Thursday, 13 September 2018

Thursday's Serials: "Dwellers in the Mirage" by A. E. Merritt (in English) - I


BOOK OF KHALK'RU
CHAPTER I: SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
I raised my head, listening, - not only with my ears but with every square inch of my skin, waiting for recurrence of the sound that had awakened me. There was silence, utter silence. No soughing in the boughs of the spruces clustered around the little camp. No stirring of furtive life in the underbrush. Through the spires of the spruces the stars shone wanly in the short sunset to sunrise twilight of the early Alaskan summer.
                A sudden wind bent the spruce tops, carrying again the sound - the clangour of a beaten anvil.
                I slipped out of my blanket, and round the dim embers of the fire toward Jim. His voice halted me.
                "All right, Leif. I hear it."
                The wind sighed and died, and with it died the humming aftertones of the anvil stroke. Before we could speak, the wind arose. It bore the after-hum of the anvil stroke - faint and far away. And again the wind died, and with it the sound.
                "An anvil, Leif!"
                "Listen!"
                A stronger gust swayed the spruces. It carried a distant chanting; voices of many women and men singing a strange, minor theme. The chant ended on a wailing chord, archaic, dissonant.
                There was a long roll of drums, rising in a swift crescendo, ending abruptly. After it a thin and clamorous confusion.
                It was smothered by a low, sustained rumbling, like thunder, muted by miles. In it defiance, challenge.
                We waited, listening. The spruces were motionless. The wind did not return.
                "Queer sort of sounds, Jim." I tried to speak casually. He sat up. A stick flared up in the dying fire. Its light etched his face against the darkness - thin, and brown and hawk-profiled. He did not look at me.
                "Every feathered forefather for the last twenty centuries is awake and shouting! Better call me Tsantawu, Leif. Tsi' Tsa'lagi - I am a Cherokee! Right now - all Indian."
                He smiled, but still he did not look at me, and I was glad of that.
                "It was an anvil," I said. "A hell of a big anvil. And hundreds of people singing... and how could that be in this wilderness... they didn't sound like Indians...”
                "The drums weren't Indian." He squatted by the fire, staring into it. "When they turned loose, something played a pizzicato with icicles up and down my back."
                "They got me, too - those drums!" I thought my voice was steady, but he looked up at me sharply; and now it was I who averted my eyes and stared at the embers. "They reminded me of something I heard... and thought I saw... in Mongolia. So did the singing. Damn it, Jim, why do you look at me like that?"
                I threw a stick on the fire. For the life of me I couldn't help searching the shadows as the stick flamed. Then I met his gaze squarely.
                "Pretty bad place, was it, Leif?" he asked, quietly. I said nothing. Jim got up and walked over to the packs. He came back with some water and threw it over the fire. He kicked earth on the hissing coals. If he saw me wince as the shadows rushed in upon us, he did not show it.
                "That wind came from the north," he said. "So that's the way the sounds came. Therefore, whatever made the sounds is north of us. That being so - which way do we travel to-morrow?"
                "North," I said.
                My throat dried as I said it.
                Jim laughed. He dropped upon his blanket, and rolled it around him. I propped myself against the bole of one of the spruces, and sat staring toward the north.
                "The ancestors are vociferous, Leif. Promising a lodge of sorrow, I gather - if we go north... 'Bad Medicine!' say the ancestors... 'Bad Medicine for you, Tsantawu! You go to Usunhi'yi, the Darkening-land, Tsantawu!... Into Tsusgina'i, the ghost country! Beware! Turn from the north, Tsantawu!'"
                "Oh, go to sleep, you hag-ridden redskin!"
                "All right, I'm just telling you."
                Then a little later:
                "'And heard ancestral voices prophesying war' - it's worse than war these ancestors of mine are prophesying, Leif."
                "Damn it, will you shut up!"
                A chuckle from the darkness; thereafter silence.
                I leaned against the tree trunk. The sounds, or rather the evil memory they had evoked, had shaken me more than I was willing to admit, even to myself. The thing I had carried for two years in the buckskin bag at the end of the chain around my neck had seemed to stir; turn cold. I wondered how much Jim had divined of what I had tried to cover...
                Why had he put out the fire? Because he had known I was afraid? To force me to face my fear and conquer it?... Or had it been the Indian instinct to seek cover in darkness?... By his own admission, chant and drum-roll had played on his nerves as they had on mine...
                Afraid! Of course it had been fear that had wet the palms of my hands, and had tightened my throat so my heart had beaten in my ears like drums.
                Like drums... yes!
                But... not like those drums whose beat had been borne to us by the north wind. They had been like the cadence of the feet of men and women, youths and maids and children, running ever more rapidly up the side of a hollow world to dive swiftly into the void... dissolving into the nothingness... fading as they fell... dissolving... eaten up by the nothingness...
                Like that accursed drum-roll I had heard in the secret temple of the Gobi oasis two years ago!
