'Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone.

-- From here on in, you're on your own.

[mynocturnality]

St. Catherine’s at Bell Gable, Fayetteville, US.

[apesoformythoughts]

“From all sour faced saints, deliver me O’ Lord. I don’t want to be with a grouch, a crab, a crocodile in a moat. The grumps are a small minority. But they’re vocal. Yes, the grumps are vocal. They have unresolved things, maybe from their childhood. They’re not disconnected from God. But they’re wrestling with him. Not a bad thing, mind you. Not a bad thing. But I want to hang out with people who enjoy life. At home I have a sunshine file; it’s just a plastic box. Inside are all the letters people have written me over the years: teenagers in the youth group, widows who lost their husbands. People who I was able to make a difference in their life. For two years I was chaplain on the children’s ward of the cancer hospital. What can you say? You can’t explain why some things happen. Only that it’s a mystery. And a mystery is reality, imbued with God’s presence. One Christmastime there was a ten-year old girl from Ireland, dying of leukemia. All this girl wanted was a Cabbage Patch Doll. Ugliest doll you’ve ever seen in your life, seventy-five dollars. Seventy-five dollars! And sold out everywhere. The mother told me:’ I’ve looked in every store.’ That same day a family from my parish asked what I wanted for Christmas. I say: one Cabbage Patch Doll, and two walkie talkies. They said: ‘Father, are you sure?’ I told them: ‘Yes I’m sure. I was a kid once too!’ The Cabbage Patch Doll went to the little girl. Then I gave one walkie-talkie to her, and one to her twin brother. So they could speak while she was in isolation. After she passed away the mother wrote me a letter. I keep it in my sunshine file. It said: ‘Those walkie-talkies were the best medicine she ever had.’”

via Humans or New York

[magpie-trove]

When Chesterton said the only way to understand Francis of Assisi in all his odd extremities and extravagance was to look at him as a man in love, and the beloved was God

[thehomelessmonk]

The newly built church of St Michael's Abbey

This is just magnificent. The newly built church of St Michael’s Abbey in California was designed in such a way that the sunlight would strike the alter at the end of Vespers on the feast of St Michael (September 29). Here’s the moment! Kudos to the architect, Jean-Louis Pagès.

source

[wanderlusteurope]

[ageofgeek]

I've been thinking about tolkien lately, and i know this must've happened to many fathers and mothers across europe in the 1940s, but

do you ever think about how tolkien was sent to fight in a pointless, brutal, terrible war, from which only he and one of his friends returned? a war that promised young british men that they would find glory, only to find death and trauma and suffering? and when he returned, stricken with trench fever, he told his children stories of the adventures of a humble hobbit - a simple tale, that maybe purposefully didn't reflect just how awful his own "adventure" was.

And then just 20 years later, those children, his children who had heard those stories of a humble hobbit, got sent to fight in another brutal, devastating war, and he had to watch them go without him, knowing what they would go through because it had happened to him.

and this time, after that second war was over, and his sons had returned to him safely, he wrote another tale. This one not as simple. This one not for children, but for the grown men and soldiers his sons had been forced to become. This one centered the brutalities of war but also the hope of friendship and love.

i just. do you ever think about john ronald reuel tolkien???

[fleur-aesthetic]

instagram | menagerieflower

[christocrucifixo-blog]

here’s a picture of the Angel Gabriel holding Baby Jesus while the Blessed Mother tries to rip off Satan’s head

[the-memeblades-chosen-one]

“kick his ass, ma’am, i got yo baby”

[alwaysabeautifullife]

As a Catholic, this is basically what Catholicism is about if any of you are wondering

[girlactionfigure]

26 years ago, Keshia Thomas was 18 years old when the KKK held a rally in her home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Hundreds of protesters turned out to tell the white supremacist organization that they were not welcome in the progressive college town. At one point during the event, a man with an SS tattoo and wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a Confederate flag ended up on the protesters' side of the fence and a small group began to chase him. He was quickly knocked to the ground and kicked and hit with placard sticks.

As people began to shout, "Kill the Nazi," the high school student, fearing that mob mentality had taken over, decided to act. Thomas threw herself on top of one of the men she had come to protest, protecting him from the blows, and told the crowd that you "can't beat goodness into a person." In discussing her motivation for this courageous act after the event, she stated, "Someone had to step out of the pack and say, 'this isn't right'... I knew what it was like to be hurt. The many times that that happened, I wish someone would have stood up for me... violence is violence - nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea."

Thomas never heard from the man after that day but months later, a young man came up to her to say thanks, telling her that the man she had protected was his father. For Thomas, learning that he had a son brought even greater significance to her heroic act. As she observed, "For the most part, people who hurt... they come from hurt. It is a cycle. Let's say they had killed him or hurt him really bad. How does the son feel? Does he carry on the violence?"

Mark Brunner, the student photographer who took this now famous photograph, added that what was so remarkable was who Thomas saved: "She put herself at physical risk to protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her. Who does that in this world?"

In response to those who argued that the man deserved a beating or more, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator Leonard Pitts Jr. offered this short reflection in The Miami Herald: "That some in Ann Arbor have been heard grumbling that she should have left the man to his fate, only speaks of how far they have drifted from their own humanity. And of the crying need to get it back.

Keshia's choice was to affirm what they have lost.

Keshia's choice was human.

Keshia's choice was hope."

A Mighty Girl

[exitwound]

[punished-nico]

what's the confusion? guy comes with an owl. your friends come over and hang out with the owl

[beardedmrbean]

seems to explain itself

[sirsullymore]

[securus-judicat-orbis-terrarum]

“For my part, when I miss an absent friend, I want to be missed by him.”

— St. Augustine, Letter 2

[eternal-echoes]

“You cannot proclaim Christ as King while rejecting Mary as Queen… the two cannot be separated.”

- Charles Coulombe

[ouroborosmotifs]

most of the time everything sucks but when the sky is blanketed in dark blue-grey clouds after heavy raining and the sun starts to peek through the clouds so that the tops of trees glint pale green and every white structure is starkly, blindingly silhouetted against the sky i’m ok.

[ouroborosmotifs]

like this

[the-jacobite]

[indomptable]

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City by: Chad Greiter

[thedogfamily]

[slegtvalk]

Hail Mary, full of grace,the Lord is with thee;blessed art thou amongst women,and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.Holy Mary, Mother of God,pray for us sinners,now and at the hour of our death. Amen.