Essay: “My soul magnifies the Lord”
For 2000 years, Mary the mother of Jesus has been a major figure in Christian theology, liturgy and art and a major inspiration to believers working to live their faith [...]
Book review: “War and Our World: The Reith Lectures 1998” by John Keegan
War is violent, chaotic, destructive, deadly and, for the aggressor nowadays, morally wrong. Yet, how to fight war except with war? Two decades ago, in a series of [...]
Poem: “Blood and flesh”
Blood and flesh Cathdrale st Etienne You tell me to crawl into the ragged slash in your side and pull the raw edges of flesh together to [...]
Book review: “The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography” by Alan Jacobs
The Book of Common Prayer was created in the 16th century as the prayer book of the Church of England. Originally, that institution had been part of the Roman [...]
Book review: “The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography” by Donald S. Lopez Jr.
In 2005, Penguin Books published a new translation of Bardo Todol, the collection Buddhist texts that, in the West, has been known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead [...]
Book review: “Absences: A Sequence” by John A. Griffin
The 21 poems in John A. Griffin’s chapbook Absences: A Sequence appear very orderly. Each is 20 lines long. Within each poem, the number of syllables per line [...]
Book review: “Aura: Last Essays” by Gustaf Sobin
One of the seven short essays in Gustaf Sobin’s final book Aura, published in 2009, is about the deep, unremitting darkness of medieval times. And about light, then and now. We [...]
Book review: “The Burren Wall” by Gordon D’Arcy
I’ve never been to the Burren in western Ireland or, for that matter, to Ireland at all. But my curiosity was piqued when I heard about Gordon D’Arcy’s 2006 book [...]
Poem: “At the hill tomb”
At the hill tomb At the hill tomb, she finds nothing. She tells the guys, and they run to find folded blooded linen. She sits on the [...]
Book review: “The Melody” by Jim Crace
The dainty Persian bells would jingle in the middle of the night when Alfred Busi’s wife Alicia would go downstairs to the larder for a snack. “What could it matter [...]