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On my walk I noticed a battery-operated cradle on the sidewalk, meant for the trash. I've been thinking about it for days. It must have been marketed for busy parents who have other things to do than rock their babies. For some reason this idea of a remote-control cradle has been haunting me. What have we lost, what have we gained? Perhaps kitchen faucets felt like a betrayal to harvesting water from a well, and driving a car left the horse and buggy behind. But I think we lose contact with important human connections by farming out certain tasks, like having someone else raise your child or walk or train your dog. Isn't part of the task of parenting about bonding, building a relationship? Even cell phones are replacing opportunities for discussion or bonding, as when driving together in the car. I often see parents on their cell phones scrolling while their child is right in front of them learning to swim. They are missing out! These moments are lost. Are people so afraid of being bored? Or are they too afraid of actually connecting?
Sunday, April 05, 2026
Canned Tunafish with a Twist
Today we made tuna sandwiches. We mixed up two cans of tuna with homemade cilantro dressing (olive oil, cilantro, wine-vinegar, fresh garlic and salt buzzed in blender) in place of mayo. We also added chopped pickles and chopped raw onion (red or white), a splash of red wine vinegar, sweetened dried cranberries and salt. We ate this on homemade sourdough multigrain toast and a few raw carrots on the side for snacking and their beautiful color.
It was delicious!
Saturday, April 04, 2026
“It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for
ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all
to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore
ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an
apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually
discover that no one expects us to be 'as gods'. We will see that we are
human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies,
and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all
our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us.
We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and
complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in
another.”
―
No Man Is an Island
―
“Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they
are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers,
and rewarded according to their capacity.”
―
The Seven Storey Mountain
“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that
our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of
other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody
else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at
last become real!”
―
The Seven Storey Mountain
― The Sign of Jonas
“If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the
fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no
result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As
you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on
the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work
itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and
more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal
relationship that saves everything.”
― The Seven Storey Mountain