Charlotte was Both

Still on the road, so a repeat will have to do.

Today’s Gospel, for Laetare Sunday.

This is one of my favorite Gospel narratives for a number of reasons.  The dynamic and exchanges it describes just ring so true, with this man being sent around, buffeted from the puzzled (and hostile) on all sides, friends, enemies and family members trying to figure out what happened to him and who did it.

And even he isn’t too sure.

The way in which Jesus heals him points ahead to the sacramentality at the core of Christian life.

Some despise ritual, say none of it matters, say that God is not bound by any of it. Of course God is not bound by it. God can do anything he likes. But in this world he created, he uses all that he created to reach us, to touch us, to heal us. Jesus could have just used his words and said – go – you’re healed, but here he didn’t. He spits. He makes mud. He rubs it on the man’s eyes and tells him to go wash.

How often are we tempted to gripe about the complexities and mysteries born of the Incarnation –  God mixing up with us is so very confusing. Wouldn’t it be simpler if God bypassed all of this mud and gunk and waved a wand, and got our attention with big gestures that no one could ignore?

Would it be simple?

I don’t know.

But it wouldn’t be consistent with the very act of Creation and God’s presence within it, that  glory and mystery of God-With-Us.

No magic wands, clearly labeled, magic words from a handbook. Just spit and mud and a push to go find the waters and wash it off.

One of the other points of this narrative that I come back to repeatedly is the process of the blind man’s faith – and I do see it as a process.

Just look at his answers to questions – they get more specific with each challenge. At first the one who healed him is just “a man.”  And no, he doesn’t know where he is.

Then, to the Pharisees, he says that he supposed the healer was “a prophet.“

Then second time with the Pharisees he argues that obviously this man must be “from God.“

And then, finally, after he has totally frustrated everyone, scandalized others and been thrown out of the presence of the Pharisees…. he meets Jesus. No accident. Jesus seeks him out. And gently asks him some questions – and in response, in recognition, the man, now seeing in every sense, calls him “Lord.”

It seems to me to be a very accurate account of how faith grows and develops – in response to questions and challenges in which we are forced to examine our encounter with God, who we think God is, exactly, open ourselves more and more to him until finally, we meet him again, having been through the ringer, from within and without, and can finally put our ultimate trust, no matter what others say we should do, in the One who touched us way back when.

From the Christian Art website.

El Greco painted Christ Healing the Blind around 1570, when he was approximately 29 years old, still in his formative Italian period before moving to Spain. This makes the work especially important: it shows a young artist absorbing the lessons of the Venetian Renaissance (dramatic colour and theatrical, complex architecture), while already experimenting boldly with his own innovative compositions. The scene shows Christ at the centre-left, surrounded by animated figures who react with astonishment to the miracle. What makes this painting particularly ‘ahead of its time’, is the daring inclusion of two large figures in foreground, which are partially cropped by the edge of the canvas. Such cropping was highly unusual in the sixteenth century, where compositions were typically balanced and contained figures without cropping them. Here, however, El Greco creates the sense that the scene spills into our own space, as if we are standing among the crowd witnessing the miracle.

On the road today. Some interesting articles.

(As per usual, follow on the Gram (Stories) for sort of timely updates. Probably not a lot up until Sunday, but then…watch out! )

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First, from an Orthodox site – but definitely applicable.

Thus, a beginning for a modern Lent is to repent from the modern world itself. By this, I mean renouncing the notion that you are a self-generated, self-authenticating individual. You are not defined by your choices and decisions, much less by your career and your shopping. You begin by acknowledging that God alone is Lord (and you are not). Your life has meaning and purpose only in relation to God. The most fundamental practice of such God-centered living is the giving of thanks.

• Renounce trying to improve yourself and become something. You are not a work in progress. If you are a work – then you are God’s work. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in” (Eph 2:10).
• Do not plan to have a “good Lent” or imagine what a “good Lent” would be. Give up judging – especially judging yourself. Get out of the center of your world. Lent is not about you. It is about Christ and His Pascha.
• Fast according to the Tradition instead of according to your own ideas and designs. This might be hard for some if they are not part of the traditional Church and thus have no fasting tradition. Most Catholics have differing rules for fasting than the Orthodox. If you’re Catholic, fast like a Catholic. Don’t admire other people’s fasting.

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That New Yorker piece on the Chinese couple with the dozens of surrogate-borne children.

Horrific. I cannot see how any of this will end, even if we are able to make surrogacy illegal in this country, which is probably never going to happen.

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From New York magazine – on the domination of Mormon women in certain corners of pop culture. I was glad to see the thoroughness – the writer reached back to the blog days of happy LDS women and babes everywhere.

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Finally – I mean, don’t say I’m not eclectic – a delightful piece from the New York Review of Books (hey , at least they’re all from NYC, I guess) – on a 16th century diarist:

On the morning of October 10, 1552, a fifteen-year-old boy named Felix left the city of Basel, on the Rhine River, to study medicine at the university in Montpellier, some 330 miles away. He was the only son, and only surviving child, of a Swiss German schoolmaster and his wife. At his departure his father gave him seven gold coins, two fresh shirts, some clean handkerchiefs, and a lecture on the virtue of hard work. His mother gave him an additional gold coin and a tearful hug. Mounting a small horse, he set off with a pair of companions for the southern coast of France.

