Robin Hardy's Abbey Lands
The Stories of the Abbey of St. Benedict on the Sea
Random Mutterings
Archive V
(July22, 2025 - Sept. 29, 2025)
Cranes of the Rising Sun
Sept. 29, 2025: I'm a bird lover. So after seeing variations of this beautiful image on several sites, I dug around to see what I could find out about it. Here's the short version: In Japanese culture, the image of a stork with the sun is a centuries-old motif that symbolizes life, vigor, well-being, and a new start. Apparently, there's not a specific myth behind the imagery; it simply represents the culmination of intertwining cultural beliefs and symbolism over time, so as to become a favorite motif in paintings and textiles. That works for me!
Editor's Hell
Sept. 26, 2025: Before I wrote my first book, I was editor at a major Christian publishing house. And I will solemnly swear to you that the photo above is close to what we got from our authors. Once we had the manuscripts untangled and coherent, the authors continued to rewrite every draft. Even on the final copy that was to go to the printer, authors made changes.
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So when I started writing my own books, I announced to myself that after 4 or 5 rewrites, I was done. There would be no more changes. And then I broke that rule for every single book.
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The good news is, with epubs and pdfs, I can rewrite to my heart's desire. So I go back to earlier books in the series to add Easter eggs or foreshadowing. It's great fun. The moral is, if it's been a month or more since you downloaded a book, better redownload. There will be new things.
Who Remembers Peanuts?
Sept. 23, 2025: Ignore the text; I'm sure it's not original with the cartoon. But Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and their friends were a part of my life from the first day I learned to read. Their creator,
Charles M. Schulz, was such a brilliant, intuitive cartoonist, that you still see his work everywhere. Unfortunately, almost all of those images are pirated.
Leonardo at Ponte Vecchio
Sept. 20, 2025: "An homage to Leonardo da Vinci, which includes his work and that of other Renaissance artists, is projected onto Florence's Ponte Vecchio, particularly during the annual Firenze Light Festival, which has featured such displays around the Christmas holiday. These events transform the historic bridge into a 'living canvas' by using video mapping to showcase the art, often incorporating music and special effects to create a magical, modern experience that connects the past with the present." From Google. This particular exposition took place in 2019.
Spontaneous Synchronization
Sept. 14, 2025: Utterly amazing. Click the image to watch, then see the explanation below.
Google AI explained it like this:
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How It Works: Energy and Information Exchange
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Initial Desynchronization: The units start with different frequencies and are not in sync.
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Mutual Influence: They begin to affect one another through their weak coupling.
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Energy Transfer: When one metronome swings, it transfers a small amount of energy to the shared base, which in turn affects the other metronomes. Similarly, the pendulum clocks [that] Huygens observed transferred energy via sound and mechanical vibrations to their shared platform.
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Phase Locking: Oscillators with slightly faster frequencies will push the system slightly, while those with slower frequencies will be slightly slowed. This exchange of energy and influence gradually brings them into phase with each other, leading to a shared frequency.
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Limit Cycle: Eventually, the system settles into a stable periodic orbit, a "limit cycle" in the phase space, where the common frequency and amplitude are independent of the initial conditions.
Science is crazy.
Out of Focus
Sept. 11, 2025: Incredible, isn't it? I puzzled over how it could be done until I finally consulted AI, which told me that it was an AI-generated image.
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Well, of course. Look close and you’ll see the tells.
The most obvious giveaway is the car in the background: it’s a strange shape, and the wheels are badly spaced. Then check out the girls’ hands: the fingers look unnatural. The girl in blue has four fingers on her left hand and the fingers on her right hand are backwards.
Then there’s the purse strap over her shoulder. I still can’t figure out what’s going on with that, and why the purse (?) looks stunted. What makes all this hard to see is that the photo size is only 3.85" by 4.45" at 96 pixels per inch, so it can't be enlarged much.
One thing’s for sure: now I look closely at every photo I see.​​​​​
I Asked God
Sept. 8, 2025: The creator of this video short made good use of a poem by Claudia Minden Weisz, although he altered it considerably in the process. For instance, these two stanzas were omitted:
I asked God to make my handicapped child whole,
And God said, “No.”
He said her spirit already is,
While her body is only temporary.
