The Time Being: W.H. Auden on Joy, Suffering, and the Space After Christmas
This year, more than any other year, my social media feed has been flooded with jokes about the limitless, uncountable, unmeasurable stretch of time between Christmas and…
Why Does My Dog Have to Die?: The Problem of Suffering Through the Eyes of Children
Author’s Note: While the anecdotes in this essay are real experiences I have had as a teacher, all of the students’ names and some of the identifying…
You Are Gods: A Defense of the Sitcom
While the concept of “comfort media” has not been in vogue for very long, the idea is relatively intuitive—at least in a modern context. Given the advent…
So Long Lives This: Sonnet 18 and the Glory of the Patron
If you were to type “greatest love poems of all time” into any search engine, you would find that in every decent list, there are several poems…
He Would Not Live Long: The Postwar World in W.H. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles”
While many great thinkers and philosophers have sought to analyze the brutality and sheer devastation of World War II, they can never quite compete with the work…
“Do it Again”: Monet, Chesterton, and the Holiness of Repetition
When one thinks of artistic impressionism, Claude Monet is probably one of the first names that springs to mind. This is for good reason—Monet and impressionism are…
The Cross of Aeneas: Virgil’s Aeneid as a Christian Epic
It is not uncommon knowledge that the great Christian thinker C.S. Lewis owed a great debt to the ancient Roman poet Virgil, whose long poem the Aeneid…
“All the Grace I Beg”: The Cruelty of Mercy in Measure for Measure
It is no secret that Shakespeare is interested in the triumph of mercy over judgment. One of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues, delivered by the character of Portia…
Forgive the Trees: A Meditation on the Coming of Spring
The first day of spring was just a few days ago, but it never truly feels like spring to me until the leaves return. I am always…
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…
The Gods Do Not Visit Our Weddings: Sin and Salvation in Catullus
The Roman poet Catullus has a certain reputation—and, to be fair, he deserves it. His poems are best known for their total unsuitability for polite company, and…
The Time Being: W.H. Auden on Joy, Suffering, and the Space After Christmas
This year, more than any other year, my social media feed has been flooded with jokes about the limitless, uncountable, unmeasurable stretch of time between Christmas and…
Just This Once, Everybody Lives: Racine’s Iphigénie and Storytelling as Salvation
I grew up on Greek mythology in the way that some people grow up on Grimm’s fairy tales. To this day, I am sometimes surprised when I…
Ivan Karamazov’s Meth Lab: Dostoevsky’s Theology in Breaking Bad
In a modern media industry driven by box office profits and Netflix streaming numbers, it is difficult to find movies and television shows that deserve classification as…
Across the Great Sea: Moby-Dick and the Problem of Suffering
Having read Moby-Dick three times, I confess that I have read Moby-Dick three more times than your average twenty-something. Unusual though I may be, I am (mostly)…