joy
A Triple Good Day
December 14, 2010
Some days are just heaven sent. Today is one and I’d like to share the joy with you.
The sun is shining after days of cold and windy weather. It feels sooo good to glance outside and see it.
Duck hunter at work
Last week I met a man at the therapy pool who hunts every chance he gets and never comes home empty-handed. He said he had more Mallard duck breasts than he needed and also too much venison. He got a couple of doe recently and is going out again with his nephew this weekend.
Today at the fitness center he brought me two duck breasts, a pound of ground venison, a venison steak and some frozen salmon he caught wild in Alaska this year. He also offered me a deer from this coming weekend’s hunting if he and his nephew get their limit. Processing is only $75.
This is such an enormous blessing because grocery prices are going through the roof and we don’t get a Social Security increase this year to cope with the situation. I’ve been putting things in the Lord’s hands and He is not disappointing.
The third good thing so far – the day’s only half over – is that the crock pot is full of my home made chili for dinner tonight. Roger will be so happy to eat one of his favorite foods. I used the ground venison the good man gave me today and some ground beef, too. Already it smells great.
How about you? What blessings can you count for today?
R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
P.S. Yesterday I posted on how to use the Google Wonder Wheel, the Easiest Idea Generating Tool Writers Can Use over at my editing&proofing.com blog. Just in case you’re interested.
Praying the Psalms – Psalm 47
December 4, 2010
King David Playing the Zither, Andrea Celesti (1637-1712 Venice), oil on canvas, private collection
Jenny at Just a Minute hosts today’s wonderful meme, so visit her to read other reflections on this psalm.
This psalm cries out joy from beginning to end. Father Paschal Botz, O.S.B. writes:
…We must consider this Psalm a festive processional hymn at the installation of God’s Ark in its place of primacy amid a great conclave of people (1Kg. 8:6). The throng responds with great shouts and trumpet blasts, for this is the triumph of their God over all that claims greatness.
But the Psalm is also forward-looking and universal, as it invites all peoples to bend their knee. This prophetic intent finds fulfillment only in Christ, and that determines the way we pray it. We celebrate His universal sovereignty over the chosen people of the God of Abraham. The King of the universe is also the King of history. All generations must acclaim Him. Our turn has come to fulfill the oracles of prophecy and to join the universal chorus of praise.
vs. 1-5 All you peoples, clap your hands, shout to God with cries of gladness, for the Lord, the Most High, the awesome, is the great king over all the earth. He brings peoples under us; nations under our feet. He chooses for us our inheritance, the glory of Jacob, whom He loves. [Our God, the terrible, the awesome, the One to be reverenced above all - we sing of His mercy, His power, His loving kindness. How else to respond to our inclusion into the family of Christ, the glory of Jacob, our inheritance by Baptism? We did nothing to deserve this blessing, but because we are His creatures and are special to Him, He gathers us to Himself. I gaze at Him in open-mouthed wonder.]
vs. 6-7 God mounts His throne amid shouts of joy; the Lord, amid trumpet blasts. Sing praise to God, sing praise; sing praise to our king, sing praise. [Not only man, but the angels are to sing praise. For us, starting with that first night in Bethlehem, the angels set the example, calling the lowliest of the low, the shepherds, to come and adore.
His first throne the manger, His second throne the cross, His final throne of glory at the right hand of the Father; we, the lowly, fall on our knees and prostrate ourselves before Him. Overcome, we rise, seize our neighbor, and sing and dance with joy. We have been redeemed and are in the company of all that is pure, all that is holy.
I recapture these moments of praise when I direct my heart to Him as I go about my ordinary activities and when I am in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament - when I visit the Church or assist at Mass.]
vs. 8-10 For king of all the earth is God; sing hymns of praise. God reigns over the nations, God sits upon His holy throne. The princes of the peoples are gathered together with the people of the God of Abraham. For God’s are the guardians of the earth; He is supreme. [God created all peoples of all times for Himself. At the end of time all who have surrendered to Him will gather together from every family and nation.