That first day the travelers stopped to dine at an inn in nearby Lieschtal; unaccustomed to walking in spurs, Felix nearly fell down a set of stairs. Two days later, in Bern, he saw six captive bears and a woman on horseback who got snared in the branches of an apple tree and was left dangling, skirts in armpits, until someone helped her down. The following day it began to rain, and Felix and his companions were forced to stop for the night at an inn filled with unsavory-looking peasants. Fearing robbery, or worse, they barricaded themselves in their room and left before dawn. (They later heard that the other guests had in fact intended to kill them.) They arrived in Geneva, where Felix met the famed reformer John Calvin and heard him preach, though he couldn’t understand the French sermon. He also got his first short haircut, which left his head uncomfortably cold.

In Lyon a ferrywoman cheated Felix of his change, so he threw stones at her boat. In Avignon he succumbed to a brief but intense bout of homesickness. At some point along the way, he turned sixteen. Finally, on the evening of October 30, a Sunday, he mounted a hill and saw spread out below him the walled city of Montpellier—and, beyond it, the sea. He proceeded down the hill, across a bridge, and past the place of execution in the fields outside the city gates. “Pieces of human flesh hung from the olive trees,” and seeing them gave him “a curious sensation.” It soon passed: entering the city, he found the streets filled with revelers, clad in white, accompanied by stringed instruments and bearing silver shells full of sugared almonds. He made his way to the home of his new landlord, a Marrano Jewish pharmacist named Laurent Catalan, who greeted him in Latin and brought him into the house. A serving girl named Beatrice took off his boots. A new life had begun.

Link to the book on the publisher’s page here.

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And….if you haven’t had time in your life to watch all the Oscar Best Picture winners…well, someone has…

(Entertaining new header, too)

Bishop Barron posted this yesterday, on the memorial of St. Frances of Rome:

I…am not quite sure what the purpose of this is.

First of all, the image itself is contrary to the spirit of St. Frances of Rome – in her domestic life, which was not about sitting in a picturesque scene, meditatively knitting.

Frances very much wanted to enter religious life, but was married off instead – but was blessed, nonetheless, by a good husband and a happy marriage of forty years, until her husband’s death.

She brought the spirit of religious life to her marriage and home, though, embracing asceticism as far as it was appropriate, engaging in penance and in addition to managing her home and raising her children, giving herself to God’s poor.

She was also a mystic.

Someone posted the full context of the quote, which I suppose was in the context of a mystical experience:

This comes from the Vita di Santa Francesca Romana (written soon after her death, c. 1440s) written by Giovanni Mattiotti, her confessor.

“He also said that a married woman, although it is very praiseworthy to be devout and to frequent church and prayer, must nevertheless not forget that God has placed her in charge of the household. Therefore, a married woman must sometimes leave God at the altar to find him in the chores of the house; because in charitably serving her husband, children, and family, she serves the Lord himself.”

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Perhaps you can see the difference context – not only of the quote, but of Frances’ entire life – offers. Especially in contrast to the sentimental, idealized image of an almost leisurely pose.

I can’t imagine Frances, even in her dedication to her husband and children, embracing this as an apt expression of the life God called her to.

More context: In Frances’ time, religious life was certainly seen as “the more perfect way.” It was something Frances herself yearned for and indeed embraced after her husband’s death.

What this quote, and Frances’ life actually shows is that yes, while one seeking holiness might be tempted to think that the only way to find it is to try to emulate the life of the “more perfect” cloistered religious, well, this is not your state in life right now, and God gives you the means to sanctity within that state of life.

But it’s not about lots of prayer v. playing with the kids and making sourdough.

It’s more like: Pouring oneself out to God through a life dedicate to prayer in the cloister v. Pouring oneself out to God through a life dedicated to serving the poor in the world.

The sphere of Frances’ “domestic cares” extended beyond the walls of her home.

Human beings, created by and for God, are called to holiness and discipleship. Frances of Rome’s example shows us one form that holiness takes, with the emphasis in all we read about her, being in her self-sacrifice, prayerfulness and – this is important – bringing the love of Christ into the world in a Matthew 25 kind of way that the cloistered religious could not.

The quote then, is both reassurance – but with the assumption that we understand the call to charity – and a warning, to not fall into believing that the way to holiness is to try to mimic the details of vowed religious life.

A contemporary application? The temptation for either a woman or a man, a mother or father, a spouse, whose prime responsibility is the family, to spend so much time in church “activities” that primary duties are neglected. But it’s for God! It’s not only fine to spend all my time at church meetings instead of with my kids….it must be good!

Anyway, Frances of Rome is revered in Rome, not for fulfilling some fantasy of the 19th century cult of true womanhood, but for her profound piety which led her to prioritize the works of mercy, both inside and outside her home.

From the traditional Office of Readings for her memorial:

Many different diseases were rampant in Rome. Fatal diseases and plagues were everywhere, but the saint ignored the risk of contagion and displayed the deepest kindness toward the poor and the needy. Here empathy would first bring them to atone for their sins. Then she would help them by her eager care, and urge them lovingly to accept their trials, however difficult, from the hand of God. She would encourage them to endure their sufferings for love of Christ, since he had previously endured so much for them.

