Another day of news. What is to be done for wrecked Puerto Rico? It is surreal. The residents of Puerto Rico are US citizens. For all practical purposes the island has been treated as a colony, stripped of wealth. The hurricane, a random, impartial Act-Of-Nature has pushed the island deeper into the debt-hole that…
Another hot late September day. It promises to be 90 degrees. Between our president and the leader of North Korea, another session of bitch-slapping, saber rattling. A formation of B-1 bombers and F-15 fighters made a pass along the coast of North Korea. What is the next move going to be and who will…
Its September 24, mid afternoon, and 90 degrees. According to the calendar it is Fall but you’d never know. It has been a while since an adequate rain, and the grass is fading from green to tan. I do not expect to become accustomed to these predicted unseasonal extreme-weather events. There will be no…
The South, too, was an earthly paradise. Not of course at all times, for all its inhabitants. There were the slaves. Yet the South, before the War between the States, had this of paradise left to it: it had the wholeness that embraced white and black in an apparent unity, even though the relationship…
When a myth becomes a daydream it is judged, found wanting, and must be discarded. To cling to it when it has lost its creative function is to condemn oneself to mental illness. I do not say we must learn to live without myths (such an idea is dangerous self-deception: it is itself a…
But this memory is the glue that keeps the universe as one: although immaterial it makes being possible, it is being. If an idea did not remember to think it wouldn’t be. If a chair wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be tomorrow. If I didn’t remember that I am, I won’t be. We can also…
Where many machines are used in monastic work (and it is right that they should be used), there can be a deadening of the spirit and of sensibility, a blunting of perception, a loss of awareness, a lowering of tone, a general fatigue and lassitude, a proneness to unrest and guilt which we might…
The Ohio River is big. From the deck of a boat, one can appreciate the scale of the bridges required to convey vehicles from Kentucky to Indiana, across the Ohio river. It is not hard to imagine the immense challenge of constructing the first bridge across this muscular flowing expanse of water. Then came…
I can’t prove this. And I have no idea how data could be collected and interpreted. I think that we are a composite of our ancestors, parents, grandparents, extending backward….. the times in which they lived, their failures, successes, triumphs, and defeats –all add up to form the backdrop, the emotional ground tone of…
A coffee shop can be a “home” away from home. For the price of a cup of coffee one can just be, hangout, find solitude with others, for reading, for ones thoughts, or for observing human nature expressed in behavior and the dress of patrons. Coffee Shops are essential public spaces. My customary spot…
