Goldfinch and Lyre Bird

Last updated on: February 14, 2014 at 2:31 pm By Eve Tushnet

I just re-read The Liar, Stephen Fry’s 1991 debut novel, and it’s still the funniest thing I’ve ever read. The antihero, Adrian Healey, careens through life plagiarizing, dissembling, cheating at cricket, and camouflaging his deepest emotions. He’s terrified of getting caught (at what? at everything), and fears/hopes that the whole world is just a giant set-up to expose him. It’s a heartbreaking book in its own way, scathing but poignant. Adrian’s vulnerability comes through from the very first real scene,... Read more

Bet You Can’t Read Just One: Addiction/Recovery Link Round-Up

Last updated on: February 12, 2014 at 10:56 pm By Eve Tushnet

“International Geographic”: I discovered that a lot of conditions which are simply a part of being an alcoholic are magnified by living in a foreign country. For example, the feeling of being terminally unique. In the town where I lived, I actually was extremely unique. There was nobody else like me. I got long stares at the grocery store, children stopped and pointed at me on their way to school. Every conversation began with, “Your nose is so big!” All... Read more

The Prison of My Person, The Shackles of My Skin

Last updated on: February 12, 2014 at 11:12 pm By Eve Tushnet

Wesley Hill quotes some powerful words from CS Lewis on masturbation and lustful fantasy: For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem,... Read more

Addiction and the Politics (and Poetics) of Personal Responsibility: me at AmCon

Last updated on: February 12, 2014 at 3:01 pm By Eve Tushnet

a listicle, and for some reason I saved the best stuff for the end, so feel free to hate me: There’s a narrative that comes up whenever addiction is discussed publicly nowadays: the narrative in which the disease of addiction essentially replaces a person’s free will. The barroom-wisdom version of it is the old line, “First the man takes a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. Then the drink takes the man.” A fairly heartbreaking version of it comes... Read more

Lots of Really Great Stuff at Spiritual Friendship Now

Last updated on: February 12, 2014 at 2:52 pm By Eve Tushnet

including: Melinda Selmys on the Cross as gift. This post manages to take a discourse I usually find kind of impenetrable–the argument about whether and how “homosexuality” (STILL NOT A THEOLOGICAL CATEGORY) is a gift–and make it into something truly sublime. I still resist looking at “homosexuality” (is this a thing?) as a “cross” full-stop, but that’s really not the point of her post, which you all should read. Jeremy Erickson has some powerful reflections on what he experienced as... Read more

And Now for Something Completely Different: Morrissey with a Cat on His Head

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 7:25 pm By Eve Tushnet

Click here to see it and learn why this photo proves–somewhat to my surprise–that Morrissey is not a god. Read more

St Makarii of Optino, quoted in “The Orthodox Way”

Last updated on: February 12, 2014 at 2:42 pm By Eve Tushnet

[St Isaac the Syrian] also says, “God’s grace comes of itself, suddenly, without our seeing it approach. It comes when the place is clean.” Therefore, carefully, diligently, constantly clean the place; sweep it with the broom of humility. Read more

From “The Orthodox Way”

Last updated on: February 11, 2014 at 4:11 pm By Eve Tushnet

To contemplate nature, then, is in Blake’s phrase to cleanse the “doors of our perception,” both on the physical and on the spiritual level, and thereby to discern the energies or logoi of God in everything that he has made. It is to discover, not so much through our discursive reason as through our spiritual intellect, that the whole universe is a cosmic Burning Bush, filled with the divine Fire yet not consumed. Read more

“Dyscommunication”: I review “Tribes” at the Studio Theatre

Last updated on: February 7, 2014 at 1:55 pm By Eve Tushnet

for AmCon: If you couldn’t understand what your family was saying, would you understand them better or worse? Nina Raines’s ”Tribes” opens with four Britons hurling abuse at each other around the kitchen table. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s mostly just crass and painful: Mom, Dad, brother and sister describing one another’s passions, hopes, beliefs, and sex lives in the most contemptuous terms possible. The fifth member of the family is deaf and yeah, you do feel... Read more

From “The Orthodox Way”

Last updated on: February 7, 2014 at 1:51 pm By Eve Tushnet

Perhaps apatheia can best be translated “purity of heart.” It signifies advancing from instability to stability, from duplicity to simplicity or singleness of heart, from the immaturity of fear and suspicion to the maturity of innocence and trust. Read more