“Dance of Creation”: I Review the Fantastic Ballets Russes Exhibit

June 7, 2013 By

at the National Gallery: …It’s ambitious, and it mostly works. Even the walk over to the exhibit feels like a part of the show: In the cool, white, high-ceilinged landing of the gallery, you walk past George Segal’s 1971 plaster sculpture The Dancers, in which a ring of four calm and focused women practice their [...]

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The Apocalypse Art Prize

May 30, 2013 By

bring the kids!: Benefactors of the Apocalypse Art Prize are hoping artists will respond to Thomas’ encouragement to explore an artistic language with a long shelf life as well as a source of subjects with endless opportunities “for imaginative representation.” Participation in the competition is free and open to all during the year 2013. Winners [...]

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The Beauty of Obedience

April 11, 2013 By

After I spoke on that panel in New York last night, some of the organizers took us out to dinner. They mentioned that this was the last of three panels on Gay Catholic Whatnot (the first two having been on Scripture and moral theology, I think), and we discussed whether it made sense to open [...]

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Sublime skating for Easter

March 31, 2013 By

I could watch this every day. So beautiful and poignant.

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“Last Minute Banquet”

November 23, 2012 By

delicious, delicious parables: If the stuff that is in the Bible isn’t true, if it doesn’t work today and if Jesus didn’t really mean what he said – I’m not interested in any of it. Thanks, but you can keep your rituals and your moral teaching. However, I believe what’s in the Bible is true, [...]

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Hidden gem in Hartford: the Wadsworth Athenaeum

October 30, 2012 By

Before the storm hit, Ratty and I visited the Wadsworth Athenaeum, a really terrific art museum in Hartford, CT. The selection is great: Dali, Degas, Chagall, an unusual Munch landscape, a fun painting of “Gossiping Women” by none other than Goya, etc. There are little delights like a porphyry bathtub from ancient Rome, an ostrich [...]

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Samuel Palmer, “Cornfield at Midnight”

October 22, 2012 By

via Wesley Hill and this guy.

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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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The two halves of my message on Gay Catholic Whatnot

September 11, 2012 By

It’s genuinely hard to say both “Die to self” and “live in Christ,” to focus equally strongly on crucifixion and resurrection, submission and liberation. I need to do better at being clear about the sacrifices. I think I’m so focused on making queer, chaste Christian life more viable, fruitful, and loving, that I can sound [...]

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From Francis Spufford, “Unapologetic”

September 4, 2012 By

You discover that repetition itself, curiously, is not the enemy of spontaneity, but maybe even its enabler.  Saying the same prayers again and again, pacing your body again and again through the set movements of faith, somehow helps keep the door ajar through which He may come.  The words may strike you as ecclesiastical blah [...]

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