Posts Tagged "blog"

Doubting Miracles, Or A Reason To Believe

(by Joe Simmons, SJ) This past weekend witnessed the canonization of seven new saints in Rome.  For holy men or women to be recognized as capital-S Saints in the Roman Catholic Church, typically two miracles need to be attributed to their intercession.  Usually these come when someone is healed without an easy medical explanation. Call me the modern skeptic, but I always found this litmus test to be… well… troubling, I guess.  In my...

On Groaning

Round Tones It’s almost onomatopoeia: sounding like its meaning. Like the word, buzz. OW— on the way to an OU-ch. It always strikes me when words contradict themselves. Take the word, rock: As a noun it means something that is absolutely stationary. As a verb it means to be in movement. Radical movement. Movement with sharp edges. So, back to groaning. That can be agony. Or joy. Or so I’m told. It’s fun to see what...

Letting Go

(by Scott Cairns) More than a hundred years ago, a chronically afflicted Emily Dickinson observed something of pain’s curious effects and aftermath.  “After great pain,” she wrote, ” a formal feeling comes.”  Her poem continues: The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs— The still Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go...

The Beloved

Connection It is the smoothing out of the path that lies before me. It is the complete rearrangement of my structure. It is my being set free. It is my complete capture. It is fullness. It is fulfillment. It is the heart of quietness, and the hand of eternity. It is the movement of life itself; the opening of what seemed to be the end. It is the beginning that occurs every second. It is wonderment and amazement; a child’s first...

To Restore

Echoes When I think of restoration, I think of destruction. First, something doesn’t need to be restored if it hadn’t been wrecked in the first place. But second, once something is restored, it can be wrecked all over again. Like a child’s building made of blocks. Up it goes. Down it comes. So what is the point of restoration, then? To a child, making infinite buildings after infinite demolitions is the fun of...