Glory to the Trinity!

 

When I started seminary back in 1974 in Rome, one of the students in my year was Sebastian Temple. Does the name mean anything to you?  It may do, as he was a composer. His most famous piece is "Make me a channel of your peace", one of the most popular hymns since Vatican II.  He was already something of  a star in his adopted home in the USA, and he found it a bit hard that in 1974 hardly anyone had heard of him in Britain. Sadly, he didn't complete the course. I learned later that he died in 1997.

My memory of him is his slot at the end of our otherwise often tedious music practice on Saturday mornings. If you put a guitar in his hands and he sang one of his songs he'd light up the whole chapel. I remember him telling the guys "Smile when you sing my songs!" It still grates on me when I hear "Channel of my peace" dragged...

Here he sings his hymn to the Holy Trinity  "Sing praises to the living God". It's hard to capture the effect that songs like his had on Catholic music. Some may sound dated now, but they helped open the window...

Bede and the Beda

 Today 25th May is the feast of St Bede, usually known as the Venerable Bede, and patron of my seminary in Rome, the Beda or Pontifical Beda College to give it its full name.  Living around 700AD Bede is one of tehtowering figures of not only church history in Britain, but all history. Although he hardly travelled at all from his base in Jarrow, Tyneside, hs fame spread far and wide  for saintliness,  and study. His history writings are our main source for the period after the Romans left.  We visited Jarrow on our September Pilgrimage to north-east England a few years back.

 

 

The Beda was founded in the 19th century for late vocations. The lower age limit for students
there now is 30, but in my time, when most seminarians started at 18 years old, there were many of us well under 30. I was the youngest!  You can learn all about the Beda at its website bedacollege. org   The picture shows the college chapel, including the very moving large crucifix.

 

An Indian fix

 

Now for something different....

After some Simon & Garfunkel songs from a few decades ago, here is a song from Coldplay, one of our best UK bands of recent years.  But this is an Indian version of "Fix You", one of their best-known songs. It is performed by Indians on a mixture of Indian and western instruments.  I've always liked music where things are mixed, often called "fusion". 

For those who don't know the song, I've included the original too, and lyrics below..

 

 

 

When you try your best, but you don't succeed

When you get what you want  but not what you need

When you feel so tired,  but you can't sleep

Stuck in reverse

 

And the tears come streaming down your face

When you lose something, you can't replace

When you love someone, but it goes to waste

Could it be worse?

 

Lights will guide you home  and ignite your bones

   And I will try to fix you

 

And high up above or down below

When you're too in love to let it go

But if you never try, you'll never know

Just what you're worth

 

Lights will guide you home  and ignite your bones

   And I will try to fix you

 

Tears stream down your face

When you lose something, you cannot replace

Tears stream down your face 

and I  promise you, I will learn from my mistakes

Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones

   And I will try to fix you

S & G by request

Seems you folks can't get enough of Simon & Garfunkel.  I've had a few requests for 'Scarborough Fair', another of their classics. I say classics, but in fact it is an old folk song. On their recorded version they sing it in counterpoint with a Paul Simon kind of peace song,( available here at https://youtu.be/-BakWVXHSug ) but here it is the simple folk tune with some lovely harmonies between the two of them. Once again, we are at the 1982 Concert in Central Park. Relaz with the half a million and enjoy... Words below, with the Simon words in italics..

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?  

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there, 

she once was a true love of mine

 

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt  in the deep forest green)
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  Tracing of sparrow on snow-crested ground
Without no seams nor needle work   Bedclothes the child of the mountain
Then she'll be a true love of mine     Sleeps unaware of the clarion call

 

Tell her to find me an acre of land    A sprinkling of leaves
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme   Washes the grave with silvery tears
Between the salt water and the sea strands  And polishes a gun
Then she'll be a true love of mine

 

Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather Blazing in scarlet battalions
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme          Generals order their soldiers to kill
And gather it all in a bunch of heather     A cause they've long ago forgotten
Then she'll be a true love of mine           

 

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?  

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there, 

she once was a true love of mine

50 years ago in Bilbao

50 years ago, April to June 1971, I was in Bilbao in the Basque country of northern Spain. I was in the gap between sixth form and university, where I would be studying modern languages, especially Spanish. So it was a chance to have a go at some real Spanish.

I was 17 and set off with the optimisn of that age, catching the ferry from Southampton to Santurce, just outside Bilbao and finding accommodation (thanks to Lynda Barry, of Christ the King). Bilbao has been glammed up a bit since then, especially with the building of the Guggenheim Museum there (below). It was "total immersion" as I only spoke to 1 English-speaking person in three months, and that was the consul-general's secretary. I stayed with some engineering students in the apartment of a lovely, kind lady called Ines (Agnes).  At first I was the butt of all their jokes, and they were delighted to teach me how to swear in Spanish. We all ended up amigos. 

