XXIX. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will [...]
This is John the Evangelist, who wrote the Gospel of John. John was the witness, the disciple who was always in the right place at the right time. The eagle that soars into the sky, holding a manuscript in its talons, is a metaphor for his faith. Some 700 years after the death of Christ, [...]
Gustave Doré’s illustration to Dante’s Inferno. Plate X: Canto III: Charon herds the sinners onto his boat. “Charon the demon, with eyes of glede, / Beckoning to them, collects them all together, / Beats with his oar whoever lags behind.’” (Longfellow’s translation, which isn’t particularly good, it must be said.) Find more here:
Last night I made a start at writing this down, then faltered when I saw how late it was, realized that my mind wasn’t nearly quiet enough to go to sleep and questioned whether the first few phrases that had formed in my mind were going to lead to anywhere. This morning I got out [...]
Yesterday I flew from the east coast to Los Angeles and watched two movies that were uncanny in the similarity of their view of the human condition. The moral synchronicity was more startling for the cultural chasm between the two films: the uber-Wasp corporate reality of the Reitman brothers’ Up in the Air and the [...]
D’s Communion One time when I was a young man I caught the scent of the priest Through the tannins of the communion wine. He smelled like my father On the morning that he buried my mother. I had just married. My new wife Kept two paces behind me In the communion line. Taking the [...]
A’s Communion Through him With him In him In the unity of the holy spirit Unto the hour of death, And the echo of a long valley For ever and ever. Crepe paper lightens my hand The flutter comes from the breath Of the word One supplication in this prayer To feel him A postcard [...]
T’s communion When I go to communion hold my hand. The change in the air, The rustle of the heavy clothes, The scuff of shoes against the polished slate, The solitary cough, The clap of the wood boards against metal stays, The mumuring up ahead, The swollen rotation of the bellows, The stillness of the [...]
A few weeks ago I watched a compelling telepic out of Britian called The Occupation. The story centers on the intertwined fates of a group of British soldiers deployed to Iraq during the first war. That deployment became the centrifugal force for personal change, ruin, temptation and despair. Grace became a compromised state of existence. [...]
This summer has a pattern and a habit that winds through it: coming down to the kitchen in the early morning, the only one awake in the house; sliding the latch on Bella and Charlie’s crate; Bella skittering behind me in a hurry and then righting herself when I open the door off the kitchen [...]