Of course there is woundedness, but there is holiness as well. How the two come together — not which one wins, but how they join — constitutes the unique and profound meaning of one’s life: the emergence out of the maelstrom of the true self, transformed in Christ.

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever.
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in the Jordan river;
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom;
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of the cherubim;
The sweet ‘well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the Prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

The awesome St. Patrick icon is by Hamish Burgess of Maui Celtic (radio show on FB). Click on the artwork for Hamish’s thorough account of St. Patrick legends & history.

Text for the prayer (often used alongside Psalm 5) is from the Prayer Foundation, also the source for this video that will let you know how to sing St. Patrick’s prayer:

In this economy, hope’s like anything else. When it comes to love, a savvy consumer can always get an upgrade. But hope isn’t an escape clause. It isn’t a getaway car. Hope’s more like telling the girl you want to marry how great a husband you’ll be and then going and being that person. You can shout and sloganeer about hope all you want. But it won’t matter. Hope isn’t wishful thinking. It’s full of requirements. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The cycle of the Church Year, from the excellent Internet Monk

It’s part of an older way of looking at time, that sees the days of our lives not as an infinite empty grid to be filled as we choose, but as a set of interlocking cycles and seasons (like the Mayan Calendar Round or the Hebrew Sabbath & Jubilee), each with its own character, and every day requiring from us a proper response.

Our multicultural, hyper-technological society doesn’t easily settle into such seasonal rounds. Our Cartesian calendar grid obscures the signs of times & seasons in favor of just plain numbers, and we expect the world to change when the numbers do. We come to 01/01 and say, “This year everything will be different!” But it doesn’t work that way. On 01/02, we look around and find ourselves in the same old country, treading the same old paths. We need to think smaller, take single steps, be prepared to take a while; we can’t make the journey in a single leap. And we need guidance, wise signs to point the way to new territory.

“From far away we come and farther we must go.
How far… how far… my crystal star?
The shepherd dreams inside the fold.
Cold are the sands by the silent sea.
Frozen the incense in our frozen hands, heavy the gold.

How far… how far… my crystal star?
By silence-sunken lakes, the antelope leaps.
In paper-painted oasis, the drunken gypsy weeps.
The hungry lion wanders, the cobra sleeps.
How far… how far… my crystal star?”

Those pagan priests of Persia, the Magi, were wise, and knew how to follow the signs of their time. There must have been a thousand & one details to attend to — what to eat, what to wear, how far they’d have to travel; but they set out, following the signs they could see, and asking directions along the way. They sought first the Kingdom of God, and they brought gifts.

Have you seen a child the color of wheat… the color of dawn?
His eyes are mild; his hands are those of a king – as king he was born.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side; and the eastern star is our guide.

Have you seen a child the color of earth… the color of thorn?
His eyes are sad; his hands are those of the poor as poor he was born.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side, and the eastern star is our guide.

– from Amahl & the Night Visitors

These are the questions of the New Year, and of the Seasons of Winter & Epiphany, as the days grow long & longer: Are you still seeking? What is your guide? What gifts do you bring?

– after William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes.

Rodin’s Poet contemplates the plight of humanity in Dante’s Inferno.

Rodin did not originally title this sculpture The Thinker, but The Poet. First created as part of his monumental work, The Gates of Hell, depicting scenes from the first book of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the figure is seated at the top of the gates while the epic drama of human damnation & salvation plays out before him. No wonder this Poet’s contemplation grips his whole self!

For Rodin the sculptor, every aspect of action, character, and spirit that he wanted to convey had to be embodied in the physical form of his works. It’s a reminder to us that we, too, are bodily works. No matter how much we may wish to separate logic from emotion, “left-brain” from “right-brain,” reason from passion, body from mind, leisure from toil, suffering from joy, love of self from love of neighbors, virtue from practicality, strength from weakness, the holy from the everyday, the feminine from the masculine — all these are part and parcel of each other; and all born, maintained, and proved in our bodies.

