Following the trail itself, Whispering Smith rode slowly.

Following the trail itself, Whispering Smith rode slowly.
Frontispiece from "Whispering Smith" by Frank H. Spearman; illustrator N. C. Wyeth

Hawaiian Waters

Taken by my brother when he was stationed in Hawaii a few years ago. Click through to see the photo in full beauty.

A strange between-time in whose tremendous hush the earth seems listening for a message from the sky.

As the sun goes down, a stillness falls over Egypt. Water channels that cross the field turn to the colour of blood, then to bright yellow that faces into silver. The palm trees might be cut from black paper and pasted against the incandescence of the sky. Brown hawks that hang all day above the sugar-cane and the growing wheat are seen no more and, one by one, the stars burn over the sandhills and lie caught in the stiff fronds of the date palms.

It is this moment which remains for ever as a memory of Egypt, a moment when day is over and night has not yet unfolded her wings, a strange between-time in whose tremendous hush the earth seems listening for a message from the sky. The fierce day dies and the sand loses its heat and all things are for a brief space without shadow.

H.V. Morton, In the Steps of the Master

Isn't this as good as a rest? Read it slowly, let your mind's eye place you there, and take it all in. H.V. Morton is superb at telling us the history and people of a place, but I have never seen anyone dwell upon his lyrical descriptions. They are scattered throughout the book and come to me almost with a shock as he suddenly stops talking about being a tourist and turns attention to the physical.

This book tracing Jesus' travels and In the Steps of St. Paul where he does the same with Paul are two of my favorites. They combine poetic, thoughtful travel writing with Christian reflections.

The road to hell is itself a living hell.

This was in the Mass readings yesterday. It is from Jeremiah who lived around 600 years before Christ was born. By now you'd think that I am over being surprised at how similar we are to the people from so long ago — but no. This could have been said today about Christians. We go after useless idols and turn our backs on God.

... you made my heritage loathsome.
The priests asked not,
“Where is the LORD?”
Those who dealt with the law knew me not:
the shepherds rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
and went after useless idols.

Be amazed at this, O heavens,
and shudder with sheer horror, says the LORD.
Two evils have my people done:
they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water.

I especially hit by the last statements God makes which point out that our sins submit us to a two-fold tragedy. We cut ourselves off from God who is the source of all joy and goodness. And we substitute empty things that lead to our ruin. These two comments from In Conversation with God drive the point home.

Sin means making a choice between nothing and the living water that springs up to eternal life. This is the greatest deception a man can fall prey to.

No wonder so many are unhappy without knowing what to do about it or maybe even realizing that they are unhappy. They are continually thirsty and nothing but God will suffice.

The solitude sin leaves in the soul should be enough to lead us away from it. The road to hell is itself a living hell.

As one who's been there, I can see how true this is.

Big Bend in the Haze

Jason Merlo Photography, Big Bend

This looks more like an impressionist painting than a photograph. Simply beautiful.

An Author You Might Have Missed - Elizabeth Cadell

 

Years ago, browsing the downtown library shelves I came across an incredibly large number of books by an author I'd never heard of — Elizabeth Cadell. I was soon hooked on these gentle, humorous novels. Sometimes there is also a mystery involved but they invariably have enjoyable conundrums of everyday living which must be figured out by the people in the books so that everything can come out okay in the end.

These novels are often called romances but they are much more than that. They weave everyday life, mystery, and romance with likable characters who you want to succeed. A fair number of them are set in Portugal which made me aware of that country in a new way. These are books for which you can often predict the story line but which you enjoy reading and rereading nonetheless. They fit into the whatever the category is where you'd find Cold Comfort Farm, Enchanted April, and Miss Buncle's Book.

I like the independent mindset always provided for at least one protagonist, although usually against what is generally considered to be "independent" in modern times. In the book Out of the Rain, for example, everyone keeps lamenting that the beautiful young widow is perfectly content to stay at home tending to her three children. She keeps asking these lamenters why being absorbed in her children is a bad thing. None of them can answer except to say she should be getting "more" out of life. This quote is from the widow's grandfather, who she lives with, but sums up the underlying mentality of the novel pretty well.

I can't help feeling that people ask too much [of life]. They don't keep up with the Joneses any more--they outstrip them. What people call happiness, today, isn't happiness. It's enjoyment. It's pleasure. And between happiness and pleasure there's a very large gap.

