A few years ago the BBC ran a three-part series, The Big Silence, about a group of only-vaguely-religious people undergoing an individually-guided, Ignatian retreat at St Beuno’s Retreat House in North Wales. Though good viewing in and of itself it was undermined by a rather confused premiss: the programme tried to invite the participants into …
Yearly Archives: 2014
‘Peirce’s argument for form’
James Chastek over at Just Thomism has an interesting short post on Peirce’s argument against Nominalism ‘in favor of forms that are both common and existing in things apart from the consideration of mind’. Chastek illustrates the argument this way: I can pick up and drop ten rocks and watch them fall each time, and I …
Cosmology, Evil, Art
The mind a creature is, yet can create, To nature’s patterns adding higher skill ; from ‘Look Home’ by Robert Southwell, SJ Brandon at Siris has a fascinating reflection, The Subcreation of Ephemeral Good, twining together theodicy, human and divine creativity, and cosmology. He says he was prompted by two posts I had been mulling …
’13 Tips From 13 Years Sick’
Toni Bernhard over at Turning Straw into Gold has some good advice on living with chronic illness. in her post 13 Tips From 13 Years Sick. For example: 11. Prepare yourself for the possibility that you’ll be chronically ill for the rest of your life. This may not be the right course for everyone, but …
Weird Search Terms
One of the joys of website statistics is seeing what Google search terms have brought people to your site. Most of the ones leading here are WordPress-plugin-related. A few are to do with Ignatian spirituality or prayer. Today I noticed this one: magic spell for catching minnows Indeed a few pages down the Google search …
Spiritual Exercise, Part II
I noted in a previous post that St. Ignatius prefers to talk about spiritual exercises or practices rather than about praying as such. I explored the way new retreatants often are surprised that a retreat can feel like hard work. Another surprise is in the offing if they come with the expectation that they will …
ME and the Immune System
Cort Johnson at Simmaron Research writes about an upcoming study of how the immune system is compromised in ME patients. For thirty or forty years you might be able to easily slough off this bug or that pathogen, but at some point for some reason the stars aligned; you were depleted in just the right …
Selfish Genes
I’ve just come across a on-my-first-impression fascinating online magazine Aeon with quite a few articles worthy of comment. One that garnered its fair share of discussion was ‘Die, selfish gene, die‘ by David Dobbs arguing that Richard Dawkins’ concept of the selfish gene is no longer useful with the growing awareness of the importance of …
Mindfulness Once Again
Having expressed my ambivalence toward the practice of mindfulness the other day I felt I should report this post from the Scientific American blog by Tom Ireland. MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s “fight or flight” center, the amygdala, appears to shrink. This primal region of the brain, …
Grieving
Up until last August I only knew of Erik Meyer as a CSS guru (that’s Cascading Style Sheets — web stuff) but then his daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumour and over the last year he has been writing about his family’s experience. It seems wrong to say so but he has written that …