After a brief hiatus due to general busyness with work and/or just plain ol’ living the dream, I’m finally back to it. Please forgive the unnecessarily long title – this sort of thing is cathartic for my soul. Mea culpa. With a dram of Talisker 10 in hand (sláinte and amen), I thanked the good Lord and toasted to the birth of my boy Robert Frost on March 26 while reading from our copy of The Poetry of Robert Frost.... Read more
Blue Jasmine, starring Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin and Louis C.K. is written and directed by Woody Allen. For her role in the film, Blanchett won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actress. She does a stellar job successfully inviting anger, sadness, hope, frustration, pity and disgust sometimes in succession, sometimes all at once. Hers is a performance well deserving of the accolades it received. The plot of the film follows Jasmine, played by Blanchett, as she... Read more
OLD HYMNS FOR NEW PEOPLE Page CXVI is a project that aims to make hymns accessible and known again. Hymns are a lost treasure and Page CXVI adds a new melody, a drum beat, and some good ol’ fashioned soul. They’ve given me permission to stream their newly released album on my blog for your Lenten listening pleasure… enjoy! FREE STREAMING GOODNESS Check out Page CXVI‘s newest album “Lent to Maundy Thursday.” They’re a fantastic band I’ve been listening to... Read more
Ash Wednesday is right around the corner. On this solemn day, the marks placed on our foreheads during the imposition of ashes mark the start of what is perhaps the most important season of the Christian calendar. Lent is the forty or so day drama that begins with Ash Wednesday and marches along for 40 days (not including Sundays). The Lenten journey perks up during Holy Week, swells in intensity during the Triduum (three day period of Good Friday, Holy... Read more
After a very long, cold, and white winter in the Dirty, the past weekend of blue skies and oh so close to balmy 50-degree weather has felt a sliver like the last day of school. Many of us, suffering to various degrees with S.A.D., have been wandering around quasi-zombielike for the past few weeks wondering if the sun would ever show his happy face again after an apocalyptic winter. While taking a jaunt through Princeton’s campus this sunny afternoon, I... Read more
LISTEN TO e.e. cummings READ HIS OWN POEM i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching... Read more
There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Courses like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human soul. I enjoy so many of my girl Emily’s poems. I particularly love this one on the power of the written word to transport and transform the reader. This theme seems especially fitting for her, given that... Read more
Separation of referring and defining is at the very heart of metaphorical speaking and is what makes it not only possible but necessary that in our stammering after a transcendent God we must speak, for the most part, metaphorically, or not at all.1 In reading N.T. Wright’s newest tome Paul and the Faithfulness of God, I was reminded of the importance of understanding the nature of metaphor if we have any hope of interpreting the Scriptures accurately (or human language in... Read more
The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, is written and directed by Terrence Malick. It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (the highest prize of the festival) and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. The film portrays life in a non-linear way, recounting the human experience from the first chapter to the last, from Creation to Consummation. Malick tells this story through the life of... Read more
Part 2 of a two-part series with unnecessarily long titles on time. This post is loosely connected to a previous post on time, its limits and consequently how we ought to spend it. In addition to the limits of my brain capacity, I simply haven’t got the time (pun intended) for tackling anything comprehensive about time. I have more questions than answers on the subject, but here are a few humble pensées on time. In his A Brief History of... Read more
Transcendentalish
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