My friend Ann Frailey has written another lovely little meditative piece, http://blog.catholicwritersguild.com/2021/02/i-lift-my-gaze.html. It’s about death and grief, a coincidence because the same topic has been on my mind. Her opening quote, which was from Tom Hanks’ character of Walt Disney in the film Saving Mr. Banks, put my own thoughts in focus: “That’s what we storytellers [...]
At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a post pondering what the meaning of it might be, suggesting we “pay attention.” There were well-intentioned attempts by many to diminish significance by pointing to epidemics, plagues, and natural disasters of the past, but we have never had a pandemic in human history, a deadly disease of [...]
I got sucked into a quarrel yesterday. I hate to admit that, but there it is. The only value such an experience has is the self-examination it evokes, not just to determine whether I was truly “right” but more importantly, to determine what made me lose my cool. I raised my voice—something I never do—then realized too late [...]
(This has nothing whatever to do with Catholic culture.) If you are lucky enough to have a friend who lives in South Georgia and has a pecan tree, you might have received pecans this year for Christmas, and you might have thought, Now what am I supposed to do with this. Well, a word or two [...]
Roseanne Sullivan over at Dappled Things has written a piece on the ghastly nativity scene at the Vatican, https://dappledthings.org/18296/if-2020-was-a-nativity-scene/ appropriately titled “If 2020 was a nativity scene”. If you haven’t seen it, you might want to brace yourself: Not included in the photo here is the figure of an astronaut and something that looks like Darth Vader with a [...]
… at a church named Church of the Immaculate Conception in the small town of Dublin, Georgia, a friend will be consecrated as a Virgin Living in the World by our Bishop of Savannah, Stephen Parkes. I can’t attend because of the virus and I can’t see the ceremony because I don’t do Facebook, but it [...]
Many years ago, during the height of my Tolkien obsession, I engaged in online chat with other Middle-Earth inhabitants. We covered topics like “Where would you have lived in Middle-Earth?” Most chatters said they would have lived in the Shire; some said Rivendell. I knew I would have lived in Lothlorien. When the topic of immortal [...]
Several years ago, when I was still teaching Freshman English at a local university, I wrote a post about the coming death of sex. I reported that I’d held a class discussion on the subject, and more or less polled my students. On the basis of that discussion, I concluded that sex was dying. There were [...]
Nowhere is the devastation of betrayal depicted more clearly than in Henry James’ Washington Square. Set in 1840s New York, it is the story of the daughter of a widowed physician who feels burdened by the plain and dull daughter of his brilliant and beautiful wife. Catherine is completely unaware of her father’s disappointment in her. She adores [...]
Joseph Pearce writes: In this week's Inner Sanctum I read and discuss three poems by St. John Henry Newman for All Souls Day. We also continue on our pilgrimage to Rome with Hilaire Belloc, hearing him wax lyrical on Europe and the Faith. Beginning a discussion of The Aeneid, I consider the extent to which Virgil's epic [...]
