Monday, Monday

Had a great, quick trip up to Louisville to take a couple of family members to the touring production of Hadestown – which, in almost every respect, was comparable to the Broadway production (which I’ve seen twice) – the exception here, unfortunately, was Persephone, who was much weaker than the rest of the cast, clear throughout the evening, and especially so during the coda “We Raise Our Cups” – which she leads, unmiked. Didn’t work well, unfortunately, because that’s a great moment.

And those of you who’ve seen it on Broadway might wonder how one particular mechanical aspect of the production was handled – I’ll just say, creatively, and well. It worked. Perhaps not quite as dramatic as what’s possible on a permanent stage, but more than good enough.

Me on Hadestown in the past.

Excellent charcturie at Cultured, just-right brunch at North of Bourbon and Mass at the gorgeous St. Louis Bertrand.

(Where, incidentally, they still use the Communion rail and it’s not a big deal at all, guys.)

Here’s some links to get you going:

I’m in Angelus News today writing about Mrs. Davis. I only had 900 words, so choices had to be made. I have more to say, and I’ll have a couple (at least) posts here about the show later in the week.

Also at Angelus today, a piece by Mgr. Richard Antall on Leon Bloy.

He was a poet in prose, the writer of memorable aphorisms and striking metaphors. He described his life as a country where it never ceased to rain. “Time,” he said, “was a dog who only bit poor people.”

Although praised by serious writers like Jorge Luis Borges, few read Bloy’s books today. He is still widely quoted by an unlikely range of thinkers, including unbelievers. Pope Francis cited him in his first homily after the conclave, saying, “When one does not profess Jesus Christ — I recall the phrase of Léon Bloy — ‘Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.’ ”

This ungrateful beggar, the irascible pilgrim of the absolute in a world of the relative, the scourge of all hypocrites, “the hurler of curses” as he entitled a chapter in the “Pilgrim of the Absolute,” and the enemy of complacency died a pious old man on the outskirts of Paris.

From the New York Times, a nice piece on the Dorothy Day ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan:

For more than a half-century, she had lived intermittently on Staten Island, where she found space to decompress from the demands of editing The Catholic Worker newspaper and living in the Catholic Worker community on the Lower East Side — there are many dozen communities around the world — where she helped to provide food, housing and other services.

In the winter of 1927, for example, Day boarded the ferry to Staten Island and, as Paul Elie recounted in his book “The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage,” sat on the deck and wrote in her journal. The waters were restless, the air foggy, her mind troubled.

“A most consuming restlessness was upon me so that I walked around and around the deck of the ferry, almost groaning in anguish of spirit,” she later wrote. “Perhaps the devil was on the boat.”

Two days later, Day went to a Catholic church in Staten Island’s Tottenville section and was baptized.

As Elie wrote, the ferry ride for Day could be “at once a retreat and a pilgrimage.” She breathed in the salt-scented air, imagined the far-off destinations of passing ships, felt the anxieties of urban life wash away. The ferry induced meditation.

On another ferry ride, in 1950, Day jotted down her thoughts: “The trip is so beautiful. The sky and water is so lovely in all its moods that I often find myself just thinking, and thinking ‘to the point’ on what has been going on down below the surface of my mind.”

Now, on this ferry gliding across New York’s Upper Bay, you could almost see Dorothy Day by the window, apart from and a part of the waterborne crowd, taking in the awesome ordinary.

That harried man hurriedly eating a sloppy sandwich. Those sea gulls dodging and darting in the ferry’s wake. That mother chasing after her toddling toddler. Those two boys speaking in Spanish about their video game. The hum of the engines felt in the feet. The dance of the churning-white waters.

Unreal Manhattan became real as the Dorothy Day eased into its berth at Whitehall Terminal. Bells sounded, gates lowered and we made our way to solid ground, saints and sinners all.