{"id":792,"date":"2014-09-24T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T00:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=792"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:50:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:50:12","slug":"sept-24-grief-and-delight-entwined-inthe-dark-down-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/09\/24\/sept-24-grief-and-delight-entwined-inthe-dark-down-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Sept 24 — “grief and delight entwined in\tthe dark down there”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday \u00a0September 24 <\/b><\/p>\n

\"Catherine_McAuley\"<\/a>Mercy Day<\/strong>
\nThe great feast that unites the Mercy world is Mercy Day. Its origin dates back to September 24th, 1827 when the House on Baggot Street opened as a school for the education of poor young girls and as a residence for homeless girls and women.<\/h3>\n

3 bishops come to mind.<\/b>
\n1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bishop 1 \u00a0 Dom H\u00e9lder C\u00e2mara (1909-1999)<\/b><\/p>\n

Once, \u00a0at a St. Louis celebration of the 150th anniversary of Sisters of St. Joseph in the US, Archbiship Dom H\u00e9lder C\u00e2mara changed me. \u00a0He had come from his home, the northeast industrial city of Recife, Brazil. \u00a0Dom Helder was a little man full of fun, passion and courage. \u00a0On the banks of the Missouri with 1000+ people sitting on the levee, his voice was drowned out by a tourist helicopter taking off just behind him. \u00a0He paused, turned around, gave the tourists and the pilot a little wave, and turned back to business. \u00a0Later, in a formal address, he grew so angry at the violence of extreme wealth\/extreme poverty that he wept as he spoke \u00a0. \u00a0. \u00a0 . \u00a0 and then spoke of God\u2019s astonishing love for the human family and began laughing with abandon \u2014 all this in the same grammatical sentence<\/span>. \u00a0Dom H\u00e9lder was completely believable, one of my heroes.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bishop 2 \u00a0Blase Cupich<\/b><\/p>\n

Late last Saturday night, I read on-line that Pope Francis had named Blase Cupich the new Chicago Archbishop. \u00a0 A wave of delight for me and many. \u00a0 Chicago is one of the big-dog dioceses of the country, \u00a0a pivotal public voice of U.S. Catholicism. \u00a0I briefly met Cupich\u00a0on the Pine Ridge Reservation when he was Bishop of Rapid City SD and had heard from local people that he has a welcoming presence. \u00a0In his Sept 23 blog John Gehring contrasted Bishop Cupich with the retiring Cardinal Francis George:<\/p>\n

“Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wa., an unexpected pick, replaces the hardline Cardinal Francis George, who clashed with the Obama administration,\u00a0compared<\/a>\u00a0organizers of a Chicago gay pride parade to the Ku Klux Klan, and once declared liberal Catholicism an \u201cexhausted project.\u201d Cupich prefers dialogue and common ground to rhetorical fireworks. When some bishops warned that Catholic institutions could be shut down because of the contraception mandate in Obamacare, he cautioned against \u201cscare tactics\u201d and instead emphasized the church\u2019s commitment to universal health care. “We should never stop talking to one another,” he\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in a 2012 essay in the Jesuit America<\/span> magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n

All week I\u2019ve been smiling and getting emails from friends around the country who are smiling too.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pope Francis<\/b> changes Catholic focus. \u00a0In an early interview published September 19, 2013 Francis\u00a0created a metaphor that has become a bedrock description of what the RC Church ought to be — field hospital.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. … And you have to start from the ground up.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>I don\u2019t know why these three bishops all came to mind this morning when I contemplated today\u2019s post. \u00a0 All three help me imagine that you do not have to ignore savage grief in order to dance with joy. \u00a0 So does Denise Levertov. \u00a0 Best to read her out loud.<\/p>\n

Have a great day, \u00a0another dazzling welcome into Autumn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post: \u00a0from\u00a0\u201cConversation in Moscow”<\/b><\/p>\n

And the poet–it’s midnight, the room is half empty, soon we must part–
\nthe poet, his presence
\nursine and kind, shifting his weight in a chair too small for him,
\nquietly says, and shyly:
\n“The Poet
\nnever must lose despair.”
\nThen our eyes indeed
\nmeet and hold,
\nAll of us know, smiling
\nin common knowledge–
\neven the palest spirit among us, burdened
\nas he is with weight of abstractions–
\nall of us know he means
\nwe mustn’t, any of us, lose touch with the source,
\npretend it’s not there, cover over
\nthe mineshaft of passion
\ndespair somberly tolls its bell
\nfrom the depths of,
\nand wildest joy
\nsings out of too,
\nflashing
\nthe scales of its laughing, improbable music,
\ngrief and delight entwined in the dark down there.
\nDenise Levertov, “Conversation in Moscow” in Freeing of the Dust<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday \u00a0September 24 Mercy Day The great feast that unites the Mercy world is Mercy Day. Its origin dates back to September 24th, 1827 when the House on Baggot Street opened as a school for the education of poor young … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}