What are you doing with your time?

 

What are you doing with your time?

I think about this from a daily notion. How we have a limited number of hours each day and how our decisions, which may be conscious or unconscious (like a routine), shapes this. If I constantly feel I have so little time in my day and it's not a lack of leading a simple life, what is it? It's allowing distractions to enter in, throwing off the time here and there adding up to loss of hours.

Søren Kierkegaard wrote that "the person who employs himself solely with the eternal, uninterruptedly, at every moment, if that were possible: he is not busy...To be busy is to be divided and distracted." (Works of Love)

Kierkegaard describes how one who is divided is not whole. Obvious, right? We are too busy to notice it most of the time. Especially now, as our culture is made up of distractions, we allow ourselves in the name of 'self-care' to be taken to the extreme, taking us away into whatever worldly distraction it is with aim at addicting you. It comes in endless forms.

But Kierkegaard ponders the way of love, true Christian love in the charity, agape, self-less, disinterested way, and concludes that when we are in full Christian love, we are whole and even though we are doing activities, it's not departed from its true meaning, it is the fulfillment of it. And it's not self-satisfied or making promises instead of taking action.

I ponder within myself when I feel overwhelmed and busy - what am I being distracted with? Social media is usually a contender, but it's not always the top distractor for me so I have to look deeper. It can be anything that takes your focus off the eternal. Meaning, it takes departure to selfish satisfaction and inward dwelling with focus on the selfish wants and desires to their full extent. The desires may not be in themselves bad things, but if it's measured out in doses that distract from the meaning of it from the eternal perspective, it is a distraction and you are divided.

Encouragement for keeping focus on love in the agape sense toward others and wholeness in the sense of our eternal focus - 

Cultivate and study the good, the true, and the beautiful

If we truly focused on the three transcendentals, it would lead us to wholeness because these things all point us to the eternal. They are signposts that direct us to God. The point is to allow these things to direct us to God.

How to cultivate the good, the true, and the beautiful -

Ask yourself with everything you consume - books, media, music, movies, TV, games, activities - are these things I focus my time on pursuing the good, the true, or the beautiful? Do they lead you to ponder the eternal? Or do they encourage you to think more selfishly? Does it produce good to partake in it? Does it promote beauty from an eternal (not worldly) perspective? Does it speak some objective truth to you?

The activities that you can answer "yes" to that they are aiming at the good, the true, and the beautiful with that eternal view. These are the things worth pursuing. Whatever your interests, look for the eternal perspective and follow it. When you spend your time here you are less distracted by all the things the world wants you to pay attention to, and you are not divided because of these other things that pull you away from such focus.

25º

 

25º

Northwind air has come
Cruel in its icy chill
Bringing sharpness into my home
Abiding in its own weather-will.

The air too cold for skin
Brings winter in its true form
Artic weather more akin
To peaks of mountains forlorn.

We are on the flat sea sands
But winds travel from far
At the back of the north wind stands
Like a ray of light from a star.

Freshly Printed - Oxford Literarium

 

Look how beautiful this cover is! I can't get over how gorgeous the Radcliffe Camera is, which is why I decided to place it front and center on the cover of my new book - Oxford Literarium: Oxford Writers in Time and Place. Available now on Amazon.

The Radcliffe Camera is part of the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford. It is one of the most beautiful spaces in which to read, work, and write. It houses the History Faculty Library. It plays an important role in the lives of the writers I visit with through the book for they would have used the Bodleian Library in different ways along with their college library, and it played a key role in my own research there at the Bodleian. I spent probably 40-50% of my library time there at the Radcliffe Camera. I'd research books to find, treasure hunt them (usually held down underground in the Gladstone Link stacks), then I'd bring them up to the upper Rad Cam to read. The other ~50% of my library time was mostly split in the Old Bodleian, the Duke Humfrey's Library, and the Weston Library Manuscripts Reading Room.

If you are interested in history, authors (like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers), Oxford, libraries, learning, poetry, connecting ideas across time, then you'll find this book interesting. As I researched connections these authors had I found more, and it led me to more trails to follow in a purely delightful path of discovery. I take you along the journey through this book, and visit with these authors in Oxford specifically to see how it impacted them. This book was a joy to research and write. I hope you'll find it interesting. 

I hope you will pick up a copy today! 

Oxford Literarium - Book Release!

