“all in context” – Thomas Merton, on sitting for a portrait

November 24, 2018 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

The patient, human work of sitting and talking and being understood on paper. How different from the camera! I am incurably camera shy! The awful instantaneous snapshot of pose, of falsity, eternalized. Like the pessimistic, anguished view of judgement that so many mad Christians have – the cruel candid shot of you when you have just done something transient but hateful. As if this could be truth. Judgement really a patient, organic, long-suffering understanding of the man’s whole life, of everything in it, all in context. – Journal entry, November 17, 1961

Merton-sketch

Steam

November 24, 2018 / Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

Steam is reliable.

1521425_10200441924089831_577710319_n photo: Lewiston, Maine – November 2013

7 degrees

November 23, 2018November 23, 2018 / Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

11159888_10202925920188181_455938979470227061_o (1) photo: Falmouth, ME Town Landing, November 2014

November 23, 2018 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

In the world you will have troubles; but be brave, I have overcome the world. – John 16:33

Around Us – Marvin Bell

November 22, 2018November 24, 2018 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane’s wing, and a worn bed of 
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks—a zipper or a snap—
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.