Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God.
...according to ongoing research that offers a solid scientific basis for Japanese farming lore.
As part of a four-year study, scientists in northern Japan have been bombarding a variety of mushrooms in lab-based garden plots with artificially induced lightning to see if electricity actually makes the fungi multiply.
(See pictures of Brazilian mushrooms that glow in the dark.)
The latest results show that lightning-strength jolts of electricity can more than double the yield of certain mushroom species compared with conventional cultivation methods.
"We have tried these experiments with ten types of mushroom so far and have found that it is effective in eight species," said Koichi Takaki, an associate professor in engineering at Iwate University.
It's interesting, I spose, but what I really want to see is videos of Japanese scientists with a lot of sticky-outy hair, wearing goggles and yelling "THROW THE SWITCH!!"
Let us arise, then, at last,
for the Scripture stirs us up, saying,
"Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep".
Let us open our eyes to the deifying light,
let us hear with attentive ears
the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us,
"Today if you hear His voice,
harden not your hearts".
And again,
"Whoever has ears to hear,
hear what the Spirit says to the churches".
And what does He say?
"Come, My children, listen to Me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord".
"Run while you have the light of life,
lest the darkness of death overtake you"
My favourite spiritual website/blog, City Desert, has an interesting post about what sort of food the ancient desert hermit monks would have eaten while living in their caves in the Egyptian desert back in the day. One tends to overlook these practical things while reading the lives of these extraordinary saints. But (barring miraculous interventions) even a levitating, bilocating mystic gotta eat.
It's got all kinds of interesting links to the foods that would have been eaten in Egypt in late antiquity and early Christian period.
It also mentions a dish that is still the "Egyptian national dish" and which many of us will be familiar with from the local felafel, Lebanese take-away shop: kushari. It's basically, just rice, lentils, salt and fried onions and garlic with olive oil and lemon. These days it's usually served with a dollop of tomato sauce.
Being a bit broke, I did a version of it tonight that was really good.
Take:
A cup of the rice/millet/buckwheat combo you picked up on a whim in the healthfood section the other day
two cups water
1 cup lentils cooked in tomato sauce
1 onion chopped
three cloves garlic chopped
grated rind of 1/2 a lemon, minced very fine
handful of fresh mint leaves
1/4 of a vegetale bullion cube
handful of coriander seeds, ground
two small tomatoes, sliced
a bit of red onion, sliced
tobasco and/or plain yogurt
In a heavy-bottomed pot, combine onions, garlic and olive oil and saute until the veg is softened. Throw in the rice and coriander and the bullion cube and let it cook in the oil a bit. Add the two cups of water and cover, reduce heat to minimum and let it steam up for about 20 mins. In a nice big dish, spoon up a layer of the rice and add a big spoonful of the lentils in a well in the middle. Shake a little tobasco over to taste, and add a big dollop of plain yogurt on top of the lentils. Sprinkle the red onion over all, and top with the sliced tomatoes.
Eat.
SO good!
Things to add: Chopped parsley, cucumber or fennel
~
I'm growing more and more interested in the idea that the principles of asceticism can and maybe ought to be applied to our lives as laymen living the Christian life in the world. I was talking to one of the monks the other day about "what makes a monk a monk," and he said that two physical things are really important, fasting and a regular schedule.
Of course, fasting for us regular folks has to take into account a lot of things, esp if you are, shall we say, of a certain age and have experienced health issues and whatnot. But the stuff I've been reading lately in the medical research world all say that a lifetime of fairly low calorie intake can have huge health benefits. Really, regular fasting isn't bad for you at all, done sensibly.
One of the things to remember, of course, is the spiritual requirements. St. Philip Neri teaches that any ascetical or penitential action taken absolutely must be done only with the permission of a religious superior. If you just do it on your own, the only result will be a very undesirable one; spiritual pride. Permission, obedience that is, is totally central to any devotional practice. Most of the time, of course, we have the normal precepts and requirements of the Faith, particularly as they are attached to the liturgical year, so of course, special permissions don't have to be granted to follow the normal life of the Catholic Church. But seriously, anything at all beyond that is very unwise to take on without supervision by competent authority.
