Heather King's Blog, page 12

LORD, HOW I HAVE LOVED THE BEAUTY OF THY HOUSE

I am back from NY as of last night, and what a rich and fruitful trip. Many reflections.

One is that we carry within us little compartments, mansions, to which the door can remain shut for weeks, months, years–and then a smell, the view down a street, a face, a series of sounds, a landscape, can open the door once again upon a long vista…

HEATHER GARDEN, TRYON PARK, WASHINGTON HEIGHTS

Such was my feeling about being in the Upper East Side–I’ve stayed on E 65th many times over the years, my room a perk of writing for Magnificat. To be literally around the corner from St. Vincent Ferrer is my idea of heaven. My room was in the back, overlooking the courtyard to the south of the church, its copper roofing, tall stained glass windows, weathered seemingly impenetrable walls, and behind them, the altar, the tabernacle, the candle burning behind red glass…

Waking, sleeping, praying, writing in my journal so close to Christ had an unbelievably calming effect. I felt sheltered, protected, shepherded, accompanied, loved. Not that I wasn’t in high gear, high-alert mode, as always, but to be able to walk downstairs, around the corner, up those tall stone steps and into the sanctuary of my favorite church on earth–and to me the most beautiful…let’s just say my mind began wandering to thoughts of I wonder if some rich person around here has an apartment they never use that they’d like ME to live in!…

Side note: In fact while I was there, a dear friend who lives in Chelsea offered me HER apartment for basically the month of January…She also gave me her old ipad which–people, I have never owned a “tablet” of any kind! More gear…another device…who needs it? was my thought. However, after setting it up a whole new world has opened to me of downloaded ebooks from the various libraries where I have cards. I’ve always hated reading books online but partly because my iphone 8 is about three inches wide and the laptop is too unwieldy…also I see you can highlight, save and copy text etc on kindle which is another feature that is esp appealing to someone like me who copies out a lot of quotes. The point being, my trip was larded with any number of such crazy gifts, the most precious ones being getting to see my friends…

In fact, my friend Muiereann, Dublin, Ireland, and I attended the 1 o’clock Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s, celebrated (I’d checked in advance) by none other than Fr. Donald Haggerty who, as many of you may know, has written a series of books that it’s not an exaggeration to say have been life-changing for me.

I made sure to stand in his Communion line, and after Mass, waited behind the altar (I felt like Eve Harrington waiting tremulously outside the stage door for Margo Channing in All About Eve) and was able to press the good Father’s hand in gratitude. I will write more about his bracing homily in an upcoming column. He couldn’t have been kinder though I’m sure he is accosted on all sides by people wanting things from him, and also looks like he barely eats, i.e. is fasting, fasting… We need people like this, to inspire, encourage, set an example.

It has got to be a trial to be a priest at St. Patrick’s as the place is overrun by tourists with selfie sticks and is a bit of a circus. To have people parading around who are so oblivious to the Eucharist…while you’re saying Mass, no less…

On the other hand, what was so beautiful about Manhattan was that the churches ARE right smack in the middle of it all, as they should be, and thus all of humanity is incorporated, accommodated, swept up, invited…To attend a six pm Mass at St. Vincent Ferrer on a Monday night and have probably 75 people in attandance was wondrous to me. Students, businesspeople ducking in after work, old people with crutches and walkers, young guys who looked like they just came from the gym…I felt part of something, which is not a feeling I (or probably many of us) get regularly…I know I am, of course, but to feel it is another matter…In the right front corner in an alcove of Madonna blue speckled with silver stars stands a snow-white statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary; a lone, faithful candle glowing through the gloom near her head…I just love this stuff. The dull gold candlesticks, the embroidered altar cloths, the side chapels with St. Martin de Porres, St. T of Lisieux, St. Vincent Ferrer himself…

One day I made my way up to another of my favorite spots: Central Park’s Conservatory Garden. Part of the area is under renovation but another huge part was in full flush, and hardly anyone was there so I got to sit in the drizzle and eat my brown rice shrimp and avocado sushi and ponder how part of the Cross is that we can only be in one place at a time, we incarnate humans, and can only live one life…I’m an East Coaster by birth and deepest temperament so the decidious trees, the streams, fountains, Hudson River, general sense of water (it rained a lot of the time I was there, which after a Tucson summer, was lovely), the wise-guy zeitgeist, the pavements plastered with wet oak leaves, the hot dogs, pizza, donuts, are all so familiar to me…

The Met Cloisters courtyard garden was also a treat…

Pray for us, St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day is today.

