What was intended as a quick errand to drop mail into the postbox turned into a lovely thick amble down the main shopping street near here and then up a side street to Citadel Hill; and along there until reaching the northeast corner entrance to the Public Gardens. I turned in and, as happens sometimes,…
The Mystical Technicolor Landscape of God
It’s funny the unexpected things that can happen before noon in a day…You can wake up singing show tunes (which I did this morning); You can shoof-shoof-shoof the flappy ears of a puppy, brush a cat, and lay witness to a duck on a wander…all in the middle of a city, all within twenty minutes,…
Post-Feast of Saint Madeleine Sophie, 2019
This past Saturday was the celebration of the Feast of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, the foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart. I choose to believe she understands why I did not get out anything ahead of time this year. It was a crazy full May… I hope she would have delighted in how…
Three in One…Emily, Thomas, and Teilhard
There is a within of things… —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin We are a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. —Thomas Berry She was not daily bread. She was stardust. —Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1914) speaking of her aunt, poet Emily Dickinson Three quotations I thought to record in the midst of…
This Side of Eternity
A beautiful bit of interior space recently opened for me when I read a friend’s reaction to the death of Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche community. She posted the announcement and commented—A great loss for this side of eternity. That way of putting it washed over me with an exquisite tenderness. Ever so true…
Perchance to Swoon Now that Springtime is Here
Today is very beautiful—just as bright, just as blue, just as green and as white, and as crimson, as the cherry trees full in bloom, and the half opening peach blossoms, and the grass just waving, and sky and hill and cloud, can make it, if they try…You thought last Saturday beautiful—yet to this golden…
Entering into Holy Week
This morning before Mass, I stopped for a moment while walking along College Street, enroute to Victoria Park. In and among cars, ambulances, and other urban groanings, the distinctly percussive Rubbee-dedubbeedee-dub….rubbee-dedubbeedee-dub. There was a woodpecker somewhere nearby. After winter’s dormancy, crocuses are stretching their blooms over by the cemetery and I understood why when I looked…
A Vision of Heaven; Help with the Dishes
Someone asked me recently about my vision of heaven,,,and then I made soup… A Vision of Heaven or, Help with the Dishes A jukebox stretchingfrom Handel to hip-hopin the corner of a kitchen;A dutch oven, a sharp chef blade;a cast iron skillet and a heavy bottomtwo quart pot with a lid.Counters for working:chopping, writing, thinking.A…
National Poetry Month
2 April, 2019 Dear Poet, Writer, Versifier, It can be slam, or a sonnet, or sometimes a hip-hop finesse, that is a quicksilver key slid into the slot and turned around the axis of a pen, freeing the pins and swinging the hasp so that the voice may breathe the life-verse that moves the universe…
Simply Springtime
Ahhh spring…fertile time for observers of creation. Among other dogs I’ve encountered over these last several days of longer walks under skies of broad blue, I have met Lupin, the greyhound, who loved being loved on and leaned right in for as much as she could get. I also met a dog that absolutely galumphed…