Our eyes of faith can see this clearly, but the rulers of this world do not see or acknowledge Him as supreme. Out of this blindness arises the afflictions of war, of poverty, of greed, of lust for power.
Lord, grant all world leaders the grace to see that they answer to You, that You are supreme, and that of themselves they can do no good. Lord, let it be that all world leaders bow down to You and sing Your praises.]
R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival
October 24, 2010
Welcome to Sunday Snippets, a great meme hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing. Join me and other bloggers to read our posts for the week. Even if you’re not a blogger you are welcome to leave comments. I’ve met some really inspiring people by participating in this meme and hope you will, too.
For some good, clean humor I shared Don’t Send Your Husband to the Grocery Store. And I love you men but I’ve had some funny times myself sending my husband off to the grocery store. Even with cell phones surprising things can happen.
Business as Usual in Haiti is a commentary on real estate prices post earthquake. It’s behavior like this that gives communists opportunities.
My Gluten Free Hot and Sour Soup recipe. Guaranteed to clear your head.
Raised from the Dead – a video of how God brought a man back to life through his doctor’s prayer.
Keeping the Faith in the Middle of Election Insanity – a few exerpts from Father Philip Schuster, O.S.B.’s book.
Praying the Psalms – Psalm 41 - my commentary.
Thanks for visiting and God bless you.
R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Bye Bye Mimosa
October 11, 2010
My painting of the mimosa tree as it was in July, 2009
Southern Missouri’s climate usually blesses mimosa trees. You find them all over the place with their delicate pink blossoms, airy leaves, and interesting shapes. Growing up in Dallas we had one in the back yard outside my bedroom window. It was really lovely. That’s why Roger and I planted one by the tool shed in our back yard about five years ago – partly because of nostalgia and partly because I just plain like them.
2008 ice storm
But…along came an awful ice storm in winter, 2008. The poor tree had serious damage, however a tree expert said to give it another year or so to see if it would heal itself.
Well, you could say it did – partially. But this spring we discovered the awful truth: the trunk was continuing to split down the middle, the crack stealing ever lower. Now you could stand on one side of the tree and see daylight clear through the trunk. No way could the tree continue to support it’s branches. Before long it would crack apart completely and break the fence. Our neighbor’s car was in jeopardy in his driveway.
This past Saturday another wonderful neighbor, who just loves cranking up his chainsaw, brought his six kids and wife over and we had a dismantling fest. In twenty minutes what had taken five years to grow was twigs and logs.
This tree was special for another reason – an elderly neighbor lady loved to see the tree waving in the wind above the honeysuckle-laden fence. Wandora couldn’t get around very well, but her eyesight was fine. We used to sit in her kitchen and chat every now and then. Two weeks before she died this May, she was again saying how beautiful the tree was. I’m glad she enjoyed it so much while she was living and didn’t have to see it come down.
Things of this world come and go. People come and go in our lives. Seasons come and go. Sometimes even when we do our best, things die. I’m glad we had the pleasure of the tree for as long as we did, and I’m especially glad my dear, old neighbor had pleasure in it, too.
Wandora was a really smart, down-home, Oklahoma farm girl. I miss both her and the tree. But maybe God’s plan was to have us grow that tree so she would have something she really enjoyed looking at from her kitchen in the waning years of her life.
R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Thanks for visiting and God bless you!
True Faith vs. Intellectual Pride
August 9, 2010
In my post Seeking God’s Will I introduced readers to my dear friend Father Philip Schuster, OSB (RIP). I am reading his book again as part of my ongoing journey of suffering with joy. His simplicity of heart was very inspiring and it opened my eyes to having greater trust in God. We will never achieve the holiness God desires for us if we don’t learn this lesson because our intellectual pride will always block our surrender to Him. To the extent we refuse to surrender we limit our ability to love.
Three Children of Fatima
Saints are not made overnight. Achieving great charity, and that is the meaning of being a saint, is done minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day with much toe-stubbing, ankle-twisting and knee-skinning along the way. The first step seems to me to empty ourselves of our intellectual pride - and sometimes that’s like bailing out a boat with a leaky bucket – so that we follow the exhortation of Jesus: Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a child, shall not enter into it. (Lk. 18: 17). Faith is to be received Jesus tells us, simply, as a child believes his parents, with open-hearted trust in God and an emptying of self. If we do not become child-like, we make no room in our hearts for faith.
