Eglise St. Viateur Church in Outremont, QC

...insects on flowers at side of house...

Fox at Cote des Neiges Cemetery

Not far from downtown Montreal, Cote des Neiges Cemetery is at the heart of Montreal... here's a fox seen one winter day, in March, not far from McGee's mausoleum...

 

 

"Peanuts" saved in a copy of one of John Cage's books...

...urban wildlife at Mount Royal Cemetery...

Father James Callaghan

 

Photographs of Fr. James Callaghan, Notman photograph, archived at McCord Museum, Montreal

Father James Callaghan

Father Martin's next younger brother is Father James Callaghan. After completing his grade school studies with the Freres des Ecoles chretiennes, James Callaghan (born Montreal, 18 October 1850) studied classics at the College de Montreal (1864-1872). He also studied at the Grand Seminaire de Montreal from 1872-1875, and he completed his studies at the Seminaire Saint-Sulpice de Paris in 1875-1876. After Father James entered the Sulpician Order all of his studies for the priesthood were conducted in France. He became officially a member of the Sulpician Order when he was ordained a priest on 26 May 1877 in Paris. Returning to Montreal, he was the vicar at St. Ann's Church in Griffintown from 1877-1880; this church was demolished in the 1970s but in the late 1990s the foundation was excavated by the City of Montreal and the triangular lot on which the church was located was made into Griffintown-St. Ann's Park. While at St. Ann's Father James lived in the church presbytery at 32 Basin Street in Griffintown. Father James also worked as a professor of English at the College de Montreal (1880-1881). He was a vicar at St. Patrick's (1881-1896) during which time he and his brother Father Martin lived at 95 St. Alexander Street, later they moved to 92 St. Alexander in 1887; 770 Dorchester Street in 1891.

St. Ann's Church, Griffintown, Montreal

Interior of St. Ann's Church, 1954

Interior of St. Ann`s Church

St. Ann's Church, Griffintown,  
demolished in 1970


Two photographs of St. Patrick`s Church

This is a plaque dedicated to Fr. James Callaghan
now stored in the basement of St. Patrick's (Basilica)
where he officiated with his brother Fr. Martin Callaghan. 
Photo takes in 1995, pictured with the plaque is my son, Jake Morrissey.

Father James was professor of ecclesiastical studies at the Grand Seminary of Baltimore, Maryland (1896-1897), and in his last years he served as the chaplain at Hotel Dieu Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital (1897-1900). He died of kidney failure at Hotel-Dieu Hospital on 7 February 1901, age 51 years. He is described in a church biography as having a beautiful soul, as being innocent and open to other people, full of spontaneity, and as a man who is not guarded or calculating.

-o-

Here is the official memorial for Fr. James Callaghan from the Sulpician Order:

Callaghan, Father James

Date of Death: 1901, February 6

Date of Birth:  1850, October 18

Aix, France

March 19, 1901

Fathers and Very Dear in Our Lord:

No Memorial Card is Available

The huge crowd that Montreal saw gather for the funeral of Father James Callaghan said quite loudly by its presence what affection and what recognition Irish Catholics know how to pay to their priests. It served also as a eulogy on the priestly virtues and sympathetic qualities which our dear departed one had displayed in his ministry, especially during the fifteen years from 1881 to 1896 when he exercised that ministry in the great parish of St. Patrick’s.

Father James Callaghan was a child of that parish. He was born there on October 18, 1850, of a faith-filled family which has given three sons to the Church. Even as early as his grade school years with the Christian Brothers he was known for the vivacity of his spirit and for a sunny disposition which never stopped being an important trait of his character. All his life, moreover, exhibited the evidence of a beautiful mind, innocent and uncontaminated, full of spontaneity and of lively impulses which he acted on after thinking them over or weighing the consequences.

At the age of fifteen he went to join his brother Martin at the college of Montreal; Martin had preceded him there by three years. There he became a member of a class which has counted twenty-three priests. Amidst so many pious fellow students, the good James distinguished himself less by application to and intensity of work than by the ease with which he did it through a quick and unlabored intelligence, and especially by a character of gold.

