Don’t Cheer

Don’t cheer, damn you! Don’t cheer!
Silence! Your bitterest tear
Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .
Down on your knees and pray.

See, they sing as they go,
Marching row upon row.
Who will be spared to return,
Sombre and starkly stern?
Chaps whom we knew - s0 strange,
Distant and dark with change;
Silent as those they slew,
Something in them dead too.
Who will return this way,
To sing as they sing to-day.

Send to the glut of the guns
Bravest and best of you sons.
Hurl a million to slaughter,
Blood flowing like Thames water;
Pile up pyramid high
Your dead to the anguished sky;
A monument down all time
Of hate and horror and crime.
Weep, rage, pity, curse, fear -
Anything, but . . . don’t cheer.

Sow to the ploughing guns
Seed of your splendid sons.
Let your heroic slain
Richly manure the plain.
What will the harvest be?
Unborn of Unborn will see. . . .

Dark is the sky and drear. . . .
For the pity of God don’t cheer.
Dark and dread is their way.
Who sing as they march to-day. . . .
Humble your hearts and pray.

- Robert Service

"Search thine own heart.  What paineth thee
In others in thyself may be;
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;
Be thou the true man thou dost seek!"

- from "The Chapel of the Hermits" by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Catholic Blogs and Resources page, St. Blog’s Parish Aggregator, and St. Blog’s Parish Web Ring are in need of promotional buttons. They should be at least 100px by 100px and no larger than 135px wide by 170px tall. Designs should be simple, elegant, and not based on any copyrighted images or phrases. An example from which to draw inspiration would be the Firefox and Thunderbird logos. I don’t want to offer any more suggestions for fear of stifling creativity.

I really have no way of rewarding the artist whose design is picked except in the form of attribution and gratitude. Are there any kind souls out there who’d be interested in helping out with this?

Here are some submissions we’ve already received:

During the Easter Triduum, the University Newman Clubs will be collecting donations to support the Christian communities and sacred places of the Holy Land. As we enter the holiest time of the year, it is important to remember our Christian brethren in the Holy Land, who are living and working in the very place of Our Lord’s life, passion, and resurrection. All of the money collected will be used to assist in the preservation and protection of the sacred shrines of the Holy Land, and to assist our fellow Catholics living in the birthplace of Christianity.

If you would like to contribute, cash donations can be given to any Newman Club officer after any of the remaining Holy Week events at CMU, or left at the front desk of the Newman Center. If leaving a donation at the Newman Center, please mark the envelope with “Newman Club Holy Land Collection” or something similar, so we know what it’s for. All monetary donations will be forwarded to St. Paul Cathedral by Steven Kesslar, the Pitt Newman Club VP, on Monday.

In Christ,
Tracy Llenos
CMU Newman Club Secretary

“A SCULPTURE OF the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, proposed as a ‘memorial for the victims of abortion’ at Villanova University, has upset some students, including some who oppose abortion.”

[…]

“Pro-life freshman Clint Gilliam agrees with the concept of the statue, but thinks its high-profile placement is a bad idea. ‘It’s just a little in your face,’ he said. ‘It sort of makes people who don’t believe in those things uncomfortable.’ Adds freshman Peggy Costello, ‘I’m personally pro-life and I don’t like the statue at all.’ ‘I feel that putting up a statue like that completely counters the diversity we’re trying to advocate or uphold,’ said Costello, 19, who thinks the memorial could alienate non-Catholics.”

Villanova is a Catholic university for heaven’s sake! There should be no need whatsoever to justify a tasteful pro-life statue, especially one with of Mary and Jesus.

"When I was 14, just a little over two months before [Rob] would have graduated from high school, he was killed. I hadn’t talked to him for some time when I just had this overwhelming need to call. His mom answered the phone and told me that earlier that day he had gone out to buy a motorcycle. As he was driving it home, he somehow lost control and wrapped himself around a telephone pole. I was frozen and utterly speechless."

