Month: October 2002

Envoy Magazine joins St. Blog’s

Well folks, I thought I would break the news. Envoy Magazine has now joined St. Blog’s, and it promises to be as much fun as the magazine. The name of the blog is Envoy Encore and with a team of Pat, Caroline, Carl, Steve Ray, Tim Staples, Mary Beth Bonacci and Catholic Light’s crazy canuck canonist, it looks the be pretty good! No, I won’t be giving up Catholic Light, the Petra Pundit, or Gratian’s Commentary to take on this team blog, but it pretty much kills what’s left of CLOG. Which reminds me, I’ve now got an email address just for blogging going at petevere@msn.com. How do I add it to everyone else’s in the upper left-hand corner?

Proposal: Make a publication
I would send this question to the Catholic Light contributors privately, but what the heck — I’ll send the question urbi et orbi. The posts on this blog are getting to be a mixture of bite-sized, blogesque paragraphs and multi-hundred-word essays. I think we should consider starting a Catholic Light online publication, with the blog being one of the sections. We could divide up the essays into Arts & Culture, Faith, Apologetics, Politics, or what have you, and have a home page featuring several essays at once. We could also accept contributions from people who are outside the Chosen Few.
It wouldn’t be a huge undertaking to write a content-management system to handle the site, and between the contributors we have more than enough talent to make a technically excellent site. Given the low cost of hosting, I’m sure we could figure out how to pay for it somehow (I don’t think we’d need more than $50 a month or so).
We’re generating a ton of material here — I think it’s quickly outgrowing the blog format. What do you all think?

The parting of friends

Next Monday I will say good-bye to the sweet kitten I recently rescued and named “Lisette.” I have found a great home for her. A little more than ten years ago I said good-bye to another woman named Lisette who is now a Poor Clare. She gave up that name for a religious name a long time ago. I’m somewhat ashamed to tell you that I don’t know what it is. She left every bauble and empty promise of this world for a life of total poverty devoted to God. Her feet are bare feet now as are those of her sisters. The community is entirely dependent on God’s grace and the generosity of others for the necessities. When I found this tiny kitten she was in the very same state though completely alone. After some thought I decided to name her “Lisette” in memory of my dear friend.

We exchanged letters only once after the entered the cloister. More than that I’m afraid would have been a distraction for her and too much for me. While in college we dated for about a year and a half before she became a religious. Actually we were best friends who kissed goodnight every now and then. Since we weren’t kissing anyone else goodnight we agreed that we were dating. I loved her enough to give her the space she needed for the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s perfect will for her. I knew God had plans for her. I was at peace with that. Looking back on our relationship I know the Spirit had to be at work. In my whole life I have never been as much at peace in a relationship as I was with her.

The time came very quickly that we would see each other for the last time. We said good-bye at her parent’s house just days before she entered the cloister. We cried and embraced. I took a step back from her to look into her eyes.
“It broke,” she said.
“What broke?” I whispered.
“My heart.”
When I say good-bye to this kitten I will tell her what I wish I had told Lisette at that moment.
“When you die, Lisette, go straight to Heaven and wait for me there.”

I am also excited because…
My dear wife bought tickets to see the Washington Opera production of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa and in 24 hours we’ll be in our finery and situated in velvet seats in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Vanessa is an amazing work, it’s a masterpiece of American opera 2nd only to Porgy and Bess. So this weekend will be a musical one: Vanessa tomorrow, a workshop on the GIRM on Saturday and The Dream of Gerontius on Sunday. Can anyone help walk my dog this weekend?
Call me a snob, but I’m attracted to the 5-course meals of music like Vanessa and Gerontius. They are “unsung” masterpieces – never to be heard on the radio right after Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, never to be covered by a marching band. My mom won’t be whistling any ditties from either while she makes tomato sauce. They speak to the wonder of creation – that when you believe you’ve heard, seen, smelled and tasted it all there’s still more that’s come from God in the form of beauty.

More on The Dream of Gerontius
“The greatness of ‘Gerontius‘ is in its profound sincerity rather than its originality, in the beauty and truth of the emotion rather than in the material skill with which heavenly rapture and hellish vision are portrayed. We are told that when the people of Verona met Dante in the streets of their town they pointed to him saying: ‘There goes the man who has been to hell’. After listening to Gerontius we are apt to think that Elgar too passed through the dark valley before his time – and beyond as far as human thought or human imagination can reach.”
-Ferruccui Bonavia, violinist, writer, composer and music critic
The Listener 22 April 1943