Here is that beautiful, child-like simplicity from Father Philip:
Human reason or intellect enters into faith and has a very important place. But in faith, reason isn’t there to question what God has said or to determine what is true. For by faith we already know what is true. God has told us. Reason is there to study the meaning of it all, to see the beauty and goodness of it all, to make the truth my own, to respond to it and live it. But not to question it! For we know it is true, once God has revealed it.
As soon as you question what God has said, you indicate little faith or no faith at all. Consider what happened to Zechariah (see Luke 1:20). Faith demands that I keep an open mind to what God has to say, and that when I believe, I believe simply because God has spoken…
It just may be true that saying we believe is not necessarily proof of real faith. Perhaps we often accept some truth or some moral law, not because we are convinced that God has taught it, but because it seems right to us and fits our desires at present. Proof of this, at least proof enough for us to take warning, comes from the fact that if something taught by the Church today doesn’t seem reasonable to us, we hesitate or even refuse to accept it. Which more or less proves that we are guided all along by our own reasoning power and not by faith. For again, faith is essentially a simple accepting because God has spoken.
Father Philip cuts to the heart of the matter. When I think of the times I doubted in the past, it was because I allowed the devil to confuse me. He only does this when our willfulness rules us and we press forward into sin because we want to indulge. I can truthfully say that any time I asked God for a deeper understanding of a truth of the Faith, He always answered me. Sometimes He made me wait awhile. Sometimes He showed me right away. But He never denied me the grace to see the beauty, goodness, and harmony of it all, nor the grace as Father Philip writes, “to respond to it and live it.”
I’ll be back with more from Father Philip soon.
Moshe Tzvi HaLevi Berger – Painter of the Psalms
July 30, 2010
Since I began participating in the meme “Praying the Psalms” and stumbled on the work of Moshe Tzvi Halevi Berger, I have been thinking about this man and his work. What contribution might his paintings make to my spiritual life and my understanding of our heavenly Father? What of his life will contribute to my understanding of Orthodox Judaism? What might it tell of the minds and hearts of devout Jews at the time of Jesus? Of devout Jews of today?
These subjects may not be important to many, but I am always thinking of how we Catholics can possibly bridge the gap between our understanding of Christ and that of others. Who knows what role the answers to my questions will play in gathering others to Him? Perhaps none, but learning more will make me a better, more thankful Christian and deepen my awe of how God works in others. Of that I am sure.
To understand Berger’s paintings, it is important to understand the man. Born in 1925 in Transylvania, Berger is no ordinary person although he looks like the quintessential Jewish grandfather. He is someone I wish I could sit down and speak with for many days because of his fascinating life and work.
Berger is descended from a long line of Hassidic Rabbis. As a young man he was interned in a Nazi prison camp for several years and after being liberated completed medical school to became an oral surgeon. By 1957 he quit medical practice to study in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He also studied in Italy at Rome’s Instituto de Belle Arte and became a successful commercial artist. God was working in Berger in the midst of his secular success, however. His artistic focus changed dramatically when he began studying the Torah and Kabbalah. In 1982 as he began living as an observant Jew, he was experiencing that deep longing only God can satisfy.
A short departure here: the Torah is the five books of Moses. The Kabbalah is, according to Wikipedia
a discipline and school of thought concerned with the mystical aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between an eternal and mysterious Creator and the mortal and finite universe (His creation).
As in New Age systems that corrupt Christian teaching and mash eastern mysticism with Christian spirituality, some unscrupulous people promote the Kabbalah as holding the “secrets” of all wisdom. It’s all gnosticism and what the attraction to this perversion of truth holds for many is beyond me. I can say that based on what Berger writes about his paintings, he is giving expression to the mystery of God’s love for man in his art, making verses of the Psalms become visual. Superstition and gnosticism appear to play no part in his thinking or work.
