Month: December 2012
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Shape Of Wind In Lilac
The lilac leaf is not interesting aside from the wind, nor is the wind visible aside from the leaf, but the shape of the wind in the lilac will hold me here for hours. It is the dance of the parts with each other, frozen in a moment, that we have the privilege to feel…
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Advent Star, 15 Dec 2012
Against the darkness of this world’s insanity, with a gunman slaughtering 20 children and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, I couldn’t take my eyes off the simple silver star. O Come thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here.
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Alexis de Tocqueville: “…bribe the public with the public’s money…”
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. Alexis de Tocqueville
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Thomas Merton: “The Trappist Abbey: Matins”
When the full fields begin to smell of sunrise And the valleys sing in their sleep, The pilgrim moon pours over the solemn darkness Her waterfalls of silence, And then departs, up the long avenue of trees. The stars hide, in the glade, their light, like tears, And tremble where some train runs, lost, Baying…
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On Art Supplies
Great artists don’t talk much about their tools. The rest of us do, because we’re still discovering what our hands can do. Most of us never get to the end of this exploration of means – and that’s ok, because to create is its own reward, no matter what stage of development we find ourselves…
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Every sketch is a question about what God sees.
If you treat your sketchbook as a book of answers you’ll suffocate from the presence of the inner judge, who will demand a certain finished quality to those sketched answers. No, see your pencil as a questioning stick. It is a divining rod, doodling among the surface textures of what you see in front of…
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C.S. Lewis: “The scholar has lived in many times…”
The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the nonsense that pours from the press of his own age. – C.S. Lewis
