Light On Dark Water

May 28, 2015

“No matter what the Church did, he was done with it.”

My friend Robert W sent me a link to this piece by Rod Dreher which in turn refers to this piece by Matt Walsh which is pretty well summarized in its title: "Maybe Christianity In America Is Dying Because It’s Boring Everyone To Death": And this is the problem with Christianity in this country. Not just
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May 25, 2015

52 Authors: Week 21 – Elizabeth Goudge

Since no one else has submitted anything for this week, I'm assembling this from several blog posts on Elizabeth Goudge that I did over a period of a couple of years beginning in 2009, when Janet Cupo introduced me to her, for which I am very grateful. Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984) should have been an Inkling.
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May 23, 2015

Late for Pentecost, but not quite too late

Janet Cupo has been doing an interesting series based on a (the?) Holy Spirit Novena, commenting on each prayer and illustrating it with works of art. This link will take you to a page containing all of them, in reverse order.
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May 21, 2015

Propaganda in the Catholic University (or College)

Francesca Murphy has written a fascinating piece for First Things about the push for revision of the curriculum to make it more "goal-oriented." Like most bits of educational jargon, the phrase seems vague and harmless on its face, but in fact means, for those who are in the trade, something more specific. In this case it
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May 18, 2015

52 Authors: Week 20 – Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916–2000) started her writing career rather late in life at the age of 58, shortly before her husband died. She was a member of the very accomplished Knox family, which included her father, who was the editor of Punch, and his three brothers, one of whom was the famous convert to Roman Catholicism,
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May 14, 2015

Week 20

Update: someone has come through with a nice piece, and I may be able to post it Monday night. Most likely not before then. I'll let the name of the author be a surprise. — There's nobody on the roster for the upcoming week. I'm going to be out of town Friday through Monday and
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May 11, 2015

52 Authors: Week 19 – Etienne Gilson

Etienne Gilson (1884-1978) was a Christian philosopher. Between the publication of his PhD thesis in 1909 and his last works of philosophy in the late 1960s, he helped to create genuine historical research in Mediaeval philosophy and theology, he wrote dozens of sparkling works of history and of philosophy, and he pugnaciously championed the influence
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May 10, 2015

All music is folk music. Horses don't sing. –Louis Armstrong (from that same Nat Hentoff book)
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May 9, 2015

Daniel Amos: “Rocket Packs”

The paleofuture theme song: Thanks to Craig Burrell for this wonderful discovery.
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May 6, 2015

American Institutions

I've been reading a collection of Nat Hentoff's music journalism, American Music Is, and came across this great anecdote: When Mr. [Robert] O'Meally was a student at Harvard, he approached [Ralph] Ellison, who was giving a talk, and asked: Don't you think the Harlem Renaissance failed because we failed to create institutions to preserve our gains?"
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