It is hard to leave the familiar and present ways to return to the ancient ones, for appearances are delicious and the invisible is unbelievable.
– attributed to Hermes Trismegistus in The Message Rediscovered, by Louis Cattiaux
Much of what we encounter on a daily basis in the hyper-digitalized realms of our culture is little more than illusion and simulation of meaning. We are fat with idiocy having been fed on a prosaic puppet show that pretends to greater depth than it can ever possibly hold within the flimsy languor of image and imitation. Those aware of more subtle sensibilities know that there are immediacies that far outstrip anything which can be read or digitally digested. These immediacies must be approached within the humble confines of the everyday however, and are often overstepped by those eager for the promise of some more grandiose entrance into mystery.
I was driving back from Atlanta on the afternoon of December 31st, and decided to stop in at the Chapel of Our Mother of Many Names in Conyers, Georgia. This farm house chapel was the site of a series of Marian apparitions during the 1990’s, and has since become a beautiful and contemplative shrine complex dedicated to the Virgin Mary in all her forms. It seemed a good way to end the year, to sit for awhile in the farm house chapel and reflect on things under the auspices of the ever watchful ‘Mother of God.’
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