Medium: Pencils 2H, B and 2B

Confluence

Where the old mall was recently torn down, inside the demolition zone that is surrounded by a great circle of fence, there are two long concrete troughs on either side of stairs that lead down to what was one of the mall's entrances: the eastern end that led out to a main alley and across it to the town's open square.

The mall was slowly destroyed, and then no more mall was there but rubble heaps; and then the rubble was taken away. The fence still stood.

Taking the place of the rubbish heaps then were heaps of the great concrete pad that was broken up on which the mall was founded. While the concrete heaps were standing, and the fence still standing around them, out of the concrete troughs that seemed to have been forgotten, on either side of what was an entrance to the mall, daffodils bloomed, like they had year after year: just inside the zoning fence, the yellow bouncing heads, but no mall there anymore.

Medium: Pencils F and 5B

Locus Focus

Locus Focus is hosted at Shredded Cheddar and is all about settings in books. Read the rules and share a setting!

"Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he."

A setting in Middle-earth is primarily drawn through a mini-history unfolding within that setting's longer and larger history. One receives a vivid evocation of the place when in the middle of it; that is to say, in the middle of the actions taking place there. But there are worlds in Middle-earth so low and so high, so beyond knowledge, that they occupy a mere two pages in The Two Towers; and it is enough to "take the lid off your top" and beset one with wild wonder, of a kind that is deeply ingrained in the soul - unless of course one is a zombie.

"'Then tell us what you will, and time allows!' said Gimli. 'Come, Gandalf, tell us how you fared with the Balrog!'

'Name him not!' said Gandalf, and for a moment it seemed that a cloud of pain passed over his face, and he sat silent, looking old as death. 'Long time I fell,' he said at last, slowly, as if thinking back with difficulty. 'Long I fell, and he fell with me. His fire was about me. I was burned. Then we plunged into the deep water and all was dark. Cold it was as the tide of death: almost it froze my heart.'

'Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin's Bridge, and none has measured it,' said Gimli.

'Yet it has a bottom, beyond light and knowledge,' said Gandalf. 'Thither I came at last, to the uttermost foundations of stone. He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake.

'We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark tunnels. They were not made by Durin's folk, Gimli son Gloin. Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day. In that despair my enemy was my only hope, and I pursued him, clutching at his heel. Thus he brought me back at last to the secret ways of Khazad-dum: too well he knew them all. Ever up now we went, until we came to the Endless Stair.'

'Long has that been lost,' said Gimli. 'Many have said that it was never made save in legend, but others say that it was destroyed.'

It was made, and it had not been destroyed,' said Gandalf. 'From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak it climbed, ascending in unbroken spiral in many thousand steps, until it issued at last in Durin's Tower carved in the living rock of Zirakzigil, the pinnacle of the Silvertine.

That swift but solid efficiency with which Tolkien emblazons in the mind this incredible place: "They were not made by Durin's folk, Gimli son Gloin." and "He was with me still." And how is it that to ponder the existence of this place entails an awesome sort of reformulation, or harrowing, of everything else existent in the world, in Middle-earth? Suddenly the world is living, more than one could even imagine. Gandalf continues:

'There upon Celebdil was a lonely window in the snow, and before it lay a narrow space, a dizzy eyrie above the mists of the world. The sun shone fiercely there, but all below was wrapped in cloud. Out he sprang, and even as I came behind, he burst into new flame. There was none to see, or perhaps in after ages songs would still be sung of the Battle of the Peak.' Suddenly Gandalf laughed. 'But what would they say in song? Those that looked up from afar thought that the mountain was crowned with storm. Thunder they heard, and lightning, they said, smote upon Celebdil, and leaped back broken into tongues of fire. Is not that enough? A great smoke rose about us, vapour and steam. Ice fell like rain. I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin. Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell.'

Gandalf asks, "Is that not enough?" Yes, it is.