When he finished his classical course, he unhesitatingly entered the Grand Seminary where the study of sacred sciences roused – even to the point of enthusiasm – that fire of soul which nature and faith together built in him. Ordained subdeacon on May 22, 1875, at the same time as his brother Martin was finishing his year of Solitude, Father James Callaghan soon felt himself attracted to follow his eldest brother to that very place. First, he came with two other confreres to spend a year at the seminary in Paris, entered the Solitude in October 1876, and was ordained priest there on the following May 26th. Some weeks later he brought back to Montreal the first fruits of his priesthood.

The first field assigned to his zeal was the Irish parish of St. Anne, still staffed at that time by the priests of St. ___. Among all the works of the holy ministry those on which the young priest especially spent himself with ardor were preaching (for which he was well endowed) and the needs of the young people, whose hearts he very well knew how to win by the liveliness of his faith and his sympathy for their years.

After three years of this ministry there was a development which occasioned the trying out of Father James Callaghan as a teacher. St. Anne’s parish and the French parish, St. Joseph’s, were given over by the seminary to diocesan administration. In the new appointments of those who were formerly St. Anne’s priests, Father James was sent to the college as teacher of English. He did good work there and was popular with the youth; but he was subject to distractions and promptings which, considering his duties, were not helpful to the general good order – forgetting sometimes and at other times mistaking the hours of his classes; letting himself, while conducting class, indulge in witty comments on the dry exercises of the day’s lessons, comments which went too far.

From the beginning of the school year in 1881, he was given his position of choice, parochial ministry, this time in the mother parish, St. Patrick’s, under the firm and experienced hand of the revered Father Dowd, in whom affection and authority combined to draw out the best of the talents of the young priest. Of this fifteen years of his ministry at St. Patrick’s the Semaine Religieuse of Montreal has said: “To speak of his inexhaustible charity to the poor to whom he was long, by appointment, the dispenser; of his zeal for the instruction and the return to the faith of our separated brothers, of whom he converted a great number; of his dedication to the young, whose works and meetings he oversaw; of the reverence that he always displayed for God’s Word, which he proclaimed with dignity and often with flair; of the retreats without number which he gave to the school children; of the kindness with which at all times he made himself available to everyone – would be superfluous after the magnificent funeral which piety and recognition have given him. At this turnout, how could anyone avoid thinking of the words of the great apostle speaking to the Corinthians – Epistola nostra vos estis quae scitur et legitur ab omnibus homnibus?” (You are our letter, known and read by all?)

Those who knew Father Callaghan most intimately have commented on his lively faith, his attachment to St. Sulpice, his obedience to his superiors; and they add that these last two traits especially showed themselves in the last years of his life. I myself, five years ago, experienced that disposition of obedience when I had to ask of Father James Callaghan a sacrifice which could but be keenly felt by him. It was the matter of his leaving his dear St. Patrick’s to go to help out temporarily at the Baltimore seminary, where there was need in Philosophy of a Professor of Holy Scripture and Church History. With no hesitation he assented to my request; went off to Baltimore (as he did everywhere he was assigned), as a good confrere; did his best at his assigned tasks.

And when he returned to Montreal the following year, he let himself be placed with the same meekness where his work would be most useful, that is to say, at the Hotel Dieu as chaplain of the sick at that hospital and at the neighboring English hospital. It was in that dedicated ministry (to which he had already been introduced during his time at St. Patrick’s) that he spent the last three years of his life. Without doubt, God had arranged things for him to prepare him for that last journey on which he daily had to act as guide to many poor souls.

Many a time during these years he said to his superior: “Don’t be afraid to assign me as you will; I want only to do what you want.” “Some seem to think I want to go back to St. Patrick’s,” he said during the last vacation period. “Leave me at the Hotel Dieu, call me to Notre Dame. I will be happy anywhere you decide I should be.”

