There is in our world a strong strain of relentless reductionism and blind rationalism whose inevitable complements are mechanical creativity-mongering and thoughtless image-proliferation. One antidote would be a revivified attention to the reason of images. Understanding Imagination, by Dennis L. Sepper (546 pages, Springer, 2013) When Professor Rosemann invited me to this colloquium—small in scale, [...]
In our mortal lives, we can often hide the desiccated state of our souls from others; in the afterlife, we can no longer hide from others what we truly are inside. Let go of your rebelliousness and disobedience, my friends, before it is too late, before you find yourself circling the path of futility. Author’s Introduction: [...]
Author J. Michael Straczynski is nothing if not fortitude made manifest. Without proper parents and without any respect for normal cultural and religious authorities, JMS found his moral grounding in the fictional character, Superman/Clark Kent. When confronted with bullying or with a moral dilemma, JMS would consider the question: What would Superman Do? It almost always [...]
Jane Eyre is a perennial novel for me. Yes, I teach it every year, but more importantly, I reread it every time. Not just a skim. A full read. And this is why. 1. Jane is a character of such growth. I know, I know. Brontë includes much of her own life and experiences in the [...]
I have read many of the volumes in my home, but there are many more I have yet to read and many which will remain unread when the soft sift in my hour glass is finally spent. And there are eighteen others I have not yet had time to write. Our home is awash with [...]
The show I never missed growing up was “Battlestar Galactica.” Every Sunday night, no matter what I was doing, I stopped, and I watched “Battlestar Galactica.” The theme of the show was a simple but powerful one. If you stand for nothing, and if you’re not willing to protect what you have, you will lose it. [...]
Mark Twain is revered today for his liberal sympathies, as a satirist who punctured pomposity, hypocrisy, and pretension. But to dwell only on the “irreverent” aspects of his work is to see only a partial picture. His Christian background is evident throughout “The Innocents Abroad,” which reflects the journey of all human beings to the [...]
I was a mere sixteen that Summer day We all piled in a beat-up car and drove To Woodstock, or someplace we had been told That a great spectacle was to occur— […]
J.R.R. Tolkien's story of Beren and Lúthien remains one of the most beautiful parts of Tolkien’s entire mythology. It matters profoundly in "The Lord of the Rings" and indeed also mattered profoundly in Tolkien’s own life. “The chief of the stories of The Silmarillion, and the one most fully treated is the Story of Beren [...]
As Immanuel Kant says, the imagination is “a hidden art in the depth of the human soul.” It is a faculty which presupposes that somehow or other two worlds of objects are present to us, one of which seems to us to be outside, the other inside ourselves. The imagination is a puzzle not only [...]
Imagination is what makes a person human. A well-developed imagination is the key to a richer, fuller life, not just for the individual but for the community. When society suffers a loss of imagination, counterfeit forms of it will start appearing. Therefore, it should be the goal of conservatives to revive society’s imagination. It is [...]
Lady Wisdom stands on the rooftop and cries out to all who will listen, to all who have ears to hear. She offers prudence to those who lack judgment and understanding to those who lack discernment. And be assured that if you choose Wisdom you choose Hope, Joy, and Life as well. Author’s Introduction: Imagine [...]
Moral imagination runs not incidentally but necessarily in tandem with a certain aspect of conservatism, what I think of as imaginative conservatism. The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (259 pages, Ivan R. Dee, 2006) The Moral Imagination is a very engaging collection of a dozen essays on a dozen authors [...]
I have known passion and power, wealth and fame, but none of them satisfy. But what is it that I desire? Simply this: that God be near and pay heed to my prayers. I yearn to know that he has heard my cry. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great [...]