how do you know

rose coloured vestments

gaudete

epistemological dissonance

Their brains are rewarded
not for staying on task but for jumping
to the next thing. The worry is we're raising
a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains
are going to be wired differently.

-Michael Rich

this is a figure of speech isn't it?
i mean
we're not talking about the actual wiring of brains, are we?

maybe it would have been more accurate to say:
their priorities will be vastly different-
and we are all likely to suffer because of that

what are we doing here

Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately co-ordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process where the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.

Friedrich Hayek +1992

horsemen pass by

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

- Albert Einstein

well? what? do? you? know?

Heidegger surf-boards along on the electronic wave
as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave.

- Marshall McLuhan +1980

it would seem that chesterton grabbed this guy

one way to do it

"...Sometimes managing to smile requires true heroism; may your smile, whether thoughtful or joyful, always do good.”

- Elisabeth Leseur +1914 (o yeah....here's a saint indeed)

-thanks to the geologian over at an earthling wonders

another horseshit day in paradise

i'm on my second cup of coffee

a lonely theme stated by gordon lightfoot
some 40 years ago

the whole song is a prayer depicting a guy caught in a fierce tug of war between his love for a bottle his love for a momentary lover and the love of his family back home

but i'm in a monastery
not lost
tasks ahead of me
a tour
i get to explain the design minds of great architects
this is a good gig
and i dig it

and tonite i will organize irish tunes for the irish wake of a an irish abbot

trudging plodding looking over my shoulder on occasion
looking all around 360 degrees quite often actually
staring into space at night
you better believe it

still swimming in minnesota
i confess
cross my wretched heart and hope to die
we are still swimming in minnesota
in october

when summer finally ends and i have some time
to reflect on all that has been accomplished
in the endless summer project
i will wax wittily about it
but for now
i must go out to enjoy it

it is autumn
but the fierce force of summer
is still apparent in the dazzling sunlight
lower on the arch of it's trajectory
splashing us in the face

conquistadores por el verano perpetuo
avant ultreya

from a distance

the earth is blue [...]

how wonderful

it is amazing

- yuri gagarin - to ground control 1961

from the golden mouth

Poor human reason, when it trusts in itself,
substitutes the strangest absurdities
for the highest divine concepts.

St. John Chrysostom + AD 407

wry catholic intellectual understatement

there isn't much difference between
infinity and eternity

- Fr. Gabriel Costa
(commenting about mathematics and it's usefulness in theological training)

why we have the blues

{ } ......“something a little funny in all our disasters, if one can face the disaster … so that it’s this passionate detachment, this inwardness coupled with outwardness, this ability to know, all right, it’s a mess, and you can’t do anything about it … so, well, you have to do something about it.”

- James Baldwin

pasar el verano

Summer

At evening the complaint of the cuckoo
Grows still in the wood.

The grain bends its head deeper,
The red poppy.

Darkening thunder drives
Over the hill.
The old song of the cricket
Dies in the field.

The leaves of the chestnut tree
Stir no more.
Your clothes rustle
On the winding stair.

The candle gleams silently
In the dark room;
A silver hand
Puts the light out;

Windless, starless night.

---Georg Trakl (+ 1914 )

trans. Robert Bly

subterranean therapy blues

"They are giving good advice.
If they are in hell,
why should we make it worse?"

margarita lagos fuentes-- mother of Claudio Lagos, a trapped miner, about help from psychologists in what to tell her son.

epistemological turbulence

Be it a question of science,
metaphysics, or religion,
the man who says: 'What is truth?'
as Pilate did, is not a tolerant man,
but a betrayer of the human race."

-Jacques Maritain

where art aims

the aim of art is
to represent
not the outward appearance of things
but
their inward significance

-Aristotle ( the Stageirite)

what i know of truth

2:11 in the morning
tired
sort of blue

found poem

You can easy
scientific prove,
it is exactly the same.
With Love
it never happened
it is homemade.

i located these sentences
on a blog called
zuihitsu dot org

the photo image is shocking

"That poster is shocking. It gives people facts before they take risks."