At that time, he still seemed full of vigor. A little later it was perceived that he was suffering from a severe organic illness, and Father Colin suggested to him to go away for awhile for his health’s sake. The sick man knew that an American bishop who had been his fellow student would welcome him with open arms. But for him that was all the more reason to say: “Please don’t send me there. He would want to keep me with him, and for nothing in the world would I want to leave St. Sulpice.”

The kidney disease afflicting him rapidly became fatal. When his stomach and heart became affected, Father Callaghan was visibly wasting away, and our doctor lost the hope that he had at first entertained. Two other doctors, called in for consultation, held the same opinion. The dear patient, however, was not aware of his danger. “I resolved,” wrote Father Colin, “to administer [Extreme Unction] to him while he had still had all his faculties. It was at that time I saw, as never before, all there was of grace and virtue in that beautiful soul reveal itself. On Saturday morning, January 12th, I suggested to him that he prepare himself for his end. ‘First of all,’ he told me, with a pleasant and smiling air, ‘I want to save my soul and give myself to God. Tell me what you want.’ After his confession, which he made with all his heart, he said to me, ‘Take me along with you. I want to be in the seminary infirmary in the midst of my confreres whom I love so much and be near you. It is there I wish to get ready to go, if God calls me.’ I decided nevertheless that it would be wisest for him to stay at the Hotel Dieu, and I told him I would come back between four and five o’ clock. In that visit, I still did not make up my mind to administer [Extreme Unction] to him; but towards eight o’ clock the sisters, quite upset, called me, and I simply told him that it would be more prudent to receive the last sacraments. ‘God wills it, and so do you,’ he told me, ‘so I do too.’ The family, several confreres, several religious, gathered round. He reacted to everything with a kind of happy enthusiasm, with the result that the ceremony was most edifying and touching. The next day, a noticeable improvement was evident, and the doctor once again took hope of keeping him for a while longer; but the improvement was of short duration.

“On Wednesday, February 6th, the dear patient, being very ill but still displaying presence of mind, I had him celebrate his [silver] jubilee. The simplicity of his abandonment to God struck me once again as wonderful. The next day he felt better and expressed his joy for the grace received the previous day. At four in the afternoon he spoke of it complacently to Father Quinlivan, who had come to see him. At half past five, his brother Luke, while helping him from his armchair, asked him, ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ James answered him. And while saying this, he died without agony. On seeing his head drop, his brother had the presence of mind to give him a final absolution.”

When the body was laid out in a parlor of the Hotel Dieu, several thousand visitors came the following days to pray over him.

Two days later, on Thursday, February 7th, a first service was sung at the chapel of the house by Bishop Racicot. On Sunday, at five in the evening, the Reverend Superior of Montreal, with an immense crowd on hand, presided at the moving of the body to Notre Dame church, where soon after the Office of the Dead was chanted. On Monday morning at the funeral Mass, sung by Father Leclair in the presence of the many who attended, His Grace, the Archbishop of Montreal, deigned to give the absolution. Later, the burial at the Mountain was conducted by Bishop Emard of Valleyfield, former fellow student of the deceased. Finally, on Wednesday, February 13th, a third Solemn Mass was celebrated at St. Patrick’s by the pastor, and parishioners again came in great numbers to pray for their former assistant and to express their condolences to the worthy family. Father James Callaghan’s old father – who survived him – like us, could not keep from finding such a death very sad and very premature. But with the dear deceased (when his situation was made clear to him), ‘we must all say: “God wills it; I will it, too.”

A. Captier

Superior of St. Sulpice

At Place des Arts during last year's jazz festival

Buildings on de L'Esplanade in Montreal

Grafitti at Pizza Welat on Somerled...

duDek and poUnD: six mEsostic poems for dK/ (3)

duDek and poUnD: six mEsostic poems for dK/ (2)

 

 

Review of James Hollis's Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path

"Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path". 

