Mainly Maps, Plus a Lizard
From an extraordinary essay by Harold Braswell:
I was not alone in discovering a connection between my personal suffering and that of Jesus. At Our Lady, Jesus was not to be seen solely in the home’s patients. He was to be seen in everyone — including yourself. “When I look at the cross of Christ I think of them” — the home’s patients — “going through their cross. Or me going through my cross,” said the home’s priest to me one day. Apparently, part of the point of looking at Jesus — every morning at mass, every time you entered a room — was that doing so brought you deeper into yourself. And, paradoxically, into others as well. Seeing Jesus was neither isolating, nor narcissistic. On the contrary, by further embracing your own suffering, you were to become more sensitive to the suffering of others: to patients, to family members, to everyone who you encountered in your day. Mediated through Christ’s body, sorrow that otherwise might put you on an island could be used to build a bridge.
Emma Willard’s Temple of Time — see a much larger version here. A few years back I wrote a review essay about maps of time.
As a number of people have been saying, this is simple but really cool.
The BBC’s Thirteen Minutes to the Moon podcast series is a really superb example of audio storytelling. Top marks.
“Ol’ Rip (died January 19, 1929) was a horned lizard (commonly referred to as a ‘horned toad’ or ‘horny toad’) whose supposed 31-year hibernation as an entombed animal is believed by some and doubted by others.... In 1897, a horned lizard was placed in a cornerstone of the Eastland County Courthouse in Eastland, Texas along with other time capsule memorabilia. When the courthouse was torn down 31 years later, the cornerstone was opened on February 18, 1928, a live horned lizard was produced, allegedly from within the time capsule. The lizard became a celebrity, and went on tour, even being taken to Washington, D.C. to meet President Calvin Coolidge.”
STATUS BOARD
- Work: Getting into a rhythm, discerning unexpected connections: Frankenstein, Maximos the Confessor, 1 Corinthians. Teaching three classes rather than my usual two is challenging, but it allows for triangulations, and triangulations are essential to creative thinking.
- Music: Do yourself a favor, make your life brighter and better: listen to “Double Barrel” by Dave and Ansel Collins. Good God! Too much!
- Viewing: Watching some performances of Wagner.
- Food and Drink: Steak kabobs with a delicious Matthiasson Napa Valley Red Wine.