Neither then nor now had it been fear alone. Fear it was, in truth, but fear shot through with defiance... defiance of life against its negation... upsurging, roaring, vital rage... frantic revolt of the drowning against the strangling water, rage of the candle-flame against the hovering extinguisher...
                Was it as hopeless as that? If what I suspected to be true was true, to think so was to be beaten at the beginning!
                But there was Jim! How to keep him out of it? In my heart, I had never laughed at those subconscious perceptions, whatever they were, that he called the voices of his ancestors. When he had spoken of Usunhi'yi, the Darkening-land, a chill had crept down my spine. For had not the old Uighur priest spoken of the Shadow-land? And it was as though I had heard the echo of his words.
                I looked over to where he lay. He had been more akin to me than my own brothers. I smiled at that, for they had never been akin to me. To all but my soft-voiced, deep-bosomed, Norse mother I had been a stranger in that severely conventional old house where I had been born.
                The youngest son, and an unwelcome intruder; a changeling. It had been no fault of mine that I had come into the world a throw-back to my mother's yellow-haired, blue-eyed, strong-thewed Viking forefathers. Not at all a Langdon. The Langdon men were dark and slender, thin-lipped and saturnine, stamped out by the same die for generations. They looked down at me, the changeling, from the family portraits with faintly amused, supercilious hostility. Precisely as my father and my four brothers, true Langdons, each of them, looked at me when I awkwardly disposed of my bulk at their table.
                It had brought me unhappiness, but it had made my mother wrap her heart around me. I wondered, as I had wondered many times, how she had come to give herself to that dark, self-centred man my father - with the blood of the sea-rovers singing in her veins. It was she who had named me Leif - as incongruous a name to tack on a Langdon as was my birth among them.
                Jim and I had entered Dartmouth on the same day. I saw him as he was then - the tall, brown lad with his hawk face and inscrutable black eyes. pure blood of the Cherokees, of the clan from which had come the great Sequoiah, a clan which had produced through many centuries wisest
councillors, warriors strong in cunning.
                On the college roster his name was written James T. Eagles, but on the rolls of the Cherokee Nation it was written Two Eagles and his mother had called him Tsantawu. From the first we had recognized spiritual kinship. By the ancient rites of his people we had become blood-brothers, and he had given me my secret name, known only to the pair of us, Degataga - one who stands so close to another that the two are one.
                My one gift, besides my strength, is an aptness at languages. Soon I spoke the Cherokee as though I had been born in the Nation. Those years in college were the happiest I had ever known. It was during the last of them that America entered the World War. Together we had left Dartmouth, gone into training camp, sailed for France on the same transport.
                Sitting there, under the slow-growing Alaskan dawn, my mind leaped over the years between... my mother's death on Armistice Day... my return to New York to a frankly hostile home... Jim's recall to his clan... the finishing of my course in mining engineering... my wanderings in Asia... my second return to America and my search for Jim... this expedition of ours to Alaska, more for comradeship and the wilderness peace than for the gold we were supposed to be seeking -
                A long trail since the War - the happiest for me these last two months of it. It had led us from Nome over the quaking tundras, and then to the Koyukuk, and at last to this little camp among the spruces, somewhere between the headwaters of the Koyukuk and the Chandalar in the foothills of the unexplored Endicott Range. A long trail... I had the feeling that it was here the real trail of my life began.
                A ray of the rising sun struck through the trees. Jim sat up, looked over at me, and grinned.
                "Didn't get much sleep after the concert, did you?"
                "What did you do to the ancestors? They didn't seem to keep you awake long."
                He said, too carelessly: "Oh, they quieted down." His face and eyes were expressionless. He was veiling his mind from me. The ancestors had not quieted down. He had lain awake while I had thought him sleeping. I made a swift decision. We would go south as we had planned. I would go
with him as far as Circle. I would find some pretext to leave him there.
                I said: "We're not going north. I've changed my mind."
                "Yes. Why?"
                "I'll tell you after we've had breakfast," I said - I'm not so quick in thinking up lies. "Rustle up a fire, Jim. I'll go down to the stream and get some water."
                "Degataga!"
                I started. It was only in moments of rare sympathy or in time of peril that he used the secret name.
                "Degataga, you go north! You go if I have to march ahead of you to make you follow...” he dropped into the Cherokee...”It is to save your spirit, Degataga. Do we march together - blood-brothers? Or do you creep after me - like a shivering dog at the heels of the hunter?"
                The blood pounded in my temples, my hand went out toward him. He stepped back, and laughed.
                "That's better, Leif."
                The quick rage left me, my hand fell.
                "All right, Tsantawu. We go - north. But it wasn't - it wasn't because of myself that I told you I'd changed my mind."
                "I know damned well it wasn't!"
                He busied himself with the fire. I went after the water. We drank the strong black tea, and ate what was left of the little brown storks they call Alaskan turkeys which we had shot the day before. When we were through I began to talk.


