Divine Love

"To every existing thing God wills some good. Hence, since to love any thing is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists" ~St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

.......As Fr. Hardon puts is, love is "to will good to someone." (Pocket Catholic Dictionary, definition of 'Love')
.......Pope Benedict elaborates further as he says in the Introduction of Caritas in Veritate, "To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it."
.......So God loves us and thus wills good to us and wants to give us that good. What is the best for us? Nothing less than God's love. Because God loves us he wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is His love, so He loves us, so He wants the best for us... Divine love is both the gift and the reason for giving. Moreover, it is the giver Himself.
.......In the light of this, all love between humans falls into place as a reflection of God's love. Human love is inspired by Divine love. "All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically." (Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate). Not only do people naturally want to love in response to the love of God, it is our mission to love. "As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity; they are called to make themselves instruments of grace so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity." (Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate)
.......A proverb states, "Love elicits a response." So God's love elicits two responses: the one above, that we love one another and that we love Him. It is only by loving God and being open to the love He wishes to pour upon us (and that we need) that we are able to fully love others. For often, our love falls short. It is not enough. By opening ourselves to God's love, we can think, say, and do what is needed with love, though it is not our own. Consider this passage from The Jeweler's Shop by Pope John Paul II in which one of the characters is speaking of the marriage of a friend which had almost completely broken and is now slowly recovering:

"The cause lies in the past. The error resides simply there . The thing is that love carries people away like an absolute, although it lacks absolute dimensions. But acting under illusion, they do not try to connect that love with the Love that has such dimensions. They do not even feel the need, blinded as they are not so much by the force of their emotions as by lack of humility. They lack humility toward what love must be in its true essence. The more aware they are of it, the smaller the danger. Otherwise the danger is great: love will not stand the pressure of reality."

And the more we are open to God's love, the more our own grows. Because of God's love, we can transcend our weaknesses. God's love gives us the opportunity for an eternity in heaven, so it gives us a purpose for living now. "Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope" (Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate)

"Charity is love received and given. It is "grace" (charis). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. it is Creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. John 13:1) and "poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5)."
(Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate)

.......To consider further what love is, I have compiled this list of what charity is and is not, according to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's' essay entitled Charity:

Charity
IS NOT...........................................IS
In emotions.................................In the will
Spasmodic....................Habit, Commandable
Contract..................................Relationship
From man or ................Supernatural, from God
anything sensual.........................................................
Picky about who ........................Wills to love
deserves to be loved...........everyone for God's sake
Isolated, countable acts................................Good habit
Occasionally good..................Growing and eternal virtue
A contract.............................A supernatural relationship
.......................................with God and neighbor
According to merit.................Loves the sinner,
..........................................hates the sin
Changed by ...........................................Eternal
and with time............................................................

.......The best place to learn what Love is is in the Bible, especially St. Paul's passage in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. My advice when you read it is, 'Since you have probably heard this a hundred times before, try to read it now with fresh ears and an inquisitive mind.'
.......Let us now conclude this discussion of Divine Love with another quote from The Jeweler's Shop:

...."Sometimes human love seems too short for love. At other times it is, however, the other way around: human love seems too short in relation to existence-or rather, too trivial. At any rate, every person has at his disposal an existance and a Love. The problem is: Hos to build a sensible structuree from it?
....But this structure must never be inward-looking. It must be open in such a way that on the one hand it embraces other people, whole on the other it always reflects the absolute Existence and Love; it must always, in some way, reflect them."

All Virtues Essentially Come From Love

All virtues come from love. We can know this for two reasons:
1. God is Love, and God is the source of all things. Everything which comes directly from Him thus directly comes from love.
2. Goodness is a reflection of the ultimate good being, who is God. Virtues are good habits- that is, they are a way of acting, thinking, and speaking in a way that consistently reflects God. And since God is love, then reflecting God consistently is loving.

