Edith Anne

Coming January 2016

Cool girl

Can't imagine where she got all that sass.

Introducing...

Judith Marie

Something beautiful...

As promised, something beautiful, a wedding photography teaser, from the BRILLIANT Diane Phelps (esse photography) and her team of photographers:

my handsome groom

Poem of the Week CXLIX

It's all I have to bring today
Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today –
This, and my heart beside –
This, and my heart, and all the fields –
And all the meadows wide –
Be sure you count – should I forget
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Have a Listen 20.0

Appropriate.

A Great Love Affair

"It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair."
- G.K. Chesterton

Blessed.

Happy Easter!

Nashville is beautiful this time of year, and I am abundantly blessed with great friends, an amazing family, a sweet and loving fiance, a merciful Lord, and so much hope for things to come. God is so good!

Rise, let us leave this place

"Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you."

"I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager."

"The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open."

"The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity."

                         

(from An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday).

Detachment

As my grandfather says, "It's not easy..."

"Because love is a choice, it means detachment from a previous mode of life, a breaking with old bonds" (The World's First Love, Sheen, p. 162).

Poem of the Week CXXXVIII

(Again) from Vanauken's A Severe Mercy:

The Shining Barrier
Sheldon and Davy Vanauken

This present glory, love, once-given grace,
The sum of blessing in a sure embrace,
Must not in creeping separateness decline
But be the centre of our whole design.

We know it’s love that keeps a love secure,
And only by love of love can love endure,
For self’s a killer, reckless of the cost,
And loves of lilactime unloved are lost.

We build our altar, then, to love and keep
The holy flame alight and never sleep:
This darling love shall deepen year by year,
And dearer shall we grow who are so dear.

The magic word is sharing: every stream
Of beauty, every faith and grief and dream;
Go hand in hand in gay companionship -
In sober death no sundering of the grip.

And into love all other loveliness
That we can tease from time we shall impress
Slows dawns and lilacs, traceries of the tress,
The spring and poems, stars and ancient seas.

This splendour is upon us, high and pure
As heaven: and we swear it shall endure:
Swear fortitude for pain and faith for tears
To hold our shining barrier down the years.

Poem of the Week CXXXV

The Living Flame of Love
Saint John of the Cross


1. O living flame of love
that tenderly wounds my soul
in its deepest center! Since

now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

2. O sweet cautery,

O delightful wound!

O gentle hand! O delicate touch
that tastes of eternal life
and pays every debt!
In killing you changed death to life.

3. O lamps of fire!

in whose splendors
the deep caverns of feeling,

once obscure and blind,

now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,

both warmth and light to their Beloved.

4. How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,

where in secret you dwell alone;

and in your sweet breathing,

filled with good and glory,

how tenderly you swell my heart with love.

Poem of the Week CXXXIV

Thanks to Frog's Hair,

from To Live of Love
Saint Terese of Lisieux

6.
To live of love, it is to know no fear;
No memory of past faults can I recall;
No imprint of my sins remaineth here;
The fire of Love divine effaces all.
O sacred flames! O furnace of delight!
I sing my safe sweet happiness to prove.
In these mild fires I dwell by day, by night.
I live of love!

He hastens to Her

Referencing yesterday's Gospel reading, John 1:35-42, in the Catena Aurea Saint John Chrysostom worthily talks about the Bridegroom:

"Observe too, when John says, Behold the Lamb of God, Christ says nothing. The Bridegroom stands by in silence; others introduce Him, and deliver the Bride into His hands; He receives her, and so treats her that she no longer remembers those who gave her in marriage. Thus Christ came to unite to Himself the Church; He said nothing Himself; but John, the friend of the Bridegroom, came forth, and put the Bride's right hand in His; i.e. by his preaching delivered into His hands men's souls, whom receiving He so disposed of, that they returned no more to John. And observe farther; As at a marriage the maiden goes not to meet the bridegroom, (even though it be a king's son who weds a humble handmaid,) but he hastens to her; so is it here. For human nature ascended not into heaven, but the Son of God came down to human nature, and took her to His Father's house."

Poem of the Week CXXVI

The World
George Herbert

Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

Then Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,
Began to make balconies, terraces,
Til she had weakened all by alteration;
But reverend laws, and many a proclamation
Reformed all at length with menaces.

Then entered Sin, and with that sycamore
Whose leaves first sheltered man from drought and dew,
Working and winding slily evermore,
The inward walls and summers cleft and tore;
But Grace shored these, and cut that as it grew.

Then Sin combined with death in a firm band,
To raze the building to the very floor;
Which they effected,--none could them withstand;
But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand,
And built a braver palace than before.

Big News

Yep. I'm getting married.

To this man, Chad Michael Cunningham:

Get excited!

Poem of the Week CVIII

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

--Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

Poem of the Week CVI

I've heard the last lines of this poem quoted many times, but I only just recently read the full poem in my latest find at McKay's Used Book Store.

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Richard Lovelace

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind

That from the nunnery

Of they chaste breast and quiet mind,

To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

A Woman Wrapped in Silence

I got the coolest book from sweet Brea the other day. I love it. You might've already guessed it, but it's called A Woman Wrapped in Silence, and it is a narrative poem about Mary, the Mother of God. It is so beautiful. I haven't read that much so far, but here is a short, but beautiful, excerpt:

And when the hour had come that was to move

The long days onward up to Bethlehem,

Until a faint new cry should break across

Our air that had not heard such cry before,

Weighted with ungarnered potencies

High portent unreleased, and tremulous

With mercies still unsaid, a moment paused

Above a quiet place, and found, just this,

A woman wrapped in silence, and the seed

Of silence was her heart that tried to give

All that it held to give, and ever more.

"Something strange is happening..."

Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.