I've been reading Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter in concert with a group of folks who have all committed to "Kristin by Christmas!" One passage I particularly loved comes when Kristin goes to stay and be schooled at a convent. Abbess Groa welcomes Kristin with these words: I have heard good things of you, and you… Read More
Category: Wunderkammer
Pope Gregory the Great, on the temptations of administrators
The Office of Readings offered a homily by St. Gregory the Great for his feast day on September 3rd. I was grateful to read it, especially because it was a good prompting to pray for priests and bishops who find themselves torn between their worldly, administrative duties and the radical promise they have made to… Read More
Living as Foreigners in the Kingdom of Truth
I've been reading* Henri Nouwen's The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom, one to two meditations a day. Today's meditation, on death to self, struck me with a doubled meaning—one relevant to the apocalypse-as-unveiling that the Church is going through at present. You have an idea of what the new country looks… Read More
The Dominican Nun who Shaped the Sound of Music
I greatly enjoyed reading Todd S. Purdum's Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution. I bought a copy for my mom for her birthday, I read (and sung) chunks of it to my husband, and I was particularly charmed by the story of the real nun who consulted on The Sound of Music. Sister Gregory was… Read More
Mother Maria, On Startling Glimpses of God in Others
I'm just a few essays into The Essential Writings of Mother Maria Skobtsova, and I already heartily recommend it. It's on my reading list for 2018, because everything I'd heard about the life of Mother Maria from friends was terrifying and wonderful (one of my friends was chrismated in the Orthodox church with Maria as… Read More
Fr. Thomas Joseph White on Substitutionary Atonement
I've finished the first book on my list of intended reading for 2018! The honor goes to Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.'s The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism. I've also made a start on Middlemarch, but I'm reading it with friends, and we're not scheduled to finish till May. The next one I finish will… Read More
Mary McCarthy, Masks, and Identity
I read Mary McCarthy's The Company She Keeps, after reading B.D. McClay's Commonweal essay in appreciation of her work. This novel of linked short stories what what Barbara recommended I begin with. (I had forgotten I'd read McCarthy's The Stones of Florence). Here's one passage I particularly enjoyed: Perhaps at last she had found him, the one she kept… Read More
Origen on “Lead Us Not Into Temptation”
The internet (and the Pope) are discussing the Lord's Prayer plea that God "not lead us into temptation" which brings up the obvious question: why would God lead us into temptation—is it a trap? It's not a new question, and, when our monthly spiritual reading bookclub picked up Tertullian, Cyprian, And Origen On The Lord's Prayer, Origen… Read More
The Friedmans’ Crypto Dinner Parties
Several years ago, I read William and Elizebeth Friedman's The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined and had a blast. Two crypto experts, in their spare time from beating the Nazis, wrote a witty, elegant guide to why most conspiracy theories about Shakespeare's true identity are wrong (and they teach you a lot of the logic of crypto along… Read More
Lewis Hyde on Usury
I love Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art, so I recently checked to see if he wrote other books, and, thus, read his The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. One chapter is focused on usury. Hyde explains that the first Christian pawnshops were allowed on the condition that charging interest was… Read More