December 26, 2005

• Wren Day

  “St. Stephen’s Day [Dec. 26] is a national holiday in Ireland, but the celebrations have little connection to the Saint.”

  This day in Ireland is instead devoted to a barbaric ritual, “the hunting of the wren.”

  Let us therefore recall a more civilized figure– St. Christopher Wren– whose feast day is Feb. 25.

  From Log24 on that date in 2005:

  … Only by the form,
      the pattern,

  Can words or music reach

  The stillness, as
      a Chinese jar still

  Moves perpetually in its stillness.

  Not the stillness of the violin,
      while the note lasts,

  Not that only, but
      the co-existence,

  Or say that the end
      precedes the beginning,

  And the end
      and the beginning
      were always there

  Before the beginning
      and after the end.

  And all is always now.

  – T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

  • 3:00 pm
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