image is from the web site of the Cornell Ornithology Lab.

The Answer
Robinson Jeffers

Then what is the answer? — Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know the great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history…for contemplation or in fact…
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.

The Church’s function
is to lead the faithful
to the luminous sphere
of Divine Being.

— Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

Bukowski himself

My son wore a blue tie to church today, and afterwards said that he can never wear a blue necktie without thinking of this poem by Charles Bukowski. It’s a favorite of mine too.

if we take—

if we take what we can see —
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.

These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on a rotten axis.

But they’ve left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.

— Charles Bukowski, in Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

Animals have the joy of living, but we have taken it away from them. They have joy, and we have so much besides joy, yet we are never satisfied. The animals never worry about the future, they do not stack food in granaries and barns, yet the Lord always feeds them. They nibble a twig here, peck at a seed there, they find protection in a hole or a burrow, and they are grateful to God. Not so us men. The birds are always singing praises to the Lord. They begin their song early, at three o’clock in the morning, and don’t stop until nine. At nine they calm down a bit — it’s only then that they go looking for food to feed their young. Then they start singing again. Nobody tells them to sing — they just do. And what about us? We’re always frowning, always pouting; we don’t feel like singing or doing anything else. We should follow the example of the birds. They’re always joyful whereas we’re always bothered by something. What is it that bothers us? Nothing, really… Isn’t that right?

— Elder Thaddeus, Our Thoughts Determine our Lives, p. 131

Image: An eastern towhee (photo from Wikipedia). We’ve been enjoying several of these around our feeder.

Favorites
Jane Eyre
The Accidental Tourist
The Apostle
Poetry
(500) Days of Summer
Another Year
The King’s Speech

Liked
Tokyo Sonata
Shall We Dance?
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
The Tree of Life
The Lives of Others
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring
Our Idiot Brother
Notorious
Margin Call
Submarine
Moon
Cassandra’s Dream
Hanna
Conviction
Win Win
The Adjustment Bureau
The Darjeeling Limited
Three Kings
Mrs. Brown
The Company Men
The Fighter
Unforgiven
True Grit
Hereafter
The Sixth Sense
Good Will Hunting
Proof
Memento
Sunshine Cleaning
Get Low
Happy Accidents
The World’s Fastest Indian
Inception
Vitus
Angel-A
Of Gods and Men

OK
Beetlejuice
The Tourist
Spellbound
North by Northwest
Return to Me
Death at a Funeral
An Ideal Husband
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Good Shepherd
The Impostors
The Parking Lot Movie
The Whole Wide World
Lovely and Amazing
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Last Chance Harvey
State of Play
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Ondine

No
Delirious
Henry’s Crime
The Way Back
Two Brothers and a Bride
The Madness of King George
Grace is Gone
The Fisher King

Re-runs
The Last Emperor
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Once
The Station Agent
Tokyo Story
Floating Weeds
Big Night
Late Spring
Bella Martha
The End of Summer
Wings of Desire
The Dead
Independence Day
Edward Scissorhands
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part II
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King.
Moonstruck
Ostrov (The Island)

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Elizabeth Regina

In my last post, I linked to a reminiscence of St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco. One paragraph in that talk mentioned St John’s committed monarchism and loyalty to the Russian royal family. It went on to say:

Vladika was firmly opposed to substituting the prayer for right-believing kings with the words “Orthodox Christians”. Specifically, in the troparion, “Save, O Lord, Thy people,” he insisted on the words, “victory to right-believing kings.”

Monarchism isn’t the most popular point of view in modern times, and I won’t get into its merits here. But I was reminded of the words about “right-believing kings” when I came across a report of Queen Elizabeth’s 2011 Christmas address to the British people. (The King or Queen has been delivering a radio or television Christmas address since 1932, when King George V gave the first (written by Rudyard Kipling!)

Much of the address is fairly standard Christmas-greetings stuff, but the closing is, to my mind, a powerful reflection on the religious meaning of “this great Christian festival.”

For many, this Christmas will not be easy. With our armed forces deployed around the world, thousands of service families face Christmas without their loved ones at home.

The bereaved and the lonely will find it especially hard. And, as we all know, the world is going through difficult times. All this will affect our celebration of this great Christian festival.

Finding hope in adversity is one of the themes of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world full of fear. The angels came to frightened shepherds with hope in their voices: ‘Fear not’, they urged, ‘we bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

‘For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.’

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed.

God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.

In the last verse of this beautiful carol, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, there’s a prayer:

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin
And enter in.
Be born in us today.

It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas.”

In a secular democracy like ours, the President isn’t meant to be a stand-in for the missing Monarch, and there’s no real reason that we should expect him to deliver such an open defense of the Faith. Great Britain is on the whole a much more secularized society than ours in the United States, so perhaps many who listened to the message found it inappropriate or even incomprehensible. But the Queen’s message made me wonder — not for the first time — whether a nation can be called Christian without a Christian ruler. With secularism written into the Constitution (as it is, though some like to deny it), there seems little chance of this happening soon.

St John of Shanghai and San Francisco

Thanks to Fr. John Whiteford’s blog, I came across some 1991 reminiscences of St. John Maximovitch by Bishop Peter (Loukianoff), who served with him in San Francisco. The whole thing is worth reading by those with an interest in this great Saint, whose relics now bless our country by their presence. Bishop Peter states strongly that many of Vladika’s eccentricities have been overstated, at the expense of his sobriety, humility and care for his episcopal responsibilities.

A few tidbits follow.

 Vladika had supper before midnight, after which he would go to his room to rest. He ate everything from one plate, with one soup spoon, always holding his prayer rope and reciting the Jesus Prayer. Sometimes he used chopsticks…

From the day of his monastic tonsure, Vladika slept in a sitting position. As a result he had swollen legs and it was painful for him to wear proper shoes, so he wore sandals. At home, in his cell, or when he served at St. Tikhon’s he often went barefoot — not for the sake of foolishness-for-Christ, but because it was easier on his feet.

Abbess Theodora, the late superior of Lesna Convent in France, told how once when Vladika was visiting the convent one of his legs gave him great pain, and she called a doctor, who prescribed rest in bed. Vladika thanked her for her solicitude but refused to lie in bed; nothing could persuade him. “Then,” related Matushka, “I myself don’t know how I was so bold, but I said to him bluntly, ‘Vladika, as the abbess of this convent, by the power given me by God, I order you to lie down.’” Vladika looked with surprise at the abbess, and went and lay down. The next morning, however, he was in church for Matins, and that was the end of the “course of treatment”.

I will cherish the image of St John eating his late-night supper with a prayer rope in one hand and chopsticks in the other.

Holy Father John, pray for us!