-Dominique Foxworth

insight

The glory of God is in man fully alive.

- Irenaeus of lyons

incidental aging as a way of knowing

"People don’t talk about it, because it’s embarrassing. They’re having sheer terror, like their worst nightmare."

manuel n. pacheco - md

said philosophical investigator

O oil-covered film-going pelicans!

count your pennies

The ideas of economists and political philosophers . . .(be they correct or incorrect)...
are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled
by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite
exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of
some defunct economist.

-John Maynard Keynes

mercy

there are places in the heart
that do not yet exist
suffering enters in
so that they might have
existence

- leon bloy +1917

i heard this during a conference
for our yearly retreat

a blessing only i got

la paix de christe
allez avec tu
dans l'orchard

few things more clear

Democratic party is basically a communist party for those who either can't function, or for those who feel sorry for them.

kirby olson - modern american political genius

nobility naked

"To me it seems that to give happiness is a far nobler goal than to attain it: and that what we exist for is much more a matter of relations to others than a matter of individual progress: much more a matter of helping others to heaven than of getting there ourselves."

-Lewis Carroll

basho echo

so many frogs
in one pond
croaking

- ed baker

the horrible truth

what is terrifying about God
is that He is a terrorist
for Love

-terry eagleton

an apple blossom sniffers concurence

I take my place by a lily-flower,
believing with Blake -
when God comes
he comes sometimes
by way of the nostril

R S Thomas +2000

found poem

simple stuff --
a direct product
of three cyclic groups
of pairwise relatively
prime orders

jh's first principle of the blues

if you're not cryin'
you're just not tryin'

cognitive synthesis

christians of this new age will be mystics
or they will cease to be

karl rahner

what on eartH?

the stone the builders rejected

cioran:another way of knowing what one knows

The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot. (“On the Heights of Despair,” p.85)

without it

it is a sad story

but what can i do?

i can't kill myself because of this

so i have to learn to live with it

-fabienne jean 31 a haitian dancer who lost her leg to the rubble of the earth quake 2010

3 plants

in my cell

the narcissus
long stemmed
petals already like
fragile cigarette paper
four white pods

an african violet
screaming out

and the comic tragedy
of the clover
having perhaps killed the
bonzai tree
they are temperamental
these clover
they sleep at night
and rise and appear
to enjoy themselves perfectly
in the brightness of the sun
the petals fan out
and are poised in a state
of
sustained glee
then they fold inward as the day darkens

these flowers are my friends
in my cell

we watch winter with
guarded indifference

musicology for the 21st century

townes van zandt was asked once:
townes, how may kinds of music are there
in the world?

he thought for a moment and then said:

Two. there are two kinds of music.
there's the blues
and then there's
Zippidydoo dah

what cellists know

the cello is like a dog
it knows when you are afraid

-thomas schonberg

knowing by faith

Despite its comparative simplicity, a homily by Thomas
stretches the listener’s powers of understanding. It goes without saying
that he wants people to
be moved to a greater love of God, but he wants people above all to think about the mysteries of
faith—to think clearly and deeply, so as to arrive at a better grasp of the meaning of the feast at
hand, or of a scriptural passage under consideration.

peter kwasniewski
jeremy holmes

the things we know

Lives based on having are less free than lives based on doing or being.

-E.Y. Harburg

cognitive attrition

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
-Ray Bradbury

haitian new year 2010

"For the moment, this is anarchy. There’s nothing we can do."
-adolphe reynald

epistemological back beat

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams

cognitive epiphany

the disturbing aspect of friendship is the
sense of willingness to be vulnerable
and trust another person with things as frail
as feelings...in this regard i suppose
it is an art

found poem

donate brain cells
minneapolis education orgs
need smart volunteers
learn more
wwwDOT
allforgood
DOT org slash
handso

sustainable thought

"There is nothing inorganic ... The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history ... but living poetry." - henry david thoreau