Blog Posts

Puzzle-tov

1/14/2017

For those of you wondering if this stay in Corpus Christi
is going to last, hear this!
But first, an editor's note, some background is in order:

I just ordered by phone 12 LARGE PRINT Variety Puzzles to this address here. This means a commitment in the amount of about $12 of loss if I move before September! Those of you who know me for the miser I am will realize that this is the symptom of a huge commitment to stay!
I can only imagine the fun Jim Ridley, our goodbooksmedia President and graphics expert will have illustrating me surrounded by Large Print puzzle books grinning!

On a more serious note, I mentioned sometime before that I resumed praying the Office of Readings again last year. I am so struck by the beauty of the writings of the Fathers of the Church. If you have never prayed this way, or stopped, you should know without thumbing through the old books of Liturgy of the Hours, unsure what the reading is for this year, you can get it day but day coming up on UNIVERSALIS (Liturgy of the Hours).
I especially benefit from the authoritative tone of the Fathers, so different from our contemporary mostly more subjective writings (including mine).

My wonderful spiritual friend here in Corpus Christi, Al Hughes, swears by a booklet written by St. Alphonsus Liguori entitled: Uniformity with God’s Will, published by Tan.
The basic idea is that when you realize that everything that happens is either God’s perfect will or his permissive will, then why be worried and depressed.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t try to avoid sufferings God permits, but when you can’t why kick against the goad?
Try it, you’ll like it.

An example would be my habit of speculating in a pessimistic way about my future on earth and the future of the country and the Church. Acceptance of what I cannot control bring joy.

I just finished a huge old bio of St. Joan of Arc. One of the most wonderful scenes is in one of those hand to hand battles so common in medieval times where people actually saw who they killed lying at their feet. Although St. Joan didn’t kill English soldiers, she was urging on the French to do so.
The documents describe St. Joan insisting that all the French soldiers go to Confession before each battle. A touching scene shows Joan holding a dying English soldier’s head and crying because he could not get to confession before his death.
How’s that for love of enemies?

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Home from the Rage

1/9/2017

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Very Short New Year’s Blog

(I was for 2 weeks with the family in North Carolina – eventually 11 people in the house)

Someone who disagrees with me about some elements of the way I am a magisterial Catholic said “I honor you for clinging to tradition to get hope.” I was very upset I think it is truth I am clinging to, because it is truth not because it is tradition. I thought it patronizing that those who, as I would see it, reject some moral obligations on the basis that these are traditions and ideals not obligations, then think of us to believe these obligations are essential as being fanatics.
When I prayed about these feelings of anger at what seemed to me to be the truth relegated to only a tradition, it seemed to me that Mother Mary wanted to tell me:
“Forgive! Think of the weaknesses behind certain sins. Thank Jesus for giving you the grace to avoid some of them. Your rage is also a sin.”

Thinking about how intense it was to have 11 intense people in one house, I was reminded that in the time of Jesus when most people lived in crowded houses, it is said that those who wished to pray in the home went up to the roof at night to pray while the others slept.

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STILL POINT

12/28/2016

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How beautiful is the Church here in North Carolina where I am visiting Carla and family for Christmas with the wonderful decorations and the solemn Masses of Fr. Ken, the pastor.
Here is what Fr. Ken told me yesterday about trying to be in the presence of Jesus all day. “It is not so much a matter of willing it every moment, but rather spending more time with God, which will gradually form you.” I thought the way eating food gives us strength without us thinking about it when we are not eating. Fr. Ken said it was more a matter of surrender than of thinking and willing. More a flow, like with those we love where our conversation flows.

An image I got in the night before leaving Corpus Christi for Christmas:
Jim Ridley’s Soul
Day and night
you swim through
myriads of images.
At the hour of Mass
the blinding
light of Christ
brings you
“To the still point
of the turning world.”

New Project – readers of this blog can help with!
I have a plan to write a new book along these lines:
9 Toes in Eternity
Images of Grace
365 One-Liners
(especially for those over 65 years old)
Assembled by Ronda Chervin
Illustrated by Diana Chervin Jump

Diana makes wonderful cartoon figure cats and birds, etc.