Review of James Hollis' Creating a Life, 

Toronto: Inner City Books, 2001. 159 pages. 

By Stephen Morrissey

James Hollis' latest book, Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path , gives the reader the wonderful experience of sitting with an intelligent and articulate person, and listening to their reflections on the meaning and value of life. This is Hollis' sixth publication for Inner City Books. Like the other books he has written, this one helps the reader grapple with his or her own meditation on life, as well as initiate new areas of thought.

In the first section of Creating a Life , Hollis refers the reader to the increasing number of contradictions we are faced with as we get older, and the confusion that is caused by our inability to resolve them. Hollis uses Greek drama to describe experiences that seem to be common to many people. Hollis says that our lives are circumscribed first of all by "Fate, or moira , [which] embodies the world of givens, the world of limitations, the world of cause and effect. Our genetics, our family of origin, our Zeitgeist, the interplay of intergenerational influences--each is part of our fate." He goes on to say we also complicate and make worse our lives with hubris, "Which means arrogance at times, a character flaw at others, or sometimes simply the limitation of possible knowledge." A third aspect of the human condition is hamartia or "the tragic flaw," what Hollis calls "the wounded vision." Hollis writes, "Each protagonist believed that he or she understood enough to make proper choices, yet their vision was distorted by personal, familial and cultural history, dynamically at work in what we later called the unconscious."

Psychology has added to and changed the names of the terms by which we describe the human condition, but human experience, in essence, is the same now as it was in classical Greek times and before. Today we speak of psychological complexes that "lie at the core of who we think we are." Hollis writes that the reader "will have to deal with this core issue the rest of your life, and at best you will manage to win a few skirmishes in your long uncivil war with yourself." Indeed, it seems to be fate that the tragic vision of the Greeks is re-enacted by each of us in our equally tragic and wounded lives.

In this, as in his other books, Hollis refers to C.G. Jung's suggestion that "the greatest burden the child must bear is the unlived life of the parents." This refers to the parents' unexamined life and subsequent psychological projections onto their children. The child is left responsible for doing the emotional and psychological work the parents didn't do. In turn, this becomes a part of the core complex through which our perceptions of the world around us are filtered. In some ways, this parental burden forms the basis of our shadow work, and while it is painful when left unconscious, it can lead to an exhilarating awareness for the participant in a more examined life.

This is not a book for the faint of heart, for those who desire an intellectual quick-fix for what ails them, or for the individual who believes that a guru, a romantic partner, or anyone else will come along and save them. Hollis discounts the cure-all approach of both New Age adherents and fundamentalists of all religious persuasions. It is here that Hollis makes his "modest claim", and this is the basis on which the book's thesis is developed.

The thesis of Creating a Life is that to create a life one must examine one's life, and out of this examination comes an awareness of the true nature of one's soul. Our psychological foundation is made up of many things, including core complexes that we wish we could eliminate altogether, but that cannot be easily dealt with. Indeed therapy can't eliminate them either. According to Hollis, what therapy can do is help you observe the core complex. This, in turn, will help the individual become a more conscious person with a maturer vision of life. Hollis writes, "Therapy will not heal you, make your problems go away or make your life work out. It will, quite simply, make your life more interesting." Thus, the examined life is the more interesting life, and the corollary that follows from this is that "Consciousness is the gift and that is the best it gets."

If the result of our choices or unreflected actions are akin to Greek tragedy or drama, then we might also ask ourselves what is the myth that best represents our life journey? What is the myth that best explains our existence to us? Hollis writes that myth "as it is used here, refers to those affectively charged images (imagos) which serve to activate the psyche and to channel libido in service to some value." Are we living second hand lives, the unresolved cast-offs of our parents' experience? Are we living reflectively or are we living reactively?

