Cult and Culture

Spending the day gently in the company of Jennifer and Nicholas, my sister and brother, getting some cult and culture into our souls. How good it is for just the three of us to be together once again.

This morning we visited the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, N.Y., which features early modern and contemporary art. Here, we viewed exhibits of prints by Francisco Goya and mixed media by Rimer Cardillo, a Uruguayan-American. We also walked the still-green rolling fields and lawns surrounding the two main buildings, delighting in the fresh air, expressing amusement and puzzlement at the sculptures and installations we met on the way around the campus. The Goya prints, of a series titled Los Caprichos, were too caustic, too savage for my liking. (For sheer pessimism concerning human nature, the Calvinists had nothing on the Enlightenment rationalists.) The Cardillo works hinted at the richness beneath the surface of everyday life and spoke of hope in spite of history's heaviness.

Jennifer will be parting company in a little while; it is her husband's 31st birthday today. But we will reunite tomorrow to celebrate our mother's 59th birthday at her favorite Italian restaurant in Babylon Village. Of course, we were all together on Thanksgiving. And maybe Nicholas and I will stop over at Jen's house on Sunday for an afternoon with her and the baby. Who would have thought I would be seeing my siblings more often, not less, once I began initial formation into religious life?

This evening, my brother and I will take in a concert in Tribeca. First, we will worship at St. John the Baptist, the Capuchin church on West 31st Street. Usually when in Manhattan, the two of us go to the Cathedral of St. Patrick. But now I am becoming a Capuchin friar, after all, and should I not worship in my brothers' house?