The political scene was different, worse than I and probably most people in the UK realised. Franco was still in power, and you felt it in all sorts of ways in daily life, not least the fact that the Basque language was banned. I remember Ines speaking it in whispers on the the phone, in case someone overheard.  On a few occasions it was quite scary, such as the military parade on the day the government celebrated "liberation day" which most of the people had seen as "invasion day".  The tanks rolled down the main street where there were only planted onlookers....

Although it was a bit scary to be thrown in the deep end on my own, I learned a few lessons, grew up a bit, and certainly got a grip on Spanish as it is spoken rather than taught. Cincuenta anos, fifty years...

One of my spiritual homes

I recently came across this picture, which shows one of my own spiritual homes. It is the chapel at the General House of the Little Sisters of Jesus at Tre Fontane on the outskirts of Rome. It is probably the place more than anywhere else where I discovered and learned how to be quiet - truly quiet, and especially quiet in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Rome can be a very noisy, busy place, and seminary life also didn't quite fit the bill. Although we had a lovely modern chapel, you knew your room was close by, as was the refectory, the common room - ordinary life for me at that time. I needed somewhere accessible, yet inaccessible in a way.  

The Little Sisters are part of the religious family founded in the first half of the 20th century in the spirit of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, soon to be canonised (left). I had come to know some of the Little Brothers, who impressed me enormously, and then someone told me that the Sisters HQ was just a short bus ride away.  I decided to investigate, and so one afternoon a few of us set out.

The convent is in the grounds of Tre Fontane Abbey, a Cistercian monastery built where tradition says St Paul was beheaded (Tre Fontane = Three springs which appeared at the spot). A simple drive wound up through the eucalyptus and other trees, and brought you to the rustic-looking wooden buildings, built partly by the sisters themselves. Then we entered the chapel, to discover that the Eucharist was exposed there every day from lunch until evening, just as in the picture above. There were some pews, but most people sat or knelt on the wooden floor. Everything was arranged with beautiful simplicity, acccording to the desert spirituality of de Foucauld and his followers. Uncomfortable at first, I was slowly drawn into the absolute silence, the quiet, the beauty for the eye and the soul.

On periodic return visits I realised I was becoming very comfortable with all this - remembering that adoration was not so, if I can use the word, "fashionable" as it is now. Silence, peace, calm do not come easily to many, and especially in front of the Lord who waits for us. Thank you, Lord for the sisters and the place, the time they have created which was for me, exactly the right place and the right time.  

You can find out more about Blessed Charles de Foucauld and the Little Brothers and Sisters and other congregations inspired by him, at  www.charlesdefoucauld.org and also at www.jesuscaritas.info/

Line of Duty

I started watching "Line of Duty" in about series 3 or 4, and went back to binge watch the previous ones. Since then, I've been a fan. 

Now you might be expecting me to say "What a disappointment" after Sunday's final episode of the latest series - and I have to admit that this was my first reaction. But after a few more days and reading one or two things, I'm coming to the conclusion that it was better than I originally thought. True, the revealing of Buckells as 'H' seemed disappointing or even far-fetched, but is there  a little more to 'Line of Duty' than meets the eye?

One of my favourite words or sayings (ask any parishioner who has to sit through many homilies) is that life is messy. So having the likes of Buckells promoted in his lack of ability, having Hastings labouring under his (Catholic and just) guilt. may not fit into the normal run of TV dramas, but perhaps it does reflect life in its variety and messiness. We all know of people promoted above their abilities,  and we all know that there are still many in our world with a solid and uncompromising conscience.

So now I don't feel that the series left a bland or boring taste after the finale. Maybe just a taste of reality that some may feel was a little too real...   

St Joseph the Worker

 Today is the feast of St Joseph the Worker, a feast instituted I think early in the 20th century at a time when communism was on the rise and many countries were instituting a Labour Day. Joseph is a very appropriate patron of the world of work, being what is called a tekton in Greek. Although this is traditionally translated as carpenter, it would have in fact included other manual work too, such as with stone. The pictue left shows the traditional site of the workshop in Nazareth.

 

One of the greatest effects of the pandemic has been on the world of work. Families have lost
breadwinners, workers have lost jobs, furloughs and redundancies are all around, etc etc.  So we need someone up there to put in a good strong word for the world of work, and who better than St Joseph?