Well Said: The Lines

“She just don’t see ‘em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly.”

Aibeleen takes a long sip of her tea. Finally I look at her. “What you so quiet for? I know you got an opinion bout all this.”

“You gone accuse me of philosophizing.”

“Go ahead,” I say, “I aint afraid a no philosophy.”

“It ain’t true.”

“Say what?”

“You talking about something that don’t exist.”

I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know as good as I do where them lines be drawn.”

Aibeleen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there, but they ain’t.”

“I know they’re there cause you get punished for crossing ‘em,” I say. “Least I do.”

“Lot of folks think that if you talk back to you husband, you crossed the line. And that justifies punishment. You believe in that line?”

I scowl at the table. “You know I ain’t studying no line like that.”

“Cause that line ain’t there. Except in Leroy’s head. Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and so-ciety ladies, too.”

Thinking of Miss Celia coming out with that fire poker when she could’ve hid behind the door, I don’t know. I get a twinge. I want her to understand how it is with Miss Hilly. But how do you tell a fool like her?

“So you saying there ain’t no line between the help and the boss either?”

Aibleleen shakes her head. “They’d just positions, like on a checkerboard. Who works for who don’t mean nothing.”

“So I ain’t crossing no line if I tell Miss Celia the truth, that she ain’t good enough for Miss Hilly? I pick my cup up. I’m trying hard to get this, but my cut’s thumping against my brain. “But wait, if I tell her Miss Hilly’s our of her league…then ain’t I sayin’ there is a line?”

Aibeleen laughs. She pats my hand. “All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”

Kathryn Stockett, The Help

I just listened to the audiobook which makes a wonderful book even better.

Worth a Thousand Words: Portrait of Father

Portrait of Father, 1884, Bruno Liljefors

Well Said: Bibles in need of customized repair

And he had a couple of Bibles in need of customized repair, and those were an easy fifty dollars apiece – just brace the page against a piece of plywood in a frame and scorch out the verses the customers found intolerable, with a wood-burning stylus; a plain old razor wouldn’t have the authority that hot iron did. And then of course drench the defaced book in holy water to validate the edited text. Matthew 19:5-6 and Mark 10:7-12 were bits he was often asked to burn out, since they condemned re-marriage after divorce, but he also got a lot of requests to lose Matthew 25:41 through 46, with Jesus’s promise of Hell to stingy people. And he offered a special deal to eradicate all thirty or so mentions of adultery. Some of these customized Bibles ended up after a few years with hardly any weight besides the binding.

Tim Powers, The Bible Repairman

The Father Had Two Sons

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1669, via Web Gallery of Art

The parable of the prodigal son is my very favorite parable.

I know I'm not alone in this. It is one of those with so many layers of meaning and also one to which we all can relate, whether it is with the prodigal or elder son.

I'd bet, though, a lot of parishes heard homilies about the prodigal son, while the elder son wasn't even mentioned. That's what happened to us. It is easy to understand why. We love the father's forgiveness, kindness, and mercy. Many people relate to the prodigal son so that makes his reunion with the father even more poignant.

What gets forgotten is the context that made Jesus tell the parable in the first place.

It is not really equally about the two sons. The struggles of both are important but Jesus is telling this parable to the Pharisees in response to their complaints about the time he spends with sinners. He's trying to get them to understand the prodigal son's journey, the father's joyful love, and the problems with the elder son's response.

The whole point of this parable is the complaints of the elder son and the father's pleading with him.

Sadly, it took me a very long time to even understand what the problem was with the elder son's complaints. They seemed pretty reasonable to me. Which says a lot about my basic personality. But once I did, it put a whole new cast on the story, one that stuck with me.

I wonder if many of us don't have a lot more in common with the elder son than we'd like to think.  How many times have I issued internal judgment on those around me? How many times have I patted myself on the back for how good I am and, therefore, how much better? How many times have I craved praise while deploring the "less worthy" who received it instead?

And that is part of the point too. Just as our fellow Christians are equally sons, we are equally sinners ... just maybe not in as public a way as those we judge. Reading the parable, we notice that Jesus leaves it open-ended. We don't know what the elder son does. Is there a conversion of heart? Not all Pharisees were hostile to Jesus. Was it partially because they reflected on parables like this one?

