Thursday, November 24, 2011

IN THE NAME OF...

I try to start my day with some spiritual exercises to help me prepare for whatever may come.

And this morning I was thinking about the way I prayed when I was a Catholic schoolboy, especially beginning and ending each prayer with "In the name of The Father, the Son and The Holy Ghost" (which later became "Holy Spirit"). I always wanted to add Mary (or "Our Lady" as we called "The Mother of God") and Saint Francis.

Then a list suddenly occurred to me (hallelujah!—for those who don't know I was a compulsive listmaker seemingly since birth and lost that compulsion entirely after brain surgery) that went like this:

"In the name of Mary the mother of Jesus, Saint Francis and Saint Claire, Shakespeare and Nelson Mandela, Ghandi and Martin Luther King..."

Later more names came to me, so I thought I'd make a list of all those that did and come to me now as I type this, occasionally looking at my book shelves for inspiration:

"In the name of...
Jesus,
Mary, mother of Jesus,
and Mary Magdelene
Saint Francis
Saint Claire
Saint Brigid
Pope John XXIII
and Dorothy Day
Ghandi
Martin Luther King
and Mother Theresa
Krishna
Lao Tzu
Buddha
Rumi
and Kabir
Skakespeare
Cervantes
Goethe
Lady Murasaki
William Blake
and Walt Whitman
Henry David Thoreau
Emil Dickinson
William Carlos Williams
William Saroyan
Jack Kerouac
and Bob Kauffman
Oscar Wilde
James Joyce
Samuel Beckett
John M. Synge
Queen Maeve
and Cuchalain
George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln
Bobby Kennedy
and JFK
Bobby Sands
and Chief Joseph
Jimi and Janis
Marilyn and Elvis
John Lennon
Johnny Ace
Frankie Lyman
Kurt Cobain
and Phil Ochs
Frank O'Hara
and Frank Sinatra
Lady Day
Lester Young
Bird
Miles
Monk
and Bill Evans
Eric Dolphy
Scott LaFaro
Clifford Brown
and Fats Waller
Jean Rhys
Martha Gelhorn
Lee Miller
and James Fee
James Haining
and Robert Trammel
Eva Hesse
David Smith
and Willem deKooning
Joe Brainard
and George Schneeman
Tim Dlugos
and Ed Cox
James Schuyler
and Ted Berrigan
Benjamin Franklin
and Thomas Edison
Renoir (both father and son)
Matisse
Bonnard
and Picabia
and among the still living
Nelson Mandela
and The Dali Llama
Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren
Diane DiPrima
and Pete Seeger
and my children
and grandchildren
and all those I've loved
and still do
Amen.

23 comments:

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Interesting: Jim intends to be cheeky and derogatory in the above remarks, yet he refers to his President as "Messiah" - the Savior.

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Lally said...

He got it from the rightwing media which has used it for quite a while. It's what passes for humor on the right.

TC said...

Mike,

If the tooth fairy left your list under my insomniac pillow and said,
"that third name from the bottom... well, she'll be President one day," I'd almost be tempted to Get Tooth Fairy Religion.

(But first I guess I'd have to get teeth.)

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Your source is pure hate-print. More propaganda on the theory that if you print lies in an official looking website and spread it around enough then it carries weight. But it only carries weight for the hateful and ignorant. like you. And the photograph with the alleged Mohamed Malik holding a Swastika placard is clearly photoshopped. You are a liar spreading lies based on hate and ignorance. Your stupidity continues to grow.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20111125/e1541d00-4583-447e-9484-34f48d386cba

This is not covered by the Second Amendment. This is not a "well regulated militia."

It's time for an update of the Second Amendment and it's time to rid our world of guns and replace them with education and consciousness.

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Harryn Studios said...

In the Name of Love ...
and after reading some of those undeleted posts I might add patience, tolerance, and understanding - but quite honestly I was thinking of something much more immediate and vengefully gratifying.
Obviously, I have work to do but pleased that I'm much further along than my right wing counterparts ...
Just curious Jim - did you spend your childhood torturing small animals or pulling the wings and legs off insects?

Lally said...

Sorry, had to delete comments again. There's enough rightwing hatred and intolerance and misinformation and lies out there to waste so much space on that here.

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
MIles said...

Sheesh, I'm glad I missed all that bile.

Dad, I read your "list" (which I experienced as a poem) as I listened to the Bill Evans trio link from the next post. Revelatory!

Lally said...

So glad you dug it son, makes me happy.

Connie said...

I'm glad I missed all those deleted comments, but it does make me wonder about someone who could have so many negative comments to make about something that was so personal rather than political.

TC said...

Connie,

It would disappoint and depress you, but also alas tell you a lot about the present psyche of this collapsing nation, to know that out here in the noble free sphere of the net there are actually MORE low slithering life-forms like this jerk who's been blotting Michael's sweet and high-minded post with all this gratuitous hate. As if the world needed more of that. I do a blog myself, and for some years now there's been a malignant troll filling my comment boxes with vicious dark matter far worse even than the miserable stuff we've seen from this guy. My troll tells me I am a boring queer jewish zionist beatnik pussy-lover, and other sweet nothings. Shakespeare once described this sort of thing as "motiveless malignity". But I fear it may be more serious than that. There may indeed be motive. Once one begins to ponder the implications, it becomes hard to sleep. And that is the object and delight which the blog troll always seeks.

Lally said...

Connie, TC said it better than I could. As we learn daily from the right's media and political presence, they don't discern between the personal and political (witness their treatment of Obama since his first day in office) unless the vitriol is aimed at them, which we all know is typical of bullies (and also know is motivated by fear on their part—studies have shown that self-described "conservatives" have many many more fears than self-described "liberals").

Connie said...

At one time in my life I was receiving very upsetting "crank" phone calls. They stopped when I got an answering machine and started screening my calls. I guess the personality of internet trolls is the same, it's just that now they can crank-call loads more people at once. Pretty sad really.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

It's all about wanting attention.

TC said...

Robert,

I fear you've just hit the nail on the head...almost.

And here we are, providing attention to that bent nail.