Seán Collins is a Saint Louis-based public media producer interested in community-building, cool lamps, photography, slow food, poetry, and the creative tension of already/not yet.
He's been a Benedictine monk, a bookseller, a network news producer, and a pastoral minister.
This Is What We Are About (Romero)
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.No set of goals and objectives includes everything.This is what we are about.We plant the seeds that one day will grow.We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.We lay foundations that will need further development.We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.—Monseñor Óscar Romero
+24 iii 1980
¡Presente!
Comments [0]
Pulled Three
My friend Sharon and I are walking our neighborhood and shooting what we see. And then challenging ourselves to pull three shots. Today, I shot 139 exposure in about an hour. Here are the three I pulled.
Rose Hips at Saint Louis University High School
Decayed Leaves
Walkway Light Fixture, blurred in camera, cropped.
The 139 are here: http://gallery.me.com/seanmcdonough#100167
Comments [0]
Building A House
My nephews (Brian and Chris) are building a home for Brian and his family in Saint Louis.
Comments [0]
Now Winter Nights Enlarge
Now winter nights enlarge
This number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o'erflow with wine,
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep's leaden spells remove.
This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well:
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys
They shorten tedious nights.
—Thomas Campion
Comments [0]
A Winter Day
Snow on the roof.All afternoon I read in the sunlit room
and jotted down words now and then,
troubled now and then by thoughts
of how long
the light would last. Nowshadows have amassed
at the feet of objects, and soon
the unmade bed, the scattered papers, the books
in rows and piles, the cups of tea gone cold,
the plates and crumbs from the lunch we shared,will look stranded in the rising dark,
like wreckage from a ship spoiled by storm.
Until I turn on a lamp
and seethe heart's sphere squared to make a room,
the mind's love entrusted
to a few words on a page.—Li-Young Lee
and jotted down words now and then,
troubled now and then by thoughts
of how long
the light would last. Nowshadows have amassed
at the feet of objects, and soon
the unmade bed, the scattered papers, the books
in rows and piles, the cups of tea gone cold,
the plates and crumbs from the lunch we shared,will look stranded in the rising dark,
like wreckage from a ship spoiled by storm.
Until I turn on a lamp
and seethe heart's sphere squared to make a room,
the mind's love entrusted
to a few words on a page.—Li-Young Lee
Comments [0]
Comments [0]