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.

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...

This Is My Body

The Eucharist, resplendent in its simplicity, stands as a divine enigma wrapped in the most unassuming of veils. Beneath the humble appearance of bread and wine lies the inexhaustible wellspring of God’s boundless love: a love that transcends time and space, reaching from Heaven to earth with a tender, infinite embrace. In this sacred rite, time itself is suspended, collapsing into a singular moment where the eternal mingles with the temporal. Here, in this most holy sacrament, I am invited into the timeless drama of salvation, a mystery not simply to be remembered but to be entered, body and soul. The bread, seemingly common, and the wine, with its familiar crimson hue, are transformed before my very eyes. What my senses perceive as ordinary becomes, in truth, extraordinary. This is My Body, This is My Blood . Words so simple yet so profound they echo throughout the corridors of eternity.