Politics and religion tend to be the great dividers in our culture and country these days. Our e pluribus unum seems to be out of wack, and “under God” has more meanings than one can imagine. Part of the issue is semantics. Take the phrase “politically correct”. Of course, the term itself seems like an oxymoron in an era in which the political machinery is driven by negative motives that pollute the air with cynicism. The term is inaccurate for the purpose that it engenders. Let me explain. To be politically correct in one’s parlance, you must be sensitive to all […]
Here’s Looking at You, Our Lady!
On the surface of things, she appeared to be her old self. An ancient of days who once sat crowned in glory. Where, for over eight centuries, generations of knees had bent in prayers of supplication. Rosaries said, and the relic Crown of Thorns treasured and venerated. But just around the corner of her timeless face, you could see the outlines of the tragic consequences of a consuming Holy Week fire. For the sake of safety, approaches to the sacred ground surrounding Notre Dame were blocked by metal fences and […]
She Bothered
Does it ever bother you that some of our words can take on different meanings under different circumstances? Take the words like “bother” and “trouble”. Within a simple change of nuance, their meanings can be suddenly opposite. At a dinner party recently one of the guests looked at the center piece of fresh flowers and exclaimed: “You bothered!” She was expressing her delight in how the host had bothered so much to take care of so many details in such an elegant manner. Which translated into an extraordinary compliment and a splendid expression of gratitude that someone would go to […]
Discovering What’s Here
Revisionist historians have made their point: Columbus did not “discover” America in 1492. You can’t discover what has already been there for centuries even though it might be twenty thousand leagues under the sea. When boat builders figured out that sailing crafts could go a long way, and cartographers figured out that there were no dragons on the earth’s edge, Christopher convinced Isabel that he could head west in order to go east. When his armada of three vessels pulled up on foreign shores of a new world, the native people on the beach discovered Europeans for the first […]