Frances was not satisfied with caring for the sick she could bring into her home. She would seek them out in their cottages and in public hospitals, and would refresh their thirst, smooth their beds, and bind their sores. The more disgusting and sickening the stench, the greater was the love and care with which she treated them.

She used to go to the Campo Santo with food and rich delicacies to be distributed to the needy. On her return home she would bring pieces of worn-out clothes and unclean rags which she would wash lovingly and mend carefully, as if they were to be used for God himself. Then she would fold them carefully and perfume them.

For thirty years Frances continued this service to the sick and the stranger. While she was in her husband’s house, she made frequent visits to Saint Mary’s and Saint Cecilia’s hospitals in Trastevere, and to the hospital of the Holy Spirit in Sassia and to a fourth hospital in the Campo Santo. During epidemics like this it was not only difficult to find doctors to care for the body but even priests to provide remedies for the soul. She herself would seek them out and bring them to those who were disposed to receive the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist. In order to have a priest more readily available to assist her in her apostolate, she supported, at her own expense, a priest who would go to the hospitals and visit the sick whom she had designated.

So you see, no, that image above does not quite capture the spirit of Frances of Rome.

BTW, to stir the pot some more, I heard someone say yesterday that St. Frances would have been appalled at the response of the Church to Covid back in 2020-21. The reading above indicates that she might not have been surprised, though.

Last week, I gave a talk at a local parish about the liturgical year. Not a history lesson, not a living liturgically in your domestic church guide, especially since I am not expert in the latter and past that particular era (although I did touch on that point).

More of a reflection on the importance and power of the liturgical year.

My central point, as it evolved, almost as I was giving the talk, was that allowing one’s spiritual journey to be shaped by the liturgical year, from the meaning of Sunday to daily prayer and Mass readings to the broader shape of the seasons, is an analog, really, to the life of a disciple, period. It’s a way living out discipleship.

We live in an age of self-determination and curation. We can shape our own lives, live in a self-designed bubble, and in fact, we are sometimes led to believe that it is our duty to do so: to discover who we are through self-examination and experience, to claim that identity, to be unshakeable in our independence and search no matter what other thinks, and to design a life that supports that and helps us flourish.

(An understanding of self and purpose that comes from a place of privilege, don’t you think?)

This, of course, isn’t the call of the Christian, who is called to find her “true” self through giving her life to God.

And what is more foundational on this earth than time?

Yes, the way of discipleship might just be rooted in the willingness to give our time over to God – to live in time he fashions, not only cosmically, but sacramentally, through his Church.

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Merton describes pagan time:

For fallen and unredeemed man, the cycle of seasons, the wheel of time itself, is only a spiritual prison. Each new spring brings a temporary hope. Autumn and winter destroy that hope with her ever returning reminder of death.

It is as if the whole of nature were striving upwards, but striving in vain. Generation after generation she kindles the flames of countless human spirits, capable of an eternal destiny…the flames leap up for a brief moment, then died down and are extinguished…none of them can reach up into eternity. The cycle of the seasons reminds us, by this perpetual renewal and perpetual death, that death is the end of all.

Time, then, to the pagan, is a prison.

But Merton, writing over sixty years ago, doesn’t let modern man off the hook. For we, too are pagan – but worse of really, since we are also cut off from nature.

“Mass man” is something more than fallen. He lives not only below the level of grace, but below the level of nature..no longer in contact with the created world or with himself, out of touch with the reality of nature, he lives in the world of collective obsessions, the world of systems and fictions with which modern man has surrounded himself. In such a world, man’s life is no longer even a seasonal cycle. It’s a linear flight into nothingness, a flight from reality and from God, without purpose and without objective, except to keep moving, to keep from having to face reality.

And then, into this endless cycle, comes Christ.

For man in Christ, the cycle of the seasons is something entirely new, it has become a cycle of salvation. The year is not just another year, it is the year of the Lord –  a year in which the passage of time itself brings us not only the natural renewal of spring and the fruitfulness of an earthly summer, but also the spiritual and interior fruitfulness of grace.

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This new understanding of time in Christ should lead us to more than a different calendar, distinctive celebrations or a strengthened “Catholic identity,” though.

As Pius XII wrote in Mediator Dei:

While the sacred liturgy calls to mind the mysteries of Jesus Christ, it strives to make all believers take their part in them so that the divine Head of the mystical Body may live in all the members with the fullness of His holiness. Let the souls of Christians be like altars on each one of which a different phase of the sacrifice, offered by the High priest, comes to life again, as it were: pains and tears which wipe away and expiate sin; supplication to God which pierces heaven; dedication and even immolation of oneself made promptly, generously and earnestly; and, finally, that intimate union by which we commit ourselves and all we have to God, in whom we find our rest. “The perfection of religion is to imitate whom you adore.”

Hence, the liturgical year, devotedly fostered and accompanied by the Church, is not a cold and lifeless representation of the events of the past, or a simple and bare record of a former age. It is rather Christ Himself who is ever living in His Church. Here He continues that journey of immense mercy which He lovingly began in His mortal life, going about doing good,[151] with the design of bringing men to know His mysteries and in a way live by them.

