Brother Paul saw me off, repeating his assurance that it had been an honour. On the road in the bright sunshine, I found myself envying him. But precisely what was it that I was envying? The warmth of the cocoon that surrounded him? His certainty? The joy that peeped out again as we shook hands? His faith itself? To some extent, of course, all of these, but there was something else: his courage. The truth is that I am unable to believe that when Christ said: 'My Kingdom is not of this world' he meant that it was. Among the fifty monks of Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, it was possible to see, misty but unmistakeable, the point. The enclosing shell of the monastery becomes a symbol of what must be the ultimate truth not only of Christianity but of all religions: the Kingdom of Heaven is within. For the monks within the walls, for the rest of us, within the human heart, which has room enough for all the walls there are. We all carry within our hearts a Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, ...
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You are of course right - my error entirely.
I've now amended the post.
It is now 11.20pm in Norfolk and we've just returned from a concert. The sky is completely clear of cloud, and we have probably the best view we've ever had of a lunar eclipse.
And an awful lot of people are arriving On An Overgrown Path via Google searches for 'lunar eclipse'. I hope they enjoy the theremin story, and return for more.
Theremin and variations on the moon
There's no lunar eclipse in this entry.
Oops. I guess now there is.
By the way, I'm still not sure that the guy sitting with Varese is James Seawright. Jim is known now more for his kinetic sculpture.
It was 50 years ago, but it doesn't look like him, so it could have been some smartly dressed Phillips engineer. I've seen that photo so many times, but I always assumed it was Jim, whom I met in the mid 60's when I lived in NYC and made some visits to the Columbia-Princeton studio. I'll probably research it further until I've satisfied my curiosity.