Your One Wild and Precious Life: End of Year Campaign

Our theme for Festival of Friendship 2021
Photo courtesy of: Sister Thea Bowman Cause for Canonization

by Suzanne M. Lewis

We are full of wonder and gratitude to announce that, due to the generosity of our most committed donors, we have already received over $8,000 in gifts; this brings us more than halfway to our end of year campaign goal of $14,000. We need you to join us in fostering dialogue and healing in the public sphere. Your contribution makes you a standard-bearer in the cause to build a culture of encounter and mutual respect.

We have found that the best tools for fostering true dialogue and effecting real healing within our broken culture are humanities education and free cultural events.

Humanities Education

Despite an overall increase of 29% in bachelor’s degrees awarded over the ten-year period ending in 2016, the steady decline in the number of humanities degrees conferred has only accelerated. In 1967, 17.2% of all degrees conferred were in the humanities. By 2014, that figure was down to 6.1%. Why should this precipitous drop concern us?

The very name “humanities” provides the answer: the various subjects that make up the humanities provide a curriculum for becoming more human. The more we lose touch with the humanities, the more we lose access to certain dimensions of our own humanity.

“Where scientific observation addresses all phenomena existing in the real world, scientific experimentation addresses all possible real worlds, and scientific theory addresses all conceivable real worlds, the humanities encompass all three of these levels and one more, the infinity of all [imaginable] worlds.” ― biologist, Edward O. Wilson

The humanities teach us how to extract and absorb facts from a document, how to interpret data, particularly in relation to the whole field of knowledge, and how to evaluate whether a claim is true or false; they also show us how to formulate an argument and find evidence to support our own claims; most importantly, they put us in conversation with others who grapple with the same human questions that preoccupy us, expose us to other perspectives, and open us to continuous learning – even teaching us how to learn from those with whom we disagree.

A quick visit to a handful of social media platforms, or a cursory scan of the headlines for competing news outlets, provides overwhelming evidence of how the tragic decrease in humanities education has had devastating effects on our public discourse.

“Depth of understanding involves something which is more than merely a matter of deconstructive alertness; it involves a measure of interpretative charity and at least the beginnings of a wide responsiveness.” ― English literature scholar, Stefan Collini

With these considerations in mind, Revolution of Tenderness has founded Convivium: A Journal of Arts, Culture, and Testimony, Convivium Press, and the Festival of Friendship. Each of these initiatives provides educational tools and programming to introduce humanities education into the public sphere. We sell our journal, and all other educational resources, at cost so that they may be accessible to the greatest number of people. Our free cultural programming offers content from pre-eminent scholars and experts while modeling the practice of respectful dialogue.

Free Cultural Events

The annual Festival of Friendship, our largest free and open cultural event, contributes a celebratory dimension to our educational work. This year, though we had to move the Festival online, we had nearly 1,300 attendees, a new record for us!

While our printed texts, videos, and other materials provide crucial substance, our events confer a body with living, human features. Without this living body, learning becomes a dry and toilsome duty, a “prize” to capture and use, or a meaningless intellectual exercise. Instead, our free events serve as life-giving feasts for the human heart and mind.

Our next exciting project will involve a commission for a new piece of music from composer Richard Danielpour, who spoke at the Festival of Friendship last month. The projected performance will take place in early 2021. We’ll provide further details as they become available.

Our working hypothesis, that “all things cry out in unison for one thing: Love” (13th Century friar and poet, Jacopone da Todi), allows us to “assume an extended shared world” (Stefan Collini) and meet anyone and everyone with curiosity and an embrace. Our festive gatherings serve as laboratories, where speakers and performers present their findings and launch new experiments in human flourishing.

Your generous support for Revolution of Tenderness makes you a creative protagonist who generates a culture of dialogue in the public arena. Please contribute to our end of year campaign today. Revolution of Tenderness is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. All donations are tax-deductible.

Double Novena, Day 3

[Left to right] St. Charles Borromeo, by Luca Giordano; St. Martin de Porres, Giles Priere, 1990

Two great men each died on November 3. Charles Borromeo passed away on that day in 1594, and exactly 45 years later, on a different continent, Martin de Porres died in 1639. Their lives overlapped by 15 years, but they never met; most likely neither one ever heard of the other. You can find the prayers for the first day here. And here are the prayers for Day Two. God’s sense of time is different from ours: his ways are not our ways. Don’t worry about beginning a day “late” or if you need to double up the prayers on any given day. God isn’t standing over us with a calendar, ready to scold us if we miss a day. He loves it when we pray. Period. Scroll further down to find today’s novena prayers.

