Gedenktafel-Guardini-Heppenheim–Bremond – CC BY 3.0 When two separate projects converge in unexpected ways the convergence can be exhilarating. Two projects I’m currently working on: -A re-reading of the dissatisfaction soldiers feel upon returning to the civilian world, not as a pathology or wound, but as a moral indictment of our dime store culture and how it fails to nourish us as deeply as more communitarian modes of living. -Background reading to better understand Laudato Si, which necessarily includes Romano Guardini.... Read more

Let me reiterate: I’m new here. New to ALL of this. But I do understand that Bishop Robert Barron is a “big deal”, very influential and with a voice that carries. But I have to say in response to his recent reaction to Daniel Berrigan’s death in the electronic pages of Aleteia : You keep using this word “violence”…I do not think it means what you think it means. I’ve read a lot of moving obituaries and remembrances of Berrigan... Read more

Abbey Ruins, Abbey Island, Derrynane – Trevor Harris – CC BY-SA 2.0 So I’ve been gone but now I’m back. Nearly two weeks in Ireland (mostly) and London (a long weekend). It’s the 100th anniversary of the “failed” 1916 Easter rebellion in Dublin. I saw a play about the “failed” 1798 rebellion, also in Dublin. And there was a feeling permeating the country (I don’t think I was imagining it) that was explicitly anti-colonial. Pro-Palestine leaflets were plastered alongside advertisements... Read more

Ernesto Cardenal reads his poems in La Chascona (Santiago, Chile) – Roman Bonnefoy – GNU Free Documentation License    To quote Eliot “against” Tradition, I feel justified borrowing from the supreme borrow himself. Eliot, the Old Possum, the scribbler of “Tradition and Individual Talent” and “Rhetoric and Poetic Drama” – the definitive binary summations of Modernist meditations on “tradition”/tradition/Tradition – points in two directions at once, always. One finger points this way: Revolutionaries(!): consider the past, not necessarily more systematically, but... Read more

“Grateful Dead at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco, October 9, 1980” – Chris Stone – CC BY-SA 2.0   I might as well come out and say it now because you’ll eventually figure it out anyway: I’m a Dead Head. I don’t simply mean that I enjoy the song “Touch of Grey”; I mean that I’m REALLY a Dead Head. I sit down to work each day listening to the “this day in history” shows on the Internet Archive.... Read more

“Simone Weil A28 Plaque” – FeydHuxtable – CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication     I chose the name of the blog based on the experiences of Simone Weil, a spiritual teacher and personal hero of mine. Most of you who read this channel are probably already familiar with Weil, the French philosopher-mystic who composed some of the most penetrating work on the nature of violence ever written. If not, The Need For Roots and The Iliad or The Poem... Read more

“Brandenburg Katharinenkirche – Hochaltar 5a Predella Katharina Bekehrung“-Wolfgang Sauber – CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International    Hello! I’m Scott Beauchamp, and I’m not a Catholic. At least not technically. Not yet. I’ve recently formally put myself on the path to entering the Church, but I suppose that informally I’ve been heading in this direction for a while. There was no road to Damascus moment for me, no sudden reckoning or instantaneous confrontation. It was more like a gradual accumulation of... Read more