The Ties That Bind

True interior life and a loving relationship with God are excluded by anyone who does not break off the ties that bind him to things, to people and to his own self in a disordered way — no matter how casual and tenuous such bonds may seem. It makes little difference, says St. John of the Cross, whether a bird is tied by a thin thread or by a cord. For even if tied by a thread, the bird will be prevented from taking off just as surely as if it were tied by a cord — that is, it will be impeded from flight as long as it does not break the thread. Admittedly, the thread is easier to snap, but no matter how easily this may be done, the bird will not fly away before first doing so.

Detachment increases our capacity for loving God, people and all the noble things of this life.

Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God: Lent and Eastertide

A Movie You Might Have Missed #37 — Everyone Says I Love You

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.   

If you've even heard of this movie, I tip my hat to you. It is a rare one. 

This hasn't been available for a while so when I saw the dvd at Amazon I grabbed it. Why had I been on the lookout for it? Because this is one of my favorites of Woody Allen's movies. Few people know that he wrote and directed a musical and for those few who do know it, no one is neutral. We really liked it and, upon viewing it last night I was surprised that it didn't seem to have aged. The only tell that this movie is 17 years old is how extremely young some of the actors seem.

This is Woody Allen's love letter to musicals, Hollywood love stories, and New York, this is the tale of a wealthy family's year. It is told as a musical, with the large cast of well known actors all doing their own vocals. The songs are classic, fit into unexpected situations, and occasionally accompany dance routines. The actors don't come off as professional singers or dancers, but have just enough awkwardness to lend everything a sincere, realistic feel. As with many musicals from earlier times, the plot is a simple vehicle to move everything along and much of the pleasure is in seeing the movie unfold.

Alfred Sisley and His Wife

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and his Wife, 1868

Penance is getting up on time ...

Penance is fulfilling exactly the timetable you have fixed for yourself, even though your body resists or your mind tries to avoid it by dreaming up useless fantasies. Penance is getting up on time and also not leaving for later, without any real reason, that particular job that you find harder or most difficult to do.

Penance is knowing how to reconcile your duties to God, to others and to yourself, by making demands on yourself so that you find enough time for each of your tasks. You are practicing penance when you lovingly keep to your schedule of prayer, despite feeling worn out, listless or cold.

Penance means being very charitable at all times towards those around you, starting with the members of your own family. It is to be full of tenderness and kindness towards the suffering, the sick and the infirm. It is to give patient answers to people who are boring and annoying. It means interrupting our work or changing your plans, when circumstances make this necessary, above all when the just and rightful needs of others are involved.

Penance consists in putting up good-humouredly with the thousand and one little pinpricks of each day; in not abandoning your job, although you have momentarily lost the enthusiasm with which you started it; in eating gladly whatever is served, without being fussy.

For parents and, in general, for those whose work involves supervision or teaching, penance is to correct whenever it is necessary. This should be done bearing in mind the type of fault committed and the situation of the person who needs to be so helped, not letting oneself be swayed by subjective viewpoints, which are often cowardly and sentimental.

A spirit of penance keeps us from becoming too attached to the vast imaginative blueprints we have made for our future projects, where we have already foreseen our master strokes and brilliant successes.

Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God,
quoted in In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez

Broccoli-Cheddar Rice Casserole

 Perfect for a Friday in Lent, but we liked it so much that we're not going to limit it to just that time of year. Get it here.

The Battle for Middle Earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings

This is the last of the major LOTR commentaries that I hadn't read. Somehow Lent during the time of Covid, social division, and angst seemed the right time for this and, indeed, it did prove to be very inspirational.

Instead of zeroing in on themes and then pulling examples from throughout the text, Rutledge takes the unusual tactic of working her way through the book from beginning to end, commenting along the way on the links between the book and Christian themes. It is very effective because we can see the themes develop and grow as the story itself grows in complexity. There are many good insights that open up the book even further for the attentive reader.

As others have commented, it isn't a perfect work. There are some points that are often repeated many times, often unnecessarily since the sort of person reading this book is already steeped in LOTR. (Also, what difference does it make that Tolkien didn't like Shakespeare? And why do we have to be told that three times?) I also didn't agree with all of the author's conclusions, though admittedly there weren't a lot of points I took umbrage with. Just enough to annoy me every so often.

None of that takes away from the fact that this is a really good commentary and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The Conversion of Our Hearts

Moral conversion, or the conversion of the will, takes place along the frequently stony path by which we learn to choose what is truly good, and to do so freely and as a matter of habit. This is the lift of growth in virtue (the medieval synonym for "habit") and into true freedom. For freedom is not a matter of doing what we like (which is a slavish habit, but of freely choosing what truly makes for an authentically human life.

The conversion of our hearts is that lifelong process by which we disentangle ourselves, emotionally and psychologically, from unruly passions and disordered affections so that our hearts and wills are drawn, like iron shavings toward a magnet, to what is truly good, true, and beautiful: God, the Holy Trinity.

George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage

Cosmos

"Cosmos" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1902

 

The great mysteries of redemption unfold gradually

The great mysteries of redemption celebrated in the Church's liturgy always unfold gradually. Throughout Advent, the season of preparation for Christmas, the Church's worship slowly and steadily unfolds the mystery of God-made-man, until we see him in the flesh born of Mary "in Bethlehem of Judea" [Matthew 2.5]. The same process of unfolding takes place during Lent, intensifying its character as a pilgrimage. The "exterior" of that process takes us, with Jesus, up to Jerusalem, where the decisive events of human history will dramatically unfold. The process has an "Interior" as well: as the people of the Church walk with Jesus from his temptation in the desert to his temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then to the final temptation to despair on the Cross, we see unfolding before us (and within us) a cosmic struggle between good and evil—between God's purposes and all the forces that resist the power of divine love.

