Martin sermons – slow reads

Speak of the Devil: an Easter homily

Three bears talk about someone over three bowls, three chairs, and three beds, and the perpetrator herself shows up in the last bed. This dramatic irony, along with the literary rule of three, seems to hold the many iterations of the famous fairy tale together. So far, so good. But after the bears discover the girl (or in… Continue reading Speak of the Devil: an Easter homily

Jesus teaches the comparison and contrast essay

“Teach us to pray,” a student asks. So Jesus compares God to an unloving friend. He loans bread, but he doesn’t give it. He loans bread to his friend not because he’s a friend but because he’s pestered.

Later, teaching on prayer again, Jesus compares God to an unjust judge. The judge gives justice not because he’s a judge – he owns that he neither fears God nor respects men – but because he’s pestered.

We get these comparisons, but we don’t get the contrasts. As a result, our prayer is based not on friendship or justice but on magic and importunity.

Job’s friends

I wonder if I would ever sit silently with a friend for seven days out of respect for his suffering. I wonder if I would ever stay with him after he began to talk for the hours or days it took him to grieve his loss, to get in touch with his feelings, and to… Continue reading Job’s friends

Jobs & vocations

The blind spiritual instinct that tells us obscurely that our own lives have a particular importance and purpose, and which urges us to find out our vocation, seeks in so doing to bring us to a decision that will dedicate our lives irrevocably to their true purpose. — Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island Mr.… Continue reading Jobs & vocations

Categories

Passages

In Person

6 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

I can't remember the last time I shook another person's hand, or sensed the angles of shoulders on each side of a bus aisle. I can't remember the last time we sat on the rubbed velvet seats of a small theatre eating popcorn and licking our buttery fingers in the dark. I see figures in the distance, rounding the edge of an empty tennis court. Glancing through office windows, I note how far apart the chairs and desks are; how empty the water cooler. After we get the vaccine, in the fall, we're going to try to come back in person— as if, during this year when we thought everything we loved would be taken away, we who'd been abruptly exiled to another dimension are being told we'll start materializing in the old-new spaces of our lives. [Read more...]

Improbabilities

6 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, to the getting of my books in order, to carry to the Commissioners of Accounts this morning. This being done, I away first to Westminster Hall, and there met my cozen, Roger Pepys, by his desire, the first time I have seen him since his coming to town, the Parliament meeting yesterday and adjourned to Monday next; and here he tells me that Mr. Jackson, my sister’s servant, is come to town, and hath this day suffered a recovery on his estate, in order to the making her a settlement. The young man is gone out of the Hall, so I could not now see him, but here I walked a good while with my cozen, and among other things do hear that there is a great triall between my Lord Gerard and Carr to-day, who is indicted for his life at the King’s Bench, for running from his colours; but all do say that my Lord Gerard, though he designs the ruining of this man, will not get any… [Read more...]

SUN LIKE/AUTUMN

5 March 2021 - Tom

Sun likeautumnleaves onwet ground.Someonewalks herewho lovesit now,at thislastmoment,someonewho willendureanotherwinterfor onemore daylike this.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

CEMETERY

5 March 2021 - Tom

Eventuallynot even the stonesremember us.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Architectures of Feeling

5 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

What kind of shape rises to meet your hands groping in the dark; what glass body will yield its cool lips to yours so you can drink until your thirst is quenched. The spice drawer exhales, releasing the last secrets your fingers sifted into a bowl. When you close your eyes, atoms of water gather in the seams and flush the walls with mossy color. Somewhere in the depths of a snail's curled shell, a cool blanket. You remember coiled green fronds, the pop of sea-grapes so tiny against the roof of your mouth. [Read more...]

Betterment

5 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and among other things Sir H. Cholmly comes to me about a little business, and there tells me how the Parliament, which is to meet again to-day, are likely to fall heavy on the business of the Duke of Buckingham’s pardon; and I shall be glad of it. And that the King hath put out of the Court the two Hides, my Lord Chancellor’s two sons, and also the Bishops of Rochester and Winchester, the latter of whom should have preached before him yesterday, being Ash Wednesday, and had his sermon ready, but was put by; which is great news. He gone, we sat at the office all the morning, and at noon home to dinner, and my wife being gone before, I to the Duke of York’s playhouse; where a new play of Etherige’s, called “She Would if she Could;” and though I was there by two o’clock, there was 1000 people put back that could not have room in the pit. And I at… [Read more...]