A whole-person model from Dr. Ernie

It’s such a hard thing for us to remember! Earth-creatures who long to be more than dust, we forget our origins & calling here. We need reminders — a book of stories, a theory with pictures, or a monument in bronze.

…Whether they fought in Salerno or Samarra, Heartbreak Ridge or Helmand, Khe Sanh or the Korengal, our veterans are part of an unbroken chain of men and women who have served our country with honor and distinction. On Veterans Day, we show them our deepest thanks. Their sacrifices have helped secure more than two centuries of American progress, and their legacy affirms that no matter what confronts us or what trials we face, there is no challenge we cannot overcome, and our best days are still ahead….

Even after our veterans take off the uniform, they never stop serving. Many apply the skills and experience they developed on the battlefield to a life of service here at home. They take on roles in their communities as doctors and police officers, engineers and entrepreneurs, mothers and fathers. As a grateful Nation, it is our task to make that transition possible — to ensure our returning heroes can share in the opportunities they have given so much to defend. The freedoms we cherish endure because of their service and sacrifice, and our country must strive to honor our veterans by fulfilling our responsibilities to them and upholding the sacred trust we share with all who have served….

And from Danielle Allen’s Talking to Strangers: On Little Rock and the Art of Political Friendship:

Of all the rituals relevant to democracy, sacrifice is preeminent. No democratic citizen, adult or child, escapes the necessity of losing out at some point in a public decision…. An honest account of collective democratic action must begin by acknowledging that communal decisions inevitably benefit some citizens at the expense of others, even when the whole community generally benefits….Their sacrifice makes collective democratic action possible…. The hard truth of democracy is that some citizens are always giving things up for others.

Art of Theory: If you could recommend two works of political theory to a modern statesman—say, Barack Obama—one contemporary work, and one work from the history of political thought, what would they be and why?

An Advertisement for The Federalist Papers

Danielle Allen: There are different answers depending on the reader to whom one’s making the recommendations, no? So your question could be: if all the libraries in the world were destroyed and you could save only two books of political theory, which would they be? There my answer would have to be Plato’s Republic and the Federalist Papers.

Plato’s Republic

Plato’s Republic and the Federalist Papers make two very different cases for how human beings can frame their collective lives so that they can flourish individually and collectively. To make sense of these two texts in relation to one another, one would have to dream up the missing stream of texts between them.

But if you wanted me to recommend two books to Barack Obama, they would be Herodotus’ Histories and Ralph Ellison’s Collected Essays. Both of these books explore how an egalitarian vision (Solon’s in the Histories, an American inheritance in Ellison) can be brought into concrete existence, as well as laying bare the obstacles to such a development. And the Herodotus provides a dose of Machiavellian insight as well.

From the Art of Theory Interview with Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor of political theory at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Studies. A 2002 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Dr. Allen’s books include Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (University Of Chicago Press, 2004) and Why Plato Wrote (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Her forthcoming works will examine the effect of the Internet on civic life, the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and the relationships between education & equality.

Nature’s so terribly good. Don’t you think so, Mr. Stanhope?”
“That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox….Yes. Very. Only — you must forgive me, it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say ‘terribly’ I think I mean ‘full of terror’….”

…he did not change his purpose, nor did the universe invite him to change. It accepted the choice, no more preventing him than it prevents a child playing with fire or a fool destroying his love. It has not our kindness or our decency; if it is good, its goodness is of another kind than ours. It allowed him, moving from shadow to shadow, cautious and rash, to approach the house where he remembered to have seen the rope….

– Charles Williams, Descent Into Hell

This year, the copyright has expired, and Ulysses has entered the public domain. You can now see the original manuscripts of the great novel, along with other Joyce papers, online at the National Library of Ireland, perform public readings, or adapt the story for your own artistic work without fearing a lawsuit. For the techno-literati, there’s the new Joyceways app that brings the James Joyce’s city & words to your fingertips. Yes!

Got your Guinness? Then here’s Marcella Riordan as Molly Bloom (from the highly recommended Naxos audiobook), in a final affirmation of love & life: