“His heart is ashes, his hope is cheaper than dirt,
and his life is of less worth than clay,
because he failed to know the one who formed him
and inspired him with an active soul
and breathed into him a living spirit.
But he considered our existence an idle game,
and life a festival held for profit…”
~Wisdom 15:10-12
Comment by JustMe
November 5, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
I was thinking today of all the photos people take. These say, “Look! We lived. We celebrated. We grew. We diminished. We grieved. We died. Look, our grandchildren..” I am terrible at cataloguing personally historic moments, now, because I’ve thought once too often of all the people who never have their photos taken, nor take any, and I realized that, nonetheless, all are in the Lord’s Personal photo album. He has us, whether we’ve stood victoriously on Kilimanjaro or invisibly at the bus stop; whether we’ve gathered for dinner here and here, or at the town dump; whether this parcel is where we’re going to build, or this noisy tarp must serve as a roof, He has us under His arm, and He shows all His friends our images. We are His family, but He catalogs our tiny human history only to show what each sharing, prayer, and gift of hope gained for another.
Comment by Gabrielle
November 7, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
These verses paint a picture of the majority of people in my work environment, and I say this in sadness, not in a judgemental way. I cannot understand how living, breathing human beings, people with children, people with artistic gifts beyond imagining, people involved in many altruistic causes, still do not even acknowledge the Divine. I just read the rest of Wisdom Ch. 15 to get a better context for the passage you’ve posted, kt, and would like to read more out of the Book of Wisdom tonight.
Comment by kathryntherese
November 7, 2007 @ 5:34 pm
I think this challenge is greater than it has ever been in history - we are SO entertained and distracted, and SO scientifically advanced, we are just short of believing we are immortal. Modern medicine can fix whatever ails us, and until we have to face some medical emergency, we remain very busy occupying our senses and our minds with things less than God.
But until we recognize that we will die, we cannot really live.
And it seems that if life were seen to be as fragile as it is, if we watched more people die (as was more common in the past), we would be less likely to forget that we are only journeying through.
Comment by Ann
November 8, 2007 @ 8:36 am
More and more of us are going to have to gather on the rooftops and shout and shout- if that’s what it’s going to take to waken them up to the meaning of their existence.
Comment by kathryntherese
November 8, 2007 @ 9:57 am
Well, Ann, you’ve just given the Mission Statement for the Cospirazione! Shouting from the rooftops.
Shouting truth and beauty. From the rooftops.
What IS the Internet equivalent of shouting from the rooftops, anyway?
Comment by JustMe
November 8, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
I’m put in mind of a beautiful little stone building in the middle of a mountain on the edge of the sea surrounded by farmland in the Ring of Kerry. It is as remote as can possibly be, and there’s no yard — it sits almost on the little winding road, there, and, there’s no parking. Whomever goes there, besides the blue- and red-wooled sheep snoozing in the gorse, goes on foot. One might think it a sheep-farmer’s or a sod-farmer’s sturdy little storehouse, but for one thing. There is a Celtic cross on the peak of its roof.
I was just thinking that no matter how marvelous it would be to shout from that rooftop, only its soft brown bovine neighbors on the hillside, the skelligs and clouds just beyond–and God–would hear. But those all already know and shout “God!” The important thing about shouting God from rooftops is being heard– by those who need to hear.
On the Internet, one hopes a blog, and blog-rings and blog-groups and websites (those that don’t sport a PayPal button!) would be the equivalent of shouting from rooftops. But who is hearing it? The Lord’s concern are the atheists, pagans, the confused and deluded, the terrified, the hope-less, the spiritually exhausted, the world-seduced, and the young (and too often, now, the young are in all those conditions). Do many of these visit our websites? I think they are too wanderish and wounded. We don’t expect mortally wounded soldiers to drag themselves to a medical tent; we must go out to the battlefield with Balm.
Comment by Ann
November 8, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
I just knew Justme would come in with the right answer.
That last line about the wonded soldiers is just so beautifully, compassionately true - it just lifts my heart.