This would be a kind of coffee-table book for the elderly
with these one-liners to meditate on one a day.
Some of these samples you are already familiar with from my blog.
But you, my dear readers, could just send me anything you like along the lines of edifying, sometimes humorous, one-liners, either of your own composition or quotes from others. They can be from the saints, but I am not putting in Scriptures because my readers would be reading Scripture as part of their daily prayer-life anyhow.
If you come up with any, e-mail them to me at [email protected] putting after each one “__________________________” from Joe Jones, or from Shakespeare, or, from the Holy Spirit.

Some samples:

When you lose family members who moved away from your location or from the earth, you come to realize that the absence of annoyance is not joy! (Ronda Chervin)
Fly low, fly slow. (Al Hughes)
“Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds an acorn.” (Dan Looper)
“If you can’t say something kind, don’t say anything.” (Pat Looper)
“Thou shalt love thy crooked neighbor with thy crooked heart.” (Auden)
“Be in the present in the Presence.” (Anon)

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Home on the range

12/18/2016

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May you all have a blessed Christmas.
May the thought of the baby Jesus, our savior, overcome all other thoughts on the negative side!
I happened to read this from St. Augustine in the Office of Readings. I thought it was amazing, even though I must have read it many times without noticing it!In case you don’t know it, here it is:
St. Augustine Office of Readings, Friday of 3rd Week of Advent
St Augustine on Psalm 37(38)
Your very desire is your prayer
I have roared out with the groaning of my heart. There is a secret groaning, which is not heard by man: yet if the thought of some strong desire has taken so strong hold of the heart, that the wound of the inner man finds expression in some uttered exclamation, everyone wonders why. A man says to himself, “Perhaps this is the cause of his groaning? Perhaps this thing or that thing has happened to him?” But who can know the answer except the one before whose eyes and ears he groaned? So the psalmist says I roared out with the groaning of my heart because if men ever hear a man’s groanings they hear only the groaning of the flesh; the groans within the heart are silent.
  And who observed and noticed the cause of his groaning? All my desire is in front of you. It cannot be before men because they cannot see the heart, but still the psalm says all my desire is in front of you. If your desire is laid before him then the Father, who sees in secret, will grant it to you.
  For that very desire of your heart is your prayer; and if your desire continues uninterrupted, then so does your prayer. It was not in vain that the Apostle said Pray without ceasing. Can we be always bending the knee, prostrating the body, or lifting up our hands, that he says Pray without ceasing? If that is what prayer means then I say that we cannot do it without ceasing.
  There is another inward kind of prayer without ceasing, which is the desire of the heart. Whatever activity you happen to be engaged in, if you only long for that Sabbath then you do not cease to pray. If you do not want to pause in prayer then never pause in your longing.
  Your continuous desire is your continuous prayer. If you cease to desire than you will have fallen silent in your prayer. Who are those who have fallen silent? Those of whom it is said Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
  The freezing of love is the silence of the heart; the burning of love is the cry of the heart. If love continues then you are still lifting up your voice; if you are always lifting up your voice, you are always longing after something; if you are always longing, it is the Sabbath rest you are thinking of.
  And all my desire is before Thee. How can we suppose that our desire is before him, but our very “groaning” is not before him? How can that be, since our desire itself finds its expression in “groaning”?
  And so comes the line And my groaning is not hidden from you. From you indeed it is not hidden; but it is hidden from many men. The servant of God sometimes seems to be saying in humility, And my groaning is not hidden from you. Sometimes also he seems to smile. Is then that longing dead in his heart? If however there is the desire within, there is the “groaning” also. It does not always find its way to the ears of man; but it never ceases to sound in the ears of God.

I am now settled into my new abode in Corpus Christi.

