• Politics/Culture - Religion

    What Are We To Make of Pope Francis?

    September 26, 2015 - By 

    We are so used to schtick, spin and PR in this world that we hardly want to believe anything anymore. Or believe in anyone. “What’s your game, and what are you trying to sell?” is our default stance, aided and abetted by a media inordinately pleased with itself in finding contradiction upon contradiction in every human being and endeavor. And truth to tell, that job is easy, because we are all as shot-through with contradiction as clay pigeons on a rifle range. Always have been. All of which begets jaundice and jadedness as our modern coins of the realm, and…

  • Poetry - Religion

    Reflections From the Abyss: The God Quest of Poet Christian Wiman

    July 17, 2013 - By 

    Poets are by turns lyrical, expressive, rhythmic, and profound, but perhaps most of all, they are intense. Their intensity manifests in the sharp eye they cast on the world and every detail in it, the careful, sustained scrutiny they give to every object, person or situation in front of them, and to every resultant thought in their mind and gut that is yearning for expression. It is this intensity that perhaps most shines forth from poet Christian Wiman’s recent memoir, “My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer.” If poetry has a way of concentrating the mind, then a wretched…