Here's a few handy rules of thumb that the City Desert website suggests with regards regulating one's eating habits:
The basic principles, which can (and probably should) be applied by contemporary Hermits, were that diet needed to be based on ingredients that were:
• simple – it was not intended to be “gourmet cooking”, nor to require unnecessary expenditure of resources, time or effort in preparation;
• sustainable – any ingredients needed to be able to survive (often for long periods) in the desert without refrigeration, preserving or canning (thus, dried lentils or chickpeas are excellent resources)(although olives might be preserved in oil, or vegetables in brine);
• accessible – ingredients needed to be easily accessible either from the Hermit’s own garden or from local suppliers close-by;
• seasonal – given the lack of means of storage for anything not dry, only seasonal produce could usually be used;
• cheap – Hermits lived with minimal resources and could only buy the cheapest (which also means the best value for money) food;
• nutritious – since Hermits ate frugally (and often infrequently), the diet needed to provide maximum nutrition with minimal quantity and cost (again, lentils are an excellent resource in this regard).
So, both my appointments, for various reasons, got cancelled today and I now find myself with a free day. Having expected someone over, I have even done all the housework this morning before ten am. Not wanting to waste a windfall, I think today's the day I'll finally get around to a project that's been brewing.
Every Sunday, I've been attending the Solemn Vespers and Benediction at the Basilica, and the monks do a very nice Gregorian version of the Divine Praises which I'd like to sing along to. The trouble is that I've never learned it in Latin. So I think today as a bit of calligraphy practice, I'm going to make the card I keep thinking I should make.
Benedictus Deus.
Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.
Benedictus Jesus Christus, verus Deus et verus homo.
Benedictum Nomen Jesu.
Benedictum Cor eius sacratissimum.
Benedictus Sanguis eius pretiosissimus.
Benedictus Jesus in sanctissimo altaris Sacramento.
Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus.
Benedicta excelsa Mater Dei, Maria sanctissima.
Benedicta sancta eius et immaculata Conceptio.
Benedicta eius gloriosa Assumptio.
Benedictum nomen Mariae, Virginis et Matris.
Benedictus sanctus Ioseph, eius castissimus Sponsus.
Benedictus Deus in Angelis suis, et in Sanctis suis.
Amen.
There's
a thing about Norcia that is wonderful but hidden, and something you
won't realise until you've been here a little while and thought about
it. Any town where there's a lot of people with Down's, working at jobs
in shops, strolling in the evening with family, going to Mass, shopping
and just being regular folks, is a town you want to live in.
It
means they don't kill people here who the world thinks don't measure up.
It means they cherish and love their children, and don't hold up a
genetic measuring stick.
It's also a pretty good indication that
it's also place where you're allowed to be a little less perfect than
the world's idea of perfect.
When I was a kid, my mother and I were surrounded by quite a wonderful collection of oddballs. Only a few of them were horrible hippie/feminists bent on world domination (sadly, these had a rather disproportionate influence). Quite a lot of them, it being Victoria, were highly educated older English people of the first half of the 20th century, who themselves were influenced by William Morris's Arts and Crafts movement and were great lovers of history and art. I was educated in large part by my mere proximity to these intelligent and cultured people, who showered me constantly with books. (Books that are today, I see from Amazon and Ebay, quite valuable collectors objects themselves...Oh well...)
A few days ago, I tried out my new calligraphy pen and to my surprise could still cut a halfway decent letter. I noted on FB that I was surprised both that I could do this, and that I had somehow forgotten that I could. Not only had I all but forgotten that I knew how to do this, but I had obviously completely forgotten where I picked up the skill.
