The latest.

I went to sleep thinking I had pulled a muscle in my lower back lifting a chair, but woke up in the knowledge that I was having another episode of kidney stones. I shall try to keep up with everyone's posts, but may not be able to respond as I should like -- not that I have been able to do so in the past. Please indulge me for the moment.

Strange Attractors

An email from ANGeL uses this evocative term to invite us to their new Guidance page with what looks to be an interesting journey through the Labyrinth for their third anniversary. And once again seraphimsigrist posts the text of the Akathist of Thanksgiving so beautifully set by John Taverner -- though his Grace is perhaps rightly distrustful of classical composers who show off their chest hair.

As you may know, the poem was discovered among the papers of a man who died in Stalin's Arctic death camps, though the authorship has been attributed to an earlier victim. I mention this because lines which might annoy coming from the conversation pit of a split-level suburban house have a certain authenticity in terms of where they come from. It is one thing to give thanks for the beauty of winter from a well heated room, quite another when you have been sent off to die from cold, hunger, and exhaustion.

With the poem +S has posted some remarkable visual art from the Gulag.