Winter, traditionally, was a time for tales in the northern parts of the world. People mostly farmed and while there is always work on the farm, in the winter there is less and much takes place inside because it must. Light and heat were expensive, at least in terms of labor, and so folk gathered near each other. Then the teller of tales came into his or her own. The story teller could draw on folk tales, shaped over hundreds of... Read more
A Man’s Wife and His Mother: How is it going? Every so often I run into a common problem I do not have. After recovering from the shock of not having or causing a problem, I generally find this is not because I have done anything particularly well. What trouble have I avoided? If Shakespeare and more than one acquaintance is to be believed, there can exist tensions between a man’s wife and his mother. Why I Avoided This Problem:... Read more
The Mob No more talking on’t. Let it be done. Away, away!* So says the mob always: don’t think, talk, but act. After all, mobs know what is wrong, what they need, and who the chief enemy is. If they are, perhaps wrong, this does not matter, or so the mob feels, because they will get what they want: bread and the blood of the oppressor. The mob is irrational and wishes to act, but whatever they do the results will not be... Read more
Nobody’s perfect. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.* That is obvious enough to be a Christian doctrine that most people who are not Christians think this true and even take a false comfort from the truth. The comfort is false, because while when we are miserable we are... Read more
I have known Socrates and Gandalf, or at least men in this life who modeled the virtues of these heroes, historical and mythical, in the twenty-first century. Saturday I learned the man I called Gandalf had gone into the West. Phillip E. Johnson was a man who lived by words: watch an interview when he was healthy and you will see a man who swam in English like a dolphin loved water. Whenever we talked, and we never stopped talking,... Read more
The AOL discs came. You threw them out. AOL sent more. You let your kids play with them:iridescent frisbees. AOL mailed more. You made jokes. AOL put them in the newspaper: high tech with Victorian tech. Finally, if you were me, you gave into the madness and signed up. This was the time when you picked waggish names and I chose “MerryTook.” (The proper names were taken by the time I gave up and I thought I would be a later... Read more
Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all.* So says the noble Edgar in King Lear about the death of great men, and we must endure, about this he is right. Yet the enduring is hard, even when the time is ripe. Sometimes, at the moment of parting, the going seems unendurable. My grandmother once said in my hearing that she would endure any amount of pain, work, and difficulty for five more minutes with Papaw. So it... Read more
We do not, of course, always know what is good for us. Our choices tend to be for what we think we want instead of what we need: our heart’s truest longing. If we go for what we think we want, life will not end well. If we find the absolute desire of our heart, and move with all our strength and God’s good mercy toward that bliss, then all will be well in the end. Our choices foretell certain... Read more
I am writing a cycle of plays for each House of The College at Saint Constantine. The Houses are named for Saint Anne, Saint Lucy, Saint Helen, and Elizabeth, New Martyr. I began with Elizabeth, princess, Grand Duchess, nun, and martyr. The atheists killed her, because her work with the poor made her intolerable. Every day she showed their agitprop was a lie. Each play (or each House) begins with a Prelude with elements of the School Song (JAC Redford... Read more
The Witch or the Wise Woman Beware witchy witches and fight demons, but if you meet Hermione at Hogwarts, make friends quickly and listen to what she says. Do not, ever, attempt to force the powers of the cosmos to tell you what a man should not know, but wherever you can find insight from Homer to Husserl take the wisdom. Wisdom is always of God: trying to manipulate God with tricks is not. Some witches are witchy, horrific, and some are... Read more
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