"I was always looking left and right"

In addition to David Bowie's passing, this week also marks the thirty-ninth anniversary of the release of his album Low, the first album of his so-called Berlin Trilogy. After spending several years in southern California once he "hit it big," Bowie retreated to Berlin to recover from his lifestyle of excess, which resulted in a fairly serious cocaine addiction.

Bowie later claimed to only have sketchy memories of his time in California, even claiming not to remember recording his Station to Station album. Station to Station was the album just prior to Low. While I am sure there is some truth to his reported lack of memory, it's easy to imagine there were things he later simply preferred not to remember, perhaps like the episode involving the 15 year-old Sable Starr (see "Oh! You Pretty Things: Spotlight on David Bowie and Catholic Sex Scandals"). Speaking of his time in Berlin, Bowie observed that by moving there from California he moved from the cocaine capital of the world to the "smack" (i.e., heroin) capital, but he had "no taste for smack." And so it appears Bowie got clean in Berlin.

The Rolling Stone Album Guide says that Low is "the music of an overstimulated mind in an exhausted body . . . [the album] sashays through some serious emotional wreckage." In an article posted yesterday on the anniversary of Low's release, Frankie Deserto tells the story of how Low began as the soundtrack for Bowie's film The Man Who Fell to Earth, for which it was rejected, and later became a seminal album, making many critical 100 best album lists: "David Bowie: Low."

Our Friday traditio for today is "Always Crashing the Same Car" off Low:

I would also draw your attention to Henry Rollins' remembrance of Bowie, which he accomplishes through the prism of Bowie's last album Blackstar:

Blackstar is on the level of Low, Heroes or any of Bowie’s standout works. It is hard to listen to because it was obviously written with his [terminal] condition in mind. The final lyric of the last track, "I Can’t Give Everything Away," repeats the song title over and over, like a mantra, and makes me want to chase after him as the song fades away, pleading with him not to go

It seems that, at least for Rollins, Bowie's Blackstar has the effect of what I might call in my pedestrian manner of writing, "good art" in that by listening to it he confronts his own mortality- ars moriendi. Today I plan to listen to Blackstar in its entirety for the first time.

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It's impossible not to mention the passing of actor Alan Rickman, who, like Bowie, passed this week at age 69. His passing was also due to the terminal effect that cancer has on so many of its victims. Almost without doubt, Rickman's best work as an actor was on stage. But his film Truly, Madly, Deeply has rightly been described as a minor masterpiece. But as an unabashed Harry Potter enthusiast, I have to state that Rickman was nothing short of sublime in his portrayal of Severus Snape. Hence, I can't help posting Rickman's take on the fascinating character of one of J.K. Rowlings' best creations:

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Ars Moriendi, by Marcos Carrasquer

The Baptism of Jesus: Divine and Human Paternity

I am not surprised that the best thing I read this year on the Lord’s Baptism was written by an Evangelical pastor. Writing in Christianity Today, Jeff Strong, who pastors a Covenant Evangelical Church in British Columbia, shares his experience of growing up with a Dad whom he describes as being apathetic towards him. While he admits that his father’s indifference, which persists even now, still haunts him, he shares a powerful testimony to the healing power of the Gospel. The power of his testimony does not lie in some silly, imagined “cure” of the kind often claimed by people who would simply rather not grapple with things as they are, such as a moment when his Dad’s indifference simply stopped mattering to him (I think one would have to question the divine origin of such a realization), but derives its power directly from the Gospel.

I was blessed with a loving father. However, my Dad (who passed away 5 years ago next week) and I were very different people. We went through a fairly prolonged, but not bitter, estrangement for 5-6 years when I was in my 20s. I have no doubt this stemmed from the choices I made that either actually disappointed him or that I imagined disappointed him. Chief among these would be leaving Mormonism and becoming Catholic, perhaps followed closely by my decision to study Philosophy and History, which he largely viewed as a waste of time and money. Our estrangement, which was never total, only ended when I married. No matter what, I knew my Dad loved me. We had a wonderful relationship the last 18 years of his life, a grace for which I am very grateful.