Or:

To enter into the liturgical cycle is to participate in the great work of redemption effected by the Son. ‘Liturgy’ is ‘common work’ – a sacred work in which the Church co-operates with the divine Redeemer in re-living His mysteries and applying their fruits to all mankind… it is a work in which the Church collaborates with the divine Redeemer, renewing on her altars the sacred mysteries which are the life and salvation of man, uttering again the life-saving words that are capable of saving and transforming our souls, blessing again the sick and the possessed, and preaching His Gospel to the poor.

In other words,

To put it another way, in Christ time takes on a sacramental dimension. The Liturgical Year bears this sacramental quality of memorial, actuation and prophecy. Time becomes a re-enactment of Christ’s saving events, His being born in our flesh, His dying and rising for us in that human flesh. Time thus becomes a pressing sign of salvation, the “day of the Lord”, His ever present “hour of salvation”, the kairos.

The baptized are baptized into Christ, into his death, to rise – and live with him. Christ lives in the world, moves in the world, calls the lost to him, through the Church, through us, shaped, not by our whims and momentary feelings about what’s important, but by the priorities he sets for us, forming us through his coming, his ministry, his passion, death and resurrection, and the pouring out of the Spirit.

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In addition, the liturgical year, like any elements of given prayer and ritual, guides us since, as Paul says, we do not know how to pray as we ought. We think we do, but we actually don’t know what’s best for us, what we really need, what others around us need. This emerges when we, holding on to grudges, are “forced” to pray as we forgive those who trespass against us, or when we, averse to thinking about the inevitable, must utter the words, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

So with the rhythms of the liturgical year.

Despite our best efforts to avoid thinking about our sins and failings, we’re put on a path of penitential self-examination during Lent.

We avoid thinking about death and what comes after until it’s November, and we can’t anymore.

We might feel terrible about ourselves, unconvinced, to say the least, of our goodness and worthiness, doubtful of our value in this indifferent, judgmental world – and then it’s Christmas, and a Child is practically placed in our lap because, we’re told, he loves us.

And in the face of loss, of emptiness that seems as if it will surely stretch forever, into eternity, we’re surrounded by Alleluia!

Will we join the song?

Or we will continue, solipsistic, restless, curating our own lives, designing our own journeys, striving in vain for release?

Here are some Monday notes:

It’s the memorial of St. Frances of Rome. She’s in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints.

• I was in Living Faith yesterday. Go here for that.

• Daniel Mitsui has come up with a banger:

“According to legend, Albertus Magnus had spent thirty years devising an oracular head, a mechanical device that could answer questions posed to it. Thomas Aquinas smashed it to pieces. Different versions of the story say that this was out of annoyance, or of fright; I prefer to think that St. Thomas had prophetic insight into the evils such devices could and would cause.

While I generally avoid putting my religious drawings on everyday merchandise, I thought that this small scene was timely and appropriate and humorous enough to make an exception:”

Direct link to Redbubble store.

• Speaking of bangers, The Irish Yank is a fellow living in NYC who’s, well, Irish – and some sort of fitness guy. But he also goes to Mass – usually at St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village, and I always look forward to his Instagram Story on Sunday night after he emerges from the 6pm Mass and enthuses about what a “banger” the Mass was and how people were just “wedged in.”

My quick stop at St. Joe’s – wow, a year ago this week!

For more young people packing a Sunday evening Mass in NYC, keep up with the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Instagram. Kneeling for Communion and everything, just imagine.

A quick clip from our Cathedral on Sunday.

• An ad popped up on some webpage for an upcoming exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art:

Well, you know what happened next.

Here you go:

The interesting part of the story of Matisse and the chapel in Vence (outside of Nice) was the role of a religious sister in the project. Matisse met her a few years before he moved there, when she briefly worked as a nurse and a model for him.

In July 1943, Henri Matisse left Nice to escape the threat of bombardment and moved to Vence in the Villa Le Rêve where he stayed until 1948.

Dominican nuns ran a nursing home just across the street. His former night nurse and model Monique Bourgeois was convalescing there. He had hired her for a few months in 1942 as he was recovering from major surgery. They became friends and she started posing for him. Fate brought them together again in 1943. They rekindled their friendship and Monique continued to pose for him. In 1944 she took the veil and joined the Dominican community, becoming Sister Jacques-Marie.

In 1947, the nuns were in desperate need of a chapel and Sister Jacques showed Matisse sketches she had made for a stained-glass window. On December 4, 1947, Brother Louis-Bertrand Rayssiguier who was passionate about modern art and convinced of its positive impact on religious art came to visit Matisse. He persuaded him not only to decorate but also design the entire chapel which would prove the synthesis of his past experimentations and research. 

Helped by Father Marie-Alain Couturier and in collaboration with the architect August Perret and the master glazier Paul Bony, Henri Matisse started working on the project after returning to the Regina in 1949. He gradually turned his vast flat in a studio on the walls of which he displayed his maquettes, most of which were life-sized.

An obituary of Sister Jacque-Marie.

