A life in words

  • Christmas Carols in Prose #1: Joy to the World

    Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her king! Let every heart make room for him and let saints and angels sing. Rejoice! Rejoice when Jesus reigns and saints sing; while fields, floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the joy that’s sounding. Sin and sorrow won’t grow anymore. Nor will thorns…

  • Christmas Carols in Prose

    Traditional Christmas carols are perhaps some of the most familiar text in the English language. I love singing them each Christmas, but for me the plain meaning of these old hymns often “hides in plain sight” due to the excessive familiarity that comes after a lifetime of repetition. I’ve found that restating them in more…

  • Painkillers for the mind

    Once upon a time as a 14 year-old I became very depressed. I was told I had depression, a serious illness that I would have to treat by taking antidepressant medications for the rest of my life. I started taking Paxil (a drug since linked to increased suicidality in young people) and it seemed to…

Of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, that it is free from war, than that it has peace. For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character….Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus V.4, 1670, trans. A. H. Gosset 1883