CHAPTER II: RING OF THE KRAKEN
                Three years ago, so I began my story, I went into Mongolia with the Fairchild expedition. Part of its work was a mineral survey for certain British interests, part of it ethnographic and archeological research for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania.
                I never had a chance to prove my value as a mining engineer. At once I became good-will representative, camp entertainer, liaison agent between us and the tribes. My height, my yellow hair, blue eyes and freakish strength, and my facility in picking up languages were of never-ending interest to them. Tartars, Mongols, Buriats, Kirghiz – they would watch while I bent horseshoes, twisted iron bars over my knees and performed what my father used to call contemptuously my circus tricks.
                Well, that's exactly what I was to them - a one-man circus. And yet I was more than that - they liked me. Old Fairchild would laugh when I complained that I had no time for technical work. He would tell me that I was worth a dozen mining engineers, that I was the expedition's insurance, and that as long as I could keep up my act they wouldn't be bothered by any trouble makers. And it is a fact that they weren't. It was the only expedition of its kind I ever knew where you could leave your stuff unwatched and return to find it still there. Also we were singularly free from graft and shake-downs.
                In no time I had picked up half a dozen of the dialects and could chatter and chaff with the tribesmen in their own tongues. It made a prodigious bit with them. And now and then a Mongol delegation would arrive with a couple of their wrestlers, big fellows with chests like barrels, to pit against me. I learned their tricks, and taught them ours. We had pony lifting contests, and some of my Manchu friends taught me how to fight with the two broadswords - a sword in each hand.
                Fairchild had planned on a year, but so smoothly did the days go by that he decided to prolong our stay. My act, he told me in his sardonic fashion, was undoubtedly of perennial vitality; never again would science have such an opportunity in this region - unless I made up my mind to remain and rule. He didn't know how close he came to prophecy.
                In the early summer of the following year we shifted our camp about a hundred miles north. This was Uighur country. They are a strange people, the Uighurs. They say of themselves that they are descendants of a great race which ruled the Gobi when it was no desert but an earthly Paradise, with flowing rivers and many lakes and teeming cities. It is a fact that they are apart from all the other tribes, and while those others cheerfully kill them when they can, still they go in fear of them. Or rather, of the sorcery of their priests.
                Seldom had Uighurs appeared at the old camp. When they did, they kept at a distance. We had been at the new camp less than a week when a band of twenty rode in. I was sitting in the shade of my tent. They dismounted and came straight to me. They paid no attention to anyone else. They halted a dozen feet from me. Three walked close up and stood, studying me. The eyes of these three were a peculiar grey-blue; those of the one who seemed to be their captain singularly cold. They were bigger, taller men than the others.
                I did not know the Uighur. I gave them polite salutations in the Kirghiz. They did not answer, maintaining their close scrutiny. Finally they spoke among themselves, nodding as though they had come to some decision.
                The leader then addressed me. As I stood up, I saw that he was not many inches under my own six feet four. I told him, again in the Kirghiz, that I did not know his tongue. He gave an order to his men. They surrounded my tent, standing like guards, spears at rest beside them, their wicked long-swords drawn.
                At this my temper began to rise, but before I could protest the leader began to speak to me in the Kirghiz. He assured me, with deference, that their visit was entirely peaceful, only they did not wish their contact with me to be disturbed by any of my companions. He asked if I would show him my hands. I held them out. He and his two comrades bent over the palms, examining them minutely, pointing to a mark or a crossing of lines. This inspection ended, the leader touched his forehead with my right hand.
                And then to my complete astonishment, he launched without explanation into what was a highly intelligent lesson in the Uighur tongue. He took the Kirghiz for the comparative language. He did not seem to be surprized at the ease with which I assimilated the tuition; indeed, I had a puzzled idea that he regarded it as something to be expected. I mean that his manner was less that of teaching me a new language, than of recalling to me one I had forgotten. The lesson lasted for a full
hour. He then touched his forehead again with my hand, and gave a command to the ring of guards. The whole party walked to their horses and galloped off.
                There had been something disquieting about the whole experience. Most disquieting was my own vague feeling that my tutor, if I had read correctly his manner, had been right - that I was not learning a new tongue but one I had forgotten. Certainly I never picked up any language with such rapidity and ease as I did the Uighur.
                The rest of my party had been perplexed and apprehensive, naturally. I went immediately to them, and talked the matter over. Our ethnologist was the famous Professor David Barr, of Oxford. Fairchild was inclined to take it as a joke, but Barr was greatly disturbed. He said that the Uighur tradition was that their forefathers had been a fair race, yellow-haired and blue-eyed, big men of great strength. In short, men like myself. A few ancient Uighur wall paintings had been found which
had portrayed exactly this type, so there was evidence of the correctness of the tradition. However, if the Uighurs of the present were actually the descendants of this race, the ancient blood must have
been mixed and diluted almost to the point of extinction.
                I asked what this had to do with me, and he replied that quite conceivably my visitors might regard me as of the pure blood of the ancient race. In fact, he saw no other explanation of their conduct. He was of the opinion that their study of my palms, and their manifest approval of what they had discovered there, clinched the matter.
                Old Fairchild asked him, satirically, if he was trying to convert us to palmistry. Barr said, coldly, that he was a scientist. As a scientist, he was aware that certain physical resemblances can be carried on by hereditary factors through many generations. Certain peculiarities in the arrangement of the lines of the palms might persist through centuries. They could reappear in cases of atavism, such as I clearly represented.
                By this time, I was getting a bit dizzy. But Barr had a few shots left that made me more so. By now his temper was well up, and he went on to say that the Uighurs might even be entirely correct in what he deduced was their opinion of me. I was a throwback to the ancient Norse. Very well. It was quite certain that the Aesir, the old Norse gods and goddesses - Odin and Thor, Frigga and Freya, Frey and Loki of the Fire and all the others - had once been real people. Without question they had been leaders in some long and perilous migration. After they had died, they had been deified, as numerous other similar heroes and heroines had been by other tribes and races. Ethnologists were agreed that the original Norse stock had come into North-eastern Europe from Asia, like other Aryans. Their migration might have occurred anywhere from 1000 B.C. to 5000 B.C. And there was no scientific reason why they should not have come from the region now called the Gobi, nor why they should not have been the blond race these present-day Uighurs called their forefathers.
                No one, he went on to say, knew exactly when the Gobi had become desert - nor what were the causes that had changed it into desert. Parts of the Gobi and all the Little Gobi might have been fertile as late as two thousand years ago. Whatever it had been, whatever its causes, and whether operating slowly or quickly, the change gave a perfect reason for the migration led by Odin and the other Aesir which had ended in the colonization of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Admittedly I was a throwback to my mother's stock of a thousand years ago. There was no reason why I should not also be a throwback in other recognizable ways to the ancient Uighurs - if they actually were the original Norse.
