New Year's Resolutions in Press Democrat

article today by Guy Kovner:


New Year's resolutions, made during the "hubbub of the holidays," don't work for Viljoen, 49, leader of a 1,000-member congregation.

"My best resolutions have come at unpredictable times, often not at the beginning of the year," he said. "Indeed, I have found that if I force the matter . . . I have a much lower success rate at sticking to my resolution than when through personal reflection I come the awareness to do something, quit something, change something, etc."

See whole article here:

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20101230/ARTICLES/12301005/1350?p=3&tc=pg

Continue Reading...

Venice Italy

Poking around in old closets I found a stash of photographs from my first trips to Europe. This one is from my one and only trip to Italy where I lay in bed for five days throwing up. I heard the canals were beautiful. Sigh.

Continue Reading...

Edward Viljoen Senior

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Thinking about my Mom and Dad today.

Continue Reading...

Laughing

In the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Kahlil Gibran

LAUGHING

When laughter is shared, people are connected. Laughter has the ability to spread in a disarming way. A belly laugh is difficult to ignore and can easily bring a smile to other people, even if they have no idea what the laughter is about. Vigorous laughter gives the body a release from tension and is reported to boost the immune system and stimulate the chemicals our bodies use to feel good.

What makes you break out in laughter? Who has the ability to make you laugh, and when last did you spend time with them? How can you get more laughter in your life? What was the last funny joke you heard? Learn a new joke and tell it to a friend.

Continue Reading...

Photos by Keith Eggel

 

Stage by William Abel

Rev. Ruth Barnhart, Candle Host – look a Nativity Scene too!

Mark Beaudry Lights a candle

Christmas Chorus – Carol of the Magi,
Directed by Christopher Fritzsche
Valerie Marshall, Cello
Z Egloff, Organ

Continue Reading...

Hildegard von Bingen - A Thousand Years

Hildegard von Bingen's work has been around for nearly 1000 years and in recent years more attention has been directed to making recordings of her music.  Her music was inspired by legendary visions which included text and music which she shared in her religious community of women.  The works have a sense of mystery which is consistent with her idea that music is a bridge to heaven.  The melodies are simple, elegant and beautiful and often accompanied by instrumental drone as demonstrated at a service at our Center by Christopher Fritzsche and at our 2009 Christmas Candle Lighting Ceremony when a chorus of women sang Virtus Sapientiae.

(By the way, For recordings of Christopher with Clerestory Ensemble click here.)

Also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, she was a writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, visionary, and wrote botanical and medicinal texts, as well as the first surviving morality play.

Here is a link to the preview of Margarethe von Trotta's movie, "Vision from the LIfe of Hildegard Von Bingam" about Hildegard's life.

Continue Reading...

Hildegard von Bingen - Mystical Visions and Music

Hildegard of Bingham was a 12th century nun, who when she was 3 years old saw a brightness so great that her soul trembled.  From childhood she appeared to be clairvoyant and clairaudient, experiencing  what she described as secret and marvelous vision of light.

“The visions which I saw I did not perceive in dreams nor when asleep nor in a delirium nor with the eyes and ears of the body.  I received them when I was awake and looking around with a clear mind with the inner eyes and ears in open places according to the will of God.”

These visions came in every day life settings.  When awake and looking into the world with a clear mind.  Not befuddled with attachment and manipulation or whatever else, and not altered by consuming anything.

She was not  completely comfortable with these visions.  In Medieval Europe it was probably risky to exhibit out of the norm behavior.  But the visions wouldn’t stop.  One day, dramatically, the icon of her faith showed up in front of her in a fiery and intensely flashing light.  This light poured from the heavens through her whole brain.

She said of it that it kindled her heart and breast as the sun warms anything upon which her rays fall.  And she began to understand the old and New Testament and other spiritual books and she began to compose music, paint, write books about spiritual matters and the natural sciences.

O virtus Sapientiae Translation:
http://edblogword.blogspot.com/2009/08/o-virtus-sapientiae-hildegard-von.html



At the heart of Hildegard von Bingen's extraordinary creativity was her accomplishment in music. In the poetry and melody of her songs, she reveals the full authority, intelligence and striking originality of her genius. She wrote profusely as no woman before her. Even though she received no formal training in music, her talent and motivation drove her to write 77 chants and the first musical drama in history, which she entitled The Ritual of the Virtues. She writes in her autobiographical passages: "I composed and chanted plainsong in praise of God and the saints even though I had never studied either musical notation or singing." Unlike the mild, mainstream music of her day, her lyrical speech breaks into rhapsodic emotion; her zesty melodies soar up to two and one half octaves, leaping and swirling into flourishing roulades which leave the singer breathless.  Hildegard's music can only be fully understood, however, in the light of all her work.

Dr. Nancy Fierro, CSJ

http://www.hildegard.org/music/music.html



Blessed Hildegard of Bingen (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis)  
(1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, visionary, and
polymath.[2] Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of
Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo
Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama.[3]    She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical  songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature  Illuminations.

www.wikipedia.org

 

Born at Bermersheim in Rheinhesse in 1098, the tenth and last child of noble parents,  Hildegard showed early signs of exceptional spiritual gifts. Looking back, she placed the  onset of her visionary experiences in early childhood, although at that stage she did not understand their significance. As the monk Godfrey wrote in his and the monk Theodoric's Vita Sanctae Hildegardis (Life of Saint Hildegard, circa 1180s): "nomine Hildegardis, patre Hildeberdo, matre Mechtilde progenita. Qui licet mundanis impliciti curis et opulencia conspicui creatoris tamen donis non ingrati filiam pre-nominatam divino famulatui manciparunt. Eo quod cum ineuntis etatis eius prematura sinceritas ab omni carnalium habitudine multum dissentire videretur" (Her parents, Hildebert and Mechtilde, although wealthy and engaged in worldly affairs, were not unmindful of the gifts of the Creator and dedicated their daughter to the service of God. For when she was yet a child she seemed far removed from worldly concerns, distanced by a precocious purity). The life they chose for her was that of a companion to Jutta, daughter of Count Stephan of Spanheim, who lived in a cell near the church of the Benedictine monks at Disibodenberg.

Jutta instructed her young charge in the recitation of the Psalter, teaching her to read and (by no means an obvious corollary at the time) to write. In subsequent years Hildegard was always quick to point out how limited her formal education had been, emphasizing that she had been taught by an "indocta mulier" (unlearned woman) and, consequently, that any insight she gained into theological or secular matters was divinely inspired.

Sabina Flanagan
http://www.hildegard.org/documents/flanagan.html

Continue Reading...

How To Do A Puzzle

Made with iTimeLapse, ReelDirector, SlowMoCam, ReverseCam, iPhone4

  

Continue Reading...

Laughing

December 9, 2010

In the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Kahlil Gibran

LAUGHING

When laughter is shared, people are connected. Laughter has the ability to spread in a disarming way. A belly laugh is difficult to ignore and can easily bring a smile to other people, even if they have no idea what the laughter is about. Vigorous laughter gives the body a release from tension and is reported to boost the immune system and stimulate the chemicals our bodies use to feel good.

What makes you break out in laughter? Who has the ability to make you laugh, and when last did you spend time with them? How can you get more laughter in your life? What was the last funny joke you heard? Learn a new joke and tell it to a friend.

Continue Reading...

Official Santa Day in Sf

Uhm!?




Photo by Chris Fritzsche
App: autostitch
Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Continue Reading...