Author: Deacon Nick

Cathedral of St. Helena

Deacons and Diaconate / Spirituality / Travel

A Former Student Gives a Homily

We’re back! Our week at Notre Dame was fantastic, but there’s nothing like sleeping in your own bed. We had an uneventful trip home, praise God. On Sunday we drove through Helena, Montana to celebrate Mass at the cathedral there. I had never been there, and I was awestruck by the amount of marble and stained glass. Helena is not exactly on the way to anywhere, but if you ever get the chance, stop in and take a tour of the cathedral. I’m currently uploading all of my...

Christ at Notre Dame

Travel

Our Last Days at Notre Dame

It’s Thursday night in South Bend and our week at ND Vision is almost over. My son and the other teens that came with us have had a fantastic time…and so have we adults. Here are some more highlights of the past few days: Sitting awestruck as 225 teens spent an hour together in Eucharistic adoration Praying/chanting morning prayer and Vespers in the lady chapel at the Notre Dame basilica Gazing open-mouthed at all the beautiful works of art that decorate the campus and its buildings Praying the...

Arriving at Notre Dame

Travel

Notre Dame Trip Days 3 and 4

Now that I’ve finally figured out how to connect to the wireless network here at Notre Dame I can give a quick update. First things first: yesterday. Two words: Chicago. Traffic. We left Jackson, Minnesota on time at 7:00 a.m., then around 2:00 p.m. got bogged down for two hours trying to get through Chicago. We were trying to avoid the Ryan Expressway because the official site said it was under construction, so we took what we thought could make better time on another road. Instead we became...

Mt. Rushmore

Travel

Notre Dame Trip Day 2

Today we’re in the small town of Jackson, Minnesota, after driving 660 miles yesterday. The weather was much nicer today–no one was struck by lightning. Highlights from yesterday’s travel: Mount Rushmore: An awe-inspiring sight to those of us who had never seen it before. A brief glimpse of the badlands: we could see the edges of the badlands from the freeway. I’d like to come back some day to take a closer look. Sights we didn’t get to see, but wanted to: the corn palace in Mitchell, SD,...

Wyoming Wildlife

Travel

Trip to Notre Dame, Day 1

I woke up this morning in Sheridan, Wyoming, after driving about 660 miles from Spokane, Washington yesterday with 13 teenagers, and 7 chaperones. Highlights of our first day of travel: Stopping at Lincoln, Montana’s 10,000 Silver Dollar Bar Attending Mass in Billings, MT with my parents. The young priest at St. Pius X Parish went to school with the deacon I wrote about a couple of months ago. Chasing a huge electrical storm across southern Montana. I really enjoy watching Montana thunder storms, but not while driving through...

Notre Dame

Travel

Caravan to Notre Dame!

My son and I will be heading to Notre Dame next week for a 5-day conference called ND Vision. We’re driving across the country in 4 rented minivans with 13 teenagers (yes, 13!). We leave Spokane, Washington at 5:00 in the morning and for the next three days I’ll be trapped inside a moving snack zone. The cars that drive beside us will see the vans surrounded by a cloud of orange BHT fumes. I won’t even begin to describe what it will smell like. What is ND...

Fred Saberhagen

Books and Reading

Berserker Death: RIP Fred Saberhagen

Fred Saberhagen , one of my favorite science fiction writers, passed away from cancer on June 29, 2007 at the age of 77. Saberhagen is probably best-known as the author of the Berserker series, a set of science fiction stories about humanity’s war against self-repairing killing machines that roam the universe with the sole purpose of eliminating all life. Saberhagen used his Berserker stories to explore what it meant to be human, and several of them were based on works of literature such as Poe’s “Masque of the...

Battlefield Earth Book Cover

Books and Reading

The Greatest Science Fiction Novel of All Time?

I’ve been playing around with StumbleUpon, and I came across The Modern Library’s List of 100 Best Novels. There are two lists, actually. The first was created by the Board of The Modern Library, and the second compiles the results of their readers’ poll. What first struck me is how at odds the Board seems to be with the readers. Take a look at the first five positions, with the Board’s choice listed first, the readers’ choice second: Ulysses by James Joyce vs. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand...

William Faulkner

Books and Reading

Like a Good Neighbor, A Book Is Always There

In my book ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature, I mention that reading a book is like talking with a neighbor. William Faulkner expresses this idea in the following quote: The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to friends: the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes–Don Quixote. I read that every year, as some do the Bible….I’ve read these books so often that I don’t always...

Lord Darcy

Book Review / Books and Reading

Lord Darcy: Sherlock Holmes Meets Jonathan Strange

If you, like me, find the Harry Dresden series not to your taste, but like the idea of a magic-wielding detective, you might enjoy the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett. Mix together Sherlock Holmes and Jonathan Strange, and add in a little alternate history, and you have an idea of what the Lord Darcy stories are all about. What if Richard Lionheart didn’t die, and what if the Protestant Reformation never happened? Garrett imagines an alternate history where in the twentieth century the Plantagenet dynasty still rules,...

Thornton Wilder

Books and Reading / Spirituality / Theology

Is Purgatory Like a Novel?

What makes fiction so powerful and so poignant? Thornton Wilder sums it up in one of the most moving quotes I have ever read: If Queen Elizabeth or Frederick the Great or Ernest Hemingway were to read their biographies, they would exclaim, “Ah, my secret is still safe.” But if Natasha Rostov were to read War and Peace she would cry out as she covered her face with her hands: “How did he know, how did he know?” Is this what the pain of Purgatory might be like:...

Storm Front

Book Review / Books and Reading

Harry Dresden Book One: Not for Me

I finished Storm Front: Book One of the Harry Dresden Files, and it wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped it would be, but it was still quite entertaining. In brief: What I liked: The setting: I particularly liked Harry’s house and office, and his idea about magic affecting complex machines The film noir elements combined with traditional wizard-lore Butcher’s conception of magic and how it works: a little Latin, a staff, some magical symbols, all the things traditionally associated with users of magic The action scenes...