March 2022
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I suppose it's just a feature of my advanced age, but often when I find myself thinking "I've never seen anything like this before," it only takes a moment for me to realize that I have, actually, seen something very much like it. The current round of anti-Russian fever has produced exactly that train of…
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It was absurd for Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) to ask Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson to give her a definition of "woman." It was even more absurd for the nominee to say that she could not do so because she is not a biologist. A few more questions: If the definition of "woman" is…
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I was listening to a CD which includes this work along with three of Mozart's piano sonatas. When this piece started I was confused for a bit because I thought it was Beethoven. Mozart can be surprising in that way. I had an aunt who loved classical music, and like many, especially of her generation,…
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To my taste there's not a great deal of charm in the writing of P.D. James, at least in comparison with some other female British writers of detective fiction. She's not the kind of writer who makes me think "that was a nice stroke" at some turn of phrase or bit of wit. There's a…
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The "Laudamus" from Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, K 427. (The "anyway" is because I've been in pretty low spirits, and listening to this Mass, especially this section, was beneficial.) This is not the performance I listened to last night, which was a 1982 performance conducted by von Karajan with Barbara Hendricks. But I…
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In one of Flannery O'Connor's stories, if my memory is correct, a stolid and far from young woman, the kind she often portrayed, offers this observation: A unsatisfied woman is a turrible thing in this life. I thought of that when I read this remark in an article called The Lie I Tell My Husband…
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(As you probably know, but just in case you don't, the Maronite Church is one of the eastern Christian bodies that are in communion with Rome–see this Wikipedia article for more information.) Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a Maronite Rite Mass. (I suppose "Mass" is not the right term, since it's a…
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This novel, by the editor of the Catholic literary magazine Dappled Things and published by the Catholic press Wiseblood Books, has gotten a good deal of favorable attention that's very much deserved. For several reasons, including the scripture reference in the title and the fact that it comes from an explicitly Catholic author and publisher,…
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Perhaps you'd find this prayer from the Ordinariate's St. Gregory's Prayer Book useful: Lord, bless us this Lent — let us fast most truly and profitably—by feeding in prayer on thy Spirit — Reveal me to myself in the light of thy holiness — let me not think I have knowledge enough to need no…
Light On Dark Water 