Unlike Strong, my Dad was neither apathetic nor indifferent towards me, but neither was he terribly pushy, even if he did take opportunities once in a while to criticize me, especially when I was younger and simply trying to find my way in the world. I accepted then as I do now that it is sometimes a father’s duty to set forth expectations for his children, especially as they become young adults. In my experience both as a son and as a father, this can cause resentment and bitterness on both sides. Nonetheless, I think it’s important to help my children move from being what I call pseudo-adults, someone who has reached his majority and claims all the rights and prerogatives of adulthood, to becoming an authentic adult, someone who also assumes the duties and responsibilities that come with being an adult.

While it is certainly no original conclusion, my overall point is that human fathers are, well, human. Stretching my articulation of the obvious, children of human fathers are also human. Being human not only means that we’re limited, but also that we’re sinful. In other words, we can do the right things in the wrong way; good intentions don’t always result in good acts.

In my 21+ years of being a father I know it is all too easy to violate St Paul’s exhortation not to provoke our children (Eph 6:4; Col 3:21). I know I am guilty of such provocations, especially when I consider my relationship with my oldest son. The transliterated Greek word translated “provoke” in Ephesians 6:4 is paragizo, which means something like “do not deliberately anger.” In Colossians 3:21 the transliterated Greek word translated as “provoke” is ereqizo, which comes closer to meaning “exasperate.” I am convinced that, at some point, all of us must learn to accept the humanity of our parents, which means, among other things, forgiving them for things both real and imagined. At least for me, this was/is no easy thing.

Commenting on Jesus’ baptism according to St Mark’s account of the Lord's baptism, which is conveyed in three verses (Mark 1:9-11), Strong notes, “We witness both beauty and heartache.” This theophany, which is the first explicit manifestation of God’s triunity, this “outpouring of love and affirmation from the Father,” occurs prior to the Lord “setting his face toward Jerusalem – and toward the cross.”

Strong points out a fact in light of the chronology of our Lord’s life: this outpouring of the Father’s infinite and æternal love for his Son occurs before Jesus performs one deed, utters one teaching, or performs one miracle. This is genuine fatherhood! “God,” Strong points out, “is the kind of Father who would disrupt reality in order to show his Son just how much he delights in and loves him.”

Rather than being off-putting, the divine paternity of God should be the rock on which we, as Christians, build our lives. Improbably, no matter what, God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Jesus Christ is proof-positive that we are God’s children whom he loves and with whom he is well pleased: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Like most fundamental tenets of our faith, God’s perfect paternity is both a comfort and a provocation. It seems to me that God’s perfect fatherhood must be a comfort before it can serve as a provocation. In contrast to how a variant of “provocation” is used in the verses from Ephesians and Colossians I invoked earlier, in this context “provocation” means pro + vocation = for my divine calling.

This strikes me as a fitting note for me as I embark on this brief season of Ordinary Time, which I plan to use as a preparation for the holy season of Lent.

David Bowie, RIP

Like many people, I was surprised to learn early this morning that David Bowie passed away. His passing came two days after his sixty-ninth birthday. It was on his last birthday that his 25th album, Blackstar, was released. No doubt there are many better places where you can read about David Bowie’s life and accomplishments. I just wanted to pass along some thoughts one might expect to find on the blog of a clergyman on the passing of such an influential artist.

One cannot have any familiarity with David Bowie’s life and music and not have a sense of the depth from whence most of it came. I found it interesting to read in an article in the Guardian newspaper that Bowie did not consider himself to be a naturally gifted performer and once confessed that he did not really enjoy performing live. The same article quotes Bowie as saying, "My entire career, I’ve only really worked with the same subject matter. The trousers may change, but the actual words and subjects I’ve always chosen to write with are things to do with isolation,abandonment, fear and anxiety," then in what I can only imagine to be a wry tone, he said, "all of the high points of one’s life."

David Bowie in 2013

In 2004 he told Ellen DeGeneres that he tried Christianity at one point. Apparently the point at which he tried turning to Christ was a very low-point, occurring shortly after he achieved fame with his Ziggy Stardust persona, towards the end of a few years he spent mostly in Southern California in the grip of what was, by all accounts, a serious cocaine addiction. As Leonardo Blair wrote in a Christian Post article, it was at that time he wrote what was probably his most explicitly religious song - "Station to Station," which is deeply rooted in the Stations of the Cross.