Our priest drew a final conclusion about the prodigal son that we shouldn't love God just for the things he can give us, that we need to seek out a personal relationship with Him. That is insightful and can be applied equally to the elder son. He talks to his father as if he were an employer, not someone he loves. As in the Rembrandt painting above, he stands in judgment of his father's mercy and forgiveness. There is nothing personal or loving in him.

Here is the parable, having removed the parables of the sheep and coin that Jesus tells first to make His point. Those have value and do add to the meaning of the main parable, but I thought I'd put the streamlined version here to make it easy to look at the family's journey.

The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to him, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So to them he addressed this parable.

Then he said, "A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.' So the father divided the property between them.

After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.

When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.

Coming to his senses he thought, 'How many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers."'

So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.

His son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.'

But his father ordered his servants, 'Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.' Then the celebration began.

Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, 'Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'

He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, 'Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.'

He said to him, 'My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.'"

Luke 15: 1-3; 11-32

Well Said: Time to pause and reflect

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain

Note that Twain is not telling us to have a knee-jerk reaction against being part of the majority, but that we should be sure we understand what we are participating in. 

That sort of self-examination is valuable no matter what the issues, if for no other reason than to make sure we really understand both sides.

Worth a Thousand Words: The Reding Fountain

Guillermo Gómez Gil, La fuente de Reding (The Reding Fountain)

Day of Prayer for Peace

Nothing could be a more perfect day for this than St. Peter Claver's memorial day.

In light of recent incidents of violence and racial tension in communities across the United States, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has invited faith communities across the country to unite in a Day of Prayer for Peace in Our Communities on September 9th.

To assist in observance of this occasion, USCCB is offering a Prayer for Peace in Our Communities prayer card that you can download. Here's the prayer:

Let us pray …

O Lord our God, in your mercy and kindness,
no thought of ours is left unnoticed, no desire or
concern ignored.

You have proven that blessings abound
when we fall on our knees in prayer,
and so we turn to you in our hour of need.

Surrounded by violence and
cries for justice, we hear your voice telling us what is
required . . .
“Only to do justice and to love goodness,
and to walk humbly with your God” (Mi 6:8).

Fill us with your mercy so that we, in turn, may be
merciful to others.
Strip away pride, suspicion, and racism
so that we may seek peace and justice in our
communities.

Strengthen our hearts so that they beat only to the
rhythm of your holy will.
Flood our path with your light as we walk humbly
toward a future
filled with encounter and unity.

Be with us, O Lord, in our efforts, for only by the
prompting of your grace
can we progress toward virtue.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Well Said: Meaning for Your Life

Don't invent a meaning for your life. It is there. Find it.

Dr. Viktor Frankl

This makes me think of Mother Theresa (now Saint TeresA) saying, "Find your own Calcutta." What are we overlooking in our own lives in our efforts to become more important, glamorous, or meaningful somewhere else? There is nothing wrong with striving for more and that sometimes takes us somewhere else. But often there is the ignored neighbor, the friend with annoying habits, the old person in our lives who is silently crying out for human attention. A cup of coffee with one of them may mean just as much, in the Divine scheme of things, as a day on the streets of Calcutta for someone else. Because we are right here, right now, for God to use.

Worth a Thousand Words: The Beach at Heist

George Lemmen, Plage a Heist (The Beach at Heist), c. 1891-92

Bright Smoke, Cold Fire by Rosamund Hodge

Short Review: Brilliant fantasy from a world class writer. Super, super, super good. This book comes out in a week and is part one of two. (Because I realize my super-long review ... which you should read anyway ... might be a TLDR for some.) 

The world was made from the blood of gods. The blood of men sustains it now. So said the Sisters of Thorn. Runajo did not believe in the gods, but she didn't doubt the power of spilled blood.

Nobody in Viyara did.

Rosamund Hodge retold Beauty and the Beast in Cruel Beauty and she retold Little Red Riding Hood in Crimson Bound. Not that you'd necessarily know that if you weren't told before you began reading.  Hodge weaves complex tales in completely unique worlds of her own imagining, with heroes and villains whose imperfections make them fascinating and compelling.