George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage

Psalm 10 — Plea for God's Judgment

In the Psalms we read how afflictions must be borne, and what should say both during and after the affliction.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

The psalmist makes a strong case for how God seems to be absent and the evil that is allowed and even applauded. I like the descriptions of the wicked — we all recognize it. 

When it gets to the part about sitting in ambush in the villages, murdering the innocent in hiding places I really thought of how many times I've seen that scenario in Indian films where evil village headmen are common characters and often are able to commit heinous crimes. It made me think of how we can still relate to the scriptures because human nature hasn't changed. 

That's also how we understand when the psalmist laments on behalf of the afflicted. We've had those feelings too.

Shema Yisrael at the Knesset Menorah in Jerusalem.
Verse 16 is part of the Bedtime Shema.

As with psalm 9 (part one of this two-part psalm), I love the fact that part of this psalm is included in daily prayers. According to Wikipedia, before going to sleep, the first paragraph of the Shema is recited. This is not only a commandment directly given in the Bible (in Deuteronomy 6:6–7), but is also alluded to from verses such as "Commune with your own heart upon your bed" (Psalms 4:4). 

 The wicked man boasts, the greedy man renounces the Lord, and the proud man thinks, "There is no God." Again, this is familiar territory. I like what St. John Chrysostom says and the lesson he draws for us to keep in mind in our own lives.

10:5 Out of God's Sight

The Peril of Flattery. Chrysostom: Do you see the folly? Do you see the unutterable ruin. Do you see the destruction gradually increasing? Do you see the things prized by the mindless, in reality full of deep misery, and now they sink from sight? Those people are applauded in their sins, commended in their wrongdoing. This is the first pitfall, sufficient to trip up the unwary. Hence it is much more necessary to welcome those who censure and correct us than those who applaud and flatter us to the point of destruction. The latter, in fact, prove the ruination of the stupid and impel them to worse evil—as though even by puffing up these sinners they led them on the way to folly.  Commentary on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

We briefly mentioned that this is related to Psalm 9 because of acrostic beginnings to each line which go in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. Here is a reflection that these two psalms are related to a larger grouping. Again, we're reminded that the editors of the big book are giving us the opportunity for a cumulative message.

The Relationship of Psalms 7-10

With the exception of Psalm 8, all of these psalms are pleas for deliverance from trouble. Singly and together these compositions call on Yahweh to serve as refuge and defender of the faithful and to act as righteous judge in revelation to the wicked. We can observe a shifting identification of the enemies from the more localized wicked who oppress the individual faithful person in Psalm 7 toward the more generalized criticism of the "nations"—the non-Israelite goyim—who are called to account for their treatment of the community at large (Pss. 9-10). ...

As a result of reading these four psalms as a thematic unit, a powerful message of divine power and human responsibility is displayed. this is not to say, however, that we only read these psalms rightly when we read them together. The ancient editors of the Psalter, who arranged the psalms in their present order, saw fit to preserve the psalms as individual compositions ... Each psalm has its own integrity, shape and voice that ought to be heard and appreciated.

What I am suggesting here is not an exclusive way of reading the psalms but another way to appreciate the ensemble that the ancient editors created and arranged in the Psalter. In reading the whole Psalter as an ensemble, one hears new voices and new tensions between voices that offer new and challenging insights that are overlooked in isolation. It is something like hearing the overture to an opera on a CD collection of overtures and then hearing it as it was originally intended—as part of the whole work. The music can be appreciated either way, but with different effects and understandings. The same is true of the music of the psalms.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

This also makes me think of the wisdom of continually meditating on the psalms so that one is familiar enough with them to pick up the themes and insights as threads in a bigger book — not only that of individual psalms to the whole collection, but of the psalms to the rest of the Bible.

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

100 Dante Cantos - 100 Videos

Tommaso Todesca is a Goodreads friend of mine who I know as Tom LA. It turns out he's a big fan of the Divine Comedy who has been working on 100 youtube videos, one for each canto. He's commenting on the Divine Comedy for his English-speaking friends, as an Italian amateur who loves the poem and is at Inferno 21 now.

He got the idea since this year is the 700th anniversary of Dante's death (Sep 14th 1321). I just found out about it and enjoyed the videos I samples.

Watch it here!

A Movie You Might Have Missed #36 — 12 Angry Men (1957)

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.  

So many strikes against wanting to watch this movie ... it is black and white, it is old, we "know" what it's about. But there is much more to it than that. 

I've seen so many jokes and references made to this classic that I thought it was time to actually see the movie itself.

In brief, 12 Angry Men is the story of a lone juror (Henry Fonda) who has reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant in a murder case. Everyone else is positive that the defendant is guilty. The jury must be unanimous either way. Complicating matters are intense heat in a time of no air conditioning, a wide range of personalities, and various personal needs that seemingly overrule the needs of careful deliberation.

This was legendary director Sidney Lumet's first feature film and the talented cast included Henry Fonda, E. G. Marshall, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klugman, and Jack Warden. They truly created a film that is still great over 50 years after it was made.

12 Angry Men is an illustration that the story is what drives a film. As the one dissenting "not guilty" juror (Henry Fonda) asks the questions he wished would have come up in the trial and thinks things through aloud, I was pulled into the case details myself. Likewise, as the other jurors comment we are given insight into this very diverse group of men.