Memory of You

Slowly forgetting as my memories drift away
far, far way into imagination's dream land;
flickering in the firelight, I see yesterdays merge;
voices blur and I can no longer understand.
Where have they gone- my days of childhood, my past?
Your face is softened to nothing; still I feel
you were smiling. I try to focus and blow away the dust;
your face becomes sickeningly polished and surreal.
But I remember the rain, as I hear it now.
And I know I was glad, and was unafraid,
for you cherished me though you never said it
all the time you were with me, all the time you stayed.
My heart remembers even if my eyes do not.
My promises I recall; each one I will fulfill.
You are never far from me, for you I will not forget:
You loved me then, and I love you still.

Birdsong

Birds sang, their voices light and sweet. Emily opened her eyes and listened to the morning. Emily was nineteen years old and a college student. But when she heard the songs of the birds, she was a little girl again, without a single worry or a single fear. Emily listened, and heard the birds of her childhood.
Emily was a little girl, and her daddy was big and strong. He went to work every morning. When he came home she attacked him with hugs and kisses, and told him what her mother had taught her in school. Her mother taught her at home. She taught Emily stories from the Bible, and how to read, and everything she thought Emily should know. Emily would sit on a stool in the kitchen, struggling through her reader. Her mom, washing dishes, would correct her mistakes and urge her on.
In spring, her mother and her would clean the house. It would smell of fresh soap and lilacs. Emily would run to the window and lean out, breathing the clean air of spring. The scents of flowers were faint upon the breeze. And the birds, singing and singing until Emily thought their hearts would burst.
Her daddy taught her to ride a bike. How proud she was when she could fly along the sidewalk with the other children. She even raced with the boys in their bike races. Once the boys piled up twigs to see who could break the most as they rode over them on their bikes. Emily won because her bike wheels were pure rubber, and the boys marveled at her bike.
On summer evenings, her dad would take her on walks. She loved to watch the sky as it settled soft and dark upon the neighborhood. The flowers of gardens glowed, and fireflies sparkled. The trees seemed strangely mysterious in the dim light of evening, as if they could move when you weren't looking.
. . . when she heard the songs of the birds. Then the alarm went off, and she had to be nineteen again.

Life of an Artist

I

Little girl sitting at the dining room table. Before her is a sheet of paper, and on the paper is a large, black circle. Around the circle is gray, like a gray doughnut with a huge black hole. A black hole. Around the gray is a squiggly line of purple. She can't think what more to draw. She pokes the purple crayon, rolling it along the edges of her paper. She looks at the black circle, ponderously. Her name is Cassandra. She-! Did the black hole just move? It seems to quiver. Not the black wax on the white paper but something Deep in the picture quivered. Cassandra shakes her head, quivers to break her concentration. And when she looks back at her drawing, she is very small.
She is very, very small. The little girl sitting with her chin in her fisted hands at the edge of a black hole. Behind her is gray. In the far horizon is a ring of squiggly purple. Before her is black and black and black. 'What is black?' She wonders. 'Is it anything more than this color?' But her questions are only little quiverings in her mind. She does not know how to say them, for she does not know the right words. Her thoughts are prisoners of her wordless mind.

