Winter Solstice: A Poem
I am sixty-six years old, there is no cure for that. Another winter solstice observed and waved off, the days are brief, and icy. Meister Eckhart, I…
How to Think About Music History
When I think about classical music, as I often do, I find myself thinking in particular about the way we conceive of periods in musical history. The…
Happiness: A Poem
The movies that really hit the spot have ironic, downbeat, equivocal endings. Happiness’s grand illusion is always just out of reach: Garance dwindles into the crowd; Rick…
The Satirist in America Today
This lecture was given at the Dinand Library, College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts, December 5th, 2022. It is republished here with the permission of…
Salvation Through Humility: A Review of “Putting on Christ” by Ty Paul Monroe
Ty Paul Monroe. Putting on Christ: Augustine’s Early Theology of Salvation and the Sacraments. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022. You are great, Lord,…
The VoegelinView Christmas Reading Recommendations
This year, the friends, benefactors, and contributors at VoegelinView and the Eric Voegelin Society offer some reading recommendations for the upcoming year. It's our Christmas present to…
Can the Rich Go to Heaven? A Lesson from Luke 18
Luke 18 opens with Jesus’s responding to his disciples’ discouragement in the face of life’s hardships. Jesus proposes a parable indicating that the question we should ask…
Ten Odd Facts about Handel’s “Messiah”
While Handel’s Messiah is, for many, an annual Advent spectacle—certainly orchestras and choirs across the country and abroad are delivering right now—in the Classical Girl household, the 1741…
Dusk of Fall in Two Frames: A Poem
Under ash-colored clouds the peaks of hardwoods going bald tremble like a hopeless remnant clinging to old, exhausted scalps. Watching the vault of heav’n the crowns of…
Eighteenth Century Christian Political Philosophy: Without a Sage
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by…
The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Review of “Time of the Magicians” by Wolfram Eilenberger
“I am therefore of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved. And if I am not mistaken in this, then the value of…
Hamlet in the Metaxy
For both William Desmond and Eric Voegelin, Plato’s concept of the metaxu or metaxy is of paramount importance. Described by Plato in the Symposium and other works,…
The Sexual Sublime and Salvation on Pandora: The Romantic Imagination of James Cameron
“I see you.” That simple phrase by Jake Sully to Neytiri consummates their relationship long before their having sex from which Jake “becomes a man” in passing…
The Monologue of Lazarus: A Poem
Do not wonder why I am pale and ashen Do ask me if I have seen a ghost. I do not want to tell you: I have…