Biography

It has been awhile

Reflecting upon nearly two months without posting, observing myself, reassessing my faith—the matter of stepping away concurrently passing with a return to college. I was taking 3 classes (11 credit hours), losing touch with my daily Mass, even my daily Rosary, as well as exercising and stretching routines. It was intentional. Observing myself at sixty years of age. I do think I overextended myself. Next collegiate semester, I was going to continue the pace, however I decided to drop a Monday-Thursday Spanish class. I want to fully concentrate on a Shakespeare class with an intriguing professor. Grace Tiffany is a Shakespeare scholar and author of historical novels dealing with the time of Shakespeare and Globe Theater. Currently, I am reading Ms. Tiffany’s ‘Gunpowder Percy’—a story centering upon the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Unexpectedly, I discovered a story I am convinced is written by an author fully steeped in Catholicism. I am fascinated. I will also be taking an online course dealing with the effects of substance abuse upon society and individuals. I will be able to return to daily Mass, my Rosary, and exercise. The first semester was a success with the realization the educational process of becoming a teacher must not be rushed. Fine tuning and proper development are essential. I thought I might touch upon deeper subjects, namely Catholicism and world views yet I find myself hesitant. I would rather say little. I am subscribing to America: The Jesuit Review. Several years in the not-so-distant past that would have been an outrage. I am still reading the Remnant Newspaper while drawing away from harsh opinions. I felt God was doing something with me when the Shakespeare class was presented to me. The presenter was my academic advisor. A young man with rainbow flags, Hillary Clinton, and Ruth Ginsberg adorning his walls. The young man is a blessing in my life. Changes are happening. I will embrace them.

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Sunday evening

I have returned to college, finishing my bachelor’s degree. I am taking three classes plus continuing to work full-time. Posting for the blog is proving difficult at this time. My spiritual life is my life. I have no choice.

The highest and most fruitful form of human freedom is found in accepting, even more than in dominating. We show the greatness of our freedom when we transform reality, but still more when we accept it trustingly as it is given to us day after day.

It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!

To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.”

Jacques Philippe “Interior Freedom

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Tourist in a home town

A return to Toledo, Ohio, my home city as a tourist. Visiting Spanish family members staying with my mother put us in the wonderful downtown Renaissance Hotel–outstanding view from the rooftop restaurant. Wonderful days encompassing Detroit–Motown Museum, Piquette Museum plus Greenfield Village/Henry Ford Museum–as well. A blessed time introducing others to Toledo’s impressive Holy Rosary Cathedral, plus noon time Mass at downtown’s St Francis de Sales Chapel. It has been a good return to my home city.

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Humility of Heart

A funeral Mass. Be careful, God is transforming. An urn, a cremation, the same as my father. My father. Thinking of my father, a life ending. Tears for a hymn, a calling, thoughts of teaching. I am content, yet still dirty. Waiting and patient with myself.

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night
I will go, Lord, if you lead me
I will hold your people in my heart

It is in this that the goodness and wisdom of God is most admirably set forth, that He offers us a means of sanctifying ourselves through our very miseries, and we shall never be able to make the excuse that we could not become saints because we committed grave sin, when those very sins might have been the means of sanctifying us by urging us to a deeper humility. How great is God’s mercy in thus giving me the means of sanctifying myself if only by remembering that I have sinned and by meditating, in the light of Holy Faith, upon what it means to be a sinner!  –“Humility of Heart” Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo

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Spanish images of the sea

I have been thoroughly enjoying a Facebook group one of my mother’s family members in Spain exposed me to. Descendentes de Marineiros, a group dedicated to Spanish descendants and active individuals who depend upon the sea. Many of the photos have a fascinating epic aura. I learned of the Spanish photographer José Ortiz Echagüe from the group. Echague, in his distinct manner, captured memorable moments from early twentieth century religious life within Spain—a way of life he felt was sadly fading away, along with so many traditional ways of life that gave profound depth to Spain. His portraits of Carthusian monks I find appealing. Here are some images captured through the group. They also recently presented images of paintings by Joaquín Sorolla. The artist who motivated my visit to New York City in order to see his exhibit at The Hispanic Museum and Library.

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Good Morning Bedlam–again

Simply because the young married couple Isaac and Torey–and the two supporting members–have infected my soul, I am posting another of their videos. The world deserves to know them. They have been married for seven years. Their lyrics are profound, a maturity beyond their years. Contemplate these words deeply: “I have no enemies–to come and take from me–I give it freely into their hands”. Amazing. I relate them to words from the Gospels: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Final stunning lyrics for a young married couple loving and working hard on their relationship: “Let’s leave them open to the breeze so everyone can see the things we’ve overcome”. Then there is the hilarious and joyous: “I’ve been living in the laughter though it’s me the world is after. I’ll keep loving until it all falls in on me”. I am enchanted.

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Strange thoughts from a strange man

Sandwiched between summer vacations, I have been Slowly trudging through Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’—an immersion for which I have my reasons. In a strange way, an odd quote Ritchie Robertson refers to several times in his compendium on the Enlightenment comes to mind. I am butchering the quote, yet I feel the idea is there. ‘The gods are allowed to be harsh for they are gods. However, a rationale man must be rationale”. Or as a Trappist monk said to me once: ‘That may be good for the saints. However, for you it is off limits”. I came across a powerful ending to a Nietzsche chapter. The penetrating insight cuts to the bone. It is what mankind, globally and nationally, has become. Luckily, on the local level I think there is hope. Faith, hope, and charity prevails on the individual and small community level. “The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of the “man of the future”—as idealized by the socialistic fools and shallow pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of “free society”), this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of mankind—and perhaps also a new MISSION!” For myself, I would prefer the idea of an old mission—the post-post-post modern that drives us into an ineffectual political obsession and division of pygmies usurped fundamentally by the old, while interspersed and unafraid of that which is good in the new. As Pope Leo XIII advocated. When an organization struggles, it must return to that which gave it birth in order to resuscitate itself.

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