i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e e cummings is so good. One of the things to appreciate about him is how tenderly he treats mystery, and how mysteriously he feels the world to be. He very evocatively presents mysteries hidden in things that we otherwise walk by unwittingly. He was a prophet of beauty, even if he did not always live in truth or know goodness by Name.

Hostile, Vicious, and Snarky.

That's a good way to describe my mood. These thoughts speak themselves aloud to me:

1. Moods come from someplace.
2. Moods affect me somehow.
3. Moods take me someplace.

 The trick about being a rational adult is to look at those things rationally and exercise restraint, redirection, and other useful ways to handle a mood, rather than to let it wreck the day of everyone else around us. The same goes for a good mood, too, incidentally, like "friendly, kind, and cheerful." We've all been in a sour mood, or even legitimately bereft and grieving, and been ambushed by Pollyanna and her sunshine, and that is as obnoxious as "hostile, vicious, and snarky" can ever be. Let's do a little triage, some first aid, if you will.

First things last, as I always say.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal tells the Class of 2012 to stop whining.

The first in a series by our bishops about current events: this one on religious liberty and conscience protection.

One of my favorite lines from all of literature and cinema comes from the movie version of A Man For All Seasons.

Richard Rich: I'm not depressed. I'm lamenting. I've lost my innocence!
Cromwell: Some time ago. You only just noticed?

Cromwell's rejoinder is quick and very typically English. It's also the line that keeps coming back to me as we contemplate and scuffle over the HHS's contraceptive mandate. Forgive me for bringing up that tiring but pressing story; and really, it strikes me as a specific instance of a much broader phenomenon: a sort of cultural awakening, if I may make the thing sound more hopeful than I feel it to be.

But what, pray, are we waking up from, you might ask? The Enlightenment. In fact, for a couple centuries at least, critics of the Enlightenment have sometimes called it the Endarkenment. Endarkenment is not altogether unsuitable. Often in our nightmares we think it is daylight, and we awaken to find ourselves enshrouded in darkness. So it is for two or three centuries we have thought all was well in the West. Now some people are awaking to realize that we have jettisoned public morals.

Some time ago. You only just noticed?

You may have heard of the Vatican's supposed "crackdown" of nuns. Enjoy this great audio interview on NPR concerning the Vatican's findings regarding the LCWR. It is balanced, clear, and avoids polemics and polarizing opposites.

While at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City with a friend in February, I made a rash oath. Rash, because unplanned and unthought-out. It is not exactly a regrettable oath, only, I do wish I had made it a little easier. The oath was this: that I should buy no more books until I had read ten that I already own. 

The Rev. Bob Lacey, a priest of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said in a recent talk:

The last thought is that we must beg for the grace of long-suffering. It is the only way to live [the] spiritual work[s] of mercy.

That is a keen insight. It is not earth-shattering, but it should be course-changing, especially if, like me, you find yourself frequently attempting concrete holiness on your own. He was speaking specifically of bearing wrongs patiently, but he might just as well have been referring to any of the spiritual works of mercy. Admonishing sinners and instructing the ignorant come particularly to mind.

Read the whole thing here.