Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs > Recent Status Updates

Only by being humbly Human can we find ourselves once again EMBEDDED within this vast world - and not Over and Against it - and flowing in a vast river in which we learn total responsibility for others’s welfare, like Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima, we find that magical Door in the Wall and the Paradise we’ve lost!

It is not the facts or accomplishments of our life that gives it meaning. It is our personal STORIES that do that!

A wonderfully positive-minded victim of rickets appears to have pre-eclampsic symptoms. For a childless senior citizen like me, this intensely human memoir is a real eye-opener!

Now Kreeft is letting us all in on the Plot of this thing we call life. We have to relax in solitude to pick out the highlights - or threads - of our life’s tapestry and see obliquely how those threads have a direct effect on the total fabric of our lives, and play with (or against) other threads to create the overview: with heuristic Thinking!

A gripping account of early midwifery work in the London slums, filled with cheerful warmth, polite distaste of living conditions and touches of riotous comedy along with touching acts of virtue among the nurses and sisters. Truly remarkable!

Now I’m into the good part: Kreeft’s own life-affirming stories - snapshots of the warm humanity we’re all in danger of losing - as opposed to the ineluctable death drift of modernism!

Combining the mystical with scholastically-informed logic, Kreeft takes us on a journey toward release from the bondage of the ego.

Another utterly charming and shortish Christmas tale. This one’s set in the old-fashioned hamlet of Mitford - Karon’s go-to venue for her heartwarming stories of a meek-mannered Episcopalian minister named Father Tim - with a group of old country folks that Time has now relegated to history!

Highly recommended to those who grew up in the fifties and sixties and can still remember the backward type of folk who still dominated the countryside - far from the constricting cities - and if you do, this inexpensive Christmas tale could be right for you!

This is a mindbender of a book, and I got so immersed in it I stayed up till the wee hours this morning! And you know what? Kreeft is opening up Doors in my Soul in consequence.

It’s Christmas Day, and the villagers are busy publicly faking winter-related mishaps in an effort to avoid going to old Jim the Pariah’s Christmas Dinner. It’s amazing to see to what lengths the town’s negative gossip has driven these folks to act, in order to have excuses for their little dislikes!

Old Jim, the County misanthrope, has issued his Yuletide Dinner invites to all the village folks who normally wouldn’t give him the time of day! A wonderful look back at crusty village life in small town Ontario in the days before the Internet changed everything.

In 2001, he had been asked if the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme would be more popular if it wasn’t named after him. ‘Whatever you call it, some people would not be worried (about the connection) with a cantankerous old sod!’

Really looking forward to this Blockbuster of the Spirit. This is the December selection of our Catholic Book Club (never too late to consider joining)!

A Rollicking Fun Yarn! When I put this one aside two years ago - just sat on it - primarily due to the wild antics of Flora’s hitherto unknown brother (was it pride? Now that’s a screaming malapropism!) I never thought I’d return to it. But I did, and I’m GLAD! It’s a Real Lark.

Couldn’t resist the pop-up ad: I LOVE Veronica Henry, and this one’s FREE on Kindle! This one should be Short, sweet - Sassily modern and a bit sentimental, as always. For those of us who believe in the marriage of Good Will and True Love!

I’ve just encountered the new Midwife, Chummy. I’m certainly no debutante, but it’s for sure I always try to be upbeat, cheery and positive - and like her, I always end up with scrambled egg all over my face! I LOVE this audiobook. Beautifully, warmly human!

Rereading this classic by Dante for the first time in 53 years - but THIS time in the wonderful 19th century English version of the famed Pre-Raphaelite, Dante Gabriel Rossetti! It’s an epochal conversion story which takes place through the medium of Young Love. For Beatrice lifts Dante up, so he can climb on mystical mountains!

My great argument with Derrida - and indeed, ALL postmodernist thinking, is that it sees us all of as pure thinking beings as having no freedom, and hence no hope. The self is levelled in upon its own nothingness. I see religion, however, as a folding in upon ouselves in our prayerful humility as pure subjects - and upon the Lord within our hearts - as Joyful, and hence Faithfui, thinking subjects!

‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold:
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’
A mother. Her kids - In Crazy, Modern Russia... And Mere ANARCHY Reigns Throughout!

Brian Brett is ME, without my meds! Wow, whatta book.

The reviews on Amazon are outstandingly good!

Norton’s prose translation of the most intellectually complex of the three volumes of the Commedia is the most lucid and readable of any that I have read. While others sacrifice clarity for the sake of poetry, Charles Eliot Norton gives us a sweeping argument we can understand - inexpensively!

Love this disarmingly touching novel...

The Sisters have a new Abbess: an election was duly held, and it was not without some very obvious emotion. The Novices, who are not entitled to vote, look on: and their jejune excitement - enthusiasm and dislike - is wonderfully portrayed by Ms Godden!

The void yawns: two very senior positions are vacant (including that of the sisters’ Abbess) and disarray is creeping through Brede, until an election may be called. In what is normally a revered House of Prayer, instability threatens.

I’m now reliving the life story of my friend Elizabeth, GR Author of From Heroin to Christ - more riveting now than ever before. Hers was a Real and Raw Redemption!

A riveting and deeply harrowing collection of memories of ordinary people who have woken up to life broken and scarred, and their brave determination to succeed in spite of all the odds! This was a warm recommendation to me from author Elizabeth Moldovan.

“Sache, par un subtil mensonge, garder mon aile dans ta main!” ...and just like Mallarme’s devoted wife, the nuns of Brede hold their aspiring young postulants’ too-enthusiastic wings in their no-nonsense and gently prevaricating hands - to obviate their premature disillusionment with monastic life!

Well, the Green Huntsman himself - which everyone in the old days would recognize as wily Mephistopheles (the devil himself!) - has given the heavily-laden and stressed-out villagers an Offer They Can’t (and won’t) Refuse!