                But the practical consideration was that I was headed for trouble. So was every other member of our party. He urgently advised going back to the old camp where we would be among friendly tribes. In conclusion he pointed out that, since we had come to this site, not a single Mongol, Tartar or any other tribesman with whom I had established such pleasant relations had come near us. He sat down with a glare at Fairchild, observing that this was no palmist's advice but that of a recognized scientist.
                Well, Fairchild apologized, of course, but he over-ruled Barr on returning; we could safely wait a few days longer and see what developed. Barr remarked morosely that as a prophet Fairchild was probably a total loss, but it was also probable that we were being closely watched and would not be allowed to retreat, and therefore it did not matter.
                That night we heard drums beating far away, drumming between varying intervals of silence almost until dawn, reporting and answering questions of drums still further off.
                The next day, at the same hour, along came the same troop. Their leader made straight for me, ignoring, as before, the others in the camp. He saluted me almost with humility. We walked back together to my tent. Again the cordon was thrown round it, and my second lesson abruptly began. It continued for two hours or more. Thereafter, day after day, for three weeks, the same performance was repeated. There was no desultory conversation, no extraneous questioning, no explanations. These men were there for one definite purpose: to teach me their tongue. They stuck to that admirably. Filled with curiosity, eager to reach the end and learn what it all meant, I interposed no obstacles, stuck as rigorously as they to the matter in hand. This, too, they seemed to take as something expected of me. In three weeks I could carry on a conversation in the Uigher as well as I can in English.
                Barr's uneasiness kept growing. "They're grooming you for something!" he would say. "I'd give five years of my life to be in your shoes. But I don't like it. I'm afraid for you. I'm damned afraid!"
                One night at the end of this third week, the signalling drums beat until dawn. The next day my instructors did not appear, nor the next day, nor the day after. But our men reported that there were Uighurs all around us, picketing the camp. They were in fear, and no work could be got out of them.
                On the afternoon of the fourth day we saw a cloud of dust drifting rapidly down upon us from the north. Soon we heard the sound of the Uighur drums. Then out of the dust emerged a troop of horsemen. There were two or three hundred of them, spears glinting, many of them with good rifles. They drew up in a wide semi-circle before the camp. The cold-eyed leader who had been my chief instructor dismounted and came forward leading a magnificent black stallion. A big horse, a strong horse, unlike the rangy horses that carried them; a horse that could bear my weight with ease.
                The Uighur dropped on one knee, handing me the stallion's reins, I took them, automatically. The horse looked me over, sniffed at me, and rested its nose on my shoulder. At once the troop raised their spears, shouting some word I could not catch, then dropped from their mounts and stood waiting.
                The leader arose. He drew from his tunic a small cube of ancient jade. He sank again upon his knee, handed me the cube. It seemed solid, but as I pressed it flew open. Within, was a ring. It was of heavy gold, thick and wide. Set in it was a yellow, translucent stone about an inch and a half square. And within this stone was the shape of a black octopus.
                Its tentacles spread out fan-wise from its body. They had the effect of reaching forward through the yellow stone. I could even see upon their nearer tips the sucking discs. The body was not so clearly defined. It was nebulous, seeming to reach into far distance. The black octopus had not been cut upon the jewel. It was within it.
                I was aware of a curious mingling of feelings - repulsion and a peculiar sense of familiarity, like the trick of the mind that causes what we call double memory, the sensation of having experienced the same thing before. Without thinking. I slipped the ring over my thumb which it fitted perfectly, and held it up to the sun to catch the light through the stone. Instantly every man of the troop threw himself down upon his belly, prostrating himself before it.
                The Uighur captain spoke to me. I had been subconsciously aware that from the moment of handing me the jade he had been watching me closely. I thought that now there was awe in his eyes.
                "Your horse is ready again he used the unfamiliar word with which the troop had saluted me. "Show me what you wish to take with you, and your men shall carry it."
                "Where do we go - and for how long?" I asked.
                "To a holy man of your people," he answered. "For how long - he alone can answer."
                I felt a momentary irritation at the casualness with which I was being disposed of. Also I wondered why he spoke of his men and his people as mine.
                "Why does he not come to me?" I asked.
                "He is old," he answered. "He could not make the journey."
                I looked at the troop, now standing up beside their horses. If I refused to go, it would undoubtedly mean the wiping out of the camp if my companions attempted, as they would, to resist my taking. Besides, I was on fire with curiosity.
                "I must speak to my comrades before I go," I said.
                "If it please Dwayanu" - this time I caught the word -”to bid farewell to his dogs, let him." There was a nicker of contempt in his eyes as he looked at old Fairchild and the others.
                Definitely I did not like what he had said, nor his manner.
                "Await me here," I told him curtly, and walked over to Fairchild. I drew him into his tent, Barr and the others of the expedition at our heels. I told them what was happening. Barr took my hand, and scrutinized the ring. He whistled softly.
                "Don't you know what this is?" he asked me. "It's the Kraken – that super-wise, malignant and mythical sea-monster of the old Norsemen. See, its tentacles are not eight but twelve. Never was it pictured with less than ten. It symbolized the principle that is inimical to Life – not Death precisely, more accurately annihilation. The Kraken - and here in Mongolia!"
                "See here, Chief," I spoke to Fairchild. "There's only one way you can help me - if I need help. And that's to get back quick as you can to the old camp. Get hold of the Mongols and send word to that chief who kept bringing in the big wrestlers - they'll know whom I mean. Persuade or hire him to get as many able fighting men at the camp as you can. I'll be back, but I'll probably come back running. Outside of that, you're all in danger. Not at the moment, maybe, but things may develop which will make these people think it better to wipe you out. I know what I'm talking about, Chief. I ask you to do this for my sake, if not for your own."
                "But they watch the camp -” he began to object.
                "They won't - after I've gone. Not for a little while at least. Everyone of them will be streaking away with me." I spoke with complete certainty, and Barr nodded acquiescence.
                "The King returns to his Kingdom," he said. "All his loyal subjects with him. He's in no danger - while he's with them. But - God, if I could only go with you, Leif! The Kraken! And the ancient legend of the South Seas told of the Great Octopus, dozing on and biding his time till he felt like destroying the world and all its life. And three miles up in the air the Black Octopus is cut into the cliffs of the Andes! Norsemen - and the South Sea Islanders - and the Andeans! And the same symbol - here!"
                "Please promise?" I asked Fairchild. "My life may depend on it."
                "It's like abandoning you. I don't like it!"
                "Chief, this crowd could wipe you out in a minute. Go back, and get the Mongols. The Tartars will help. They hate the Uighurs. I'll come back, don't fear. But I'd bet everything that this whole crowd, and more, will be at my heels. When I come, I want a wall to duck behind."
                "We'll go," he said.
                I went out of that tent, and over to my own. The odd-eyed Uighur followed me. I took my rifle and an automatic, stuffed a toothbrush and a shaving-kit in my pocket, and turned to go.
                "Is there nothing else?" There was surprise in his question.
                "If there is, I'll come back for it," I answered.
                "Not after you have - remembered," he said, enigmatically.
Side by side we walked to the black stallion. I lifted myself to his back.
                The troop wheeled in behind us. Their spears a barrier between me and the camp, we galloped south.

