Beethoven combined a breadth of contemplative serenity and a concentrated loftiness of thought, a yearning for a place utterly pure and free of this vale of tears, a vale in which he functioned so erratically and from which he eventually completely withdrew. He was a man who eventually tamed his self-serving musical passions, pierced the [...]
The imagination allows the human experience to be of both motion and stability, both becoming and being—but could it be that contained in our experience of time is an experience of divine nature? In his Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius writes that “the infinite motion of temporal things tries to imitate the ever present immobility [...]
Bruce Springsteen has called "We Are Alive," the final song on his 2012 album, "Wrecking Ball," a "ghost story." That it is, but it is also a song of high spirits and hope, one that deals with the Christian themes of resurrection and the communion of saints. There's a cross up yonder up on Calvary [...]
While many artists and composers have depicted the Passion of Christ, Beethoven carried an especially weighty cross in the form of his privation of hearing, which isolated him from society and forced him to compose music from his “inner ear.” Like Christ in the Garden, he found himself alone and forsaken, wrestling with a tribulation [...]
As coronavirus fatalities multiply these days—as COVID-19 leaves our bodies sick and makes our spirits sick at heart—I find myself asking how similar the mood today is to that of the West during the 1889-1890 flu pandemic. One of the world’s worst plagues occurred in 1889-1890. The so-called Russian flu is of particular interest [...]
If you’re feeling threatened by disease, I want you to know that many people the world over have felt that way for many centuries and they nonetheless held fast, carried on as best they were able, and rejoiced whenever they could. So, here’s what I think of the current COVID-19 situation: Be mentally, emotionally, [...]
To the Christian struggling with the uncontrollable urge to engage in social media and internet searches, books like Nir Eyal’s “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life” might appear to be a godsend. However, such instructions are bound to be frustrating and disappointing to those seeking lasting spiritual progress. Technology’s invasion [...]
Beethoven wrote "Adelaide," a song for solo voice and piano, between 1794 and 1796, when he was in his mid-twenties. The text of the song is a poem in German by Friedrich von Matthisson, to whom Beethoven dedicated the work and to whom he wrote after its completion: "My most ardent wish will be fulfilled [...]
We were all riding high only recently, and suddenly, there’s not enough on the shelves of the grocery stores. How should we think about it all? The virtue of a curriculum like that at our college is that the sweep of it encompasses the memory of the most extraordinary challenges to human nature. Pandemics [...]
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) remains Germany’s most popular poet and arguably its best alongside Friedrich Schiller.[1] Born in Frankfurt into a bourgeois upper-middle-class family, he spent his early years as a leading voice in the Romantic literary movement known [...]
Latin, as the primary historical language of erudition and learning in the West, is the sole gateway into the halls of Western thought and humanistic learning. Without the use of this language, we can hardly know ourselves, and certainly not the road that brought us to the modern day. “To read Latin and Greek [...]
Do we really have to shut down our entire country because of the danger of the coronavirus? I confess I’m still not sure exactly about the wisdom of it. I have more thoughts about that, but I’ll save them for a future essay. Right now, the reality is that #canceleverything is winning the day [...]
If we make the most of the coronavirus lockdown, we will take time to assess our whole lives. The crisis could awaken all of us and be the tipping point for a major reversal in the world’s moral and spiritual decadence. I was first introduced to the riches of Benedictine spirituality when a kind [...]
"Hunter of Invisible Game" is a short, post-apocalyptic film directed by Bruce Springsteen and Thom Zimny that was released on July 9, 2014. The film is also the music video for the eponymous song, which appears on Mr. Springsteen's eighteenth studio album, High Hopes. —Editor I hauled myself up out of the ditch And built [...]