Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Various & Sundry

Reading this Sunday? Glad you asked. Well there was the Columbus Dispatch, with an interesting re-publish from the NY Times about a Russian former KBG who was poisoned by an obscure element and who, before he died, pointed to President Putin. That led me, naturally, to "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" for a little Soviet atmospheric. Dark. Then a dollop of the novel “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova, which I haven't been able to get into for whatever reason. Spending time with Stalin & Dracula meant many a flower I was neglectful in pollinating, though I carried them around as if they were portable rectangles of joy. The natural ebulliency of a read day tends to abate as the clock remorselessly moves.
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Haven't seen The Nativity yet, but one local review included the accusation that it is without joy. If true then it certainly omits the chief message of the Incarnation. By contrast, no one could accuse Handel's Messiah of a dearth of joy.
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Been having a strong hunger for Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”. Reduced to playing and re-playing snippets off amazon.com since I can't find my CD. Alack & alas! Or is it alas & alack?
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I used to have hanging one of those Victorian-era pictures of the Blessed Mother depicted with long attractive brown hair and limpid blue eyes. Her Immaculate Heart was exposed and her face exuded warmth. A few years later, due to a desire for accuracy and a fit of art snobbishness I took it down off the wall. Even if you ignored the exposed heart, I reasoned, this wasn’t what Mary looked liked. Of cours, no one on earth knows what Mary really looked like. But I figured at least I could have an accurate representation of how she represented herself to the indigenous citizens of Mexico in the 1500s.

So I put up one of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Even though this wasn’t what Mary looked like either, it did symbolize what she thought of us. She thought enough to appear to Juan Diego. Her half-Spanish, half-Indian features bespoke a willingness to be, like St. Paul, whatever her fellow humans needed her to be in order to win them over. And that last attitude was telling. It meant that that original Victorian image of Mary, depicted as the girl next door with a heart aflame, was far more accurate than I’d first thought after all.
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I love these sort of posts even if they sound a tad pedantic. I'm most surprised that Tom K hasn't read Confessions. Random thoughts:

I think "The Enduring Chill" is my favorite of Flannery O'Connor's stories.

I guess I'm going to have to read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" since anything Steven & Tom agree on has to be good.

I'll take Steven's disdain for Lincoln's Second as evidence of his profound Southern bias.

His point about Chesterton resonated in that I can't seem to read him continuously. Chesterton's relentlessly aphoristic style makes bite-size pieces easier to take, and yet there are very few authors I'd have wished to have read more -- in other words, I wish to have read his whole ouevre without having read it. I finished "Orthodoxy", but without as much profit as I'd expected going in. I wish I'd chosen to read "The Everlasting Man". I've read that in parts, and those parts have been more illuminative that "Orthodoxy".

Walker Percy must be one of those you either love or hate. He's the only novelist I've read everything he's ever done. (If Updike was less prolific and horny he might've been the second.)
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The Eastern Liturgy I frequent has been a'changing. A new pastor is the reason, and it has taken me aback at how much even a seemingly "unchangeable" liturgy like those of the Eastern church can have a very different feel with a different pastor. I think it shows that Latin Masses could've become "clown" Masses with enough effort and chutzpah. That's not to say this particular Byzantine Catholic Church's liturgy is hugely different from the one under the old pastor; there still is the "public privacy" of a liturgy that provides space for heart-speak. A minor but affective difference for me was the replacement of this prayer (which, with repeats, is long), with a chant of the Beatitudes:

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth, sing praise to His name; give to Him glorious praise.

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O Savior, save us.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and forever....

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O savior, save us.

Be gracious to us, O God, and bless us; let Your face shine upon us, and have mercy on us. O Son of God, risen from the dead, save us who sing to Your: Alleluia!

This is a prayer from the heart. By contrast, the Beatitudes strike me as not intended as prayer but simply affirming that the poor, pure, single-hearted and meek will be blessed. There is no obvious petition or praise in it. Maybe the pastor put it in there for didactic purposes, but liturgy is one of the few places one can escape the didactic in favor of the estatic. There's always the homily for the latter...