After moving to the United States in the early 1980s, Berger gained renown for very large Kabbalistic murals he painted in Florida and Brooklyn, New York. The latter was six stories high. In 1988 he began his series of Psalm paintings which would take him fifteen years to complete. The year 1992 saw him move to Jerusalem where in 1995 he founded the Museum of Psalms in a building located in the courtyard of the synagogue built by former Israel Chief Rabbi, Avraham Yitzhak Kook. Berger lives in a single room next to the museum and visitors often are privileged to have him as a guide when viewing his works.
As if illustrating all 150 Psalms was not enough, Berger embarked on the task of painting 42 images on healing, light, and meditation called the Sun series. Based on the Zohar, these are no less deep than the Psalm paintings. Completed in 2007, they are part of the collection at the Museum of Psalms.
Another short departure: the Zohar is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses). Wikipedia says,
The Zohar contains a discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and “true self” to “The Light of God,” and the relationship between the “universal energy” and man. Its scriptural exegesis can be considered an esoteric form of the Rabbinic literature known as Midrash, which elaborates on the Torah.
The goal of Moshe Tzvi HaLevi Berger in painting the Psalms was to “bring inspiration to the souls of many who seek spiritual enlightenment and do not live by bread alone.”
These are the very words Jesus spoke in Matt. 4:4:
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God
and Luke 4:4:
And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God
derived from Deuteronomy 8:3:
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
Berger has had more than 100 one-man shows on three continents. Had it not been for the internet, I would never have discovered this great and unique spiritual art which rightly belongs to the Judeo-Christian heritage. In my next post I will write a little about the elements of symbolism in his works but for now, let me say that he has inspired me on my journey of suffering with joy.
Sabbath Moments
July 10, 2010
Join Colleen over at Thoughts on Grace to share moments during the week when you, for however fleeting a moment, rest in the Lord.
1. One of my Sabbath Moments for the week thanking God for the developing relationship with a home schooling mom who lives across the street. We share garden veggies we are growing, and cooking tips. Her husband came over and sawed a dead limb off our mimosa tree which will have to be torn down this fall because of ice storm damage. I enjoy her children, too. Whenever I think about them all, I rejoice in the Lord that we are blessed with such good neighbors.
2. The shasta daisies I put in around the lamp post in front are so beautiful with their yellow centers and white petals. They stand straight with their blossoms looking at the heavens as if they are joyfully smiling at God – a great reminder of what I should be doing more often – looking and smiling at God.
Visit Colleen to join other Catholic bloggers sharing their Sabbath Moments, and thanks for stopping by here.
The Horse With One Blue Eye
June 29, 2010
Asti
Suffering with joy means that sometimes you just lie quietly and say the name of Jesus. Sometimes it means taking medicines and supplements that you’d rather not take but you do it anyway to care for your body – and do it cheerfully. Sometimes it means finding something to enjoy at whatever level of functioning you have whether that is puttering in the garden or picking up a skill you’ve always wanted.
For me art and wellness go hand in hand. Part of my journey to better spirits in spite of chronic pain and fatigue is learning to do digital art – to create beauty however I can. Now beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are some universal tenets that apply to good art such as the rule of thirds, Divine Proportion, color relationships, and for me, a noble end-purpose which is to show the beauty and order of God’s creation. I’m very much a beginning artist, learning to use tools and opening my mind to all sorts of possibilities.
Last week I was studying a lesson on airbrushing and chose a photograph to paint of my friend Lynn’s black quarter horse, Asti, who has one blue eye. It took a long time – about 3 days – and the deleting of many images before I got this one. I not only wanted to capture her blue eye, I wanted to give a sense of her muscled power and force of personality.
The photograph was taken at high noon in bright sunlight with a 300mm zoom lens on our trusty 35mm film camera with the main focus on the eye. This made everything in front of and behind the eye out of focus. I eliminated all the background except what was necessary to give definition to the face where needed and carefully applied layers of paint to make the eye stand out. The wind was blowing that day and you can see that from the mane, which gives a sense of movement to the picture as does the pose itself with the head and neck angles. Through the use of dark and light I wanted to draw the viewer’s eye in a circle around the painting always landing at Asti’s eye. The bright sun brought out the browns in her coat and face which would otherwise have looked much darker.