Now Romeo and Juliet serve as a springboard into a dystopian fantasy world where there is one city left standing. Without blood the magic will fail and the walls will fall. And when that happens ... the zombies will get in.

This book shows the originating tale a little more clearly than her previous books. There are feuding clans following entrenched beliefs, there are Shakespearean quotes and poetry, there are masked balls, there is forbidden love, and even an apothecary. Romeo and Juliet can never acknowledge their love publicly. However, these elements come in a tale where Romeo and Juliet are side characters compared to the the two narrators.

The righteous atheist Runajo has joined the religious order who maintains the walls because she knows the magic is failing. Seeking long-forgotten spells means finding a way into the Sunken Library, awash in the living dead. When she encounters Juliet, they must offset each other's weaknesses if they are to succeed in averting disaster.

Paris is a pure-hearted true believer in his clan's destiny to help save their people. When his life becomes inextricably bound with Romeo's, his world turns topsy-turvey in a quest that takes them through the lawless underworld of the Lower City.

Paris and Runajo are fully realized, fully complicated human beings with faults, hopes, and internal struggles. We can recognize something of ourselves in them, even as their flaws drive us crazy.  We want them to succeed, even as we wince at some of their assumptions and decisions.

This is told against the backdrop of a culture that can never forget tragedy and death are inevitable, and that the price of life is someone else's blood. The themes are big and the devices, such as doubling, work to give the story depth and complexity beyond the usual dystopian story.

Juliet shook her head. "The word for justice is … I can feel it. Not just as an idea in my head, something I was told or that I made up. It's like the way the sun rises, or stones fall to the ground. It's infinite and eternal and closer than my heartbeat. And when people are hurt—even people who die and are gone and become nothing in the darkness—people my family would say I should care nothing about—I can feel justice scream against it. Nobody in my family understands that. They all think justice is just for use, some kind of—of instructions on how to keep us safe and headed toward the Paths of Light. It's not. It is real and it wants. It wants to reach into every corner of the world, and I was to make that happen. That's what I wanted. To bring justice to the whole city, and not just my people" She drew a ragged breath and fell silent.

Oh, thought Runjo. Her too.

She hadn't known there was anyone else.

A third of the way into this book I realized I was reading a major work of fantasy by an author of immense talent. Is this how people read when Dune was being serialized in Analog magazine? When the Lord of the Rings only had The Fellowship of the Ring published? That they were witnessing something extraordinary?

I can't tell if this book will measure up to those standards yet because it is, unfortunately, being published in two parts. That's annoying. So very annoying. I don't know who planned it that way but whoever did it was wrong to chop it in half. Chop being the operative word.

Nevertheless, my gut feeling remains. This is an incredible book that I cannot wait to finish.

NOTE: The most unfortunate part of the review galley is that it didn't mention that this was the first of two parts. The end was incredibly confusing until I wrote the author to find out what was going on. So if they haven't had the courtesy to make it obvious in the final book, I'm mentioning it here.

Oh yes - Got a review copy. Didn't affect my opinions.

Worth a Thousand Words: Dezertiri Market

Dezertiri Market
from Eating Asia

Well Said: Belief and the Gospels

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe but yourself.

St. Augustine

From an old pal of mine, St. Augustine. As is often the case with his observations, nothing could be truer.

Blogging Around: If the mainstream media covered Jesus the way it covered Mother Teresa

“Why didn’t he heal everyone in Capernaum?” asked Rachel, echoing a question found in the new book The Ridiculous Messiah, a lacerating critique of Jesus by Cyrus of Caesaria, the popular Cynic. One of the most damaging charges from the bestselling book is what the author calls the “selectivity” of Jesus’s healing.

Rachel noted, accurately, that many others in Capernaum were known to be ill that day. “My mother has dropsy. My brother has a bad back. And I had a migraine. Jesus didn’t bother to ask if we wanted to be healed.”

Also, say critics, if Jesus was concerned about the sick, why would he not build a proper hospital or shelter?

