Category Archives: Geoff Wood Blog

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed . . .             Toward the end of the 1979 film Manhattan (which revered film critic Roger Ebert included in his list of The Great Movies) Ike, a 42 year … Continue reading →

9/11             On September 13th, 2001 – contrary to all expectations – Jane and I took off for Italy as planned.  This was but two days after the unspeakable crimes of September 11th.  I was of two minds after those … Continue reading →

Lost and Found             Mark Twain tells us, in his classic story The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, of how mournfully Tom’s Aunt Polly spoke of his and his friends’ drowning in the Mississippi River back in the 1840’s near Hannibal, … Continue reading →

Labor Day             Since our world has become digital, since we can move mountains by simply playing upon a keyboard, does the word labor apply nowadays?  Labor in the sense of sweat, lifting, pushing, dragging, using hand tools, shovels . … Continue reading →

The mind of a sage appreciates proverbs.  Sirach 3: 28              Proverbs were the principal method by which the youth of biblical times were taught how to live ethically and successfully.  Written educational materials were hard to come by in … Continue reading →

If life is a bowl of cherries, then what am I doing in the pits? Emma Bombeck             The Bible is not meant to be read as simply a history book.  It’s more along the line of poetry, saga, drama … Continue reading →

Imagination is funny / it makes a cloudy day sunny . . .             In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables we meet a young man named Holgrave who in a fit of frustration cries out:  … Continue reading →

Even after we have experienced the worst, why do we find it so hard to convince ourselves there’s nothing worth living for?             It’s a wonder that the Book of Ecclesiastes, from which our first reading is taken, ever made … Continue reading →

The parents eat sour grapes and [what happens?] the children’s teeth are set on edge.  Ezekiel 18:2             How true that proverb seems to be even within our last couple of centuries.  Since our founding fathers failed explicitly to include … Continue reading →

Jesus always used stories and illustrations . . . In fact, he never spoke to them without using parables.  Matthew 13: 34          Way back in 1885 the Catholic bishops of the United States meeting in Baltimore decided to publish … Continue reading →