Movies
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Last Weekend in Standard Time
Jinx didn’t let us sleep in too late today, which was a pity because I was still exhausted from yesterday’s little stroll. But spotted dogs with small brains and enormous personalities cannot be denied, and we laughed together as he bounded around the room, growling and moaning. Yes, moaning. Jinx has a peculiar noise he makes when he’s trying to provoke us into playing with him, a noise that sounds quite a bit like the timbers in the HMS Indefatigable with HH on the bridge during a storm. A deep, creaky, groany glissando up and down three octaves. Moaning will have to do as the noun here. The moaning. Oh,…
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Passion And Warfare
A light rain was falling this morning when I let Jinx out. I busied myself with my morning routine, and after a while I went to check and see if the spotted menace wanted back inside. I opened the door and took a breath into my lungs, preparing to call his name. That’s when I saw what looked like a short, medium-sized dog trundle across the front yard, just outside of the reach of the porch light. Then it registered. Coon. A big one. I looked around to see if Jinx was in sight, and then I called with a thin and tentative voice. “Jinx? Come on in, boy.” I…
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CLXIII
Today marks 163 years since a young peasant girl, removing her stockings while preparing to wade into a stream in Lourdes, France, was visited for the first of several times by the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have long been fascinated by the story of St. Bernadette, one of the two young French maidens who have figured so large in my spiritual life, the other being Saint Joan of Arc, for whom I have a special and intense devotion. When I was a little boy, I watched the old black & white movie, The Song of Bernadette, on television with my mother. I was quite bored with the movie, except for…
- Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Movies, Quotations, Reflections
Blue Skies, Hidden Lives, Unvisited Tombs
The day dawned under a sheet of gray, with the clouds in the east giving way to the sun, as if a long florescent tube had been flicked on just beyond the mountains. Jinx cavorted in the snow and carried chunks of ice around as if they were prizes beyond compare. The roosters one farm over called to the brightening sky as I crunched my way past, and the breeze was slight enough that my face was not numb when we reached home. While drinking our coffee, Mrs. Orr and I finished watching a movie we’d started last night. The movie was A Hidden Life, directed by Terence Malick, and…
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Mystery, Life, Syllables
My dear friend Father James, the Trappist monk who lives at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, has been much on my mind lately. I wrote him this morning and hope to hear back from him soon. He has been having some health problems lately, and at his age, his remaining time is speeding up, is precious, is like the dust on a butterfly’s wing: fine and invaluable. I watched a video about the abbey on Youtube and noticed near the end a series of photos taken in the woods surrounding the monastery. Some of the pictures were taken near Thomas Merton’s (Father Louis’s) hermitage on the grounds there.…
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Respite From Madness
While all the madness swirls around us, let me encourage you to support something truly worthwhile, as opposed to the false and foolish trash one encounters in the world. Here is a modest documentary in production that could use the help of people who have not succumbed to ClownWorld, Inc. The documentary focuses on the plight of small ranchers in the USA. As someone noted, the people featured in the documentary and the people producing it are not the sort who will bend the knee to nor wash the feet of degenerate agitators. They are more worthy of your support than any sports team or network streaming service or woke…
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Seasons Of Life
Things have shifted, and now I am detaching from some things and moving towards some new ones. A time of nervous stomachs and pleasant anticipation, a period of feeling overwhelmed and unprepared, a stretch of unsettled hours, of feeling my age, of pushing out again into the waters of hope, watching the clouds and the horizon. It’s lighter in the mornings now, and I see the bicyclist on the shoulder of the road each day on the way to work. I lift my hand and breathe a blessing and a prayer, and as always, I wonder where he is going and what he does and how his day and his…
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A Spiritual Movie Recommendation
Mrs. Orr and I watched a movie last night and I’ve been thinking about it all day. The movie is A Ghost Story, starring Casey Affleck. Mr. Affleck’s presence in the film was what made me want to watch it, as I have enjoyed his subtle, naturalistic performances in several movies over the years, including Manchester By The Sea and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It’s tricky to write about this sort of movie, because it’s one of those that I would likely not be inclined to watch if someone attempted to describe it to me. It was a find, simple as that. A Ghost…