I asked God if He loved me,
And God said, “Yes.”
He gave me His only Son, who died for me.
And I will be in heaven someday.
click to view the video
While the presentation is effective, I kind of resent that no credit is given to the author. At the same time, I bet she'd rather the message get out. In 2008, Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes of the Union Congregational Church wrote:
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"When you walk through that valley with God you’re going to emerge on the other side of that valley a better person, a stronger person and a more loving person. That’s why I really like a poem that was written about 30 years ago by a woman named Claudia Minden Weisz. On her website she says that the poem came to her shortly after she attended a Gaither Family Concert in Seattle. What you also need to know is that when she wrote the poem she was beginning a journey through a stressful, sad and scary valley of her own. It was a journey through a valley that brought her face to face with one of the worst nightmares a mother can face. You see, Claudia Minden Weisz had just learned that her daughter Angela was suffering from a rare disorder known as Rett Syndrome. It’s a neurological disorder that affects mostly young girls. What happens is they begin to withdraw socially. They lose their ability to speak and suffer from seizures and scoliosis. Eventually the girls end up severely disabled."
God's Spirit shines brightest in the broken.
Cool Sound Effects
Sept. 5, 2025: Under the category head of "Things You Never Realized You Needed to Know Until Today" we're adding "How Sound Effects Might Have Been Made for Vintage Cartoons," courtesy of Josh Harmon (who has apparently attained the status of expert in this field.)
In this short, he's demonstrating his repertoire of sound effects for "Jeepers Creepers," a 1939 Warner Bros. animated short film. Click the photo to watch Josh at work.
Or you can watch the whole 9 1/2-
minute cartoon here.
The Disabled Comedian
Sept. 2, 2025: This is stand-up comedian Josh Blue, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy shortly after birth. Click the pic to view the segment, but you'll also want to check out his website here.
Fake Village, Fake Bomb
August 30, 2025: Now, this is entertaining. But whenever I see something like this, my first thought is: Is it true? Let's find out.
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In checking it out, I ran across an article by Joris Nieuwint on War History Online which appears to be the source of this information. It begins: "This story has been told in many ways, where locations of where the airfield was and how it was bombed being different. . . .
"Still, there are a lot of aspects of the story that make it seem more like an urban myth than reality: Just as there is strategic value in fooling your enemy, there is also strategic value in allowing your enemy to continue believing he has you fooled even after you’ve caught onto his plans. That’s a considerable advantage to throw away merely for the sake of a minor 'up yours' stunt."
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But "French author Pierre-Antoine Courable and his Belgian cohort Jean Dewaerheid have brought the force of serious research to the seven-decade-old legend of Allied bomber crews hitting fake German airfields with fake British bombs. . . . Courable published his book which, for this writer, finally proves with absolutely thorough research and the first-hand accounts witnesses that everyone said never existed that the wooden bombs for wooden targets skit actually happened, and many times. A year later, the long-sought star witness for Courable’s thesis, a Luftwaffe pilot by the name of Oberstleutnant Werner Thiel came forward and was videotaped corroborating the story of the Allied air force’s joke."
There you have it!​​
Marble Art
August 27, 2025: I don't know how, but some people just figure out how to do something, and then do it (click the pic to watch):
I'd buy one.
Deathless Death
August 24, 2025: I introduced you to Deacon Tom McDonald over here at Weird Catholic, but now I need to share this post of his with you (click on the pic). Although I am not Catholic, I found so much wisdom and compassion in this piece, I earnestly want you to read it. Here's an excerpt:
The dead hear us. They are all around us. That's what the communion of saints is. It is the entire church, living and dead. The church is an equal opportunity institute. We don't kick people out just for the trivial reason that they are dead. We realize that some of them are cut off from us forever in hell. Some of them need our prayers as they travel toward sanctification in purgatory. And some of them are right now gazing in love and wonder at our Lord, while also looking upon those they love.
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We call that last group the saints. If we are very sure the person is in heaven, we even give them some fancy capitalization, and call them Saints.
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And the Saints are here for us.
One reason I believe it is because of what I experienced at my mother's deathbed, which I shared here.
I Want a Duck
August 21, 2025: Watch what happens.
(Click the pic.)
With her own guard dog, of course.