In a 2003 BeliefNet interview, when asked if his questions about reality had changed over the years, Bowie replied,

I honestly believe that my initial questions haven't changed at all. There are far fewer of them these days, but they're really important. Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It's because I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: "Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months

In the same interview, when asked what his priorities were over the next few years, he talked about how over the previous 10 years his life had stabilized after his marriage to Somali-born model, Iman, and how at ease he was with being "a family-oriented guy," which he said he didn’t previously think was part of his makeup. "But," he quipped, "somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me." He then added, "I’m actually like my dad!"

Even then, 13 or so years before his death, as a man in his mid-50s, with reference to God, Bowie sagely observed, "That's the shock: All clichés are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God--so do I buy that one? If all the other clichés are true... Hell, don't pose me that one." The interview ended on that note.

Here's a video for the song "Lazarus" off his Blackstar album:

Look up here, I'm in heaven
I've got scars that can't be seen
I've got drama, can't be stolen Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I'm in danger
I've got nothing left to lose...

The Baptism of the Lord

The significance of his Baptism by John in the River Jordan is one of the mysteries of our Lord's life that is very often overlooked or underplayed. Our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters refer to today's feast as the "Feast of the Holy Theophany." A "theophany" is when God manifests himself in a manner detectable by our senses.

It's easy to miss that in our Gospel for today's feast that, immediately following his baptism, Jesus is confirmed (Luke 3:15-16.21-22). Because he is the anointed One, the Messiah, Jesus is anointed directly by the Holy Spirit, who descended on him in the form of a dove, as the voice of the Father declares that he is the Father's beloved Son. This is the Theophany of the Most Holy Trinity, God making himself fully manifest for the first time in Scripture.

All four canonical Gospels agree that his baptism by John marked the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. I think that one reason why the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is so closely linked on the liturgical calendar to his Nativity (in the United States it brings the season of Christmas to its end) is because these events set in motion the Paschal Mystery, which is the very mystery of our redemption.

Our brothers and sisters who observe today's feast as the Theophany also see his baptism as making holy all the waters of the world. As we see in the blessing of water in our Roman Catholic baptismal rite, water is both necessary for life and, at times and under the right conditions, a deadly force.

In baptism God claimed you as his own. When you were baptized, you were called by name. Through baptism God made what was implicit in you explicit. In the waters of baptism we are reborn as God's children, which adoption is only made possible by Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

As he ascended, the Lord sent his disciples (his sending is what made them apostles) to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in God's thrice holy name (Matt 28:16-20). It was on the first Christian Pentecost that 3,000 people were baptized in response to Peter's preaching (Acts 2:14-41). Such has been the case for more than 2,000 years. We, too, are sent to proclaim the Gospel, to glorify the Lord by our lives, to make disciples of all nations. In order to make disciples, you must first be a disciple.

In light of his own baptism, we certainly Jesus by receiving baptism ourselves. As I pondered today's feast, an event from Jesus' life popped into my mind is when Peter wanted to walk on water to the Lord, who was himself walking on the water (Matt 14:22-36). At the Lord's urging Peter stepped out of the boat and began to walk on the water of the Sea of Galilee. But he lacked faith and so he sunk. As he sunk, Peter cried out "Lord, save me!" St Matthew tells us, "Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, 'O you of little faith, why did you doubt?'" Who knows, perhaps that was Peter's baptism?

"It takes strength to be gentle and kind"

Since the end of the year is always such whirlwind, I've deliberately taken it a bit easier now the we're in 2016. Since last Friday was New Year's Day, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, I chose not to post a traditio. Choosing thusly I missed a great chance to post U2's "New Year's Day." Oh well, a bit cliché n'est ce pas?

Today I had that procedure, highly recommended for people as we turn 50. Maybe it's because my Dad was killed by cancer that I was so nervous and, frankly, a bit scared. My results seem to indicate a clean bill of health. I am grateful that after I was prepped and waiting to go into the procedure room (sounds omninous in a kind of Huxleyan way, which is how it felt- I hate hospitals and airports), I was able to pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary and utter a few Memorarés. While it may seem overly dramatic, it was an opportunity to usefully contemplate mortality. Whenever I am consciously confronted with my mortality, I ask the Blessed Virgin for the grace of not dying without benefit of the sacraments.

