• Thoughts

    Who Am I Protecting?

    Blogging is a strange pastime. I often wonder why I still try to pursue it. Recent interactions with people have convinced me, more than ever, that keeping things under my hat makes for more peaceful relationships, so why would I…

  • Thoughts

    Bamboozled

    The word “corruption” jumped out from the pages I read today in Couturier’s Sacred Art, and I jotted a quick note: “Corruption: you can’t go home again, and you can’t start over as if the past never happened.” I guess…

  • 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

    New Narratives

    It has arrived: the first day of 2022. Why have I looked forward to it with such longing? Is it simply the notion of starting fresh, cleaning out the old and tired and worn? Is it that 2021 was a…

  • Thoughts

    A Madeleine Day

    Will I ever retire Walking on Water: just leave it alone or give it away? I doubt it. It continues to speak to me, even though I would never think to include L’Engle in a list of my favorite writers.…

  • Thoughts

    Time for Hope

    Jesus has redeemed the time. I’d not understood this until recently. I thought that we (each of us Christians) were called to redeem the time. Where did I come up with such a notion? Well, here and there, from this…

  • 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

    All We Need for the Journey

    For one reason or another, I saved a Magnificat meditation by Dorothy Day. Her words appear in purple. Today the atmosphere is very heavy. Rain threatens. So often one is overcome with a tragic sense of the meaninglessness of our…