Biden by Neil Waldman
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21TH, 2023
“Brothers and sisters, the Lord invites us to step out of the logic of self-interest and not to measure love on the scales of calculations and convenience. He invites us not to respond to evil with evil, to dare to do good, to risk in the gift, even if we receive little or nothing in return. For it is this love that slowly transforms conflicts, shortens distances, overcomes enmities and heals the wounds of hatred. And so, we can ask ourselves, each one of us: do I, in my life, follow the logic of recompense, or that of gratuitousness, as God does? The extraordinary love of Christ is not easy, but it is possible; it is possible because He Himself helps us by giving us His Spirit, His love without measure.
Let us pray to Our Lady, who by answering “yes” to God without calculation, allowed him to make her the masterpiece of his Grace.
Pope Francis
Communism in a Democracy
It’s the birthday of English poet W.H. Auden (1907), who once said, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” Auden published around 400 poems in his lifetime, including haikus, villanelles, ballads, sonnets, and limericks.
T.S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas
Crying, “What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill On the Floss?”
One of his most famous poems is “September 1, 1939,” written in a bar in New York City on the eve of World War II. The poem became very famous for the line “We must love one another or die,” but Auden disliked the line and the poem; he tinkered with both throughout his life, finally disavowing the poem entirely. He said it was “infected with an incurable dishonesty.”
In 1939, Auden was sailing to New York with his friend, writer Christopher Isherwood. They had known each other since they were eight years old and both attending boarding school at St. Edmund’s.
Auden landed at a somewhat shabby, funny-looking brownstone in Brooklyn Heights with other writers like Carson McCullers and Benjamin Britten. They called it the “February House” and it became a notorious haven for intellectuals, bohemians, and hangers-on, though Auden was very fussy about everyone’s writing time and instituted regular working hours before debauchery was allowed to start. He even made sure everyone had a good dinner every night, delighting in announcing, “We’ve got a roast and two veg, salad and savory, and there will be no political discussion.” Even striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee lived in the house for a time. She paid a good rent for her room in exchange for writing lessons. She began her book The G-String Murders (1941) at February House. And after a conversation with Auden, Carson McCullers started the book that would become The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951). Sometimes things got a little crazy: one boozy evening the writers raided the icebox and mistakenly ate cat food. Auden’s housemates called him “Uncle Wiz.”
W.H. Auden spent half of his 66 years living in New York City. He once said, “I adore new York, as it is the only city in which I can live and work quietly.” Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection The Age]of Anxiety (1948). His books include Letters from Iceland (1937), The Sea and the Mirror (1958), and Thank You, Fog (1974).
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 