Lesser Feasts

  Very cheap bookshelves groaning under the weight of unfinished projects Some of my Facebook friends report that they read impressive numbers of really serious books and were otherwise insanely productive in 2020. Others are lamenting that they read hardly anything besides annoying news, dominated by unpleasant electioneering and COVID disasters, and accomplished next to nothing. I am closer to the second category. I read a bit -- Susan Howatch's Starbridge novels, some fluff, some theology -- but the list (if I kept a list, which I don't, because that would be work, which, as I believe we've established, I'm not doing much of) wouldn't be impressive in either length or seriousness. I got some scholarly writing done, but I won't have anything with a publication year of 2020. And I'm beginning the year by missing a deadline. But I'm not missing the deadline by much, and I'm really not lamenting about my "lost" 2020, because, all things cons...

The view from my window in the Retreat House I've been quiet lately because I was on a retreat at the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield . I left my work back in Edinburgh and spent a week largely in silence, tending to my spiritual life, reading, playing the piano, walking through the extensive grounds, and soaking in the daily round of office and mass. I wasn't expecting any great revelations, and I didn't have any. But I left with something like the feeling you have when you've let your glasses get dirty and then give them a thorough cleaning. Everything is crisper, brighter, clearer. My meeting for spiritual direction was both illuminating and encouraging. ("There's nothing wrong with your prayer life," the brother said with a mixture of affection and exasperation. "Just get on with it.") And the Franck violin sonata is coming along pretty nicely. Now that I'm back in Edinburgh, I'm catching up on the surprisingly long list of ...