A horse’s eye is only a small part of the face, which made this project really challenging. How could I show what I wanted without distracting elements? Gaining some mastery of digital airbrush technique helped me a lot. The pose gives the impression that Asti is swinging her head out of the frame directly towards you and I wanted to emphasize that, too. In the 5×7 or 8×10 size, her blue eye really stands out whereas on this page I couldn’t make an image that large so the eye color is not as impressive. I guarantee you, though, that if you were standing next to her you wouldn’t miss that cornflower blue. Go ahead, reach out and pet her on the nose.
Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival
June 27, 2010
Welcome to Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival hosted by RAnn over at This That and The Other Thing. We Catholic bloggers like to share our favorite posts with each other and our readers once a week, so visit RAnn and join us all.
This week I harvested our first batch of asparagus beans and mentioned a recipe I used to cook them at The Asparagus Bean Surprise II. You gotta see the picture I took of them. They sort of remind me of dreadlocks they are so long. Imagine somebody walking around with asparagus beans for hair!
In Laser Technology Reveals Tomb Paintings I wrote about the great discovery of early devotion to the apostles at the catacombs dedicated to St. Thecla in Rome and how the discovery was made.
For more insight into the Pope, visit The Pope as Liturgist.
I wrote a short commentary at Praying the Psalms – Psalm 24. It strikes me as yet another psalm glorifying Christ the King.
This week I’ve spent many hours viewing videos and working tutorials in my super-duper Corel Painter 11 program. It’s like getting a college education in many aspects of art. Just learning the different brushes and how they work is a big challenge. This coming week I’ll be posting an airbrush rendition of my friend Lynn’s horse, Asti. Some day I hope producing this digital art will get a lot easier, but learning to do something I’ve dreamed my whole life of doing – producing good art – is really joyful.
Sabbath Moments
June 19, 2010
Sabbath Moments are times when we rest in the Lord, taking a break from activity. Colleen at Thoughts on Grace hosts this meme, so you can go there and join other bloggers to see how they spent some God-time.
This week I looked over the veggies to see how they are doing and discovered that the Asparagus Beans are already forming. The are about 8 inches long and quite skinny, not ready for harvest. God is always with me in my garden because He alone is the author of life and I know that all that is good comes from Him. I thank Him for the healthy tomato plants and the generous harvest of zucchini He is giving us. This looks to be the best year for veggies we’ve had since we started our garden. What a joy!
Yesterday I posted about a great Doctor of the Church, St. Ephrem, Harp of the Holy Ghost. While searching YouTube for some of his hymns set to music, I got lost in God as I usually do when hearing sacred choral music and chant. If you would like to hear a beautiful work that to me sounds heavenly, click on the link in this paragraph and visit God through John Tavener’s liturgical composition set to St. Ephrem’s Nativity hymn.
Sabbath Moments
June 12, 2010
Colleen at Thoughts on Grace hosts this every Saturday. Sabbath Moments are the times when we rest in God.
By now my readers know that beauty, especially natural beauty, moves me to God. This week I took some photos of veggies in our garden to include in one of my posts. As I turned to go back to the house I saw the Stella d’oro daylilies blooming in an attractive pattern.
I confess that all flowers remind me of Our Lady, and these joyful blooms are no exception. The golden color for the Queen of heaven, for the “House of Gold” in the Litany of the BVM; and the elegant drape of the green leaves as of a full skirt on an ante bellum gown, green the color of hope and renewal, said to me, “I am here.” Everywhere I turn God shows Himself and so often He brings His most perfect creation, the Blessed Virgin, with Him.
Often my Sabbath Moments are just that – moments – a quick second when I think of God and His goodness and generosity to us. Seeing the daylilies was one. In the midst of all the evil afflicting the world, God continues to say that He is here and wants us to acknowledge Him as our Creator and Redeemer, as the One Who loves totally in a way we can never completely comprehend.
