I suppose one of the greatest mercies God affords us is that when we’re born, we haven’t the skills to wonder about what a curious thing being is. You are, and that’s how it all begins. One of the saddest things, however, is that many people never begin to wonder about that. Journey isn’t going […]
Category Archives: General
A couple of weeks ago I complained about the lack of depth, metaphysical depth particularly, in the Harry Potter books and in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. Both novels let us down in that regard, because both deal with magic, the supernatural, and environments where people ought to be preoccupied with The Way Things […]
Does the fact that you can’t find Platform 9 ¾ at the train station bother you? Does the phrase The Well at the World’s End make you hope that there just must be something wrong with your road atlas? Do you check out rabbit holes in the forest . . . just to make sure? […]
You should take a look at this movie. I’m not going to write a proper review of it; that’s been done better elsewhere and elsewhere again. But I would like to make a point about John Carter. This story, true to the book, looks at the question I posed in another post a couple of […]
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Christian magic, Christian charms and spells, common enough in the Middle Ages but pretty much extinct now. Find that post here. And I left the subject wondering what happened to this custom. Why did it disappear? The charms weren’t particularly pagan, so it can’t be that everybody suddenly […]
Imagine you woke up in a world where you could, with a simple phrase, make a glass partition protecting your evil cousin from a giant python disappear. And shortly after, you discover that there’s a whole community of people just like you who are desperately trying to get in touch with you because you’re their […]
Would your priest cast a spell for you? Maybe you need a fever or a headache or dropsy healed, or you need the crops to grow, or you have an elf chasing you around, or you need the bees to settle and stop swarming. So you ask your priest or preacher for a little help. […]
There’s a certain irony to seeing someone who has worked against themselves so successfully that, having arrived at their great goal in life, they find they can’t practice their beloved trade anymore because they have to work at other things all the time to support their new successful status. That’s the politician for you. It’s […]
Last week, exploring the chance to see some medieval art in Washington DC this winter, I wrote about Anonymous 4 and the Folger Consort at the National Cathedral, and rounded it out with a mention of the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard at the National Geographic’s Explorer’s Hall. You can find that post here. But there’s more, […]
Anonymous 4 and the Folger Consort appeared at the Washington National Cathedral last Friday night performing some of the sacred songs of 12th century mystic Hildegard von Bingen (and some 13th century French court music for variety) in a program they call Heavenly Revelations, and altogether it was a solid evening of twelfth-century Christian mystical […]
