Reflections upon Emergent Occasions

One of John Donne's most important and haunting prose works, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, was composed in less than a month during an illness. Donne divided his book into twenty-three sections, each consisting of a meditation, an expostulation, and a prayer.

My meditations and reflections are not in any way as profound as John Donne's,

but I did gain pleasure from the discipline of making regular, almost daily, reflections on what was happening in my life for a short period of time during an unusual circumstance--in a land that was both new and old for me.

The term "emergence" as it is used today refers to how objects and patterns arise from simple interactions in ways that are surprising. Every day in Ireland--as well as in my preparations and my subsequent reflections--was full of the quality of "surprisingness." These entries and images are one way to record and remember these epiphanies.