While writing a book called The Consolation of the Ordinary, I tried to come up with as many synonyms as possible for ordinary: daily, everyday, mundane, quotidian, common, and so on. Only late in this process did it occur to me that one such synonym is small.
I’ll never forget the day I discovered that other people are real. It was 1981, the year I became a Christian, but the event I’m about to describe happened, interestingly, a few months before my conversion.
John of the Cross is two amazing things: a saint, and one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language.
Watch this on YouTube or read the text below.
Most of us, I think, have an expectation that life will be good to us. When trouble rears its ugly head, we are surprised, even offended. We watch the news; we know terrible things happen to people all the time. But somehow we think we’ll prove the exception.
A group who is studying my book Practicing the Presence of People asked me to provide a short video introduction. Watch the result on YouTube. I’m not a dynamic speaker, so if you’d rather read than watch, I’ve added the script.
Imagine you’re a robot with a binary brain, all 1’s and 0’s.
Now picture yourself looking at a flower.
As research for my current project, a book on the spirituality of sleep, I arranged a visit to the Sleep Clinic in Parry Sound, an hour’s drive north of where I live.
Colored lights appear, secret packages arrive, and the sound of distant (very distant) sleigh bells can be heard drifting down from the north.