Old World Swine

Prayer for Jeff Hendrix, aka "Athos"

As you may have noticed, I've been in a very eccentric blogging orbit for some time, and so I fall behind on important news and events in the lives of a lot of people I admire.

Jeff Hendrix (also widely known on the interwebs as "Athos"), author, blogger and Bearded Catholic, has been one of those consistently engaging writers and commenters I've had the pleasure to run across. I have not lately done much blog surfing, and so I was not aware of some serious health issues that Jeff was having... or I was not aware they had become as serious as they have. I'm sorry to hear that Jeff is in a very bad way.

Jeff's fellow blogger from The Four Masketeers, Michael Baruzzini, reports via Mark Shea that Jeff "is in the last days of his battle with cancer. I would like to ask you, and your many readers, to keep him and his family in prayer."

Please join me in prayer for Jeff Hendrix, his family and his friends. May they all be granted the peace of Christ.

UPDATE: I just read at Mark Shea's blog that Jeff passed away this morning.

Eternal rest, grant unto him, O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May they he rest in peace.

Amen.

Signs in the Heavens

Some amazing skies I've seen lately. Unforunately, I had no way to record them for posterity.

The first was Thursday morning, when I saw the thinnest of crescent moons hanging over a the pre-dawn glow that spread low on the Eastern horizon. A crescent so slim and brittle one was afraid it might break in a driving autumn wind. The atmosphere was so clean and clear (so different from summer) that behind the crescent one could see very plainly the bulging form of the unlit portion of the moon, its solidity and roundness so palpable that it looked like someone had hung a Christmas ornament among the stars.

Then this morning I again became an accidental stargazer. Sweet Wifey had just left for the day and I was about to start my morning prayers. I have always struggled to keep any discipline and consistency in my prayer life, and having a routine is almost a necessity. When my schedule is disrupted or goes through major changes, my prayer life suffers for weeks. I am a creature of habit. I am also not a morning person. This particular morning (as with most) if I closed my eyes to pray, my brain assumed it was time to go back to sleep.

But I'm also a very visual person, and when my eyes are open for prayer, the world is full of distractions for me. So, I went to our big picture window to look out on the pre-dawn blackness of the woods, so that I would have as few visual distractions as possible. I was delighted to see the stars out and shining brilliantly in the pristine autumn air. Orion was clearly visible, even through the tangle of oaks with their remaining tattered leaves. If one has to be visually distracted during prayer, one could do worse.

Then I saw what I realized was a prodigy, but one routinely overlooked. I saw a man-made star, blinking its multi-colored lights silently across the heavens. The thing is, had any cave-dweller seen such a thing in ages past, it would have been some sort of apocalypse, a portent and a wonder. If I understand correctly, primitive people would often speculate that there must be heavenly beings or even men riding aboard comets and meteors. Here I was looking at a multi-colored shooting star, knowing full well there were people riding in it, and it hardly registered on my conscious mind as I sipped my coffee. How dull our minds must be, to see such a thing as mundane.

It reminded me of this quote by Ralph Walso Emerson, taken from David Zach's book of quotations called Worth Remembering;

If the stars should appear just one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore!

God Invented Weekends

I love being a Catholic. The photo above was not set up at all... just a collection of stuff that happened to be there this morning: my favorite pipe, some smoking paraphernalia, prayer book, Rosary and G.K. Chesterton coffee mug. Later tonight, I suppose I should take another photo, only there will likely be a glass of wine instead of the coffee.

There are hedges that need trimming, and half a hundred small chores that cry for attention, but The Boss jovially insisted I take the whole day off and drop by His House later to see him.

Sunday is also a great day to read all the poems Pavel Chichikov has sent through the week. Like a good meal, it takes a little leisure to give them proper attention.

Today (Sunday, July 11) is also day four of the Belloc Novena.

(cross posted at The League of Bearded Catholics)

Prayers, Please

We happen t have a lot of folks in my extended family in need of prayer right now;

My Uncle, who is eighty-one, recovering from recent surgery on his back, also two days ago lost his wife (my mom's sister) to a sudden stroke. Her funeral is Friday.

Their son, my cousin, is recovering from gall bladder surgery and may not even be able to come to his mom's funeral.

My mom's other sister has been battling cancer for 3 years and has just been sent home for hospice care and pain meds. There is no treatment left.

In addition, my brother, who had just arrived for my aunt's memorial, just got word that his wife has been checked into the hospital (by their daughter) for what the docs have found to be congestive heart failure. No surgery planned at present, but she is in intensive care with pneumonia and fluid around the heart and is very weak. Now he's 15 hours from home and may need to turn around and head back ASAP.

I covet your prayers on their behalf.

Prayer Request

Fellow Catholic blogger Eric Scheske has asked for prayers for his father, Mel, who has suffered a stroke.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, send him healing, and grant your grace and peace to him, his family and all those who love him.

UPDATE: I read on Eric's blog that his father has passed away.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord,
And let perpetual Light shine upon him.
May his soul
And the souls of all the faithful departed
Through the mercy of God
Rest in peace.

Amen.

St. Christopher Protect Us!

I have been wearing out St. Christopher's phone line the last few days, praying over various car and travel related problems. I could use all the prayers I can get, so I'm sending out the call to all my readers.

I have one car that has been repaired (thanks be to God!), but another that is balanced on a knife-edge between being fixable and being a heap of worthless, inert metal. Our family needs this car to be in working condition, and within our meager budget.

The other cause of so much running about by St. Chris lately is the fact that my son passed his driver's test today, and will be on the road by himself for the first time tonight, as he drives to an evening college class. This gives new relevance to the time-worn phrase "Saints preserve us!".

Needless to say, we all covet your prayers.

Some Great Quotes

GKC On Education;

"State education is simply Conscription applied to culture, or to the destruction of culture."

