Witness, NM

Pabst goes to Coney Island It was Veteran’s Day weekend, November of 2019, and I had been living in New York City since March. In that time, from the first week of March to the second week of November my cat died, I broke my two front teeth, and I had failed to quit drinking…

The Way, the Truth, and the Myth “Today the word ‘myth’ is often used to describe something that simply isn’t true. A politician accused of a peccadillo will say it is a ‘myth’, that it never happened. When we hear of gods walking the earth, of dead men striding out of tombs, or of seas…

Unidentified White Males The Episcopal Church is the church for outcasts, what my godmother describes as mutts. An outcast is like refuse, literally one who is cast out of society, living on the fringes. These days the fringes are more virtual than they have ever been. In the “The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the…

Behold the maidservant of the Lord! “My soul magnifies the Lord,     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me,    and holy is his name” (Luke 1:46-49). The…

A Seinfeld Story This is not the ideal format for scripts, but I was sick last week, I’m still sick but I was sick, then, too. I found this old tweet I wrote during COVID, and tinkered with it. I had just learned about No Contact and immediately wrote this with George Costanza in mind.…

Re-Becoming the Universal Church “Stories can tell what history cannot describe; how the mother of God became Our Lady is such a tale. When she became the prototype of the ‘image of woman’ – never a goddess, no longer an icon, not yet the sentimental pinup of baroque art – the other figures peopling the…

Discrimination on the Path We have for our desire God and God alone therefore we are “convinced more than ever of the absolute impossibility of being half a Christian. And [we] determined, through his grace (the absolute necessity of which I was deeply sensible of) to be all-devoted to God, to give him all my…

Discerning the Way “I am a rose of Sharon, A lily of the valleys.  As a lily among the brambles,             So is my love among the maidens” (Song of Songs 2:1-2).  Discrimination is what keeps us walking the royal road, keeping us free of delusion; this is the Buddhist right view on the eightfold…

Notes from stillness “This it is to be a perfect man, to be sanctified throughout; even ‘to have a heart so all-flaming with the love of God as continually to offer up every thought, word, and work, as a spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God through Christ.’ In every thought of our hearts, in every word…