That doesn’t mean you never say things with which people disagree. It means you don’t make a career, in or out of the Church, out of being a provocateur and a hater.
OUTSIDE LIES MAGIC
THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL
St. Paul fell off his horse, but Christ comes in the form of a lamb, a dove, a heron. That’s not to say he’s always gentle. But he’s often gentlest when we’ve been doing terrible violence to ourselves and others.
ROBERT MACFARLANE’S LOST WORDS
His capacity to conjure landscape is alone astounding. Add to that an astonishingly wide-ranging grasp of geography, geology, natural history, cartography, and literature. Throw in the fact that he’s no mere scholar or armchair philosopher: every book is grounded in his willingness to take on the physical hardship of mountain climbing, hiking, camping, sailing, and tramping. But what makes Macfarlane sublime is the aching longing for a lost Eden that sounds like a bass note beneath all his work.
HAPPY NEW YEAR: BIRDS, SPIRITUAL COMPANIONS, NEW LIFE
Santa Barbara’s Coal Oil Point Reserve, a mute swan, and saving lives for the New Year…
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A GARDEN VIDEO
My dear, insanely multi-talented friend Lisa Marr who, along with her life partner Paolo Davanzo, runs the Echo Park Film Center (EPFC), put this video together with footage I shot on my iphone and with a grant from the AARP. I am actually NOT retired, thank you, though am thrilled to be part of this […]
WONDER AND ENCHANTMENT
“Our language for nature is now such that the things around us do not talk back to us in ways that they might. As we have enhanced our power to determine nature, so we have rendered it less able to converse with us.”
–Robert Macfarlane, “Landmarks”
NOT GRITTING MY TEETH!
I keep thinking of Fr. Walter Ciszek, who said clandestine Masses in the woods, under penalty of death, as a prisoner in Siberia. “[T]hese men would actually fast all day long and do exhausting physical labor without a bite to eat since dinner the evening before, just to be able to receive the Holy Eucharist—that was how much the Sacrament meant to them in this otherwise God-forsaken place.”
UNDER STORM’S WING
Hope, adventure, excitement, and the transferral of enthusiasm are surely the essence of the “life” we Catholics so vociferously claim to promote…So let’s see a little of it!
TWO FAVORS
One: Is someone out there conversant with Adobe InDesign who would be willing to change the date on two flyers? I am balking at paying up to 100 bucks–though maybe I’m just being cheap. Or maybe I’m just asking in the hopes I will receive! Two: A reminder about my newest book: HARROWED: Life Lessons […]
LOTUSLAND
Madame Ganna Walska (1887-1984) was the type of Southern Californian eccentric over whom people from back East love to roll their eyes, muttering “land of the fruits and the nuts.” Born Hanna Puacz in Brest-Litovsk, Poland, she was an opera singer who was married six times. She resided in New York and Paris, toured Europe […]
HARROWED: LIFE LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN
IT IS HERE. My newest book. the back cover copy. “This is the story of the garden: my first, and perhaps my last. I started it at the age of 64. I’m 68 now. The garden brings me satisfaction, beauty, astonishment, joy. The garden also requires an inordinate amount of worry and work. When I […]
BIRDS AT THE BASIN
“Follow the trail leading from the ‘stonehenge’ restroom/amphitheatre area south,” the directions run. “You can walk all the way down to the LA River, but if you do (the trail leads through a tunnel under Burbank Blvd.) be sure to go with another person.”
Naturally, I skipped over that last part.
ART WORTH DYING FOR: JAMES DICKSON INNES
Born in Llanelli, Innes studied at Carmarthen Art School and the Slade. A colleague there noted that he ‘was of middle height, black haired and thin featured, handsome to many people… there may have been something satanic in his look.”… He was already dying of tuberculosis, having been diagnosed at 21.