In every generation, there are always those who shun the darkness to follow the light. It is these humble souls with whom I am blessed to worship every Sunday. Through the glory of God, the light shines in the darkness as it has ever done, and still the darkness does not comprehend it. Et lux [...]
The Iliad is Homer’s vehement attempt to reconcile god and man, clairvoyantly musing on how terrible and wonderful it would be if a man possessed a divine nature. As the heroes of The Iliad are slain in blood, Homer gives each of them an epitaph in poetry, that they may die not as expendable masses, [...]
Myth connects us to the deepest truths and dynamics of human experience, and it does so through the gift of imagination and catharsis. As we identify with the hero, we experience what he goes through. We share not only his thoughts, but also his emotions. Heart speaks to heart. Some time ago my wife sighed [...]
Ride this one out, as you have done before. Batten down what can be battened. Reef What can be reefed, avoid the white sea-shore, Do not expect a rescue or relief. Endurance is its own kind of relief. The other ships are sinking. You must be Hope’s light for them, the north star of belief, [...]
How much of one’s desperation comes from apparently having it all, according to the precepts of secular humanism—the great false religion of our time—and yet having nothing at all to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon? Growing up in a small Montana town the 1980s—no stop lights, no fast food, plenty of guns—I was mostly [...]
All through the 1960s, my generation had been riveted by the space race started by President Kennedy. But what the astronauts accomplished on Christmas Eve of 1968 left us awestruck, and I remember it not as a moment of victory in the space race, but as an opening of religious wonder on that Christmas Eve… [...]
Latent in the seeds of all social movements, Charles Péguy asserted, are invariably good intentions: altruism, the common good, solidarity, or perhaps the search for truth. Why, then, must they all end in politics? One of the most influential public intellectuals of the French belle époque, Charles Péguy, had every reason to be weary of [...]
The twentieth century produced many giants and many heroes. Some of these were both heroes and giants, and one must include in this number the giant and heroic figure of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The twentieth century produced many giants and many heroes. Yet many of the giants were not heroes, and many of the heroes were [...]
How is it possible to feel happy and sad at the same time? Recently I tasted that bittersweetness as I walked the campus of a college I attended almost 30 years ago. The landmarks of warm memories were still there: majestic buildings, the elegant gym, the cozy dining hall. Then I came to a place [...]
For all that we are often lost amid the loneliness, hostage to the gravity and grief that cause us to fall, there is always that sudden and unexpected upsurge of grace and glory to lift us high above the dark and sullen weight of so many dead and dying leaves... An old and valued friend, [...]
Because of intense fear, we refuse to acknowledge that nothing in this world is permanent, that everything perishes, that soon we will be no more. Lodged within every human heart is the blind hope that death comes to others, not to us... Prometheus was the one Olympian god to rebel against Zeus’ plan to wipe [...]
Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and [...]
The power of imagination is to see things whole, to see things clearly, to see things with sanctity, to see things with love… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Alan Cornett as he discusses Wendell Berry’s thoughts on environmentalism and climate change, wealth and the economy, hope and [...]
Hope permeates God’s creation, our natural world and the world of nature, as concrete images and as an enduring cycle, a complete and unrelenting season in itself… Hope is not a finite thing as Emily Dickinson well knew. A thing of feathers it is, and few definitions could do it justice. Yet we can catch [...]