I understand why mothers are constantly tuned into the needs of their babies, why they are born multi-taskers, why they have eyes in the backs of their heads, and why they can survive on very little sleep for extended periods of time. It is all built into women, with few exceptions. But can anyone tell [...]

Continue Reading Paternal Instinct?

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be! In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy [...]

Continue Reading WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – SONG OF THE FAIRY POEM

“To most men loneliness is a doom. It is imposed upon the criminal as the heaviest of punishments; carried to extremes we know it will drive him mad; nothing seems to unman a man as the loneliness of a prison cell. Even for those who are not criminals, nothing so wrings pity from a human [...]

Continue Reading The School of Loneliness

Yesterday I put up an entry suggesting that the tsunami and divine chastisement may not be completely unrelated. It was really the continuation of a discussion on Amy Welborn’s blog, and that context was important. The connection between earthly calamities and the divine will is certainly worth discussing, but after reading one more account of [...]

Continue Reading Deleted Tsunami Post

Permalinks aren’t working now, but Fr. Jim Tucker has some common-sense things to say about “centrism” as the strategy of those Catholics who want to oppose “extremism” (scroll down to “Centrism the Answer?”). Another problem with centrism is that it is entirely dependent upon where the shifting extremes of Left and Right happen to be. [...]

Continue Reading Left, Right, And Center

O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by; Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night. For Christ is born of Mary, And, gathered all above, While [...]

Continue Reading Phillips Brooks – O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM POEM

“You think I am dead,” The apple tree said, “Because I have never a leaf to show– Because I stoop, And my branches droop, And the dull gray mosses over me grow! But I’m still alive in trunk and shoot; The buds of next May I fold away– But I pity the withered grass at [...]

Continue Reading Edith M. Thomas – TALKING IN THEIR SLEEP POEM

The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump Which well you may see at the Zoo; But uglier yet is the hump we get From having too little to do. Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo, If we haven’t enough to do-oo-oo, We get the hump– Cameelious hump– The hump that is black and blue! We climb out [...]

Continue Reading Rudyard Kipling – THE CAMEL’S HUMP POEM