 

Happy 2026! The best way to start a new year - With a new book!

I am thrilled to announce that my newest book is now available - published on Amazon.

Oxford Literarium: Oxford Writers in Time and Place

This book is a labor of love and research. Filled with authors who lived, taught, wrote, thought, and experienced Oxford in different ways, such as:

C.S. Lewis
J.R.R. Tolkien
Dorothy L. Sayers
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lewis Carroll
Evelyn Waugh
Robert Burton
And More!

I had the immense privilege to live in Oxford for most of March 2025 where I spent everyday in the Bodleian Libraries reading books and viewing manuscripts and letters from these amazing authors. It was a great dream of mine to research in the Bodleian Libraries. I got to live across the street from the Radcliffe Camera (part of the Bodleian) where I walked into the quadrangle every morning with my coffee, stepped inside the library to warm up and treasure hunt the books to read that day. 

You will journey with me on my travels as I experience the Bodleian during my research and the places associated or visited by these authors (colleges, pubs, libraries, gardens). I explore how these authors are connected in surprising ways across space and time. In my research, finding those connections in my reading was such a joy. To see how some authors knew each other, some referenced older authors, led a similar youth journey, or were inspired by each other's writings.

It is a bit frightening to share one's writings with the world, but I believe when we are given an ounce of a talent and the passion to put something that promotes good, it is meant to be shared. The power comes through the sharing and the talking with others about it or about some concept explored through it. I hope you will check it out, and if you have any interest in any of these authors you'll pick it up out of curiosity. You might learn something and share in an appreciation of the place Oxford and its many amazing writers.

You can check it out and purchase a copy on AMAZON

If you read my new book, I'd love if you left a review!

NOËL - A J.R.R. Tolkien Poem

 

Christmastide greetings! A few days before Christmas, the YouTube algorithm gave me a gift that that was most welcomed, which is not what we might normally say. But in my feed it showed me a video of a "lost Tolkien Poem" being sung by a sacred music group. I was so intrigued, and I'll admit, a little skeptical. I had to investigate. How could a Tolkien poem be lost, first of all? 

Indeed, I discovered that this poem was in an annual magazine published by an Oxfordshire Catholic High School in 1936 and not seen again by public eyes to be published until 2015 when it was "found". What an amazing discovery - that Tolkien wrote a stunningly beautiful poem for an annual school magazine. Granted, Tolkien was not a poet in the literary world sense, he was a professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford, but this poem is a treasure. It sounds like something from Anglo Saxon and his sub-created world of Middle-earth. The language and rhymes flow so beautifully. I do think Tolkien was a masterful poet as he was a master of language, even if poetry is not what he was known for.

The sacred music group, Floriani, who composed this poem to music, is immensely talented and I cannot stop listening to this song with its beautiful, wistful storytelling and invoking ancient words. The way Tolkien personifies nature with the winter cold is stunning as is their arrangement of the music with harmonies and melody. I copied the poem here, and the video so you can enjoy it along with me. I recommend you watch and read along the poem as it opens up the story Tolkien is revealing - the ancient tale of Christ coming being told deep in the misty world swathed in the mystery of faith. May you continue to have a blessed Christmas season and start to 2026.

NOËL

by J.R.R. Tolkien

Grim was the world and grey last night:

The moon and stars were fled,

The hall was dark without song or light,

The fires were fallen dead.

The wind in the trees was like to the sea,

And over the mountains' teeth

It whistled bitter-cold and free,

As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;

His mantle long and pale

Upon the bitter blast was spread

And hung o'er hill and dale.

The world was blind, the boughs were bent,

All ways and paths were wild:

Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,

And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer

Was pricked with distant light;

A star came shining white and clear

Alone above the night.

In the dale of dark in that hour of birth

One voice on a sudden sang:

Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth

Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:

They heard her song arise

O'er mist and over mountain snow

To the walls of Paradise,

And the tongue of many bells was stirred

in Heaven's towers to ring

When the voice of mortal maid was heard,

That was mother of Heaven's King.

Glad is the world and fair this night

With stars about its head,

And the hall is filled with laughter and light,

And fires are burning red.

The bells of Paradise now ring

With bells of Christendom,

And Gloria, Gloria we will sing

That God on earth is come. 

Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters

 

I've drawn you pictures of everything that happened - Polar Bear telling a story after all the tea things had been cleared away; me finding Polar Bear in the snow, and Polar Bear sitting with his feet in hot mustard and water to stop him shivering. It didn't - and he sneezed so terribly he blew five candles out.

Still he is all right now - I know because he has been at his tricks again: quarrelling with the Snowman (my gardener) and pushing him through the roof of his snow house: and packing lumps of ice instead of presents in naughty children's parcels. That might be a good idea, only he never told me and some of them (with ice) were put in warm storerooms and melted all over good children's presents!

- Letters from Father Christmas, J.R.R. Tolkien

We all recall when we were little the magic of Christmas. We could feel it all over town, in stores, at home, in church. There was something special about the season - maybe special traditions, a tall Christmas tree, visits from Santa, a new red dress to wear, carols that sing of Jesus as a baby, etc. Whatever memories might come to your mind, did you receive letters from Father Christmas? Maybe you did not, but J.R.R. Tolkien's children did.

The book that collects these letters (all the drawings, letters, and envelopes) and compiled were really spread out over twenty years that Tolkien created these intricate and creative letters to his children. Even when the children outgrew it, they delighted in it so much they encouraged their continuation. The story from Father Christmas at the North Pole along with North Polar Bear, the snow-elves, red gnomes, cave-bears, and goblins continues year after year. To find out what happens next, the children have to wait a whole year. Could we ever wait a whole year for the next installment? Children likely have more patience than us adults, especially when it comes to a story.

Returning to these letters is delightful. It's full of shaky handwriting, P.S. notes from North Polar Bear, and drawings of the disastrous things that occur there at the North Pole. Using languages adapted from Quenya (Elvish language of Tolkien's Middle-earth) and possibly Spanish, he writes a Goblin language and an Artic language. Over the years there are storms that hit the North Pole, a visit from the Man in the Moon, the Polar Bear falls down the stairs whilst carrying all the parcels, the tall pole breaks in the middle when Polar Bear climbs it and falls through the roof resulting in damaged parcels and then he had to move house and Polar Bear's leg got broken, and more. 

There's a lot going on at the North Pole, Father Christmas and North Polar Bear are very busy, and Tolkien had the inside scoop, using his imagination. It makes me think of how much more creative I was a child, writing silly stories, cutting out decorations, building paper chains, writing cards. Can we capture some of that creative spirit as adults? Absolutely. Take a couple hours this afternoon. Draw something. Write a silly story. Write a poem. Write a letter. Make up a play. Make something out of paper. I bet you have something to share or some talent in there, some memory from childhood or an imagination to set a world alive. 

May you have a blessed Christmas Eve!

Advent - An Icelandic Tale

 

And as if born of all this whiteness, with the craters' black rings and solitary troll-like lava pillars rising here and there, an air of solemnity marked this Sunday in this settlement near the mountains, something that tugged at the heart. An immeasurable, pure holiness surrounded the placid Sabbath smoke that rose undisturbed from the scattered, low farmhouses that nearly disappeared beneath the snow, an incomprehensible and unimaginably promising stillness. Advent. Advent!
Yes...Benedikt mouthed the word gingerly, that big, quiet, wonderfully alien yet at the same time homely word, perhaps for Benedikt the most deeply homely word of all. Admittedly, he didn't know exactly what it meant, yet there was expectation in it, anticipation, preparation - that much he understood. As the years went by, that one word had come to encompass practically his entire life. For what was his life, what was man's life on earth, if not an imperfect service, sustained by expectation, anticipation, preparation?

- Advent, by Gunnar Gunnarsson

This book. It caught my eye as a new release, as it was just published in a new English translation. First published in 1936 by the Icelandic writer, Gunnar Gunnarsson, it is a short novella, with a warm and cosy tone from the very first page. You could read it as a quiet adventure story, and you can also feel nourished by the deeper links to the season of Advent and its meaning. There are so many parallels and hints to Christ. The trio of selfless travelers, the 7 day adventure, the good shepherd, Christmas, the period of waiting, saving lost sheep in the deep cold, sacrifice of the shepherd to search for the one sheep, journey through storms, relying on God. I could go on, but it's full of such gestures. It is so beautifully written, it drew me in right away. It's easy to read but rich with atmosphere in the midst of the Icelandic landscape of cold and snow.

