A Pilgrim's Platen

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To See The Sun No More

I recently traveled to Houlton, Maine, to participate in a seemingly national cultural event: the viewing of the total annular eclipse. It was not a journey that I had really planned out beforehand. The decision to go at all was in question up until the hour before I left. I made the trek up to the northern half of the state that I have learned to call home with a close friend of mine who had also awoken that morning, unsure of his participation in the journey. As we drove up with plenty of time to spare we could not help but notice the immense amount of traffic on a hundred-mile section of the interstate which rarely sees more than three cars at a time. It was clear to us that people wanted to see this eclipse. As rather lukewarm astronomers, we were unprepared for the mass of people we would encounter when we reached our viewing destination.

Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner

About two years ago I was sitting in my grandmother's living room, and we were discussing the books that we were reading. I do not remember what books we were discussing, but I remember her interrupting our discussion of a certain book to ask me if I had ever read The Way of a Pilgrim , I said that I had not, and she proceeded to tell me that it was her favorite book. She pointed it out to me on the shelf and told me that I should have it. I asked her if she was sure she wanted to give it away because it was her favorite book. She said to me that she had read it ten times already, and she figured that she would not need to read it again in her lifetime. Fast forward to last month, and I am presenting this book to my newly formed book club. We read it together in a month and spent a few hours discussing the book over wine, cheese, and crackers. My brief thoughts on the book are as follows.

An Ode to Change

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. These few lines sit at the very beginning of T.S. Elliot’s famous Four Quartets: a great work that I do not pretend to understand or appreciate to the level it deserves. If it were not that a man who is considered to be a great writer wrote these words, my instincts would be to interpret this first stanza from Elliot as foolish, repetitive and unproductive ramblings. If time is relative and its significance constantly reconnects to itself, then time as a linear existence does not seem to make sense, or at least it is significant. Today's events can be significant to me because of the way they relate to events that happened to me twenty years ago. That does not mean that this point in time is the same as the point in time twenty years ago, but it does mean that in a way, through my memory, my imagination, and the...