Wednesday, 12 September 2018

Homily by His Eminence Joachim Cardinal Meisner, Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne (in English)


 This text was copied from https://www.de-vrouwe.info/



May 21, 2016


Dear sisters, dear brothers!

One of the most used and most often misused words is love. Love seeks proximity to man, not with noble or academic distance, but rather love wants to be in the middle, between men. In Latin, to be between is “inter-esse”, or interest. Interest is therefore another word for love. The Word of God, the Eternal Son, went forth from the blessed communion of the Most Holy Trinity and has dwelt among us in the world. This is because God has a burning interest in us. The first and most important coworker in this going-forth was Mary. Since God is love, God truly took Mary into the middle of this act and interested her in living between heaven and earth. As we profess in the Creed, the Word was made flesh by the Holy Spirit through Mary, the virgin. God is so interested in man that He has taken Mary into His interest. She answered, “I am the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk 1:38). In the parable of the good Samaritan, Mary becomes visible in the form of this merciful man. There, the priest and the Levite pass by the man who has been attacked by robbers. They had no interest in him. Yet the Samaritan stopped. He bent down to the one who had been robbed and poured oil upon his wounds because that person was interesting to him. In Mary, God also gave such a merciful Samaritan to the world. She stops and bends down to pour oil on the wounds of everyone who has been attacked by robbers.
1. Mary has been drawn by God into the middle of His path towards mankind. Since it pleases God to be with mankind, He needs someone who shares His joy in mankind and who allows themselves to be taken into service in as much as everything that concerns and moves man interests Him. Mary therefore lives among mankind everywhere upon this broad world wherever they live. Mary has become at the same time a fellow comrade and a co-inhabitant of the peoples of every region in the world. In Bethlehem, she was a Bethlehemite, in Nazareth, a Nazarene, in Egypt, an Egyptian, in Jerusalem, a Jerusalemite. In Częstochowa, she is a Pole for the Polish, in Altötting, she is a German for the Germans, in Kevelaer she is a Rheinlander for the Rheinlanders, in Mariazell, she is an Austrian for the Austrians, in Guadalupe, a Mexican for the Mexicans. We could go thus through all the countries of the world and declare them Marian.
                In the Family of Mary, we have been given a concise description of her presence among all people in that we honor Mary here as the “Lady of All Nations”. God has deliberately settled Mary among all nations in that from the Cross the Lord Himself binds us to Mary. Regarding Mary, He said to the Apostle John beneath the Cross, “Behold your mother!” (Jn 19:27). From the beginning, Mary was the solution to the many problems of man. I remember my own childhood very well. My father was lost in the war and my mother had to go to work every day to support her four children.
                When my oldest brother, who was already doing his apprenticeship, would return home and saw us three younger brothers without our mother in the apartment, he would ask, “Is no one home?” The three of us were but that apparently did not count. Our mother was missing! She was the soul of our family. Just by being there, she created an atmosphere of comfort and good will. We therefore waited every evening until she finally came home from her hard work. Only then did we feel like we were home and safe. She gave us the certainty that we were accepted and loved. “Is no one home?” is something often asked in our families and cultures. There is no substitute for a mother. Therefore we, as Christians, cannot do without Mary.
                The spirit of Europe and of the world is Mary. She is truly here! She lives in the individual nations among the people. She is especially visible and tangible in our places of pilgrimage. In the Russian church, there is a Marian icon with the title “Assuage My Sorrows” or “Warm My Coldness!” Even her simple presence blesses and sanctifies man. God really is interested in them. That is why He Himself became man, and for that process, He placed Mary in the middle. She is in our midst as a sign of His affection for us men. She is the visible and tangible interest of God in our world. It is therefore that we honor her as the Lady of All Nations.
2. Mary is also the ladder between heaven and earth, between grace and nature. She truly gives the Word of God her flesh and blood, so that it may take on a human face. We discover in our faces similarities with those of our father or mother. Since Jesus had no earthly, biological father, His human form was entirely influenced by Mary. He is the very image of His mother. At the same time, Mary is the hollow mold or the negative of the Word of God made flesh. In her, there is not just one word or moment of the life of Jesus present. She is the “living with Him” in person. Mary is the ultimate creation: she is the mirror image of the entire Word of God, in which all is created and redeemed. Her path is a part of His, but for her it is always a new one of not knowing and not being able. God is and remains a mystery. Mary learned in each moment what God’s providence wanted. Her way is marked by her own inability to plan from one moment to the next. God is a mystery which Mary decodes for us through her obedience in faith. There is nothing else found in Mary than the Word of God, and it is precisely therefore that men find themselves in her. And so, in spite of all our incomprehensibility we know that she recognizes and understands us. She is the interpreter of God and His decisions for us.
                Here we can understand the blessing spoken by the woman on the street to Mary: “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breast at which you nursed” (Lk 11:27). Now the eternal Word of the Father, looks at us with the facial characteristics of Mary. And if a loving look is the shortest path between two people, then truly the loving look of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, is the shortest path between the living God and us poor people. The expression, “Pray together, stay together”, is then valid for Mary. In the Gospel of Mark we read, “He went home again, and once more such a crowd collected that they could not even have a meal. When His relations heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mk 3:20-21). Mary is and remains among her foolish relatives, as the scriptures say. Perhaps this way was even more bitter for her than the way of the cross later.
                It can happen that people go mad with Jesus. It happened with His own relatives and also His disciples. I have the impression that the same is happening with some representatives of the Church today. What we hear from some people today is madness. Mary remains unswerving in their midst. She patiently bore her importunate relatives and did not distance herself from them but remained unswerving with her Son. She is God’s path to mankind, and therefore also mankind’s path to God. For the sake of her relatives, Mary goes with them so that they may arrive at their goal, Jesus. They should go to Him not as to one who is crazy, but rather to the Redeemer of the world, which He truly is and whom they necessarily need. The Church has her archetype in Mary. She is man’s path to God. She therefore remains in the middle, which is to say she is also among those who reject Jesus and who consider Him insane. There is no alternative to Him, for He is the only one who has descended from heaven and who said to us: on earth as it is in heaven. He is therefore also the only one who has ascended to heaven. And for this ascent, He has left us Mary as our ladder, so to speak.
3. Nowhere on earth is heaven so clearly realized as in Mary. “On earth as in heaven,” is synonymous in her. The Eternal Word of the Father became man. Nature and grace have grown together in union in Mary. From sinners, she makes sons and daughters of God and they are thereby made into brothers and sisters of each other. Their happiness and their joy are found in this. In that way, they grow together into the family of God, into the Church. Most of the saints became what they are with Mary, for in her God has come to be always among and between men. Whoever speaks of Mary, thinks also of Jesus Christ. Whoever sees Mary, also sees the Church, for the angel specifically said to her, “The Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28). Therefore we are always at home where Mary is.
                Mary heals us from all schizophrenia and from a double life: for example to be a Christian on Sundays and just a regular citizen during the week. Sundays we go to church with God and during the week without God to the factory. In the house of God we count on God; during the week in a research laboratory we begin with the assumption that God does not exist. This division of consciousness destroys us as Christians and as men. Schizophrenia divides our consciousness and thereby also our faith.
                Christ is God and man at the same time. Mary therefore is also the Mother of God. She shows us that our faith in God has to be completely embraced by our daily life and that our daily life must be borne entirely by our faith in God. There may be nothing left over that is just a part of our faith without also being a part of our life. Otherwise it is not worthy of the designation “faith”. There can also be no part of our lives that remains as just a part of life, for then it is not worthy of the word “life”. Faith and life are one, which has become visible in Mary.
                Mary is the personified interest of God in man and his world. Interest is nothing more than another word for love and means “to be among”. In Mary, God is always among us, in our midst, back then and now. We are therefore not lost creatures who are handed over to the storms of the world. God does not handle us and our worries with kid gloves. He lets us stand, there where the storms blow, and often does not protect us. But He has given us His mother to be our mother. That is enough! We do not need more than a mother, more than the Mother of God! Amen.

