Friday, October 8, 2010

"To watch it all burn away, burn away"


This is such a great song on so many levels, certainly a great song as fall sets in. Grapevine Fires by Deathcab for Cutie is our meditative Friday traditio- it's like a down tempo 'It's the End of the World as We Know It (I Feel Fine)'. A mediative and personalized apocalypse (Ἀποκάλυψις = unveiling) as summer dies.

"We watched the plumes paint the sky gray/
She laughed and danced through the field of graves/
And there I knew it would be all right"

My dear Don Giussani describes what this burning away is all about:

"Christians may not win. This is exactly the point: that we always win, even if we were to be always defeated, where ‘winning’ is realizing a greater humanity, and ‘being defeated’ means not having power. As one of you said once in a discussion: ‘We aim for a victory without power!’ This was what he meant. It’s the victory of the human. By facing life according to faith, we achieve a victory of the human, our gesture is more human. This does not mean that our position prevails politically, economically, and so on, that we attain power." Luigi Giussani, (The I is Reborn in an Encounter via Cahier Péguy).

In these days during which the impulse to make a political powerplay, to assert ourselves in an ideological way, this is a good reminder. We live and speak the truth with great love, saying "Yes" over and again to the One we serve, who asks nothing less of us than our entire selves.

Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam

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