Christmas
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They call it "12 Days of Christmas Songs," but they use the 12 days preceding Christmas, which may be ignorance or may be a bow to the reality that on December 26th most Americans will consider Christmas over. Anyway, I've only read a few of these, and they're a mixed bag to say the least, but
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Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time,A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning
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I tend not to like jazz reworkings of Christmas carols. There's almost always a kind of levity that either borders on or crosses over into irreverence. And for that matter I'm not fond of classically-trained voices singing anything except classical music. But this seems an exception on both counts. A friend sent it to me,
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This is a carol I did not know until fairly recently but have come to love, by way of this King's College recording, which I think I've recommended before. It's an inexpensive two-disc set of wonderful performances of most of the best-known and some lesser-known carols, plus a Vaughan Williams "Fantasia on Christmas Carols" (which
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If you don't know Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, you should. It's a selection of Middle English poems related to the Nativity, set to music. Here's a performance of the entire piece. And here is something I posted a few years ago, a sort of recipe for a very tasty holiday drink. I said then that it
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I hope Our Lady would take the title of this post in the affectionate tone in which I first heard it, which was from the lips of a college teacher in reference to his own wife's gravid condition. She was within earshot, if I remember correctly, and seemed to be more amused than not. This
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…In the meantime, the only thing that I can see that will help you is to learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, to be kind to yourself, by looking outwards to God, by accepting the fact that you are infinitely loved by Infinite Love, and that if you will only cease to build up
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I knew once the primmest old invalid lady who could well have offered her helplessness to God but had a grievance with Him because He had not permitted her to be eaten by a cannibal for the Faith; she could not accept herself as a sick woman but she would have achieved heroic virtue as
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“Be it done unto me according to thy word” surrenders yourself and all that is dear to you to God, and the trust which it implies does not mean trusting God to look after you and yours, to keep them in health and prosperity and honor. It means much more, it means trusting that whatever God
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If I were you I should not worry with de Caussade and his ilk. Most books of that sort are written by and for religious (monks and nuns), and once they have made a clean break from their family and the world, they have not got the same kind of troubles that we have. It is
Light On Dark Water 