December 31, 2016, years end. One more year fades into the rear view mirror. I pause longer to reflect, than was the case when I was younger. Yesterday I stopped by The Roadster Shop which is across the street from the Starbucks where I often come to write. The guys and gals at the…
We are a few days past winter solstice. The solstice is the shortest day, the least amount of sunlight. Every year as the solstice nears I am disconcerted at the rapid onset of nightfall. “Is it dark already”, I ask myself at 5PM. I feel cheated of sunlight by winter. Christmas is our resistance…
Year to year, I am drawn to the Christmas story. It is a simple well known tale. I re-imagine the story in terms of one more year of life experience. At this juncture I am interested in Matthews rendition of the story. (Matthew 1:18-2:23) The points of dissonance in the story speak to me,…
I suspected this was coming. Yesterday I felt abnormal tightness in my throat. Aspirin, two at a time were taken throughout the day. In a semi conscious mental fog around 5 AM I felt a persistent stab of pain. Well, it’s not the first time that I’ve had a sore throat. I was well…
Last night I attended a concert at the United Center. The Pretenders with Chrissie Hynde opened for Stevie Nicks. Nicks has been writing lyrics and performing her songs, album after album, since the early 1970s. Nicks is on tour with her band to reprise her songs written over a forty year career as a…
The first sip of coffee, like a knife-cut of astringence, faintly sweet and bitter to the tongue: a metaphor for life. With practice some develop a taste for it,…. for life that is. I am a Christian monk and priest, and I am, therefore, accountable before God for the actions and deeds of every…
We are embedded in the day to day. We tend not to notice the exquisite design all around us, the product of our progenitors sweat, intelligence and passion. Reflecting upon this past Thanksgiving holiday, feeling some awe at the memory of a well appointed dining table. In the pleasant company of family, children and…
And yet he felt forebodings. Some nameless threat lurked just around the corner of the world for the sun to rise again. The feeling had been gnawing at him, as annoying as a swarm of hungry insects that buzzed about one’s face in the desert sun. There was a sense of the imminent, the…
How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely? “Perhaps,” said Apollo, “by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else.” “Perhaps,” said Thon Taddeo, “but I doubt it.” “You reject all history, then, as a myth?” “Not ‘reject.’ But it must be questioned. Who wrote your histories?” “….a doubt…
A radical skepticism reduces reason to its own caricature: to a mere rationalization of positions that were actually predetermined by desire and were held– or secured– by force alone. Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch Meaning, Published 1975 Who was Michael Polanyi? Michael Polanyi, (11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath,…
