Observances

A Blog of News and Notes from Michael Magree, SJ

Category: Longform posts

  • A new moment

    I’m back working on the website, because I have been grateful for how much people want to stay in touch and to see what I am up to during the next year. I will be on sabbatical after receiving tenure, and I will be spending a good portion of that time from September 2026 until August 2027 overseas. In future posts, I will report more of what the coming year will include.

    Now seemed a good time to come up with a new title for the blog. Bailiwick, the former title, is a favorite word of mine, but it does not communicate enough about my work or vocation.

    Some other options for blog titles that I considered:

    • Eastern Promises
    • Spiritual Formation
    • A Time of Gifts
    • Ad Orientem
    • To the East
    • To the Sunrise
    • Toward the Rising of the Sun

    None of these satisfied. I settled instead on Observances.

    For myself, the new title indicates an aspiration of the next year, to become more obedient and disponible to God within the vocation and the mission that I have been given. I want to be “an observant,” one with his eyes on God and with real adherence to the way of life in which he continues to place me. I also want to be “an observer,” one who is attentive and watchful, noticing the world around him, especially as I encounter in this year new ways of being Christian, being religious, and being human. 

    I will soon add a way to sign up for a monthly newsletter, so that people can stay informed about updates to the blog. You can always follow the blog via any RSS feed reader such as NetNewsWire.

    Thanks in advance to any and all who follow along. May this social (and parasocial) relationship be useful and AMDG: for the greater glory of God.

  • Writing in a Jumble

    Writing has a tendency to clarify my thoughts on a subject. Yet it does so only after throwing my thoughts into chaos. Two things seem to be happening. In the first place, my mind, as I begin to compose, begins to make all sorts of connections that it has never made before. In the second place, I find that the way I express myself makes far less sense on the page than it did in my mind. Or rather, I find myself with the links and connections that had seemed to make sense suddenly seeming to have very little weight. 

    The movement into greater clarity through writing is hard fought. 

    Clarity is gained first through a kind of disciplined focus that respects and values the new connections that seem to burst forth in writing and yet also knows how to put those new connections to the side. The goal is clarity about the topic itself. 

    Clarity is gained in the second and harder place by that self-knowledge that is able to admit how little I know, and how many were the platitudes that seemed so powerful. It is this second movement that is also the profound spiritual movement of leaning into the darkness. There is a kind of human and intellectual trust that says that the darkness is a place of fruitfulness and not a place of death. This is an important, if feeble imitation of the great active and passive nights of the senses and of the spirit, which are such a part of the spiritual journey.