We stream on color: blue, aquamarine, dove grey. To look straight down gives vertigo, but farther out the surface seems serene, both concentration and reflective flow. Horizons offer us expanse”confine us, also. Every wavelet, though unique, resembles all. The latitudes decline; there’s almost . . . . Continue Reading »
Outside Taos, New Mexico The topknot turned. Light struck the needled floor. The darts of sunlight found you where you lay, a target of entrancement, breathing pitch. I think of all you saw that day, but most of all I think about your face, a zone of passing weather, reading change, and being it, . . . . Continue Reading »
“People sink,” wrote Mr. Bishop; “they have no stamina left, they say ‘It is the will of God’ and die.” ” The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845“1852 , by Cecil Woodham-Smith A work such as this was never from God: poor people evicted to wander the road, or to the dark poorhouse where man . . . . Continue Reading »
Perhaps Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, has set out to provide the story of Methodism’s political engagement in the twentieth century. His thesis (which only appears in the last paragraph) is that American Methodism in 1900 was growing, confident, unified, and . . . . Continue Reading »
Vatican II’s teaching on religious freedom changed policy, not . . . . Continue Reading »
In the month since Ray Bradbury died at the age of 91, a host of tributes have appeared, touching on almost every salient aspect of his long life and his exceptionally many-sided work. Yet one theme worthy of attention, so it seems to me, has been largely ignored. “Largely,” I say”not entirely… . Continue Reading »
It wasn’t a conclusion he thought he’d come to. When he was a young graduate student, Jonathan Haidt presumed that “liberal” was pretty much a synonym for “reasonable,” if not for “obvious.” Now, as he writes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and . . . . Continue Reading »
On a typical afternoon, I drop off my eight-year-old daughter and her best friend at ballet lessons and return home to meet my five-year-old son’s friend for a “play date.” Their mothers and I appear to have everything in common. We all order our children’s clothes from the same upscale . . . . Continue Reading »
Catholics in the last fifty years or so have almost completely ceased to do dogmatic theology. Save for a handful of admirable holdouts, we have practically given up the fruitful enterprise of a millennium: the believing mind’s effort to understand the Christian mysteries. The deep things of God, . . . . Continue Reading »
On February 6, Queen Elizabeth II marked her diamond jubilee, an achievement that Great Britain will celebrate throughout 2012. I am not a monarchist, but I’ll happily join in saluting the Queen, who embodies several qualities that are in short supply among 21st-century public figures. In one of a slew of diamond jubilee books, author Robert Hardman reports that Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, is awed by the Queen’s “gravitas.” … Continue Reading »
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