“Here is a symbol…” begins the Robinson Jeffers poem, “Rock and Hawk,” the order of those in the title, as in all poetry, meaningful. The setting is a “headland” of Jeffers’s beloved and rugged northern California (Big Sur) coast, where we read (and see, through the poet’s eyes), a hard, unfeeling gray rock, “standing tall…/where the seawind/Lets no tree grow…” Jeffers lets us know the rock has also proven unmoved by earthquakes and “ages of storms,” so stout and unyielding it is in its essence, repelling all who would seek to impinge on its domain. With one exception. Because after…
-
-
Historians hail Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press circa 1440 as a seminal shift in human civilization, and so it has been. It would take another nearly four centuries, until 1826, before Nicéphore Niépce captured “View from the Window at Le Gras” via a “heliotrope” process that has been immortalized as the world’s first photograph. Parlor game enthusiasts might argue these centuries later about whether Niépce’s picture was worth more or less than any proverbial thousand words set to type by Gutenberg. But what we have learned as we creep up on the 200th anniversary of Niépce’s accomplishment is that…
-
“Home” most always represents both a real, particular place and a metaphor with almost unparalleled richness in human life. Home, as the ancient maxim has it, is not only where our hearts are, but also where we lay our heads down on familiar pillows in beloved zones of comfort, where we are (or at least nurture a hope to be) most ourselves and most accepted and understood as the selves we are. It’s where we go to regather ourselves in times of turmoil and crisis, whether of inner identity or outer world upheava. To “go home” is to “call it…
-
Two visions for How to Be in the World, shared a week ago, on Easter Sunday, the Christian world’s holiest day of the year, the veritable heart of the faith that has buoyed billions of people over the millennia. First, excerpts from Pope Francis’s final papal address, his last full day on earth: “Today at last, the singing of the “alleluia” is heard once more in the Church, passing from mouth to mouth, from heart to heart, and this makes the people of God throughout the world shed tears of joy…Jesus is not in the tomb, he is alive! Love…
-
Amidst the chill of a world seeming to spiral ever deeper into an abyss, with spring making its usual valiant effort to overcome the darkness, could we maybe help it with an exquisite extra dollop of light? In the words of a certain ex-president: “Yes, we can!” So we will, in this uncustomarily short (!!) blog post I will soon turn over to the Swiss street cellist who bills himself as “Jodoc Cello” (real surname, “Vuill”). A few notes in, he is joined by an unknown violinist seemingly strolling by and inspired to create an ad hoc duo. (Though I…
