Eros, Attraction, Beauty, Desire

The “October” issue of The Way has just been published including my article on the Spiritual Exercises, “Id Quod Volo: The Erotic Grace of the Second Week”. I wrote briefly about the core idea a little while ago and if you are interested you can access the full version free, gratis, and for nothing at The Way online.

3 comments November 29th, 2006

Sunday Week 33 Year B

Homily for a Study Day on the Spiritual Exercises dealing with the Contemplatio ad Amorem

Readings: Dan 12:1-13; Heb 10:11-14, 18; Mark 13:24-32

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5 comments November 19th, 2006

Post Plugins Updated

Similar Posts, Random Posts, Recent Posts, and Recent Comments have all been updated. One or two bugs in parameter handling have been fixed, certain parameters can now be blank where appropriate, or be more complex than before, e.g., 'before_title=<li class="item">'.

Excerpts can now be trimmed down to stop them ending in mid-word. They can be cut back to a word or a sentence. NB excerpt_length is now counted in characters and not words as previously.

Add comment November 14th, 2006

Saturday Week 31 Year II

Readings: Philippians 4:10-19; Luke 16:9-15

Money continues to be in the spotlight today and it’s interesting how Jesus both praises and condemns it in the same breath.

He calls it tainted, little, even loathsome and yet, precisely because it is so unimportant it assumes importance. How we handle the small stuff reveals our hearts better than our big-banner projects or the public values we claim. Money, because it means so little says so much: it speaks of what we worship truly rather than who we say we do.

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12 comments November 11th, 2006

Too Attached to Words

It isn’t as if it is entirely news to me… but a recent round of being edited for publication has really rubbed in how attached I am to the sound of my own ‘voice’.

I’ve been working with Philip Endean, SJ, editor of The Way, to get an article ready for the latest issue and I realise I’ve been a difficult author. I’ve been adapting a piece given orally at the Loyola Hall Seminar on Spiritual Accompaniment into something that can be read off paper. My written style tends to the oral anyway, which stands me in good stead for preaching but makes me awkward on the written page. And this piece I wrote deliberately densely, playing with the weight of words, to evoke a feeling, a memory, an experience. Philip’s admirable outlook is that if a sentence takes two readings it needs editing. He has his readers to think about but I have been more wedded to the words than the communication. Every cut and every elucidation I’ve taken personally–I want it to sound like me.

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4 comments November 8th, 2006

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a strange and nasty and underestimated illness. I’ve been suffering with it for the last five years or so. The US Centre for Disease Control has just produced a detailed web site on the subject.

What is CFS? Doesn’t everybody get tired out? The CDC says this:

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9 comments November 8th, 2006

Presidents in Their Own Words

Chirag Mehta has taken the written words of US Presidents and plotted a tag cloud of the results. Very interesting. You can watch the rhetoric shift year by year.

Thanks to Andrew Vande Moere (who also has links to similar projects).

3 comments November 6th, 2006

Sunday Week 31 Year B

Readings: Deut 6:2-6; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 12:28-34

‘And after that no one dared question him any more’… Interesting. What do you think shuts them up so thoroughly? Are they scared? Confused? Are they silenced by his cleverness? Are they moved in some more obscure and unknown way?

And what of us? What happens in your heart on hearing that great prayer echoing tonight? ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the one God and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength’. What stirs in you? Anything? Fear? Devotion? Joy? … What?

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Add comment November 6th, 2006

Beauty?

There’s a striking short video at the Campaign for Real Beauty website. It critiques the ideal and manipulation of female beauty in advertising while also managing to be an advertisement for Dove beauty products that manipulates images of female beauty. But it’s worth a look–do you feel enlightened or hoodwinked?

Thanks to Brandon

2 comments November 2nd, 2006