We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness, we call it love. –Dr. Seuss Illustration above by Mayumi Otero
Category
Art
When Is A Masterpiece Really A Masterpiece?
“What makes a work of art unique isn’t its color or composition or subject, it has nothing whatsoever to do with what we see. Why are some paintings masterpieces while others, perhaps even more competent, are forgotten? Why are some symphonies still beloved hundreds of years after the composer has died?” Gamache thought about it….
Why I like Hardcore Music: Art, Morality and Catharsis
The philosophical debate over the moral effects of the arts is hardly new; we can trace it back at least as far as the writings of Plato (ca.428–ca.348 bce) and his most famous student, Aristotle (384–322 bce). Plato argues that we should be suspicious of the so-called “imitative arts,” because they arouse our passions—“Frantic tick…
A weak force, like a kiss.
It is in or under the name of God that the event calls upon us. It is not what we call God that is at issue, but what God calls. Then again, it is not what God calls that is at issue, but the response, which is the first and only testimony to the call,…
The Golden Echo by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace, Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace— Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath, And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver…
Freedom and Sweet, Sweet Love Making
Love requires freedom…..this means that God’s actual goal for creation, to bring it to fruition within the divine love (Paul’s ‘all-in-all’), requires creation to have genuine freedom. Even Calvinists pretend its true in their daily lives. For example, when two lovers consummate their marriage in a passionate act of sweet love making, freedom, vulnerability, and…
A Persuasion, A Form Evoking Desire: David Bentley Hart and the Aesthetics of Christian Truth
Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to…
I will not be diminished by you or anyone else.
“I expect you to answer Misère” said Gamache, turning back to Vasan Gilbert and holding his eyes. “Doctor” Gilbert said, his voice cold. “I will not be diminished by you or anyone else.” He looked again at his son, then back to the Chief Inspector. “Désolé,” said Gamache and bowed slightly, never taking his deep…
When The Answer is Also The Question
An image Bell returns to often in Love Wins is that of Jesus being the rock that gives water, an image from Hebrew scripture where Moses, leading the Israelites through the desert, called on God to give them water. God told Moses to take his staff and smack a rock with it. The rock cracked…
What kills can’t be seen
…to catch a killer they did’t move forward, they moved back, into the past. That was where the crime began, where the killer began. Some event, perhaps long forgotten by everyone else, had lodged inside the murderer and had begun to fester. “What kills can’t be seen,” the Cheif had warned Bovue. “That’s what makes…