Merry Christmas from the Isle of St. Patrick

I have to admit that I wasn't familiar with this particular song prior to moving here.  However, I've heard it more than a few times this Christmas season and find it beautifully haunting...  

... "Walking in the Air" from the 1982 Oscar nominated short "The Snowman"...

Enjoy! 

Thomas Merton

Known for his mystical theology, Thomas Merton wrote many books on the topic of contemplation, meditation, and prayer.  One of the foremost Catholic writers in the last half of the 20th Century, I urge anyone interested in the inner life to read any or all of the following books by Merton:

• "New Seeds of Contemplation"
• "Contemplative Prayer"
  
• "Thoughts in Solitude"
• "No Man is an Island"

More about Thomas Merton here.

The Seven Storey Mountain

I bought this book while living in Northern California many, many years ago and never got around to reading it.  It was one of the few books that I brought with me here to Ireland...

... and I finally got around to reading it.

Thomas Merton was a special and unique Trappist monk.  He possessed a combination of keen intellect with an impressive yearning to know God.  He was also a tireless writer full of curiosity, kindness, poetry, and spirituality.

His modern journey was one not too different from that of St. Augustine.  This book will touch the contemporary reader as much or more so today as when it was first published in 1948.

A bit of a vagabond growing up (having lived in France, England, and America by the time he was a teen), he did not officially turn to Catholicism until his early 20's.  And once he did he explored his religion in great depth and shared his experience in this wonderful autobiography written in his early 30's.

My favorite sport...

... is college football.

And this is the home stadium of "my" team.

There's something magical and very special that happens when we score our first points in a game.  Thousands of balloons are released by the fans, one by one, that float gently up into the sky, carried away in the prevailing breeze to the four corners.  

It's truly a sight to behold.  I don't know of another tradition quite like it in all of college sport. 

Gratitude.  Praise.  Celebration.