Susan Clancy, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Harvard University, has just published a book called “Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens.”
Articles from February 2023
The Nightmare (1781) by John Henry Fuseli
Detail from "Très Riches Heures" (c. 1412)
Kristin Lavransdatter
For the past few weeks I have lived in 14th-century Norway, sharing the life of Kristin Lavransdatter, the eponymous heroine of Sigrid Undset’s Nobel-prizewinning, 1200-page saga.
Photo by Michael Walk on Unsplash
Flying high
A friend sent me the following quote, from the now-deceased yogi Neem Karoli Baba: “It is better to see God in everything than to try and figure it out.”
Photo by Sneha Cecil on Unsplash
On pigeons and humans
The 18th-century philosopher, Voltaire, wrote this about superstition: “A Frenchman traveling in Italy finds almost everything superstitious, and is hardly wrong.
Urnes Stave Church • Photo by John Marx (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Of saints and sinners
A week or so ago I tried to articulate something of my religious faith in a blog post called Credo. I listed some of the authors within the Roman Catholic tradition who had influenced my spiritual evolution. Among them was the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset.
Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash
The sea into which all rivers flow
I have mentioned here before Meera Nanda’s “Prophets Facing Backwards: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India.” It is a demanding book, but richly rewarding, and of exceptional relevance to our time.
Photo by Kent Pilcher on Unsplash
Like shining from shook foil
During his lifetime, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins was known to only a few close friends. The first collection of his poems did not appear until 29 years after his death. Today he is one of the best loved poets in the English language.
"Pepper No. 30" by Edward Weston (1930)
More clearly than the eyes see
My recent Musing about Virginia Woolf’s “moments of being” sparked a thread of comment about those elusive incidents of attentiveness and insight when we are lifted out of the “gray wool” of everyday life and permitted to feel an intense connection with the world beyond our selves.
Photo by Jonas Weckschmied on Unsplash
In the morning of the world
We knew the morning was special when we saw the blue meadow.
Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash
End times
If I were a mean-spirited person, I would say that I hope to be left behind when the Rapture comes.