+ Joachim Cardinal Meisner
Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne

Tuesday, 11 September 2018

Tuesday's Serial: "BEN-HUR: a tale of the Christ." by Lew Wallace - XXXIV (in English)


BOOK SEVENTH

  "And, waking, I beheld her there
  Sea-dreaming in the moted air,
  A siren lithe and debonair,
  With wristlets woven of scarlet weeds,
  And oblong lucent amber beads
  Of sea-kelp shining in her hair."
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.


CHAPTER I
                The meeting took place in the khan of Bethany as appointed. Thence Ben-Hur went with the Galileans into their country, where his exploits up in the old Market-place gave him fame and influence. Before the winter was gone he raised three legions, and organized them after the Roman pattern. He could have had as many more, for the martial spirit of that gallant people never slept. The proceeding, however, required careful guarding as against both Rome and Herod Antipas. Contenting himself for the present with the three, he strove to train and educate them for systematic action. For that purpose he carried the officers over into the lava-beds of Trachonitis, and taught them the use of arms, particularly the javelin and sword, and the manoeuvering peculiar to the legionary formation; after which he sent them home as teachers. And soon the training became a pastime of the people.
                As may be thought, the task called for patience, skill, zeal, faith, and devotion on his part - qualities into which the power of inspiring others in matters of difficulty is always resolvable; and never man possessed them in greater degree or used them to better effect. How he labored! And with utter denial of self! Yet withal he would have failed but for the support he had from Simonides, who furnished him arms and money, and from Ilderim, who kept watch and brought him supplies. And still he would have failed but for the genius of the Galileans.
                Under that name were comprehended the four tribes - Asher, Zebulon, Issachar, and Naphthali - and the districts originally set apart to them. The Jew born in sight of the Temple despised these brethren of the north; but the Talmud itself has said, "The Galilean loves honor, and the Jew money."
                Hating Rome fervidly as they loved their own country, in every revolt they were first in the field and last to leave it. One hundred and fifty thousand Galilean youths perished in the final war with Rome. For the great festal days, they went up to Jerusalem marching and camping like armies; yet they were liberal in sentiment, and even tolerant to heathenism. In Herod's beautiful cities, which were Roman in all things, in Sepphoris and Tiberias especially, they took pride, and in the building them gave loyal support. They had for fellow-citizens men from the outside world everywhere, and lived in peace with them. To the glory of the Hebrew name they contributed poets like the singer of the Song of Songs and prophets like Hosea.
                Upon such a people, so quick, so proud, so brave, so devoted, so imaginative, a tale like that of the coming of the King was all-powerful. That he was coming to put Rome down would have been sufficient to enlist them in the scheme proposed by Ben-Hur; but when, besides, they were assured he was to rule the world, more mighty than Caesar, more magnificent than Solomon, and that the rule was to last forever, the appeal was irresistible, and they vowed themselves to the cause body and soul. They asked Ben-Hur his authority for the sayings, and he quoted the prophets, and told them of Balthasar in waiting over in Antioch; and they were satisfied, for it was the old much-loved legend of the Messiah, familiar to them almost as the name of the Lord; the long-cherished dream with a time fixed for its realization. The King was not merely coming now; he was at hand.
                So with Ben-Hur the winter months rolled by, and spring came, with gladdening showers blown over from the summering sea in the west; and by that time so earnestly and successfully had he toiled that he could say to himself and his followers, "Let the good King come. He has only to tell us where he will have his throne set up. We have the sword-hands to keep it for him."
                And in all his dealings with the many men they knew him only as a son of Judah, and by that name.
                One evening, over in Trachonitis, Ben-Hur was sitting with some of his Galileans at the mouth of the cave in which he quartered, when an Arab courier rode to him, and delivered a letter. Breaking the package, he read,
                "Jerusalem, Nisan IV.
                "A prophet has appeared who men say is Elias. He has been in the wilderness for years, and to our eyes he is a prophet; and such also is his speech, the burden of which is of one much greater than himself, who, he says, is to come presently, and for whom he is now waiting on the eastern shore of the River Jordan. I have been to see and hear him, and the one he is waiting for is certainly the King you are awaiting. Come and judge for yourself.
                "All Jerusalem is going out to the prophet, and with many people else the shore on which he abides is like Mount Olivet in the last days of the Passover.
                "MALLUCH."
                Ben-Hur's face flushed with joy.
                "By this word, O my friends," he said -”by this word, our waiting is at end. The herald of the King has appeared and announced him."
                Upon hearing the letter read, they also rejoiced at the promise it held out.
                "Get ready now," he added, "and in the morning set your faces homeward; when arrived there, send word to those under you, and bid them be ready to assemble as I may direct. For myself and you, I will go see if the King be indeed at hand, and send you report. Let us, in the meantime, live in the pleasure of the promise."
                Going into the cave, he addressed a letter to Ilderim, and another to Simonides, giving notice of the news received, and of his purpose to go up immediately to Jerusalem. The letters he despatched by swift messengers. When night fell, and the stars of direction came out, he mounted, and with an Arab guide set out for the Jordan, intending to strike the track of the caravans between Rabbath-Ammon and Damascus.
                The guide was sure, and Aldebaran swift; so by midnight the two were out of the lava fastness speeding southward.