The question, I suppose, is what makes us genuinely happy. That is at the bottom of all Cadell's novels.

They are witty, well plotted, and leave you in a good mood. I return to them again and again for light reading.

The covers I've included are from some of my favorites but you can hardly go wrong. 

Many of them are now on Kindle and on Audible, some of which are narrated charmingly by Cadell's granddaughter.

Our Daily Bread

"Our Daily Bread" by Anders Zorn, 1886.

J.R.'s Art Place (see link) says: It depicts his mother cooking potatoes for workers on the family farmstead.

Wetland Delta

Wetland Delta, Remo Savisaar

Conventional Wisdom — not what you think it is

I remember being dumbfounded recently when learning that "conventional wisdom" was an invented phrase that specifically means what I always thought it did ... rather than what it is often put forward as meaning, which is "true wisdom."

The following excerpt is heavily edited to get at the essence but I can highly recommend the entire chapter.

Just as truth ultimately serves to create a consensus, so in the short run does acceptability. Ideas come to be organized around what the community as a whole or particular audiences find acceptable.

Numerous factors contribute to the acceptability of ideas. To a large extent, of course, we associate truth with convenience—with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. ... But perhaps most important of all, people approve most of what they best understand. ... Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding.

Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability. They are highly predictable. It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the Conventional Wisdom. [...]

The enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. As I have noted, the conventional wisdom accommodates itself not to the world that it is meant to interpret, but to the audience's view of the world. Since the latter remains with the comfortable and the familiar, while the world moves on, the conventional wisdom is always in danger of obsolescence. [...]

Ideas need to be tested by their ability, in combination with events, to overcome inertia and resistance. This inertia and resistance the conventional wisdom provides.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society

Moonlight in South Texas

Julian Onderdonk, "Moonlight in South Texas," 1912.

Julian Onderdonk was an impressionist who became known as "the father of Texas painting." Find out more at Traces of Texas.

Gangubai Kathiawadi

Mafia Queen.

Duped and sold to a brothel, a young woman fearlessly reclaims her power, using underworld connections to preside over the world she was once a pawn in.

This isn't usually the sort of movie that would interest me but I'm a sucker for director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. This one doesn't disappoint. It is a fascinating look at a young woman sold into prostitution who rises  to run the whole brothel district containing 4,000 women. She does this by both her intelligence and force of personality and the novel idea of protecting the women from the worst depredations of their trade. The story is based on one of the chapters of the nonfiction book, The Mafia Queens of Mumbai.

I've always liked actress Alia Bhatt but have never seen her in a role like this where she exhibits what a wide range she has. Sometimes beautiful and feminine, sometimes swaggering mannishly, sometimes every inch the steely business woman/madam.

Bhansali's films are known for their beauty. Despite this being set in the brothel district of Mumbai, there are still recognizable touches of the director's trademark beauty to be found. The scenes where Gangu is allowing herself to be attracted to the young tailor and the dances showed that familiar style. I appreciated that we are shown the awful life of a prostitute without having to see the details.

Catholics may be interested in a section, based on historical fact, where a Catholic school near the brothel area begins a campaign to clean up the area without any plan for how the 4,000 inhabitants would be able to live. As Catholics we suddenly woke up to the idea that there should have been Christians working to help those in the less fortunate area all along. 

As is usually the case with Indian movies, this would have benefited from being about 45 minutes shorter. The last half hour in particular was much too long and preachy. Despite being in sympathy with the message — the people who sell girls into prostitution and the people who buy their services get off scot-free while the victims are the ones who suffer — I didn't need it told to me in three ways.

Nevertheless, it is a movie that we've been talking about ever since we saw it and is well worth your time. 

Rating — Introduction to Bollywood (come on in, the water's fine!)

Lagniappe: Charles Dickens' and the Boffins' Railway Accident

On Friday the Ninth of June in the present year, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr. and Mrs. Lammle at breakfast) were on the South-Eastern Railway with me, in a terribly destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I climbed back into my carriage—nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught aslant upon the turn—to extricate the worthy couple. They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt. [...] I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers for ever than I was then, until there shall be written against my life, the two words with which I have this day closed this book:—THE END.

