Come, Desire of Nations, Come…
Why study the pagans? The question threatens to become rote, dull and boring because we have become so accustomed to its’ formally, logically apt answers.
Pagans First.
“…a god of purity and brightness and the clarity of perfect form, the most radiant and visible of all that is divine, but also a god always more distant, more hidden, whose arrows fly from farther and ever farther away; the shining one, the lord of poetry and song and prophecy, but also the god …
Liberalism And Conservatism Explained In Fables
Liberalism and conservatism, explained in two fables I wrote for Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke A Fable by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A mother was preparing a ham dinner. After she cut off the small end of the ham, she threw it away and placed the larger chunk in a pan for baking. Her husband asked her, …
The Uncertainty Of History/The Certainty Of Fiction.
Count me as one of those amused by the self-congratulation inherent in just about every American news story about how primitive Sochi is. In the weeks leading up to the 2014 Olympics, my favorite media outrage was the one about stray dogs being rounded up and put down before Olympic visitors arrived in town. Never …
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Babette And The Beatific Vision
Several months ago, Babette’s Feast received a Criterion release accompanied by a fat little book of essays about the film, as well as the Isak Denisen short story upon which the film was based. In the last several years, I have seen the film five times and loved it so much I named a daughter …
Developing Virtue Through Understanding.
A final exam I recently gave on The Consolation of Philosophy. Write a conversation between yourself and Lady Philosophy. Lady Philosophy wants you to be happy, although you have recently gotten away with something sinful and you think you might feel better once you have confessed it to the person you sinned against. You have …
The Transcendental Aspects Of God As Children.
The first two chapters of Shelley’s Frankenstein describe the lives of three young children in Geneva: “I [the narrator Victor] was…deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.” “[Elizabeth] busied herself with the aerial creations of the poets and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home…” “…Clerval occupied himself…with the moral relations …
Christ The Student: Student As A Divine Office Of God.
Christ has often been seen as Prophet, Priest, and King, and following an Augustinian theory of learning, He has often been viewed as the Teacher as well. We have not often imagined Christ as the Student, though. Should we? The act of learning was such a mystery to Plato that he claimed learning was nothing …
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Punks.
I. On Sunday afternoon, I drink a French press and put on Bill Evans or Django Reinhardt while meandering through the forest-clearing, four pound Sunday edition of the New York Times. On the sofa, my wife and I read the paper while our children take a nap, which is an hour if we’re lucky. So …
Your Very Life Is A Sacred Text
At least one of St. John Chrysostom’s homilies on the Ascension is absolutely hilarious. Not accidentally hilarious, be assured. In the great preacher’s second homily on the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:6 and following), Chrysostom explains why Christ, for a second time, evades the apostle’s question about when the Kingdom of Israel will be …