Mind-Blowing Scientific Study of Intercessory Prayer
August 18, 2025: This randomized controlled trial documented in the British Medical Journal was conducted at the Rabin Medical Center in Israel in July 2000. Following are abbreviated portions of the introduction:
"Two randomised controlled trials tested the effect of remote intercessory prayer (praying for persons unknown) on outcomes in patients admitted to an intensive coronary care unit. Both studies showed a beneficial effect. A recent systematic review of the efficacy of distant healing concluded that 'approximately 57% (13 of 23) of the randomised, placebo-controlled trials of distant healing . . . showed a positive treatment effect' and that 'the evidence thus far warrants further study.'
"The purpose of the present study was to extend these observations to patients with another severe disorder, bloodstream infection. As we cannot assume a priori that time is linear, as we perceive it, or that God is limited by a linear time, as we are, the intervention was carried out 4-10 years after the patients’ infection and hospitalisation. The hypothesis was that remote, retroactive intercessory prayer reduces mortality and shortens the length of stay in hospital and duration of fever."
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The results? "Remote intercessory prayer said for a group of patients is associated with a shorter hospital stay and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection, even when the intervention is performed 4-10 years after the infection." [My emphasis]
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One further note: I saw this study cited on two other sites which fraudulently reported that the objective was unproven. The moral of the story is to always go to the source.
In Honor of Our Armed Forces
August 15, 2025: The guys who build, maintain, fly, drive or direct these super vehicles have to express it somehow (click to view):
Understandable.
Addison's Walk
August 12, 2025: Accidentally found this amazing shot of Addison's Walk on Wikimedia Commons, by Morel
After a late-night walk here with JRR Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, C.S. Lewis told a friend: "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it."
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That quotation is from Humphrey Carpenter's book The Inklings. He recreates a fascinating account of this walk, a portion of which I've included as a pdf.
(Go buy the book so I won't get in trouble.
Actually, this is an advertisement.)
The reference is personal for me—so much so that I quoted from Carpenter's book in the Afterword to my own stories.
Life Is a Mist
August 9, 2025: I generally prefer my biblical illustrations to be more upbeat, but this one does pack a punch, and the quotation is 100% accurate. And the analogy holds true in the context in which St. James presents it—that of someone using his ordained time to get wealthy. Which is a futile use of one's time: You can't take it with you.
But I also feel that part of our life remains behind when we depart, in the memories and ramifications of our interactions with others. Since I make a story out of everything anyway, this is how I phrase it: Your Life Is a Story.
Every Online Discussion
August 6, 2025: Everybody thinks they're like the two guys pictured, when they're more like the two guys posting. That's why I usually just browse these forums and don't say anything unless I'm really really really really sure of what I'm saying, and can prove it. By the way, the classical art is the center detail of a fresco featuring Plato and Aristotle in "The School of Athens" by Raphael. (I know because I googled it.)
Backwards Pickup
August 3, 2025: America is the land of innovation and ingenuity, even if it's just to prank the cops. Click the pic to view the video.
driver facing you
front of pickup
Christian Faeries?
July 31, 2025: About midway through the Abbey books, when Kele appears, the stories are loaded with faeries from there on out. I had some struggles with justifying them in a Christian series, but couldn’t see what else to do: they're baked in. So when I saw this post on Substack, I almost fell out of my chair:
I clicked over to the original article and began to read. It’s very long and involved, but well researched. There is no doubt that rural populations throughout history have claimed to see and interact with all sorts of supernatural beings.
I came to a roadblock, however, when the author began quoting C.S. Lewis in defense of the existence of faeries:
C.S. Lewis gives four possibilities regarding the classification of fairies:
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“a third rational species distinct from angels and men”
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“a special class of angels”
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“some special class of the dead”
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“fallen angels; in other words, devils” ​
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However, in the same work, Lewis does not declare any of these options to be definitive. Instead, he considers this lack of a clear place or category for fairies to be one of the main gifts offered to us by them and their world:
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“They are perhaps the only creatures to whom the [medieval Christian] Model does not assign, as it were, an official status. Herein lies their imaginative value. They soften the classic severity of the huge design. They intrude a welcome hint of wildness and uncertainty into a universe that is in danger of being a little too self-explanatory, too luminous.”