II

Veins of white, where the black wax did not quite meet, ripple through the black hole. The veins are slitting farther. The peices of black are splintering apart. Where they shift, the paper under them glares white. Something deeper than the paper, nearer than the wax, is stirring. Something is moving and moving everything else. The gray throbs and the purple squiggly line, far in the distance, squirms uncomfortable.
Steady, up and down; up - the living thing under the black wax is trembling - violently. The white cracks, like lightening, shoot to the edges of the black. The gray heaves and lowers, vomiting a gray minst. Heaves and lowers. The purple squirms and rises. It is a ring of electric fury, snapping and flexing. It sends out purple and orange sparks. The enormous drawing comvulses in rhythm, as if it has a pulse.
The girl waits for the living force with a pulse to come out. She knows it will come out. Chunks of black wax are being rent from the paper and flung. They hurtle outwards. Just as they are about to smash down into the gray fog, they rear upwards. They lift and wheel around the black hole's edges. Cassandra watches all this. . . astonished. The chips of black wax are circling evenly, like horses on a carousel.
Little girl waiting. Waiting with her chin in her fisted hands, but nothing comes out of the black hole. 'How did my picture come alive?' She wonders wordlessly. 'Where did its life come from?' But there is no one to answer her questions. No one who can understand them. No one. The girl is entirely alone. She sits and waits, but there is nothing in the black hole.
There is more black orbiting in the air than black on the paper. Only a few specks of black still cling to the very, very blank white paper. The paper is empty of any secret. Cassanra walks into the center of the paper where the pulsing thing was supposed to be. There is a Deep pulsation, but it is so low she can barely hear it. But she feels it. Everywhere she feels it. She stands in the center of the very, very empty paper. But there is no wiggling beast giving her drawing life. There is only Cassandra. And the pulsation. The pulsation is very heavy here. She feels it in the edges of the paper, in the sparking, flexing purple line. She feels in it the heaving, vomiting gray mist, and the circling chunks of black wax, and along her skin. She feels it in her blood. It is a heart beating, heart of the little girl.

Virtue and Emotion

It is easy to agree with Plato that emotions are lower than thoughts and that they ought to be suppressed because they get in the way. However, emotions show the depths of the human soul. They lead a person where mere reason cannot. And if we really are to agree with Plato, we must see that if God made emotions, then -in the original way in which God made them- they cannot be bad.
I would like to raise the question, what is a virtue made of? A virtue is the fruit of all that is best in a human. This best includes emotions. When a person acts virtuously, are not all the components of their soul in a harmony with God and with each other?
Emotions must be guided by thought, but likewise thought must be guided by emotion. When these two seemingly opposite parts of the soul work together, there is harmony; and where there is harmony, there is the possibility of virtue.

Virtue
/\
/...\
/......\
Emotion.......Thought

Wisdom

A sort of meditation
Some things are too deep and dark to be put into tests. There is no mathematical formula for evaluating trust, for example. But I am talking to myself. Everyone knows what I am saying. But they forget it. And the wise repeat it. And I hope I am one of the wise. But I'll never know, because wisdom can't be measured by degrees or tablespoons. What exactly makes a person wise? Perhaps, understanding of all that is forgotten, what must be repeated, and then repeating it.
Yet, I think it also has to do with truth . The wise person is the one who searches for the truth, because he understands its value. The wise person searches, and does not give up until he finds it. He prepares against what might discourage him, and he perseveres. The wise person is the one who sharpens his perception of good by remaining chaste and pure in heart. He deepens his intellect by studying the truth of other wise men. Thus, when he meats the Truth of God, he recognizes it, loves it, and spreads it.
This, I think, is wisdom.

4 kinds of music

There are, I believe, four categories into which all music can be divided, according to one's reaction when the music is over:
1. The kind of music you don't even bother to hear till the end.
2. The kind of music that when it is over, makes us glad it is over.
3. The kind of music that when it is over, makes us replay it in our minds and wish it had not ended quite so soon.
4. The kind of music that when it is over, makes us cry because it leaves the air empty, absolutely hollow like a body whose soul has just abandoned it.

(thank you, Paul, for your input)

I think therefore I am- until I was

Writing exercise from my Composition class: Describing dieing in outer space because your ship has blown up.