NEW YORK

“What faith in her Son’s vocation would be demanded of her! What baffling things she would have to face! The slaughter of the innocents and Christ the innocent cause of it, the flight from Herod, the life in exile, and the Child being hunted all his life long; his fasting, so much against the grain for a mother; his choice to be homeless, after all the years that she had longed for and waited for their home together.”
–Caryll Houselander, of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Just a note from NYC–the main thing is the absolute heaven in being in a place with tons of Catholic churches, all beautiful, that are OPEN ALL DAY. Mass morning, noon, and evening, Adoration, Compline here and there: you are never far from a sanctuary.

I’m especially not far from a sanctuary as I’m across the back courtyard from St. Vincent Ferrer. Yesterday was the Feast of St. Dominic so they celebrated a pull-out-all-the-stops 6 pm Mass with a procession, schola, Veneration of Relics etc., plus “light refreshments” after which not to put too fine a point on it were pretty spectacular.

I may write a column about some facet or destination of my trip so won’t go into too much detail. I had a lovely day in Washington Heights Tuesday that included a walk through (and rest in) Tryon Park and a stop at the Met Cloisters.

TRYON PARK HEATHER GARDEN, WHICH OVERLOOKS THE HUDSON

Another high point: the American Folk Art Museum exhibit “Francesc Tosquelles: Avant-Garde Psychiatry and the Birth of Art Brut.” Tosquelles was all for eliminating hierarchies and special uniforms for doctors, patients helping to cure patients (really the model for AA), walks in the fresh air, and art.

Marguerite Sirvins (1890-1955) was a French textile artist who developed symptoms of schizophrenia and, as a mental patient, crocheted an entire wedding dress (never used) out of thread from unraveled bedsheets.

Myrllen (pronounced Merlin), Tennessee Eastern State Psychiatric Hospital, made among other things a fantastic blue coat embroidered with panels and text (also from unraveled thread). After being subjected to a battery of grotesque treatments, she was finally given Thorazine–and quit embroidering forever. Something deep there about how psychotropic meds shut down the bad parts but the good parts, too. Maybe she just needed love, and could have continued with her fantastic sewing.

UNTITLED (KNOWN AS “MYRLLEN’S COAT”), c 1948-1955

I think these are Etruscan, from a random Met gallery I ducked into to get away from the crowds.

I mean come on–this is what people created before they started frittering away their lifeblood on the internet.

THE JAPANESE AMERICAN MEMORIAL TO PATRIOTISM DURING WWII

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

In Washington, D.C., for a week recently, I hit many of the high spots: The National Gallery, the Smithsonian Castle, the Botanical Garden, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

My hotel was close to Union Station, a grand old railway and now ground transport hub that’s worth visiting if for no other reason than to check out the elegant brass drinking fountains. I’d take side streets down toward the Mall. It was on one of them that I came upon a memorial that touched and moved me at least as much, if not more, than the flashier, more heavily visited sites.

The National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II is a beautifully thought-out and designed triangular pocket park located at the intersection of New Jersey Avenue, Louisiana Avenue, and D Street.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

ROGER ACKLING: ARTIST OF SUNLIGHT AND WOOD

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Roger Ackling, British artist (1947-2014), sat for hours training the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass onto pocket-sized pieces of salvaged wood.

The sun burned small dots; the scorched dots formed ordered lines. The resulting creations are exquisite miniatures: “counter, original, spare, strange” to steal a line from Romantic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty.”

Ackling was not a conventional believer but his thought, intense focus, discipline, refusal to pontificate, and sense of humor bespeak a profound respect for mystery.