Hermit Diary 58. My Companions the Books

5 March 2021 - Beth

Today, I learn, is #WorldBookDay. Who makes up these things? (And immediately hear a response in my head: "Publishers like you!") Be that as it may, in my life, every day is book day, and it's been so practically ever since I can remember. Last week the members of my book group started talking about when we had begun to be readers, and what form it took for each of us. We told stories about the books in our homes, local libraries in the small towns many of us had grown up in, how reading early made problems for us in school, happy hours spent reading in treehouses, or curled up on couches on rainy days, what those favorite books were and how they shaped us as the readers we are today. I've never been a solitary introvert, but I was definitely a bookworm whose parents often told me, "Come on, get your nose out of that book, and go outside!" This was a somewhat half-hearted admonition from my mother, who was pretty much of… [Read more...]

OUT

5 March 2021 - Tom

Outthe samewindoweach dayI seethe sunpaint withlightthe samelovelytrees.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (15)

4 March 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe words for emptying the trashalso mean kissing God.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Labor of love

4 March 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

A glimpse of the Color The Omer Trello board: the digital "room where it happens." I can't remember how we initially framed my role. Cat-herder, maybe. I'm the lead architect for Bayit Publishing, so our book projects (and liturgy projects and to some extent blog projects) are in my purview. Last summer, a new idea from Shari Berkowitz reached our doorstep: a contemplative coloring book for the 49 days of the Omer, with illustrations that each user can transform with color, and kavanot / intentions /reflections and questions on each page. The Bayit board approved the Build Plan, and we set the book in motion by creating a Trello board where collaborators could keep track of tasks and chat via digital post-it notes. That was June, and at first, I didn't think I'd be very involved until it was time to bring the book to print. When Shari brought the concept to Bayit, our #VisualTorah sketchnoter Steve Silbert immediately volunteered to do the illustrations. Right away, they invited me as editor / publisher to partner… [Read more...]

The Kodomoroid reads the news

4 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

to museum-goers; she sports a cute bob and wears a clean white cotton smock. Her older sister Otonoroid has her hair in a neat ponytail; she talks, acts, even breathes, if that's what we can call the light puffs of air escaping from her mouth. They each take up about the same amount of space as one human would and look almost lifelike, except for those small inconsistencies that make us second-guess our own sense of reality: a rubbery fold at the corners of the eyes, the not-quite-fluid motion of a body copying the way the body moves. And I know a sepia-tinted photograph of my father from the '80s that I feed into an app called Deep Nostalgia will not bring him back— Still, when I press play and his animated head turns gently toward me, the part of my brain that startles at the uncanny is overcome by wonder. How those clear blue-gray eyes look as if they're looking right at me, even as the smallest half-smile seems to hold something back. [Read more...]

Poor in spirit

4 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and I to Captain Cocke’s, where he and I did discourse of our business that we are to go about to the Commissioners of Accounts about our prizes, and having resolved to conceal nothing but to confess the truth, the truth being likely to do us most good, we parted, and I to White Hall, where missing of the Commissioners of the Treasury, I to the Commissioners of Accounts, where I was forced to stay two hours before I was called in, and when come in did take an oath to declare the truth to what they should ask me, which is a great power; I doubt more than the Act do, or as some say can, give them, to force a man to swear against himself; and so they fell to enquire about the business of prize-goods, wherein I did answer them as well as I could, answer them in everything the just truth, keeping myself to that. I do perceive at last, that, that they did lay most like a fault to… [Read more...]

