The Aroma of Longing

Recently in the combox, some of us have been discussing longing. When I asserted that longing is the post-Romantic condition, Mrs. T corrected me: it is the human condition.

We live on one side of an old two-family house from the 1930s, and when we moved in, I had perhaps irrationally high hopes that our other-side neighbors, a young-ish married couple with no children, would become great friends of mine. But it was not to be. Soon after we arrived, they complained about our noise: our son, whose third birthday was nearing, is a very rambunctious boy, and my husband and I would talk in our bedroom, which abutted theirs, apparently past our neighbors' bedtime. We have tried to be sensitive -- I don't consider us a loud family (except for when I practice, when my husband plays the piano or his accordion, when my son is screaming, when I am yelling ... hmmm) -- but sometimes we forget. My husband was vacuuming the living room the other night when the wife called and said she had just gone to bed and could we please stop; it was, um, 8:30.

So this great friendship was not to be. But I have a kind of olfactory voyeurism into my neighbors' lives. The house has two separate basements, one for each side, with built-in chutes on the first and second floors to throw dirty clothes down to the laundry room. Whenever I open one of the chutes, I can smell what my neighbors are cooking. It always smells so good that I feel disappointed by what I'm cooking on my own side of the house (which is usually also quite good) and seized with longing for what they're having for dinner. They make a lot of popcorn, which is not something we have over on this side. And this morning, as I was throwing last night's pajamas down to the basement, I caught the aroma of their coffee. It was wonderful - cinnamony, inviting, seemingly nothing at all like the coffee I was brewing back home. I imagined what life must be like on the other side of the house: bathed in warm colors, with attractive, artsy knick-knacks strewn about. But my own coffee was good too, and the husband of the couple is getting his doctorate in something called post-subculture studies, so maybe it's just as well we didn't become friends.

Prayer Request

From Really Rosie:

Please pray for my friend R. She is twenty weeks pregnant with her third child, and went for a routine fetal anatomy ultrasound yesterday, which showed that she is carrying a boy with two markers that correlate with Down Syndrome. The doctor ordered an amniocentesis to verify, but the results won't be known for two weeks. Although they are Catholic, her husband has indicated that he would want to terminate this pregnancy if the amnio proves conclusive. R. is feeling guilty (she has two boys, and had been praying for a girl) and scared. Please keep her family and her new little one in your prayers.

"Having Confessed"

Having confessed he feels
That he should go down on his knees and pray
For forgiveness for his pride, for having
Dared to view his soul from the outside.
Lie at the heart of the emotion, time
Has its own work to do. We must not anticipate
Or awaken for a moment. God cannot catch us
Unless we stay in the unconscious room
Of our hearts. We must be nothing,
Nothing that God may make us something.
We must not touch the immortal material
We must not daydream to-morrow's judgment—
God must be allowed to surprise us.
We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer
By this anticipation. Let us lie down again
Deep in anonymous humility and God
May find us worthy material for His hand.

-- Patrick Kavanagh, from from Collected Poems © W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Russia

I feel like I live in Russia, while everyone around me lives in America.

It's been blisteringly cold here, and, because I don't know how to drive, I've been taking my son to his twice-weekly nursery school on a sled (everyone else rumbles past me in four-wheel drive). One of the main reasons I chose this school was that it's in walking distance, about a half-mile away. We got the sled after I tried getting there in the stroller one day after a snowstorm. We were unprepared for the fact that after snowstorms in our new town, there is snow banked up at every curbside, and not everyone shovels the walk in front of their homes. I ended up making my son walk while I dragged the stroller behind me through the snow. A kind woman rolled down her windshield to ask if we needed help, and a crew of sanitation workers commandeered their garbage truck in our direction, thinking my car had broken down. It was too complicated to explain to them that we were recently arrived from a place where one doesn't need to drive. From the looks of us, we might as well have been from Russia.

My sister said that I reminded her of the Lapland Woman from Hans Christian Anderson's wonderful tale "The Snow Queen," who, because she never wastes anything, writes a message to the Finland woman on a dried cod. Let's hope that even these experiences won't go to waste.

"Will I be faithful?"

Another link to McNamara's Blog: the devastating story of Sr. Maura Clarke. May she intercede for us.

McNamara's Blog

Fallen Sparrow, the source of much that is excellent, has put me on to a blog that's right up my alley, McNamara's Blog. The eponymous author, a historian, works as an archivist for the Diocese of Brooklyn, and his blog is full of fascinating facts about Old (Catholic) New York.

(He also has a recent post up about Servant of God Sister Elizabeth Prout, above, in whom I have a special interest; an English convert, she founded the Passionist Sisters in England, the order to which the fictional opera singer Evelyn Innes, one of the subjects of my dissertation, repairs in retreat from the worldly sensuality of her life on the stage.)

Remembering Father Richard John Neuhaus

Robot Boy, of all people, sent me the link to this brief but excellent profile of Fr. Neuhaus. When I had the time to read First Things regularly, I always turned to the back pages, Fr. Neuhaus's "While We're At It," first. He was a keen observer of the ironies of American cultural life, and I always learned something -- occastionally something truly heart-changing -- from his column. I cancelled my subscription in the end, in part because I was too busy teaching, parenting, and dissertating to read it every month, and also, it must be admitted, in part because I found First Things' editorial position, which sought to use pro-life rhetoric to justify support for the Iraq War, frustrating. I still don't have time to read it, but it is a real loss that we won't have Fr. Neuhaus's witty and compassionate voice to illuminate the coming years of the Obama presidency. If anyone could challenge the morality of abortion law on the basis of civil rights (a compelling and cogent challenge), Fr. Neuhaus could.

