Tag: modernity
Cormac McCarthy’s Sorrow of Creatures
Are dreams only dreams? Or are they God’s gifts of the unconscious which we still fail to know? McCarthy lets these questions remain, and no argument or worldview can answer them. So, we are left waiting for God to say something, anything, as His answer.
A Case for the Psychiatric, Part 2: Dostoevsky’s Christianity
There is something new in Doestoevsky's insights into the psychology of “the Human Being,” beyond the Church Fathers, or at least that's the case made. If this is true, especially in
the light of the complete mental breakdown happening all around us, shouldn't we be redirecting our time and energy toward incorporating this and making it central to our thought and lives?
Faithful Lives in Faithless Times
To the tomb, all life hastens. But while death is ineluctable, the growing good of the world is not. There is an intrinsic vulnerability to civilization (and parenthood), in large part because the beings who comprise it have the capacity both to sustain and destroy it; to be “the best of the animals when completed” and “the most unholy and … savage” when divorced from virtue.
Water and Wood: An Artistic Parable
Ed Hagenstein reflects on Makoto Fujimura's metaphor for cultural engagement and suggests that cultural renewal starts with the essential resources all around us.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: A Review
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self draws on a deep reservoir of erudition rather than the shallow puddle of populism.
Through a Glass Darkly: A Review of Eric O. Jacobsen’s Three...
The lens through which Eric O. Jacobsen views the three pieces of glass that serve as the basis of his book—the windshield, TVs, and phones—is in need of a good polishing.
Joyless Moderns
The modern age, in almost every detail, began with the flat rejection of joy. And the modern condition consists in alternately lamenting that there...
Lethal Loyalties: Dulce et Decorum Est
What if the nation-state was not the cure but the cause of the wars that we term “religious”?
Thoughts on Teaching Wendell Berry
Teaching Wendell Berry to students today isn't a thankless task, but the victories are small and far between (which, one might say, is all the best victories always are).
Dirt, Dollars, and Devices
Holland, MI. I confess: I hate farms. I hate everything about them. I hate the malodorous smells that take days to wash off. I...