Comment by JustMe
November 8, 2007 @ 8:03 pm
What a lovely surprise to read, Ann–thank you. In those rare times when JustMe says something right, one can be sure she has not acted Alone.
We’ve never seen a more wounded people. I’d thought it was mostly just here in the States, where we are held by so many demons disguised as governing body, as health, as saviour– and ever acting as judge, jury and executioner. But it’s not.. the loss of spiritual vitality is almost everywhere, and the fruit of that loss is most visible (apart from DC and NYC and Hollywood) in Darfur and the Sudan and Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Congo DR, Iraq, No. Korea, Israel and Calcutta.. and it is striking the hearts and bodies of the young with deadly force.
And we all are losing some solid contemporary helps very rapidly.. Edward Said, JP II, Mother Teresa, all the old and solid apologists and loving activists and diplomats as well. Pretty soon, we’ll not have even Jimmy Carter nor Jesse Jackson.
It’s frightening. We’ve read not only of little churches turned into pubs in Ireland (and large churches having been turned into discoteques in Moscow), but of a boy in Finland whose t-shirt said, “Humanity is overrated,” and he actually believed that — many do — so he finished off some of that for a few kids and himself.
And I STILL hear people speak of selling their ova — dare I say here how much a human egg goes for? Why, no. People think money is the answer to all of life’s fiercest woes. In this, they have underestimated the word “fierce”. Life’s most fierce woe is not being able to trust a loved one to have your back, even if they’d like to.
Life is cheap, love is fickle.. and respect–what’s that? And self-discipline? How can we have peace or resolution to any conflict or wrong or lack without first treasuring life and love, without acting with respect and restraint?
Oh, we could go on and on, yes. But let me say something else. Something is breaking through in all this.. Something… for seminaries (and the Diaconate) are thriving again and are quite orthodox and far more careful in screening; WYDs never EVER lack for millions–oh, that alone should give us such hope! And the tattoos are becoming lighter-hearted.
*sigh..
There are better ways to shout Truth and Beauty from the rooftops, yes. And we’re finding them. Never fear. We are finding them. But millions are falling through the cracks, millions of child soldiers and laborers, millions of uneducated, millions of hungry dying, diseased dying, sometimes only from a lack of clean water, and millions of unborn.. all we can do is what we can do, and no one does that better than ourselves. Together.
The first disciples just prayed and then opened their mouths. Experience taught them what to say, what not to waste breath on. Everyone back then thought the world was about to shut down. We probably should think that, too, for its value of increased intensity– and in looking at the state of the world physically, too, oh, one must wonder indeed!
Anyway, I do not have any of the greater artistic gifts, so I created a MySpace page, and a YouTube page, and joined a Catholic online clan somewhere in Canada. I also visit sites that make me want a shower before I’ve finished reading the first post.. but we fight fire with water, so it works out ok. Otherwise, I just stumble along, knowing that text and talk can only do so much. Prayer is key, isn’t it? Prayer is 9/10ths of the battle.
Comment by gabrielle
November 10, 2007 @ 1:51 am
Yes, millions are falling through the cracks. But if, for example, I have regular readers (non-commentors) consistently coming in from China, Korea, Cambodia, India, Thailand… and I don’t have a clue who they are, what their circumstances are, what their religion may be (if any), or why they keep reading, it gives me the impetus to keep posting. I think about them before I go to bed; I wonder about them during the day. We probably can all say the same thing in this regard. But when I think of them in their own countries, facing goodness knows what kind of circumstances, having come upon my little blog out of the thousands of blogs online, it reminds me of a message in a bottle, tossed into the ocean.
Comment by JustMe
November 10, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
I hear ya. The invisible little ones along any Way are the only reason I’m ever visible. To quote a better person, one beggar tells another where there is Bread.
Comment by kathryntherese
November 10, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
If we are not mendicants, we have lost our way, so let’s continue to lead each other where we find Bread!
A Conspiracy of Beggars. Sounds like a poem. Or a strange movie…
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