St. Charles Borromeo: When the bubonic plague struck Milan, in August of 1576, the governor and most of the rich inhabitants fled the city. By contrast, Charles Borromeo, who had been out of town for a funeral, hastily returned to Milan. Described by Desmond Seward as “Tall, painfully thin, with piercing eyes, Cardinal Borromeo was one of the sights of Milan, celebrating Mass in gorgeous vestments at the Duomo’s high altar, tramping through the meaner streets to visit the sick and the dying. Accessible to all, he was a father to the city’s poor, selling his furniture to feed them, and an uncompromising ascetic who slept on straw and lived on bread and water…”

Once back in Milan, Cardinal Borromeo dedicated himself to reducing the human costs of the plague. Rev. Prosper Guéranger reported: “In the absence of local authorities, he organized the health service, founded or renewed  hospitals, sought money and provisions, decreed preventive measures. Most importantly though, he took steps to ensure spiritual help, assistance to the sick and the burial of the dead. Unafraid of  being infected, he paid in person, by visiting hospitals, leading penitential processions, being everything to everyone, like a father and true shepherd” (L’anno liturgico – II. Tempo Pasquale e dopo la Pentecoste, Paoline, Alba 1959, pp. 1245-1248).

Today let’s pray particularly for the shepherds of the Church, and all other religious and secular leaders, that they may seek out and implement wise and effective methods to decrease the human toll of the current pandemic.

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The Revolution of Tenderness needs your help. We are in the final days of our 8th Festival of Friendship, an experience that has enriched and sustained our lives in wholly unexpected and beautiful ways. We are not asking you to sell your furniture, as St. Charles did! But please be generous toward our end of year campaign, through Network for Good. Every donation is tax deductible.

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A note on the sources for the prayers: the introduction and first prayer for each day of the St. Charles’ novena come from a booklet he wrote to provide spiritual healing for his people in the time of the plague. These prayers struck us as so fitting, given our current plague, that we have incorporated them. To introduce the St. Martin novena prayers, we have quoted from the writings of the Peruvian saint’s many admirers. Otherwise, we have turned to the liturgical texts from the Roman Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours to furnish the best prayers for our novenas, just as we did in honor of St. Jude.

The Prayers:

St. Charles Borromeo
Day Two:

Be charitable and prudent with all the members of your household, treating them and making sure they are treated well, with love, and seeing to it that they are not maltreated.

Do not speak injurious language either to your children or to any other person.

Rather make an effort with divine grace to restrain anger and taking offense in adverse circumstances which arise during the day in the house or outside

.
[Charles Borromeo, “Booklet of Reminders”]

You, Lord, who have the power to renew the heavens, the earth, and all things, give to all of us that new heart, that new spirit which you promised us through the mouth of your prophet: And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you (Ezekiel 36:26). Bestow it upon us, Lord, with such abundance that it will produce in us, efficaciously and constantly, new resolutions, new customs, a new way of life, and in the end, that eternal renewal which the new Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, already came into the world to bring us. With this help, our heart shall be enlarged, reforms will no longer seem hard, nor your service burdensome. But the yoke will be sweet and the weight of your holy commandments light to us. We ask this through your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
[Charles Borromeo, “Booklet of Reminders”]

Preserve in the midst of your people,
we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled
the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo,
that your Church may be constantly renewed
and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ,
may show his face to the world.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Our Father, Mail Mary, Glory Be

St. Martin de Porres
Day Three:

“Rose of Lima, like her friend, Martin de Porres, who lived four blocks away in the Dominican priory, joined forces to make sure that no one would be left out of the banquet hall of God’s love and mercy.  God’s heart does not exclude anyone.  All that life offers us is a gift.  All that God offers us is a gift.  Our response is to join hands around the table of God’s infinite love, the table where Jesus breaks open his body and pours out his blood, and give thanks.  The Eucharist is not a place of exclusion.  In the wedding banquet of God’s Son, all are welcome.”
[Rev. Brian Pierce, OP]

Blessed is the man who is found without fault,
who does not make gold his life's object,
who does not put his trust in wealth.
- His future will be secure in the Lord.

Who is this man that we may praise him,
for he has done wonders in his life?
- His future will be secure in the Lord.

O God, who led Saint Martin de Porres
by the path of humility to heavenly glory,
grant that we may so follow his radiant example in this life
as to merit to be exalted with him in heaven.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
[Collect for the Memorial of St. Martin de Porres, Roman Missal]

Our Father, Mail Mary, Glory Be