December 1, 2020 – Tuesday of Advent Season
“Companion is the one who eats the same bread.”
–Dom Helder Camera
This show stopping photo was not taken this year; weather.com predicts something like a wintry mix — some snow, temps ranging from the mid-thirties to mid-forties so the view outside my window this year doesn’t take my breath away; just an ordinary workday. This Tuesday, though, takes us a little deeper into Advent – – a season of outrageous promises of hope mostly from Isaiah. Advent’s prophets are meant to be read out loud, taken seriously, placed in tension with our gloomiest predictions of a mean world’s worst. Here are some verses from Isaiah 35, the prophecy for late in Advent’s first week.
“The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
The pic at the beginning of the post was taken some years ago early in Advent’s second week – – Sometimes Detroit is gloomy; sometimes exquisite. For more than 4 million people, metro Detroit is home no matter its weather.
Advent reminds me of one of the great saints in my life. Here’s an Advent meditation about Dom Helder Camera I wrote some years ago.
Dom Helder Camera February 7, 1909, Fortaleza, Brazil – August 27, 1999. He was archbishop of Recife and Olinda from 1964 to 1985 during a military dictatorship in Brazil. He interpreted Catholic teaching with consistent, fierce attention to the violence of systems that sustained brutal poverty. He made serious enemies.
It is said that some of them hired a hitman to remove him. Like the professional he was, the hitman stalked Dom Helder for some time, learning his habits, seeking a place and time apt for killing. In the process, he listened to the Archbishop speak a number of times until, one day, he fell at Dom Helder’s feet, weeping, and begged for the grace to change his life and his profession.
When he walked this earth, Dom Helder’s presence engaged the world’s wounds. This unblinking attention to the violence of poverty was matched by legendary playfulness. Here is one story among many, this one I witnessed. Once Dom Helder was speaking to about 1500 Sisters of St. Joseph who sat on the St. Louis levee overlooking the Mississippi River (by the Arch); in the middle of the talk, a helicopter took off right behind him filled with tourists taking a ride with a bird’s eye view of the river and the city. It made enough racket that it was impossible to hear what the Dom Helder was saying. He paused, turned around to the helicopter, and gave the tourists a puckish little wave. When the helicopter got a little farther out on its trip, he turned back to us.
Here is one of his sayings. Read it like a poem, out loud, with pauses.
Have a blest work week,
john sj
Today’s Post – Dom Helder Camera
“It is possible to travel alone, but we know the journey is human life
and life needs company.
Companion is the one who eats the same bread.
The good traveler cares for weary companions, grieves when we lose heart,
takes us where she finds us, listens to us.
Intelligently, gently, above all lovingly, we encourage each other to go on
and recover our joy
On the journey.”
7 February 1909 – 27 August 1999