A Breezy Night's Entry

Equipped with a most portable new Surface Pro that has a decent battery life, I am sitting outside on my terrace as I write.  It is breezy and still warm at 11:30 p.m. and I can count some fifteen brilliantly shining stars even here in the middle of Los Angeles. I think the one going out of sight soon, is Orion's Belt.

This little terrace, which in large part faces a wall, but in a part significant to me, also looks down onto our condominium's pool, and upwards toward very old palm trees that are currently swaying fairly wildly in the wind, is a piece of paradise to me.

I brought the tablet cum attachable keyboard out here when I thought of my morning's sojourn here, around 10 a.m., prior to a shower and the beginning of my daily activities.  That was a heavenly hour or so. Sad though I was at the hazy cloud in the distance reminding me of the Glendora fire set by three callously negligent young men, leaving people's lives in ruin, I could not deny how much I love the weather here in Los Angeles. The sun was just creeping to a point where it would actually get too hot to sit here, but I had time to savor the moments before it would arrive. Bleu, my 18 pounder, pounced onto my lap. A crow perched on a frond extending from one of the palm trees, and it seemed to me that he was watching me, watching him and we both watched another crow on another tree ripping pieces of bark off his landing space.

I could hear birds, and occasionally catch one or two flitting from top palm branches.  I thought it a good time to say the rosary, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and noted that the crow stayed for most of my distracted prayer, leaving only when I got a bit into the last decade. Then about ten of his fellow crows with a leader at point, flew by the tops of the palms and above them a jet, high in the sky and yet seeming to be part of the pack of birds.

Time stops on this terrace. I seem able to put in abeyance regrets, and even after two and a half years, spurts of anger, at having my career dispensed with by the  mover and shaker du jour who did not give one whit about my time, emotional commitment and success in upholding the shifting sands of ethics rules for twenty five years despite assaults by cacophonous contradictory soul wrenching demands. I consider that God had and has a plan for me that as Newman says, I may never know in this life, but which is as surely set as the stars in the sky that fascinate me night after night. Here, it is easy to let go as it is in no other place, except perhaps in the amber filtered light of my churchbefore the Blessed Sacrament. There too, I realize, time stops and there is nothing I must do but be.

In these two places for certain, I breathe deep and secure. Silly, isn't it.

My neighbors are out on their terrace a ways down. I think they are in entertainment.  Who isn't? When I came out here that was my goal too. Comedy writer. I was going to become a television comedy writer. I had even written a few scripts with my then partner. Twists and turns. I suppose nothing is too late. No thinking here. . . no more digression tonight. I like the sound of their low voices, slightly withholding toward the woman typing on her terrace.  I like the smell of their cigarettes. It's real. Unfiltered.  There's a double meaning. My Westminster chime clock has just gone off, striking twelve a.m.

The wind is increasing in intensity.
Bleu is back out here again on the other chair curled up. I love it.

I shall curl up on this chair, after a fashion, before going off to bed where thinking will overtake me till about 3 a.m. But in the morning, since I hear the weather will be fair again, I will be able to come out for another infusion of stillness. 

If A Djinn Could Preach--January 12, 2014, Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord

I stopped watching the Golden Globes this evening when I saw what actors and movies were winning the bobble. 

I guess it is a sign of impending age related crotchedy-ness that I no longer enjoy hearing about or reading about, or seeing, the "stars" of Hollywood and all outsourced locales. The Dream Factory produces more gloom and horror than cheer and hope.

Not that there weren't some good and good-ish movies, from a creativity point of view, like "Nebraska", or "Philomena" or "Blue Jasmine" or "Saving Mr. Banks", or even "Her" which I saw last night. Oh, and one I saw a while ago, "All is Lost". But starting with that latter film I have noticed something rather jarring to me. I say, "to me" because I am guessing that there is a large part of the population who couldn't give a. . .darn about this observation.

God is rarely mentioned. And where He is, He is represented by the worst of humanity as if to suggest it downright righteous that He be eradicated from the secular scene.

In every one of these movies, the main characters are lost souls one way or the other. In Redford's case, he is literally lost at sea. 






Redford says only three things in his movie and one of them is the F-word. Not to say that in his situation I wouldn't have recourse to such a word, and far more frequently than he did. But here's the thing. I think God would have been given a bit of space in, in my case, my not so infrequent rants. I would have been begging Him, if not to save me, to give me a quick and relatively peaceful death, as much as one could expect in the Indian Ocean with a big hole in my boat.

God has become politically incorrect.

Except perhaps in Church, and even there, I notice a bit of boredom amid the parishioners. On a day like this, celebrating the first deliberate public appearance of Christ as an adult (as a young pre-pubescent child he had been in that Temple showing his early capacity), He came to the Jordan to be baptized by His cousin John.  At that moment, when He immersed Himself in the water, though He had no sin to be washed away, He and His Father in heaven kicked off the three years that would culminate in death and Resurrection, all to save us bored and smug and sinful, emphasis on the sinful, beings who have resisted Him every step of the way. Or dismissed Him. Which is a pretty ironic thing for a creature to do to his Creator. But then if you don't believe there is a Creator, . . . .well it gets complicated, doesn't it?

God so loved us He became sin to take away those of every man and woman from Adam and Eve straight up to this very second I am writing and you are reading, if still you are. The Israelites argued with God. Believing Jews still do. Believing Christians, we're a little, no a lot, lackadaisical. Those who find belief a quaint little throwback to a time when knowledge, say of the time of Aquinas, of Avila, or Ignatius of Antioch, or for that matter, when the Founders of this country looked to Natural Law, i.e. Divine Law as the basis for constructing and implementing a nation, simply banish Him from places like the movies, and look to banish Him entirely from the public square.

When Jesus stepped into that river over 2,000 years ago, He knew that we'd exercise our freedom of choice in this way and yet, STILL He proceeded with the greatest act of love ever or that could be ever. That is beyond time itself.

  

If this Djinn Could Preach

I recently revealed to a friend for the first time that if my faith, Catholicism, had permitted or would ever permit it, I would have liked to have been considered as a candidate for the seminary and priesthood. "You could have," you might say, "gone to the Episcopalians which allow women priests.".

The thing is, however, I could not. I believe that my faith has the fullness of truth and if that be the case then my personal desires, wishes or hopes for a particular role within it, must properly be superseded by how that truth unfolds within it. Perhaps in time the Holy Spirit will cause it to be concluded that "in persona Christi" is not restricted to the male.  For now, I remain in obedience to the dogma and doctrine.

I am blessed that I am able to act as server at Mass almost daily. When the celebrant raises the host as it becomes God Himself I am close to the central action of Catholicism. It just doesn't get better than that other than to be in His Presence in Paradise.

I've got no complaints you see.  Still having heard more than one poorly constructed homily in my life (I have been fortunate that within my parish the priests have generally been inspired) I have wondered what it might be like if I could preach homilies-which is not allowed to either lay men or
women under canon law. What a joy it seems it would be. Work of joy.

Maybe it's the beginning of this new year or the agitation and events of these last several that has me thinking in this direction and needing to enhance my offerings in this forum, this blog. Perhaps I shall on a Sunday or holy day take a stab at writing about the readings during the Mass from the perspective of this spottily trained often auto didactic lay person with the title above on those occasions-If a Djinn Could Preach. 

Depending on my schedule and emotional and/or spiritual impetus I shall try to begin about today's readings, tomorrow. Stay tuned if you tune into these pages at all.