John Janaro's Blog, page 182

Abstract, Concrete, Hearts that Love

Here is some recent graphic art:
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"Park Bench" -- digital design based on a photo of a park bench.

"Elements, 1" is an abstract expressionist digital design. The theme is "elements."

"Sacred Heart" for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, digital design based on freehand drawing.

"Immaculate Heart of Mary" is a digitally stylized and augmented rendering of a photo of a common Fatima image.

Christina Grimmie: "I Will Always Love You"

I'm glad Christina Grimmie's YouTube page reposted her beautiful rendition of the song "I Will Always Love You" which has an especially poignant and personal sense as we approach the second anniversary of her death.
Christina recorded this in 2012 on YouTube, when she was just 18 years old.

It was the only time she sang a cover with karaoke background music rather than arranging and performing the instrumental parts on her own keyboard. This cover was a tribute to Whitney Houston, who had just died, and Christina wanted to concentrate entirely on the vocals in order to do honor to the great singer who had left her mark on a whole era of popular music.
In the end, however, this was more than a tribute to Whitney. Christina did what she always did, what she couldn't not do. She made the song her own.
By 2012, she had a good microphone, but otherwise there was little in the way of high production for this song. The relative spontaneity of the "early days" of YouTube was still the rule. Still, it sounds terrific. This is a precious recording entirely because Christina Grimmie had a precious voice.
She sang this song with her own unmistakable voice, with her own soulful, melodious resonance, her own combination of strength and sweetness, her own seemingly effortless modulation between soft and powerful tones, and her command of the whole range of volume, dynamics, and the entire palette of sonic nuance her voice could employ.
The voice of Christina Grimmie was unique, inimitable, and—like Whitney Houston—worthy of the word great.

Mighty Waters

We had so much rain over the weekend that there was high water and flash flooding all over our Valley.
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But the new week has been dry and cool, with lots of sunshine. At least in my neighborhood, what had become Angry Creek was returning to manageable levels.
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Still, this spot was little more than a muddy path in the unusual dryness of last Fall. Relatively speaking, we now have a roaring deluge of mighty waters near Happy Creek Road.
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It was big enough to be on YouTube!

Corpus Christi: The Eucharist as God's "Poetry"

For some reason, this post from two years ago (the picture above--an image from the altar of our parish church--and the poem below, which I don't think is one of my best poems) is the most widely viewed post in the history of this blog. 

It could be a search engine accident--i.e. lots of people are looking for "pictures of the Last Supper" or for information about "Corpus Christi, Texas." In any case, many thousands have viewed the page from two years ago.

Perhaps a few have read it.

As I have written elsewhere, the Eucharist is God's poetry, written into the heart of history and the heart of every day.

Here I stammer, straining to see a few shadows and hear a few echoes of the mystery, and to remember the "taste" of His gift.

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What is this Love?

What is this Love,
this Love inexhaustible
broken into crumbs,
poured out in earthen vessels?

What is this Love?
Love Creator of the burning stars;
Love Creator of the angels—     those great, gigantic, magnificent, comprehending spirits.

Love Creator of the human being….     The glorious human being:
     master of the earth and its things,
     yet a tiny speck under the sky;
     image of God,
     dust and ashes.
     great and miserable,
     hungry humanity, hungry with a thousand hungers….

This is Love's impossible gift;
Love inexhaustible,
     broken into crumbs,
     poured out in earthen vessels.

Love beyond all measure
become a morsel of food and drink
     in our tiny mouths.

Given and given, poured out and broken,
Love to the end, scattered
     beyond the edges of all wandering,
     finding, filling
     the hidden empty starved spaces
     of the most distant secret silent cries.

Human Relationships: Living as "Brothers and Sisters"

Dear fellow Christians: do we really believe that Jesus makes us brothers and sisters in a unity more intimate than anything in this world? Do we really know what it means to live as members of one another in Christ, journeying together toward our common destiny of eternal life and love in the Trinity?

It's so easy, as Catholic Christians, to have a moment in which we recognize, "this is the road for our journey!" but then to walk that road like we are strangers.

I have a very hard time with that. For me, the road is so weird and I get lost all the time, or go around in circles. I can't do this alone. I need something more than polite fellow-travelers on this trip. Even though I constantly fight to preserve the illusion of my "autonomy" and the fantasy of my own self-sufficiency, I know that I need to live my faith together with other people.

