Chamaeleo Sapiens

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Metachrosis at Chamaeleo Sapiens

Chamaeleo Sapiens has changed its colors once again! The look and the content have shifted, but I hope the same spirit - to work through life's highs and lows together - remains intact. This reorientation has been on my mind for a few months now, but as 2020 has progressed it has impressed upon me the need for the change, for my sake if for no one else's! If the revamped blog helps you navigate this difficult year any too, then I'll take that as an additional win for 2020!

I originally started this blog in the days when LiveJournal was still a recent thing and people didn't think twice of over-sharing personal information online. How times have changed! (And rightly so! What were we thinking?!) And my God, how times have changed! I know I personally had a great deal of hope for 2020, but here we are in this year when we don't get the options we want, but the options we have.

Last year was a year of great highs and lows for me personally (more on that later!), and I entered 2020 really expecting life to be on the up and up as 2019's lows worked themselves out. Instead, here we are! Decision after unexpected decision has confronted me this year, and I've procrastinated, whined, raged, and despaired by turn waiting and hoping against hope not even for the options I wish I had, but just for the far from ideal options I had just last year that are now themselves well and truly gone. (For the foreseeable future anyways!)

But this isn't the year we get the options we want, it's the year we get the options we have. My hope is to explore them together with you as we all navigate this difficult year and the years to come.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Loving the Dead

Four years ago around now I made a visa run out of Ukraine and got to spend the weekend in southern Poland exploring Krakow and Częstochowa. I got to see some really neat stuff, but one of the most endearing and enduring memories I have is of leaving the little chapel in Krakow where I'd gone for an early All Saints/Sunday Mass and seeing how many people were already in the adjacent cemetery on that sunny, cold fall morning to visit the graves of their loved ones, many of them not only bringing flowers, but even picnic baskets so that they could share some time together as a family, both living and dead. It was such a profoundly moving and beautiful thing, and now whenever these three days of Halloween (All Hallows Eve), All Saints, and All Souls roll around I can't help thinking of that cold morning in Krakow and the warmth of those people's love. I hope we all are blessed to have such enduring love in our lives, love that overcomes the flimsy barriers we erect between the so-called living and the dead...

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Cooking Blog

I've finally decided to split off reports on my culinary [mis]adventures to a new blog, Oxen and Elephants. Enjoy!

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

"Conditor Alme Siderum"

Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people's everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
and hear Thy servants when they call.

Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
should doom to death a universe,
hast found the medicine, full of grace,
to save and heal a ruined race.

Thou camest, the Bridegroom of the Bride,
as drew the world to evening tide,
proceeding from a virgin shrine,
the spotless Victim all divine.

At whose dread Name, majestic now,
all knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
and things celestial Thee shall own,
and things terrestrial Lord alone.

O Thou whose coming is with dread,
to judge and doom the quick and dead,
preserve us, while we dwell below,
from every insult of the foe.

To God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Spirit, Three in One,
laud, honor, might, and glory be
from age to age eternally. Amen.

An Advent hymn sung at Vespers in the Roman Rite.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

"When The Lamp Is Shattered"

When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead -
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute -
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

A poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

"My Heart's in the Highlands"

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

A poem by Robert Burns. He can only be speaking of the Ethiopian Highlands here of course! "My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here..."