Dedicated to Garion and Joanna The only appropriate way to begin this is with a joke. The following series of events shall try to illuminate the real punchline to this joke. It is not what you think. This is the joke: Why did the chicken cross the Road? **** I stood on the deck of the WB Yeats as we approached shore, beholding the Wicklow mountains where Saint Kevin once toiled in solitude, passing the iconic chimney stacks of Dublin, and feeling blessed it was a rare sk

End times have been my obsession for years now. Not necessarily the eschatology of religion (though this cannot be ignored), but rather...

I wasn't a political teenager. Anti-authoritarian and anti-conformist for sure, but that spirit in me never quite translated into any...

Lately, I've been getting more and more into world mythology, that superstructure of belief and narrative upon which modern man stands...

I'm not a sportsman or sports fan by any definition. Never have been and probably never will be. I'm too skinny, too slow to play myself, and I get bored too easily to be a spectator. But lately I've been taking an interest in the symbolic and ritualistic element of sports – which is to say the religious element. I'm often told that the Old Testament is a depiction of man's struggles – with himself, with nature, with hostile tribes and most importantly, with God. After all, I

A holiday 'escape'. A weekend 'escape'. 'Escapist' novels. Mere 'escapism'. Escape, escape, escape. We live to escape. To the child,...

A story , the very notion of a story , is a need as deeply embedded in human beings as the need for food and shelter. (Here I was...

I once met a rather tall, balding, ragged English man semi-squatting in a derelict, dilapidated flophouse in a bustling Central European...