Just another writer

  • Today’s saint picture: Saint David the Dendrite

    Today’s saint picture: Saint David the Dendrite

    Early saints often ended up with rather—eccentric—biographies. The holiness of these figures drew people to them when they just wanted some alone time and in the case of Saint David the Dendrite, his solution to his was to climb an almond tree and live there for three years, thus his title (dendrite coming from the…

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  • Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint William

    Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint William

    Back to a domestic church visit, today I went to the Saint William parish in the Mont Clare neighborhood of Chicago. The church building is a 1959 building with a very mid-century modern aesthetic to it. the tinterior, meanwhile, reflects the final days of pre-Vatican II architecture with side chapels and a sanctuary surrounded by…

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  • Today’s saint picture: Birth of Saint John the Baptist

    Today’s saint picture: Birth of Saint John the Baptist

    Most Catholic religious feasts commemorate the death of the saint. As far as I know, there are only three births celebrated in the Catholic church: Jesus (Christmas), Mary (September 8th) and John the Baptist (today). Jesus and John are mentioned in the Bible and I suppose once we had a feast celebrating the Immaculate Conception¹…

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  • A new post to my mailing list

    A new post to my mailing list

    I posted a few random observations from my trip to Europe on my mailing list. Feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already.

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  • Today’s saint picture: Blessed Marie of Oignies

    Today’s saint picture: Blessed Marie of Oignies

    I was briefly excited when reading the biography of Marie of Oignies to read about her being married and convincing her husband that they should live in poverty and care for the lepers in Nivelles and this led to her foundation of the Beguines, a lay order that did not take formal orders. Then I…

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  • Today’s saint picture: Saint John Fisher

    Today’s saint picture: Saint John Fisher

    Thanks to a chance review of a book by Graham Greene, Louise Imogen Guiney’s Recusant Poets, I ended up doing a deep dive into the reformation and Catholic counter-reformation in England (I have a fairly deep collection of books about 16th–17th century English Catholicism and the poets of that era) so seeing that today’s saints included…

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  • Today’s saint Picture: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

    Today’s saint Picture: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

    There’s a Saint Aloysius church in Chicago, but it doesn’t have a Saturday Mass so I’m doing a picture instead of my nerd pilgrimage today.  Aloysisus Gonzaga was one of the generation of Jesuits who entered when the order had become established after Ignatius’s death and, although born an aristocrat and the heir apparent in…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 6 July 1998

    A visit with my younger self: 6 July 1998

    It’s interesting to me that I find the following more humiliating than my account of stalkerish behavior. Writing requires two talents: that of description and that of imagination. That the two may exist separately is clearly acknowledged; that they may only thrive together cannot be denied. Story idea, An old man deals with the death of a friend much…

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  • Today’s saint picture: Saint Silverius

    Today’s saint picture: Saint Silverius

    Looking over the options for today’s saint, I ended up settling on Saint Silverius, who was one of the handful of popes without a roman numeral after his name (out of 267 popes, there are 41 without roman numerals). What’s more, his father was a pope, although he had married and bore Silverius before being ordained…

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