The Narthex

At the head of my favorite exercise trail, which goes deep into the wooded back hills, stands a grove of trees maybe a hundred feet tall and aged that many years. A few weeks last autumn, I noticed people collecting things on the ground and stuffing them into satchels. They…

In 1967, during my hippie days, I stood on a landing between the first and second floor of the Boston Public Library admiring the 160-year-old, side by side, marble busts of Christ and Lucifer. Sculpted in 1845 by Horatio Greenbough, these have been on display in the library unharmed since…

Let us ponder Psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God. The purpose of "practicing the Presence" or "mindful meditation” is achieving a quiescent mental state. In my experience, rhythmic breath control for 20 minutes daily, AM and PM, provides good training for contemplation. The human respiratory system…

While waiting in line at a supermarket, I stole a peek inside a gossip magazine. A title, The Pressure of Being Perfect, and a picture of Princess Kate, all smiles, had caught my attention. I realize the world holds a materialistic concept of perfection, but here was an opportunity to see…

One early weekday morning six years ago, I was steering my enormous shopping cart in narrow Walmart aisles when I heard this announcement: “Welcome, lucky Walmart shoppers. We have an exciting giveaway this morning at the orange desk in the Housewares section. You must be there in the next two…

Casey, the homeless offspring of Gen. Robert E. Lee whom I wrote about last October, sat at a concrete picnic table in our small neighborhood park. The purple Jacarandas were in full bloom everywhere. As I approached during my daily walk, he closed the book Pillars of the Earth by Ken…

Joyce was seven when she experienced the Battle of Britain. After WWII ended, she won two swimming championships, then night-schooled for 140 words/min in shorthand. She quit working at sweatshop textile mills after she got a better paying job as a secretary in the Manchester police department. She had a…

During a Sunday morning walk in my lower middle-class neighborhood, I came across a City employee matching paint for a sidewalk wall which had been marked with graffiti. I asked him, not expecting an answer, “Why do kids do this?” “Maybe to feel important, to mark their territory like a…

During my city engineering career, I mentored a young fellow worker. When he was a child, Michael—whom I nicknamed Grasshopper (Kung Fu)—had a narrow escape with his parents from Vietnam just before the Communists took over. He later graduated from UCSD and started working as a civil engineer. Back in…

When I was working as a city engineer in my senior years, I found occasion to advise younger coworkers about some curious issues. When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, the Church was in the midst of electing a papal successor. Because I was known among my fellow workers…

Joyce hears the thunderous drone of German bombers flying overhead, so dense that they blot out the sun like a dark storm cloud. At seven years old, she’s experiencing The Battle of Britain. Citizens must stay at home with black-out conditions at night. While trying to fall asleep, she hears…

In the early 1980s, while walking through an enclosed shopping mall I decided to visit a gaming arcade. The place was buzzing with youth decked out in spiked purple hairdos, dragon tattoos, riveted leathers blazoned with gang symbols, and long drooping chains from hip pockets. The din of silicon pings…

About 20 years ago, the children of tenants renting my house pasted glow-in-the-dark stars on the master bedroom ceiling for their parents. When I moved in, I noticed the virtual galaxy the children created. Lying on my bed, I turned off the lamp and looked at the ceiling, surprised and…

In the mid-1960s, I could be seen on the Boston Common dressed in surplus military fatigues, complete with jacket and boots, sporting a chestnut brown beard. I wasn’t aware at the time that all us hippie rebels were enacting a spectacular resurgence of utopian socialism. Our rebel cause was to…

Recently I read this news clip: “The Andromeda galaxy ate our sister galaxy, and now it’s coming for us.” An astrophysicist used poetic license to describe that star-studded dinner event but it got me thinking. Maybe I need to expand my narrow definition of living things. My biology textbook made…