Last week, Welk Resorts “gifted” us with two free nights—IF we submitted to a one-hour sales presentation. Sheila’s highlight: hitting the shops along El Paseo in Palm Desert on our last day. Yeah, she succumbed to temptation. My highlight: spending those two hours ambling from art gallery to gallery. In the Elena Bulatova Fine Art Gallery, I turned a corner and saw a unique pic of Marilyn Monroe—a crush from my junior high days. I stepped to the center of the painting, and it became…
Read More
image from Nora Carol
Fake News
This post may be my most politically relevant and unyieldingly nonpartisan. A few weeks back a commentator, who’s been around since Watergate, expressed that he is more concerned about the future of our country now than at any time in his life. Why? We can’t agree on truth. We don’t seek truth. Partisans, on both sides, decry as “Fake News” anything that doesn’t match what they already want to believe. We accept, as gospel, rumors with no evidence. The divide between left and right grows. And I’m not sure electing more “people with our values” will help…
Read More
Church of the Nativity by UNESCO
A Radical Entry--Jesus: a Real Person
Let’s do our own brief Advent, as we approach the last four days leading up to celebrating the birth of Jesus. Each day, a brief new post will be added to the list for you to meditate and ponder on. We’ll use a favored carol, “What Child is This?” to examine the radical entry of God into the human experience: who is he, and what does that mean for us? Was he a real person?
Read More
Rock Stack by Juan Cisneros
When Rocks Talk
Signs of Christmas abound. “Silent Night” to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Manger scenes to those of Santa at the North Pole with his elves. But the pic above, which I put up earlier last week on its own, takes me to a deeper level on getting into the “Christmas spirit,” a level beyond our typical cultural Christmas. And may I suggest that the spiritual signs dominate the cultural ones. The pic of stacked rocks prompted ...
Read More