It works on so many levels including, not intended I am sure, how very different twelve white men can be even though we have been trained by society to think of them as peas from a pod. We also see why we can't just accept what we are told, why individualism and working as a team both matter, and much more. I have been on several juries and seen some very similar situations arise.

On a side note, I also appreciate my air conditioner anew.

Although unintended on my part, it was also the perfect movie to watch on Memorial Day weekend as I wound up feeling proud to be an American. Who'd have thought that I would have felt that way about jury duty? Just one more reason the movie is a classic.

God's distribution of talents

On coming into the world, man is not equipped with everything he needs for developing his bodily and spiritual life. He needs others. Differences appear tied to age, physical abilities, intellectual or moral aptitudes, the benefits derived from social commerce, and the distribution of wealth. The "talents" are not distributed equally.

These differences belong to God's plan, who wills that each receive what he needs from others, and that those endowed with particular "talents" share the benefits with those who need them. These differences encourage and often oblige persons to practice generosity, kindness, and sharing of goods; they foster the mutual enrichment of cultures...

1936-36, Catechism of the Catholic Church

I really love this and the way it elevates all our particular qualities for their place in God's plan. It really puts into perspective the fact that what we think are good or bad qualities are all being used for a purpose we can't see. In that way, for me, it links to "in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Love of Winter

 

Love of Winter, George Wesley Bellows

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik is adept at weaving completely original and compelling stories from the merest thread of a fairy tale (Uprooted, Spinning Silver). Her Temeraire series is an imaginative telling launching from both the Master and Commander series and the Dragonriders of Pern series.

So when I was reading this book and the word "Scholomance" made me think of Dracula, I went looking for information. In this case, Scholomance originates in real folklore (read more about that here) that was used by Bram Stoker in Dracula. It's just a sentence or two about how Dracula essentially was schooled at, as a friend told me once, "the devil's Hogwarts" So I was thinking of that and ... found this from Dracula.

The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due.
...
He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

What Novik has done with these beginnings is to turn the Harry Potter magical boarding school on its head. This is a school where there aren't any teachers, where supernatural monsters roam the halls, and where students form alliances hoping that they will survive graduation. There is a lot more to this magical world and, as always, Novik's world building is wonderful, with all the ramifications followed through to logical conclusions, sometimes in surprising ways. It is told by El who has the power to destroy multitudes but whose New Age mother taught to be respectful of life. Which really puts her in a bind when it comes to exercising enough power to pass her classes.

In many ways, this is a typical school scenario where the heroine is an outcast who has to gather a band of fellow students around her to accomplish their goals. There's a high level of angst which I found somewhat tiresome by the end. However, it is a great adventure told with humor, irony, and a certain innocence that worked for me. And, its heart is in the right place.

I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What [my mother's] never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.

El's mother taught her well and El draws a number of thoughtful conclusions which enrich the story and give it a good anchor. I'm looking forward to the second part of the series.

Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Paris (World’s Fair) 1900

 

   Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Paris (World’s Fair) 1900

Psalm 9 — Confidence in God

When the enemy is being accused and creation saves, do not take the glory for yourself but know that this is the victory of the Son of God and sing to him in the words of Psalm 9.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

This is one psalm in Greek but two psalms (9 and 10) in Hebrew. We follow the Hebrew numbering. The reasons for thinking of it as one long psalm are because psalm 10 has no title and seems to be loosely connected to the theme of psalm 9. Also the psalms actually form a single acrostic poem. Each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

This psalm is a real celebration of God from all angles even though the psalmist is still suffering and awaiting deliverance. But he is confident in God's faithfulness.

A shofar, symbol of the Rosh Hashanah holiday.
Verse 4 of psalm 9 is found in the repetition of the Amidah on Rosh Hashanah.

I like the mention above that part of this psalm is used in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. Because that is how we Catholics experience the psalms — as part of the liturgy.

On this psalm, Didymus the Blind is the one who caught my attention with the two points made below.

 9:10 Those Who Know God's Name

God Never Abandons Us. Didymus the Blind: Those who have a perfect knowledge of your name trust in no other thing. They are not abandoned by God. This word must be understood with wisdom and reverence, considering that one should not think that the person who lives rightly in his daily affairs is abandoned by God. One who thinks thus is deceived. Indeed several of the impious have thus believed. Some say that Abel, who was killed, was abandoned, as also the prophets and apostles, for these individuals were afflicted continuously, and many of them even murdered by people. With this distinction made, we say that the person who is with God up to his last breath is not abandoned, even if he suffers innumerable wounds from his enemies. Fragments on the Psalms

===================

 9:15 The Pit They Made

The Wicked Caught in Their Own Sin.. Didymus the Blind: Secretly [the wicked] build traps of deceit with their own plans and words, so they may seize someone unsuspecting. But by that very trap that they have hidden they are punished, for vindicators will keep those very ones they have caught. This punishment is done by the providence of God. For what other is the judgment of God than that the sinner is caught by his own deeds, because he holds the reason for his own condemnation for those who live unrighteously. This agrees with that which is said before: "He who has opened a pit for his neighbor will fall into it (Ps. 7:15)." Fragments on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

Some Good Pandemic News - For a Change

I receive The Dispatch's free morning roundup newsletter. It was so refreshing to read some of this good news, instead of continually being bombarded with gloom and doom. I'm not saying everything is sunshine and roses but it is really nice to look at both sides, because there is positive to go along with the unrelenting negative I see on the news.

