Category: Aesthetics

  • You Belong Here – And It’s Beautiful

    Among the most uncomfortable feelings is that of “not belonging.” It is one of the forms of shame, for, when we do not belong or are “out of place,” we feel exposed and inherently vulnerable. It is not a feeling that we sustain for any length of time without engaging in behaviors designed to make…

  • When Icons Became Windows

    Some thirty years ago I was doing doctoral work at Duke University under Geoffrey Wainwright. I was drawn to Wainwright on account of his commitment to liturgical tradition and practice as the ground of theology. A course that became a turning point in my studies was on the nature of language in theology. Like all…

  • Truth, Lies and Icons

    As verbal beings, we live in a world of icons. We experience the world in an iconic fashion. A major difficulty for us is that we have lost the vocabulary of iconic reality. We have substituted the language of photography. The dissonance between reality and our photographic assumptions has led us to doubt both. Man…

  • The Mythic Character of Reality

    The friendship between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien is well-known, as is Tolkien’s role in bringing Lewis to Christ. Less well-known (unless you dig a bit further) is Tolkien’s role in bringing Lewis out of a rigid and flat understanding of the world and into the rich possibilities afforded by “myth.” Without this conversion, Lewis…

  • Words As Icons

    Creation has a sacramental purpose: it reveals God. For from the first making of the world, those things of God which the eye is unable to see, that is, his eternal power and existence, are fully made clear, he having given the knowledge of them through the things which he has made (Rom. 1:20) This…

  • The Demons of Our Time – Within Us

    In 1872, Dostoevsky published his novel, The Demons [Бесы]. It demonstrated in a microcosm, the insanity that lay within the revolutionary movements of 19th century Russia. That insanity broke upon the world in 1917 and has remained present with us, in one form or another, ever since. The madness that he describes takes place in…

  • The Life of Beauty in an Ugly World

    In my last article, I described our personal existence as something that is not self-contained but found only in relation. Who-I-am is seen in the face of the one beholding me. There is an element of this in the perception of beauty that is worth noting. Some years ago, my wife and I visited the…

  • Face to Face – Without Shame or Fear

    We are apparently living in the age of the face, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad.  I know all the complaints about our culture of “selfies,” and there are certainly many things in that to make us wonder, but our fascination with our faces long predates the technology of our phones. In the usage…

  • Providence and the Music of All Creation

    God’s being and actions are one. This is essentially the teaching of the Church on the topic of the Divine Energies. When I read discussions about this – it seems to get lost in the twists and turns of medieval metaphysics or passes into the territory of seeing the “Uncreated Light.” Both approaches are unhelpful…

  • The Goal of a Lesser Life

    From my earliest childhood, I always heard the future spoken of in superlatives: the best, the best possible, etc. There was an unspoken assumption that each human being was uniquely suited to something and that if they found that unique thing and worked at it, they could become the best at something. Some of my…


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Latest Comments

  1. Michael: Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll take a look.

  2. Michael, Of course. I’m describing a collective effect rather than an individual effect. Collectively, the decline of religion in affluent…

  3. Father, at my parish we have quite a few wealthy folk who have jobs that are often secular in nature…

  4. Michael, Kevin, Abortion is a good example of the law of unintended consequences. For years, conservative voters championed pro-life candidates,…

  5. Kevin, about 16 years ago politics hit home one Sunday in the Lutheran Church right across the street from my…


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