I have to be honest and say that last Friday was probably not the best day for me.  I won't go into detail, but emotions erupted early Friday morning between me and a family member.  I literally cried for 3 hours and spent the rest of the day and the middle of the night trying ...

Romans 13: The night is advanced, the day is at hand. “My child, this is indeed a dark age. But my children must always look towards the coming dawn. Darkness will end; light will triumph. And what a dawning it will be! No counterfeit, but a true illumination leading to an era of peace. Rememb...

And I have to say I am not really surprised.  I mean it totally sucked that Jason broke up with her on national television.....but I mean are we really surprised? Basically, it did exactly what ABC wanted...it got everyone talking.  Moving on now. At Illuminate we had 3 baptisms.  ...

Once in a while, the Goddess of Love gives us great gifts. One example is the return of the Goddess of flowers in springtime. But a better example is a moment of "illumination." Enlightenment usually occurs gradually, by the accumulation of moments of illumination. [In Zen, these are called ken-sho,...

2 Timothy 3:8-9…They also oppose the truth–people of depraved mind, unqualified in the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be plain to all. “My beloved, the lies you see all around you and hear about, the blasphemies poured out of the hearts o...

The manuscripts of David Kaufmann, Jewish scholar extraordinaire. Wonderful illuminations, inventive typography and even a little bit of naughtiness....

Yesterday, I got a new book that has me absolutely mesmerized. It's called "The Bible Illuminated: New Testament." It is the entire New Testament in the form of a classy, glossy, picture-filled magazine. It came about as a result of a dinner conversation between two men in Stockholm, Sweden about wh...

From Berwyn to Lithuania. [Disclosure: The author of this novel is a good friend of mine, but he neither solicited this review nor has he seen it before its posting.] The surname “Nowak,” like its Balto-Slavic variants throughout Eastern Europe (“Ð�овотный,” “Nowicki...

If you enjoy illuminated manuscripts, check out Christmas: Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts. At the Getty Museum site, there's Making of a Medieval Book. From a bishop's note to monk copyists at Durham Cathedral (reference): "You write with the pen of memory on the parchment of pure conscience, scra...

Over the last few months, I’ve been spending the vast majority of my train trips reading books, and as a result I’ve eaten through a great deal of literature. Some non-fiction, some fiction, some I’d recommend, others not so much.  So, in the interests of not letting that experien...