The wind shears through hardwoods, then rain brings down the leaves here, eight thousand miles east oftheir archipelago of service, maplike now in its remoteness. Woodsmoke censes the air in the hermitage they . . . . Continue Reading »
For a magazine devoted to religion and public life, the piece by R. R. Reno entitled “Engines of Destruction” was rather strange (January 2024). Religious analysis was almost completely absent: Except for an attack on the positioning of Christian leaders and Pope Francis, it was . . . . Continue Reading »
Initially developed at the University of Toronto between the 1930s and 1970s, media ecology is a meta-disciplinary perspective that understands media as environments that shape human consciousness. Despite this expansive approach to media, media ecology has generally shied away from exploring that . . . . Continue Reading »
How to describe what can’t beseen, invisible, yet universal,what is, has been, will always be,the Endless One, the cosmic forcewithout which nothing would exist,formlessness creating form,the mountain etched on open sky,the music score of notes and rests,silence giving shape to sound, asdarkness . . . . Continue Reading »
Before I formed you in the womb, my son,I knew you. Knew you long before that highspring day in the sixth year of the reignof FDR, when the full-leaved sycamores that frame the tired river that runs Eastsmiled on your mother—just sixteen—andyour father, twenty-one, when they cametogether . . . . Continue Reading »
You’re bound to lose: the house will always win,in time. At first, though, Fortune flatters thosewho yield to her enticements. You beginwith bits of luck, small stakes. If you propose a higher sum, she’ll play her violin,flash gold-flecked eyes, throw you a long-stemmed rose.When bets get high, . . . . Continue Reading »
now thou but stoop’st to me—Ben Jonson The falcon like a teardrop heaven criesfrom higher than the city’s tallest towerdesigned to fall precisely through clear skiesnow hurtles at two hundred miles per hourAt such a speed what keeps her flashing eyesfrom drying out her lungs from ripping . . . . Continue Reading »
Those familiar with Christian Wiman’s career will know he has explored various forms: poetry, anthology, criticism, and memoir. Zero at the Bone combines each of his talents to produce something familiar and yet strangely new. Continue Reading »
Winter is a bad time. Whether for a season or for a life, it dampens the self. Or so a recent writer claimed. “Mankind endured a long winter of the Dark Ages” for a thousand years, “repressing” the human spirit in a barren season that lasted centuries. The human individual, as fate would . . . . Continue Reading »
The day I lost my sight,I could no more see you, my love,Still God is in the remnant. The day I can not hearYour lovely voice reveal your thoughts,Yet God is in the remnant. The day I can not moveMy lips to speak my love to you,Still God is in the remnant. The day I lose my memory,And all the times . . . . Continue Reading »
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