In the Garden Blind

The Mystery
by G. K. Chesterton 

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the May in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower. 

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud. 

And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind. 

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

The Food of Angels

 Today is the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church. From a letter to her niece, Sister Eugenia:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious Blood, with desire to see thee taste the food of angels, since thou art made for no other end; and that thou mightest taste it, God bought thee with the Blood of His Only-Begotten Son. But reflect, dearest daughter, that this food is not taken upon earth, but on high, and therefore the Son of God chose to be lifted up upon the wood of the Most Holy Cross, in order that we might receive this food upon this table on high. But thou wilt say to me: What is this food of angels? I reply to thee: it is the desire of God, which draws to itself the desire that is in the depths of the soul, and they make one thing together.

 This is a food which while we are pilgrims in this life, draws to itself the fragrance of true and sincere virtues, which are prepared by the fire of divine charity, and received upon the table of the cross. That is, virtue is won by pain and weariness, casting down one's own fleshly nature;—the kingdom of one's soul which is called Heaven (cielo) because it hides (cela) God within it by patience, is seized with force and violence. This is the food that makes the soul angelic, and therefore it is called the food of angels; and also because the soul, separated from the body, tastes God in His essential Being. He satisfies the soul in such wise that she longs for no other thing nor can desire aught but what may help her more perfectly to keep and increase this food, so that she holds in hate what is contrary to it. Therefore, like a prudent person, she looks with the light of most holy faith, which is in the eye of the mind, and beholds what is harmful and what is useful to her. And as she has seen, so she loves and condemns—holding, I say, her own fleshly nature and all the vices which proceed from it, bound beneath the feet of her affections....

Misplaced Morality Rots in the Roots Unconscious

The Modern Manichee
by G. K. Chesterton

He sayeth there is no sin, and all his sin
Swells round him into a world made merciless;
The midnight of his universe of shame
Is the vast shadow of his shamelessness.
He blames all that begat him, gods or brutes,
And sires not sons he chides as with a rod.
The sins of the children visited on the fathers
Through all generations, back to a jealous God.

The fields that heal the humble, the happy forests
That sing to men confessed and men consoled,
To him are jungles only, greedy and groping,
Heartlessly new, unvenerably old.
Beyond the pride of his own cold compassion
Is only cruelty and imputed pain:
Matched with that mood, a boy's sport in the forest
Makes comrades of the slayer and the slain.

The innocent lust of the unfallen creatures
Moves him to hidden horror but no mirth;
Misplaced morality rots in the roots unconscious,
His stifled conscience stinks through the green earth.
The green things thrust like horrible huge snails,
Horns green and gross, each lifting a leering eye
He scarce can call a flower; it lolls obscene,
Its organs gaping to the sneering sky.

Dark with that dusk the old red god of gardens
Still pagan but not merry any more,
Stirs up the dull adulteries of the dust,
Blind, frustrate, hopeless, hollow at the core;
The plants are brutes tied with green rope and roaring
Their terrible dark loves from tree to tree:
He shrinks as from a shaft, if by him singing,
A gilded pimp and pandar, goes the bee.

He sayeth, 'I have no sin; I cast the stone',
And throws his little pebble at the shrine,
Casts sin and stone away against the house
Whose health has turned earth's waters into wine.
The venom of that repudiated guilt
Poisons the sea and every natural flood
As once a wavering tyrant washed his hands,
And touching, turned the water black with blood.

Links of Note

 * Ryan Miller, A Metaphysics of the Common Good (PDF)

* Tuomas Tahko, Natural Kind Fundamentalism (PDF)

* James Lennox & Mariska Leunissen, Aristotle's Biology, at the SEP

* Edward Feser, Does Just War Doctrine Require Moral Certainty? at "First Things"

* Flame & Light, Hume's Sign Argument and Attributed Character

* Robert McNamara, Aquinas vs Camus, at "Dumb Oxen"

Fields that Tingle with New Birth

April Night
by Archibald Lampman

How deep the April night is in its noon,
The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night!
The earth lies hushed with expectation; bright
Above the world's dark border burns the moon,
Yellow and large; from forest floorways, strewn
With flowers, and fields that tingle with new birth,
The moist smell of the unimprisoned earth
Comes up, a sigh, a haunting promise. Soon,
Ah, soon, the teeming triumph! At my feet
The river with its stately sweep and wheel
Moves on slow-motioned, luminous, grey like steel.
From fields far off whose watery hollows gleam,
Aye with blown throats that make the long hours sweet,
The sleepless toads are murmuring in their dream.

Arche tou Euangeliou Iesou Christou Huiou Theou

 Beginning of the good news of Jesus Anointed, Son of God.

As it has been written in Isaiah the prophet: See, I send out my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, voice of the one shouting in the desolation, Ready Lord's Way, build levelly his highway.

John came, the one immersing in the desolation and declaring repentant immersion for pardon of failings. And all the territory of Judea and Jerusalem were pouring out to him and were being immersed by him in the Jordan river, acknowledging their failings. And John was clothed with camel pelt and belt of hide around his loins. And he is eating locusts and wild honey.

And he was heralding, saying, The mightier than I comes after me, for whom I am not fit, having stooped, to loose the strap of his sandals. I immersed you with water, but he will immerse you with Holy Spirit.

[Mark 1:1-8, my rough translation. This is deliberately very wooden, in a crude attempt to capture the rough vividness of the passage. I have done a slightly smoother (but equally experimental) translation here, where I also commented on the attribution to Isaiah.]

Today is the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist. 

Two Poem Drafts

 Tallasaia

The sea,
salt-sprayed,
drives on rocky shores,
birthing clouds of mist;
the breeze, newly bold,
mildly cool,
is not unfriendly;
it is more curious
than piercing,
a question-asking breeze.

And I
am wandering,
shells and rocks around me
on the shores of Tallasaia.

Black Tea

Black the mug and dark the tea
like inner depth of brew-dark sea,
with silence deeper than that in me,
I catch warm scent like honeyed leaves
as steam is caught and interweaves
the air and, weaving like graceful bee,
repairs the world inside of me.