Let us praise Him for His wondrous deeds, great and small, and let us show Him to others joyfully, as the daylilies do, in all we do and say.
A Little of My Story
March 5, 2010
Holy Trinity, 1430, Master of the Votive Picture of Sankt Lambrecht, Museum mittelalterlicher österreichischer Kunst, Vienna
“O Lord,” I prayed, “Help me to grow more patient and trust You more.”
“Are you sure?” He asked.
“Yes, Lord.”
“Okay, I’ll give you fibromyalgia and everything that goes with it,” He said.
“Whoa! What is that, Lord?” I asked.
“You’ll find out, and I’ll be with you every step of the way,” He replied.
Six years or so ago when I was diagnosed my body was burning from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I couldn’t stand to wear my glasses and couldn’t see without them. Every morning I got up, dressed, had breakfast and promptly collapsed into bed again. After awhile I gave up on dressing and stayed in my nightgown. My mind was in a stupor such that I could hardly pray and I lay there simply clutching my rosary. When I had a conversation with my husband I forgot what I wanted to say after three words were out of my mouth. I gave up driving and stopped going anywhere except to church, which finished me off for the rest of the day.
A couple of years went by and I found myself completely discouraged and wanting to go to bed never to wake again. It seemed that everything the doctor told me to do and prescribed for me only helped marginally. Yet as sick as I was, I never lost the feeling that this condition was God’s will for me, although I did think for awhile that maybe He might have picked a less unpleasant way to get His point across.
One day I said, “Well, Lord, I don’t get it. Here You have smacked me over the head with a 2×4 and I still don’t get it. What is it you want of me?”
“I want all of your pain and suffering. Give it to Me with joy for the restoration of the Traditional Catholic Mass. Give it to Me for the priest I have chosen to be your next bishop. Give it to Me for the redemption of others and to expiate your sins. Give it to me for My priests who are troubled,” He said.
“OK, Lord. Whatever you say. I want to do Your will. But Lord, why did You have to teach me patience and trust this way?” I asked.
“Because you were too full of yourself and your talents and ambitions were misplaced. I could not work through you the way you were. I want you with me for all eternity. I want you to know and understand Me better, to trust Me more through your helplessness and pain and to share what you are learning on this journey with My other children who are suffering even worse than you,” He said. “I want you up here on the cross with Me. I want you to witness to My message of hope and love, and the joy that comes from doing My will. I want you to understand the fullness of My love for you.”
Morning sun over the ocean, Shizuoka Prefecture, (c)Tomo.Yun (www.yunphoto.net/en/)
And so I didn’t give up, and after accepting two new hips from Him through a good surgeon, and after slowly regaining some physical and mental equilibrium from remedies He showed me through knowledgeable holistic practitioners, I started this blog and put it in His hands. I blessed Him for giving me this miserable disease and for putting me through the added great pain of hip degeneration; for making me aware that I have to depend on Him for every breath, every blink, and every beat of my heart. I blessed him for giving me a high maintenance body because I know He wants me to learn how to care for it properly and share what I learn with others. I blessed Him for showing Himself to me both through pain and through the many forms of beauty that reflect His being. Most of all, I bless Him for loving me enough to have created me and for having put all the wonderful people in my life whom I would never have met had I not become disabled.
“A Song for Nagasaki” by Paul Glynn, S.M.
February 26, 2010
Dr. Takashi Nagai
Last Sunday I found a book at the church library. It wasn’t on my top ten for Lent, but it was about Japan and a Japanese holy man who transformed others’ lives by his gentleness and forgiveness. Since I am interested in Japanese history, especially in what transpired to cause the terrible aggression that drew so many into World War II, I checked it out. What I ended up with is a moving conversion story that brings Christ’s teachings to life in a unique way and that has enriched my Lenten prayer.
A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai-Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb
Nagai entered into a spiritual quest while he attended medical school in Nagasaki – a quest that led him from Shintoism to atheism to Catholicism and ultimately to marriage with the daughter of the family which had been at the heart of the underground Church for the centuries of government persecution of Christians. The biography reveals how Nagai’s medical studies, service as a medic in the Japanese army during the occupation of Manchuria, and his return to become a pioneer of radiology research at Nagasaki University formed his spiritual growth.
