Heather King's Blog, page 44

SPIKY, HAIRY, SHINY: INSECTS OF LA

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

“Meet your neighbors!” invites the Natural History Museum, but they’re not talking about the people next door. The exhibit “Spiky, Hairy, Shiny: Insects of LA,” runs through April 1, 2022.

All over the city, for the last 10 years people have gathered insects to help the Museum staff with its BioSCAN (Biodiversity Science: City and Nature) project. The project’s ostensible goal is to track climate change, but the insects were so wondrous in their color and design that the Museum decided to curate some of the more startlingly beautiful photographs and offer the results to the public.

If you come to the exhibit in the flesh, you’ll find large-format photographs of our local insects displayed next to life-size specimens. You can hear recordings of L.A.’s bugs across the span of an entire day. And you can learn more about the BioSCAN project

But if you’re not up for making the trek to the USC area in the summer heat, you can also check out the online exhibition and view some of these stunning and varied neighbors online.

You could not make these creatures up!

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

ANNOUNCING THE INDIAN SUMMER 2021 HEATHER KING WRITING WORKSHOP!

TIME’S A-WASTING…DO IT!

PRESSURE RELIEF

I forget sometimes that I’m an alcoholic, bodily and mentally different from my fellows as we say in recovery. Not that I don’t devote what seems like a trillion hours a week to keeping myself in fit spiritual condition, but sometimes my nervous system, psyche etc just go faintly to severely haywire for an apparent reason.

Inevitably one of the first symptoms is insomnia. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep at all though exhausted and other times I fall asleep but wake at 2 or 2:30 or 3 which is just a terrible drag as I am one million percent a morning person and my circadian rhythm is hard-wired when awake in the a.m. to get up, start drinking coffee, and embark on a frenzy of activity.

ESPECIALLY when I’m exhausted as I’m afraid I’ll be too tired to “get everything done” if I pace myself and so try to do it all at once, the idea being that after I perform my zillions of household chores, administrative tasks, correspondence responding-to, research and writing, to name just a few, I will then allow myself to go back to bed. Which never but never happens.

That’s just normal times. Throw in any kind of cultural/political/religious “situation” on which I have AN OPINION and God help me. I’m like a dog with a bone, talking to myself, jotting notes, constructing an airtight argument by means of which I hope to persuade the world and God that I AM RIGHT.

Like lately, I am SO on board with awe at the Transubstantiation, reverence for the Eucharist, et cetera. I’m very much at odds, however, with the way many people propose to demonstrate that reverence. And so deeply absorbed and exercised and upset and indignant and desirous of building a case did I become that I stopped going to Mass for a few days!

Yesterday morning after about 4 hours of sleep, I was out on the patio with my prayer books thinking Oh my God, I will never never make it through this day. And suddenly I realized, Why not go to the 7 at Sts. Peter and Paul? Just as suddenly, my whole being kind of righted. I was still tired, but not tired plus depressed plus frustrated plus pissed at the world.

Right then, I opened my Magnificat to read the day’s liturgy and the accompanying reflection was by Claude La Colombière, 17th-c. Jesuit priest, and was all about the essential nature of daily Mass and of how without Communion he gets tired, crabby, mean (I’m paraphrasing) ,and how if there is ONE THING WE CAN DO, it is to partake of the Eucharist every chance we get.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Without me you can do nothing.”

Which was really, in a nutshell, my whole point to begin with–except I forgot to take my own advice.

Does that ever happen in your world–that you’re stuck or struggling or have just come to some major epiphany, and on the instant practically you come upon a passage that seems specifically, directly, written to/for you?

The weather broke last night as well. A cool, refreshing breeze blew and It actually rained a teeny bit in the Sonoran desert. I went out and walked in it and this morning–for the Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist–feel cleansed.

MY PERSONAL COMMUNION OF SAINTS: BILL CUNNINGHAM

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

What does living out the Gospels look like as an attraction? To whom could we point a contemporary seeker, convinced that the Church is rigid, constraining, bloodless? To me, Bill Cunningham (of whom I’ve written here before) is a modern day saint: in his  understated way, a man who was utterly faithful to the teachings of Christ, utterly a servant, and utterly unique.