I thought I'd excerpt it.

• If you’re looking for some coronavirus optimism these days, you don’t have to squint too hard to find it. On the infection and hospitalization data itself, just take a look at the chart above. Per our analysis, the seven-day rolling average of confirmed new COVID-19 cases peaked on January 11 at 257,927. Today, that number is 70,591—a 73 percent decrease in six weeks.
• It’s not just cases, either. The seven-day average of test positivity—another marker of virus prevalence—has dropped from over 14 percent in the first week of 2021 to 5.3 percent this morning. On January 6, 132,464 people were hospitalized with COVID-19. That figure has decreased for 40 straight days, and is now nearly 60 percent lower at 55,403. Deaths are a lagging indicator, but they, too, are beginning to fall off after a sustained plateau above 3,000 per day.
• And then there are the vaccines. Last March, you’d have been laughed out of many rooms if you said the United States would be on track to inoculate about 50 million people against COVID-19 by the end of February 2021. The laughter would have only grown louder if you added that those vaccines would be 95 percent effective at preventing symptomatic illness, and close to 100 percent effective against hospitalization and/or death.
• In recent days, the news has only gotten better. One study found that Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine is up to 85 percent effective after a single jab, and that it doesn’t actually need to be stored in burdensome, ultra-cold freezers as previously believed. A second (preliminary) report from Pfizer, BioNTech, and Israel’s Health Ministry found the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine to be 89.4 percent effective at preventing infections, meaning the vaccine limits most asymptomatic transmission of the virus as well.
  
  
Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the news couldn’t be much better. “The two mRNA vaccines we have been using have 95 percent efficacy against all manner of disease: mild, moderate, and severe. And [they] may—likely, I think, probably—reduce shedding, it just hasn’t been studied carefully,” he told The Dispatch. “And to date in the preapproval studies, we couldn’t find any evidence for serious adverse events in tens of thousands of people. And now the vaccine has been in tens of millions of people, so you can say with some confidence that the vaccine doesn’t even cause a rare serious adverse event. So I’d say it’s remarkable. I don’t think anybody could have predicted this a year ago.”

A Movie You Might Have Missed #35 — Searching for Sugar Man

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed. 

In America we've never heard of Rodriguez, an enigmatic rock musician from the early 70's whose two records flopped. In South Africa, his records are bigger than Elvis. The legend surrounding him always includes a colorful death on stage ... by self immolation, pistol to the head, drug overdose, etc. Two South Africans set out to find out how Rodriguez died.

Why Rodriguez is so well known in South Africa is worth a movie of its own. When you include the discovery made by the men tracking down his legend, it propels this story into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category.

The documentary is put together like a well told piece of detective fiction and we were riveted by the story of the American musician we'd never heard of before.

Le Songe de Jacob (Jacob's Dream)

Nicolas Dipre, Le Songe de Jacob, c.1500

 

Moët Chandon Crémant Impérial poster

Moët Chandon Crémant Impérial poster, Alphonse Mucha
via My Daily Art Display

 

Sin most clearly manifests during the Passion

It is precisely in the Passion, when the mercy of Christ is about to vanquish it, that sin most clearly manifests its violence and its many forms: unbelief, murderous hatred, shunning and mockery by the leaders and the people, Pilate's cowardice and the cruelty of the soldiers, Judas' betrayal - so bitter to Jesus, Peter's denial and the disciples' flight. However, at the very hour of darkness, the hour of the prince of this world, (Cf. Jn 14:30) the sacrifice of Christ secretly becomes the source from which the forgiveness of our sins will pour forth inexhaustibly.

1851, The Definition of Sin section,
The Catechism of the Catholic Church

Of course, that makes so much sense and is so true.

I'm left with no insightful observations of my own because this is just something that never occurred to me. It is something I will try to keep in mind especially during Lent.

Stations of the Cross - Vatican, Bishop Barron

Sculpture at Church of the Condemnation and Imposition of the Cross, Jerusalem
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

It is traditional to reflect upon the Stations of the Cross on Fridays during Lent and especially on Good Friday. Most churches have them at 3:00 p.m. as that is the time that Jesus died.

My problem is that I find group Stations of the Cross to be anything but conducive to reflection. Most of the time the devotions read aloud are simply sappy and, though that can be a sincere form of devotion, it doesn't do much for me. I really feel that eye rolling during the stations isn't good for anyone's spiritual health so I tend to reflect on them at home instead.

In past years I've used various meditations from the Vatican index of past years from the Way of the Cross. You get a wide range from guest meditations to papal ones and there are English translations as far back as 2000.

Bishop Barron has a series of excellent meditations as either video or audio. You can download a print pdf from the page for the video link. They are excellent.

Flying Mink

Flying Mink, Remo Savisaar

 

Prayers during this cold, cold weather

 It's not news that in Texas ... and here in Dallas, of course ... we're suffering from extremely cold weather with temperatures way below freezing and a lot of people out of power. 

We ourselves are very lucky to have not suffered any power loss, although we've got friends and family within 5 miles who have. We're doing what we can in using a minimum of power. Hannah, Mark, and Andy are on their way over to shelter here until their power comes back on.

Please keep everyone in your prayers.

When "light sins" aren't so light

While he is in the flesh, man cannot help but have at least some light sins. But do not despise these sins which we call "light": if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fills a river; a number of grains makes a heap. What then is our hope? Above all, confession.
St. Augustine, quoted in #1863

===============

Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root. #1865

From The Catechism of the Catholic Church in the section looking at mortal versus venial sins.