I am enjoying being in a parish I love. It is Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is in a hispanic area that is considered dangerous. I plan to go door to door evangelizing. I told the parish secretary that I am not afraid because I come from NYC where we heard police sirens through the night. But you can pray “cover” for me, just the same if you wish!
The pastor, who speaks Spanish perfectly, from previously being a priest in Mexico, though he is Italian origin from the East Coast of the US, is doing something wonderful. He set up a foundation of wealthy good Catholics to contribute to renovating the whole neighborhood around the Church. For starters, last summer, he had all the single-parent kids who would be out on the street at the parish parking lots playing sports and getting catechism, and a free lunch, supplied by the parish and supervised by many teen parishioners and others.
At the posada I went to, he told me that this Sunday before Christmas, all the local kids from the streets will come for a Christmas dinner with their parents; and someone has donated tons of free bicycles for the kids. This will be on local TV, so many will see what a great parish it is to return to if they are lapsed Catholics, which most local Hispanics are!
I figure I know enough Spanish to go around with a hispanic missionary couple door to door and try to bring them back. For those of you who know a little Spanish, it seems to me that a gringa anciana might intrigue them.

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My Winter Migration

12/12/2016

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What a week since my last blog!
For various reasons I decided to retire from formal teaching at Holy Apostles in Connecticut at put all my hopes into life in Corpus Christi, with lots of time for prayer and other less pressure ministries.
The send-off at the seminary was so incredibly moving. The President of the Seminarians arranged for each national group choir to sing a thank you song in their own language, and the Rector was very heartfelt in his tribute and then everyone in the cafeteria came up and gave me a hug after all the priests present gave me a blessing.
I had a beautiful welcome in Corpus Christi. Unfortunately it happened to be one of the coldest days ever when I arrived, so I am not basking in the sun, but expect to be come this Sunday when the usual 70 degree winter resumes!
It will be the same e-mail address – [email protected] but only the cell phone 860-759-4521.
Please pray that it may truly be a deep, contemplative, part of my life with “9 toes in eternity” as I like to joke, and also less of my vices of ego-centric exhibitionism and garrulousness that victimize friends and acquaintances!

Left over from the last blog is this stupendous, additional poem by Theodore Maynard
Faith, Hope and Charity
….
Since faith is lost among bewildered minds
Of all things credulous except her vision,
What tall, fantastic turrets must we build
To pierce the desolate reaches of the sky
How deeply plumb belief’s abysmal waters
Before we each the sunken floor of truth!

I (skeptical where nearly all are sure,
And even cynical of their (the ideas of the bewildered) starched assurance
Turn from their fallible rationalities
Their proofs of a too superstitious science –
Being least positive with the positivist –
….Believing passionately where others doubt.

For still I hold that truth alone can be
The final food and clothing of the mind,
That satisfaction of its burning thirst,
The end to which the mind at last will turn –
A tenuous foothold for a world of shadows!
Loud, loud, my God, let Thy confounding trumpet
Startle and shake the drifting universe!...

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Fish Song

12/3/2016

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Carla, my daughter’s writing 10 years ago, but on Facebook on November 23, 2016