Cunningham (1929-2016), the subject of the 2010 documentary Bill Cunningham New York, was a fashion photographer—or, as he preferred, “fashion historian”—who for decades was a fixture in the New York Times.

“Evening Hours” covered NYC’s social, philanthropic, and political glitterati. “On the Street” celebrated the whole glorious spectrum of his beloved Manhattan. “The best fashion show is definitely on the street…It’s always the hope that you’ll see some marvelous exotic bird-of-paradise.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

NOTHIING BUT THEE

I always get confused re the distinction between humility and hiding our light under a bushel. Nonetheless with all honor to a Power Greater Than Myself: my Angelus News column just received First Place from the Catholic Press Association 2021 for Best Regular Column on Arts, Leisure, Culture and Food.

I definitely need to start writing more about leisure, but I’m too busy.

I also got a Second Place mention in the category “Best Coverage–Racial Inequities” for this essay, “The Ultimate Scapegoat.”

Even better, my beloved Angelus News received many other awards in many other categories. Big congrats to all, all around, with a special shout-out to Pablo Kay, editor-in-chief, who rec’d an Honorable Mention for the best such IN THE COUNTRY.

One year the CPA had me as a speaker for their annual awards conference. I went up after some guy from EWTN who crowed about having recently expanded the station’s reach to 18 trillion or something like that. When I got up there, I laughed, “Well, my own media empire is a bit smaller…I operate it from a desk in my bedroom that’s about four feet long”…

My desk I’m happy to say is now more like seven feet long as I’m using my former dining room table on which to spread out.

The weekly column is the fruit of a whole life of prayer, reading, pondering, sifting. When I saw yesterday that I’d won, first I cried a little and then I said, “That’s your prize, Jesus.” Nil nisi te.

EVOLUTION AND FAITH

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

“Evolution and Faith: What Is the Problem?”, an essay by Georgetown University Distinguished Professor of theology John F. Haught, was published earlier this year by the Portsmouth [RI] Institute for Faith and Culture. 

Having asked the same question myself many times, I read the article with excitement and interest.

I am no scientist, and admittedly, even after reading several books on Darwin, I don’t fully grasp his theory.

But if God is the maker of all that is seen and unseen: it is simply impossible that science could be at odds with religion. If it seems to be, it’s because we have misunderstood, misinterpreted or misconstrued God.

That’s because we see things from our human standpoint, and from a human standpoint our major goals are always 1) to avoid  suffering and 2) to amass as much power, property, and prestige as possible. We assume a “loving” God must want those things for us as well.

So we reject God as antithetical to our idea of love, instead of accepting the Trinitarian God and re- examining our idea of love.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

CLOISTERED

Immurement is a ghastly form of punishment. From wiki: “Immurement (from Latin im- “in” and murus “wall”; literally “walling in”) is a form of imprisonment, usually until death, in which a person is sealed within an enclosed space with no exits.[1] This includes instances where people have been enclosed in extremely tight confinement, such as within a coffin. When used as a means of execution, the prisoner is simply left to die from starvation or dehydration. This form of execution is distinct from being buried alive, in which the victim typically dies of asphyxiation.”

Straddling the thin line between passion and pathology, as certain members of we faithful tend to do, there have been those who adopted a modified form of the practice as a way of ongoing, if rather straitened, life.

To wit, again from wiki: “Anchorites: A particularly severe form of asceticism within Christianity is that of anchorites, who typically allowed themselves to be immured, and subsisting on minimal food. For example, in the 4th century AD, one nun named Alexandra immured herself in a tomb for ten years with a tiny aperture enabling her to receive meager provisions. Saint Jerome (c. 340–420) spoke of one follower who spent his entire life in a cistern, consuming no more than five figs a day.”

I’d read of such people somewhere along the line: nuns who shut themselves up except for a tiny opening through which they’d receive food, the Eucharist, and visitors seeking spiritual guidance. Naturally, I was compelled–cranks, very possibly, and yet…

CHECK OUT THE WOODEN JAVELINA!
HE CAME WITH THE PLACE.