The problem with this is that he completely miscontrues what Lewis says. So I commented on his post:
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"Very interesting; very weighty. It will take me some time to absorb all the nuance here. While I heartily agree with the reality of the unseen, I'm afraid you have misquoted C.S. Lewis in The Discarded Image (of which the subtitle is: “An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.”) That whole chapter on the Longaevi is a discussion of fairies in literature—fiction—not in the real world. Not only does he not state a personal belief, on p. 134, he says, ‘Such, very briefly, are the three kinds of fairies, or Longaevi we meet in our older literature. How far, by how many, and how consistently, they were believed in, I do not know.’”
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The author of the post hasn't replied and I don't expect him to. But I'm discounting everything else he says. Regardless, my faeries stay.
The Importance of Shoes
July 28, 2025: Here in Texas, it gets pretty warm during the summer, which is roughly from April through October. So Texans are acutely aware of the necessity of the proper footwear for comfort, safety, and style. Allow me to illustrate with my own shoes.
First up is my go-to summer choice. These I wear approxi-mately 90% of the time, inside and out. They used to be white. I should buy another pair, but I finally got these broken in.
Here are my formal shoes, which I wear to Walmart. I’m also reluctant to get these dirty. In addition, I often wear clean socks with these.
Here are my walking shoes. They’re in pretty bad shape, since I walk a lot. I have backup walking shoes which I’m reluctant to wear because they’ll just wind up looking like these.
As a bonus, here’s my standard winter footwear (indoor, mostly). They’re necessary because wood floors are cold.
I hope you enjoyed this foray into my closet. I look forward to seeing shots of your preferred footwear.
A Purple Sky
July 25, 2025: Accuweather shared this shot of a purple sky in Kansas, but I didn't see any explanation for it, so I queried Google's AI, which said:
"A purple sky during a storm in Kansas, or anywhere else, is caused by the scattering of sunlight by water droplets and other particles in the atmosphere, particularly when the sun is low on the horizon. The combination of low sunlight, moisture from the storm, and cloud cover creates the right conditions for this phenomenon.
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"Sunlight and Scattering:
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"White sunlight is actually a combination of all colors of the rainbow. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, it interacts with air molecules and other particles. This interaction causes the light to scatter in different directions.
"Purple Sky Phenomenon:
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"When a storm is present, particularly with low clouds and a setting sun, the light has to travel through more of the atmosphere. This increases the amount of scattering. If the conditions are just right, the pinkish hues of a setting sun can combine with the scattered blue and violet light to create a purple or violet appearance in the sky. The moisture from the storm also contributes to the scattering effect. "
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Sounds about right to me.
Marketing Like Jesus?
July 22, 2025: I hooted when I saw this on Substack, thinking that it reduces Jesus to a hustler who’s interested in making a monetary profit. Then I thought I might be just a tad judgmental, so looked up the website and landed here, where Darren Shearer says:
“Following the Air Force, God opened the door for me to attend seminary for theological training at Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA). Unlike 99% of my classmates, I didn’t enter seminary with the goal of becoming a seminary professor, pastor, or the leader of a faith-based nonprofit. I viewed seminary as a launchpad for ministry in the marketplace. I approached seminary with the understanding that my ministry would be primarily in the marketplace… not inside a religious institution.
“Although 85% of most pastors’ congregations work in for-profit companies, there weren’t any classes about the “Theology of Business” in my seminary. There weren’t any classes about how to help the members of your congregation to use their spiritual gifts in their workplace. After all, pastors usually do not have backgrounds in business, so how could they understand the daily experience of a business professional well enough to disciple them effectively in a marketplace context? . . .
“Not only did God call me to work in the marketplace, he called me to start businesses. As I learned in seminary, the entire purpose for these businesses would be to make disciples of Jesus.
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“When I was working for other employers, I was limited in the way I could express my spiritual gifts and calling. I had to do what my boss wanted me to do. Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, has given me the freedom to do exactly what God has called me to do… and in the way He has gifted me to do it.”
Okay, I can’t find any problem with that, and I wish Darren great profit in his efforts. (It also looks as though he’s refined his messaging a little. I shudder to think what some readers would think of me if they found copies of my early books in a secondhand store somewhere.)
You could call it Chataine's Guardian 2.0