God, an elderly Jesuit once suggested to me, is something like an old carpenter in a small village in Vermont. If you ask the townspeople where to turn to for carpentry work or repairs, they will say, “There’s only one person to call. He does excellent work. He’s careful, he’s precise, he’s conscientious, he’s creative,…
Complex & Simple, Nature, Places, Posts
Nature’s Savage Beauty – the coldest day in Pittsburgh
This picture was taken through the windows of the staff lounge at the hospital where I worked in the burns intensive care unit in December 1993. The beauty of winter, seen through the placid landscape of white roofs and steamy chimneys, is savaged by Man’s need to keep warm and the terrible unexpected fires that sweep through homes with unattended kerosene…
Places, Posts
The Stairs Series
Experience Music Project Museum, Seattle (2015)
Books, Complex & Simple, Persons, Posts
The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
The term ‘the road less travelled’ has its origins in the poem The Road Not Taken,written by the august American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could…
Complex & Simple, Nature, Persons, Posts
The Clearing – Tomas Tranströmer
“Deep in the forest there’s an unexpected clearing that can be reached only by someone who has lost his way.” (Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015); Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, 2011)
Nature, Places, Posts
Lichens at MacRitchie
Nature is celebrated as much by its companions as it is by the featured. In these series of sunlit moments, at the boardwalks of MacRitchie reservoir in central Singapore, the beauty of the simple lichen is revealed.
Nature, Places, Posts
The Gathering Storm
Can you not feel the electricity in the air, as we ride into the gathering storm, and see the haunting beauty of the sharp relief, like a knife’s edge set against a soft grey flannel? (January 2015, the East Coast Parkway, Singapore).
Complex & Simple, Persons, Posts
Silence
Pope Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, was eloquent on the value of silence: “In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express…
Complex & Simple, Persons, Posts
Reflections on the Missal
Ministering to the Migrant Workers – Members of the St Vincent De Paul Society Conferences, Singapore James 2:14-18 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food…
Nature, Places, Posts
Bauhinia Rhapsody IV
(Week 18) The first flowers. And more. The plant looks very jaded, and a little worn around the edges. Like a weary soul whose time has come to journey beyond adolescence. (Week 6) The mysterious miracle of growth and fruitfulness Another two weeks has passed. Now, there are these giant steps towards starting up the…