Charles Dickens, postscript Our Mutual Friend

Thanks to my interest in weird fiction I have heard the story many times of Dickens' close brush with death in that railway accident. It is often told when reading or referring to Dickens' short story The Signalman, which was a favorite of H.P. Lovecraft and makes it into many weird fiction and ghost story collections. It directly shows the effects of that accident upon Dickens' writing.

Many people on the train were killed or injured so we are not only lucky the manuscript was unhurt but that Dickens was able to finish the book. Perhaps that is why he sent every chapter of Edwin Drood directly to the publisher as soon as he finished it. It didn't stop the book from being only half finished upon Dickens' death, but I can imagine the relief it was to him that someone was keeping it safe as he progressed.

The Happiness of the Moment

The Happiness of the Moment, Edward B. Gordon

 The artist says:

There is not a large selection of bars and restaurants here (at least in my opinion) but it can happen that a complete stranger invites you to a bottle of beer on the banks of the river, after work. Sitting under the delicate leaves of the robinia, looking at the river passing by, admiring the golden light of the sunset, the beer tastes particularly wonderful.

Who is My Neighbor?

Using the very same conscience we have been talking about for the past few days, our scholar of the law in Sunday's Gospel reading nails the right answer with no problem. Here's the reading and then I've got a couple of bits of commentary that were fruitful for me.

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
"Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law?
How do you read it?"
He said in reply,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself."
He replied to him, "You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live."

But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus,
"And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus replied,
"A man fell victim to robbers
as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road,
but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place,
and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him
was moved with compassion at the sight.
He approached the victim,
poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.
Then he lifted him up on his own animal,
took him to an inn, and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins
and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction,
'Take care of him.
If you spend more than what I have given you,
I shall repay you on my way back.'
Which of these three, in your opinion,
was neighbor to the robbers' victim?"
He answered, "The one who treated him with mercy."
Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Lk 10:25-37

This is one of the most famous parables, thorougly studied and commented upon over the ages. I'm used to hearing many takes on it. However, these snippets from some commentaries struck me with force this time.

Instead of giving the lawyer the answer he demanded, Jesus' answer demands from the lawyer his answer to the question: Are you a good neighbor? He must answer the question now, instead of asking it, and he must answer it in his deeds, not just his thoughts and his words. ... Jesus' answer ["Go and do likewise"] does not tell us who to pin the label of "neighbor" on but tells us to pin it on ourselves by our actions.

Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul, Cycle C

Clearly the scholar is the illustration of what we've been thinking about from the first reading in Deuteronomy. He knows what is good and what is evil. It is in his heart and he listens. Of course, then Jesus tells him go to and do it, which is the necessary step in being the good neighbor. Don't just think about it, but act on it.

In Conversation with God has more on this beginning with someone who I've never heard anyone dwell up on in a homily, the victim.

This is my neighbour: he is a man, any man whoever who has need of me. Our Lord makes no specific reference to race, friendship or blood connections. Our neighbour is anyone who is close to us and has need of help. Nothing is said of his country, or of his background or social condition: homo quidam, just a man, a human being.

If Jesus answered the question instead of, in classic rabinnical style, turning the question around to the scholar, this is what he would have said. In asking his question, he is answering it. Everyone is our neighbor. I knew that, but because parable goes on to focus on the good Samaritan in such detail, it never struck me with such force as this last Sunday.

So what does the "go and do likewise" mean? It is spelled out. When the need is recognized we should act.

Firstly, he went up to him. This is the first thing to be done whenever we encounter misfortune or need; we have to get up close, we cannot just observe the situation from a distance. The Samaritan next did what had to be done: he took care of him. The charity Our Lord asks of us is shown in deeds; it consists in doing whatever needs to be done in each individual case.

God places our neighbour, and his needs, along the road of our life. Love is always ready to do whatever the immediate situation demands. It may not be anything particularly heroic or difficult; indeed what is called for is very often something small and simple: This love is not something reserved for important matters, but must be exercised above all in the ordinary circumstances of daily life (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes).

Our Lady's Child

‘Marienkind’ (Our Lady’s Child; or, Mary’s Child)
Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban

I discovered these artists at Lines and Colors where there are more images and some fascinating information.

Rosaline's Curse by Katharine Campbell

Rosaline's ex-fiancé is a god.

