I have often wondered what our Creator’s intentions for Ecclesiastes 1:2-11 is? Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? Ecclesiastes 1:2-3 NRSVCE A young person once argued that “vanity” was akin to a loss of…
As I read the fragile and parched first pages of my father’s 1952 diary, the sands of time slowly weaved the context of its moment into my consciousness. He was writing well past midnight, having attended to his daughter, my sister. Now he paused to slow down to pen a few thoughts. He was more…
“This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is in fact the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the onset, taken each other seriously.” “If you ask twenty good men today what they thought the highest…
Lines divide …………………………………… or they unite Lines block ……………………………………. or they move Lines are rigid ……………………… or they are wiggly Lines are straight …………………… or they are wavy Lines encircle ………………………. or they can radiate Lines are focused ….. or they are allowed to meander Lines are heavy ………………………….. or they are dotty Lines clarify…
Perhaps more worldly and less wise in this prolonged period of self-indulgent isolation, is the simplicity of luxury, of a Sunday breakfast of local ground coffee, toasted local baguette, accompanied by a spade of slated butter and some fig preserve. Perfect.
These series of pictures of sunbirds show the demands on their attention as they go about their simple lives. A loud cry had startled this female sunbird to scan the heavens just as she is ready to work on the nectar of the red button ginger plant. The male sunbird, an even more flighty creature,…
I wrote this in March 2020, and stopped. ” Writing in February (2020), I did not believe the world would turn in such a way as if nothing else matters, to be able to think of nothing else, but as a contagion which has afflicted the earth and its people in a hundred varied ways.…
The two consecutive Gospel Readings that confronted me on Saturday after Ash Wednesday and on the following day, the First Sunday of Lent challenged the present-day cozy certainty that a Christian life paved with good intentions, faith, hope and love will inevitably succeed – and bears witness to the angst-filled battles in the lives of…
In this short selection, I am drawn this Sunday after Christmas, by the Cacophony of the Trivial, a collation of ramshackle untidy exhibits, curated on a placid Day of Rest, even as the world is on the brink of yet another mutant attack, amidst a mega tug-of-war between vaccines and live mRNAs. though Earth is…
I have stopped trying to get a grip on focusing on the delicate petals of this beautiful flower of the Duranta erecta or golden dewdrop. You try to pin down that sliver of tissue so delicate that it defies revelation and definition. And you wish that its magnification will somehow transform it into a startling,…