We Shall Not All Sleep: Legacy and Resurrection in “The Once and Future King”
I may have grown up on Disney’s The Sword in the Stone and Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series, but that does not make me an…
What We’re Reading
Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare in Bloomsbury. The Bloomsbury Group is a famous collection of English professors, intellectuals, and writers who rivaled The Inklings among the great communities of…
Footwear: A Poem
I know I don’t need another pair of shoes, But they, I see – although second-hand – Are finely made - to my mind, beautiful: The standard…
The Name of Truth
Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God - Jonathan Edwards In the streets of the world Truth is walking veiled like…
Fugitive Love and the Runaway Heart
The exceptional brilliance of his works, his contradictory nature, his desire to bring together faith and intelligence, classical and Christian civilization, the old wine and the new…
The Tension of Belonging
Alienation has been a central concern for philosophers since at least the early nineteenth century. But the thinker who gives us perhaps the most compelling account of…
Dieterich Buxtehude, Music, & the Experience of Life
Our experience of classical music has become rather abstract, detached, and academic. When the great composers were active, music was closely interwoven with everyday life. Music was…
Becoming as a Child
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, “Verily I say unto you, unless ye be converted…
Frederick Douglass and our “Glorious Liberty Document”
In August of 2019, The New York Times Magazine published a special series of articles collectively entitled The 1619 Project. The lead-off essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones immediately…
The Almost-Chosen President
Abraham Lincoln is America’s greatest and most important president. Although a contrarian might like to assert George Washington, himself a great president, the honest reality is that…
What’s Left of Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is, without question, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. While existentialism and phenomenology as philosophical movements existed prior to Heidegger, his 1927 Being…
Hector Berlioz and the Art of Musical Storytelling
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is celebrated for expanding the orchestra, revolutionizing musical form, and giving a new exalted role to program music—that is, instrumental music that tells a…
Has Modern Science Killed the Essay?
“Thence it happens that nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known, nor are any people so confident as those who tell us fables, such…