Our obsessiveness about exercise and health seems supremely anti-gnostic.
But the opposite is the case. Consider the imagery: “Buns of steel” and “Abs of iron” and “Cable-like biceps.”
The bodybuilder aims to exercise himself to robothood. His goal to exercise until he’s elevated to a state beyond human. He wants to escape his inevitably soft and pliable, penetrable and vulnerable, fleshliness.
A Catholic Approach to Immigration
In the USCCB’s recent Special Pastoral Message, the bishops of the United States highlight the suffering inflicted…
The Classroom Heals the Wounds of Generations
“Hope,” wrote the German-American polymath Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “is the deity of youth.” Wholly dependent on adults, children…
Still Life, Still Sacred
Renaissance painters would use life-sized wooden dolls called manichini to study how drapery folds on the human…