jquinbyʼs scribbles, updates, &c

A Little Office for Evening Prayer

Our family prayers at day's end have developed into the following routine, which I am calling here A Little Office of Evening Prayers, because it's short and suitable for little ones. It's basically a single decade of the rosary with some extra stuff added to the end. Feel free to adapt for your own use. Enjoy!

Leader: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Response: Amen

Leader: O God, come to my assistance
Response: Lord, make haste to help me.

Leader: Glory be to the Father…
Response: As it was in the beginning…

All: Apostle's Creed

Leader: Glory be to the Father...
Response: As it was in the beginning...

Three Hail Marys offered for the following (shifting each night to the next one in line):

  1. An increase in faith, hope, and charity
  2. The intentions of the Holy Father
  3. The intentions of our bishop
  4. The intentions of our pastor and his vicars
  5. The people of our parish

Leader: Tonight's mystery is ________.

Pray one decade of the rosary, every person present taking one of the Hail Marys.

Concluding prayers:

All: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen.

All: O God, whose only begotten son, by his life, death, and resurrection has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech thee that by meditating on these mysteries of the most holy rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise, through this same Christ, our Lord, Amen.

All: Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do, thou, O prince of the heavenly host, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

All: Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

Sing the Salve Regina

Family Litany: each person in turn names a saint until it wraps around back to me and I add one or two more. When everyone is present (including our son-in-law), the list looks something like the following:

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.
Saint Anne, pray for us.
Saint Marianne Cope, pray for us.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
Saint George, pray for us.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.
Saint Cecilia, pray for us.
Saint John Bosco, pray for us.
Saint Dymphna, pray for us.
Saint Arnaud, pray for us.
Saint Damian, pray for us.
The Fourteen Holy Helpers, pray for us.
Saint Edmund the Martyr, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Leader: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Response: Amen

Leader: now everyone go to bed.
Response: (various)

Guardini on virtue

Finished up Romano Guardini's Learning the Virtues. Father Schmitz referenced it in Made for Love, so into the to-read list it went. I like it, and would recommend it to anyone looking to make progress in the spiritual life, particularly if you're a person who (like me) occasionally gets stuck doing examinations of conscience. Quick-reference cards are useful to a point, but if you (like me) run through a list that closely tracks against the Decalogue, you may come up short in the end. I mean, I didn't commit murder last month or any of these other egregious things so I must be in pretty good shape, right? Probably not.

Was I a peacemaker? Did I hunger and thirst for righteousness? Did I show mercy when it was an option? Here are questions that defy a quick yes-or-no answer. When I got angry that one time and stewed for two days, why was that? Ah, sure looks like my pride had been rightfully stung. I had nearly forgotten it, and that one's an old reliable sort of sin for me. And so it goes.

In any case, books like this can be very useful and instructive. Fr. Guardini was a wonderful writer and a particular favorite of both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. I also highly recommend his book of meditations, The Lord. Wonderful stuff in there. Up next is to clear out the accumulating periodicals: The New Atlantis, among others.

Holiday vacation is over, so it's back to the normal schedule around here: early to bed, early to rise.

Yesterday I met with our bishop for the final step in my application process. It looks like I'll be in the next formation class. I am feeling very hooray and also yikes. Pray for me!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Last few books of 2020 are arriving today: Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, Merton on contemplative prayer, and Fr. Devin Roza’s Fulfilled in Christ, which explores typology in the sacraments. For Christmas I also received the third volume of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth, and will be saving it for Lent.

To fill the gaps I’ve been dipping back into Joseph Conrad. At some point in the past, I shelled out a few bucks for his complete works on the Kindle so he’s something of a go-to: The Shadow-Line, which was pretty good and The Rover, which I’ve just started.

All told, my vacation has been the holidays, which were good (and continuing as I write), an extended communications blackout thanks to the bomb on Christmas morning, a fair amount of ham radio tinkering, and a new game called Factorio, which I’ve needed to strictly ration.

I also just turned 50; the receiving line forms to the left please.

Thanks be to God, we are all well. I pray the same for you and yours.

Rachel

Somewhere in these unending wastes of delirium is a lost child,
      speaking of Long Ago in the language of wounds.
To-morrow, perhaps, he will come to himself in Heaven.
But here Grief turns her silence, neither in this direction, nor
      in that, nor for any reason.
And her coldness now is on earth forever.

— Auden, For the Time Being

I have been reading and re-reading For the Time Being all throughout this past Advent. How it’s managed to escape my attention all these years is beyond me. I have to credit W.H. Auden’s Cure for the Post-Christmas Blues by Jeff Reimer for piquing my curiosity, and I was mighty glad to see the oratorio included in an Auden collection I already owned but had only glanced through a few times since buying it. Serves me right I suppose.

Monday thoughts

A beautiful run on a mild late-December morning, with the echoes of this morning’s Office of the Holy Innocents in my head. Thinking about a dear relative who passed yesterday after a long fight with cancer. Looking ahead gratefully to my 51st year on earth.

Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui. Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus.

Quite a temperature drop over 24 hours…

Currently reading: Learning the Virtues: That Lead You to God by Romano Guardini 📚

Merton

twitter.com

Commonweal Magazine (@commonwealmag) Tweeted: On this day, in 1968, Thomas Merton died tragically and prematurely. One of the most influential mystics of the 20th century, Merton was also a prolific Commonweal contributor.

Here, we’ve compiled some of his most lasting spiritual writings: t.co/9n4v9sqRl…

Calculating Christmas

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Calculating Christmas, by William Tighe

A politics of conversion

Like alcoholism and drug addiction, nihilism is a disease of the soul. It can never be completely cured, and there is always the possibility of relapse. But there is always a chance of conversion a chance for people to believe that there is a hope for the future and a meaning to struggle. This chance rests neither on an agreement about what justice consists of nor on an analysis of how racism, sexism, or class subordination operate. Such arguments are indispensable. But a politics of conversion requires more. Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul. This turning is done through one's affirmation of one's worth an affirmation fueled by the concern of others. A love ethic must be at the center of a politics of conversion.

Cornel West, "Nihilism in Black America," Race Matters 📚

Currently reading: Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI 📚. So short I’ll have to pace it at 1 chapter/week to stretch it through Advent.

Books and thoughts on Lectio

Incoming books:

  • Race Matters by Cornel West
  • Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives by Pope Benedict XVI
  • Learning the Virtues by Romano Guardini

I finished the Rilke collection the other night. On the whole, I liked it - particularly The Duino Elegies. Much of it was gorgeous opaque, but then:

And now in vast, cold, empty space, alone.
Yet hidden deep within the the grown-up heart,
longing for the first world, the ancient one...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

That's from "Imaginary Career." Even in translation, Rilke turns a phrase. I also finished The Sign of Jonas, and I'm going to have to think about that one for awhile. Coming as it does at this time of my life - in these particular circumstances - it sheds a great deal of light on the contradictions of a vocation. What God wills against what you expect (or even desire). And this according to the You that stands apart! What he sought in Gethsemani was not what he found. Not at first, anyway. In the end he found it, but he had come so far in his understanding that he barely recognized the person who had begun the same book he was finishing. This book was recommended to me, I think because I had expressed an affinity for both Jonah and Thomas Merton. Certainly I'll be turning over contradiction for some time to come.

Lectio has been alternating between Isaiah and the Gospel reading for this Sunday, which marks the beginning of Advent. As I'm writing this, that would be Mark 13:33-37. The things that 'jump out' and stay with me from session to session continue to astonish me.

At first it was watch and pray. Surely we only watch when we are confident that the master will return? We wait in perfect expectation. And we pray in all things, at all times. Let prayer be unceasing, but not unconscious. A man once told me that he wasn't sure when he wasn't praying! That's what I want, how I want to be. David Steindl-Rast shows us that gratitude as a response to a gift is an act of profound love and prayer. It recognizes the gift, as gift, which means it also acknowledges the giver.

The next night it was what I say to you, I say to all.  All are to watch. No one is exempt! The invitation is universal. Could this also be read a bit differently? Those who hear have a solemn charge to show and tell. As He speaks to us, so He speaks to all - if we let Him. "The medium is the message." Did you know that McLuhan was Catholic? I only learned that a few years ago, to be honest.

Last night I stayed with whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. I'm still pondering this one. These are nighttime and the liminal moments surrounding darkness, maybe when watchfulness is most difficult.

I'm not even sure if trying to capture these thoughts and responses is worthwhile - something seems to be lost between the heart, the head, and the keyboard.


Race day!

This is powerful, powerful stuff.

The Last Children of Down Syndrome by Sarah Zhang. I'm a subscriber and try to hold off on reading the cover stories until I have the magazine in hand, but I broke that rule this time.

The introduction of a choice reshapes the terrain on which we all stand. To opt out of testing is to become someone who chose to opt out. To test and end a pregnancy because of Down syndrome is to become someone who chose not to have a child with a disability. To test and continue the pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis is to become someone who chose to have a child with a disability. Each choice puts you behind one demarcating line or another. There is no neutral ground, except perhaps in hoping that the test comes back negative and you never have to choose what’s next.

What kind of choice is this, if what you hope is to not have to choose at all

Later:

In late 2018, Genomic Prediction, a company in New Jersey, began offering to screen embryos for risk of hundreds of conditions, including schizophrenia and intellectual disability, though it has since quietly backtracked on the latter. The one test customers keep asking for, the company’s chief scientific officer told me, is for autism. The science isn’t there yet, but the demand is.

