Sabbatical Journal: 17. Archbishop Weakland Speech

Saturday 25 April. 9:10 a.m. Lion Yard, Cambridge. I was thinking the other morning about all those promises Mary made to those who say the rosary. What a deal! It seems too easy! Why is it that I seem to be happier with these promises than with Christ's own? Their closeness in time? Their greater specificity? Is it because I find it easy to say the rosary or am I looking for a simple solution? Both, I suspect; but saying the rosary isn't always easy, and I can't always expect to have the same attitude or desire unless I keep at it, which is always a struggle. I like to think it is easy because of the thought of Mary's kindness and love. In contrast to Jesus she seems to ask less, like the mother who intercedes with her husband for the children (only this time it is her son, who, in turn, intercedes with the Father). But I'm not sure I've got the real reasons figured out.

Thinking also that Mary asked us to say the rosary for the reparation of sins and yet how can we ever gain the reparation of sin? That is the mistake I think I fell into for so long. It is not my work at all, but the work of Jesus. My only work is to come to a real understanding of the need for sorrow at one's own sins, not so much guilt, as disappointment in failing to be better at love. Still, it is the relationship with Jesus we need to work on. Perhaps through continual sorrow for sin and prayers for reparation we come to better that relationship.

Archbishop Weakland mentioned yesterday (in his speech at Heyworth College in London) that he remembered a sermon from 1949, and therefore it must have made an effect on him. The same thing is true with things I remember. In particular, I was thinking about the remarks made to me by M. Fridolin and Fr. Van Dorn about talent and potential. I have thought over the years that I would like to have had better guidance from them, not just the words, "You've got talent, work harder." I didn't see any place in which to channel my energies and, as it turned out, I was waylaid by rock music. (By inclination I am like my mother and follow in her emotional footsteps, paralyzed at times by my feelings of wonder, beauty, etc. Yet my father, I suppose, has passed on to me a certain logic and thus I tend to like to order my feelings and produce a result; ergo, poetry, a perfect solution, as would have been music.)

Archbishop Weakland's talk was a response to those who think that capitalism has won the ideological war and should therefore be adopted by the church as the party line. It was no surprise to me, having never for a moment thought that such a position makes any sense as a church position, that Weakland concentrated on the various problems associated with capitalism (U.S. style, of course): problems with waste, rampant consumer and social acquisitiveness (we are known by what we have, not who we are), etc.

Monday 27 April. 2:50 p.m. Home. Windy. Why, he was asked, did Hugh Trevor Roper become a historian? Because, he said, the present was very dull, "while the past was exciting and very visible." (Interview in The Independent, 25 April.)

My thoughts about work, thoughts of aversion to the life I left behind come upon me like so many waves, lapping the shore. Occasionally there is a high tide (many waves, strong feelings), but there is low tide as well (complacency, calmness). Any time I want a high tide, I just think of the details of the daily grind!

Problem with my writing: I can't seem to imagine anything beyond myself!

11:10 p.m. Remembering that I dreamt about Michelangelo last night. Coming across an entire body of less well know or undiscovered works, we combed an area; was it a cave, a cathedral? Something big, with openings. Looking for all those new works, in wonder.

Going over astronomy with Mara till almost ten tonight, she asks if the world will end. I say, yes, in a few billion years. She is a bit worried. I remember my own fears and try to tell her no big deal, by then we won't be around (neither of us), people will make a new sun or have off to a new planet. I sense her fears. There's not much I can do, we all have to come to grips with thoughts of our own deaths, and, added to that, the death of our world. I will try to help some more, but we each have to take it in.

I used to dream in violent

Shades of brown and red, my death
accomplished without success or failure,
Taken back before my time.
But what was my time?
Nothing I had a clue
To pursue beyond the lifelong
Honor of this Being so generous
with His love He wanted me back—
so soon. The years passed,
and fear and apocalypse
were buried beneath heaps of
material --from kitchen sinks
To college funds, getting by to learning more.
They are still there, mind you,
(Those fears)
And I mine my early fears daily
For the truer colors I know lie within.

Tuesday 28 April. 7:45 a.m.

Jeffrey: "Where the hell is my sweater!?"

Thomas: "Good catch!" "Cats don't frighten me."