I recovered quickly enough from the anesthesia and found my lovely wife waiting beside me. Seeing her smiling face was wonderful. I am very grateful, too, for the many friends who prayed for me yesterday and today.

After I arrived home, we made breakfast and listened to The Smith's. The first song I heard was "I Know It's Over" off their 1986 The Queen is Dead album. It sounded lovely to me on a gray, cold, semi-snowy January day. Hence, "I Know It's Over" is our first Friday traditio of 2016:

It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes strength to be gentle and kind
Over, over, over, over

Epiphanising the Epiphany

At least to my mind and ear "epiphany" is a wonder-filled word. According to any useful dictionary, our English word "epiphany" comes to us via the Middle English word epiphanie, derived from Anglo-French through the Latin epiphania. Before Latin, the word originated in the Greek epiphaneia, which simply refers to an appearance, or manifestation. We typically use the word to refer to the appearance or manifestation of something, or someone, that is not only significant in some way, but an appearance pregnant with meaning, a manifestation that goes deeper than what appears to our senses, having what I will call, for lack of a better term, spiritual resonance.

James Joyce made use of "epiphany" as a literary tool throughout his oeuvre. In his posthumously-published autobiographical work, Stephen Hero - which work was the basis of his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce defined what he meant when he used "epiphany." Stephen Hero's epiphany about epiphanies happened one evening as he was strolling down a Dublin street ("Eccles' St," according to Joyce). As he walked he became aware of a young woman speaking to a young man on the steps "of one of those brown brick houses which seem the very incarnation of Irish paralysis." Stephen overhears the young woman telling the young man, no doubt in an effort to be demure, that she had just been at chapel. To this the young man responds with something inaudible to Stephen, but something to which the young woman "softly" replies, "0 ... but you're ... ve ... ry ... wick ... ed." Joyce conveys that "This trivialit*y made [Stephen] think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies."

By an epiphany [Stephen] meant 'a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. He told Cranly that the clock of the Ballast Office was capable of an epiphany. Cranly questioned the inscrutable dial of the Ballast Office with his no less inscrutable countenance:

-Yes, said Stephen. I will pass it time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it. It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublin's street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany.

-What?

-Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised. It is just in this epiphany that I find the third, the supreme quality of beauty [italicizing mine]

The third "supreme quality of beauty" to which Joyce's protagonist refers was articulated by Aquinas, no doubt explicating Aristotle. Stephen goes on to opine that cataloging epiphanies can only be done "with the aid of the lantern of tradition," that is, he must work from an aesthetic theory. With this he wades into a discourse on beauty according to the Angelic Doctor (i.e., Thomas Aquinas):

You know what Aquinas says: The three things requisite for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance. Some day I will expand that sentence into a treatise. Consider the performance of your own mind when confronted with any object, hypothetically beautiful. Your mind to apprehend that object divides the entire universe into two parts, the object, and the void which is not the object. To apprehend it you must lift it away from everything else: and then you perceive that it is one integral thing, that is a thing. You recognise its integrity. Isn't that so?

With this introduction Stephen proceeds to unpack for poor Cranly Aquinas' three qualities. While it doesn't seem that Cranly is very interested from get-go, this does not begin to become apparent to Stephen until his companion is distracted by the antics of a drunk man who has just been thrown out of a bar. It seems that while Stephen, in the wake of his awakening, is content to discourse about epiphanies, Cranly simply pays attention to what is going on around him, reminiscent of Stephen's walk down Eccles' St.

Having finished his argument Stephen walked on in silence. He felt Cranly's hostility and he accused himself of having cheapened the eternal images of beauty. For the first time, too, he felt slightly awkward in his friend's company and to restore a mood of flippant familiarity he glanced up at the clock of the Ballast Office and smiled:

-It has not epiphanised yet, he said

How often have you felt like Stephen after engaging in a discourse? You know, the kind you launch into, telling someone how to build a watch when she only asked you what time it was. I don't know about you, but I have to be careful not to cheapen "the eternal images of beauty." One way of reading this Joycean excerpt, the way I read it today, is by refusing to accept it as a case of Stephen casting pearls before swine and seeing it, instead, as an instance in which a swine dons pearls and sashays about like a great beauty.

