Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Various & Sundry

A Byzantine friend of mine always mentions the Sack of Constantinople as the understandable reason that the Orthodox are not much interested in the ecumenical gestures of Rome. He speaks of it as if it happened yesterday and calls the wound "deep". I think I must have a case of compassion fatigue because I just can't get too exercised over it. I probably offended him when I asked if maybe five thousand years would be enough time to heal that wound since apparently one millennium wasn't enough (of course by saying that I was probably doing my part in lengthening the time it would take to heal). I conveniently trotted out my Irish heritage, saying I've managed to get over what the British did to the Irish. It seems like if you or your parents were involved in some sort of atrocity it is understandable that grudges be held. But where is the line at which it becomes ridiculous? Should not we all be furious at Adam and Eve for starting the mess?

There were, of course, bad things perpetrated by both the Orthodox and the RCC through history. My Byzantine friend reminds me a bit of Karen Hall, very passionate. Sometimes I wonder if you can get the passion without the enmity part of it, the holding grudges part. To borrow a Star Trek analogy, it seems there are Scottys and there are Spocks, and if you're in need you go to Scotty, because he is generous and warm and sympathetic. If you want forgiveness you go to Spock, who would not hold grudges simply because they are "illlogical", since, as in the case with grievances held against people long dead, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe this would also apply to Aquinas/Augustine too, the passionate Augustine versus the cool Aquinas.
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I was reading something by N.T. Wright over the weekend and he mentioned how the symbol for the Messiah for the Hebrews was the lion, and the symbol for sacrifice was the lamb. And suddenly I thought of that verse from Isaiah where the "lion lies down with the lamb" was Christ embodied: the meeting of the annointed one and he who would be sacrificed.
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OSU football legend Woody Hayes used to say that of the three things that happened when you passed the ball. Two of them bad. With blogging, at least three things can happen and two of them bad: i.e. uncharitableness & error.
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Read a bit of Maranis's Vince Lombardi bio over the weekend. It was a different time, a different world. The coach was a daily communicant his whole adult life, and when he went to D.C. he introduced himself to the priest, asking him what time morning Mass was. He said "7:30am" and Lombardi had the chutzpah to say that 7am would work better for him. The priest was amused. The problem for those in authority is to feel a sense of entitlement. I did a little re-reading of All Quiet on the Western Front over the weekend and it's maddening to see the waste. I don't have a problem with authority figures making mistakes. What is a nightmare is when they don't correct the mistake.
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Distant lands are not so far away
I don't know why we don't go
Take my hands
I'll show you the way
Pack your bags and sail away...

- Holiday by "The Other Ones"

Sunday sun on the porch, poems bled at the edge of a lead pencil. The weekend evaporated quickly if pleasantly but I run with the intensity of the feverish, away from the sulphurous neighbor dogs causing traffic to stand still in the street. I run down undulating asphalt roads melting in abeyance before the sun. I run down cul-de-sacs and thoroughfares, past the Good Burghers cooking burgers, past the small variances in architecture that press uncalled for poignancies upon me as if each cornice or arch or bay window were snowflakes, individual as each of those within the houses.