Not not not not
I decree that Nothing about me is to be of other existence, My solo self is to be completely sovereign. My boundaries are to be impassable, inviolable. Let me be…
Category: words
Pentecost: The Dove Descending Breaks the Air
From Little Gidding, TS Eliot: The dove descending breaks the air With flames of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only…
Robert Louis Stevenson bequeaths his birthday to Annie Ide
I had read somewhere that Robert Louis Stevenson had bequeathed his birthday (13th November) to a girl who was born on Christmas Day. Lately I came across Katherine Miller’s poem…
“The Unbelievers” – short fiction by G Scott Huggins
At the now defunct Sci Phi journal, here is an interesting story by G Scott Huggins, “The Unbelievers”. The story has a fairly clear theological point, but also reminded me…
“Silence is not the contrary of the Word but its guardian”
From “Lieber’s Lament”, Chapter 6, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., George Steiner: As it is written in the learned Nathaniel of Mainz: there shall come upon the earth…
See the Domnach Airgid (or Domhnach Airgid) in Dublin
A while back I blogged about the Domhnach Airgid, an artefact in the National Museum which is a shrine for a manuscript of the Gospels. It turns out that the…
“Thinking about the immortality of the crab”
Via the Wikipedia page devoted to Miguel de Unamono, I came across this wonderfully evocative Spanish idiom: Thinking about the immortality of the crab (Spanish: Pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo) is…
I Taught Myself To Live Simply – Anna Akhmatova
I taught myself to live simply and wisely, to look at the sky and pray to God, and to wander long before evening to tire my superfluous worries. When the…
Séamus Sweeney 