In Memoriam

Composer Ennio Morricone died in Rome today. Vatican News tweeted that the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture recalled that the composer had been “‘able to express the ineffable and the invisible at the same time.’” The Associated Press [AP] contributed this look at the Oscar-winning composer.

The President of the Pontifical Council for Culture shares his memories of Oscar-winning Italian composer #EnnioMorricone, who died Monday in Rome at the age of 91.https://t.co/cv73d0DjiO

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) July 6, 2020

Playing to the House

Music is creative. In Barcelona, Spain, playing music in an opera house became more creative. 

An opera house in Barcelona reopened with a performance to 2,292 plants https://t.co/epUpxssHh2 pic.twitter.com/gKAYJ2Jl7G

— CNN (@CNN) June 27, 2020

“No More Than You Have”

A single “community of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, also known as Trappists,” exists in Britain. Nick Hamer made a documentary that “shows the everyday life of” the monks. The monks switched from working their dairy farm to “a state-of-the-art brewery.” A trailer follows Jesuit Paul Nicholson’s review.

‘Do you ever think that you’ve wasted your life?’ https://t.co/63N7plqgPG #OutsidetheCity #Film

— Thinking Faith (@ThinkingFaith) June 9, 2020

Easter Joy

The fact that the Easter festival has been given 50 days indicates the magnitude of celebrating it with joy. After 5 weeks human celebration easily begins to flag. The pandemic unites people more closely with the first disciples than one might think: they were joyless before the Risen One visited them.

Editor in Chief of America Media Jesuit Matt Malone notes that faith flowing from Easter infuses people with new purpose.

Easter joy gives us the faith to stand in our present, on the bedrock of the past, and face our future: a future of our choosing yet also chosen for us, @Americaeditor writes in his 'Of Many Things' column. https://t.co/L53BskDSJl

— America Magazine (@americamag) May 20, 2020

Time Not Withstanding

The story below spans two continents and several cultures. It recounts a past favour being repaid today. 

The Irish are repaying a favor from 173 years ago in Native Americans’ fight against coronavirus https://t.co/4C7Q5KwPIE

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 13, 2020

Music and Healing Comfort

A physician with a background in music had an insight. She enlisted the help of friends to present music from far distances to the physician’s patients and to her colleagues.

To Begin: Happy Mothers’ Day

#PopeFrancis on #MothersDay: "I want to remember with gratitude & affection all mothers, entrusting them to the protection of Mary, our heavenly mother. My thoughts also go to the moms who have passed on to the other life and accompany us from Heaven." pic.twitter.com/OuL0sWBtdm

— Catholic News Service (@CatholicNewsSvc) May 10, 2020

Poetic Herald

May can see snow. More welcome is the poet’s sharp sight: “the lights of the flowers / coming on in waves.”

Poem of the month: Primavera by Robin Robertson https://t.co/GPRf8xPTOJ

— The Guardian (@guardian) May 9, 2020

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Later: Sunday’s 2^nd Reading

“Striking Parallels”

Sadly, “women's contributions to health care have been consigned to the historical shadows due to their lower status, income inequality and constrained social roles.” Author Sharon T. Strocchia has written a detailed book about Renaissance women delivering health care. She lets “interesting historical figures…add color to the book's detailed research.”

It seems strange to assert that a book about Late Renaissance Italian women in health care is relevant to the present global crisis, but striking parallels are found throughout "Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy." https://t.co/g8qqRc0UV0

— NCR (@NCRonline) May 6, 2020

Needed: Stillness

'Be still': 12 images to evoke silence, peace and calm reflection – in pictures https://t.co/EQCQFwdP7e

— The Guardian (@guardian) May 2, 2020

“Dynamic and Continuous”

From the perspective of staying home routinely the phrase “dynamic and continuous” can feel alien. Staying home avoids contagion—contracting and spreading it. It also invites considering things differently.

The Christian virtue of hope is “dynamic and continuous,”  wrote  Emeritus Pope Benedict in an encyclical letter devoted to hope. Christian hope “makes things happen and is life-changing …The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”

Frances Murphy cited those words and others in her review of the 1997 film, “Life is Beautiful.” Thinking Faith reposted it. It may be worth rewatching to secure a continuing sense of beauty during life in pandemic.

"It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for." If this is a message you need to hear at the moment, find it on screen: https://t.co/Ur6zJnMBci

— Thinking Faith (@ThinkingFaith) April 28, 2020

Earth Day: Golden Anniversary on 22 April

Meet Jenny Mottar, Art Director for NASA Science. Jenny explains her inspiration for this year’s Earth Day Poster. The video in the tweet contains links for more activities.

A puzzle for our 2020 #EarthDay poster, which uses a variety of @NASAEarth satellite images. Can you find where each image is located in the artwork? Check back later today for answers!

Download a printable poster to decorate your space: https://t.co/jwX2sMqohS #EarthDayatHome pic.twitter.com/CGAAT6Eiub

— NASA (@NASA) April 18, 2020

Awake and Asleep

Pantries are yielding their holdings for creative cooks at home. Keep? Toss? Check the date? J. Kenji López-Alt explains that, “Expiration dates are not expiration dates.“ Read more about the voluntary food dating, and how age affects foods.

