Under The Earth

MIDSUMMER: THE BIRTH OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST
Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us.

Christ, hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.

God the Holy Ghost, Have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, One God, Have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, pray for us.
Queen of Prophets, pray for us.
Queen of Martyrs, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, precursor of Christ, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, glorious forerunner of the Sun of Justice, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, minister of baptism to Jesus, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, burning and shining lamp of the world, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, angel of purity before thy birth, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, special friend and favorite of Christ, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, heavenly contemplative, whose element was prayer, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, intrepid preacher of truth, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, voice crying in the wilderness, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, miracle of mortification and penance, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, example of profound humility, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, glorious martyr of zeal for God's holy law, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, gloriously fulfilling thy mission, pray for us.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.

Christ, hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.

V. Pray for us, O glorious St. John the Baptist,
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us Pray:

O God, Who hast honored this world by the birth of Saint John the Baptist, grant that Thy faithful people may rejoice in the way of eternal salvation, through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

R. Amen.

Now on this table
The sunlight in every cranny of the bread
Shining on the juice, the blood of grapes
The blood of God
Heaven is joined to earth
Every time
The wine was poured
In chalices
or seed spilled forth
In sighs from longing cocks
There was the incarnation
Here is the miracle:
That when there are eyes to see it
When what slept inside awakens
Then he walks across the
Sinai in a pillar of cloud
Then she marches with her trumpets
In a bolt of fire
Then the sharpest desire that licks the dormant
Body
Then the blood
And then the body
And the bread
The book you read
The last thing you fed on
Has gone
Through its transubstantiation

Ben

You aren't my partner or my other self. Our worlds, our outlooks are distinctly different. Looking at you, so different from me I am startlingly aware of my individuality. Of how the me that is me reaches out to you. Whatever I feel with you is an individuality that is the antithesis of loneliness. That I rejoice in. You're not my other half. Much like Alanis Morrissette I do believe that one and one make two. We make a good two. Much of the good I do comes from you.

Somewhere in the space between
Your old life
And my set ways
Grows a happiness like the roses in the backyard
Deeper, deeper pink like fish flesh, not girl pink,
Pretty pink, but blood and spirit pink
The color they call salmon
A rose like a weed
A plant
Opening up all meaty
Not greedy
But accepting life
Taking it out of the dirt,
Flesh colored petals soaking it up out of the sun
Without effort
The only effort now that we exert
Could be the effort to crush this thing
That grows between you and me
God knows I love you

Even now I am afraid to construct
these lines
As if they will define my madness
And end what I am seeing
All this time I’ve wanted
to build a temple to you
And fill it with blood and roses
All the time I ignored you
Your touch, your breath,
the scent of your clothes
All of it—
I adored you

Chris and Ben more or less make my world go around... Okay, you guys can stop now. I'm getting dizzy...

O Lord, thou hast been our refuge in every generation…
-Psalm 91

It’s an easy thing to give up. People today don’t believe in anything. Kids have no respect. To me, far more dangerous than that vague respect older people talk about—kids have no self respect, no self love. They seek it anywhere or they seek oblivion. No one believes in anything anymore. Not even themselves. It is a very dark synopsis and we wail for the good old days. No one has the values they used to, people treat each other like objects now. Just look how we use each other.

Anyone who says such a thing needs a brief survey course in history. There is more of Jim Crow, lynchings, interment camps and slavery than there is apple pie. Women bleeding in back alleys and men battered to death for loving each other, convents full of nuns set to flames because they were Papists and not Protestants fill the pages of our good old days.

There was a statement found from a while ago lamenting the loss of innocence and virtue in youth, of how the world was going to nihilism long before it could make the trip to hell in a handbasket. I look around at the people I love and lament those things too. But this statement was found on clay in Egypt over four thousand years ago. Every generation has its struggles. In every age things seem to be at an end and yet we persist. Goodness, light, virtue, remain. It just seems that sometimes it’s news to us that we have to struggle a little to get them.

The phrase that I am tired of hearing—because it is shot through with holes and excuses—is the unimaginative and immoral, “As long as two consenting adults are doing something and not hurting each other, why is it wrong?” It seems sad that we’ve come to this impasse where morality, decency, imagination and responsibility have been replaced by so flat and dull a statement. Whoever utters it eventually learns, after a great deal of heartache that all the trouble comes from what the adjective and the verb—consenting, hurting—conceals

As a liberal and a Catholic I have seen that what masquerades as liberalism now is often this lack of responsibility. It is increasingly news to people of my generations that 1. you are a human being who 2. lives in community with human beings—that means lives contingent upon and not against others and 3, are responsible to your fellow human beings. The first two statements are merely facts. The last can be debated, but only a fool would.