It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can. (G.K. Chesterton)
Month: March 2023
Tagging the Palace Walls
I was in Desmond’s Hip City. Delroy Wilson’s musty Dancing Mood posters strewn underfoot. Party for the End of the World slapped on the hoarding, made from cut and paste hysteria. Hunger strikes and tribal clashes, clashes luridly with magical runes graffiti. Ruins a dancing mood for a spellbound stargazer like me. Harald Bluetooth,[…]
15 Minute Cities – Utopian Villages, or Dystopic Hells?
There’s much ado of late on ‘15 minute cities‘, (FMCs – like everything else now, they have their own acronym) a proposed redesigning of our metropolises, so that the basic amenities – groceries, shops, cafes, libraries, schools, parks, even, might we add, churches – will all be within walking, or biking, distance. Gone will be[…]
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen. (Saint Thomas Aquinas, +1274)
Contra Cardinal McElroy’s Moral Muddle
In January, Cardinal Robert McElroy, one of the most recent Bishops elevated to the cardinalate by Pope Francis, published quite a controversial article in the Jesuit-run America magazine, which quickly inflamed ecclesiastical circles. After receiving countless criticisms, he decided to publish his respondeo, which was supposed to bring some clarification. No need to say, that[…]
Cheating Chat-GPT
In 1950, Alan Turing – one of the inventors of the modern computer, and fresh from helping win the war by designing it to decipher Germany’s indecipherable ‘Enigma Code’ – posited a test that he dubbed the ‘imitation game’, but was later named after him: Could a machine mimic a human so accurately, that no[…]
The Rise – and Fall? – of the Nones
He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest; and finding none he says, `I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes he[…]
Trials, Purification and Transfiguration
And He was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white (Mt. 17:2). On the second Sunday in Lent we always read the Gospel of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. We do so in order that our focus may be directed towards the glory of Easter and[…]
Loving Your Home
Sometime contributor to these pages, Rebecca Jacobson – and her own Mum – have a delightful and quite lovely blog, lovingyourhome, which is well worth checking out: reflections, remedies, wisdom and good advice for around the house – and the crisp, lovely photos add to the ambiance. In the most recent post, you can learn[…]
If someone wishes to love himself he must not allow himself to be corrupted by indulging his sinful nature. If he wishes to resist the promptings of his sinful nature he must enlarge the whole horizon of his love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord. Further, if he wishes to[…]