Ladydale Diary
Lady Day 2021
This has to be one of the most anomalous days on the calendar. As the Feast of the Annunciation and also, according to Tradition, the date of the Crucifixion, it is the date on which the Word was made flesh and the date on which the flesh was nailed to the Cross for our sins and for our redemption. And yet, oddity of oddities, Lady Day is not even a Holy Day of Obligation. Odd indeed.
The importance of this holiest and most significant of days was not lost on that great Catholic, J. R. R. Tolkien, who selects this particular date for the destruction of the Ring. In doing so, he connects the destruction of the one Ring that rules them all and in the darkness binds them with the destruction of the one (Original) Sin that rules them all and in the darkness binds them. The one Ring and the one Sin are both destroyed on the same symbolically significant date because, allegorically, the one Ring is synonymous with the one Sin.
Like Tolkien, the Pearce family treats Lady Day with the importance that it merits and commands. Earlier today we attended the Annunciation Day Mass in festive mode and we’re forsaking the Lenten Fast in honour of the Feast. Sancta Dei Genitrix, ora pro nobis!
Earlier this week, I can’t recall which evening exactly, we sat down as a family to watch Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. Susannah and I had not seen this for years because the violence of some of the scenes were not suitable for the eyes of Evangeline. Since Evangeline turned thirteen a few weeks ago, we thought that this would be the year that she could watch it with us. It really is a powerful moving icon (moving in both senses of the word). I wrote about my experience of seeing it again, after so many years, for the Imaginative Conservative. I will, therefore, let my friends in the Inner Sanctum read this essay, when it’s published, and will desist from any further comment here.
A little unexpected drama has just announced itself via the vibrations on my phone. There’s an extreme weather alert with respect to the possibility of tornadoes in our area. The weather is certainly weird. Warm. No wind. Thunder. Light rain. I’ve unplugged the computer as a cautionary measure against a possible lightning strike but I don’t think we’re all going to barricade ourselves in the basement until my cell phone releases us from the cell. I think we’ll take our chances in the old-fashioned way by keeping an eye on the sky.
With my five-week seminar course for Memoria College coming to an end last week, I am now only teaching one course. This is the ongoing course on the Great Books, every Friday morning, for Red Cultural in Chile. We’ll be finishing Sophocles’ Antigone this week and continuing with Oedipus Rex.
On Monday, we commenced the discussion of a new book for the FORMED Book Club, Russell Shaw’s Eight Popes and the Crisis of Modernity. Our opening discussion centred on St. Pius X and Benedict XV.
The only essay I’ve written this week, apart from the aforementioned revisiting of Mel Gibson’s Passion, is the second of the series for Crisis Magazine on great literature “in a nutshell”, which focuses on The Odyssey.
I’ve been interviewed by Paul Senz on Shakespeare’s Catholicism for Catholic World Report and by Tolkien author Michael Jahosky for his podcast Mythic Missions on Chesterton’s influence on Tolkien and Lewis. The former is yet to be published but the latter can be seen by following the link in the post in the blog section of this site.
Looking out the window, as the rain gets considerably heavier, I see a wild turkey grazing nonchalantly a few yards from our contentedly dabbling ducks. They don’t seem too concerned by the thunder, lightning and rain. Following the bird signs in the manner of the ancient Greeks, I’ll ask the fowl whether the foul weather is dangerous. And on that punning note, I’ll exit stage left to a chorus of groans and hisses….
A brief postscript on the photographs that Susannah has taken today to illustrate the DiaryP: The camellia blooms were cut from our resplendently burgeoning bush, to the west of the house, on the edge of the fairy wood, as my daughter has dubbed the copse that nestles against one side of our home. The geraniums are in a hanging basket on our porch, in which some Carolina wrens have built their nest. The blossoming tree in the background serves as an external curtain to our dining room.