CHAPTER II
                It was Ben-Hur's purpose to turn aside at the break of day, and find a safe place in which to rest; but the dawn overtook him while out in the Desert, and he kept on, the guide promising to bring him afterwhile to a vale shut in by great rocks, where there were a spring, some mulberry-trees, and herbage in plenty for the horses.
                As he rode thinking of the wondrous events so soon to happen, and of the changes they were to bring about in the affairs of men and nations, the guide, ever on the alert, called attention to an appearance of strangers behind them. Everywhere around the Desert stretched away in waves of sand, slowly yellowing in the growing light, and without any green thing visible. Over on the left, but still far off, a range of low mountains extended, apparently interminable. In the vacancy of such a waste an object in motion could not long continue a mystery.
                "It is a camel with riders," the guide said, directly.
                "Are there others behind?" said Ben-Hur.
                "It is alone. No, there is a man on horseback - the driver, probably."
                A little later Ben-Hur himself could see the camel was white and unusually large, reminding him of the wonderful animal he had seen bring Balthasar and Iras to the fountain in the Grove of Daphne. There could be no other like it. Thinking then of the fair Egyptian, insensibly his gait became slower, and at length fell into the merest loiter, until finally he could discern a curtained houdah, and two persons seated within it. If they were Balthasar and Iras! Should he make himself known to them? But it could not be: this was the Desert - and they were alone. But while he debated the question the long swinging stride of the camel brought its riders up to him. He heard the ringing of the tiny bells, and beheld the rich housings which had been so attractive to the crowd at the Castalian fount. He beheld also the Ethiopian, always attendant upon the Egyptians. The tall brute stopped close by his horse, and Ben-Hur, looking up, lo! Iras herself under the raised curtain looking down at him, her great swimming eyes bright with astonishment and inquiry!
                "The blessing of the true God upon you!" said Balthasar, in his tremulous voice.
                "And to thee and thine be the peace of the Lord," Ben-Hur replied.
                "My eyes are weak with years," said Balthasar; "but they approve you that son of Hur whom lately I knew an honored guest in the tent of Ilderim the Generous."
                "And thou art that Balthasar, the wise Egyptian, whose speech concerning certain holy things in expectation is having so much to do with the finding me in this waste place. What dost thou here?"
                "He is never alone who is where God is - and God is everywhere," Balthasar answered, gravely; "but in the sense of your asking, there is a caravan short way behind us going to Alexandria; and as it is to pass through Jerusalem, I thought best to avail myself of its company as far as the Holy City, whither I am journeying. This morning, however, in discontent with its slow movement - slower because of a Roman cohort in attendance upon it - we rose early, and ventured thus far in advance. As to robbers along the way, we are not afraid, for I have here a signet of Sheik Ilderim; against beasts of prey, God is our sufficient trust."
                Ben-Hur bowed and said, "The good sheik's signet is a safeguard wherever the wilderness extends, and the lion shall be swift that overtakes this king of his kind."
                He patted the neck of the camel as he spoke.
                "Yet," said Iras, with a smile which was not lost upon the youth, whose eyes, it must be admitted, had several times turned to her during the interchange of speeches with the elder -”Yet even he would be better if his fast were broken. Kings have hunger and headaches. If you be, indeed, the Ben-Hur of whom my father has spoken, and whom it was my pleasure to have known as well, you will be happy, I am sure, to show us some near path to living water, that with its sparkle we may grace a morning's meal in the Desert."
                Ben-Hur, nothing loath, hastened to answer.
                "Fair Egyptian, I give you sympathy. Can you bear suffering a little longer, we will find the spring you ask for, and I promise that its draught shall be as sweet and cooling as that of the more famous Castalia. With leave, we will make haste."
                "I give you the blessing of the thirsty," she replied; "and offer you in return a bit of bread from the city ovens, dipped in fresh butter from the dewy meadows of Damascus."
                "A most rare favor! Let us go on."
                So saying, Ben-Hur rode forward with the guide, one of the inconveniences of travelling with camels being that it is necessarily an interdiction of polite conversation.
                Afterwhile the party came to a shallow wady, down which, turning to the right hand, the guide led them. The bed of the cut was somewhat soft from recent rains, and quite bold in its descent. Momentarily, however, it widened; and erelong the sides became bluffs ribbed with rocks much scarred by floods rushing to lower depths ahead. Finally, from a narrow passage, the travellers entered a spreading vale which was very delightful; but come upon suddenly from the yellow, unrelieved, verdureless plain, it had the effect of a freshly discovered Paradise. The water-channels winding here and there, definable by crisp white shingling, appeared like threads tangled among islands green with grasses and fringed with reeds. Up from the final depths of the valley of the Jordan some venturous oleanders had crept, and with their large bloom now starred the sunken place. One palm-tree arose in royal assertion. The bases of the boundary-walls were cloaked with clambering vines, and under a leaning cliff over on the left the mulberry grove had planted itself, proclaiming the spring which the party were seeking. And thither the guide conducted them, careless of whistling partridges and lesser birds of brighter hues roused whirring from the reedy coverts.
