Learning to write in the tropics

Back in September, during a somewhat inauspicious visit to the Edith Stein Archive in Cologne, I recorded a podcast with my good friend br. Thomas Mannion, Dominican Friar and University Chaplain in Edinburgh. It was the second we had done and since then we have recorded a third. As with so many of our encounters, these occasions are filled with joy and some pretty deep conversations intermingled with laughter. During the second recording, I briefly mentioned a theory I had about how unity in the Dominican Family was palpable in some concrete things, like the fact that we all follow the same rite of profession, well sort of- for starters as a Lay Dominican you promise to live a life according to the charism of St Dominic rather than take vows. For this reason, this was one of the topics we both agreed needed further thinking and investigating, some things such as obedience and poverty were promises that Lay Dominicans, many of whom are married, would not live in the same way nor was it...

After lunch today I meandered, after another frustrated attempt a solving a bureaucratic conundrum, into what I thought was the fifth floor of the library I am currently working in only to find all of my things missing. Being towards the end of the lunch hour, this level of the library was almost completely empty except for the most dogged of researchers, most likely PhD students. I began to panic, checked another aisle, then went back to the one I was sure I had sat in and check the drawers, as if all of the things could possibly fit into such a small space. Then I went to the storage room in the back. Nothing, I began to wonder what librarian to ask for help and if they were going to chastise me for leaving my things like that for over an hour. Since it’s a fairly closed off area mainly accesible by researchers only, I had done it, like everyone else, multiple times in the past, but you never know the temperament of the rotating librarians and their penchant for enforcing the rules w...