That's my wing over there. I think maybe it's moving. I think... Who said that? Cogito...
My thoughts freeze in my head. I feel as if I ought to feel like I'm falling. But I don't feel... What do I feel?
Cogito igitur... Who said that?
I should be tired. But I am too tired to fell tired. I am freezing, but my blood is moving so slowly I don't feel it stop.
Stop.
Twitch my finger, and it hurts. Hurts to move: am I moving in this stillness?... So, this is dieing. I see a friend's face before me. Why her face? I wonder. Why not someone else's? I cannot remember what they look like. I can never remember what anyone looks like. Why am I thinking? Shouldn't I be dieing? Am I alive? I know I'm not dead.
Stop. Like a telegram. Stop. But I haven't stopped yet. Cogito Igitur Ego. Stop. I hold on to that thought, like a lifeline. But I don't care about dieing. I am too far from what I love to think how I will never be near it agian. I cannot, somehow, think 'Why am I dieing?' Perhaps because I only know it, cannot feel it.
It hurts to twitch my finger. Is this what death feels like?
There is a vacuous silence. My thoughts are sucked into it. They enter it and die. Dieing... But I cannot be sucked away into nothingness. I must exist until I die. I cannot disintegrate and evaporate with my ship. I must be. I will be. Until I am beyond existence. Stop.
Cogito Igitur Ego... Sum. And that is the final word, the closing chord. I am alive and wait. Wait. this is going very slowly. Why, I wonder, why am I dieing so slowly?
Blackness all around. Strange place to die. As if I were buried alive. Will my body fall apart, once I die? There is a very white star over there. It is so white and far away. Maybe I will come near it.
Stop.

water lilies

Water lilies whisper wondering
in the lakes and wetlands.
These are hard times;
these are cold times.
These are times,
and time's a river.
Listen, listen!
Don't you hear it?
There are times:
All times are history
by the morning
aft the closing
of the night.
Water lilies, water lilies,
wild stagnant water lilies
in the blooming of the waves
and in the sparkle of the the sun.
Time goes; time goes, and it's lost.
Hard times down the water falls.
What is left? What is left?
Water lilies, Water lilies.
Wild, stagnant, still the same.
Heart unbending in the waving,
blooming and not wilting yet.
These are hard times, water lilies.
These are hard times yet.

and the garbage cans

The sky is gray
and it's raining.

I lie here
petting the cat.
I should be
doing school.
I was so
happy yesterday.
I thought I'd
found something,
a reason to
hope in today.
But the earth is
the same place,
Nothing
has changed.
We lie here,
and it's raining.
We want to know
the answers,
colors to our
gray questions,
and be able to lie
down and sleep.

The answers are there,
at the other end of it all,
So I must keep going.

The bicycles lie by the garbage cans.
I thought I had found my answer.
But only I asked the question.
And there are many more questions.
The bicycles lie by the garbage cans.
It seems as I gaze at the cat
like I'm ready to sleep and not ask.
And the bicycles and the garbage cans in the rain.

The cat's eyes slit open in sleep.
Even in dreams you cannot leave
the life holding you and the rain.
It seems like I'll be passing
while the bicycles, garbage cans, rain.
The earth is the same thing

And it's fading away.
Vague thoughts that I don't hold.
And the bicycles- the cat twitches-
the rain. The rain has gone.
And I lie here by the cat.
And the bicycles lie by the garbage cans.
My thoughts run on; they ask
and I'm tired. The cat is asleep.

And I'm fading away.
I thought I found something.
I'm fading while the bicycles
rust by the garbage cans cracked.
And I'm fading. The earth is the same.
And cat, in the dream, and the rain's gone.
I'm fading. The questions still ask.

So, I had to write this essay for my English Composition class. I think it's worth reading.

Music, Who Am I?

It was all Socrates’ fault. He said that one can tell who a person is by what they listen to. I desperately wanted to know who I was, and I was determined to discover the truth is this assertion.

I remembered how on the last days before my three most recent birthdays I had watched the hours end, one by one. It was like trying to hold the waves as the river dragged me onward. Then, shortly before my seventeenth birthday, I heard the song “From a Distance” played by flutist James Galway. I instantly associated it with growing up, and the song became a source of steady hope and my window through which I looked back at my past and forward into my future. On the last day before my seventeenth birthday, I thought of that song and all it was to me; I did not count the hours.

I recognized this as proof that music did indeed shape me, perhaps even who I was. I decided to test Socrates. I don’t know who I, a stupid American teenager, thought I was to challenge the unquestioned wisdom of an ancient Greek philosopher.

For one month I did not listen to music. I hoped I would discover my essence, uninfluenced by music. In the silence, I became more perceptive of sound, and as my ears sharpened, I grew to rely on them more than any other sense. A strong connection developed between what I hear and how I consider my life and surroundings.