I have to admit there is a certain comfort in knowing I'm clear of mortal sin. Unfortunately that gives a tendency to think of venial sins as light and not worth worrying about as much. Until we consider the points made above. I think of gnats which seem so little and "light" until one is caught in a cloud of them. What venial sins are clouding sight and mind until I can't even imagine life without them?

Avane Srimannarayana

In the pursuit of solving an ancient mystery of the small south Indian town of Amaravati, Narayana, a corrupt cop must battle the dangerous clan of dacoits [bandits] and it’s fierce leader.

This is a mashup of a Western, an action thriller, a swashbuckler, rivalry between murderous brothers, putting on a play, and an Indian mythological fantasy of sorts. If that sounds bonkers it is, kind of. But it is a kind of bonkers that I found really entertaining. A lot of the fun lies in all the genres that are ruthlessly shoved together with humor, excellent production values, entertaining dialogue, and engaging screen presence from Rakshit Shetty who portrays Narayana.

Despite all these elements it still remains unremittingly Indian as exemplified by four gunfighters who wear cowboy hats, leather dusters, and dhoti. And it works.

I'm pleased to hear that there is a spinoff being considered, featuring Cowboy Krishna, who is "protecting American culture" in the town with his saloon.

 This is not a Bollywood movie but a Kannada language film from "Sandalwood." (I love the creativity with the "wood" names.) 

It is a long film with a lot going on. The plot is complicated (although we kept up without more difficulty than occasionally losing track of who was who in the secondary characters. And it is loaded with visual jokes and references. Some of these are easy for Americans like the saloon and Western stuff and some are going to go right over your head (as they doubtless did for us). But it doesn't matter. The story works without getting everything.

 Rating — for viewers with medium to difficult Indian film experience. (It's not rocket science, but without any cultural background at all you might feel kind of lost.) 

Watch it on Amazon Prime.

 

Living Well with the Cardinal Virtues

To live well is nothing other than to love God with all one's heart, with all one's soul and with all one's efforts; from this it comes about that love is kept whole and uncorrupted (through temperance). No misfortune can disturb it (and this is fortitude). It obeys only [God] (and this is justice), and is careful in discerning things, so as not to be surprised by deceit or trickery (and this is prudence).

St. Augustine, quoted in 1809 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church

St. Augustine sums it up perfectly. Now, getting to the point where we can live the cardinal virtues that well is a lifelong task ... a.k.a. striving toward sainthood.

Go to The Virtues section at the link above to read about the cardinal virtues which is what leads up to this quote.

Dreams

Dreams, 1896, Vittorio Matteo Corcos

 

Metropolis — Nuts in a Good Way

 

I watched this 1927  silent film as part of my 2021 Book and Movie Challenge. I knew it was really influential. I knew it was a big story set in 2026 about the downtrodden workers under the city and the rich people living in a futuristic city of splendor. This made it seem as if it would be preachy and boring, although with gorgeous sets.

Forget all that. This movie was nuts. And I mean that in a good way.

Let's start with a sexy female robot, mad scientist, forbidden love, a rooftop chase with fistfight, a horrifying chase of the heroine through the catacombs, and a really effective double role for Brigitte Helm playing both the heroine and the evil robot. All set off with amazing style in which I could see influences for Frankenstein movies, Bladerunner, Star Wars, and a ton of other movies. All the times I'd read about this movie no one said it was science fiction. I was actually on the edge of my seat at times wondering where this crazy story would go next.

I was really surprised also to see a lot of religious symbolism throughout. This begins when the hero leaves his world to see what lies below and has a vision of the workers being fed to the demon Moloch. Numerous references to the Apocalypse, complete with Biblical readings, are accompanied by Dies Irae  music to carry the theme home. Crosses, the seven deadly sins, the Tower of Babel, a flood, and the importance of the coming of "the Mediator" are just a few of the other things rounding out the religious references.

There aren't tons of title cards telling us the dialogue but we usually know what everyone's talking about. As Norma Desmond said in Sunset Blvd., "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" Sometimes the acting is way over the top which is understandable since a lot of these actors came from theater where you've got to go big to reach the back rows. However, there was surprisingly subtle acting sometimes where closeups allowed. 

 In many ways I was aided by many years of watching indie or foreign movies where you learn to just let them wash over you in the hopes of the big reward by the end. And, I was helped by our Indian movie watching where you learn you won't catch every line or reference but you'll get most of it by the end. Also, Bollywood has trained me to be very tolerant of "big" acting.

As you can probably tell from what I've said, this isn't what you'd call a subtle movie but it is amazingly effective at being both entertaining and getting the point across.

The Morality of the Passions

The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man's heart the source from which the passions spring.

There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.

"To love is to will the good of another." (Cf. Mk 7:21) All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. ...

In themselves passions are neither good nor evil ...

1764 - 1767, The Morality of the Passions
Catechism of the Catholic Church

I've been reading the Catechism very, very slowly over a few years now and have gotten to the Life in Christ section. I continually admire the clarity and depth with which the Catechism puts things. In this case I was really struck by the idea that the passions connect our sense and mind. Of course. That makes so much sense but I'd never really thought about it before. 

The whole section is worth reading if this also grabs your attention the way it grabbed mine.

Red Squirrel

 

Red Squirrel, Remo Savisaar

We've got plenty of squirrels but none with ears like those! Click through on the link to see this photo in full size glory.