So where can I go? The Church, of course! But what does that mean? There's the local church ...what do I find in the typical vibrant American [or insert your country here] parish? There are the sacraments, first of all, -- the fountains of Christian life are given in them. But how is this life lived intensely? Well, the parish has many kinds of groups. I may encounter something here that really changes me. Or I might just find lots of well-intended activity going on. That's good and worthwhile, but by themselves good activities are not enough. After they're over, I get into my car and drive back to my lonely fortress. Is that what the New Testament calls "the fellowship of disciples"?

I need help for my whole life, relationships, everything. I need "community." This is a fundamental human need, and for a Christian this need only intensifies. But let's face it: building and sustaining a real community is the hardest thing in the world . People always end up fighting and dividing into factions. Catholics? Oh boy, we fight more than anybody.

So where can I find intense "Catholic community"?

What about just giving up my mind and my freedom to someone who seems to know it all, some self-appointed "benevolent Catholic dictator" who just tells me what to think and what to do and relieves me of the awful burden of being a human person? I must admit that this option can be very tempting. "Conformity" and "comfort," disguised as "obedience," could shape my notions and my behavior into a formulaic routine, and give me a sense of superiority, but they would also also suffocate my heart -- that depth of me that says, "I am someone, I have been made for a reason, I have aspiration, I have hope, I don't just want to be reduced to a 'part' of a project, not even the cosmic project!"

What else is there for me? Should I just embrace and exalt my aloneness? I could say, "I'm gonna do what I think is 'Catholic' [i.e. whatever I want, as long as I can rationalize it by some veneer of Catholic theology or piety] and just blow off everybody else." For me, personally, that's the short path to the psych ward. Others seem to get by with this attitude, except that it's really crummy for their spouses (who often become ex-spouses) and their children and anyone else who needs them or tries to care about them. Not a good option.

I don't want to be alone. I need people. Clubs and casual friends and the internet are not enough. But being part of some kind of "collective" not only is humanly unhealthy, it also just covers up the loneliness. And there can be a lot missing even from the experience of being in dedicated Catholic groups that work together for the good of the Church. People can share an activity (even passionately) without sharing their lives. Passion for the cause can become a cover for not acknowledging the poverty of my person, for not sharing myself, for not loving and for not being honest about my own vulnerability, my own need to be loved.

I can even "belong" to a "movement," and wear it like a badge, and conform myself to its external style, and do all the "stuff," and still not invest myself. I can cover up the fact that I'm poor and that I need God. I can hide it from others, and from myself. I can choose mere conformity over the struggle to live with others heart-to-heart. It's so much easier than the risk of exposing my suffering to myself and others, and then suffering even more as I discover that they don't fully understand me and they can't fix me.

Portrait of the Artist as a Proud ManIt's also true that I don't want people meddling in my life. I don't want to let them see my faults and then tell me what they think "I have to do." That's because I lack humility, first of all. I mean, let's be real here. I'm a proud man and I don't know how to be humble. I don't like being corrected by anyone else, even (especially!) when their corrections are spot on.

I'm proud, therefore I'm afraid.

But there is another reason for this fear that I have. So often in life, my experience has been that people come along, stand on their platform, rebuke me, and then they go away! It's as if they are saying, "You don't really belong (and we won't really love you) until you correct these aspects of your personality, and you have to do that all by yourself. Then, after you've filled up all your own personal holes, then we will be with you and love you."

I shouldn't be surprised by this, however, because I do the same thing to other people.

We do this so much to one another. Precisely those of us who are most committed to the ideals of community and relationships and solidarity: We do this. It happens in movements and committed Christian communities. It happens (too much) in "Catholic" marriages and "Catholic" families where we pride ourselves on our Catholic values, on how we "do things right" and how we are so different from all those screwed up families and screwed up people out there in the bad, bad world.

How different are we, really? We have an indissoluble marriage, a big family, a good Catholic community, or even an institution or movement "that has been praised by the Pope." But how do we live? Do we live as "brothers and sisters," really? Or, rather, do we live our real lives alone. Then we come out to "help" one another every so often. Then we go back to our own inner shells, to being alone.

Even when we are "together," we can easily live this dialectic of loneliness and invasiveness, reducing our togetherness into a kind of violence and alienation. This happens insofar as we forget about Jesus, insofar as we forget about the Holy Spirit. This forgetfulness can happen even when there's lots of talk about Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Church and the Eucharist and the sacraments and community and the dignity of the human person and all the rest. It's easy to "domesticate" these words into our vocabulary and forget about the mysterious, intimate, concrete realities they signify.