I became acutely aware of the evils of the world, perhaps because I was listening more than ever before. The world struck me as horrific, resonant with hatred and deception. My friends were disappointing me; my parents expected me to make choices I was not ready for, and I was hungering for something I hardly believed in. The chaos of others’ voices and my own faults strangled me. My mind was jarred with raucous noise. With increasing panic I struggled to understand it all- society, immorality, people. Yet I did not even know how to perceive the world. Truth and falsity are too tangled. What was I to do? How was I to react? Below all this was a throbbing hope that there might be a universal truth to summarize, unite and explain all people, including myself.

Also at that time, I found everyone wanted me to be happy and nice. It was like a sheet of smoky glass surrounded me. People only saw of me what they wanted. When I did not smile, they would laugh and say, “Smile! The sun is shining.” They did not listen to what I was trying to say. I would flounder for any answer to their questions and hope they would hear the hypocrisy in my voice as I said something I did not believe. But I was saying what they wanted to hear, nice things lit by the sparkle of an imaginary sun. Why did they expect me to be so happy and nice? Did they think that by being so, they could pretend the world was a good place and life easy?

As another month began, I decided to listen to music for one hour in the morning and one hour at night. One Saturday morning, I chose Shostakovich’s 8^th Symphony.

I listen.

The music is wild, bizarre, unlike anything I ever heard before. Like water might feel as it spreads across the ground where it has been spilt free from its container, so I feel my mind expanding, daring to look into horizons I had never thought possible. I try to do something while I listen, but I cannot. My entire mind is consumed by the symphony. The instant I am not alert, the music will leaves me miles behind and become incomprehensible. I close my eyes, and I see colors, brilliant colors on opaque darkness; they seem to mean nothing, only visual translations of the sound. Then I realize the darkness is my mind; the colors are my thoughts. My thoughts are being blown up as they are given unbelievable expression in the music. The music explodes in the darkness, challenging, mounting, bursting, shattering. Breaks. Heals. Breaks again. Is meant to be broken. The bandage was false. My thoughts are all fragments, dancing apart like galaxies, held together by sound.

The music begins to translate itself into the language of my mind. I understand. The music is an analogy of society, immorality, people. It is a rhythmic explanation of all the inconsistencies and faults of mankind. Within this symbolism, I find I am a microcosm of the wild, bizarreness of life and the human experience. We are each worlds of unanswered questions; we are each symphonies. All people together create the chaos portrayed in this symphony.

The music grows to be everything but what I hear. It is the patters before my eyes. It is the swaying surrounding my body. It is the clean, limitless air I breathe. Yet I cannot hear anything, just as I cannot see my face. The music is my mind. I am slipping from it. I am slipping into it. Music, who am I? The music is me. The music is the confusion in my own soul.

If I could breathe slower- If I could write faster- Every measure is a day’s emotions, rising, falling. Every wave is a passion. I skim at breakneck speed across the foamy crests with hardly a chance to see into the depths.

My eyes are closed. I do not see the sun. I feel motion. I am moving through my mind; I am climbing up into the past. Problems unsolved, like incomplete days, are sewn together. With rapid speed the music fills the voids in me of unanswered questions, from the surface of perception to the depths of my subconscious. The darkness is alive, and I am alive. I do not need the sun to show me that I am moving, that I exist.

I open my eyes. The music seeps from my consciousness. I have not moved an inch. The air of my room is polluted with demanding questions and haughty answers and expectations. I feel a queasy uneasiness. When my eyes are open, I need the sun to see that I exist, but I do not know who exists. So I close my eyes.

And I listen.

I am turned inside out and shaken like an old rug. My essence is explodes into a thousand fragments that transform themselves into sound. All the confusion in me is surrounding me. Mental trauma, which once choked me at every turn of my mind, is now outside of me. The symphony is coming to a close. I watch the minutes end, one by one. I wait for one last discordant eruption. But the music is simple, vulnerable; what could it mean? I wonder at myself for understanding the dissonant sound but not being able to relate to a restful melody. My subconscious, concupiscent desires, despair, and perverted hopes talk to me from outside of me. They are far from me, and I realize I am free to sense the inner peace that I had almost forgotten to believe in. The answers and harmony I have been hungering for are being sung to me. I know how I am to respond to society and the faults of humanity. The symphony glides into a finish with poignant ease.

