Today we take a brief break from rovering in Turkey, as I want to share with you a link to my new monthly column for the Episcopal News Service (a gig that came about through this blog, I might add). This month’s column is about standing on a street corner with Thomas Merton in Louisville, Kentucky. Faithful readers of the Holy Rover will recognize some of its musings, but I hope it has a fresh idea or two in it as well. ... Read more
If you were a sailor approaching Istanbul by boat, you would recognize this vista from a long distance away, for it is one of the most easily identifiable skylines in the world. It shows the historic heart of Istanbul, Seraglio Point, which is unmistakable because of the silhouettes of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, both flanked by minarets. At the very end of the peninsula lies the Topkapi Palace, home to the Turkish sultan during the Ottoman Empire. This picture... Read more
One of my favorite memories of Istanbul happened during our first morning as my friend Marian and I walked with our guide through the historic center of the city. As we strolled, he read the buildings and structures that we passed as if they were a history book, pointing out their Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and modern elements. Here were the remains of a Roman hippodrome, there an obelisk from Luxor, there an ornately decorated Ottoman palace standing next to... Read more
It’s January, it’s cold, and there are still several more months left in winter. And so for the next days I invite you to take a journey with me. To Turkey, where I was fortunate to spend nine days earlier this month. My trip began with an invitation from my friend Marian, whose name you might recognize from her many enthusiastic comments on this blog. “Come with me to Istanbul,” she said. And honestly, how could a Holy Rover refuse... Read more
I know what you’re probably thinking: how could the U.S. get its first official Marian apparition site and the Holy Rover not be on the scene with the breaking news? Later, my friends, later. I’ve got Champion, Wisconsin, on my list of must-see destinations, but in the meantime, I’m back blogging to tell you about the most lovely book I’ve been reading: Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. Subtitled “A Geography of Faith,” the... Read more
As the slow turn of the year’s wheel takes us into Advent, that time of reflection and introspection, the Holy Rover is going to be shifting gears. For more than a year I’ve been posting items six-days-a-week, but the time has come for a break. The Holy Rover isn’t retiring completely, but for the foreseeable future I will be posting items only occasionally as the spirit moves me. I still hope to tell you about books that interest me, show... Read more
And so we come to the end of our journey with Thomas Merton. If you’re interested in taking a trip to see the Abbey of Gethsemani and the Thomas Merton Center in Louisville, go to A Tour With Thomas Merton, where you’ll find a series of interconnected pages that give practical details of a pilgrimage to Kentucky. But before we leave Merton behind, let me tell you a little bit about his final resting place. Outside the main church at... Read more
“For me to write is love; it is to inquire and to praise, or to confess or to appeal,” wrote Merton in an unpublished journal. “Not to assure myself that I am (“I write, therefore I am”), but simply to pay my debt to life, to the world, to other men. To speak with an open heart and say what seems to me to have meaning.” If you’re interested in continuing your journey with Thomas Merton, here are a few... Read more
So from the perspective of these nearly two weeks of reflections on Merton, what is the meaning of that mystical experience we began with, the one that happened at a busy intersection in Louisville? Merton described it this way in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I... Read more
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The Holy Art of Being Lost
I know what you’re probably thinking: how could the U.S. get its first official Marian apparition site and the Holy Rover not be on the scene with the breaking news? Later, my friends, later. I’ve got Champion, Wisconsin, on my list of must-see destinations, but in the meantime, I’m back blogging to tell you about the most lovely book I’ve been reading: Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. Subtitled “A Geography of Faith,” the... Read more