I don't want to belong to a group of people who just correct my behavior and call me "brother," but forget the real Jesus, and therefore don't really, actively love me. That's not the life of the Church. That's manipulation. That's the dynamic of a fundamentalist sect. It's just another form of power imposing itself upon the weak.

Without Jesus emptying Himself on the cross out of love for sinners, for each one of us, for every human person, without Jesus and His love to the end... what are we?  Nothing!

With Him, and depending completely on Him, trusting in Him, we really live the mystery of the Church. We are His presence in the world. This is our vocation, and this is what He wants so ardently, for us and for others, because He wants to love. What can I do except beg Jesus to make this happen in myself, my family, my friends, that the Holy Spirit will make this new life grow in me, change me, transform me, taking up all the weakness and the fear, opening up all the selfishness.

When we talk about our relationships within the Church, we use these terms: "brothers and sisters" and "members of a body." Why? Are we just being nice? Why these metaphors, or even better, are they just metaphors? The Church is our Mother. Baptism is a new birth. We are brothers and sisters and more, members of Christ's "mystical" body (and "mystical" means real, but in a mysterious way beyond our understanding). Thus incorporated into Christ's body, we are members of one another.

Is all this just "Christianspeak"? I hope not. Because this is what I want! I want brothers and sisters. I want a family. I want to belong to God, to call Him "Father," and to have the freedom to be with others in my life and say, "I am your brother" and "you are my brother, you are my sister."

You--my brother, my sister--you help me just by the fact that we are together, you help me even when you fail or forget. We live our fidelity to Jesus and the whole of His Catholic Church together, on the daily level. We can help one another to deal with all the junk that comes along every day, and when we look at one another, we'll start to remember that because of Jesus all of this junk has value.

And, if you think I'm being stupid about something, go ahead and tell me, because that's what brothers and sisters do. Of course you might be wrong, but if you think you see something that I'm missing about myself, you'll take the chance. I might get angry, but together we'll work it out (eventually, with patience) and we'll grow. We can look to our elders whose wisdom and example are a gift to us. We can forgive one another for having different personalities and therefore bumping against one another all the time, every day. Because we know we're a family and we're not going to go away and stop loving each other. We are together in Him. Jesus. We help one another to follow Him to the place where our hearts will all finally be at home.

Is it possible to live this way? Is it possible to even begin to live this way? It must be possible, because this is the life that God wants to give us. The Christian vocation is to love every person, of course, but the vitality of that love comes from the unity, openness, and freedom that Jesus gives to Christians who love one another. Thus we are exhorted to

"Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all" (Ephesians 4:1-6).

This is at the heart of Jesus's prayer for all his followers:

"...that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:21-23).

Is it possible to live this way, daily, together? It must be possible. It is, more than anything, what the world desperately needs from us. We can at least begin. We can begin to want it, desire it, ask for it. We can begin to live this way, and then begin again the next day, and every day.

As for me, I run away from this life every day. It scares me to death (why is that?). But it's still what I really want. I beg for it. Jesus, I know that this is the only way to live really, to find myself, to walk the steps of each day, to attain my destiny.

Jesus, help me to begin again.

Little Kids Get Big

I couldn't resist this Facebook "memory" from nine years ago today (June 1, 2009).
The little girl on the left (Lucia) is graduating from High School today. The kid behind the cakes (John Paul) celebrates his 21st Birthday today!
HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!

Saint Joan and "God's Girl Squad"

May 30 is the feast day of the peasant girl from Domremy, Jeanne la Pucelle, whom we call "Joan of Arc." She was burned to death on this day in the year 1431 in Rouen in France, after her short, stunning, inexplicable career in the history of late medieval Europe.

Joan gave her life after leading armies, encouraging a king, and baffling her adversaries in her long and famous trial. Finally condemned by treachery, she cried out the name of Jesus as the flames consumed her on the stake. She returned her soul to God after having fulfilled the mission she had received from him.

She was only 19 years old.

Nearly 700 years later, Saint Joan continues to be a national heroine in France, to fascinate and inspire people all over the world, and to be a source of renewed innocence and goodness and courage.

Even today, she is one of great leaders of a singular army that fights for the good on the innumerable battlefields of human hearts, a spiritual army that I like to call (with a little humor but more than a little affection) God's Girl Squad.

