We spend most of our time looking forward to tomorrow. We say: “There will always be another day,” or “there is always tomorrow” but really, we live our lives in three dimensions, don’t we? In the present, backwards through the past to our childhoods and forward with an eye toward our futures. Each one has …
Continue reading “Life-Love 74: Catching up with old friends”
We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about time. Actually, we tend to turn our time into a commodity, thinking about it as a line and then dividing it up into bits that we all understand: minutes, hours, days, week, months, years… This a good way to be productive, but it has an unfortunate …
We live in permissive times. Instant gratification is of the essence for most: in fact, we’re told by voices and images in broadcast and social media that we should only do things that are in our direct interest. So we do enough to get by and just make it. Accompanying this trend is a feeling …
Continue reading “Life-Love 72: Transcending “good enough”.”
I saw something very moving at Mass today. I had taken communion and was in my pew, on the red leather kneeler, saying the prayers of gratitude and reconciliation that I say each Sunday. I was in my usual seat, bathed in the winterlight streaming through a stained glass window that depicts Simon of Cyrene …
Continue reading “Life-Love 71: A mother’s care for her struggling child”
We often live our lives as though we had an endless road to travel ahead of us. We tell ourselves that there will always be another day, another relationship, another chance to make a good deal. We while away the hours in idleness or worry, day dream or anxiety. We worry endlessly about what other …
Our lives are populated by incomplete projects. Half-finished bird-houses lie in our sheds awaiting a final coat of paint or a roof, the beginnings of books and poems litter our notebooks and flutter around our offices in blizzards of paper. Sometimes, however, we steel ourselves to work, or, more likely, clear enough time to be …
Our lives are so full of noise. It’s difficult to feel enough quiet to be able to be creative, or even simply to feel human. Quiet is a funny thing – it doesn’t mean absence of noise, does it? No, in fact, one can feel quiet in the midst of a cacophonous train station or …
Many of us discount the Opera as a medium that could possibly interest us. When we think of it, we get images of dowdy people in suits and music that we can understand, sung by large people in outlandish costumes. This couldn’t be further from the truth! The opera is a vital and powerful way …
If you suffer from insomnia, the way I do, you know what it’s like to spend a lot of time exhausted. You’ve tried it all – going to bed at a set time, having some warm milk before turning in, crosswords before bed, perhaps even a night cap. Sleep eludes you, however, and you read …
For those among us who love coffee, there is nothing like the first approach our favourite muddy drink. First there is the feeling of personal sagging that brings on the desire for caffeine: drooping shoulders, twitchy eyelids, a cottony batten in the mind that seems to start around the ears and spread to behind the …
