Learning to write in the tropics

 This may not be the easiest post to read for some people I know and may seem infinitely naive for those few I know that are actually knowledgeable and much more practiced on the subject. Edith Stein once gave a talk titled in German Muttererziehungskunst- roughly translatable as motherhood kraft. At the start of it she humourously commented on the irony of a single female academic, who had spent the better part of a decade living in a Dominican convent and college, and a year or two later would become a Carmelite, being asked for a talk about motherhood. She of course had ample knowledge about spiritual motherhood, something she also commented on in this talk. There is much that one can learn from observation and talking to others about a certain topic, it isn’t only experience, though obviously experience gives a knowledge about some things that renders a depth that is missing without that experience. In the case of marriage, it is a curious thing, but the church has a clear idea...

Things have been quite busy and I have generally been avoiding the news, so my own world consists of pleasanter things than the trials of Trump, the crazy Tory policies, Ukraine, Israel, and the latest saga of corruption cases in Spanish politics, which reflect more personal vendettas than actual financial swindles. For not watching the news I seem to be quite up to date, I live with a family member that does stay up to date and she likes to comment. My information is partial. One of the most interesting moments in recent times was when a week ago I remembered a conversation I had with a Dominican friar from the Western Province of the United States based somewhere in California. It’s was way back in the final Autumn before the pandemic and some details are now hazy. He is attached or at least teaching at an institution, or maybe it was a parish as well, named St Catherine of Siena. He told me a story of  a lay Dominican he had once known that had moved cities every couple of years...