Two recent posts at Health Rising, ‘Biomarker…‘ and ‘System Reset…‘, explore the role of the autonomic nervous system in ME. The research they describe definitely resonates with my own experience. I can get stuck in a state of ANS arousal that nothing seems to shift once it is in place–which is just as described. One …
Monthly Archives: August 2014
The Galileo Affair: Rough Guides II
The Renaissance Mathematicus continues his Rough Guides with more on heliocentricity and the Church. As always fascinating. (And full of Jesuits too)
ME: More Research
The brain fog has been coming and going over the last few days but I have been able to cobble together the rest of that article on teaching of spiritual direction for The Way. Unfortunately it feels cobbled together: I hope that the editor will help me put some better shape to it. Meanwhile I …
Brain Fog
Sorry that updates are sparse right now — I am suffering from brain fog, a common symptom of ME. Mine is generally better than this but right now I find it hard to string two sentences together, let alone say what I want to say. This is particularly distressing since I am behind deadline on …
The Galileo Affair: Rough Guides continue
The Renaissance Mathematicus continues his series of Rough Guides on the transition to heliocentricity, this time focusing more directly on the confrontation between Galileo and the Church. I have been criticised for claiming, in a recent post, that given time the Catholic Church would have come to accept heliocentricity in the seventeenth-century and in fact …
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I Love My Kindle
I do. I have the fairly early generation one with the little keyboard and stuff and it has brought me back over the last few years to reading books. Without it even paperbacks give me neck strain and cramped thumbs and aching wrists. Not only is the Kindle light in weight but I find it …
Questions to Ask when Decision-Making
Margarita Tartakovsky writes at PsychCentral on 4 questions to ask yourself to make good decisions. I don’t know whether to be gratified or dismayed that the 500 year old wisdom of St Ignatius has the subject covered rather more effectively than the answers she reports. The four questions, courtesy of Alison Thayer, correspond roughly to …
Blog Archaeology 6
On this day in 2005 I preached a homily about the Ark of the Covenant and God’s presence in particular places. Of course Indiana Jones gets a look-in too. I like the final image a lot — it still moves me when I remember it. Readings (Thursday Week 19 Year I): Josh 3:7-17; Matt 18:21—19:1 …
Experiencing God
The critique of natural theology since Kant has been that God is not an object of possible experience. I think the claim involves a confusion of experience and sensation, and that experience is a more subtle concept that can include God, even apart from mystical or religious experience. So says James Chastek in a post …
Blog Archaelogy 5
This homily was preached at a retreat house Eucharist on this day, the Feast of the Transfiguration, in 2006. It wonders about glory and downward mobility: “about what we think is up or down, high or low, glory or shame, and about which way we will travel, and how, and with whom.” Readings: Daniel 7:9-14; …