"No man is educated until he is emancipated from education."

and on Health Care Reform;

"...The world has suffered quite as much from its recent reforms as from its ancient abuses."

These quotes were all taken from one brief article by Chesterton, reprinted in the July/August issue of Gilbert, the magazine of the American Chesterton Society. I don't give enough praise to this publication, especially considering how much I enjoy reading every issue several times over. I could blog about every article they print, but it would take too much time away from more mundane and urgent business. I still hope to do a post on Chesterton and the Modern Art Movement, the beginnings of which he saw firsthand.

This next is a poem that was part of last night's readings from the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary;

What joy,
what happiness there is in heaven!

The shoot from the root of Jesse,
sown so long ago
in the time of the patriarchs,
has today sprung up and begun to grow.

It will bear a Flower
which is destined to heal the world,
a Flower whose scent revives the dead,
whose taste heals the sick,
and whose beauty delights the angels -
a white and red Flower
which angels long to see.

St, Thomas of Villanova (1487-1555)

To Renew The Image of Adam Grown Old

From the Wednesday evening prayer of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary;

"...Therefore he came down, in a manner he knows,
he stirred and came in a way that pleased him,
he entered and dwelt in her without her perceiving,
she received him, suffering nothing.
He was in her womb like a babe,
yet the whole world was full of him.
Of his love he came down to renew
the image of Adam grown old."

- Saint Ephrem (c. 306-373)

It reminds me a bit of this;

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Will Paint for Food (or possibly beer)

 

Well, life is full of surprises, ain't it? Remember a while ago, when I was asking readers to send in their impressions of the local and personal effects of the recession and the stock market crash? I made my own observation at the time that I was seeing very little evidence of it, as yet, aside from lower gas prices. Then I did make note that some local stores would be closing (a Starbucks, Circuit City, Linens & Things).

Now the evidence I asked about has come up and kicked me in the aft end... as of Friday I was given the official two week notice that my job is being cut. My last check will arrive in a month.

It was a surprise, but not a deep shock. I had been aware for some time that the amount of work they had for me to do was steadily declining. When I started in my position, I was kept busier than a grasshopper kicking the seeds out of a watermelon, but in recent months I had not only begun to somewhat, shall we say, stretch the projects I had, but had actually started to create my own projects (which has never been in my job description). I began to create a library of stock illustrations that (based on my experience) I thought might be useful in the future. As this library expanded and went largely unused, though, it began to feel very futile. I was sitting at my desk, drawing a check and drawing (literally) whatever I thought made sense... food, mostly. Our company had used a lot of food art in their packaging.

I had the odd hot-potato-we-must-have-this-by-Tuesday job to break the monotony, but it began to feel like my own company was sort of holding me on a retainer for those increasingly rare instances when I was actually needed. I began to get frustrated and a bit depressed, which is a horrible position for a Christian.

The Christian should always be eager to go wherever God leads and do whatever is needed without complaint and with sincere gratitude. Constant thankfulness should be the default position for any follower of Jesus. Life is just too variously and mind-bogglingly wonderful - too "lopsidedly benevolent", as I have put it before - to allow oneself to mope because this or that aspect of it isn't meeting one's expectations.

So, when I began to get frustrated and depressed at my job, I knew something was deeply wrong. I was also feeling a more insistent desire to move ahead with my fine art, and the day job (with its two-hour daily commute) seemed to suck the life and energy (and creativity) out of me. But I have a family to support, and as long as I could keep the job, I figured that was where God wanted me to be.

So, it looks like I'll have a lot more time to devote to the fine art and to Catholic (and other) illustration. I'll be putting up some illustration and cartoons from time to time, as well as my painting. There are new avenues open to me, now, in terms of getting my art out there in front of people. As it turns out, instead of painting this past weekend, I spent the time getting my Etsy store up and running. Etsy is a cool, fairly new outlet for handmade goods and art, and I've been meaning to get my online store - er, gallery - started for some time. I may even have time to begin that series of the Mysteries of the Rosary I have been wanting to do.

So, check it out. Tell your friends!
(Thats www.oldworldswine.etsy.com)

The Esty site will most likely be where I direct people from my Daily Painting blog from now on, though I have had some early success with E-bay and may continue to use it. I don't know. You would think I might have more time to blog here at OWS, now, but that's not likely. I'm going to have to hit the ground running if I want to maintain any kind of steady income in all this, and so I'll be treating the fine art as a full-time job (and possibly more). I'm grateful, though, that I'll be able to make it to daily Mass.

Your prayers would be most appreciated. At the moment I'm kind of excited at the possibilities, and am looking at it as an adventure... Wheee! another big dip on the roller coaster of life... but it is easy to talk that way when the checks are still coming. We have been through some lean times before, and the romance of such a position fades quickly. The sense of adventure turns into a rather permanent knot in the stomach.

As Chesterton has said (and I have often quoted before);

Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property.

I have to say that, as a Distributist, I do look forward to looking after my own property.

Personal Prayer Request

My father-in-law, Gerald Bowers, died Sunday after a fall he had the week prior.

We did not know, at first, that things were so serious, but later they found a break in one of the bones in his neck, and he passed away in his hospital bed before they had even had a chance to begin proper treatment.

He had suffered and struggled in the last couple of years, especially from a bout of encephalitis that nearly took his life. He was 82 and quite frail at the time of his accident.

I meant to post on this before, but things were rather hectic so I just ran with the posts I had planned. I hope to post soon a short piece about the life of this remarkable man.

Prayers for the repose of his soul, for my wife, her mom and the rest of the family would be deeply appreciated.

we always have so much to be thankful for, and several of the family are getting together today at our house for Thanksgiving dinner. I pray you all have a blessed Thanksgiving, as well.