At least, that's what he claims to be. He could be a purple gnome for all Rosaline cares, she just wants him out of her life.

Unfortunately, his presence is the result of a curse she brought upon herself when she stole the sacred relics of Ilona the Godslayer.

Since the ill-advised theft, her luck changed for the worse in several ways. Her brother died, she was betrothed to that awful swine, and put into an enchanted sleep for almost eight hundred years. To add insult to injury, her fiancé was somehow still alive when she woke up.

It seems the only way to turn her luck around and get rid of her evil ex, is to return the relics she stole.

Unfortunately, a lot changed while she was in that enchanted sleep. For one thing, everyone now spends most of their time staring at the magic rectangles they keep in their pockets. For another thing, moving human bones across international borders requires a permit.

If Rosaline is to return the relics and break her curse, she has to learn to navigate this new and remarkable world of paperwork and machines.

Luckily, she gets a little help from a friend.

Mark Reid is working toward a master's degree in forensic anthropology. His near-perfect life is turned upside down when what he thinks is a perfectly preserved eight-hundred-year-old corpse turns out to be a princess who is still very much alive.

Now, he must help her integrate into the modern world while somehow convincing her that this holy quest to return the relics she stole is a bad idea.

I've read many takes on Sleeping Beauty but this is the first where she awakes in 2017. Rosaline is a product of her times in some ways such as moral and cultural codes. But, she's surprisingly adventurous and ready to embrace opportunities and challenges that might daunt a modern person tossed 800 years into the future. I love the way her character is written - just the right blend of old and new that is true to her personality.

Rosaline's Curse is a sequel of sorts to Love, Treachery, and Other Terrors. This is mainly apparent in the two evil fairies who put her into the long sleep in the first place. They were causing all sorts of havoc to Rosaline's ancestors in the first book. Luckily, the book can function as a stand alone since the missing pieces have to be explained to the modern people helping Rosaline.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The quest was fun, Rosaline's adaptation was skillfully handled, the romance was well done between two very different people, and it was funny.

Bouquet

Bouquet, Duane Keiser

Sulla collina di bos'n (On Bos'n Hill)

Edmund Tarbell, sulla collina di bos'n

Obeying Our Consciences

Yesterday, we looked at the first reading from Sunday which I am reprinting below just to make things easy. Today we're building on that by hearing from Peter Kreeft.

Moses said to the people:
"If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God,
and keep his commandments and statutes
that are written in this book of the law,
when you return to the LORD, your God,
with all your heart and all your soul.

"For this command that I enjoin on you today
is not too mysterious and remote for you.
It is not up in the sky, that you should say,
'Who will go up in the sky to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?'
Nor is it across the sea, that you should say,
'Who will cross the sea to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?'
No, it is something very near to you,
already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out."

Dt 30:10-14

Peter Kreeft looks at what we do in order to be able to ignore God's will. I have a feeling this may be as familiar to you as it is to me.

This reading shows that Moses is truly a great psychologist. ... The Ten Commandments are clear. It's our own wills that are not clear. They are divided. one part wants to play God and say, "My will be done."The second part wants to obey God and say, "Thy will be done." So what do we do? To justify our weak and divided wills, we pretend that it's God's will that's unclear. We "nuance" the Commandments; we pretend they are unclear and difficult to understand because we find them difficult for our rebellious wills to obey. ... God undercuts that rationalization by giving us conscience. Deep down, if we are honest, we all know very well what we should do and what we should not do 99 percent of the time. ...

Of course, we have to be honest with our conscience. We can easily ignore it, silence it, cloud it, or make compromises with it. We have to be uncompromisingly honest and always ask, What is the truth? What is the true good? That's the first duty our conscience tells us we have: to honestly seek the truth, will the truth, and want to know the truth about what we should and should not do. And then to obey it. ...

We all know—even the most skeptical and unbelieving moral relativist clearly knows— that we must obey our conscience. You will never meet anyone who says it's ok to deliberately disobey your own conscience. We all know it; we just don't do it.

Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul, Cycle C

Tomorrow we're going to take a quick look at the Gospel reading from Sunday, one of the most famous of all parables, The Good Samaritan.

Still Life with Irises and Blue Jar

Still Life with Irises and Blue Jar, Edmund Tarbell