A SONG SUNG BY A FISH
There are those things that can’t be said simply. I think it’s possible that nobody is born. We wheel around inside our mothers and only vaguely find one another, all of us twisting like a swarm of Jonah’s, turning this way and that in the skin of what either swallows us whole or becomes an ark. But a Noah is also terrified, anxiously watching the waters recede a little more every day, white-knuckled patriarch perched on the precipice of a vanishing oblivion.
Whatever I write here is wholly a preamble, a song sung by a fish. If she were to die, this might write itself as finished, but it can’t be done now: nothing that breathes will allow itself to be summed up while still puffing: every exhalation is a new letter in the alphabet of a life.
For some period of time, I lived inside my mother wearing the face of a wish. I remember the hushed sanctuary of a thousand churches, the round braille of rosary beads passing one by ten through your fingers as Mysteries, back and forth soft Latin waves of devotion: the Lord be with you, and also with you: a thousand times a thousand times forever.
In certain dreams, my mother wears a casual cloak of rainbows and has made a covenant. Her world will never be destroyed by water: by proxy, I am safe. I am not safe. My realm is forged from water. I see her in fragments stitched loosely at the surface. I do not notice that those who walk on water keep their arms flung out wide; that they move in the shape of a cross.
In other dreams, we face each other, so in those dreams, I have risen. I am a raven then, tight and black with eyes on fire. I am getting ready to fly to and fro, to and fro, hunting for branches. I think I am a bird but I am still a fish. My mother is a frightened dove. A thousand loaves later, my flesh will part and route into pieces and pathways, some of whom will face me and I will remember. I am a crucifix swinging below my mother’s breasts. It has been her hope to save me.
In some now, I am myself again. I think it’s possible that everyone is born and born and born exactly, into each moment. Everything else is a dream. Everything else is a wish. Everything else writes a sharp black cross on the sky with a raven’s wide wings and empty claws. We are looking for a nest we left behind but it is all around us. We look up towards a tunnel : the light scatters and we are once again fish: small and silver, fleet with opportunity.
This is a preamble: the sound things make before they break, a rumbled warning before the earth quakes toward another eternal effort to swallow itself. We are born in the water, borne by the water, slight boats on the crest of a flood. We carry our mothers inside us when they die, whole in the way of what has finished singing and can finally be named.
There are those things that can be simply said.

Alleged message from Mother Mary to me:
Mary: Don’t you see, with less formal work, you have more time when we send people to you and then we can send love and truth through you to them.
May it be, I replied.

Random thought:
Michael O'Brien, the Canadian's writing is deep and elegant; whereas Dean Koontz the American's writing is blunt, pithy and sock it to 'ya' - a reflection not only of 2 cultures but also of older and younger generations in the Church?

In BROTHER ODD by Dean Koontz, the protagonist, Odd Thomas is taking refuge at
a Benedictine monastery. There are separate facilities for both monks and nuns.
Here are some excerpts from the book:
“These sisters wear old-style habits that can make them seem as formidable as warriors in armor.”
“Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than a monk, you have more opportunities than you might have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it.”
“The most constant darkness that is with us every day, at all hours of every day, is the darkness of the mind, the pettiness and meanness and hatred, which we have invited into ourselves, and which we pay out with generous interest.”
“The best of all things we can do for one another: Make the dark small.”

Perhaps because I am leaving here, Holy Apostles in Connecticut, at least for 8 months, many people are showering me with loving affection. Of these some I count as fans. I love my fans because they persuade me that if people love me in spite of my glaring vices of anger and unending garrulous speaking, then I figure I probably will get to purgatory some day.

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Moving on

11/22/2016

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I mailed my 6 boxes with all my possessions to Corpus Christi, Texas, where I will live for 8 months, if not more, in a lovely apartment adjoining a convent, only a few blocks from my dear web-master family, The Ridley’s, and other dear old friends. I leave for there on December 6th and you may pray travel blessings upon me if you will!

Musings about fear in school….I have this theory some of you may agree with, that one of lesser reasons parents like to home-school is to spare their beloved children the horrors of fear that seems to be an inevitable part of regular schooling! I thought of this during the week because we had one of our Vietnamese religious Sisters, giving a thesis defense for her M.A.
Even though it is a tiny university/seminary where everyone loves each other, I could feel her fear permeating her old fashioned habit and especially her sweet tense face.
Why does this have to happen, I thought.
Of course I wound up with the carrot and stick issue, that, after all, most students would never study anything systematically without exams, and defenses, etc. etc. etc.

But in home-schooling that tension is so much lessened.

I am reading the English writer, Theodore Maynard. He flourished in the first half of the 20th century as a convert to our Church via Chesterton and Belloc, and then taught poetry in the US for most of his life...Theodore Maynard.
Reading his autobiography, I decided to try reading his poetry:
His most famous poem, written for his wife, reverberated to me with how my sons-in-law looked at my daughters when they first met them.
BREAD AND WINE
I find that you are all things: were you wine
        And nothing else to my delirious brain,
I might have drunken deep
        And sober, never thought of you again.
But you are winter firelight, when the rain
        Drips from the eaves; you are my daily bread;
In my companioned sleep
        By you the kindled heavens of dream are fed.
You are the candle burning by my bed
        To pacify a shadow-frightened child;
And you the early lark
         That rises from the grass when dawn is mild.
Dress you in innocence, my undefiled,
          Incredibly familiar, like the shine
Of stars in dusk and dark.
          How could you be all else - were you not wine?
_____________________
::
More lines from poems of Maynard:
      “A crust of bread;
Brook water; and, for condiment,
Wild berries; rushes in a cave for bed –
     With these my soul could be content.”

