Articles 356
Who Loves Academic Discourse? A Review of Rita Felski’s Hooked
Attunement, attachment, engagement, and identification are all absolutely necessary for properly considering artworks of all kinds. However, I struggle to identify the application of Felski's argument. Perhaps it is because,…
Joe Rogan’s Speech Impediment
A decent society must be characterized by individuals who reject designations of class guilt and innocence, who are capable of seeing the image of God in the face of the…
Forest Rebel Cinema
With this love and materiality, these two films express the pure reality to which their protagonists are so devoted. In a world of frictionless unreality, endless abstractions, and tepid and…
The Irony of a Wendell Berry NFT
While some are admittedly pleasing, NFTs will not be the great decentralizing force many of us long for. Instead, their rapid profusion creates speculative bubbles and too often rewards unvirtuous…
A Good Party: A Review of Breaking Ground
A Good Party, Tara Isabella Burton suggests, is “a place where bonds of friendship, fostered in a spirit of both charity and joy, serve as the building blocks for communal…
Narrating Sickness, Land, and Hope
To whatever extent I imposed a narrative on experience, it was only because experience first imposed it upon me.
Motherhood as Sacrament: A Review of Maya Sinha’s The City Mother
Sinha’s writing should appeal to multiple audiences, from those disillusioned with modern urbanity to young mothers to thoughtful people concerned with the persistent presence of evil in our times. The…
From Endoscopy to Colonoscopy: One Man’s Strange and Confounding Journey Through American Health Care
Beneath these critiques of the American medical system and the biological mysteries of the human body throbs a more existential question: How does one deal with suffering? These are some…
Ross Douthat’s Landscape of Suffering
Douthat continues to discover remedies for his condition, but his experience has produced a book in which the natural world confronts us with suffering’s source and signifies the possibility of…
The Stories We Share
Douthat is, I think, proposing a conversation. As a low-level functionary in the medical-industrial complex, I would like to take him up on that offer. There may be much to…
On to Ottawa Redux: Notes from Canada’s “Freedom” Convoy
The Revolutionary Spirit promises—especially to the disaffected in extreme situations—a false hope in burning the status quo to the ground. It promises a new world order. It promises a reset.…
500 Acres and a Castle
By acquiring sufficient acreage, typically a minimum of 500 acres, ideas can be given the isolation they need to have a chance at succeeding, unmolested by the outside forces of…
When Foot Voting is Necessary: A Review of Free to Move
It would be nice if Somin would see migration (national and international) as a remedy for intolerable situations, a lesser evil, not a desirable thing in itself. Those who aren’t…
A Farmer Who Walks the Talk
Human stories, centered around human persons in pursuit of wisdom, are the roots from which communities grow. We can be sure, by the sweat on the brows of each person…
Substitution and Exchange
If such substitution and exchange were genuinely possible, would we agree with Lewis that no gift was more gladly given? Would we too readily assume we could bear another’s burden…
Two Cheers for Sacramentality
I give two cheers for Mark Clavier’s timely and eternal reminder to us that we should seek the encounter with God in the world; it may just give us a…
Ishiguro’s New Novel Contemplates the Relationship between Humans, Machines, and the Natural World
Sterling, KS. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), the humans believe in science. The titular character, however, believes in the Sun. Klara is a solar-powered robot whose…
Intellectual Grounding: A Conversation with Wes Jackson
It’s hard to escape from beauty if you’re ready to observe the biotic activity and geologic history of the world. Beauty is essential, and I’m saying that, even with the…
Livin’ la Vida Litúrgica
A final benefit of the liturgical lifestyle is its uniting force. Liturgical and sanctoral calendars vary among Christian confessions, echoing more divisive pieties and doctrines. But when the things Christians…
Pretend It’s a Book
Fran Liebowitz suggests that “a book isn’t supposed to be a mirror, it’s supposed to be a door.” Universities are the same. They are not meant to simply reflect the…
The Light of Wisdom’s Face: Sophia in Exile by Michael Martin
The only thing that can save the world from a lost Christianity is a Cross-centered Christianity. Can Christians take the truths from both Life Is A Miracle and Sophia In…
Finding Common Ground on Climate: A Review of Saving Us
In the balance, Hayhoe’s book makes a positive contribution to the climate conversation. The book encourages dialogue rather than hectoring. In that sense, though the targeted topic is climate change,…
Life Under Sycamores
Frank Mulder is preaching the same Gospel. Pictures of Frank Mulder make him look like he could be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, on a bicycle, planting sycamores instead of apple…
Opting Out of the Outrage Machine: A Review of Bad News
My least-favorite bumper sticker of all time reads, "If you're not outraged you're not paying attention." As a remedy for this sort of dopamine-fueled attitude, the author suggests that we…