9/8/24

 Sunday, September 8, 2024

1951 Pope Pius XII publishes the encyclical Sempiternus Rex

1974 US President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon of all federal crimes

2015 Pope Francis announced moves to streamline the annulment process within the Catholic Church

2022 Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral Castle after ruling for 70 years, as the UK's longest-serving monarch. Her eldest son inherited the throne as King Charles III

In bed at 9:30, half-awake around 3, misty dreaming of Bruce Springsteen, earworm of 'You Can't Start a Fire without a Spark, up at 3:50.  I let Lilly out at 5:05.  Geri got up at about 8:30, so our circadian rhythms are about 4 or 5 hours out of synch.

Prednisone, day118, 10 mg., day 24/28.   Prednisone at 5:05.   AllBran and berries at 7:00.  Morning meds at 8:30.

Holy Week.  I started the day listening to episode 1 of The Atlantic's podcast about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, TN, and the riots or uprisings that followed.

Simone Weil  I read The New Yorker article "The Supreme Contradictions of Simone Weil: It’s a conundrum of the philosopher’s biography that most basic human needs were alien to her,". by Judith Thurman, September 2, 2024.  I can't pretend to understand Weil's thinking or mysticism, but I'm surprised that we have at least two points of connection: first, she is said to have had a profound religious or spiritual experience or ecstasy and to have prayed for the first time, in the Portiuncola in Santa Maria degli Angeli below Assisi, and second, another such experience at the Benedictine Abby in Solemnes listening to the monks engaging in Gregorian chant while suffering from terrible migraine headaches.  She said she felt the "possibility of living divine love in the midst of affliction".  She was an ascetic, especially toward the end of her life and most people would call her mentally ill.  She died, in part at least of starvation, at age 34 and the coroner all her death a suicide though others disagree.  How many 'saintly' persons are what most of us would call 'mental cases'?

 Unlike her, I did not enjoy any profound spiritual experience while visiting either Assisi or Solemnes but it appears we had at least similar drives to go to those places. Though not as profoundly as she was, I was touched by the visits to both places.  I remember the Portiuncola more than the great basilica at the top of the Assisi hill, especially the spot outside the little chapel where Francis is said to have died, naked, on the ground.  Of our trip to Solemnes, what I remember most vividly was Geri's incredible tolerance of my desire to hear the monks chanting, though it meant walking in a cold, December, northern France, rain for a couple of miles along the river Sarthe.  She never complained or called me out for putting her through what turned out to be an ordeal leaving both of us soaking wet, very cold, and stiff as boards by the time we reached the Abby.  Once there, we couldn't find the entrance to the chapel and I was ready to give up the effort, but she persisted and got us into the building in time for me to hear the chants during the Terce canonical mass.  After lunch at the hotel restaurant across the road, I returned to the chapel to hear more chants at the Sext hour, while Geri enjoyed staying warm and dry at the hotel.   It was after that experience that I was certain that I had married a truly extraordinary woman. (Rembert Weakland had been the abbot at Solemnes before being appointed archbishop of Milwaukee.)

Lethargy seems the best description of my condition today, a state of decreased consciousness, or maybe it's just lasssitude, a state of mental weariness,  lack of energy; listlessness; languor.  Or as I sometimes put it, brain dead, not depressed or anxious, but hardly alive.  A lost day.

Thanks to David who came over for his annual gift of cleaning out our gutters, a messy job requiring a lot of ladder climbing and scooping out mucky dead tiny Locust and other leaves,  Friday when he and Sharon picked up Ellis he also went down to the basement and loaded a 40-pound bag of salt into our water softener.  I had tried to do it myself a few days before but couldn't manage to lift the bag to the top of the salt vat.  These experiences, for which I am most grateful, make me wonder how long we (or Geri) will be able to stay in this house, with all its maintenance requirements.  Geri has missed this year's entire gardening season because of her knee pains and two surgeries.  

Anniversaries thoughts.  Re Pius's encyclical and Francis's simplification of the Church'ss marriage annulment procedures, I say Bah, humbug.  Re QEII's long reign as queen and empress of the British Empire, I say I admire her tenacity, respect for traditiol, and sense of duty, but as British royalty generally I say, Bah humbug.  Cruel Brittania, and all that . . 

RE Ford's pardon of Nixon, it wouldn't have been necessary if the Roberts/Trump Supreme Court had been sitting in those days since now we know that Nixon was right when he told David Frost "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition."  So much for, in America, no one is above the law.