Category Archives: Geoff Wood Blog

Being unable to see the forest for the trees             After reading today’s Gospel selection I picked up my old pre-Vatican II missal and paged to the “The Sacrament of Penance” section.  There were instructions on how to go to … Continue reading →

To whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.             After 2000 years the language of the Gospels has become so familiar to our hearing that it may lack its original punch.  I mean, when you hear … Continue reading →

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley, /An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain / For promis’d joy! (Robert Burns)             I could look it up but I think this is one of those … Continue reading →

Jesus claimed, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”  They kept saying: “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?”             A friend of mine who runs a business that produces rivets and related products returned recently from … Continue reading →

So I did sit and eat             In the preface to her 2008 book Sacramental Poetics Regina Mara Schwarz (scholar at Northwestern University) says, “The Eucharist has always been mysterious to me.  As a Jewish child, nothing in my tradition … Continue reading →

Seeing Beyond Appearances*             The sibling children of Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age, ranging in age from six to eleven, had lived among the adults of their household long enough to acquire a critical attitude toward them all.  As the … Continue reading →

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, he was good friend of mine / I never understood a single word he said . . . [Creedence Clearwater Revival] I’ve known about penknives all my life – the kind of folding knife you can … Continue reading →

Victims of Circumstance In today’s first reading the priest at the Israelite shrine of Bethel tells Amos to leave the premises, to go back where he came from – because of his disruptive prophecies.  And you get the impression there’s … Continue reading →

River City In 1912 (according to the 1957 Broadway production The Music Man) a salesman named Harold Hill (played by Robert Preston) arrived energetically in River City, Iowa to sell musical instruments to the town’s youth. (My own son Adam … Continue reading →

Sleeping Beauty Today’s Gospel episode about a young girl whom Jesus raises from a deep sleep brings to mind all those Sleeping Beauty stories that have become a part of our culture, for instance the one we rarely hear about … Continue reading →