“Between the Lines: The Work and Teaching of Roger Ackling” (Occasional Papers, $21), a book of personal essays, reflections, reminiscences, and photographs edited by Emma Kalkhoven, is a good place to start.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

FRIED-BRAIN SUMMER

Here is something interesting I noted recently:

GEORGES BRAQUE, FRENCH PAINTER (1882-1963)

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

BORIS “FRANKENSTEIN” KARLOFF, BRITISH ACTOR (1887-1969)

–From the first Mass reading, July 30, 2024:

“Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest, Over the great destruction which overwhelms the virgin daughter of my people, over her incurable wound.

If I walk out into the field, look! those slain by the sword; If I enter the city, look! those consumed by hunger. Even the prophet and the priest forage in a land they know not.”

–Jeremiah 14:17-18

Somehow, reading the news these days, this rings very true.

Two picture books to help while away those afternoon siestas:

Merchants, Printers and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300-1550 by Lisa Monnas. This is 115 bucks or so if you want to buy it. If you don’t you can borrow it for one-hour increments on the Internet Archive. Gorgeous, swoon-worthy fabrics, paintings, and colors.

The Life and Work of Luis Barragán, by Buendía Júlbez and José María, also expensive, also available to borrow from Internet Archive. Barragán, as you may know, was a noted 20th-century Mexican architect, and if you like moss-covered fountains, walls of faded hot pink, tangerine and old gold, shadowy alcoves, recessed lighting, and jungle-cactus plantings, coupled with clean modern, lines, take a look.

From a description of the ground floor living room of the much visited Luis Barragán House in Mexico City; “Within a few steps, the figure of a wood carved Madonna, a luminous cylinder-shaped floor lamp, and the first of the great reflecting spheres (a new spatial contraction captured in silver) appear, carefully placed so that they might be discovered.”

I am preparing to travel to NYC next week. Very much looking forward to churches that are open all day for prayer, rest, reflection, private tears, mental breakdowns, etc. It’s been slim pickings here in Tucson, though I am soldiering on.

Have selected a few galleries at the Met (am on an Edouard Vuillard kick) and will confine myself to those so as not to be overwhelmed. Will also visit the Cloisters and the American Folk Art Museum.

What do you want to see at the Folk Art Museum?” a friend asked.

“Oh they have an exhibit of French mental patients from the 40s,” I replied. “The second I saw it, I got on kayak and booked a flight.”

VIRGIN AND CHILD, CARLO CRIVELLI, 1480
FEATURED IN THE MERCHANTS, PRINTERS AND PAINTERS BOOK

THE SOLITARY BEE AND OTHER LONERS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Swarms, herds, flocks, packs. When I think of animals, I tend to think of them living together in community. Bees in particular evoke images of hives — giant battalions of workers busily serving the queen, a great glistening mass I once saw slithering around the honey-laden frame held by an intrepid beekeeper friend.

Imagine my surprise, then, to learn recently of “the solitary bee.” They’re more diverse than their social honeybee and bumblebee brethren — there are 4,000 species in the U.S. alone, accounting for 98% of our total bee species. They’re also equally important pollinators.

The male solitary bee has but one function — to mate. The female gives birth, lives independently, collects pollen for her young, and then dies.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

THE GOD WHO RISKS

“The Eucharist is not meant for comfort; it is meant to draw a soul to greater sacrificial offering.”
–Fr. Donald Haggerty, from Conversion

“And then the problem. If you don’t pray, if you are not searching for a personal relationship with God, if you don’t stay with Him for long periods in order to know Him, study Him, understand Him, litte by little you will start forgetting Him, your memory will weaken, you will no longer recognise Him. You will not be able to, because you will no longer know how to love.”.

“Have you not been praying, not seeking HIm personally because you don’t love Him or because you have no time?
Usually we are afraid to accept the first reality; it is easier to fix on the second.”

“It is impossible to pray to a personal God–that is, love a personal God–and remain indifferent to your suffering brethren.
It is impossible.
Anyone who prays without suffering for his suffering brothers is praying to a pole, a shadow, not to the living God.”
–Carlo Carretto, from The God Who Comes

From Lecture 11–“Purgatory V, VI, IX, X” in a 24-part series called Dante In Translation, given by Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta, and offered (for free) by Yale Courses:

Starting at 22:00:

Prof: The issue is that in a love relationship between God and the soul, we are always at risk. If you accept the principle of a love economy, regulating the universe, which Dante does, certainly does, then you understand this notion of hazard in– not as a principle of just chance in the sense of casual blind randomness, but in the sense of this risk–proposition risk element.

Then the canto goes on–this particular metaphor goes on with another meeting between two poets. Yes?

Student: What do you mean by love economy?

Prof: The economy of love–the question–the clarification is what do I mean by the love economy?

Dante’s universe, it’s a universe of love and that’s how creation takes place, the creation of the universe and the creation of human beings. So we are–the involvement that we–every soul has with God is one of love. Just as in the relationship between say, Beatrice and Dante, there is an element of risk in loving. What is that risk in loving? I can think of several.

I think we are all grown ups to understand that, one loves and one may not be reciprocated in love.

That’s a pretty bad risk. Certainly, it’s a risk of God who creates and may not be loved, which is the story of what disobedience is, and certainly is the existential experience of human beings to be involved with someone.

“What is a psalm but a musical instrument to give expression to all the virtues?”
–From Explanations to the Psalms by St. Ambrose, bishop

VESPERS WALK, TUCSON

THE “FILTHY, ROTTEN SYSTEM” IS US

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins:

It’s instructive to read some of the more notable mid-20th-century Catholic writers in light of today’s political and religious climate. How do their prophetic teachings and thoughts hold up 70 years later?

Carlo Carretto (1910-1988), Italian priest, social activist, and contemplative, authored several books, among them “Letters from the Desert” (Orbis Books, $9).

In a later work, “The God Who Comes” (Orbis Books, $16.99), he writes: “One of the most fundamental errors a Christian can make in our times is to mistake or identify the gospel message with the evolution of history or with social revolution.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

BACK FROM RETREAT

“Perhaps the saints became holy because they never made peace with the impossibility of seeing God in this life. Among the poor, or in the midst of hostile or indifferent souls, they went in search of his face, only to return again to the silence of prayer where God once more hid himself. These souls lived as though always on the verge of finding a treasure and never succeeding. Blind and groping, cast back into darkness after refusing every partial vision–this was always preferable to taking comfort in a brilliant shadow.”
–Fr. Donald Haggerty, from Contemplative Provocations

“It is yearning that makes the heart deep.”
–St. Augustine

ROAD TO CEMETERYENTRANCE TO CEMETERYDAY IS DONE BUT LOVE UNFAILING DWELLS EVER HERE…

I had a very intense week-long retreat at St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, followed by a very intense day and night in the city.

Now that I’m back I can begin to “process.” And continue to make travel plans for NYC (Aug. 5-13) and Ireland (Sept. 5-30).

I left LA at 4:30 am Monday, stopped in Indio where I’d accidentally left behind my toiletries a week before, gassed up once, booked it, and was back in Tucson by 11:30. After which I spent three hours raking up the mesquite pods and other detritus that had been spread all over the front yard, back yard, and patios by a storm that took place over the weekend.

This week I need to work on a piece on Maria von Trapp for Magnificat and a piece on the solitary bee and other creatures from the animal kingdom who “go their own way.” I have books on the painters Giorgi Morandi and Édouard Vuillard I’m dying to dig into, and am listening to a 24-part series on The Divine Comedy–“Dante in Translation” with Giuseppe Mazzotta (put out by Yale Courses–check it out!) on YouTube.

But mostly I’m proof-reading and line-editing the “galleys” for my next (self-published) book: CONSUMED; The Joys, Sufferings and Débacles of a Life Ordered to Art.

Sufferings is right.

MATTERS FOR YOU ALONE: POEMS THAT EXPLORE FRIENDSHIP

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Leslie Williams is an award-winning Massachusetts poet whose collections include “Success of the Seed Plants” (Bellday Books Inc., $14) and “Even the Dark” (Southern Illinois University Press, $18). 

Her latest, “Matters For You Alone” (Slant Books, $17), consists in “a spiritual exploration of friendship: its shapes and duties, stresses and blames — and its absolute necessity.”

The title derives from the Jean-Pierre de Caussade 18th-century classic “Abandonment to Divine Providence,” and the poems are shot through with the search and longing for God, for connection, for the desire to love and to be loved.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

LESLIE WILLIAMS
photo: Kim Daley