards all guidance and direction is the Fat Lady.
• Donald Trump is the Fat Lady.
• That person who perpetuates cruelty to our most vulnerable and oppressed is the Fat Lady.
• Hitler, ISIS, and Stalin are all Fat Ladies.
• My inner demon is the Fat Lady.
• I am the Fat Lady.

• Step 4: Repeat Step 3, but with conviction this time.

• Step 5: Acknowledge that each of the aforementioned is, indeed, Christ Himself. Acknowledge this every day.

• Step 6: For instructions on utilizing this mindfulness to combat our daily human propensity to judge our enemies (demonic as they and we may be) with love and mercy, I invoke at long last the luminous Dorothy Day (from a symposium on "Transcendence," sponsored by the Church Society for College Work, 1968):

God made men and women to be happy...yet how can we be happy today? How can we transcend this misery of ours? How can we believe in a transcendent God when the Immanent God seems so powerless within time, when demonic forces seem to be let loose? Certainly our God is a hidden God. I would say there are evidences of transcendence in the striving for community among the poor and destitute among whom we live in city and country. Men and women have persisted in their hope for happiness. They have hoped against hope though all the evidence seemed to point to the fact that human nature could not be changed. Always they have tried to recover Eden, and the history of our own country shows attempts to found communities where people could live together in that happiness which God seemed to have planned for us. (...) But how to love? That is the question.

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 1 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

HELLO TO ALL WHOM THIS MESSAGE EQUALLY COC C N ERNS. MO TH AT WAS SUPPOSED TO SAY CONCERNS. TYPEWRITERS ARE WEIRD.  MOVING ON. ART: IN RESPONSE TO YOUR MESSAGE_ *:  I THINK THIS IS ESSENTIAL. AND MORE THAN ESSENTIAL, UNIVERSAL. I AM GOING TO INVOKE MY GIRL DOROTHY DAY TO EXPLAIN WHY AND HOW, ASETHIS IS SOMETHING SHE TOUCHES ON FREQUENTLY IN THE LONG LONELI  NESS. FOR THESE INVOCATIONS, HOWEVER, I AM GOING TO EMPLOY THE USE OF A GOOD OLD FASHIONED PEN, AS TYPEWRITING IS MORE  DIFFICULT THAN ANTICIPATED BY CAMPFIRE GLOW. MAY TRY AGAIN  LATER IN CASE OF HAND CRAMP. (FAREWELL FOR NOW, YE OLDE REMINGTON.

Haunted by God (Part 6 of 6)

The following is one of a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it illuminated and in its entirety, following Liza's directions.

Art (and others),

Onward with your cc'ing. I remain in my silence as captivated as I was in my communication. As you know, Connor and I are now on day 11 of our dispersed camping excursion through the Keweenaw. We've slept alongside the Huron River, atop mountains, on the outskirts of ghost towns and Native American burial grounds and a long-ago abandoned Catholic cemetery, deep within a national forest, and under the stars on the stamp sands of Lake Superior.

It was on these sands, early this morning, that I came across a passage in The Writings of Dorothy Day in which she quotes Dostoevsky's Kirilov. "All my life," he says, I have been haunted by God."

That is the way it is on these mountains, along these riverbanks, in these woods, deep within these plantations of God. That feeling is everywhere around me here now. Nature, when not yet rearranged by man, reminds me more than anything else of this world just how it feels to be haunted by God. So, for the time being, I remain in the clouds of this thread and in the clouds of the Keweenaw.

What wealth to me this show has brought.

Liza 8/12/'15

Haunted by God (Part 5 of 6)

The following is one of a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it illuminated and in its entirety, following Liza's directions.

Dorothy Day-ly Intentions:

"Don't worry about being effective, just concentrate on being faithful to the truth." - The Long Loneliness

"The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up." - Interview with Time '75

"If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God." - The Catholic Worker

"Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington." - The Catholic Worker

Though Dorothy possessed the art of human contact, her autobiography is The Long Loneliness. All of us, she believed, have a yearning for love; deep down, buried beneath the clutter of our days, there was in every person the longing for community. But there was a loneliness that persisted even in the midst of other, the essential isolation that belonged to any commitment or vocation. There was a kind of loneliness, to which Christ invited his friends. Yet of his long loneliness, whe wrote in the words of Mary Ward, an 11th-century English nun, "The pain is very great, but very endurable, for he who lays on the burden also carries it."

Haunted by God (Part 1 of 6)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it illuminated and in its entirety, following Liza's directions.

Quick notes: 

1. First "response" attached. Begin reading on the page addressed to Art (& others), move left, and then move on to second attachment as a continuation of first attachment. In explanation of quoted excerpts: I've been absorbed in The Catholic Worker lately and have a newfound fascination with Peter Maurin, namely his Easy Essays. Worth checking out if incognizant and/or interested in Catholic social justice warriors.
2. Response to most recent e-mails in the works. Patience is appreciated and admired. This here human hand sure don't move as swift and mighty as that there information technology. 
3. I wrote these by hand to avoid screen time, yet here I am breaking this very rule through these "quick" notes. The machine wins again. I'll beat it next time, I swear.