In May 1988, just under four years before his death, France’s greatest living composer made his only visit to Australia. Olivier Messiaen was 79 years old, and his journey, officially, was part of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations. But his real preoccupation—as always when he . . . . Continue Reading »
Colorado, where I live, is a great place to go stargazing. Up in the mountains, the heavens are particularly vibrant and clear. I go out at night when I can, and, like millions of others today and certainly before me, look up and marvel. What do we see? We see truth, of a sort, for the Psalmist . . . . Continue Reading »
My mother’s teeth were kept in a bottlemarked with the sign of the cross. I usedto shake it till they’d rattle,interest and childish horror fused.They weren’t her teeth. They were mine.My brothers’ and my sisters’, too.The one’s we’d shed, as sharks do,pearls we’d surrendered to . . . . Continue Reading »
The last time I was in America, which was last autumn, I visited the battlefield at Little Bighorn. It was a beautiful snowy day. The landscape was vast and white and still. When we pulled into the battlefield site, hardly anyone was there. A couple of park rangers, a few other visitors. It made the . . . . Continue Reading »
You get the best first impression of Poundbury on a bright summer’s afternoon, when the air is heavy with heat and the light begins to turn gold. You’re in Dorset, a rural county on the south coast of England, close enough to the sea for the light to have that maritime clarity. Driving from Lyme . . . . Continue Reading »
I sat in my chair, looking through the window across the wide plain to the towers of Lüneburg. Everyone was silent. The therapist turned to the older woman. “What do you see?”—“The Elbe River.” Then she began to tell: Her father, whom she had never met, had died in Russian captivity . . . . Continue Reading »
Once, the story goes, man stood at the center of the universe. He looked in the mirror and saw a masterpiece: “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty . . .” He looked to history and saw the hand of Providence guiding the species from the Garden of Eden to the splendors of Christendom. He . . . . Continue Reading »
Several years ago, James Mumford brought to my attention a passage from an essay by George Orwell. I was struck by it then and am struck by it still. The essay is titled simply, “A Hanging.” Orwell had served in a British police force in Burma at a time when Britain was still a colonial power. . . . . Continue Reading »
The room was overflowing, the applause thunderous. Novelist, activist, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth delivered a galvanizing Erasmus Lecture in late October. It was one of the most bracing and exciting in our long series of Erasmus Lectures. I’m delighted to publish “Against Christian . . . . Continue Reading »
My father holds a panel of glassbetween us: we are both bathed blue.Wordlessly, we let the light passthrough. Where blade scores, glass breaks true. Cut pieces are placed side by side.Burnished, their edges touch through foiland lead. Coils of thin smoke dividethe air above us. From such has come . . . . Continue Reading »