April I have booked four nights at the Holy Cross Retreat Center Hermitage, Las Cruces, New Mexico. Here I plan to map out THE REST OF MY LIFE ONCE AND FOR ALL.
THE CREATIVE LIFE
THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
We Catholics keep our decorations up till Epiphany (January 9th this year), I’ve learned (or depending on whom you consult, is it The Baptism, which this year falls the day after Epiphany (Jan. 10th), or is it January 5th which, counting December 25th, is the twelfth day of Christmas, or is it January 6, which is the day the three wise men are supposed to have arrived in Bethlehem)?
In short, just leave them up for now.
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY
Then I settled down to one of my favorite kind of afternoons: I started reading “Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania & Healing” by Horatio Clare. H, as his friends (and now, I) call him, wrote a stellar memoir about growing up on a Wales sheep farm called “Running for the Hills”, and has written a bunch of travel and landscape type books since. He’s also possibly an alcoholic, and possibly bipolar, and suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and really, really should not smoke pot.
METANOIA
“Metanoia is a response to an invitation that focuses on God’s promise that something new is in the offing. It is an invitation to a conversion of mindset. It is so radical that we don’t have an English word capable of communicating it.”
“DRESS CODES” AT THE AUTRY
As Yves St. Laurent said, “I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity—all I hope for in my clothes.”
SUMMON THE WHEAT
It’s good to give–but why is it so fiendishly difficult for some of us to receive: to impose, to “bother,” to make a pest of ourselves (or so we tell ourselves?)
RICHARD DIEBENKORN’S OCEAN PARK SERIES
Take, for example, Ocean Park No. 140 (1985). It may not be a landscape, but its two triangular swaths of gorgeous saturated color—dark green and deep blue—to my eye irresistibly evoke land, sea and sky.
FINDING FREEDOM AT THE LOST KITCHEN
“Finding Freedom” is the story of how Erin French picked herself up by the bootstraps, begged, borrowed, scavenged, refurbished an old Airstream trailer and opened a popup, made a handshake deal for an abandoned gristmill in rural Maine and bit by bit, breathed a world-famous restaurant into life.
CALLED TO GIVE UP
![HILMA AF KLINT'S "PRIMORDIAL CHAOS, NO. 6," 1906-07. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) "was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered among the first abstract works known in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian.” [wiki] The painting is a reflection of my inner state after a long home-invasion siege by a recalcitrant ground squirrel.](https://i0.wp.com/www.heather-king.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Hilma_af_Klint_1906-07_Primordial_Chaos_-_No_16-2.jpg?resize=337%2C335&ssl=1)
The trap sat there untouched for days. This morning I went out and found that The Squirrel had managed to REMOVE THE TOWEL, thrust it aside like a messy teenager, probably nab a candy bar or two, and leave the door wide open.
ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE: LOVE WITHOUT LIMITS
“Those eyes of his were always strangely penetrating. The SS men couldn’t stand his glance, and used to yell at him, ‘Schau auf die Erde, nicht auf uns!’ (‘Look at the ground, not at us.’)”
VIVA MAESTRO!: COMPOSER GUSTAVO DUDAMEL
Dudamel’s philosophy, work and life constitute a resounding rebuke to those who maintain that art is a frivolous whim in these dark times.
DEAREST SISTER WENDY
On one level, the book can be read as a dialogue about the active versus the contemplative life.
MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN, SCIENTIST AND ARTIST
Read up on this amazing 17th-c. caterpillar obsessive, butterfly aficianado, explorer and artist!
REHABILITATING ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX
In this culture of perpetual aggrievement, could it be that we’ve been missing the message that’s right in front of our faces?