I heard Fr. Neuhaus say Mass once at Fallen Sparrow's parish, and was moved by the fatherly love with which he preached on the subject of chastity. I was saddened to learn later from the parish priest that a few of the communicants at that Mass, most of them young women students at Barnard, had complained about the content of his homily, arguing that infringed upon their freedom.

Fr. Neuhuas, requiescat in pace.

(P.S.: First Things is where I first read the excellent Mrs. T., and it was in Fr. Neuhaus's column that I first saw the poem "O Eve!")

"It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America . . . "

Blogging will be light over the next couple of weeks: I'm revising my dissertation in advance of the deposit date later this month. I'm interrupting my work and my usual no-politics rule today, however, to bring you this sign of the coming Apocalypse (hat tip: Canadian blog Work in Progress).

"Getting My Life Back"

A powerful reflection on motherhood and real life by Jennifer F. at Conversion Diary, which is a particularly appropriate read for me on the eve of my son's third birthday. Jennifer F. is a Catholic convert and a radical truth-teller.

(H/T: Tertium Quid at From Burke to Kirk and Beyond.)

The Crime of Inhospitality

Last night I dreamed that I was on trial in Cincinnati, a town I've never been to in real life (though I've performed in several other Ohio cities). I had committed the crime, it seems, of having come to town as a visitor and failed to show proper hospitality to its citizens. I acted as my own lawyer. Where, I asked in my defense, was the crime in being inhospitable, especially when I was a visitor? Wasn't it incumbent, rather, on the citizens of Cincinnati to be hospitable to me? And if lukewarm welcomes for strangers were prosecutable, there wouldn't be too many free men walking around, would there?

In spite of my efforts, it appeared that my conviction was likely; the prosecutor was also the judge. I planned to appeal.

Our First Parents [UPDATED]

Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly:

. . . Remember Adam's fall
o thou man
From heav'n to hell!
How we were condemned all
In hell perpetual,
There for to dwell.

Remember God's goodness,
o thou man,
And promise made!
How he sent his son, doubtless
Our sins for to redress:
Be not afraid!

-- Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)

I found out at Mass on Christmas Eve day that it was also the Feast Day of Saints Adam and Eve. I had never thought of our first parents as saints, acclaimed by the Church as dwelling in heaven in the glory of God and interceding for us, their wayward children, on earth, but upon reflection it made a lot of sense.

Though disobedient to God and the authors of our own intrinsic sinfulness, Adam and Eve were saved through redemption. Christ, Saint Paul tells us, is the "last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45), who ransomed us from the ineluctable condition of sin into which we fell through the disobedience of the first Adam. And Mary, according to Saint Irenaeus (whose feast day, incidentally, is also my birthday), is the New Eve, who loosened "[the] knot of Eve's disobedience . . . by [her own] obedience. The bonds fastened by the virgin Eve through disbelief were untied by the virgin Mary through faith."

I have a particular love for the saints of the Old Testament, especially the penitent musician David, and I am going to be adding our first parents, Saints Adam and Eve, to my litany and asking their help in the new year.

A happy and blessed new year to ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifll who visit here.

(To hear a very nice solo performance of the hymn that the the Mellstock Quire sing in Thomas Hardy's novel, go here.)

UPDATE: via Maclin Horton, a beautiful poem by a Trappistine nun about Mary as the consoler of Eve. From that page, you can also hear the exquisite musical setting of "O Eve!" by Frank La Rocca. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

(The hymn is "Colchester" by eighteenth-century English composer William Tans'ur, performed by the Theatre of Voices, led by Paul Hillier.)

The Holy Souls

Dawn Eden has written a moving post about a life-changing dream (which sounds like one of the very few true dreams we may be fortunate enough to receive in this life). Christmas Day is traditionally regarded as a time when many souls are freed from Purgatory; may our prayers help them, and help those who remain.

I wish great joy on Christmas day and beyond to all who visit here.

Now That's Sangin'

(as my old voice teacher from east Texas used to say).

In fact, this humble little recital performance is some of the best singing I've ever heard in my life. It's the radiant Austrian soprano Gundula Janowitz, whose peak years were in the 1960s, singing Mozart's little Lied "Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling" (Longing for Spring). The song has something like folksong status in Germany and Austria, where it's known by its first line, "Komm, lieber Mai" -- and, as you can see in the translation below by Emily Ezust, it's a children's song.

Come, dear May, and make
the trees green again,
and by the brook, let
the little violets bloom for me!

How I would love
to see a violet again -
ah, dear May, how gladly
I would take a walk!

It is true that winter days have
much joy as well:
one can trot in the snow
and play many games in the evening;

build little houses of cards,
play blind-man's-buff and forfeits;
also go tobogganing
in the lovely open countryside.

Ah, if only it would grow milder
and greener out there!
Come, dear may! we children,
we beg you!

O come and bring for us, before anyone else,
lots of violets!
Bring also lots of nightingales
and pretty cuckoos!