Designs for Living

October 29, 2012 By

Let’s see how much I can post before Sandy knocks out our power! Anyway, I got a lot of great new questions on my whirlwind speaking tour of Pittsburgh and its suburbs. Some of them were really tough to answer (“Why did you accept the teaching authority of the Church?”, to which I suppose the [...]

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From Denise Levertov, “To Live in the Mercy of God”

October 25, 2012 By

Such passion— rage or joy?                               Thus, not mild, not temperate, God’s love for the world. Vast flood of mercy                       flung on resistance.

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Memento mori

October 22, 2012 By

Yeah.

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“St. Francis Borgia and the Dying Impenitent”

October 10, 2012 By

Got that in with forty minutes left in his feast day! Looks awful at this size though, sorry. Anyway this is Goya and yes, the subject was one of the Borgias. Every family’s got its embarrassing relative….

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Advice for the Advicelorn

October 9, 2012 By

I was reading John Cheese’s latest column, “5 Pieces of Advice Every Adult Wishes They Got as a Teenager,” and it got me thinking about the subject of advice more generally. I usually tell people I’m against advice, but manifestly that isn’t true: I give it and even, very very occasionally and when I have [...]

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Confirming all my suspicions: Oscar Wilde edition

October 3, 2012 By

The less you care about the Crucifixion, the less I will gain from your reading of Wilde’s writing. Period, comma. (Provoked by this book, which is his dissertation I think and therefore much is forgivable, but also Camille Paglia.)

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Welcome Dawn Eden to Patheos!

September 28, 2012 By

She’s here. My review of her new book, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, is here.

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“A Child’s Garden of Sacrifice”

September 26, 2012 By

You should be reading your kids Oscar Wilde.

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How Green Was My Carnation

September 26, 2012 By

The God of Mirrors, by Robert Reilly, is a soapy little novel about Oscar Wilde. It basically goes through the historical record imagining what each triumph or disaster might have felt like. There are lots of Wilde epigrams and assorted flotsam throughout the book, not always placed in a way which makes sense (there’s an [...]

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Let’s play You Should Be Grateful

September 25, 2012 By

When Wilde extended a hand, he made no move to take it. “Prayer is the only thing that can console you in this place, prisoner. I trust you understand that. Prayer and a true spirit of repentance.” –Robert Reilly, The God of Mirrors (of which more later) There’s a way of saying true things so [...]

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