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Days Upon Days
The temperatures are so very mild here now…about 72F , sunny and mild, with rock-bottom humidity. The sensitive antennae of my bones tell me that winter will approach with more speed than I had anticipated. Mrs. Orr and I were talking recently about how we used to dread the hot weather — because in Texas, that’s really all we had — and how we welcomed the fall and winter months. Not no more, ese! The cold has an effect that it didn’t in our salad days, so there is a novel sense of dread now with the shifting sun patterns and the almost-chilly breeze. I am watching the hummingbirds closely,…
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Small Mysteries, Large Voices, Small Mention
Behold — I shew you a mystery. We have several hummingbird feeders in our yards, some of them mounted on metal shepherd’s hooks. We’ve learned that the only hummingbird feeders worth having are the ones with a water dam in the top, a sort of cup that holds water and keeps ants from getting onto the feeder. I have to keep careful watch on the feeders, replenishing the water in the dams because it not only evaporates, but also because some of the smaller songbird will drink the water in the tops of the feeders. The other day I must have missed checking on one of the feeders, because when…
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From Archbishop Vigano’s Pastoral Intervention
In this recently released pastoral text, Archbishop Vigano directly and forcefully addresses the manner in which the Church (and all the churches) has become indistinguishable from the corporate structures now clamoring to blend into the Great Reset. We have understood, in these times of crisis, that whoever is constituted in authority is now disconnected from those over whom he holds command. The so-called pandemic has shown that those who govern are obedient to the orders of supranational powers, while citizens are deprived of their rights, and any form of dissent is censored or psychiatrized, according to a recent felicitous expression. The same thing happens in the Church: the highest levels of…
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Such Will Not Be Found In A Church
One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what to make of him. In fact, they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud; but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstract norms of ‘perfection’ to his own life. He cannot seem to make his life fit in with the books. Sometimes his case is so bad that no monastery will keep him. He has to be dismissed, sent back to the world like Benedict…