          But when I see
The kindled stars upon the skies
That stretch to desolate infinity,
          I tremble, and tears cloud my eyes…

       Serene thy light
Shall fade before the coming night,
After the candid joys of day –
Yet leaving what no night can take away.”

Not through a tame placidity
          Shall I attain to final peace;
A sheep among the nibbling flocks,
A stolid ruminative ox,
           Still herd with the loquacious geese.

Rather an eagle whose fierce eye
          Sees from his crag the glint of morn,
A stallion with unmastered breast
A lion whose rage can never rest,
          A phoenix, or a unicorn!....

Then symbols of that burning Peace,
          Perfection of Activity,
Flare from the trampled bloody sod;
And blooms the loveliness of God
          To overwhelm and ravage me.

Sung in his rock-bound grave the toad
          Lives out his thousand dismal years.
But you – with God for goal and goad –
Wing upward, feathered by the load.

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ALLELUIA, TRUMP

11/21/2016

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In case you missed this: Analysts are acknowledging that the pro-life presentation of Donald Trump at the third debate led to:

(i) an unprecedented search activity on Google (Abortion/Trump, Abortion/Clinton) on the 3 days prior to the election.
(ii) more than 1 out of 3 voters exiting the polls in the states Trump carried self-identified as Christian/Catholic voting the life issues. Prior to this election, both liberal and conservative analysts thought that Pro-Life issues we becoming passee in contemporary electoral politics.
The election of Donald Trump sends a loud and clear "not so fast!" warning to those analysts.

Even though the hymns in the Liturgy of the Hours are not high poesy, I find them beautiful and consoling. Here is one that particularly warmed my heart.

How great the tale, that there should be,
In God’s Son’s heart, a place for me!
That on a sinner’s lips like mine
The cross of Jesus Christ should shine!

Christ Jesus, bend me to thy will,
My feet to urge, my griefs to still;
That e’en my flesh and blood may be
A temple sanctified to Thee.

No rest, no calm my soul may win,
Because my body craves to sin;
Till thou, dear Lord, thyself impart
Peace on my head, light in my heart.

May consecration come from far,
Soft shining like the evening star.
My toilsome path make plain to me,
Until I come to rest in thee.

From my “conversations” allegedly with Mother Mary:
Ronda: Great joy in the readings for All Saints.
Mary: Even if you don’t become a saint on earth, we will be with you in purgatory and you will rejoice to feel saved at last.
More:
Ronda: I thought about daughter, Carla, going through yet another big biopsy to test for recurrence of her seemingly cured lymphoma, that it fit with Simeon telling you, Mary, that a “sword would pierce your heart, and the thoughts of many would be revealed” and how the cancer was the sword for Carla but the thoughts of many, all who poured out love 3 years ago, and now again, are what has been revealed.
To the great joy of our whole family, that biopsy didn’t show cancer. This doesn’t explain all her pain, but the theories of what could explain it are much less deadly than cancer. Carla asked me to thank all of you who have been praying for her.

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VIS-A-VIS

10/31/2016

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Why is it better to talk to spiritual directors face to face vs. on e-mails or phone calls? I think it is because when the mentor is plunging the two- edged sword of truth into us to overcome our defensive, denial mechanisms, we can better receive that sword if we are seeing the merciful look in the eyes of the mentor!

I like Face to Face confession for the same reason.

Another conversation, this time allegedly with Jesus:
Ronda: Why do I have the deep need to have a literary man close to me?
Jesus: Oh, the author of the greatest book ever written, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, isn't good enough for you?

