• Thoughts

    The Silent Treatment

    I wake up in the morning and, after figuring out what day it is, think, “Hey, I get to write today. I wonder what I’ll say.” It’s a nice thought. For more than a year, I was in the habit…

  • Thoughts

    Are You Threatening Me?

    The husband of a sister-in-law wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a vintage political “pairing” to the most recent family Christmas gathering: “Reagan/Bush 84.” This fellow and I were standing in the kitchen, where the conversation was lagging. Therefore, I decided…

  • Thoughts

    Freedom is Hard to Hold

    Explanations are for English Papers In the process of putting away Christmas decorations recently, I washed five cut crystal vases and two candlesticks and arranged them in pleasing groupings on the mantel. There’s still a big empty space in the…

  • Thoughts

    Taking a Safety

    I got to the computer yesterday by way of Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Ensouling Language, a book I am still s-l-o-w-l-y making my way through (and now that I’ve shared it with Dennis, it’s often in his office, where I don’t…

  • Thoughts

    One Piece Leads to Another

    Well, goodness knows, I’m tenacious. I certainly wouldn’t be here writing if I weren’t. On my kitchen table right now sits a 28 x 22” slab of foamcore board and on it is a partially complete jigsaw puzzle. I wanted…

  • Thoughts

    Of Men and Misunderstanding

    To Share or Not to Share Two days ago, I began thinking in earnest about the balance between silence and expression. I am coming to understand how essential It is to express oneself and to be free to express oneself,…

  • Thoughts

    Words and Light

    Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be blind? If so, whatever you’ve imagined is probably wrong. According to Jacques Lusseyran, who lost his sight in an accident when he was eight years old, the world doesn’t…

  • 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

    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…