I just encountered a young man doing his morning run and we stopped and chatted. I live near a university, so I wasn’t surprised he was a student; a grad student getting his second undergraduate along with a master’s in music and music therapy—and a master’s from the “University of Theology and Spirituality” whatever that is. [...]
I am no scholar of scripture, and I’m dubious of those who claim to be, even within the Church and its long history of scripture scholarship. Not only is complete fluency in the ancient languages of scripture necessary, but also a thorough knowledge of the ancient cultures in which those languages were spoken. At the church [...]
Sometimes a little life experience sticks in our memory and we don't know why we still remember it after six or seven decades. I think it might be because the experience is a lesson, like a little parable from God. It stays with us because we are meant to learn something from it, something important. I [...]
My friend Ann Frailey has written another lovely little meditative piece, http://blog.catholicwritersguild.com/2021/02/i-lift-my-gaze.html. It’s about death and grief, a coincidence because the same topic has been on my mind. Her opening quote, which was from Tom Hanks’ character of Walt Disney in the film Saving Mr. Banks, put my own thoughts in focus: “That’s what we storytellers [...]
At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a post pondering what the meaning of it might be, suggesting we “pay attention.” There were well-intentioned attempts by many to diminish significance by pointing to epidemics, plagues, and natural disasters of the past, but we have never had a pandemic in human history, a deadly disease of [...]
I got sucked into a quarrel yesterday. I hate to admit that, but there it is. The only value such an experience has is the self-examination it evokes, not just to determine whether I was truly “right” but more importantly, to determine what made me lose my cool. I raised my voice—something I never do—then realized too late [...]
(This has nothing whatever to do with Catholic culture.) If you are lucky enough to have a friend who lives in South Georgia and has a pecan tree, you might have received pecans this year for Christmas, and you might have thought, Now what am I supposed to do with this. Well, a word or two [...]
Roseanne Sullivan over at Dappled Things has written a piece on the ghastly nativity scene at the Vatican, https://dappledthings.org/18296/if-2020-was-a-nativity-scene/ appropriately titled “If 2020 was a nativity scene”. If you haven’t seen it, you might want to brace yourself: Not included in the photo here is the figure of an astronaut and something that looks like Darth Vader with a [...]
… at a church named Church of the Immaculate Conception in the small town of Dublin, Georgia, a friend will be consecrated as a Virgin Living in the World by our Bishop of Savannah, Stephen Parkes. I can’t attend because of the virus and I can’t see the ceremony because I don’t do Facebook, but it [...]
Many years ago, during the height of my Tolkien obsession, I engaged in online chat with other Middle-Earth inhabitants. We covered topics like “Where would you have lived in Middle-Earth?” Most chatters said they would have lived in the Shire; some said Rivendell. I knew I would have lived in Lothlorien. When the topic of immortal [...]