In addition to the above NYT link via The National Geographic read about how the sleep of some people these days teems with “vivid, unusual dreams.” “Researchers explain why withdrawal from our usual environments—due to social distancing—has left dreamers with a dearth of ‘inspiration.’”

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Wiki-image Yellow column by “Arntor | CC BY-SA 4.0"

Fire One Year Ago

Notre Dame burned last year. The pandemic has put on hold the renovation efforts. National Geographic posted a story about past and present filled with video and text. It includes Kristin Romey's look

at the resilient Good Friday service by Michel Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris, at a make-shift altar in Paris’s wrecked shrine, calling for renewal not only of a building, but of a people.

“Today,” Aupetit said, “we are in this half-collapsed cathedral to say that life is still here.”

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Wiki-image Yellow column by “Arntor | CC BY-SA 4.0" 

Virtual Events Around the World—at Home

Reuters posted a calendar of livestream events around the world. At the site one can add events to electronic calendars. Events from theatre, arts, talks, music, and events for kids: more than distraction such events can nourish imaginations and spirits.

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Wiki-image Melb symphony orchestra.jpg by “fir0002 | CC BY-NC 3.0"

Flexibility for Future

The pandemic continues. It will for some time. Reuters posted a video in which children share, among others things, their difficulties with physical distancing. How to help them?

The Guardian tweeted a post from its Family Section:

At no point do the makers of Sesame Street say any of this will be easy [for parents]. But neither did they suggest the future has to be grim.

“I hope [people can see] a picture of joy within this moment,” Gibson said. “The act of rallying together toward a common goal is not a sad occasion.”

Sesame Street's pandemic advice for parents: 'Find rituals, be flexible, take a breath' https://t.co/zMtbsu0rFs

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 11, 2020

Remote Serving

As time elapses one may have a lapse of memory: entering home and forgetting to wash one’s hands first thing. One can forget that inactivity can be life-giving service. Taking to heart past infectious crises, washing hands, physical distance and solitary exercise: these are ways of living that will be in place for some time.

Jesuit Brother Joe Hoover considered our inactivity and new behaviours as he described living Ignatian spirituality in the time of Covid-19:

A Christian deemed “nonessential” has to hand things over to others—even secularists—to do the work of feeding, protecting, consoling, caring for. The police, the E.M.T.s, the doctors, the nurses, the outreach workers, whatever their religio-ethical framework for life, they are on the front lines of this crisis, not you. …you are left with the intense washing of your hands—17, 18, 19 seconds—as your most profound act of personal martyrdom.

Read his “Praise, reverence and serve the God of coronavirus.”

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Wiki-image Social Distance (Illustration) by “Maximilian Schönherr | CC BY-SA 4.0"

Meaning of It

The Pope’s British biographer and Pope Francis conversed. Their conversation was published today. Francis spoke of the “meaning of the coronavirus pandemic.” His biographer, “Austen Ivereigh reveals exclusively to Thinking Faith how the interview—the pope’s first for English-language Catholic publications—came about, and how the pope sees a world in crisis being offered the chance to change.”

[Links to their conversation are at the end of this exclusive.]

Remembering our future: @Pontifex speaks to @austeni about the #corona crisis: https://t.co/0essHuseUF

— Thinking Faith (@ThinkingFaith) April 8, 2020

Teacher Outside My Window

Antoni Gaudí was the Catalan architect of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica. Gaudí was convinced that modelling after nature was close to God. Gaudí was very intuitive. He said, “My teacher is the tree outside my window.” He could see what others could not.

Looking at a tree as if seeing it for the first time can help one’s vision in these days of physical separation. Birds can be a more welcome treat for the eyes and the ears. Birdwatching, says a tripsavvy post, is a “way to add a little more zest to your quarantine routine right now.” Learning—as well as centring—is in watching.

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Wiki-image Raven by “Park staff - NPGallery | PD-US"

Part Travelogue, More Spiritual Nourishment

After numerous news reports about the pandemic in Italy, an honest and touching personal account refreshes. In  early March Jesuit Patrick Gilger flew to Milan to study Italian. His America Magazine post are journal entries that bear his reflective stamp and deft turns of phrase (“alone-together age”; “before social distancing became social discipline”). His post conflates his present with Milan’s present and past and helps us appreciate our present.

Father Gilger also recalled that 3^rd-Century St. Cyprian pastored during a plague in North Africa and noted that today’s “health care workers and grocery store clerks and all those who stand on the front lines of our own pandemic…teach us, as did Cyprian, that the question of whether we have the courage to come closer to those who are suffering must be posed again and again.”

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Wiki-image Galleria_Vittorio_Emanuele_dalle_guglie_del_Duomo_di_Milano by “Zuccheroevaligia| CC BY-SA 4.0"

[After supper: 5 in 1—Resources To Enter Palm Sunday]