“Morally Exemplary Friendships”: Wesley Hill looks for examples

June 5, 2013 By

at First Things: …When I originally announced that I was working on a book about friendship, Ben Myers suggested I pick up Uncommon Friendships: An Amicable History of Modern Religious Thought by William Young. The book focuses on three pairs of friends—Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot, and Julia Kristeva and [...]

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“Friendship in Between ‘Romance’ and Loneliness”: Wesley Hill

May 30, 2013 By

blogs; did I post this already? It’s from a few months ago. Anyway I just re-read it and liked it a lot. Comments also worth reading! Early on in Mark Vernon’s insightful book The Meaning of Friendship, there’s this throwaway observation: “In TV soaps, the characters always have their friends to return to when their [...]

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Hope Stumbles Eternal: “Frances Ha”

May 25, 2013 By

The director of The Squid and the Whale made a movie with the star of Damsels in Distress, and it’s about friendship between women, forgiveness, and coming to terms with your life. Ordinarily this is the kind of sentence I end with, “…and then I woke up.” But no! Frances Ha is real, it’s in [...]

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From yesterday’s readings, Book of Sirach

May 25, 2013 By

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure. –readings for 5/24

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“All-Weather Friends”: me on Wallace Stegner

May 21, 2013 By

at Acculturated: All three novels of marriage I’ve looked at so far have a certain sense of the privacy of marriage, which can become isolation. In fact, the focus has narrowed with each novel: Extended family and community are essential parts of Kristin Lavransdatter, but its heart remains with Kristin’s marriage and home; the isolation [...]

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From “Brideshead Revisited”

May 14, 2013 By

“I think you are very fond of Sebastian,” she said. “Why, certainly.” “I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long.”

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“Making Amends Was Everything I Least Expected”: Anna David

March 15, 2013 By

at The Fix–I cannot get enough of these stories: I thought I knew exactly how my Ninth Step in AA would unfold. Instead, over a decade later, I’m still trying to make sense of people’s unpredictable reactions. more

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“Christians: Siblings, Not ‘Friends’?”: Wesley Hill

January 18, 2013 By

writes: …In the New Testament, familial language far outweighs the language of friendship when it comes to describing Christian community. Believers are one another’s “brothers and sisters in Christ,” not (primarily) one another’s “friends.” It’s true, as Stephen Fowl and others have shown, that some of the Greco-Roman language of friendship is reappropriated in the [...]

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A conversation with me and Sr. Jeannine Gramick

January 5, 2013 By

at Interfaith Voices. (Scroll down–I missed this when it was posted over the summer.) I haven’t listened to it yet, so apologize in advance for any errors, jerkishness, etc….

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“Friendship in the Ordinary”

January 5, 2013 By

Wesley Hill on a (death-haunted!) story of women’s friendship.

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