Learning to write in the tropics

While the focus is on academic production some digression is inevitable..... I recently recorded another podcast, this time with a good friend who happens to be a Dominican friar. We talked Dominican life, discernment, and being a lay Dominican. If interested you can listen to it on the  Light from light  podcast. Now most people hear Dominican and think the white habit (female or male version) but there a quite a few lay men and women who are also Dominicans. The most famous of course is St Catherine of Sienna but most lay Dominicans work a regular 9 to 5, are married and have children. In some cases they win Nobel prizes of literature, as Sigrid Undset did back in the day. You never know where the combination of study and prayer lived in community (slightly different for the laity) will take you. As I have led a fairly nomadic life, with the exception of covid-tide that had me in one place for the first time in like 4 years, I have begun to wonder how positive this nomadic l...

 Against all odds and without being fully or even partially vaccinated I am in an airport again, for the first time since March 2020, when I naively came to Honduras for a short visit and ended up staying, locked behind closed borders. It is scary to be here, somehow the mask doesn’t feel like sufficient protection and I wish to be back in the safety of my home. At the same time, it feels like it is time to go, time for another adventure, even if this time rather than exploring a new place I am returning to somewhere familiar.   I sit after the first short leg of my journey in an airport that last November was under water after two tropical stores came through in the span of two weeks. There are still areas hidden under canvas being rebuilt or refurbed after the water went down.There are still some hours before my next flight. People walk about seemingly unafraid of the ‘rona’ not keeping any of the tooted 2 Mts of distance while I sat here eating my sandwich with some trepida...