Was it a noise I’d heard? I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. No, it was a lack of noise. The night had become suddenly still. Try to remember the dream I was having, I think. Whispered voices…something creepy about the way they sounded. I glance at Lorraine. She’s still asleep. The clock reads [...]
Well, in about a week, Lorraine and I will be taking only our second ever trip across the Pond to visit Merrie Olde England once again. This will be for a new joint art exhibition with Ted Nasmith, Ruth Lacon, and Peter Pracownik, and for a book signing of "Black & White Ogre Country" with Angie [...]
With the advent of Lent, I resolved to stop listening to all of the latest newscasts, to stop reading blogs about the unfolding financial crisis, to stop listening to interviews with political pundits. And the silence was, at first, frightening.Activities that had sapped my energy and prevented me from paying attention to the real world around [...]
In the staid sects of Asia, there abounds a balking at “becoming”. That is, there is a curious notion that to engage with the cosmos is conceit, and that the noblest of one’s actions must, of necessity, be inaction. The individual is an illusion, and only dispassion leads to divinity; only renunciation leads to true rest. [...]
Troubled times are coming. Just as Treebeard saw his world change, so are we about to see ours. Right now, just before the elections in the USA, I see so many who are afraid. The old bylaws are broken: banks are going bust, world markets are whiplashed. Enormous crowds gather, hypnotized, hoping that a new leader [...]
Some mornings, when Lorraine and I arrive at the Theology library, the lights are still off in the basement book stacks. Peering through the doors into these catacombs, all you can see is gloom; the library was once a chapel, and the basement is mostly underground. Yellow hallway lights sculpt the silhouettes of shelves, with here [...]
I bought a new rain gauge. Since Atlanta is in the midst of the worst drought on record, I don’t know if this speaks more to my folly or to my faith. But with the coming of autumn and the lack of rainfall, I’ve gotten antsy. I’m wary. And somehow, measuring the mood of the weather [...]
“It sounds kind of sad,” the little girl said. It was sad. I was in a classroom full of middle schoolers. We had just learned to sing a very simple Gregorian chant, a setting of the Sanctus. And despite the fact that this was a Catholic school, neither the music teacher nor any of her students [...]
The phone rang. Thinking it was a friend returning my call, I picked up rather than letting the answering machine take a message. The voice on the other end explained that I didn’t know him, but that he and his wife were the owners of a house Lorraine and I had built in the 1990s. He [...]