By now most readers must be aware that we are not dealing with the activities of the first half of life. This text is not about ambition, career, or even traditional domesticity. It isn't Hollis' project to tell the reader what kind of life to create--his purpose is simply to define the foundation of understanding necessary to create an authentic life. An examined life best expresses the soul's purpose. Hollis' book is addressed to those people who have entered the second half of life, who have survived what Hollis calls the "gigantic, unavoidable mistake" of the first half of life. For Hollis, "The larger life is the soul's agenda, not that of our parents or our culture, or even of our conscious will."

This book is a meditation on the life journey of individuation. Jung's concept of individuation "has to do with becoming, as nearly as one can manage, the being that was set in motion by the gods." This, then, at a practical level is a process of psychological and spiritual maturity. A test for this maturity lies in one's capacity to deal with anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence. Hollis writes, "The more mature psyche is able to sustain the tension of opposites and contain conflict longer, thereby allowing the developmental and revelatory potential of the issue to emerge."

Part two of Creating a Life is comprised of twenty short chapters dealing with "attitudes and practices for the second half of life." These include: amor fati, the necessity to accept and love one's fate; that the examined life is one of healing; that the examined life is also healing for our ancestors; and so on. Some readers may feel overwhelmed by Hollis' listing and brief explication of these necessary "attitudes and practices." However, he is reassuring and directing the reader to observe his or her own unconscious as the primary authority in one's life. Individuation lies, in part, in the process of reflecting upon the processes of the unconscious mind.

Part three of Creating a Life brings to a conclusion James Hollis' meditation on how to approach the second half of life. Certainly, above all else we need to be grateful for being alive at this most liberal and tolerant of times and places in the history of humanity. Hollis refers to the myth of Oedipus that is suggestive of our own human condition.

How did Oedipus live out the second half of his life? We may each have our own personal myth to discover, a myth with which we identify and which gives our life substance, meaning, and depth. Oedipus, however, is an archetype representing everyman in his flight from the darkness of his core complex to his discovery of soul and meaning. Hollis writes,

After Thebes, after the stunning humiliation of midlife, Oedipus spends his final years in humble wandering, wondering what it is that the gods wish him to know. He learns, he absorbs, he winds his weary exile to Colonus, where he is blessed by the gods for the sincerity of his journey. It was not so much that he created his life, as that he allowed at last that life might create him, as the gods had intended. The price of this gift, both precious and perilous, was exile and suffering; the price of not finding his calling was ignorance, pettiness and annihilation of the soul.

James Hollis reminds the reader of what a profound and exciting journey we have been invited to undertake. It is the journey of individuation, sometimes frightening, never exempt from the many experiences and emotions that are part of the human condition, and always demanding we extend ourselves beyond what we thought possible. We continue to create our lives because, simply put, it is all we can do, if we have the gift of consciousness and are sensitive to the soul's command that we look inward.

Published: The Newsletter of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal, March 2001. 

Note: Read other reviews of books by James Hollis reviewed here, do a search on this blog.

duDek and poUnD: six mEsostic poems for dK/

 “Like acrostics, mesostics are written in the conventional way horizontally, but at the same time they follow a vertical rule, down the middle not down the edge as in an acrostic...”

—John Cage

 

 

 

 

 

Morrissey & McGee

At Cote des Neiges Cemetery, a cold day in late March at McGee's mausoleum. Here's the heart someone left hanging on the door to McGee's mausoleum, still there months later...

Notes on Voice in Poetry

                      

The discovery of a poet’s voice brings an authenticity to the poet’s work, that the poet’s voice communicates the content of the poem as well as the poet’s inner being, his or her soul. Voice in poetry is the expression of the soul.

__________________________

It isn’t the sound of your voice or how well you read a poem out loud that is voice. It isn’t a poem for several voices. It isn’t slam poetry or performance poetry. It’s the essence of who you are as it is expressed in the way you write, your own original distinctive individual voice.

__________________________

Voice in poetry, to be authentic, must be true to the self of the poet, to the inner, subjective, self-perception of the poet. The voice has to be authentic and true to the poet’s inner perception. Voice has to be an expression of the authentic self, not the self covered over with falsehood and conceit.

