Well, this could be a bit of a time suck… 😬
I was first introduced to John O’Donohue years ago by my friend David, via this amazing interview by Krista Tippett for On Being. I finally picked up the book that made him such a beloved voice for so many a couple of weeks ago and I’m really enjoying it at the moment. 📚#worldbookday
Had the opportunity to visit the exhibition of Nick Cave’s The Devil — A Life at the Xavier Hufkens Gallery (St-Georges) in Brussels just over a week ago. I found it beautiful, and surprisingly moving. - 🎨
Eco again (File under “Things that fuel this researcher’s neuroses”): “An idea contained almost by mistake on a page of an otherwise useless (and widely ignored) book may prove decisive for your research. You must discover this page on your own, with your own intuition and a little luck, and without anybody serving it to you on a silver platter.”
Umberto Eco on asking librarians for aid as you research your thesis: ”You must overcome any shyness and have a conversation with the librarian, because he can offer you reliable advice that will save you much time. You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation. A person who asks for help makes the librarian happy.”
“Amalia, I find that my religiousness is a slowly emergent state, one that is entirely drawn to the Anglican church of my childhood, and that the haunted presence of Christ is the essential and defining quality of that state of being. Christianity, for me, is bound up in the liturgy and the ritual and the poetry that swirls around the restless, tortured figure of Jesus, as presented within the sacred domain of the church itself. My religiousness is softly spoken, both sorrowful and joyful, broadening and deepening, imagined and true. It is worship and prayer. It is resilient yet doubting, and forever wrestles with the forces of rationality, armed with little other than the merest hunch or whispered intuition. The defining characteristic of my belief, and which I consider to be a fundamental imperative in my life, is uncertainty. This questioning impulse is the essence of freedom and the creative catalyst that keeps the wheels rotating irrevocably toward God.” - N.C.
Freshly roasted pumpkin seeds are one of the best things fall has to offer. 🍽
Finished reading: Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin 📚
“But is not Christ a general direction? asked the elder. What other kind of direction do you seek? And how do you even understand the journey anyway? As the vast expanses you left behind? … Do not become like your beloved Alexander who had a journey but had no goal. And do not be enamored of excessive horizontal motion.”