Anyway, the other morning I was sitting out front, admiring the light filtering through the ocotillo-spine fence and realizing I’ve barely been leaving my house except for long walks and supplies, and I thought: I’m immured!

Think about it. I’m surrounded by an enclosure, on all four sides. I actually have a box of figs in the fridge. Leave out the people approaching for spiritual guidance…the holiness…the formal vow….okay, so maybe I’m not actually immured. I’m more like one of those six-year-old boys who drapes a blanket around his shoulders, steals a candle from the living room, and makes his little friends gather round a makeshift altar while he pretends to be a priest.

Whatever–I’m having the time of my life. All kidding aside, the 2020 lockdown, if not for the terrible suffering wreaked by the pandemic, suited me to a T. Continuing with the theme, soaring summer temps in Tucson make for a day that is naturally spent close to home. Walking early in the morning or evening is to me heaven (might be a bit on the warm side for others, but I am one of those people who is, annoyingly, always “cold”).

Speaking of pretending, illusion etc. I have also become obsessed, not too strong a word, with learning how to shoot and edit YouTube (or really any kind of) videos. Let’s pretend…No. Not that we’re YouTube “stars.” But that our desires, no matter how seemingly childish, to light the world on fire with Christ somehow, somewhere, avail.

THAT’S A WELCOME SIGN BENEATH THE LIGHT-
COME ON IN1

CORPUS CHRISTI

This morning I woke to an email from a dear friend at Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario.

She wrote of the sunflowers and morning glories she planted yesterday. She spoke of the six years she spent in Magadan, Russia, helping to establish the first Madonna House there.

She reminded me of a saint I wrote about a few years ago. My friend is a bit of a saint herself. And in honor of the great feast of Corpus Christi, here’s the piece.

SERVANT OF GOD ADELE DIRSYTÉ (1919-1955), tortured and martyred in Communist Russia, wrote the prayer book “Mary, Save Us” while imprisoned in Siberia.

Born in Lithuania to parents who were farmers, Adele was the youngest of six children. At college she majored in philosophy, then worked for various youth organizations. Among them was Caritas, which served widows and orphans. She taught German at a girls’ school, leading her students in prayer and retreats.

The Soviet occupation of Lithuania began in 1940. In June 1941, Germany attacked the USSR and soon occupied the Baltic territories.  During the Nazi occupation, Adele lived with a woman who was harboring a Jewish girl.

By 1944, the Soviet army had reoccupied the capital city of Vilnius. Adele began participating in a resistance movement that was organizing for Lithuanian independence. 

In 1946, she was arrested for hiding a woman who had escaped from the Soviets. She was brought before a tribunal, and sentenced for “counterrevolutionary activities” to ten years in a concentration camp.  

Imprisoned for a year in Vilnius, she was then transferred to what would be the first of a series of forced labor camps. She and her fellow inmates hacked trees, moved rocks, and built railways, They also endured bitter cold, poor sanitary conditions, and starvation rations.

Adele was known for her kindness, faith, and steadfast efforts to console and comfort her fellow prisoners. At Magadan concentration camp in Russia, she managed to produce a small prayer book, hand-sewn with cloth covers. Other inmates were encouraged to add their own hand-written prayers as the book made the rounds of the barracks. Originally called: “Prayer Book for Girls Exiled in Siberia,” the little volume eventually found its way to the West and is now known as “Mary, Save Us.”

One day a priest inmate from the adjacent men’s camp arranged for the Eucharist to be brought over and distributed among the Lithuanian women. The guards noticed and, over the coming months, Adele was taken repeatedly to a cold underground cell and beaten. All her teeth were knocked out. Her fellow inmates realized she had been marked for “slow extermination.”  

In the fall of 1953 she was held in the punishment cell for a week, then transferred to an unknown location for the winter. She returned to Magadan partially incoherent, with half of her hair torn out, and was moved to the mentally ill ward. Here she refused food, saying “You who work must eat.” She died on September 26, 1955.  The cause for her beatification was opened on January 14, 2000.

