From “The Book of Silences” Introduction to Volume 1
The Book of Silences, Volumes 1 – 23343 From the introduction to Volume 1 … the editors have found the task of compiling all the silences of recorded history a…
Category: commonplace book
“the culture of the Mechanics’ Institute”
Reading John Buchan’s “The Island of Sheep”, the last of (and the best of) the Richard Hannay novels, I came across this arresting passage (spoken by Sandy Arbuthnot on his…
“Carbon dioxide should be regarded the same way we view other waste products” – Klaus Lackner and changing minds on carbon
This Elizabeth Kolbert article from the New Yorker on carbon capture is a few months old, but still well worth reading. It is sobering to read how many of the…
“Sibhse ghabhas tríomsa, cuiridh uaibh gach dóchas” – Dante’s Divine Comedy as Gaeilge
Recently I acquired a copy of Padráig de Brún’s translation into Irish of “Inferno”. de Brún translated the whole Divine Comedy. The fly jacket of my copy states that “it…
The “lazy and indifferent” heron of “Monday or Tuesday”, Virginia Woolf
The only short story collection that she had selected in her lifetime, “Monday or Tuesday” is a 1921 collection in which she pursued the approach to writing set out in…
Henri Nouwen on the powerlessness of God
From “Bread For the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith”, Henri Nouwen: In and through Jesus we come to know God as a powerless God, who becomes dependent on…
St Carthage and the miracle of the ever flowing barrel of beer
“Bóthar na Naomh and the Black Lane: Roadway of the Saints” is a booklet produced by the Whitechurch Historial Group. It describes itself as a “map and compendium” completed “to…
from “Small, Silent, Still” – Fr Paul D Scalia
Full piece here. An interesting interview with Fr Scalia – son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – here We require that God be as we want Him: big,…
Séamus Sweeney 