Rosary

The old uncle has been hired to do a Christening, the recipient thereof, his beloved niece. It seems now that the whole lot of them will be coming back next month to celebrate my parent’s fortieth. Guess who is cooking dinner? Meanwhile, peace has returned to the mountains. Let us backtrack a bit though, shall we? What follows—fragments of various letters, slivers of thought, echoes of soliloquies captured in passing; white shadow riders of the infinite, silent and graceful like fluted crystal swans, the transient ghosts of memory snatched at in moments of effervescence…you know, that sort of thing! So, here goes.

                                                                             ***

Although I remained utterly brain-dead throughout the long and dusty-hot hours of the morning after, I was most pleasantly engaged the while. I sent off for the total Consecration package, for one thing, and in keeping with the ways of the archetypal Trickster, also joined the Athonite Fathers, who would, no doubt be horrified at the mere thought of anyone doing something so grievously wicked as consecrating their sorry soul to Mary. They are a rather dour bunch, all told. But well, I know where they are coming from, and gladly leave them to their labors. After all, an Eyore will be an Eyore…a swampy, droopy-eared donkey evermore, happy as hoof-rot and just as fragrant. Some people really do like to be desperately unhappy. Alas, since having met you I myself am no longer one of them. Mea culpa, aye?!

Now granted, there is a certain stage on the spiritual journey when the cross becomes the only antidote possible to the existential anguish of a soul in formation, but I will hold that cheerful thought for another day, perhaps. Some souls have a real yin for the process and can’t put it past them—fermation, I mean. They are like quicksilver without a mold, hence their necessary and painful compensations. It is only too bad that such canine spirits can’t be recruited to our side. There is, however, something deeply providential about your insisting that I join those fearsome monks at this time. Naturally, I would not so much as dream of posting to them—which is likely why I am still getting their posts in the first place, hmm? As for fermation. That word is not yet in the dictionary. It is a serendipitous cross between formation and fermentation. The end result is either vinegar or the blessed wine of the Blood of the Lamb. Perhaps the amount of sugar added makes all the difference.

Anyhow, I also joined a couple of beautiful Benedictine sites, as well as Sanity_through_Presence (since all is welcome) and a good number of others….some only for a bit of comic relief…others, no doubt, for the holy irritation that only religious fanatics can provide the likes of warriors such as myself. Now, the proud member of fifty-three groups and counting. And everywhere I look I see reflected the horrors wrought by ignorance and superstition. Protestants I will generally leave alone, but Roman Catholics are family, and so they have no excuse. I expect nothing less than the absolute best from them. Unless they are free-catholic and thus apart from the Magisterium. As Benedict would say, valid but illicit.

***

Just got your letter, sweetheart, as well as two package in the mail, brought to me by a saggy-baggy Opa who looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here, and but who would really rather be in Illinois than elsewhere. (Grandma looks like she’s just come back from a war). Grandparents! Sheesh.

Me…? I only miss my Suzie

Crystalline stars trickle down across my hands in wonder. Oh, my love! Until my fingers are but quaint figurines of sculpted ivory wearing in their stony clasp the simple wreaths of faded damask shrouds, set in cryptic parallelograms, shall I pray with these beautiful beads. In other words, until I drop dead, my heart. Bury them if they break? Whaaat! Are you kidding me? Over my dead body!—or with it, rather, but not before then. LOL. And now when I pray, it will be with your hands even, your fingers, your thoughts and strength and love and devotion. Your own rosary!! Oh sweetheart, I am speechless. Oh my angel, you. And so deeply sad a letter then must pass between us as the one you sent to me today? But, I am hardly married, as of yet. Besides that, I must agree to the terms of the engagement (so to speak) before anything takes place at all, and so we will leave that sorrow until it comes to pass if it comes to pass at all.

Meanwhile, I wear my lady’s ring (the eagle) though it will need a bit of resizing one day. The beautiful card, and the Montfort consecration booklet, and all on one day! But I read well between lines and it seems there is much that you are not saying—as is ever the way of dragons, by the way. You are of course welcome to take liberties with my life, in perpetuity—and with me as well, that goes without saying—provided only that such liberties over stimulate my imagination in unseemly ways.

September the fifth :

Good morning my arany dragon, you! Are we feeling any better? After opening my packages yesterday I lost all interest in writing. After all, I had some praying to do with the stars. It did occur to me though that a minor miracle had taken place. To whit, I received your rosary on the day that I manifested my consecration package—on the feast day of the Holy Rosary. Holy smokes! You do realize, don’t you, that it was none other than Mary herself who brought us together again in this lifetime? Where we are concerned, I trust her completely. Where she is concerned I trust fully my heart. But hey, you are the Catholic. I could be wrong. I wouldn’t know one feast day from another. But it’s the thought attendant the discovery that counts. Is it not, then?

 Last night I called upon the spirit of the black panther. Subsequently, I dreamed that I was serving a life-sentence in prison. Unfortunately, I rather liked it though! I had a nice cell-mate, the food was pretty good, and the energy was simply fantastic—which is to say, lively, vibrant, exciting and in Technicolor. All the inmates were young and healthy and most everybody that I knew was there in prison right along with me. Some of them were even guards.

Okay, so I began the consecration. I must say though that the so called prayers are simply appalling. Who ever came up with the silly idea that devotion should consist of rhyming doggerel of unsurpassing triteness? Such shameless, ghastly ejaculations urgently require immediate revision into Shakespearean blank verse—preferably in the elegant Latin of Cicero. No wonder the church is spiritually bankrupt.

Poets of so astoundingly low a caliber as needs resign themselves to the ignominy of composing prayerbooks for the illiterate should be sent forth without delay to corrupt the Episcopalians. I’ve seen better verse on Hallmark Christmas cards. Poor, dear Mary. How can She stand it with all those taffeta angels and pooping cherubs playing harpsichords up there in Heaven? One would think that it were a well established fact by this time that sentimentality is the steak through the very heart of the spiritual life. Cliché’s on the half-shell. Tum-tum-tum-tum-tums ® LOL.

 But look, my sweetheart. Take your courage in hand. You are ever so deeply loved. The sorrows of the day are sufficient unto themselves, you know. No need to tell you so; no need then either to dwell on things that are in God’s hands and never turn out as one expects them to. As a German proverb has it—one always cooks hotter than one eats. I should know, being the penultimate habitual transgressor of said dictum.

Aye, so it is. And meanwhile, the house is quiet once more, the blissful tranquility of premature senescence is happily restored, and my dad is back in his office where he belongs, tying up the phone lines. The clouds are hanging black, and heavy with rain, deep in the valleys where dark stands of pine whisper to themselves the sibilant mysteries of water and wind and sky.

I am feeling, the while, like a bull elk in full rut. Alive and electric with joyous lust. It is the season, I guess. Autumn…my very favorite time of the year. The hieros gamos of life in death and death in life, wreathed about with the sweet incense of wood smoke and fallen leaves and the delicious tang of impending frost.

With that thought I take my leave, leaving myself within the golden circlet of our life.With smoky kisses as plentiful as the harvest in the garden wilderness of Sol.Ever my love, my edes cicukam, my tender embraces; my veils of soft, opalescent light.Your little Knight-lite, i.