Messages (Some in Bottles)
The Gothic Revival in the Victorian age created significant demand for new stained glass, and one of the leading firms to supply that glass was Burlison & Grylls. The making of a stained-glass window begins, of course, with detailed designs, and at some point the production of cartoons showing what the finished product will look like. I think these cartoons are a pleasant art form in themselves. These come courtesy of the Town Mouse, where you can see higher-resolution images.
The incredible journey of the electronic plastic bottle
Alexi Sargeant: “Our resolution should be not simply to survive our present apocalypse and resume ‘life as normal.’ Let us wake up to ways the world ends every day, responding with compassion when we encounter others going through one slow-motion apocalypse or another. But let us also not turn a blind eye to the grace-filled apocalypses of first steps, surprising kindnesses, and new possibilities. Just because a baby, for example, is a small and ordinary being doesn’t mean she is not also an apocalyptic prophet, tearing with tiny hands at the veil that keeps us looking only at what is and not at what ought to be.”
Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.: “I am a Cistercian monk. In the middle of my monastery, surrounded by the stone arches of a medieval cloister, is a garden. We do not go into the garden — we only look at it from the outside, through the arches of the cloister. The only one to go in is the gardener. The garden signifies the monastic life; closed off on all sides from the distractions of the world, it is open upward toward the infinite Heavens. More particularly, the garden signifies virginity and celibacy. It is a reference to a verse in the Song of Songs, the great love poem in the Bible, traditionally ascribed to King Solomon: ‘A garden locked is my sister, my bride, / a garden locked, a fountain sealed’ (Song of Songs 4:12). The Cistercian tradition sees the virgin bride of the Song of Songs as an image both of the monastic community as a whole and of the soul of the individual monk. The life of the monk is a life of longing, of not yet entirely consummated love for God. The ecstatic eroticism of the Song expresses something of the intensity of the soul’s love story with God.”