Before the bomb exploded over the city that fateful August day, Nagai already had developed leukemia from his radiation exposure, yet he had refused to quit working. The cancer did not stop him from caring for victims of the inferno although he was wounded himself, and to his surprise and that of his fellow medical practitioners, his disease went into remission for a couple of years because of his exposure to the bomb’s radiation.
Nyoko-do
Nagai lost his beloved wife in the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945, but his children who were farther from ground zero survived. Not long after, he moved into the rubble of the ruined city to study the effects of radiation on all life forms, constructing a tiny dwelling on the ground where his house once stood. He called his little abode “Nyoko-do“, meaning “as yourself hall” taken from Jesus’s words: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It was one 6×6 room with a porch built by friends. He lived there with his children until he died.
Throughout the book Glynn interweaves Japanese history and customs into Nagai’s story, giving the reader a good understanding of the depth of this man. He describes well how Nagai brought not only physical healing but spiritual healing to the suffering and war-weary people. Determined not to be bitter or vengeful, he wrote articles and powerful books as a legacy for his children that became best-sellers throughout Japan. During the last four years of his life, he accomplished this lying on his back because of weakness and abdominal swelling caused by the cancer.
This book above all, is a story of love and forgiveness, of sanctity brought forth from horror. Many people from around the world, including Helen Keller journeyed to meet this unassuming man, who gave most of his earnings for the education and care of war orphans. His example continues to inspire and he is considered a saint by many Japanese people of all faiths.
If you are attracted to conversion stories, this book will not disappoint you. It is filled with the wonders of God’s grace and inspiration to overcome all bitterness, resentment, and desire for vengeance that plague the human heart. Nagai truly suffered with joy.
Jesus and Mary in Art
February 11, 2010
Sometimes it is just too much to pray using books or even rosaries when people are ill. But sacred art demands no effort from us in gazing upon it’s beauty. This window to the divine draws our spirit and sweeps us to prayer almost before we know it. It teaches us the truths of our faith wordlessly – a catechism in brush strokes, mosaics or sculpture.
Picturing Mary
The same can be said of the DVD, The Face: Jesus in Art
Both of these were made for WNET 13, a New York public television channel. Whenever I watch them I think what a great teaching aid they would be for home schooling families. You can stop the video to demonstrate art principles and you can use it for art projects and appreciation. But most of all, these videos inspire great love for Jesus and Mary through the artwork filmed. I highly recommend them and have placed them in my store.
Secret Harbor
February 5, 2010
Rule of St. Bruno approved by Jesus, the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter, fresco, Museo della Certoso, Milan
A priest friend of mine suggested I add this gorgeous Carthusian blog to my blogroll. The pictures are lovely and the short meditations wonderful. I especially like their subtitle:
Rejoice, because you have escaped the various dangers and shipwrecks of the stormy world. Rejoice because you have reached the quiet and safe anchorage of a secret harbor. - Saint Bruno’s letter to his sons the Carthusians
We are fortunate that men of deep prayer like the Carthusians exist and that we have a site like Sacred Harbor to bring their spirituality to us. Following Pope John Paul II’s recommendations that the Church make better use of the media enriches us all. Since it is difficult for most Catholics to have a spiritual director, we have to fend for ourselves. Thank God for the opportunities He gives us with these kinds of blogs.
If you love sacred art, you will love seeing the photographs of the frescos of St. Bruno at Milan. Sacred art and all true beauty aids us in suffering with joy for God. Contemplating it is prayer.
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Another topic: I received an email from a friend which encouraged all people of America to say a prayer for our country each night at 8:00 Central time. This initiative is like the one Winston Churchill went on radio to promote in Britain during World War II when their country was bombed nightly by Germany.
Please invite all your friends to participate in this daily effort. America must return to the principles on which she was founded or she will perish. Darkness already envelopes much of the world. Let us plead before God that Christ reign in all hearts and that our individual lights lit by Him truly shine among men. The best ammunition we have against the powers of darkness is prayer.
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