My best friend in high school was pulled off a platform by a passing train and died. Getting that phonecall from my dad was one of the worst moments of my life. Anyhow, I know other folks have lost loved ones unexpectedly. We’re connected by a terrible bond, but we can use it to help each other. At the lowest points of my life I’ve found writing poetry to be very theraputic. I thought perhaps folks still mourning a loss would appreciate this poem that I wrote when my best friend died.

Goodbye, Good Friend
(Craig Bednarek October 23, 1977 - June 3, 1999)

I wasn’t ready to lose you
I probably never could be
But you were taken away
Snatched up
Snuffed out in your prime

Damn it!  Why?!?
It just doesn’t seem real
How can it be?
I’ve never known anyone else so alive
So full of life, and energy, and hope

I know we didn’t keep in touch
I’m sorry for that
I can never make up for it
But even though the paths of our lives diverged,
I knew that you were trying to live a good life

A life I’d like to think I influenced
I know you influenced me
You changed me
Helped to make me
Where would I be without you?
You brought me out of my shell

You made me smile
You made me laugh
You made me live
Really live

How can I ever thank you?
How could it be possible?
These words can’t say it
But I have to try

I admired you
Despite all your faults
I dreamed of being more like you
And now you’re gone
And I feel like that dream is too

I loved you like a brother
Better in fact
You were a kindred soul
We complimented each other
I kept you in line
And you kept me sane

I will always cherish your memory
How could I possibly forget?
A spirit like yours doesn’t die easily
You will always live in my heart

Sometimes that isn’t enough
I get so angry
At God or life or the world or whatever
For taking you away
Who had the right?!?

You wouldn’t want me to despair, though
So I’ll try to be sane and happy
And live life to the fullest
To live with your spirit in me

I miss you every day
Goodbye, good friend
May the LORD bless you and keep you

“I usually don’t send out pure opinion pieces, but let it be said: There is not one person anywhere who can give you a good reason why it’s OK to show a man’s chest on TV, but not a woman’s chest. You can ask over 100 people why — trust me, I have — and not get a real answer. It’s just a silly superstition that some people came up with, a bunch of others went along with it, and now we’re stuck with it. Have you ever heard a real reason?”

[…]

“This is different from other issues, like abortion, affirmative action, or the death penalty — I have opinions on all of those, and probably so do you, but there are two sides to each issue, and I can at least see where the other side is coming from. But I’ve never heard the other side of the boob issue.”

“A good sign of a widespread belief that has no supporting logic is that if you ask people why they believe it, they always pass the buck on to someone else. ‘Our society has decided…’ ‘The community feels that…’ ‘Judges have ruled that…’ — except with that last one, if you listen to what judges say, they pass the buck too, saying ‘According to contemporary community standards…’ What’s missing is someone standing up and saying ‘I, yes *ME* *PERSONALLY*, I believe that seeing a mammary gland is harmful, and here’s why.’

“To people who say that inciting any male lust is bad, I tell them I grew up in Denmark (although I’m American) and there you could see bare breasts in public advertisements, on the covers of supermarket tabloids, and on the beach, and nobody cared. And, the sex crime rate is much lower there. It’s not obvious that nudity even incites much ‘lust’ once you’re used to it anyway — men live in nudist colonies surrounded by naked women and don’t get turned on. (It’s the visitors who are easy to spot, because they aren’t used to it and it makes them stick out, so to speak.)”

Read the rest here and let me know what you think.

Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston

Here’s an interview with the artist.

Calling all artsy folks in St. Blog’s Parish!

The Catholic Blogs and Resources page, St. Blog’s Parish Aggregator, and St. Blog’s Parish Web Ring are in need of promotional buttons. They should be at least 100px by 100px and no larger than 130px wide by 162px tall. Designs should be simple, elegant, and not based on any copyrighted images or phrases. An example from which to draw inspiration would be the Firefox and Thunderbird logos. I don’t want to offer any more suggestions for fear of stifling creativity.

I really have no way of rewarding the artist whose design is picked except in the form of attribution and gratitude. Are there any kind souls out there who’d be interested in helping out with this?