                The water started from a crack in the cliff which some loving hand had enlarged into an arched cavity. Graven over it in bold Hebraic letters was the word GOD. The graver had no doubt drunk there, and tarried many days, and given thanks in that durable form. From the arch the stream ran merrily over a flag spotted with bright moss, and leaped into a pool glassy clear; thence it stole away between grassy banks, nursing the trees before it vanished in the thirsty sand. A few narrow paths were noticeable about the margin of the pool; otherwise the space around was untrodden turf, at sight of which the guide was assured of rest free from intrusion by men. The horses were presently turned loose, and from the kneeling camel the Ethiopian assisted Balthasar and Iras; whereupon the old man, turning his face to the east, crossed his hands reverently upon his breast and prayed.
                "Bring me a cup," Iras said, with some impatience.
                From the houdah the slave brought her a crystal goblet; then she said to Ben-Hur,
                "I will be your servant at the fountain."
                They walked to the pool together. He would have dipped the water for her, but she refused his offer, and kneeling, held the cup to be filled by the stream itself; nor yet content, when it was cooled and overrunning, she tendered him the first draught.
                "No," he said, putting the graceful hand aside, and seeing only the large eyes half hidden beneath the arches of the upraised brows, "be the service mine, I pray."
                She persisted in having her way.
                "In my country, O son of Hur, we have a saying, 'Better a cupbearer to the fortunate than minister to a king.'"
                "Fortunate!" he said.
                There were both surprise and inquiry in the tone of his voice and in his look, and she said quickly,
                "The gods give us success as a sign by which we may know them on our side. Were you not winner in the Circus?"
                His cheeks began to flush.
                "That was one sign. There is another. In a combat with swords you slew a Roman."
                The flush deepened - not so much for the triumphs themselves as the flattery there was in the thought that she had followed his career with interest. A moment, and the pleasure was succeeded by a reflection. The combat, he knew, was matter of report throughout the East; but the name of the victor had been committed to a very few - Malluch, Ilderim, and Simonides. Could they have made a confidante of the woman? So with wonder and gratification he was confused; and seeing it, she arose and said, holding the cup over the pool,
                "O gods of Egypt! I give thanks for a hero discovered - thanks that the victim in the Palace of Idernee was not my king of men. And so, O holy gods, I pour and drink."
                Part of the contents of the cup she returned to the stream, the rest she drank. When she took the crystal from her lips, she laughed at him.
                "O son of Hur, is it a fashion of the very brave to be so easily overcome by a woman? Take the cup now, and see if you cannot find a happy word in it for me"
                He took the cup, and stooped to refill it.
                "A son of Israel has no gods whom he can libate," he said, playing with the water to hide his amazement, now greater than before. What more did the Egyptian know about him? Had she been told of his relations with Simonides? And there was the treaty with Ilderim - had she knowledge of that also? He was struck with mistrust. Somebody had betrayed his secrets, and they were serious. And, besides, he was going to Jerusalem, just then of all the world the place where such intelligence possessed by an enemy might be most dangerous to him, his associates, and the cause. But was she an enemy? It is well for us that, while writing is slow, thought is instantaneous. When the cup was fairly cooled, he filled it and arose, saying, with indifference well affected,
                "Most fair, were I an Egyptian or a Greek or a Roman, I would say" - he raised the goblet overhead as he spoke -”O ye better gods! I give thanks that there are yet left to the world, despite its wrongs and sufferings, the charm of beauty and the solace of love, and I drink to her who best represents them - to Iras, loveliest of the daughters of the Nile!"
                She laid her hand softly upon his shoulder.
                "You have offended against the law. The gods you have drunk to are false gods. Why shall I not tell the rabbis on you?"
                "Oh!" he replied, laughing, "that is very little to tell for one who knows so much else that is really important."
                "I will go further - I will go to the little Jewess who makes the roses grow and the shadows flame in the house of the great merchant over in Antioch. To the rabbis I will accuse you of impenitence; to her -”
                "Well, to her?"
                "I will repeat what you have said to me under the lifted cup, with the gods for witnesses."
                He was still a moment, as if waiting for the Egyptian to go on. With quickened fancy he saw Esther at her father's side listening to the despatches he had forwarded - sometimes reading them. In her presence he had told Simonides the story of the affair in the Palace of Idernee. She and Iras were acquainted; this one was shrewd and worldly; the other was simple and affectionate, and therefore easily won. Simonides could not have broken faith - nor Ilderim - for if not held by honor, there was no one, unless it might be himself, to whom the consequences of exposure were more serious and certain. Could Esther have been the Egyptian's informant? He did not accuse her; yet a suspicion was sown with the thought, and suspicions, as we all know, are weeds of the mind which grow of themselves, and most rapidly when least wanted. Before he could answer the allusion to the little Jewess, Balthasar came to the pool.
                "We are greatly indebted to you, son of Hur," he said, in his grave manner. "This vale is very beautiful; the grass, the trees, the shade, invite us to stay and rest, and the spring here has the sparkle of diamonds in motion, and sings to me of a loving God. It is not enough to thank you for the enjoyment we find; come sit with us, and taste our bread."
                "Suffer me first to serve you."
                With that Ben-Hur filled the goblet, and gave it to Balthasar, who lifted his eyes in thanksgiving.
                Immediately the slave brought napkins; and after laving their hands and drying them, the three seated themselves in Eastern style under the tent which years before had served the Wise Men at the meeting in the Desert. And they ate heartily of the good things taken from the camel's pack.