On Dead Leaves

“Oh!” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How I have delighted as I walked to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air, altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a [...]

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On Desert Islands

“One of the world’s most tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island, because people always answer ‘a deck of cards’ or ‘Anna Karenina’ when the obvious answer is ‘a well equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the [...]

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Dragons to Fight

“Cynicism cannot save us. I know this first hand. Yes, it might offer us a temporary insulation from the pain of being alive. But the world that disenchantment offers us is closer to the grave than we might have thought. Dull and gray and tasteless — the tomb of the cynic is built while he [...]

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On Individualism

“Individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all others, and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the world . . . individualism is of democratic origin.” – Alexis De Tocqueville

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My Song is Love Unknown

Read this. Heartbreakingly beautiful. Pastor Sumpter strikes again.

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Monkish Hospitality

“This porter should have a room near the gate, so that those who come may always find someone at hand to attend to their business. And as soon as anyone knocks or a poor man hails him, let him answer, ‘Thanks be to God’ or ‘A blessing!’ Then let him attend to them promptly, with [...]

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through a mirror dimly

I wish I could write about love, but it escapes me completely. Nothing inspires young people to poetry quite like love – but Jane Austen once noted the “efficacy of poetry in driving away love,” and I’m not very good at it anyway, so I won’t venture into meter. But how else to begin? My [...]

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Holy Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town to’another due, Labor to’admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy [...]

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“…I have ended in puzzles and contradictions.”

“Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and most often entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. [...]

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Dishdriers

“Katherine had reached the awful pans that needed scouring now, and Martha went away and left her with them, as is the traitorous habit of all dishdriers.” -Edward Eager, Half Magic

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