After the chapel opened in 1951, the press compounded her troubles by inventing titillating stories about the old painter and the young nun. “The builders of churches,” her novice mistress told her sternly, “have never achieved anything good or beautiful without being crucified for it.”

Sister Jacques-Marie, having tried but failed to persuade the irrevocably secular Matisse to be buried in the Vence chapel, was forbidden by her superiors to attend his funeral in 1954.

In retrospect she came to see her contribution to the chapel as the high point of her life, writing a lively book – Henri Matisse, La Chapelle de Vence – about it in 1993, and starring 10 years later in a film – A Model for Matisse: The Story of the Vence Chapel, directed by Barbara Freed – that celebrates the captivating wit, energy and natural authority Matisse first recognised in her.

She died in a convent at Bidart on the French coast near Biarritz.

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• Speaking of movies… check out the latest from Movie Guy Son – and give a subscribe, thnx.

They are in the section of The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints called:

The last couple of pages:

You can read the text of the Acts of the two saints here. 

5. A few days after, the report went abroad that we were to be tried. Also my father returned from the city spent with weariness; and he came up to me to cast down my faith saying: Have pity, daughter, on my grey hairs; have pity on your father, if I am worthy to be, called father by you; if with these hands I have brought you unto this flower of youth- and I-have preferred you before all your brothers; give me not over to the reproach of men. Look upon your brothers; look upon your mother and mother’s sister; look upon your son, who will not endure to live after you. Give up your resolution; do not destroy us all together; for none of us will speak openly against men again if you suffer aught.

This he said fatherly in his love, kissing my hands and grovelling at my feet; and with tears he named me, not daughter, but lady. And I was grieved for my father’s case because he would not rejoice at my passion out of all my kin; and I comforted him, saying: That shall be done at this tribunal, whatsoever God shall please; for know that we are not established in our own power, but in God’s. And he went from me very sorrowful.

6. Another day as we were at meal we were suddenly snatched away to be tried; and we came to the forum. Therewith a report spread abroad through the parts near to the forum, and a very great multitude gathered together. We went up to the tribunal. The others being asked, confessed. So they came to me. And my father appeared there also, with my son, and would draw me from the step, saying: Perform the Sacrifice; have mercy on the child. And Hilarian the procurator – he that after the death of Minucius Timinian the proconsul had received in his room the right and power of the sword – said: Spare your father’s grey hairs; spare the infancy of the boy. Make sacrifice for the Emperors’ prosperity. And I answered: I am a Christian. And when my father stood by me yet to cast down my faith, he was bidden by Hilarian to be cast down and was smitten with a rod. And I sorrowed for my father’s harm as though I had been smitten myself; so sorrowed I for his unhappy old age. Then Hilarian passed sentence upon us all and condemned us to the beasts; and cheerfully we went down to the dungeon. Then because my child had been used to being breastfed and to staying with me in the prison, straightway I sent Pomponius the deacon to my father, asking for the child. But my father would not give him. And as God willed, no longer did he need to be suckled, nor did I take fever; that I might not be tormented by care for the child and by the pain of my breasts.

7. A few days after, while we were all praying, suddenly in the midst of the prayer I uttered a word and named Dinocrates; and I was amazed because he had never come into my mind save then; and I sorrowed, remembering his fate. And straightway I knew that I was worthy, and that I ought to ask for him. And I began to pray for him long, and to groan unto the Lord. Immediately the same night, this was shown me.

I beheld Dinocrates coming forth from a dark place, where were many others also; being both hot and thirsty, his raiment foul, his color pale; and the wound on his face which he had when he died. This Dinocrates had been my brother in the flesh, seven years old, who being diseased with ulcers of the face had come to a horrible death, so that his death was abominated of all men. For him therefore I had made my prayer; and between him and me was a great gulf, so that either might not go to the other. There was moreover, in the same place where Dinocrates was, a font full of water, having its edge higher than was the boy’s stature; and Dinocrates stretched up as though to drink. I was sorry that the font had water in it, and yet for the height of the edge he might not drink.

And I awoke, and I knew that my brother was in travail. Yet I was confident I should ease his travail; and I prayed for him every day till we passed over into the camp prison. (For it was in the camp games that we were to fight; and the time was the feast of the Emperor Geta’s birthday.) And I prayed for him day and night with groans and tears, that he might be given me.

8. On the day when we abode in the stocks, this was shown me.

I saw that place which I had before seen, and Dinocrates clean of body, finely clothed, m comfort; and the font I had seen before, the edge of it being drawn to the boy’s navel; and he drew water thence which flowed without ceasing. And on the edge was a golden cup full of water; and Dinocrates came up and began to drink therefrom; which cup failed not. And being satisfied he departed away from the water and began to play as children will, joyfully.

And I awoke. Then I understood that he was translated from his pains.

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From the Christian Art website:

Our two saints are depicted among the procession of female martyrs depicted in the 6th-century mosaics of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. In these shimmering mosaics, a long line of richly robed female saints moves solemnly toward Christ, each crowned with a martyr’s wreath. Set against a golden background that suggests the light of heaven, the figures appear timeless, almost weightless, participating already in eternal glory. These mosaics are among the most important survivals of early Christian art in the West, bridging the classical world and the emerging Byzantine style. They are not merely decorative, they are also deeply theological. They present the martyrs not in the moment of suffering, but in triumph, inviting the viewer to see beyond death to glory.