I remembered a hilarious saying from a woman at a prayer group
30 years ago! “I have a Joan of Arc complex. I tie myself to the stake and hand out matches!”
If the shoe fits?

I have these sweet conversations with, allegedly, Mother Mary. Here is one you might like, especially if you are over-extended:
Ronda: Is it awful that I care so much about my orderly agenda?
Mary: God made you that way with the plus of doing prodigious amounts of things for the kingdom out of zeal and order, but we need to temper the negative side of valuing work more than love sometimes – that sweet intimate love of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, me, Joseph, your angel all the saints and all the humans we give you to love. Treasure the intimate times more.

A dear mentor got me onto reading a book of Dean Koontz. Though the genre is foreign, it is full of Catholic themes and, I am told, he has become more and more Catholic since his conversion many decades ago.

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NEW VENTURE

10/28/2016

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I am excited about a new venture. Check this out. At the same time click on programs when you enter the station on the web and see all the other great programs you might want to listen to and even come on with questions, etc.

EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL?

Sometimes I notice that I and others do a sort of mild, mild, emotional blackmail on others in this kind of conversation:
“Heh, I leave you messages on e-mail, face-book, etc. and you don’t get back very soon….so I don’t count? (Implication, after all I do for you, if you really love me you HAVE TO conform day by day to what I want back from you.)

I don’t think this is very Christian. I don’t think that Jesus tells us that if we miss one of the prayers we usually say every day because we are busy that this proves we don’t love Him!We need to accept the limits of human love which include the differing agendas of family and friends – some want to make contact every day but others either can’t, or just don’t want such a daily dialogue…
But Jesus always wants to dialogue with us!!!

Check this out for a dialogue!

Inter-faith dialogue partner of mine who is a serious reform Jew, a lawyer, but also a long-time democrat, who praises our Church mostly because we are so social justice-minded:

Ronda, I suppose that you and your friends aren’t one-issue voters for the President?

Ronda:
You suppose wrong. Heh, look! If all Catholics in Germany had voted against Hitler instead of thinking that he was promising to lift them out of the depression, and that was more important than that he was a crazed anti-Semite fanatic…. wouldn’t that have been good?

My Jewish interlocutor:
I never thought of that analogy. I do think abortion is wrong, but I don’t think making it illegal will change much.

Ronda:
So we shouldn’t have outlawed slavery but left it to everyone’s choice? It’s 60 million babies, much more than 6 million Jews but you don’t care????.....Until we saw the pics of the concentration camps no one believed it but TV won’t show what abortion is!!!

Interlocutor:
I think Trump is a fraud and doesn’t care about abortion at all.

Ronda:
So Lincoln started out not as an abolitionist but he finally got the right idea. Just look at the platforms. Hillary is totally pro-abortion from the get-go.

Interlocutor:
So, I see what you are saying, but still I care too much about social justice to vote against Hillary….

Ronda:
So, when she wins and takes away tax-exempt status from the Catholic Church claiming that we are discriminatory about gay marriage and funding abortion, will you volunteer to join a Catholic team of lawyers to defend us?

Interlocutor:
Hillary may appoint Pope Francis to the Supreme Court….

So, since this conversation took place in a restaurant where I made my points at the top of my voice screaming at my friend….I thought maybe it was sinful of me to show such rage….not because I’m not right, but because it falls under Von Hildebrand’s definition of self-righteous anger being loving to hurl denunciations from the throne of truth. Couldn’t I have said all that in a softer voice????
May you’all also have fun like this in the weeks before the election.
Lord, have mercy!

Boasting:
Now and then someone gently calls me on boasting too much. I blush! But this week I got a new insight into boasting. In a certain way boasting is Pelagian (the heresy that we don’t need grace since human nature is good and produce good by itself). How so? Because when I boast I am putting all the merit on my works instead of on the grace that enabled me to do them! It is a form of ingratitude!

When I reported this to a person who accused me of boasting, he replied that I should
avoid boasting about this insight into boasting
and just turn the “Ronda-volume down.”