Psalm 8 — the Back Parts of God

As you see the grace of the Savior extended everywhere, so many being saved, if you wish to raise your voice to the Lord, sing Psalm 8; or you can use the same psalm as well as 84 in thanksgiving for the vintage harvest.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

Did David, the shepherd, compose this after being out with the sheep all night and seeing the glory of the night sky?

This psalm gives us so many quotes that are part of Western culture, such as "what is man that thou art mindful of him?". I love this one and it has clearly touched so many deeply that they wanted to give the context of its joy and praise in their own writing.

Thierry Legault, The Veil nebula (NGC 6992) in Cygnus,
with permission
See more images and this one larger at Mr. Legault's website.

Here is the insight that I love the most.

8:1 The Lord's Name is Majestic

Only the Back Parts of God. Gregory of Nazianzus: The Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Glory, is manifested among the creatures that it has produced and governs. These are the back parts of God, which he leaves behind him, as tokens of himself like the shadows and reflections of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes, because we cannot look at the sun himself, for by his unmixed light he is too strong for our power of perception.  On Theology, Theological Oration

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

This is just the best, referring back to Moses in Exodus 33:19–23 when he asks to see God's face and is told that he'd be overcome and so will get to see the back of God. Here we are with creation, as Gregory tells us, seeing God's back parts. Just wonderful.

Now on to some of the other great insights inspired by this psalm.

Balancing Deity and Humanity

It seems to me that I seldom meet any strong or exultant sense of the continued, never-to-be-abandoned, Humanity of Christ in glory, in eternity. We stress the Humanity too exclusively at Christmas, and the Deity too exclusively after the Resurrection; almost as if Christ once became a man and then presently reverted to being simply God. We think of the Resurrection and Ascension (rightly) as great acts of God; less often as the triumph of Man. The ancient interpretation of the Psalm 8, however arrived at, is a cheering corrective.

C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

What is mankind ...?

The dignity of human beings is stressed in this passage in a way unparalleled in the ancient Near East. According to Mesopotamian sources, men and women were created to relieve the workload on the lesser gods who were forced to cultivate land in order to feed the gods. When the growing human population became too noisy, the gods thought to extinguish human existence through the great flood. As a result of the flood, food offerings to the gods were no longer forthcoming. Only then did the gods find that humans were nonexpendable after all. Although humanity survived the flood, the gods decreed certain afflictions to keep the population from ever growing out of control again. According to Ps 8, far from being expendable slaves to the gods, human beings are the special objects of the Creator's care in the vast universe.

NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

8:3 The Work of God's Fingers

Makes One Wonder. John Chrysostom: "What is it about human beings?" ... Taking full account of such marvelous care and such wonderful providence on God's part, and the arrangements he put in place for the salvation of the human race, [the psalmist] is struck with complete wonder and amazement as to why on earth God considered them worthy of attention. Consider, after all, that all the visible things were done for their sake. For them the design implemented from the time of Adam up to his coming; for them paradise, commandments, punishments, miracles, retribution, kindnesses after the Law; for them the Son of God became human. What could anyone say of the future they are intended to enjoy? So all those things are going through his mind when he says, to be thought worthy of such wonderful privileges, what must the human being be? I mean, if you consider what was done and is being done for their sake, and what they will enjoy afterwards, you will be stricken with awe, and then you will see clearly how this being is an object of such attention on God's part. Commentary on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

I also love this connection to Genesis and God's creation.

Sheep and oxen / ... birds of the heavens and fish of the sea.

The language of this compact but embracing catalogue is  a deliberate recasting in somewhat different words of the first Creation story ever, but the audience of the poem is surely meant to hear in all this a beautiful poetic reprise of Genesis 1. The eye moves downward vertically in the poem from the heavens to the divine beings who are God's entourage to man's feet and, below those, to the beasts of the field and then to what swims through the sea (which no longer harbors a primordial sea beast).

===================

Lord, our Master, / how majestic Your name in all the earth.

Although biblical literature, in poetry and prose, exhibits considerable fondness for envelope structures, in which the end somehow echoes the beginning, this verbatim repetition of the first line as the last, common in other poetic traditions, is unusual. It closes a perfect circle that celebrates the harmony of God's creation. ...

Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: The Writings

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

A Movie You Might Have Missed: 34

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.  

I'll just get this out of the way first. This might be the worst poster/dvd cover I've ever seen for a movie.

Be not afraid. Watch it anyway.

This movie's unique blend of talent includes Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow. If it is hard to imagine what they all have in common, then you are in the right frame of mind for Be Kind Rewind.

Mr. Fletcher's (Danny Glover) Be Kind Rewind VHS rental store is in decline. Despite his claims that jazz pianist Fats Waller was born there, the building housing his business is going to be demolished unless he can finance renovation. When Mr. Fletcher goes on an annual trip to memorialize Fats Waller, he leaves sole employee, Mike (Mos Def), to tend the store.

Naturally this is when things go very wrong. Through a freak magnetic accident, all the tapes in the store are erased, leaving Mike and his friend Jerry (Jack Black) to come up with a way to satisfy rental customers. They reshoot movies on demand using their own cameras.

Part of this movie's charm is the combination of standard bumbling comedy with wacky brilliance. Fair warning: the first part is a bit more of what one expects from a Jack Black movie. When we watched it with friends during a movie night, my husband and I looked at each other thinking, "What have we done?"