Last night, in my digging around the innernets for stuff about medieval manuscripts, I discovered a heretofore forgotten book that has been made available in its entirety online by the good offices of the Kelly Library at the University of Toronto. As I flicked delightedly through, I realised instantly that I recognised every page of it. This was one of the books that I had been given by my mother's older friends as a child, and it all came flooding back to me.
Once I showed an interest, they also gave me materials, and I now remember hours and hours sitting at the dining room table on hot afternoons just like this one, poring carefully over the illustrations and meticulously copying the letters and forms.
Writing Illuminating and Lettering, by William Johnston, who is known today in the circles as the "father" of modern calligraphy, who almost single-handedly revived the art, and contributed enormously to the early 20th century revival of interest in all things medieval that was to strongly influence Tolkien. The book was first published in 1906, and I'm fairly certain that I had one of the early editions.
It was a strange experience flipping through the pages electronically, and seeing again the images that had been completely dug into my synapses before I was ten. It transported me back to a time when I was very certain about who I was, and who God was, before my teenage apostasy and the near-ruination of my life, the derailment from which I am only now recovering.
It's a strange thing to realise that you were more right about the universe, more authentically yourself and more in line with the genuine ordering of All Things, when you were ten than when you were 35. And equally strange to start going back to those original mental conditions in middle age. But it's a strange world we've created, and it confuses the young.
The other day I was chatting with Fr. Cassian on the steps of the Basilica after Mass, and we fell to lamenting the terrible effects of the anti-culture on young people. I said that I felt terribly sorry for them, and that I mostly wrote with a mind to helping them avoid the great fallacies and Fantasies of our time. He said, "Oh yes! I remember being young, and it was awful." We both agreed that it was much better over as soon as possible, so one could return to the sensible and straightforward things we first learned.
~
Practice, practice, practice...
I had, of course, forgotten the sublime pleasure of spending hours practicing calligraphy. I'm working on developing a style to use with my Saint Paintings, that is turning out to be a combination of half uncials and mid-Gothic. I'm finding the "d"s quite tricky.
Of course, as with everything else in our times, if you want to learn something, there's a YouTube video to help:
~
Art and Fear
I told a new friend here in Norcia about the plans for the Saint Paintings and said I was feeling rather intimidated by the whole thing. The notion of actually making a living as a painter is ... well... it seems a little fantastic. She gave me an excellent suggestion, saying that I should think of it as "doing crafts". It's a perfect solution. I know how to "do crafts"! We all do, right? We did it in kindergarten. It's easy and fun.
Sometimes you just have to learn how to trick your brain.
I'm revisiting a book one of you all sent me a few years ago called Art and Fear, a little slim volume that addresses that stuff your brain does to you when you want to make art but are so afraid of failure you don't try. It's been translated int an astonishing array of languages and has had 12 printings, so it seems it's not just me.
~
Technical stuff...
I'm also having quite a wonderful time mucking about with a new medium. I'd taken a little weekend workshop in illuminating when I was about 11, and I remember for many years practising with Windsor and Newton drawing inks. The instructor said that the best medium available in modern art suppliers, the one that most closely approximated what the medieval scribes used (and wasn't too expensive) was gouache, but I never tried it at the time.
But when I started this project, I saw that the local stationer's here in town had a good supply of gouache tubes, and that it wasn't very expensive, so a few weeks ago, I dug them out of the art cupboard, and I'm finding that they're fantastic. Exactly suited to this project. Easy to use, opaque colour that you can use like oil paints or dilute and use more like watercolours. When they dry on the palette you can reconstitute them with a drop of water, and they dry in minutes so there's no long waits between painting sessions. You can paint over mistakes quite easily, and do exactly the same techniques of colour mixing as with oils.
For glazes and washes they're not so good, because once you dilute it too much, all you really get is the chalky medium and very little pigment, which turns out just sort of a ghostly, chalky pallor. I've figured out how to deal with this, however, and will finish the main parts in gouache, do a coating of fissativo to set the gouache, and then use pure watercolour as a light glaze over top to deepen the colours.
