“A Feather on the Breath of God”
[The text and musical score of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum composed in 1151-8 by Hildegard von Bingen, OSB (1098-1179) includes the phrase “I am a feather on the breath of God.”] O Lover,...
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O Drawer!
O Lover, As well You know, I have occasionally flirted with wildly varying spirituality hypotheses involving everything. One such variant has been that You simply are not, at least no more than as projected...
“I Am the Lord and There is No Other”
O Lover, In chapters 43-45 of II Isaiah the prophet, engaging exiles in the Babylonian and Persian empires, has You repeatedly proclaiming that there are no gods but You. An example would be 45:18:...
Musings on “Night Vision”
O Lover, In the recent 2nd Sunday of Advent homilist Fr. Daniel Groody, CSC, an international authority on immigration and faculty/administrator at Notre Dame, cited an image which remains with me. He related how...
Mary’s Sheen of Authenticity
O Lover, In an earlier post I wrote that all prayer is somehow response to what I called Your “seizing.” Variously exemplified, this dynamic also occurs in liturgy. More than in timeless themes of...
What, Finally, Is Prayer?
O Lover, In a recent conversation a friend raised a question as old as faith: what is prayer? Although this is a query the answering of which finds a lifetime too brief a time,...
Music Yet Again
[Duruflé, Maurice (1902-86), Requiem (Op. 9, 1947); performance (with organ) by the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Stephen Layton (cond.), Saint-Eustache, Paris.] O Lover, In the face of the darkness encroaching on Advent and...
The Unfolding of Advent
O Lover, Last week signaled the end of liturgical year #2023. We have now crossed into Advent (“coming” or “arrival”), a four-sunday season characterized by anticipation, waiting, silence, attentiveness, penitential preparation, and hope of...
The Risk of Fixation on Safety
O Lover, On the penultimate Sunday of this church year the gospel reading was the parable of the talents (Mt 25:14-30). In contrast to a pair of servants who had doubled their five and...
A Lover-haunted Dream
O Lover, Last week, during my first night following a brief hospitalization, I had a dream. The experience was unique and arresting, both before and after waking. In the dream I was a participant...