However, the middle and end suddenly take an unexpected turn which winds up combining a love of movies, personal creativity, history, community, and ... of course ... Fats Waller, whose story is wound through the movie. (For the record, our friends loved it.)

By the way, this was directed by Michael Gondry who is known for his distaste of CGI. This has led to some very creative sets and movie making in order to come up with effects in his movies. A wonderful example in this movie is when Mike and Jerry are on the chain link fence. Just watch for it. You'll see what I mean.

If the divine creator has taken pains to give us ...

If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is to serve them with ceremony.

Fernand Point, La Pyramide

Ida Lupino, They Drive By Night

 

Ida Lupino in They Drive By Night, costume by Milo Anderson
via Silver Screen Modes

The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armour on Horseback

Giuseppe Castiglione, The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armour on Horseback, 1758
Via Wikimedia

No special reason for this ... I just liked it!

None of the virtues are simple.

"Dealing with him was distasteful," she said. "He was similar to some of our donors. Outwardly quite charming, but I don't value charm. There are other qualities I value, such as perseverance and honesty." My face must have changed. She smiled again. "You have a right to disbelieve that, after what you've heard, but honesty is a complicated virtues."

"I always thought it was one of the simpler ones."

"None of the virtues are simple," Margaret O'Connor told me. "Only the sins."

S.J. Rozan, Concourse

A Movie You Might Have Missed #33 — Sunset Blvd.

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed. 

"The poor dope. He always wanted a pool."

This movie starts off watching a dead man floating in a pool, with a voice over from the man himself. You then hear this quote and you remember that Billy Wilder's dialogue crackles with verve and multiple layers of meaning. We then flash back to see the story of Joe who is an aspiring screenwriter but on the run from repo men when he dodges into a driveway to throw them off the track. He finds a dilapidated house from the 1920's and Gloria Swanson as the equally dilapidated former silent screen star who lives in the past and is planning her comeback. Joe finds himself lured into becoming her rewrite man and gigolo.

It is an unforgettable film that is a blistering expose of Hollywood which still holds true today. Interestingly many stars of the silent screen had parts in this to add authenticity and Cecil B. DeMille actually played a much more significant role than we would have thought ... and did so with surprising gentleness and charm.

Cemetery Gates

Cemetery Gates, Marc Chagall, 1917
via Wikipaintings

This painting fascinates me. First, because I love cemeteries. Walking in them, photos or paintings of them ... I am drawn to them and, to a large degree, find them soothing. This is not really soothing, instead being energetic.

The gate is marked with Hebrew. The shape of the sky behind the tombs looks like crosses rising into the air (that is my Catholic lens, I realize), the blue is bright and full of energy and draws me up away from the somber lighting around the gates and ground. It seems full of hope ... expectancy ... and active.

"Me," said Poirot, "I lead a very moral life."

"The English," said Poirot, "are a very moral people."

Lord Dittisham said: "Confound them, they are!"

He added, looking at Poirot, "And you?"

"Me," said Poirot, "I lead a very moral life. That is not quite the same thing as having moral ideas."

Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs

Psalm 7 — God Has Prepared His Deadly Weapons

When certain people plot against you, as did Ahithophel against David, and you are informed of this, sing Psalm 7, and place your trust in God, who will deliver you..

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

Another lament. So many laments in a row. This one, though, has some interesting twists such as showing God threatening the enemy and the psalmist saying, "Hey I haven't been perfect in the past, but this time I definitely deserve justice."

7:6, The Fury of Enemies

Arise, he says, using the word to mean "appear"; he employs a human and obscure expression as though God were asleep, when really he is hidden and unrecognized in his secret plans.

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

Yes. How often does this happen to us too?

7:8, My Righteousness and Integrity

Not Perfect Righteousness. Theodoret of Cyr: In these words the divine David has not left a testimony to his own righteousness: we hear him protesting the opposite, "because I acknowledge my lawlessness, and my sin is always before me"; and, "I said, 'I shall declare my lawlessness against myself to the Lord,'" but he calls it justice in the matter before us. I committed no wrong, in fact, he is saying against Absalom or Ahithophel or those arrayed in battle with them against me. So I beg to be judged in the light of this righteousness and innocence and not in the light of the faults previously committed by me. I ask for judgment on these current grounds and not for a payment of penalty at this time for other sins.  Commentary on  the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

This strikes me in the light of confession and being able to pick ourselves up, trust in God's forgiveness, and moving forward to try to do better.

7:12, God's Weapons Prepared

Yahweh prepares to mete out the punishment ... stringing and drawing the bow and preparing to let fly with flaming arrows at the enemy. This well-drawn portrait of the ready archer stops just short of release — bow straining, eye on the target; Yahweh is poised, ready to act. The picture encourages the enemies to reconsider their opposition in light of Yehweh's sure defense of the righteous.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

=====================

I would happily understand [the bow in this verse] as the holy Scriptures, where the rigidity of the Old Testament is bent and subdued by the strength of the New Testament, as by some sort of bowstring. The apostles are launched from it like arrows, or divine proclamations are hurled from it. These arrows he has fashioned ... to make those who are struck by them blaze with the love of God. ... Once struck by these and set on fire by them, you must blaze with so great a love for the kingdom of heaven that you scorn the tongues of all who block your path and want to call you back from your fixed resolve. ...

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

I like the point that thinking of what Yahweh can unleash might make the enemy change his mind. How often I've had that same experience — often by considering that I'd have to confess a deed I was contemplating. Nothing like that for making you choose the righteous path instead of sin.

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

Red Hen

 

Red Hen, Himmapaan.

