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 […]
On late days one summer, I would walk through the rich heat to the small chapel in the sacristy in the rear of the church, off the corridor that joined the monastery and the church together. Bishop Ansgar would say Mass each afternoon: sepulchral, solemn, devout. What I can remember about those Masses was how […]
I just finished reading an over-heated novel by Raymond Khoury, The Sign. I’m never really sure why I’ve read one of his novels when I finish: the plots are unlikely, the characters simplified and the themes painted in awfully broad strokes. He’s too cerebral to be a pulp writer, and too unimaginative to be a […]