Selection - Journal of Dom Jean Paul d'Hiver, O.S.B.

[The handwriting is neat, but is canted to the side, as if blown by a high wind. Evidently much of it was written at high speed.]

I received a letter today from S. L. She reviewed the latest chapters I gave her, and had quite a bit to say about my view of nationhood.

"I don't see why you take such a conciliatory stance towards human institutions- for instance, the American government. I do understand why one might take up such a position, because one has to exist somewhere, after all; I don't understand why you in particular have allowed yourself to slide into such a paltry explication of the Gospel. The Word of Life is not to be diluted by checks and balances, Father. The Church is a new radix, and while not supplanting nature, it takes it into a new order of being that leaves all merely natural concerns by the wayside.

"This is a hard saying, I know, because after all: man may not live by bread alone, but he does live by bread. Man has to work in the sweat of his brow. The Gospel does not deny nature, and so it cannot deny work; this is the problem that the Socialists don't acknowledge. The Gospel does, however, elevate nature, and so Christian work is inherently different than that of an ordinary human being.

"Why do humans work? Because he who does not work, does not eat. Well and good. But why do modern men work? To get ahead, to amass a little bit for tomorrow, to save up for the future, to ensure the material increase of his progeny and the safety of his family. This is not wrong. Pope Leo said so himself. The desire to provide for the daily bread of one's children is fundamental to the race, to the health and indeed the being of humanity. The radical question, implicit in the New Dispensation, is: what is your children's daily bread?

"Bread is the staff of life. It is food, proportionate to our nature, fundamental and steady. You can rely on bread. Not for nothing is it one of the temptations with which Satan tempted Our Lord. It is food for men. But Christians are more than men: they are gods. They are sons in the Son. Given that we have a new nature, anything and everything proportionate to our previous selves is now necessarily insufficient. What is the daily bread for a Man-God?

"The work of the Christian is ordered to contemplation. We are called to know God as He Is. Thus, no longer can we merely labor for increase of wealth and try to save for the future. The future is now, and always will be. Therefore we cannot be any longer concerned with the things of this world, but are to use them for heaven.

"Human institutions that perpetuate the merely human mentality - concern for the world on its own terms - are most effectively Christianized by polite subversion."

She is a most interesting woman. I'll need to think this through, although I'm not sure she'd understood what I've been trying to say. I'll have my turn to understand and critique when she sends me her next story; she has hinted that it will be released to her "test audience" in the next month or so.

Selection - Spiritual Diary of Caroline Kess

[This is expensive paper, almost like stationary. The words are written in aging brown ink, obviously inscribed with a fountain pen. The writing is stately, and flows across the page like a procession on Corpus Christi.]

God, O my God, I have sinned, and sinned greatly. In your mercy I trust with the sum of my being, for all thy ways are justice and all thy thoughts are peace.

I beg you to preserve my brother in his hour of trial, in this time of purgation which afflicts his soul both night and day. Do not suffer us sinners to lose another of your flock, this man, my dear friend, your child bought in blood. Preserve him, Lord, save and exalt him.

Dear Jesus! His soul is too beautiful for you to lose! If I cannot have him saved, why would you entice me as you do? I know that you want my joy! How can I be joyful if you do not bring him to the Kingdom?

Preserve, protect, defend him for us. For all they ways are justice, and all thy thoughts are peace.

My mother will die if he fails. Oh God, my God, why do you plague your children so? Pardon and indulge this sinner's failure to understand and her wailing laments against you. I know that you spurn only to welcome home, I know that you punish only to lastingly perfect.

But my mother will die if you do not aid Oliver.

How am I so bold, to speak with certainty of what has not been? Is this not what you have taught me? Is this not why you send me to your faithful even from the early hours of day, when they begin to wear down the steps of this house where you have placed me? Why do you make me do what I do not want to do? Why can't I just be alone with you, instead of sitting quiet and still, listening to the mewling complaints of housewives who think their pain proceeds from a different cause than the children they betrayed and the wombs in which they cultivate darkness and willful emptiness and a lonely self-hood which is bought at too high and terrible a price? What do they not understand about the corrosion of blood once spilled?

And the men! The men who come, hats in their hands, smiles on their faces, lies in their hearts! Why do you preserve us... what do you want us to be, if you let us be what we want?

...enough of this. You have heard my prayer, my God. This I know.

I thank and kiss your wounds and mine. Humble this iron soul, my God. I beg you.

[There are numerous brown stains, both on the page and around the edges. These cause the paper to crackle when moved.]

Selection - Journal of Norma Bethel Prescott

[This page has been torn from a spiral notebook; the shredded holes haven't been removed from the left-hand side.]