Mistake and Imagination

Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know — that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling Into Happiness

How the Whale Got His Throat

How the Whale Got His Throat, illustrated by Himmapaan
Illustration for How the Whale got his Throat, in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories,
published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by The Folio Society, 2012

Which Way to Go From Here

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where –” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“– so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Jesus' Resemblance to Joseph

Jesus must have resembled Joseph in his way of working, in the traits of his character and in his way of speaking. Jesus' realism, his eye for detail, the way he sat at table and broke bread, his preference for using everyday situations in his teaching — all this reflects his childhood and the influence of Joseph.

St. Josemaria Escriva, Christ is Passing By

White-Tailed Eagle

White-Tailed Eagle, Remo Savisaar

 

Reading all the immense annotated editions of the classics

Another gem from Edmund Crispin. In this case from The Case of the Gilded Fly.

He had bought, and read, all the immense annotated editions of the classics in which the greater part of every page is occupied with commentary (with a slight gesture to the author in the form of a trickle of text up at the top, towards the page number).

A Snowman Straight Out of Miyazaki

 I picked this up from J.R.'s Art Place where he says:

A friend pointed out that this snowman looks like he stepped out of a Hayao Miyazaki film.

Woman with a snowman, early 20th century. Collotype with hand coloring; unknown photographer, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Of course, after featuring My Neighbor Totoro yesterday, I couldn't resist sharing this.

Psalm 6 – Prayer for Healing

When you feel the Lord's displeasure, if you see that you are troubled by this, you can say Psalm 6.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

There is great food for thought in the points made about asking God to judge as a father and not an authority. There is a nice difference there in the love and personal concern that a father brings versus a more disinterested judge. Surely that is the frame of mine we should always have when we turn to God.

Also, the idea that the psalmist is asking God to restore the right, the intended, order is one that reminds me about how the world was meant to be, versus what it is.

I like the way this illustration shows David surrounded by dangers — a wild animal, a man with weapons, a centaur — but he keeps his eyes on God.

Psalm 6 illustration from A Book of Hours from Namur

6:1, Not in Anger

Like a Father, Not a Judge. Theodoret of Cyr: He does not beg to be uncensured but rather not to be censured in anger, nor does he plead to avoid discipline but not to suffer it with wrath. Discipline me like a father, he asks, not like a judge; like a physician, not like a torturer. Do not fit the punishment to the crime; instead, temper justice with lovingkindness.  Commentary on  Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

6:3, How Long, O Lord, How Long?

The psalmists did not lament just the personal, individual, or societal suffering they saw and experienced. They also complained because ... the rightness that should have been an integral part of a world created by Yahweh seemed to have run amok in suffering, pain, injustice, oppression, and death. Life was not just difficult, it was not only painful, it was also very, very wrong.

... The psalmists' sense of rightness demanded that God act to reestablish his intended order. Thus, the psalmists felt free to ask, "God, what are you doing? Where are you?" By these tough questions hurled at God the psalmists were aligning themselves with the tough-minded worldview that the world as we have it is not the world as it should be or as God intended . The world is broken and needs divine help to restore it.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

 Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

None but the most blindly credulous ...

 From the disclaimer page of The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin.

NOTE
None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and nobel city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of Unlikely events and persons. But there are liimits.

It is a nutty story and what he says is absolutely true.

Still life with orange and plum

Robert Spear Dunning - Still life with orange and plum

 Right now citrus is at its height. I've been enjoying grapefruit which are my favorites but that orange looked so bright and tangy that I had to share it.

Stagecoach Mary

Mary Fields: Freighter, cook, domestic worker, star route mail carrier,
first African-American woman star route mail carrier in the U.S.

Also Catholic. They forgot to mention that part.

I first heard of Stagecoach Mary on the American Catholic History podcast, which I recommend you listen to right here.

The Reality of Tuna Casserole

 I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

 

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to finish watching all the TV shows it's downloaded.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Light, entertaining, fun, exciting. All that with a sense of humor and a mystery to solve in order to keep everyone alive. I like that Murderbot uses its free will to spend all day watching TV, if possible. I also liked the reason that it was capable of the killing that makes it name itself "Murderbot."

In a way, it felt a bit like it could have been from the Firefly universe. Or maybe Futurama? Every time Murderbot said "kill all humans" - and it was said a fair number of times - Bender flashed before my eyes.

I've seen a few complaints that this is too short and episodic feeling. You mean just like the entertainment that Murderbot loves to watch so much? Maybe that's why I liked it. Sometimes all you want is a good episodic adventure with a likable hero struggling against the odds. And that's what we've got here.

Returning to the mud

The French in another context call this "nostalgia for the mud." They mean a bourgeois romanticization of impoverishment. But I mean it in spiritual terms. Every time I recognized the truth and lived it, I was happy, and when I did not, I was not. And yet I always returned to not-happy, as if that were ... warm and happy mud.

Peggy Noonan, John Paul the Great

The Ferry

The Ferry, E. Phillips Fox

 I love the brightness  of the women's gowns against the brown of the wharf and ferry.

The Night of the 3rd Ult.

The Night of the 3D Ult. [copyright 1890]. First edition, first issue.

Set in London, in a lower class boarding house, and concerns the doings of both a police detective and a private detective. Bleiler calls the ending of this novel “almost brilliant.” OCLC locates only three copies of this title, including the deposit copy at the Library of Congress. A significant and very scarce detective novel.

Image and description via Books and Art

This sounds like just my type of book. Too bad it is so rare.