Look who’s in town:

I enjoy watching movies being filmed – for a short time, since the process is both really interesting and really tedious. We’re not Atlanta, but Birmingham has a steady…trickle of film and television projects filmed here, mostly low budget, a Hallmark Christmas movie or two. But we do get bigger stars once in a while. Patricia Heaton filmed a movie in my old neighborhood many years back. I saw Aaron Eckhart dodge explosions downtown. In 2023, Matthew McConaughey filmed The Rivals of Amziah King here – never heard of it? That’s because it’s only being released this next summer…but the important thing is that one of the houses that provided the main location was across the street from a friend of my son’s.

Anyway, yes, Alec Baldwin has been in town this week filming a movie with the… rather unfortunate working title of Crosshairs.

Reddit told me that they were filming in the park between the courthouse and City Hall yesterday, so I took a drive over there to check it out – and yes, indeed, there they were, on a set with security that I would describe as…relaxed.

So relaxed, in fact, that the director decided that the five paid extras weren’t enough for the effect he wanted, so the PA came to the group of onlookers – me and a bunch of downtown office workers, mostly attorneys or attorney-adjacent, I think – and said, “Hey, you wanna be in the movie?”

Well, um, okay sure.

The complication was that the film is apparently set in New York City in winter (so you film in Alabama in March? Never mind…) and it was about eighty degrees and few of us, even the professionally dressed, were wearing jackets. So they ran to wardrobe, grabbed a bunch of overcoats and distributed them. It was hot, but for art, anything.

The scene, I think, was that Baldwin’s cop partner had just been shot and he’s sitting there on the bench in the aftermath – in some of the shots, they just focused on Baldwin, then they’d bring in the other actor to lie on the ground dead. They decided a crowd shot would work – so they gathered the twelve or so of us, bunched us together, had us hold up our phones and gawk, and filmed us from behind.

So, if this ever makes it to any kind of screen, and that shot makes the final cut…the greying head in the oversized tweed overcoat?

C’est moi.

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Observations:

Yes, it was slow. I popped back this morning and they were still on the same moment, this time, filming mostly close-ups, with Baldwin with his hand to his mouth or over his eyes. As I was leaving, a bunch of extras clad as EMTs trailed in and there was a gurney set up, so I assume that would be the project for the rest of the day. (A PA told me this was their last day shooting in Birmingham).

They’d also filmed on the most vintage-style street in the city, Morris Avenue, which still has brick surfaces and older building fronts. Perhaps they’re trying to pass it off as Greenwich Village?

As we were standing, waiting around, Baldwin came up to us – I guess he’d been told that one of the extras was some sort of pilot, maybe Navy, and he made a beeline for the fellow and talked to him very engagingly about his work, about Hunt for Red October, and so on. He was about three feet from me! And I successfully resisted the temptation to take a photo. Actually, the temptation wasn’t that strong since it would have been very lame to do so.

And I for sure wasn’t the woman who exclaimed, loudly, as Baldwin stood there talking, The man, the myth, the legend!

Oy.

It’s so weird seeing famous people in person, people whose face, voice and even affect is so familiar to you because they’ve lived in your living room on screens for maybe even hundreds of hours. Most of my experience in this has been with stage doors – like last year with Bob Odenkirk, Michael McKean and so on in Glengarry Glen Ross (speaking of Alec Baldwin). I know philosophers and media experts have unpacked this, but the shift in perspective that occurs when a screen-person becomes a real-person is hard to describe.

(Contemplation on this matter and its wider implications on the way….)

It really is crazy, the number of people employed to create a minute of film – and that’s just on set. And this wasn’t any kind of high-budget production.

Is it worth it? I dunno. Because what is, in the end, “worth it?”

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More from this morning:

Speaking of movies….like and subscribe!

I thought about calling this post “Still Dreaming,” but then decided it was better for the SEO to go with the movie title, you know.

Anyway, Train Dreams is one of the prestige movies of the past year. When it was first released, I had zero interest in seeing it because I’d read the novella and had not really liked it. In fact, I only read it because I heard about the movie, it was short, sounded sort of interesting, so why not?

I wrote a bit about it here – just a little bit. I mean, this is all I said:

Beautiful writing, but at the service, of just that – writing, not life. Felt forced and inorganic. 2/5

Now, here’s a clue about my take on the film version:

It prompted me to remember the book….positively.

As in: deciding that it was much better than the movie.

So..what does that mean about the movie?

Spoilers ahead.

The thing about the novel is that it’s strange. As I recall, my reaction to all of it was that it felt strange for its own sake, without pointing to anything beyond.

So, there’s a very odd, surreal and rather important element to the plot that…is totally absent from the film, which really made me wonder…why make this movie at all, if you’re going to eliminate the weird, legendary maybe half-wolf girl that Grainier thinks just might be his daughter, missing since the age of four months?

(Not a toddler, as in the movie)

Without it, and without one other element I’ll mention in a minute Train Dreams becomes…ordinary.