Music, who am I? I close my eyes, and I know. I am the question, the seeker. The music is my reason, my illumination.

stream of conciousness

Absurdity. I am. And I like that word. It sounds what it is. Uncanny balance. Rediculous parallels.

For the challenge of it all

Addicted to books like computer games

fractions (5/16) and fragments that come falling
like rain, and I don't know if I'm nuts, .......... or
maybe ..................(or maybe)
just/more of a
...............................(more of a . ' , ")

than them.
Than them. Than Them thanthem thanthemthanthemthanthemthanthe/m,
..............................................................and
wh/o is comparing? we're all just fractions (5/16) and
doomfully nothing is (quite)/new ..................only
maybe...................(maybe)
(more)thanthemthanthemthanmaybeI'mnutslikethem.

The Uninvisibles

Shimmering and glowing, they stand up and are seen.
They are the shimmering and glamorous,
and they force us to look and behold.
Their splendor dazzles us until out eyes are
too contracted to see anything else.
They are like rotten eggs that have been painted;
they have pretty shells.
They are the visibles.

They slip by peacefully, content in unpublicity. Simple.
Unwanted by the visibles except to be
their audience and source of loyal acclaim.
They're hardly noticed. They attract no attention
into their humbly lit world.
They are like plain surfaced rocks;
perhaps there are crystals inside.
They are the invisibles.

They're what both worlds bear alike
though not received alike by both.
They are the growing ones, too small to be seen,
too beautiful to be ignored.
They beg our attention, yet we hardly notice
with our contracted and dimmed eyes.
They are like delicate flower buds;
there is a promise if they are not killed.
They are the uninvisibles.

PRESSURED TO BE LEADERS OF AN UTOPIA

Does it ever seem that you are bound down by a sense of duty, a strict idea of what is 'right', and that somehow your happiness lies beyond this 'right', so maybe it's not really 'right' after all? It seems as if the young people of today are expected to do so much, be tomorrow's everything, the hope of their fellows,and the saviors of the world form undoubted and unidentifiable doom. It's as if I and my peers are not allowed to breath unless we are breathing in our tireless work to help people and save the world.
I don't understand this. Our parents perhaps had the same pressure, and as they did not live up to it, they place it on us. Generation after generation, placing their hope for the future in their children. I'd like to object to this legacy on 3 points:
1. Does the future have to necessarily be good? Considering that our parents will be dead by the time this 'future' rolls around, what do they care? If the future is not heaven, at least it is reality.
2. If the future is, by some unknown decree, supposed to be utopia and all that, why should we be the ones to bring it about if so many generations before us have obviously failed?
3. Isn' it rather ridiculous to place one's hope in one's children, especially since so much of the child's faults are inherited from the parents?
I think in this sense, the parents are the ones being irrationally idealistic, and the teenagers the ones being understandably rebellious, not because of some idea of drug and sex freedom in their own minds, but because of the perfect economy and relaxed lifestyle dream of their parents.

Are the trees purple in your dream? Tell me,
tell me, in your dream, is the water red?
What do you want or wish for- tell me,
tell me- that is not in part here?
Am I there? In your dream, tell me-
Tell me, In your dream. Are you there?

ART I ~What is art?

What is art?
Art is. . . Does anyone really know? Anyone can give examples, but does anyone really know?
I think it is the explaining of the wild torrents of our minds. It is the taking of what we hold to be true and making it pleasing and accessible to others. It is a teaching of truth, an explaining of mysteries which transcend our limited comprehension. It is a window into another's soul. It is a source of hope when we have given up on beauty and truth.
Beauty and Truth are far from always agreeing. But in art they are shown as sisters.