Backstory—
Posts of October 24th—
Love Ghost and Versions—
and a version of Plan 9—
Related religious meditation—
Irresistible Grace, illustrated by The Girl in the Yellow Dress.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Behind the Green Door
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday June 22, 2008
Salvation by Grace
Today’s New York Times has an obituary of Henry Chadwick, an Anglican priest and expert on church history who believed strongly in ecumenism.
Church history and ecumenism may interest few Americans, who have not recently suffered the sort of conflicts familiar to Northern Ireland.
Nevertheless, here are some thoughts on the matter.
From a statement of “the five points of Calvinism”–
Irresistible Grace
“‘Irresistible grace’ refers to the grace of regeneration by which God effectually calls His elect inwardly, converting them to Himself, and quickening them from spiritual death to spiritual life. Regeneration is the sovereign and immediate work of the Holy Spirit….”
Calvinism is, of course, a deeply serious and powerful approach to spiritual matters.
Still, I prefer the following visions of grace:
How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?
— Wallace Stevens, 1936
On the left, a Catholic answer.
On the right, a Protestant answer.
For further details, see 10/16/05.
The above two
Philadelphia stories
have met in a different
vision of Grace:
Click image for a (much) larger version.
This tableau, in the larger version showing details in the background buildings, seems to me an apt, if more Calvinist and less Catholic, version of what Paul Simon, in his Graceland album, has memorably called “angels in the architecture.”
Let us hope that the late Henry Chadwick now has a place among such angels.
Related material:
Yesterday’s entries and
what T. S. Eliot might call
their “objective correlatives“
in the Pennsylvania Lottery
and in this journal:
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Friday, September 26, 2003
Friday September 26, 2003
A Mass for
Rosh Hashanah
In memory of playwright Herb Gardner, who died on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2003, in honor of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset today, and in celebration of T. S. Eliot’s birthday, which is today, here is an illustrated Mass from the Catholic News Service dated Sept. 24 (Saint Herb’s Day):
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Proposed Vatican document on liturgy returned to drafting committee ROME (CNS) — A proposed Vatican document on liturgical norms was sent back to its drafting committee after cardinals and bishops raised some objections and encouraged some changes. Among other things, the draft presented to consulting prelates in June reportedly discouraged the distribution of Communion under the forms of both bread and wine and said altar girls were permissible only for a good reason.
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See also the two previous entries,
and “Max’s Hawaiian Ecstasies” in
Gardner’s play “The Goodbye People.”
For a musical accompaniment to this
requiem for Gardner,
the “Aloha Mass,”
click here.
Among
those
at the
Mass:
The Mass, at Max’s Hawaiian Ecstasies
in Paradise, will conclude with
“Simply Irresistible,” sung by
Saint Robert Palmer and performed by…
The role of the congregation will, as usual,
be performed by George Plimpton.
Payment for our sins will be made by
Johnny Cash.
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