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 [...]
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 [...]
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: [...]
The 22nd of July is Mary Magdalene’s day, and continuing my sequence of sonnets written in response to the church year I post this for her. As usual you can hear the poem by clicking on its title or on the ‘play’ button. This sonnet is drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
As a child, I spent my free time divided between two activities—exploring the environs in and around my hometown, and reading everything under the sun. Ranging from biography to high fantasy to rigorous logic, these books shaped my tastes, thoughts, and aspirations. Ever since attending first grade—at Wiley Elementary School in Hutchinson, Kansas—I’ve loved to [...]
I have lived a life of violent extremes: outcast and king, shepherd and warrior, betrayer and betrayed, a man of song and a man of blood, the worst of sinners and the beloved friend of God. What have the mountains and valleys of my life taught me? One thing and one thing only: patience. [...]
My first and last care is not politics but education. Education seems to me inherently conservative, being the transmission, and thus the saving, of a tradition’s treasures of fiction and thought. But education is also inherently imaginative. Author’s Note: I wish to dedicate this essay to a writer of books whose greatness is at [...]
Though myths lack literal truth, I am convinced that they contain true wisdom that must be attended to by those who desire to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. How, you may ask, can I both reject and embrace the message of the myths? Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other [...]
The Christian belief in the Eucharist stands as a universal expression of faith in a transcendent value that exists beyond human effort, to which we can nevertheless strive through faith. It would be hard to find anything in the history of civilization quite like this mystical belief that bound Christians together in communion for [...]
Oh, pay heed, citizens of the twenty-first century, to Philosophy’s warning. There are many in your day who think they can control Fortune’s Wheel. They cannot. Those who reach the top of her Wheel may rejoice for a day, but sooner than they think, the Wheel shall spin and they shall accompany it in [...]
In the Year of the Dragon The Lion fell: Exhausted, confused, Lost in the thickening mist of age and pain, His brittle claws still deep in the flesh of his prey, His iron, toothless jaw still clamped on Life’s throat. […]
There is always room in the temple of poetry for another voice, another perspective, another way of tackling the great themes of humanity. So listen to me, now, you who will grace this earth 2000 years after I’m dead and gone: Be the person you were created to be. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, [...]