Building Bridges, Made for Love

Just finished (in near-record time) both Building A Bridge by Father James Martin, SJ and Made for Love by Father Mike Schmitz. Both explore the same subject: LGBTQ+ people and their place in the Church. I thought the books complemented each other very well - Building A Bridge sets the stage very nicely, opening the way to a dialogue based on respect, compassion, and sensitivity. It is thoroughly pastoral in its focus. Made for Love covers some of the same ground, but takes a closer look at some of the theology. In any event, both converge in and around the same place: the universal call to God's love is just that: universal. None are exempt or cast out. The living Christ meets each of us where we are, as we are. Yes, the call to love is accompanied by a call to conversion and none are exempt from that either. The encounter of Jesus with Zaccheus the tax collector shows us a pattern: welcome and community first, conversion next. 

I see from reviews that most folks fall in an either-or stance with respect to the two authors. Sorry, but I'm not seeing it. Neither sets out to be the definitive pastoral or theological manual. Each comes off as sensitive to the struggles of the individuals and their lived experiences. Both point to our final end: life abundant in the glory of God.

I recommend both.


The mint has grown back so I guess it’s mojitos in November. The cold will be here for good at some point but until then…

RIP Rabbi Sacks

Very sad to read that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks passed away over the weekend. His Erasmus speech several years ago set me on a reading project which continues to this day. I very much liked his Essays on Ethics, and anticipate returning to it often in the future.

Requiem æternam dona ei, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

It’s 75 here today so we’re barbecuing and hanging around outside. Winter will get here when it gets here but for now…

Sunny window nap

Merton prays

From The Sign of Jonas, a diary Thomas Merton kept during the first few years after making his perpetual vows at Gethsemani:

The way You have laid open before me is an easy way, compared with the hard way of my own will which leads back to Egypt, and to bricks without straw.

If You allow people to praise me, I shall not worry. If You let them blame me, I shall worry even less, but be glad. If You send me work I shall embrace it with joy and it will be rest to me, because it is Your will. And if You send me rest, I will rest in You. Only save me from myself. Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement's sake, to unsettle everything You have ordained.

Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Than the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. This is what I love for. Amen, amen.

I want to write about Steindl-Rast's Gratefulness but I'm not sure if I'm up to it. Pieces of it come back to me constantly which I take to be a good sign. It has opened doors to contemplative forms of prayer which were sort of on the periphery, just out of the corner of my eye. Close-by, but un-named and maybe unseen. Then you see them and the reaction is "Of course! It was there all along!" It seems strange that such a short book would be difficult to summarize, so universal as to defy simple categorization. It is, in short, a book about prayer and gratitude, and how each reflects and magnifies the other in the smallest of moments. These moments should catch us by surprise, which means we must - paradoxically - be prepared for surprise.

That will have to suffice for now. Maybe more later.

Currently reading: Compensating the Sales Force, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Designing Winning Sales Reward Programs by Cichelli, David 📚

Here is a very rare post that touches ever-so-briefly on work.

I don’t do a ton of business-related reading. When I do, it’s usually because some book is making the rounds in the C-suite of my employer and reading what they’re reading has been helpful in my role, which is nominally manager but perhaps more accurately described as contextualizer-in-chief.

In any event, the start of a new fiscal year comes with the annual adjustments to the sales compensation plan (i.e., quotas, bonuses, spiffs, and the like). These might seem like a minor thing to the rest of the company but I’m here to tell you that they are of nearly existential importance to the sales team, of which I am a part.

I recently got very interested in how compensation plans are developed, so here we are.

Ongoing gratitude

Still working through David Steindl-Rast's book on gratitude and prayer. I'll have more to write when I'm done. It's been wonderful so far. He frequently quotes Rainer Maria Rilke, who has been on my radar for some time now. I ordered a collection of Rilke's poetry which was delivered earlier today. Then I'll maybe alternate that with Merton's The Sign of Jonas.

Hopefully Rilke and Merton will serve to more than offset some work-related reading that's coming my way on the design of sales compensation plans.

Books...

Currently reading: Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness by Steindl-Rast, David 📚

This was just recently recommended to me, along with Thomas Merton’s The Sign of Jonas, by a deacon with whom I met recently as part of the discernment/application process. He also recommended deeper/further exploration of contemplative prayer, so I’ve begun regular lectio again.

I’ve tried lectio on and off over the years but after our conversation on prayers and praying, I’m really going to try to make it stick this time. Attempting to turn the Office into lectio hasn’t really worked either. I think this is fine; he helped me to reframe some of my thinking around the Office as well.

Political homelessness

Timothy Keller, writing in the NYT a few weeks ago:

So Christians are pushed toward two main options. One is to withdraw and try to be apolitical. The second is to assimilate and fully adopt one party’s whole package in order to have your place at the table. Neither of these options is valid. In the Good Samaritan parable told in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus points us to a man risking his life to give material help to someone of a different race and religion. Jesus forbids us to withhold help from our neighbors, and this will inevitably require that we participate in political processes. If we experience exclusion and even persecution for doing so, we are assured that God is with us (Matthew 5:10-11) and that some will still see our “good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:11-12). If we are only offensive or only attractive to the world and not both, we can be sure we are failing to live as we ought.

David French referred to this piece in his newsletter this morning. I recommend reading both in their entirety.