There are some ideas so plainly preposterous, so spectacularly stupid, that only an astrophysicist of atheist persuasion could possibly believe them. And when will we stop listening to such people, I’d like to know—all these self-styled experts eager to tell us how little we know? Especially about the origins of the universe, concerning which they [...]
Books on theology and books on gardening are more than plentiful, but rarely are both topics fused in the way these books manage to do. Christine Norvell gives us the intellectual grasp of the relationship between creation and the life of the soul, while Samantha Stephenson explains how, by cultivating both the earth and our [...]
Whether they be fairies, gnomes, cryptids, aliens, or elves, what are these creatures about which man has written for centuries? C.S. Lewis explained that the medieval mind understood them to be inhabitants of a kind of middle realm between the physical and the spiritual regions. But is this "Middle Earth" real? No matter our chosen [...]
We may say that the world for Thomas Aquinas does not merely have but is blessed with intelligibility, just as man is blessed with reason. Nature’s beauty is not confined to the senses but extends to the mind. “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has [...]
Editor’s Note: Author Siobhan Nash-Marshall recently passed away. Please enjoy this wonderful essay, one of many she penned for us. I have escaped the City, as I do every year in Summer. I know that this sounds trite, and perhaps even a tad snobbish, like a line from The Great Gatsby. But that heat that [...]
Although Pythagorean mathematics bears little resemblance to what we find in today’s textbooks, its foundation was laid by ancient lovers of wisdom. By rediscovering its original significance, mathematics might guide our minds not toward engineering aimed at mastering nature, but toward contemplation, preparing us for deeper contact with the realm of spirit and its magnificent, [...]
It’s incredible how much the weather affects us. Toward the end of their protracted journey to the Promised Land after their miraculous escape from Egypt, Moses gathers all the Israelites together and tells them that life in Canaan is going to be different from life in Egypt. One of the differences will be how their [...]
Infused with the formative power of story, classic literature—replete with beautiful nature language—has the potential to call us back into the “remembrance of what is,” imparting vital concepts of land and place that will shape the next generation of Creation’s stewards. Imparting Concepts of Land and Place through Classic Literature Wendell Berry’s 1964 poem “The [...]
“At the Council of Trent, nobody noticed that it was Gutenberg who made all the problems,” said Marshall McLuhan, “and at Vatican II, nobody mentioned the hidden ground of electric information which has created all the moral and theological problems of our time.” Marshall McLuhan identified our time of postmodernity as the “ecological age” in which [...]
Emily Dickinson creates a simple buffet for our imagination in her nature and summer poems, but most especially in "I taste a liquor never brewed." And rather than being appalled by her celebration of “drunkenness,” I embrace her abandoned delight in the essence of summer. I taste a liquor never brewed – From Tankards scooped [...]
Sigrid Undset understood how experiences of joy alongside unfulfilled longings can break the spell of modernity and open a window into the spiritual life. "The Wild Orchid" explores the possibility of spiritual awakening in society that has grown bored with the Christian faith and is seeking new ways to re-enchant the natural world. In Sigrid [...]
Seashore towns once played the same conservative role as American farms did, but by the end of the twentieth century, man took to coercing nature in order to protect his ocean playground. The Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of the United States serve as a home to the Union’s great cities and to a majority of [...]
The self-absorption that is so prominently on display in the present day precludes such transcendence. It involves an inflation of the self that results in the eclipse of all phenomena transcendent to it. The question that materializes in this age is not so much, what do I matter, but what does anything else matter but [...]
My mother’s unrelenting message to me was: Keep your head, keep your feet planted on the ground, muster courage in the face of the ambiguous and the unknown, do what is in front of you, and by all means possible take care of your responsibilities. I’ve had more vaccinations for more virulent diseases than most [...]