Author Archives: popeyephil

Sacred Silence Like a treasured diamond or gold ring, silence has been discarded and lost. Sound surrounds. Sound invades. Sound blinds. Sound silences. This sound has become noise. Another silence embraces, envelopes, and invigorates. Thus, silence needs to be understood in a larger way than simply a lack of audible noise. I love to write […]

Crowded garages with no place to park the vehicles dot many a street these days. The growing proliferation of storage business broadcasts that we have too much. I have a nickname, “gadget guy,” because I accumulate gadgets; too many, as I am reminded! On a given day, while I may have 30 or so emails […]

We are driving home. We are lost in the dark. We are lost without signs. We are far from home. We are both with and without! Imagine driving down a avenue at night, with the street lights out, without street signs,, with no headlights, without GPS, and with pervading clouds without stars to be seen! […]

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said” “Stuff your eyes with wonder.” With what do “stuff my eyes”  — at what do I look most, if not, all the time? TV, my iPad, my iPhone, the faces of the people I love? What goes into my eyes, my brain leaves an imprint on me and […]

Fire The book takes its title, Fahrenheit 451, from the temperature at which paper catches fire, a turning point between existing and ceasing to exist.  Montag is also at a turning point. Will he change his life or will he burn under his society’s brutal constrictions? Fire is a dual element. A symbol of creation as well […]

The angry person — we have all known one or many. Sometimes we have been that angry person. The sage who wrote in the book of Proverbs (29:8) penned the following: “People who make fun of wisdom cause trouble in a city, but wise people calm anger down.” While the stream or torrent of anger […]

Others First This past weekend the death of one student at a local high school affected the lives of many others. One student said in class “I wish I had picked something up.” It is that vein and spirit that Paul wrote to his community in Philippi centuries ago “Each of you should look not […]

When we hear the phrase “first responders,” of whom do we first think? Police, paramedics, firefighters, to be sure, come to mind. However, our children are the first responders to events in their life! And who are the first teachers in their life — their parents? In the prayer over the parents in the Roman […]

In The Blink Of An Eye A quick action, an instant, a heartbeat — and things change! The unexpected action of ours or others changes life and leaves an imprint, and possibly a scar, on us and others. Jim Denison today wrote in on his website Denisonforum.org the following: “Three months after 9/11, Kobe Bryant […]

Prudence At the opening of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, Pope Francis urged the bishops to be prudent. Some people might have welcomed that word as a reprieve from urgent action about the problems of our day, as a sign that nobody should expect to be shaken up by what the bishops would […]