“He’s a carpenter, isn’t he?” said Rachel. “Build us a hospital!”

Matthew, a former tax collector from Capernaum who follows Jesus as an “apostle” grew animated when he heard that criticism.

“That’s not what he’s here for!” he said. “Others do that. He simply helps people as he meets them.”

“That’s a common defense of him,” says Cyrus, contacted by this reporter through a messenger. “And it’s absurd.”

A classic piece from America magazine. Definitely go read the whole thing. Via Brandon Vogt.

Well Said: Our Will

We have nothing of our own but our will. It is the only thing that God has so placed in our own power that we can make an offering of it to him.

St. John Vianney

Worth a Thousand Words: A Passionate Kiss

Richard Mauch, A passionate kiss, circa 1900

Genesis Notes: A Lesson in Contrasts

GENESIS 4:1-26
Did I ever pay attention to Lamech before? I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear the answer to that is no. He's the perfect example of how sin can increase when not fought at all by the individual.

Lamech and his two wives from The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah

Lamech, who is the Bible's first polygamist, appears to be a violent, arrogant man. He boasts to his wives that even though he has killed a man, anyone who tries to take his life will be avenged "seventy-sevenfold." He reckons himself to be even greater and more important to God than his forefather, Cain. Something has gone very wrong among these people. They appear to know the details of their family history (how else would Lamech know to compare his deed with that of Cain?), but they have no knowledge of what the details mean. Because Cain was cut off from his family and the presence of the Lord, his spiritual blindness was not only perpetuated among his descendants, but it intensified. The father always teaches the son, either for good or for evil. This is how it is in families. See how Cain's sin of pride has progressed in Lamech to proud presumption. He presumes upon God's mercy in saving Cain from death, having no apparent understanding of what God's mercy was meant to produce humility, repentance, reconciliation. Through the rest of Scripture we see, over and over, what traits develop among men who, for whatever reason, have shut their hearts away from the presence of the Lord. This is our first example of it.

God Took Enoch, By illustrators of the 1728 Figures de la Bible,
Gerard Hoet (1648–1733) and others

Again, Enoch never made much impression on me either but now I can see the contrast he provides with Lamech. I don't think I realized that another prophet besides Elijah was ever "taken up" either. There's a definite lesson in those contrasts. Another lesson lies in the fact that two such minor characters can have such big stories to tell about themselves and about the human condition. Not a word is wasted in Scripture. It is all there for a definite purpose.

Enoch is the first man described as a "prophet" in Scripture. Hebrews tells us that he prophesied judgment on ungodliness. We learn from Old and New Testaments that Enoch did not see death. He was such a friend of God's that he was "taken up." It is amazing to see the difference between Enoch and Lamech. By it we are meant to comprehend that although sin entered the human race through Adam and Eve, bringing with it great spiritual and physical consequences, men are still able to respond to God's grace. By no means has God given up on all humanity!

Enoch was distinguished in his family by God's remarkable favor upon him. He represents the power that acknowledging God in family life can have on family members, as they pass on their tradition from generation to generation.

All quoted material is from Genesis: God and His Creation. This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.

Well Said: Whatever Captivates Your Mind During Prayer

A person worships whatever captivates his mind during prayer. Whoever in his prayers thinks of public affairs, or the house he is building, worships them rather than God.

Caesarius of Arles

Worth a Thousand Words: The Wave Breaker

The Wave Breaker
by the incomparable Remo Savisaar

Worth a Thousand Words: Beach at Fecamp

Claude Monet, Beach at Fecamp, 1881
via Arts Everyday Living

This painting with a coming storm seems to reflect the continual news of hurricanes, tropical storms, and tropical depressions heading for Florida and Hawaii.

Lagniappe: Nuance

Reese glanced over her shoulder at the two Eldritch at the door. "You are Liolesa's bodyguards?"

"You have the right of it, if not the nuance," one of them replied …

"What's the nuance?" she asked.

"We are bodyguards who have trained to work together as soldiers, and we are fifty in number."

"Oh!" Reese said. "Well. That's a lot of nuance."

M.C.A. Hogarth, Rose Point