A short little reflection on words by Romano Guardini, The Rosary of Our Lady: The word is something very rich, alive, even mysterious: a formation of sounds and consonances by which the speaker gives the listener a glimpse into the inner realm of thought. To a certain degree this might be done by a simple […]
I recommended a movie to a friend. It is not a particularly great movie, but it has a good story. A light comedy with an unusual love story within a very somber setting. Some parts are kind of different but expected considering the premise of the movie. What really makes the movie, in my opinion, […]
If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned. — Joy Harjo
Jesus warns us [that] charity is not genuine if it seeks human praise (Matthew 6:2-3). Our actions are ‘beautiful’ when they reflect the light of God, so it is therefore right that the merit and praise for this light go to him. — Blessed John Paul II
What then is it all about? In a brilliant sentence, Benedict carefully explained the broad sweep of our being to us: “God made the world so that there could be a space where he might communicate his love, and from which the response of love might come back to him.” This passage emphasizes the central […]
It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle […]
Do we dare say it, “it’s all for you”? The winters marked the Earth Its floor with frozen glass You slip into my arms And you quickly correct yourself Your freezing speech bubbles Seem to hold your words aloft I want the smoky clouds of laughter To swim about me forever more I will race […]
You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums, or in the silence after lightning before it says its names - and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, […]
In further reflection on the song “Laughing With” (see lyrics and this post), the word transcendence has popped into my head. Paradox points to transcendence, to something more. To transcend means to rise above, to see more. It does not deny what is, it just gives a wider vision of what is, depth, a larger […]
It is fairly obvious that the names Dostoevsky uses for the characters in The Brothers Karamazov are important. Names are not only labels for identifying characters, but the meaning of names also point to their type of character or role in the overall theme of the story. For example, the name of the hero Alexei […]
When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. […]
The power of a good metaphor. Two stories and a poem about water. From a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace: There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two […]
There’s a time I can recall Four years old and three feet tall Trying to touch the stars and the cookie jar And both were out of reach And later on in my high school It seemed to me a little cruel How the right words to say always seemed to stay Just out of […]
I heard this excerpt quoted from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (who passed away earlier this month) on the radio. It is from his closing address to the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee held last July. (Read the whole talk). The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. […]
O ME! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless— of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light— […]
There is a line from a William Stafford poem: “It’s for the best,” my mother said, “Nothing can ever be wrong for anyone truly good.” And then I look at the suffering Jesus endured, and the suffering of all people. If any one was definitely good, it would be Jesus. As for me, the only […]
This statement by Ronald Rolheiser, from his book The Shattered Lantern, got me to wondering. When there is no pattern to our actions we experience meaninglessness. Just because I do not recognize or perceive a pattern, does this mean that there is no pattern? Would God do this to me or to us? Would He […]
From Br. Joseph — Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matthew 5:7) The word mercy is one of those loaded words with many meanings and connotations. Unfortunately, the modern use of this word tends to focus only on its association with pity or clemency. By checking the dictionary, we find far deeper […]
When I was younger, late high school and especially in college, I identified with Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” It was the motto for the Age of Rationalism. It is still often used in today’s postmodernism. After finding faith, or rather faith found me, I believe that Descartes had it backwards—I am, therefore I […]
From the movie, Red Planet: Chantilas: [Suppose] we just finished poisoning the earth and everyone was dead in a hundred years. Then what was the point of anything? Art, beauty—all gone—the Greeks, the Constitution, people dying for freedom, ideas. None of it meant anything? What about religion? Do we give up on God too? Gallagher: […]
In The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich writes (after page 148): The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith. We have seen that he who has the courage to affirm his being in spite of fate and guilt has not removed them. He remains threatened and […]
I’m on page 148 of Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be. He has painstakingly described three types of anxiety that are part of being human (ontologically speaking). There is the anxiety of fate and death, of which the western ancients were most troubled. There is the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, of which the Medieval […]
I am standing on the cusp of a low hill. I can see my goal across the way on top a very distant hill. The path below through the valley is obscured. I can see no clear way to proceed. How to get there from here? I know I must press forward to the next […]
Life is like a pearl: it needs a grain of sand at its center—death—as the irritant, the enemy, to stimulate the production of the mother-of-pearl of life around it. But death remains at its center. At the heart of life there is death. Death is our being. Man is mortal. — Peter Kreeft, Love is […]
In Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft writes about three books in the Old Testament that essentially outline three ways to live and view life: Ecclesiates, life as vanity; Job, life as suffering; and Song of Songs, life as love. These are analogous to hell, purgatory, and heaven. In regards to Job, he writes about […]