• Thoughts

    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…

  • Thoughts

    Trust Issues

    Domenique de Menil writes, in her foreword to Sacred Art, a collection of essays and reflections by M.A. Courturier, O.P. : “For Père Couturier, to be sure, straightforwardness, which begets clarity, was the simple and immediate principle of his personal…

  • Thoughts

    Who Wrote that Book?

    Most of my life was largely guided by unquestioned assumptions: my parents loved me, school was a good thing, following the rules was a guarantee of success. I know that my parents loved me, but the other stuff? Well, let’s…

  • Thoughts

    This Milky Way of Souls

    I have been reading The Road to Vatican II by Maureen Sullivan, OP, in two ways these past few weeks. Sister Maureen was one of my professors in college, and I’m glad I went ahead and bought this book, as…

  • Thoughts

    What Are You Saying?

    This seems like a strange choice for a simile: “… as welcomed as child sacrifice.” I came across it in a book I’m reading, and it gets thoughts swimming in my head, thoughts like, Who thinks this way? You want to…

  • Thoughts

    Books are for Reading

    I wish more people would read more books. There. I said it. Oh, and if I could get more specific: I’d ask that everyone choose from a wide range: fiction and nonfiction; written for children and adults; history, science, religion,…

  • Thoughts

    How Absolute?

    Two chapters a day is my quota for War and Peace. It’s possible that I will make it more of a priority at some point, but for now, I am content with my pace and have been pleasantly surprised by…

  • Thoughts

    It Can Get Hazy Among Humans

    Reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels set in Roman Britain is a bit of a paradox. As a lover of freedom, I should be rooting for the native tribes who have had their ways of life upset, curtailed, and sometimes ruined by…

  • Thoughts

    Any Remorse? Justice? Freedom?

    At one time, I stumbled upon a video or two in which a psychiatrist of some sort explained the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths. (I think I may have written about it.) The net/net was that psychopaths are born with…

  • Thoughts

    Letting Myself Look

    I guess I have not written about Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill and that surprises me. It, or maybe just the Joe Rogan chat with Tom O’Neill, turned out to…