While I refer to "God's Girl Squad" with tongue-in-cheek (because, after all, they're just kids), I mean no lack of respect for the awesome reality of this group. I am referring to the two-thousand-year-old group of young women who dedicated their lives to Jesus Christ, and who usually sealed that dedication with martyrdom at a very young age—or else they died young from some excruciating disease or some other thing that brought incomprehensible suffering.
Their short lifespans, however, have not stopped them from continuing to mysteriously "take care of" people in this world, with a very particular tenderness and attention and (I don't know how else to describe it) a very "energetic spirit."

As another one of their leaders, Therese of Lisieux, put it, they "spend [their] heaven doing good on earth."
They are particularly attentive to the weak, the physically weak and the spiritually weak. Not to mention the psychologically weak. We the living can ask for their help, and they will help us. But I think that often they "decide to bother us" long before we even think of asking for any help, or even know who they are.

They are fearless and they are persistent. After all, they live entirely from the infinitely magnanimous Heart of the Risen Jesus.
I'm not joking. These girls are real. Saint Joan of Arc is just one outstanding example. And for reasons that I cannot fathom and could hardly begin to try to explain but that are genuine and significant nonetheless, this is an all-girls' group. Here we find the "genius of the feminine" with a eminent, supernatural vitality. These are girls with the simplicity and joy of little children, the innocence of maidens, the tenacious hearts of mothers, and the authority of queens.

Think of it: Start with the anonymous ones that were probably among Nero's victims in the gruesome year of 64. Then you have Saints Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, Melania the Younger, then others from the Middle Ages along with Joan, and then from all over the earth, from Japan to the Americas to Africa, through the centuries, all the way up through Therese and Elizabeth of the Trinity to Blessed Chiara Luce Badano, who died from osteosarcoma at the age of 18 in 1990.

Chiara Luce, as I have noted before in this blog, first tapped me on the shoulder on March 12, 2012.
Of course that last detail is merely my very fallible self-reflection on my own spiritual journey. I have no doubt that Chiara Luce is my good friend, but I can't make any particular statements about our friendship or any of these other mysterious friends and helpers of my life with any objective authority.
I know they are very "busy" in my life. But I don't see them. I don't hear them.

Rather, I surmise, I follow "hunches," I mark their connection with events in my life even as I find myself swept up into the stories of their lives. I can't prove (even to myself) that the specific help I'm inclined to attribute to the Girl Squad is anything more than a combination of coincidences and my very active imagination.
But, overall, there is something to it.

Catholic tradition and teaching assure us of the reality of the intercession of the saints. I have confidence that they accompany me in various ways on my journey with Jesus in the Church. And there is also that particular level of reality that pertains to personal relationship, where people experience connection to one another in a manner that cannot be fully objectified or conceptually expressed.
The workings of the heart, of love, are beyond our understanding in this world.
Occasionally these mysterious, grace-given relationships have effects that can be evaluated by rational investigation. An incurable disease suddenly vanishes, and scientists have no explanation for how this was possible. These are the miracles that find their way into the dossiers submitted to the ecclesiastical processes of beatification and canonization.
These are very careful, very rigorous processes. There are people who have enough testimonies to fill a room with old fashioned filing cabinets. Out of these, one or two might be submitted for consideration as a verifiable miracle.

Most of the good that flows from the enormous range of the love of God's Girl Squad would never even make it into the room.
Nevertheless, I'm convinced that these girls are a special group, with a special place in the Heart of Jesus and the communion of saints, and that they "work" in a special and particular way through the love of Jesus that has transformed them.

We have so many examples among the Church's officially declared saints and blesseds, but there must be many others who are not canonized, among whom surely are those who lived in good faith as non-Catholic Christians, or even "non-Christians" (who in this world were mysteriously connected to Christ's life by love, by the vital response of their good conscience, and by their fidelity to the steps of the journey given to them).

There must be many others—even girls we knew in this life as our sisters, neighbors, friends, students, or children—who have gone to God and yet have not ceased to be with us.

More Illuminated "Digital Manuscripts" From Scripture

Here are a couple of texts and designs I have worked on recently. It is not always easy for me to identify the connection (if any) between the design and the verse itself.

Sometimes I'm just playing around with colors and possibilities. But there are obvious graphic themes (as in the cross design in the verse from 1 Peter below).

I'm trying not to just do the same thing over and over. That is part of the challenge.

This "Face"

There's a lot going on with this "Face," you know it. That's one complicated human being there.

...But don't worry; it's not all bad!

Children of God, Heirs with Christ in the Spirit