Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs > Recent Status Updates

A civilization of love is not sentimentality, it is justice and truth. A civilization of love that did not demand justice for people would not be true civilization - it would not define authentic relations between people.
Saint Oscar Romero, April 12, 1979

Well, guys, I FINALLY picked this up on Audible - so, later today in a quiet moment, I’ll don my headphones, fasten my seatbelt, and prepare for a rough ride into the wide blue Yonder!

Buechner tells us how the transcendent brokenness of his own life’s story enabled him to live a giving life of his own, in spite of living, throughout it all, utterly on the edge with the demons of self-doubt.

For all of you who may catch the CBC Canada Radio airwaves in the Northern States, or for those of you around the world who may catch them on the web or on shortwave, the beloved name of the great lamented Stuart McLean will not fall on unfamiliar ears. For me, he was the best Canadian cut up since Leacock! My sis knows that well and so sent me this book for Christmas. May the Angel of Christmas be kind to her!

Good Christmas Eve fun. Two broken singles meet and gradually connect over the holidays at a Christian ranch. They’ve both been badly hurt and their secrets wedge them apart until the catalystic twin girls of the stonewalled widower joyfully melt their ice jam with their liveliness and laughter.

There were happy days in the fen country as well as dour ones, glorious hot summer days when the harvest fields were gold as far as the blue horizon of the sea, spring days when parties of riders cantered down the centuries-old grass roads between rows of flowering crab apple trees, winter days when everyone went skating on the flooded fields...

Wonderful book about two elderly and well-respected but deeply-scarred 19th century Londoners who find healing and fulfillment in their newfound affinities and burgeoning friendship.

This Gentle Winsome Joy of a Book is on sale TODAY at Amazon for $1.99!!!

When I was twelve, me and Mrs Bertinetti would walk the dark of Princeton to Wilson Avenue, she to St Francis Church and me to the convent where I served Mass at 6:30 and with eyes in the back of my head, saw Srs Jean and Damascene, Limbania Elise & Josephine starched upright in prayer. The sun’s first rays fired the altar cloths, white as the angel’s wings of the Holy Card tucked like a secret in my Missal.

Church that eats a bread white and unleavened
And no other eats Christ the Lord without
The crust hard, its mold scraped off discarded,
A Christ who does not exist for he is
One bread one body, whole only when poor
Ones are one and one is many who need
Someone to bring them back to the giver
Of bread to make them new seeds that die...

HOW INCREDIBLY WELL HE WRITES!

What a Beautiful book - and, honestly, it’s utterly Transformative for me!

A nice big book I inherited from my grandmother - she bought it in 1955 through Book-of-the-Month Club when she was living in Tooele, Utah.

It was the longest consecutive time I’d spent with my mother since I entered the Franciscan Order. On pilgrimage she talked more freely, shared, and opened up in ways that surprised me. And she was a very good reader of the liturgical texts at Mass and of paraliturgical rituals.
This, to me, new dimension of my mother delighted me... I usually only thought of how good she was and how hard she worked, morning, night

Bodo is also a deeply respected poet:
CROWN OF THORNS
Good Friday, transplanting
Crown of Thorns shrubs
I remember how your
Flower beds ordered
The college courtyard...
You died outdoors, running
Through a dark wood wild.
(His mentor fell apart after Vatican II!)

An extremely moving portrait of a Franciscan priest who grew up in an impoverished family of Italian immigrants and learned his faith through the legends of the saints - and who later woke up to his role of priest through discovering the uncluttered compassion of his calling. A basic, no-frills, self-revelatory tale with an blunt lack of imagination about finding the common-sense brokenness of love. The Real thing.

This wonderfully thick and amenably (for me) large-print book arrived in the mail today from the great Franciscan bookstore in Ashland, Ohio. Father Bodo really speaks to me, especially as here, where he details his long and profound charitable and contemplative life. Looking forward to this book!

So what’d I do - since perusing this SUPER Kid’s’ book? Bought a NUMBER of copies for the Awesome Friendly Kids I know: Young and, well, Young at Heart like me! SNAP IT UP!

My friend Stjepan sent me his first book of poems to comfort me in a period of mourning. I was immediately transported back to my friend Nicole’s funeral yesterday - in a large room of us elderly neighbours...
I’ve arrived here, but where am I?…
In essence nothing has changed.
Faraway people, where are you now?
Can you still hear my words?
For when darkness swallows the past,
Only Winter remains in your heart.

Well, after my last update, I made my pick of most culpable candidate for the guilty murderer. When you read this, you’ll see red herrings fly fast and loose! Anyway, we’ll see...

Another mauled body is discovered. All signs point to another grizzly attack. Miss Pink is not so sure...

The book is great! And Miss Pink is such a super sleuth...

THIS, my friends, is the Phenomenally Evocative and Entrancing short prose poem - READ BY THE MONUMENTAL POET DYLAN THOMAS HIMSELF - in 1952. And you can pick up THIS Christmas Treat on Audible for the mere Pittance of $13.00 & change! GO FOR IT! It’ll TURN YOUR CHRISTMAS INTO A TIME OF PURE JOY...

A searingly heart-tugging Book!

DNF. Just too much for my old, soft and usually receptive brain.

An incredibly RIVETING read - and the ebook’s so INEXPENSIVE. This is FIVE STAR material!