Town today. Mrs. Lewis thought it'd be nice to walk. I said no, you're almost eighty, ma'am. That made her mad, a little bit, and she went off sulking for an hour. I said I'd go in the car by myself, and got my hat and gloves. She came out to the car just as I was leaving, and she got in without saying anything. I could tell she was still mad at me, but I didn't mind, and after a while she didn't either. The drive was pretty, and I took it slow with the windows down for the cherry blossoms in the Ibsen field. Mrs. Lewis has always loved the cherry blossoms, even if she doesn't care for the Ibsen's. She doesn't say much about them, and she's always civil when we meet them after church, so it might be hard to tell that she thinks they're not noble people. She did say that, one time, Christoff Ibsen isn't a noble man. She did say that. I don't know what she meant by it, and I haven't tried to ask her.
But the cherry blossoms she's always loved. I drove so slow, she said we should stop so she could cut a sprig. She did it herself, even though she had to reach a bit and looked uncomfortable, but she also looked pretty pleased with herself when she sat down in the car again. There now, she said, settling the flowers in her lap. That was all she said, looking right at me, and I could tell she thought she had beat me out for what I said about her being eighty. That was all she did, though, and I was happy to let it alone
But town wasn't too cheerful anyway. The cherry blossoms were the best part of the trip. Mrs. Lewis got her letters, to save the postman the trouble, she said, and she opened them in the car like she always does. Turns out her cousin Isobel just passed away, which I think shouldn't have surprised any sensible person at all. Isobel was herself eighty-two, and sick for longer than I've known Mrs. Lewis and Ms. Sinead. But you'd think it was her own death told beforehand when Mrs. Lewis finished the note. It sat in her lap, slowly covering up in blossoms, while she stared out the window and didn't say a word. I started to feel bad that I had said that this morning about her being so old, even though it didn't make any sense that we would walk to town. I'm not young either. Maybe I should have said something about that instead.
I said we should stop for beignets at Frenchie's, which I hoped would take her mind off her troubles. She said okay, and we talked to Frenchie herself for a little while, or she talked to us, which is probably the better thing to say. Mrs. Lewis was quiet, and though she tried to look calm, I could tell her mind wasn't on the place or the food or Frenchie. We didn't stay that long, and I took home a beignet for Ms. Sinead and left. We were going to go to the haberdashery, but Mrs. Lewis said she was tired, so we went home instead. When we got there, Mrs. Lewis thanked me in the quiet way she gets when she doesn't want to talk anymore, and went inside to her back room. I watched her pass the stairs, and noticed that she didn't look at them on purpose. It was a mess, at first, trying to convince her she couldn't take them the way she used to. Now she's settled in alright in the old back parlor, but every now and then I catch her glaring at the stairs and at me and Ms. Sinead when she thinks we don't see. This time she didn't, just passed them by while she took off her gloves and shifted the Ibsen sprig from hand to hand.
I watched her go. She left a trail of pink blossoms, and they drifted a little in the open window breeze.

[There is a date in the upper corner, but it is too smudged to be made out clearly.]

Fragment - "Thoughts on a New Christendom" - Dom Jean-Paul d'Hiver

[This seems to be material for a book. The author's name and the page number are in the upper right hand corner; this is page 33.]

"-but no one reads the documents anyway. Such engagement, these days, is not in vogue.

"If one were, however, to peruse the social encyclicals, a certain level of discomfort would be unavoidable for even the most committed Catholics. The fact is that no candidates for public office in this country, at least in living memory, have been taint-free as far as the Church's teaching is concerned. Some advocate forms of social engagement that exceed the common sense limits laid down by Leo XIII and similar voices; others focus too narrowly on the rights of families, or more commonly, on the rights of individuals considered apart from their social habitat.

"This deviation from the ideal should not trouble most people, at least as a deviation. Practiced ideals are not immaculately conceived. One expects material circumstances, especially varying human personalities, to bend the perfection of any system at least a little. This deviation ought, however, to make Catholic voters aware of the transcendence of the system they have received from their Magisterium; the tenets laid down in Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno serve as pristine scaffolding for the civilization of love. Giving them flesh is a difficult and perhaps impossible project, but one that we as Christians are bound to pursue. In light of this difficulty, however, one should not expect political leaders to exhibit devotion beyond the human. Presidents are not Messiahs. The very size of the endeavor is meant to drive home to Catholics in the pews: this is a work for all. The struggle is to incarnate the Mystical Body in the body politic as nearly as possible. As such, the whole Body is concerned with this end, and "cries out in labor pains" until that incarnation is achieved.

"There is one Messiah, and he lives in all Christians. All Christians must perpetuate his work and presence in the world, as in the world; Christianity evokes - demands - a formalized political structure in which to wrap itself. The God-Man was swaddled not in the light of divinity, but in homespun cloth. It is one goal of this book to show that participatory democracy, viewed as perpetuating the incarnate will of the people, can be a unique and preeminent catalyst for incarnating the Mystical Body of Christ.

"To that end, we will explore the various elements of democracy, and view it especially in light of its fundamental problem: what to do about pluralism?"

[The date on the page is 10/22/1973. There are various scrawled notes in the margins, mostly illegible or crossed out. One, running along the bottom of the page in loose letters, reads: "Who are 'the people'? Dangers of abstract thinking. -S.L." This hand is different from the one that left the other markings.]

In Quo Thesaurum Invenis

These posts would be best read if you unearthed them from an iron-bound chest in the corner of a garret on a silent afternoon. The room itself is full of dusty light and smells of aging things. It sits above a house long-lived-in and recently desolate... even vermin do not travel up this way that often anymore.

The medium of these posts is yellowing paper. Reading them is a tactile experience, as the bumps and ridges left from the gnashing type-writer still brush against one's fingers en passant.

Certain oddments are among the papers, many of whose meanings are difficult to discern. The natural thought is that they are illustrative of various details contained in the posts. There is a lock of hair, faded; a tiny book written in letters that might very well be Arabic, with an even tinier flower pressed between its pages; a heavy coin, of unknown metal, bearing the androgynous profile of some yesteryear tyrant. There is at the very bottom a dagger, honest-to-God, encrusted with semi-precious stones.

Some of these posts are dangerous; all of their authors are dead.