WHAT CAME

3 March 2021 - Tom

What camebeforethe sameas whatcomesafter.Loss isnot losswhen itreturns.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

HAWK IS NOT

3 March 2021 - Tom

Hawk is notlast year's leavesin the winterbranches, thoughhe could be,he always could.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Spring Approacheth Slowly

3 March 2021 - Loren

There are signs that Spring might actually be on the way and we can soon expect migration sightings, but for now our world (with the exception of Evergreen trees) remains largely browns and grays. So, it seemed appropriate that my first sighting on our latest trip to Theler Wetlands was of a Song Sparrow foraging on a pile of snow leftover from a recent snowstorm. The sound of male Red-Wing Blackbirds trying to attract mates echoed across the refuge, but all I actually saw was a single, female Red-Wing Blackbird. Didn’t see any Bald Eagles, like we often do, but we did catch sight of a Red-Tailed Hawk. The clearest sign that Spring is coming, though, was the sound of Canada Geese pairs claiming their nesting ground when another pair dared to fly over. [Read more...]

3 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Watch on Vimeo I turned 55 on the first spring-like day in late February, which felt like a cosmic mixed message. For weeks I’ve been fighting low-level depression about getting older and being a failure as a husband — and by fighting I mean going for long walks, mostly on snowshoes. bone-tired ogling the snow-free strips of field My birthday was shopping day, though, and when I got back to my parents’ house with their groceries, just past noon, Mom surprised me with a cake. And it was warm enough to sit out on their veranda and talk. It took me back. When I think about my childhood now, it seems to me that I spent an inordinate amount of time just kind of poking at things with a stick. I suppose that must sound absurd to anyone who grew up with video games and the internet. decades after the last train tree-of-heaven I’m consoled by the thought that this sort of arm’s-length but intent preoccupation with whatever was in front of me may have… [Read more...]

Period Piece

3 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

We climbed the hundred steps and rang the bell. Taking turns, we wrapped our hands around a bundle of prayer sticks and dropped them on the table. Sleepy-eyed, a monk pushed toward us a pad of paper, a pencil stub. We were to write down a question or a wish, which is also a kind of question. How far we were from the cities where we'd crossed the thresholds of all our houses. We didn't save the stone of every fruit that fell so brightly from the tree, proclaiming it was ready to become our brand- new heart. Mist was always drifting through the valley. A bridge was always cutting through it to disappear somewhere beyond. On a distant ridge, the ruins of a convent or a garrison, where ghosts walked their labyrinths and kept to themselves any counsel about the future. I wanted to keep a souvenir, to take a sheaf of creased and dog-eared photos: sunlight on a shaded porch, the roots of orchids parting the air. The man and woman seated next… [Read more...]

Comedian

3 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where a full Board sat all the morning, busy among other things concerning a solemn letter we intend to write to the Duke of York about the state of the things of the Navy, for want of money, though I doubt it will be to little purpose. After dinner I abroad by coach to Kate Joyce’s, where the jury did sit where they did before, about her husband’s death, and their verdict put off for fourteen days longer, at the suit of somebody, under pretence of the King; but it is only to get money out of her to compound the matter. But the truth is, something they will make out of Stillingfleete’s sermon, which may trouble us, he declaring, like a fool, in his pulpit, that he did confess that his losses in the world did make him do what he did. This do vex me to see how foolish our Protestant Divines are, while the Papists do make it the duty of Confessor to be secret, or else… [Read more...]

POET

3 March 2021 - Tom

You setyourselffor this,your work,every day,this, andnothingelse.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

On March 1st

2 March 2021 - James Brush

the grackles openedlike gates in the treesshadow birds, eyes glisteningyou could almost imaginethese noisy shadesabandoning tangible birds,parking lots and steel dumpstersin their odyssey throughsuburban woods,clacking and creakinglike machines or clocksticking away the lasthoarse seconds of winter. This is from my book Birds Nobody Loves. It seemed fitting to dig this one out today as we come around to another March. The 13th looms large here as that’s the day Texas started shutting down a year ago. I never would have imagined I’d have to be going to work in a face shield and an N95 a year later. On another note, I’ve been tinkering with this old site and made new book landing pages that include videos, interviews, collaborations and related stuff. Putting it together, it was surprising to see where these birds have flown the past 9 years. Here’s the page for Birds. Welcome, March. [Read more...]