The dull matte finish of gouache doesn't really appeal to me much, having been trained to paint with oils, and because they stay "active" more or less forever, you normally have to put gouache paintings under glass; a single drop of water on them can ruin the painting even years after it's finished. I don't want to bother with framing under glass, and don't think the ceramic tiles would do well in such contraptions anyway. But I've solved both of these problems with the simple application of an acrylic varnish that brings out the beautiful jewel-like colours that it had when wet, and gives it a nice low-gloss finish and protects them.
But in general, these little drawbacks are nothing compared to the ease of gouache as a medium, and it's affordability. A 20 ml tube of artists' gouache goes for 4 to 10 Euros, compared to comparable oils that can be as high as 50 E a tube, and sometimes more.
Here's a nice American chap who has taught himself to paint and did most of his landscape work in gouache...
And here's someone else who mainly does gouache and watercolour, plein-air, which I've not yet worked up the nerve to try.
You can see that the medium's very "dry" appearance lends itself brilliantly to the style of the 19th century realists. It's very Sargent-y.
~
Also, I wonder if someone couldn't perhaps see their way to making me one of these.
Or this one would do,
These, apparently, are miniatures, but I could do with one full size.
How do you deal with this problem: you have an old friend who wants to re-connect. You really care very much for this person. He has enormously good qualities and is loyal and decent, but he suffers from such ferocious anxiety and other emotional disorders - mainly caused by "family of origin issues" - that it makes him manipulative and in some ways actually kind of dangerous to know. A long time ago, you were pushed to making the drastic measure of cutting off all contact because of it all. It was very painful because for a while you'd been fairly close.
He isn't aware of the motives for most of his more difficult behaviour, and spends a lot of time fairly confused about why he can't keep his friends and relationships better. He suffers a lot because of the awful lies his evil brain tells him all the time.
When he's relaxed and not feeling threatened he is smart, fun, interested in the same kinds of things and a genuinely warm and good soul. On the side of the angels, and all that.
He's also very lonely because of his brain-troubles and has reached out to you on FB.
Fr. Cassian Folsom, Prior of the Monastery of St. Benedict in Norcia, on why this particular form of music is ideal for the spiritual life:
Why do we sing? St. Augustine says: Cantare amantis est: a good paraphrase might be: "only the lover sings." Our singing is the expression of our love-longing for God. Now the texts we sing are primarily Scriptural, and the melodies are very ancient, some of them technically demanding. The result is that there is plenty of material both for the intellect and the heart. We pray with our lips, with our bodies, with our emotions and with our minds...
The music is sacred music, which means it doesn't resemble secular musical forms. So worshipers encounter a kind of music -- with its specific melodies, rhythms and tonalities -- that removes them from the ordinary and places them in the realm of the holy. Our monastery has chosen the classical repertoire of Gregorian chant because of its extraordinary beauty and its capacity to draw the listener into prayer.
And on religious life:
What do you think it is about your monastery that attracts Young Monks?
I think it's always been the case that young people tend to be idealistic, enthusiastic, generous, critical of the status-quo, and eager to change the world. Our way of life offers a concrete proposal: "Do you want to give your life to God in a radical way? Here's a great way to do it." Ours is a young community (the average age is 33) and like attracts like.
For those that do not understand the life of a Monk can you give some
insight into your world?
The Gospel of John interprets the actions of Jesus by referring to a saying of Jeremiah the prophet: "Zeal for thy house consumes me!" (Jn 2:17). That's what motivates the monk: zeal for God, desire for God, love-longing you might say. All the tools of monastic prayer and asceticism flow from this passion for God. The monastic charism of hospitality inspires us to share this zeal with others. People flock to the monastery from far and wide. They're not looking for us monks, they're looking for God. So our task is to become transparent, so that our own weakness and sins don't get in the way of God's powerful action in the world.