One detail, from her time before prison, haunts. A former student remarked “She was modest and very quiet… Her lessons were a bit boring.”

Her lessons were a bit boring. How sharply we are reminded that the person  marked out by Christ to share his crown is often outwardly ordinary and without special talents.

Her lessons were a bit boring.  And within Servant of God Adele Dirsyté burned the heart of a martyr, a queen, a saint. 

For this and 49 other such stories, check out FOOLS FOR CHRIST: FIFTY DIVINE ECCENTRIC ARTISTS, MARTYRS, STIGMATISTS, AND UNSUNG SAINTS

MAGELLANICA

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

Magellanica is a five-part, four-hour audio drama, streaming for free through June 30 on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Sticher and other major podcast platforms.

Adapted by the award-winning playwright E.M. Lewis, from her 2018 World Premiere play, the drama is based on an actual expedition: the scientists and engineers, led by American climatologist Susan Solomon who converged at the South Pole Research Station in 1986 in order to study the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) on the atmosphere.

The thumbnail: “In the darkest, coldest, most dangerous place on Earth, eight imperfect souls are trapped together and utterly isolated from the outside world for eight and a half months. This tiny, international community meets as strangers and must face life or death challenges, their own inner demons, and depend upon each other for survival.”

In other words, this is one perfect way to ponder the last year as we segue back into “normal” life.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

SECRET JOYS

“Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you.”
–Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), author of “My Utmost for His Highest”

I spotted the above cactus while scurrying to 7 am Mass this morning.

By the time I emerged from church it was already kind of incredibly hot!

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!

I am going to use these hot summer days to learn something, or a few things, new.

After I posted the other day about my YouTube channel, for example, I thought, Oh maybe I should actually learn what a YouTube channel, and is for, and how you make it look nice.

This all brought up deep resistance. I think I should know how to do things or learn things or feel my way on my own (pride). I’m not interested in probably 97% of what’s on YouTube (pride). I’m afraid I’ll get first overwhelmed, then obsessed (based on experience, a very real fear).

I like to forge my own path.

Okay, fine. But there’s a very thin line between forging your own way and sloth. There’s another thin line between not wanting to sell out and not wanting to risk failure and rejection. I would way rather sit on the sidelines judging the “marketers” while feeling smugly proud of my own relative obscurity. There’s a kind of dishonesty at the core that, lately, has been making for a certain degree of discomfort.

So yesterday I went on YouTube and searched “how to make a good youtube channel.” What came up were all these videos of earnest, engaging, enthusiastic, young men wearing backwards baseball caps who were just incredibly helpful!

They were all like, “You have to be adding something of value to people’s lives. You’re taking up people’s time and energy: what are you giving or offering them?” How great is that?

The next thing they all said was, “Find a niche. Figure out one fairly narrow thing upon which you want to focus. No-one, unfortunately, is interested in the meanderings of your daily life. You can’t be all things to all people.”

Also great: so sensible, though I never would have thought of it myself (obviously). And that you can’t be all things to all people applies across the board to all of life.

Then they went on to offer all these other bits of wisdom that I, too, have picked up in the course of my earthly pilgrimage, though in my case it’s taken about 40 extra years. They talked about wanting their first video to be so perfect, and being so crippled by fear, that they put off making it for months (I took the opposite tack, but the underlying fear is actually the same). They talked about being patient, about being willing to put in tons of work, about starting small, about not being obsessed with the numbers, about being yourself and not trying to copy or imitate anyone else.

I learned what a thumbnail is, and a tag.

But mostly I learned how much I have to learn, and about the depth of my arrogance.

But all the YouTubers also said you have to make a ton of mistakes, so no harm done. But I am going to put some real work into learning to make a decent video, and I’m also checking out the possibility of a podcast, and my thought is to narrow my focus to The Vocation of the Artist–which is a very roomy subject and basically would allow me to have long conversations with all my dearest friends.

So thanks for bearing with me as I continue to Connect All Us Exiles!

Because I can hardly imagine a greater secret joy than that.