So-called "apologetics" often cheapens images of eternal beauty. To live faith apologetically can render you blind to daily life, to what is unfolding right in front of you in all its beauty and complexity. Faith that is truly faith does not seek to apply pre-fabricated answers to life's pressing and persistent questions and quandaries. As Msgr Giussani often noted, what is needed is not a discourse, but a witness. To take our cue from Joyce: the mystery of God-made-man-for-us has to be epiphanised.

Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God

A month or so ago I ordered a used copy of David Wilbourne's little book A Virgin's Diary. In the book, Wilbourne, who serves as a bishop for the Anglican Church in Wales, creates an imaginary diary for the Blessed Virgin Mary during her pregnancy with our Lord. As one might suspect the entries run the gamut from mundane, to funny, to whimsical, to quite insightful. It certainly is not a book everyone would like, but I am enjoying it immensely.

Appropriate to today's solemnity is something from an entry in which Mary, or Miriam as she is called in the diary, accompanies Zechariah to Jerusalem for his first service in the Temple since the birth of his son, John (the Baptist). In the early morning of the second day the young, pregnant virgin goes for a walk that takes her down through the Kidron valley and up the Mount of Olives. Once on the mount she is amazed by the glory of what she sees as she looks over the holy city. But her amazement "is quickly replaced by another feeling." As the change occurs she begins to shiver "with sheer terror, dread at what lies ahead." She begins to doubt her fiat: "What on earth am I doing, going along with all this? How can I, or my yet-to-be-born son, ever hope to make even the slightest impact . . .?" In Wilbourne's telling she is referring specifically to making an impact on the Jewish religious system rooted in Temple worship, which worship she participated in the previous day. In her despondency, she tells God "let's forget all about it."

In his imaginary account, Wilbourne writes that God "is surprisingly upbeat" in response to Miriam's near despair. "This is a fresh start," He tells the young woman. "Through you and our baby, I want people to know that I'm into everything, all the squalor, all the heartbreaks, all the pain, all the pregnancy sickness, that nothing in all creation is beyond my reach." God ends this disquisition by telling the despondent young woman, "That's incarnation girl! I want to abolish the sacred by shouting out that everything is sacred!"

I am tempted to end my post here, but I like where Wilbourne takes the dialogue. In reply, the young Miriam says, "A laudable ambition . . . As a sermon, that deserves a straight alpha. But doesn't it seem a funny way to go about it, kicking off the [God's]-Into-Everything-Show with a virgin birth. It does give the teeniest weeniest impression that you ain't into sex." God replies: "Oh no, I passionately believe that with delight and tenderness couples may know each other through love . . . But we had to go for a virginal conception so I could put my signature to the venture from the start. No more or no less than that. Don't worry Miriam, I won't let you down. We'll win through. Remember that I am with you."

Reflecting on her encounter, Miriam notes that remembering God is with her, far from being a comfort at this point, causes her to "shake more with terror." As she makes her way back into the city she is overcome with weariness. She sits down and begins to weep. As she sits weeping a donkey nuzzles her and stays by her side. Miriam climbs onto the donkey's "cross-marked back" and rides back into Jerusalem.

As my friend, Fr Peter Nguyen, SJ, noted in a brief exchange we had concerning Reformed theology- theology without a Marian dimension leaves one cold. Specifically he wrote, "To tell/theologize the story of Christ is to also tell/theologize about his mother."

In light of Wilbourne's welcome reflection on Christ's mother, here's something most relevant by Edward Schillebeeckx, OP, from his classic book on sacramental theology, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God: "The incarnation is not merely a Christmas event. To be man is a process of becoming man; Jesus' manhood grew throughout his earthly life [here I would invoke Luke 2:52], finding its completion in the supreme moment of the incarnation, his death, resurrection and exaltation. Only then is the incarnation fulfilled to the very end."

Remember, O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.

Happy New Year!