Yes, it’s supposed to be the story of an ordinary man during a certain timeframe – from World War I to the 1960’s – a man who experiences events, prosaic and tragic, who doesn’t see a purpose to it, can only see life as from the window of a train – one thing after another – until, late in life, he’s taken up in a plane, can see the expanse of the earth below him, and has an epiphany of how the pieces of the world – including his life – fit together.

All shot in a dreamy, meditative, Malicky style. Style, that is, for Train Dreams has none of Malick’s contemplative sensibility, both deeply grounded and intensely transcendent.

There’s no drama except for acceptance of one’s life, I suppose, but Grainier doesn’t seem to struggle with much in that prcoess except, of course, grief at the loss of his wife and daughter (which honestly…isn’t a big theme in the book), sort of trudges along cutting wood, watching the world change, thoughtfully – except that we really don’t know what he’s thinking.

Before I finish up – I agree with Victor Morton on Joel Edgerton’s casting and performance as ” a taciturn man who is neither “brooding” nor resentful. Just simple.”

Movie Guy Son constantly makes the case – and he’s absolutely right – that an adaptation must be judged on its own merits, not in comparison to the source material – unless, I’d add, that adaptation touts the relationship, then it’s fair game.

So while I agree with him, it’s hard not to bring the novel into this one. And I know that’s unfair, but nonetheless I think even if I hadn’t read the book, I would still have had a So what? Why should I care takeaway from the film. Contrasting the book with the movie, just brings the latter’s problems into sharper relief.

Even though I didn’t love the book and found it a little pretentious in the end, what it had was an off-kilter strangeness that’s lost here, which to me, renders the film lovely, but inert.

That is, a “dream” is not just a misty, haunted recollection. A dream is odd.

Finally – here’s another plot point that is quite different in the novel, and I do think it’s important.

One of the primary instigating incidents in both movie and novel (it opens the novel), one that comes back to haunt Grainier, is the death of a Chinese railroad worker. The man is accused of stealing, a gang of his fellow workers grab him and throw him off the bridge they’re building. In the movie, Grainier is a conflicted witness to this act, at one point tries to help, is kicked away, accidentally, by the flailing man himself. For the rest of the film he’s haunted by the visage of the victim. Could he have done more?

That’s the movie. In the novel….Grainier participates in the act. And afterwards, he’s haunted, not by guilt, but by a conviction that the man had cursed him:

Now Grainier stood by the table in the single-room cabin and worried. The Chinaman, he was sure, had cursed them powerfully while they dragged him along, and any bad thing might come of it. Though astonished now at the frenzy of the afternoon, baffled by the violence, at how it had carried him away like a seed in a wind, young Grainier still wished they’d gone ahead and killed that Chinaman before he’d cursed them.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

“Thank you, Bob,” his wife said.

“Do you like your sarsaparilla?”

“I do. Yes, Bob.”

“Do you suppose little Kate can taste it out your teat?”

“Of course she can.”

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Right?

Do you see what I’m talking about?

Movie Robert Grainier is an observer who’s tacitly and steadily trying to make sense of what he experiences, and most of that is consistent with normal lived reality – even the violence. He’s not implicated in any of it, and none of it is strange or otherworldly.

Novel Robert Grainier doesn’t try to make sense of the warp and woof of ordinary life, not really, participates in a terrible crime, and engages with the off-kilter and bizarre – even within his own soul.

The film is nice to look at, Edgerton is good, but it’s a flat, unchallenging, almost predictable ride down the tracks and finally up in the air to a sentimental, audience-pleasing conclusion.

Prepping a talk for Saturday, an article deadline for next week which requires (re)watching some movies, preparing for the podcast recording this week, trying to do a writing reset (again), getting ready to travel…some notes and links:

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I was born in a 0 year, which means I start thinking of myself of the age ending in that year on January 1.

So, for two months now, I’ve been thinking of myself – and even describing myself – as 66. I think I’ve composed some exasperated X posts on that theme, even.

A couple of days ago, a thought came, like a thunderbolt. Wait…I realized….I’m not 66….I’m 65! Only 65!

I was actually…pleasantly surprised.

(Probably not a good sign)

Even so, a satisfying moment, since my fountain DC = Fountain of Youth, obviously.

(For a few more months)

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• A bass baritone in Florida is selling cars – and posting his opera-inspired sales pitches. Hope he sells thousands of cars!

Nissan Dorma…get it?

• The City of St. Jude parish in Montgomery, very important during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, is still going strong.

A plantation prior to the Civil War, and for years a local picnic spot, the site of St. Jude was purchased in 1936 by Father Harold Purcell. A sprawling campus would develop in the following decades, including a “social center” that hosted a medical clinic, community rooms, and clergy living quarters.

A community of Dominican nuns eventually moved to the site, establishing what the parish says was the first interracial Catholic religious congregation in the country.

The parish entered U.S. Civil Rights history on March 24 when thousands of marchers convened on its campus to rest at the makeshift campsite there.

That trek was the third attempt to march to the state Capitol; the two other attempts had both been abandoned, one after the Bloody Sunday incident and one after a judge issued a temporary injunction against the marchers.