When I read the first two pages of the book, I immediately went online to order more copies as gifts. It's too lovely not to share. It is so slim, you could read it in one sitting. And it really could be enjoyed by anyone. It's the kind of book you'd want to read every year, as part of the Advent season, and it will reach into you differently with each read.

The story is simple - a man (Benedikt) has a tradition in Advent of venturing out into the deep winter cold with his trusty dog and sheep as companions to find lost sheep out in the wilderness and bring them home so they don't freeze to death. He feels responsible for these sheep. It's at his own peril and sacrifice, as he comes to many challenges along the way.

It's an adventure at the surface yet it reaches into the foundations of trust we can place in God. It's subtle, not forcing these reminders but showing them along the way. It's simply part of Benedikt and his beliefs. It offers so much if you want to venture deeper and notice all the references to Christ in such a beautiful story. 

The Gift of Advent

 

The story of the Incarnation is the story of a descent and resurrection. (C.S. Lewis)

Welcome to Advent. We are in the the first week of this season of waiting and seeking light. I burn my advent candle for each day as it passes, as we inch closer to the day of the Incarnation, the gift of Advent and the missing chapter of the book that was not revealed until Jesus came down.

In an essay called "The Grand Miracle", C.S. Lewis begins by laying out the idea how the miracles that have occurred in nature reveal the character of the Incarnation. Just like the natural world and the things that occur in nature showcase the character of the universe, so do the miracles reveal what the Incarnation is, though held to a different standard as the goings on of nature are continuous, as seasons change, but the Incarnation was a one time event that occurred in history, a time and place.

Nature imitates what we see reveals in Jesus's coming. Seeds are buried deep down so they can rise into a plant. Jesus enters by coming down, not only into humanity, but down deeper into death, into a corpse. This pattern in nature of dying, descending, coming to life, is there because it has been there with God. Lewis calls to mind the nature religions of the pagans, and how they believed in a nature beyond nature, which is where God fits - holding that characteristic of dying and rising, and yet "remaining quite outside and above the nature religions."

Then, to look at humans in the story, how in the search for God amongst nations and peoples, the story narrows and narrows until it lands at one point - "small as the point of a spear - a Jewish girl at her prayers. That is what the whole of human nature has narrowed down to before the Incarnation takes place." The Jewish people are selected to carry this thing that will save the world. To their burden, suffering, and honor, all in one. And yet through that suffering, they are promulgating the healing of others. Lewis introduces this as the Christian centre - how by the suffering of one many are healed. 

This, the Incarnation, Lewis says, is the missing chapter of the manuscript and the answer that fits into the problem of the whole story. It adds depth to the patterns in nature of death and rebirth, and it illuminates the rest of the story. It changes the way we think about and approach death. We can no longer say that death doesn't matter. It matters. "Christianity does not simply affirm or simply deny the horror of death; it tells me something quite new about it." We are to be humbled when we appreciate the enormous sacrifice that other people make for us, and reminded to make sacrifices for others. 

Here we are, approaching the grand miracle in just a few weeks. Take some quite moments to reflect on this season and its meaning. It comes to us each year and we can approach it with new eyes and a fresh spirit in a humble stance. May your Advent be blessed.

Leafy Showers

 

Leafy Showers

Boston Public Garden

The leaves fall like showers,
Not rain, but variety leaves -
Shapes and colours distinct
To their species of tree.
Raining leaves in a glorious gust
As a breeze carries them tumbling,
Dancing, spinning, flying through the air - 
Landing on the heads of people bustling,
On the page that I am writing on,
Or on the benches, for children to pick up.
Oh, how I used to collect leaves
On our family leaf looking adventures -
Treasures held in my small hand,
Delicate and vibrant all in one leaf -
It was a work of art to me,
And it belonged in my collection.
I feel the same now, only I write
The memories and take photos of my leaves
Leaving (leafing) them to blanket the land.

Brick Chimneys from my Window

 

The College Club of Boston - Commonwealth Avenue

Brick chimneys from my window
On Commonwealth Avenue
Sits betwixt colourful leaves
On tall, elegant trees
Shades of russet, caramel, gold
Early morning casts gentle light
In a city of rising buildings stamped
With historical detail and nuance.
Commonwealth is a park itself, between
The lane - tree-lined and path-laden - 
Autumn whispers through the branches
And the leaves take their cue - 
Onward into Autumn, friends, 
Let's display our ultimate hue.