Always Advent

Over at SciFiCatholic, D.G.D. Davidson has posted a meme that asks:

“Where would you most like to live for one week, one month, one year, and half your life? Explain why.”

His answers:
http://www.scificatholic.com/2008/02/meme-week-month-year-ha lf-your-life.html

I thought this sounded fun, so I’ll play:

A Week

I’d like to spend a week in Petropavlovsk, Russia, because that’s where my adoptive son was born.

A Month

A Carthusian monastery (there are Carthusian monks and nuns, so I could stay with a group of nuns) because it would be a great extended retreat and it would get that monastic thing out of my system.

A Year

Tanzania. The first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere (1922-1999) was a devout Catholic whose cause for canonization has begun. Unlike many African countries, Tanzania is free of tribal strife and civil war, many believe due to Nyerere’s influence.

Half my life

Ireland. I’m half Irish and I’ve never even been to Ireland, but I would love to go “home” and spend many years there tramping across those fields and going to pubs and learning to play a tin whistle. All that.

Wanna play? Leave your answers in the comment box! I’ll share my children’s answers starting tomorrow. You can name real places, like I did, or imaginary places, like SciFiCatholic did, or a combination. Have fun!

What is a “meme,” you ask?

In the context of web logs / ‘blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it’s some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

More here:http://thedailymeme.com/what-is-a-meme/

I finally found a free evening to sit down and watch this amazing film. Throughout the experience, a phrase kept coming to mind: “Only one thing is necessary.” (Luke 10:42) And the brothers have found it, in poverty, silence, and simplicity, at the Grand Chartreuse.

Can I find it in my crazy, mixed-up life?

The brothers live in their own little houses (called “cells”) which have a couple of rooms and a private garden. A brother comes around with a cart and gives them their meals through a little hatch. They eat all their meals alone in their hermitage (except for Sunday lunch). They say all their prayers in solitude (except for some of the prayers of the Divine Office), and they do not speak at all (except during the scheduled time of recreation with the other brothers). They can study, read, work in their gardnes, and they take turns at various jobs around the monastery. Feeding the chickens and so forth. I’m sure a lot of modern, noise-deafened, hectic people (like me) look at that life and think, “I want to be a Carthusian, too!”

No, you don’t. Do not mistake discontent with your current life situation as a call to something as radically different as cloistered monasticism.

A friend of mine wrote, after a profound experience of God on a retreat, that he felt God calling him into the desert and saying, “Will you love me here?” For most of us, the real sand and rock desert is far away and we can’t move there. Nor can we or should we move to the desert of a monastery. (Some of us should because God is calling us there.) The desert — the good kind of desert, where non-essentials are stripped away–is anywhere the thirsty soul finds itself. I live in a non-descript suburb of a standard, large metropolitan area that is devoid of inspiring vistas. My life and my household is busy with children, a job, grad school studies, a faith community, and a to-do list a mile long. But the spirituality of the desert, or the monastery in the Alps, is possible no matter where a person lives and no matter what the circumstances. In a modern, computerized, plugged-in culture you must exert considerable effort to create the desert around you and within you. Strip away the essentials and live with the one necessary thing.

Find the hermitage within your heart and go sit at the feet of Jesus.

Links:

Steven Greydanus:
http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/intogreatsilence .html

Arts and Faith:
http://artsandfaith.com/index.php?showtopic=13153

Barbara Nicolosi:
http://churchofthemasses.blogspot.com/2007/03/into-great-lon g-silence.html

Jeffrey Overstreet:
http://lookingcloser.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-yorker-on-into -great-silence.html

Where to buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Into-Great-Silence-Two-Disc-Set/dp/B00 0OYNVOY