/ Mexican, Roman Catholic: hopeful philologist, medievalist, and poet. It's a beautiful life.
/ "It is not we who speak, but the Spirit." - St. Matthew
/ "'Tell all the truth but tell it slant.'" - Dickinson
/ "If you're going through Hell, keep going." - my dad
/ "Nella natura tua, O Deità eterna, cognoscerò la natura mia...O Trinità eterna, Amor mio dolce, tu Lume, dona a noi lume, tu Sapientia, dà a noi sapientia, tu somma Fortezza, fortifica." - St. Catherine of Siena
Not to be dramatic but when I was like 13 Jenny Nimmo told me one of the best things you can do is to provide safety and comfort and a quiet place for others to harbour in and I have literally never been the same
i can never understand how my classmates and professors be studying mythology, philosophy, and literature and still be heavily religious. i can never.
Because if all that mythology, philosophy, and literature reveal anything, it’s that the spiritual impulse, that desire to know What is out there, seems to be a pretty universal feeling.
That literature, mythology, and philosophy reveal an innumerable mass of people groping towards a Something that can only start be explained through symbols, using words to share what they have experienced in the shakey medium that they have in front of them, a medium that, no matter how limited it is, still allows two speakers to look at each other and say, “Yes, I understand too.”
The fact that an Attic Greek warrior and I could both look at the image of a small child, the son of a woman, crushing a snake to death and have us both realize it’s sacred significance (even if we don’t quite agree what that significance is); that an Aztec peasant and I can hear about the blood of a scourged man replenishing a field of crops and realize deep down in our hearts that this represents a primal reality, whatever that reality is; that a dutiful son in 8th century China can place incense burning in front of a portrait of a grandfather, and a 19th century Russian Orthodox priest can do the same at the altar of his God, both understanding that this incense represents something important; they all point, I think, to something.
I’m part of a human tradition that goes back to before recorded writing. I have an inheritance that may be as old as our species itself. How can I not tremble with awe at this gift, the gift of millennia of people just like me raising their faces toward Heaven?
I have been a sheep caretaker for like two days and already I’m like. Wow. I get it.
I get why these were some of the earliest mammals to ever be domesticated. They look up to humans with this sort of dumb but all at once innocent and pure and trusting expression. They’re happy to see you. They follow you around. They like to be rubbed under their chins. Maybe its just some latent Scottish highland shepherd DNA I still have in me but I look at my sheep charges and suddenly I see why the love of God for humanity is so often described as a shepherd and his sheep. I’d fight a wolf for these guys. I’d go way the Hell out of my way for them. I’d carry their young for miles on my own back.
