Pointings

There is nothing like attending a live performance. But there's much to be said for exploring music on a home audio system. And if one is serious, it makes sense to assemble the best equipment one can afford in the pursuit.   Of course, afford-ability is in the eye of the beholder . Digital Music - Downloading and Streaming: All of us of a certain age have gone through the experience of LP records, Cassette tapes, maybe even 8-tracks, and CD's. Now the era of the CD is giving way to digital music. Actually, a CD is a form of digital music. Every second of music on a CD consists of (about) 44,100 16-bit numbers. (*). Now, with the Internet, we can experience a new means of accessing digital music. There are essentially two ways to do so: Locate and download the music, and store it on a hard disk drive somewhere in your home. Later, you can play i

Cynthia Bourgeault is a colleague of Richard Rohr at the Center for Action and Contemplation . Are you familiar with her already? I have not been, but I think she might have some light to shed on meditation / centering prayer in general, and the Christian take on it specifically. Here are a couple of things I discovered relating to Cynthia: A series of 4 YouTube videos called The Heart of Centering Prayer- Christian Nonduality in Theory and Practice   Her book on the topic . And another book of hers .

I subscribe to Tidal ( see also ), a music streaming service with tens of thousands of albums streaming in CD-quality or higher. Recently, I have also set up a Roon core server on a laptop dedicated to acting as the hub of my in-home system. Roon integrates my 3 Raspberry Pi 's ( see also ) and my NAD amplifier with BluOS module into a seamless system and also integrates my own music library with Tidal.  So, using the Android Roon app, I can play the same thing in one, two or three locations simultaneously or a different track in each. And if I search for something, it looks both on Tidal and in my library (NAS) and presents the results in an intuitive way ... Tidal items show the Tidal icon beside those from that source. I'm running Roon Core on

Here's an interesting video on the topic from the amazing series Closer to Truth . The interview is with theology professor Celia Deane-Drummond . During the interview she speaks of Theodrama and references its author, Hans Urs von Balthasar .

Bruce Cockburn has written a biography , "Rumours of Glory"  in which he describes his conversion experience. He doesn't wear his faith on his sleeve, but several of his songs are among my favourites: http://www.metrolyrics.com/lord-of-the-starfields-lyrics-bruce-cockburn.html http://www.metrolyrics.com/beautiful-creatures-lyrics-bruce-cockburn.html http://www.metrolyrics.com/mystery-lyrics-bruce-cockburn.html And while we're on the subject of mystery, here's a short interview with Roger Penrose called " What Things Really Exist " in which he ponders three inter-related mysteries : Mathematics, Physical Reality, and Consciousness. Penrose is a colleague of Stephen Hawking. And that leads me to Julian Barbour , my favourite physicist. I have his book " The End of Time " where he explores more fully his understanding of time as outlin

Reawakening: To what does Jesus call you? : Morning: Psalm 37:1-18; Daniel 5:13-30; I John 5:13-20 Evening: Psalm 37:19-42 ; Luke 5:1-11 Fishing for people never appealed to me.  T...