Once: Falling Slowly

I must find time to write a bit about the movie. But until then, this is the song that has been playing in my head all day:

Falling Slowly from mohinder suresh on Vimeo.

I like rainy nights

Especially when I'm inside a bus and it's raining gently outside. Things look tranquil and clean. And the warm golden of the street lamps reflecting off the wet roads somehow makes me feel happy and peaceful. Perhaps it reminds me of Christmas somehow. Maybe Christmas lights? 

Nearer my God to Thee

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

May it be so!

Leviathan!

What a sight! I'm amazed at the prey and the predators both.





These huge schools of fish remind me of another wondrous phenomenon:





Creation is just amazing.

Old school!

Haha. What a scrawn kid Bill Gates used to be.

Reverence

Photo credit; Piotrek Photos, Via Crescat.

 Look at the deep devotion and reverence on the pope's face. Wow. 

So true...

Snigger

Before Hitler

Today, the Führer is universally recognized as the embodiment of evil and the most convenient example of a truly terrible human being. Before World War II, who was the rhetorical worst person in history?

The Pharoah. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, many Americans and Europeans had a firmer grasp of the bible than of the history of genocidal dictators. Orators in search of a universal symbol for evil typically turned to figures like Judas Iscariot, Pontius Pilate, or, most frequently, the Pharaoh of Exodus, who chose to endure 10 plagues rather than let the Hebrew people go. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote: “No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775 [the date of the Lexington massacre], but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever.” In the run-up to the Civil War, abolitionists regularly referred to slaveholders as modern-day Pharaohs. Even after VE Day, Pharaoh continued to pop up in the speeches of social reformers like Martin Luther King Jr.

Read the rest here. It's a short but interesting article.

Sure on this Shining Night

Via Brigitta.

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand'ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

- James Agee

Help us, O Loving Mother

I love this statue of Mother Mary at our parish church in Sri Lanka. I'd like to pray in front of it now.

She's so beautiful. And gentle.

I haven't spent a lot of time in Sri Lanka, but when I was there for 8 months as a young boy with my mother and sister, we used to pray in front of it after every Mass we attended. And when I was there for an year in 2004-2005, I did the same.

On the whole, I love the churches in Sri Lanka - they are always peaceful and dignified.

Abandonment

My God! may I hate sin, and unite myself to You, taking the Holy Cross into my arms, so that I, in my turn, may fulfil your most lovable Will.... stripped of every earthly attachment, with no other goal but your glory.... generously, not keeping anything back, offering myself with you in a perfect holocaust.

- St Josemaria Escriva, The Way of the Cross: Ninth Station: Jesus Falls the Third Time

Peter Schipperheyn, 1955, Jesus carries the Cross

Always And Forever

Eponyms

Wanna Live Forever? Become A Noun from NPR on Vimeo.