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• From Art & Theology

The following excerpt is from the fourteenth-century biblical drama The Last Judgement from the York cycle of mystery plays [previously], performed annually in York, England, on the feast of Corpus Christi until its suppression by Protestants in 1569. Based on Matthew 25, this final play in the cycle was produced by the city’s guild of mercers (dealers in textile fabrics) and so is sometimes referred to as the Mercers’ Play.

I’ve chosen to feature it at this time because almsgiving—that is, assisting those in need, especially through the giving of money or goods—is one of the three pillars of Lent, and according to Matthew 25:31–46, it’s the measure by which Christ eternally blesses or damns people. It’s what separates the sheep from the goats, those who truly know Christ from those who don’t.

When I was hungry, ye me fed;
To slake my thirst your heart was free;   [free = willing]
When I was clotheless, ye me clad,
Ye would no sorrow upon me see.
In hard press when I was stead,   [When I was placed in difficult circumstances]
Of my pains ye had pity;
Full sick when I was brought in bed,   [in = to]
Kindly ye came to comfort me.

More.

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• Movie Guy Son continues his journey through the history of the Oscars – give him a subscribe and pass it on!

An excellent piece by Michael Baxter in Church Life Journal on racism and the American Catholic Church.

Certain bishops wanted more from the Plenary Council of 1866, most notably Martin J. Spalding, the Archbishop of Baltimore, who called for a national program to raise funds for missionaries to evangelize former slaves. Ahead of the meeting, he wrote to a fellow prelate that freeing the slaves provided “a golden opportunity for reaping a harvest of souls . . . .” But the Council rejected Spalding’s proposal of a nationally coordinated effort. As a result, Catholic ministry to Blacks proceeded only in a piecemeal way, with the bishops in Savannah, St. Augustine, and Baltimore recruiting religious orders (such as the Sisters of St. Joseph and Benedictine monks) to minster to Blacks in their dioceses.Moreover, some religious orders started pastoral work among Blacks in the West and the South: Jesuits in Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri; Spiritans in Kentucky and Arkansas; and Josephites in Louisiana, among others.

But all the while, there was resistance to the Church ministering to Blacks, and not only in the South where it might be expected, but also in the East where Church resources were stretched by the need to provide pastoral care to European immigrants. Rome weighed in on this matter as the bishops met for the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore of 1884. They were instructed by the Vatican to upgrade their ministry to Blacks. In response, the bishops established an annual collection “for Indians and Negroes.” Nothing more. As a result, Spalding’s “glorious harvest” collapsed into a “lost harvest.” The Church’s record of evangelizing Blacks in the decades after the Civil War was, in the understated words of Cyprian Davis, “not a very glorious one.”

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As I’ve written before, there’s a triumphalist, self-satisfied tone to popular accountings of American Catholics and race that, like all triumphalism, works to hide inconvenient truths.

A few years ago:

Moreover, do know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the American Catholic hierarchy’s actions – and inaction –  on racial issues were judged mostly negatively by others around the world, particularly Rome. In other words, most American bishops and religious order leadership during this period reinforced, rather than resisted racism. And that was noted.

This is startling to some because of a particular narrative, quite prevalent in the American Church since the 1980’s. It’s a triumphalist, self-satisfied narrative, the outgrowth of apologetics enthusiasm,  that has glossed over institutional sins  and presented a story of American Catholicism in which the main point about race has been something like: “Well, Catholicism didn’t split during the Civil War like the Protestants. And, er, Pierre Toussaint, Katharine Drexel and Augustine Tolton, you know. And that one cool Black parish in my city.”

To expand:

The casual reader of American Catholic history might well have come to believe that all was mostly well in the history of Black Catholics in the United States. For the narrative that many are familiar with is one that places institutional Catholicism in favorable contrast to mainline Protestantism, with the latter’s role in upholding discriminatory civic policies and traditions. Somehow, in our mind, the work of St. Katharine Drexel and the Josephites and the image of Catholic religious marching in Selma tilts the balance in our favor against segregated and separated Protestant bodies.

Historical reality is, of course, much more complicated. We can celebrate the existence of all-Black religious orders of sisters, but why did they have to exist? Because white religious orders wouldn’t accept Black women as members and white religious orders didn’t want to serve Black populations. We can celebrate, for example, predominantly Black parishes and schools in New Orleans, but why did they come to exist?  Because the institutional Church acceded to Jim Crow laws, both in letter and spirit.

In short: when we look at the history of the Catholic Church and African-Americans in the United States, there is no room for institutional or majoritarian self-congratulation. It’s a history marked by fearful submission to civic, cultural and social prejudice, which teaches us, among other things, that there is nothing new under the sun.

In his piece, Baxter refers to the “272” – the 272 enslaved persons that the Jesuit sold in order to seed the funding of what is now Georgetown University. I looked at Rachel Swarns’ book on the subject a few years ago.

As I wrote, emphasizing a point about the contrast between American Catholic thinking on this and European:

As Swarms cites, there was disagreement and disapproval of the Jesuits’ use of enslaved persons and especially the sale. Within the Jesuits, there was some, especially from Rome and from a priest or brother or two who actually lived on the plantations. But very interesting to me was that the main criticism of the Jesuits on this score comes from non-Jesuit clergy, usually originally from abroad (which would be most American clergy of this period anyway) who were shocked at this situation and condemned it in no uncertain terms.