__________________________

The point is to discover one’s voice, and then you continue writing and voice changes in what one writes, but the discovery of one’s authentic voice is a border one needs to cross in order to write the work that follows, work that one can stand behind, that gives one the self-assurance to expresses one’s vision. 

__________________________ 

Voice is a vehicle for the content of poetry, but it is also inseparable from poetry; content expands when an authentic voice is discovered. Voice is not style, style changes but voice is the expression of the inner, psychological dimension of the poet; voice is the expression of psyche. The expression of voice changes just as our actual voice changes with age, but once an authentic voice is discovered then voice will remain authentic to the poet, no matter what the poet is saying.

__________________________

There is no way to find one’s voice, it must be discovered by the poet, but not all poets find their voice in poetry; however, after voice is discovered the person writing poems is a real poet, not someone who also happens to write poems. If someone who writes poems never finds his voice, he is not a poet. How can he be when writing poetry is predicated on writing from an authentic voice? This does not diminish what a poet writes before the discovery of voice, in some way voice might exist as a precursor to the discovery of the poet’s authentic voice, or at least the reader can see the potential for the birth of voice in the early work.

__________________________

First, you have to be born a poet and realize you are a poet by writing poetry, then you have to put in your 10,000 hours of apprenticeship. There’s nothing romantic or fun about it. It’s a lot of hard work to be a poet and as you get older it gets harder and harder, not because of writing poems but because of all the pother work that comes with writing and building a body of work; for instance, organizing and placing your archives, working on your selected poems, writing criticism, keeping up correspondence, managing what you have created a lifetime building, and so on.

__________________________

Voice is the expression of the poet’s integrity as a poet. Voice is the expression of the poet’s character, sensibility, and integrity as a human being. This is why it has such importance to poets.

__________________________

Discovering one’s voice does not disqualify or negate what the poet wrote before this discovery, but it is a signifier of the poet’s maturity as a poet. 

__________________________ 

Voice is when we speak from the heart, from the soul, without pretention or affectation, but honestly without censoring ourselves, with only one conviction, to be true to our inner necessity, to what we have to say (not what we want to say or should say, or think we should say) but abandoning these things of the self, to speak from the real and authentic self, not the layers of self, but from the heart, with honesty, and from the soul.

__________________________ 

The genesis of both the content of the work and the voice expressing the work are simultaneous, they can’t be separated. They are the same process. The work is written in the voice as the voice is discovered and as the work is written.

__________________________ 

Voice in poetry is not one’s “style” of writing; style may be narrative, minimal, visual poetry, or what have you. Voice is access to psyche from which poems are written. If a poet hasn’t discovered his “voice” he hasn’t become a poet.

__________________________ 

A poet can’t “search for a voice”, but all poets need to find their voice. Voice comes to the poet, it isn’t something you can “find”. Voice is the expression of the poet’s psyche, the congruence of events that allow the poem to authentically express the inner, spiritual and psychological, being of the poet.

__________________________

God bless you, Mr. McGee: Thomas D'Arcy McGee, 1813-1868 (two)

These photographs were taken last November 2012 (I'll be at McGee's mausoleum today); this is the 145th anniversary of the assasination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the fathers of Canadian confederation and someone, more than most others, who helped form our idea of modern Canada. His vision was of a tolerant and welcoming country, a place where people would leave behind the prejudices of the countries from which they came.

Above, a plaster heart someone made and left hanging on the door to McGee's mausoleum. He has become a folk hero and his life mythologized.

God bless you, Mr. McGee: Thomas D'Arcy McGee, 1813-1868 (one of two)

 

I am not the only one who visits Thomas D'Arcy McGee's mausoleum at Cote des Neiges Cemetery. I pay my respects to McGee several times a year with these visits and I often find flowers or other mementoes of other people's visits. He is one of the true folk heroes of Canadian history, assasinated in Ottawa on April 7, 1868 as he returned to his reesidence after addressing Parliament. The anniversary of the 145th year since his death is tomorrow.