... which MOJ colleague Susan Stabile just sent my (our) way:
Annunciation
‘Hail, space for the
uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek
obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.
____________________________
Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More
often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
______________________________
She had been a child who
played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more
momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –
but who was God.
The Thread
Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me--a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven't tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Orway back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.
Primary Wonder
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, and everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
Michael P's post asking what would our lives be without friends brought to mind a post I made a while back on my own blog titled, What it Means to Have Friends. The post was prompted by a video done by Work of the People, exploring the question, What is Poverty? My post, which describes and links to the video is here. Ask yourselves the questions the narrator of the video asks and you'll be on the way to an answer to Michael's question about what it mean to lack genuine friends.
Whatever it is--indeed, whatever the meaning of the question(!)--consider this:
What would our lives be like without friends ... *genuine* friends? What would our lives be like without love?
..... has to be this alliance of arguably the two most-despised sectors of the U.S. economy these days -- banks and health care providers. Lori Swanson, Minnesota's Attorney General has just filed suit against a local chiropractic clinic for fraudulent issuance of health care credit cards.
Her consumer alert memo on this trend among health care providers explains:
Some clinics aggressively promote health care credit cards to make more money. Banks often encourage dentists, medical clinics, chiropractors, cosmetic and eye surgeons, weight loss programs, hearing aid dispensers, and other providers to offer health care credit cards to their patients as a way to make more money for the clinic. When a patient charges services on a health care credit card, the clinic is paid right away by the credit card company, even if the services are to be delivered in the future. Some patients report feeling pressured by their clinics to enroll in health care credit cards to pay for care that they do not need or want or cannot afford.
Patients should remember that clinics have an incentive to aggressively promote these credit cards as a guaranteed way for the clinic to get paid promptly but that the cards may not always be in the patient's best interest. Do not let your clinic pressure you into taking out a credit card you do not want. Do not sign up for anything without asking to read the fine print.
Beware of interest-free promotions. Health care credit cards are now offered by many of the nation's largest lenders, including GE Money Bank, JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, and Capital One. Across the country, health care companies like UnitedHealth Group and Humana have also gotten into the mix by offering credit cards.
Many lenders try to entice patients into signing up by offering credit cards that have a zero percent interest rate if the balance is paid off within a promotional period (often 12 or 18 months) and if, during the promotional period, the consumer makes all monthly payments on time. If the balance is not paid off within the promotional period or if the patient misses a monthly payment, however, interest rates can quickly jump to as much as 29.99 percent retroactively. Before being tempted by a zero-interest offer, be absolutely sure that you can pay the balance in full during the interest free period and that you can make all your monthly payments in full and on time. If you can' t, you may end up being responsible to pay off your health care bills at double-digit rates that you cannot afford and may also be responsible for hefty late fees.
Maybe what we really need is some sort of omnibus health and financial system reform bill.
For months now, Congress and the White House have talked about the need for Americans to seek “common ground” on the issues that face us. This is a very welcome theme.
The “common good” and “common ground” are central messages in Catholic social teaching. This is why the Church always seeks to work cooperatively with people of other faiths and no faith to secure the basic elements of human dignity for all our citizens—decent housing, a living wage, justice under the law and adequate food and health care. It’s why America’s Catholic bishops have pushed for national health care reform for the past several decades. It’s also why the Church, in principle, supports current efforts to craft legislation that would ensure basic health care coverage for all Americans.
But God, or the devil, is always in the details.
Read the rest of Archbishop Chaput's column here.
"The clue to the political thought of any period lies in the conflict between various views of human nature."
-Kingsley Martin, The Rise of French Liberal Thought (1929)
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
NYT
August 11, 2009
Spectacular Distractions Are the Perks of Judgeship
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — The
search is on for a candidate for one of the most scenic jobs in
American law: magistrate judge for the United States District Court in Yosemite National Park, home not only to towering sequoias but also to a tiny federal courthouse where park justice is doled out 52 weeks a year.
“It’s the Garden of Eden,” said Larry M. Boyle, a magistrate judge
from Idaho who filled in at the park for two weeks this summer. “But
the law is the same as in San Francisco or Boise or Manhattan."
[Read the rest, here.]
