Category: Faith
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Architecture of Salvation – St. Clare’s Catholic Church
A friend and follower of Frank Lloyd Wright, [Francis Conroy] Sullivan designed this impressive church [St. Clare’s Catholic Church] in his mentor’s Prairie School style, incorporating flared overhanging eaves and geometric wood accents on stucco to emphasize a strong horizontal form. ~ from Exploring the Capital: An Architectural Guide to the Ottawa-Gatineau Region If you… Read more
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Developing a Personal Point of View
I stop for a latte and drink in the view. The café, six tables and a banquette against the plate glass wall, offers a window onto the Byward Market and the Gatineau hills. Wind pushes the clouds across the city in an ephemeral drama of light and shadow. A commercial crane, red and ten stories tall, anchors the scene. Read more
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Larry’s Christmas Cards
I didn’t so much as meet Larry Racioppo as find him. Home from NYC and working on this piece, I admired his photographic work on the 9/11 Memorial & Museum site and he agreed to lend me an image. Turns out, he’s lived a fascinating life; he’s been a NYC taxi driver in the early 80’s, staff photographer for the… Read more
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Manhattan’s Divine Intervention
Unless you leave room for serendipity…how can the divine enter? ~Joseph Campbell A few minutes one way or the other, heading south instead of north, a conversation, a distraction, a photo or lunch. There’s no good reason I stepped into St. Paul’s Chapel at that precise moment and not another. Filled to the brim – standing room only… Read more
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Perfectly Beautiful
When I stepped into the dark coolness to escape the scorching heat I didn’t expect to find the most beautiful space I’d ever seen. Of course no flash photography or tripods were permitted and my children possess a built-in limitation for looking at things tiled or religious. I was, as always, left wanting more. Click… Read more
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The Paddler
Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk in a torrential downpour and returned home with a kayaker from Florida. Karen has been travelling, paddling and visiting up here since late June. She completed sections of the Trent-Severn Waterway then discovered the Rideau Canal. She parked her car in Ottawa and caught a train back to Kingston,… Read more
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Live Where You Are….And Love Where You Live
On her site, Musings of a Kitchen Witch, writer Thalassa weaves a gorgeous story of the irrefutable role of geography and place in her world. It is reproduced here with her permission. ************** Spirit of place is defined as the tangible (buildings, sites, landscapes, routes, objects) and the intangible elements (memories, narratives, written documents, rituals, festivals, traditional… Read more
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SacredSpaces: Vedic Verses on the Mystical Rites of House Consecration
FROM THE VEDAS Reproduced with permission from Hinduism Today The building of a house, or even any transaction concerning it, is not just a matter of masonry or of business. It is in both instances a liturgical act, in which human lives as well as the powers above and below are involved. A house is… Read more