Shangri La?

Having recently written a novel about the longing for utopia (The Assassin Lotus), it was wonderful to take a trip with my wife to a real-world paradise--the "Garden Isle" of Kauai. Oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, it remains as lush and wild as when I traveled there as a teenager some 40 years ago. A veritable Garden of Eden--without a single snake!  Click the pics to enlarge:

The Storm Before the Calm

"Christ Before Pilate" - Andrea Mantegna, 1500

"Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness, with all its crises, pangs, and torments." 

~Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik

A Baroque Birthday

Johann Sebastian Bach
March 31, 1685 - July 28, 1750

"To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time."                                 ~ Pablo Casals

"If Bach is not in Heaven.....I am not going!"                           ~ William F. Buckley

The Bravest

"US Soldier in Baghdad," photo by Karen Ballard

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."

~ Thucydides (460-395 BC)

Fanaticism

"All men harbor fears and doubts. We struggle to overcome them. Fanaticism springs from the effort to deny them."

~Professor Conrad Woolsey in THE ASSASSIN LOTUS

The Big Picture

Martyrs

Icon paintings of the infamous beheading of St. John the Baptist are a long tradition among the Eastern Orthodox. Recently the Coptic Egyptian Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California and Hawaii asked digital artist Tony Rezk to make an icon of the 21 Coptic Egyptian men who were beheaded by ISIS in Libya.

(click to enlarge)

As Father Peter Carota describes: "The Icon shows them kneeling near the Mediterranean Sea before they were beheaded for Christ. They are in the orange jumpsuits they died in and have red sashes to show that they shed their blood for Jesus. The angels are showering down on them the crown of martyrdom.  Many verbally professed Jesus as they died." 

Read an interview with the artist HERE.