You have to wonder, what would be more terrible: to be at the bottom of the abyss of Khazad-dum, which gives "forsaken" and "lost" in any other place of the world, like a deserted island or the middle of the Amazon, the look and feel of home; or on the pinnacle of the Silvertine (the window out onto it being caved-in), "without escape upon the hard horn of the world"?

These two settings, linked by the "lost" Endless Stair, are somewhat like those margins of Middle-earth where the Elves go sailing (completely different too of course), but they are quite concretely within Middle-earth.

Ivan Generalić

Jesus on a Cross, By Ivan Generalić (December 21, 1914 – November 27, 1992)

I just came across this wonderful Croatian artist at Art Inconnu. Be sure to view his other works that the post links to.

Medium: Pencils H and 2B

Sketch Fragments

Medium: Pencils 2H and B

Medium: Pencils 2H and B

Good Old Catholic Links

"The blessing of each communicant at Mass with the Host is a very small detail -- if a blessing imparted by Christ Himself in the Eucharist can be called small. But it does prove that real love resides in and provides for the smallest details, however easy they may be to miss. Real love seeks to satisfy even the tiniest desires of the beloved. Indeed, to real love, nothing is tiny or beneath notice. Real love leaves undone nothing that can possibly be done for the beloved's happiness."

From Anita Moore's excellent post, On Being Starved into Submission.

It's a funny thing, that St. Thomas Aquinas would come to say of his entire body of work that it was as straw, after beholding - as St. Paul before him - the eternal kingdom of God; and that when Jesus appeared to him one day while kneeling in chapel, He would say to Aquinas in regards to his "polemical" writings against those old things that stupid argumentative people call heresies, not "Your entire work, Thomas, is as straw", nor, "You, Thomas, do you think you are significant in doing these things?", nor, "Do you persist in these writings because you think I need you to, who are as a fly in my ray?" but said to him, as one who precedes His eternal authority with the most exquisite courtesy, "You have done well with your writing; what do you wish of Me?"

***

I really like this picture of Fr. Longenecker with his altar servers.

***

I was at Michael O'Brien's site and came across the Holy Cloak Novena. I seem to vaguely remember coming across it somewhere else a while back. O'Brien writes of it:

"This ancient novena of prayers is called the Holy Cloak of St. Joseph, a particular and special way to merit the patronage of this great Saint while also rendering honour to him.

It is to be recited on thirty consecutive days in memory of the thirty years St. Joseph spent in the company of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If for some reason you cannot recite the prayer on a particular day, you may make up for it by reciting it on the 30th day as many times as the recitation was missed.

The extraordinary graces obtained by this prayer are innumerable. St. Teresa of Avila said: "If you really want to believe in it, prove it to yourself by reciting the Novena and you will be finally convinced."

It is most efficacious to say a prayer for the Souls in Purgatory.

With the same solicitude that we help dry the tears of the suffering souls, so to can we hope that St. Joseph will help dry our tears in our necessities. In this way, St. Joseph's Holy Cloak will spread itself over us and will serve as a shield against all those dangers which beset us so that we may all one day, with the grace of God, obtain eternal salvation.

Our Lord and Our Lady invite us to love and honor and pray to St. Joseph:

Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary, "I wish that every day you offer special prayers to Our mother and St. Joseph, Our most sweet guardian." The Blessed Mother said to the Venerable Maria de Agreda, "You must see to it that you continually increase your love and devotion to this great Saint. In all your necessities, you must avail yourself of his protection, under all circumstances you must encourage as many people as possible toward this devotion . . . for indeed, whatever our devoted spouse requests in Heaven, the Almighty God will grant on Earth.""

I guess it can be started on any day one chooses; and going for thirty days, I'm not sure how that's a novena, but it's called a novena anyways.

You have to take housing the toad seriously

Medium: Pencils 2h and 5B and pencil crayons and I think a couple of them were pastel pencils

Medium: I think Pencils B and 2H

Medium: Pencils H and 2B

Medium: Pencils 2B, 2H, F and B

Medium: 5B Pencil

Medium: 5B Pencil