To Sara Sweeney, bricks, concrete, and glass are expressions of our soul. Each building, in the architect’s view, is a statement of us, our relationship to each other, and our connection, or disconnection, with the Earth.
A registered architect, Sweeney has had a 19-year career reflecting her passion and commitment to sustainable design, green building practices, […]

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An angel, calm and serene, is playing an instrument, perhaps heralding an arrival. Indeed, those worshiping inside the church where the angel is on the front exterior wall were awaiting a coming – the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They believed it was going to happen imminently. The years of the 19th century came and […]

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Beautiful landscape calls us to dream and to wander, to take paths unknown. In it, we fix our eyes both on the distant horizons and on the tiniest details at our side. It reaches into our souls, rewards and soothes us. It is the Earth’s embrace.
Standing in an open field in England’s Lake District recently, […]

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“Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it?”
John O’Donohue
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
If we are blessed with such kinship, then the Irish Hunger Memorial is a place of its embrace. This small. lush pocket, off New […]

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New York City may seem like a curious place to go looking to see gorse, the small shrub that thrives in rural fields and along hillsides, its yellow flowers rippling across the countryside in spring. But there’s at least one sure place I’ve enjoyed the sight of it in New York – the Irish Hunger […]

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Outside, it was a post-Christmas, rush-hour frenzy, throngs crowding near the revolving doors and the holiday windows of Macy’s or walking speedily to Penn Station. Inside St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in New York in the midst of all of this, you’d never know it. Two men were slowly and carefully […]

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