Origins and Ends
The golf lovers around here spent much of the weekend, when they weren’t out on one of the courses that just opened for the season, watching The Masters. Since they no longer have to put up with CBS Sports and…
Enjoying the View from Here
Well, I guess I cut my vacation short. Thank you to everyone who let me know that my words do matter. It means more than you can imagine. I used to hate Lent with every fiber of my being. I…
Peace Travels Light
Alice Miller has made me a minimalist. All that’s left? Me and the truth. The agendas; the philosophies; the advice and instruction; the judgments, opinions, and ratings; the rules and the “this is the way it’s done”s; the excuses and…
Word Problems
A Declarative Sentence Life Sounds Like This Don’t ask questions. Don’t tell people things. Don’t get fat. Don’t get too skinny. Don’t embarrass us. Don’t get bad grades. Don’t think you’re so smart. Don’t misbehave. Don’t blame it on your…
Continue the Conversation
Everything is interconnected, which is why I cannot try to isolate the books I read. I need to keep a dozen or so in process. I need to stop worrying about not finishing one or another: no more self-imposed rules,…
Reading, Writing, Rules, and Reason
Was it a year ago already that a friend told me about an unlikely book she was reading and finding fascinating? I describe the book as unlikely because if anyone were taking bets on either of us reading it, he…
White, Grey, Black
“I asked him what prayers. He said they prayed to Yezu Klisto and someone called Simon. Is that the same as Simon Peter?” “No, not quite the same. The fathers could tell you about Simon. He died in gaol nearly…
Daring Despite the Danger
“The known, our current story, protects us from the unknown, from chaos—which is to say, provides our experience with determinate and predictable structure. … When we are in the domain of the known, so to speak, there is no reason…
Maybe I Missed God
My kids and I always have theological discussions. I’ve been talking to them about God, faith, Catholicism, in one way or another, since each of them was born, and while I love babies and toddlers, I am happy to have…
The Awful Futility of Explaining
In Marcel Billot’s foreword to Sacred Art by M.A. Couturier, he explains that L’Art Sacré was a review run for a time by two Dominican priests, Father Couturier and Father Pie-Raymond Régamey. They managed, apparently, to work together and produce…
The Tales We Tell
It turns out that I have a tendency to make the most of a bad situation, and I write it that way because this was not readily apparent to me for the longest time. If I had been asked, while…
How to Make Good Coffee or Maybe Art
I’ve been working on my drawing skills, but it has not been all fun and games. Two- and three-point perspective entails finicky rules, and I’ve never been a fan of rules, especially the ones in games of micromanagement. After all,…
