Has there ever been a more astute observer of the war between the sexes than James Thurber?
Daphnia pulex • Photo by Paul Hebert (CC BY 2.5)
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
Universe in a box
According to legend, Christ appeared to the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich and showed her a little thing the size of a hazelnut that he placed in her hand. “What is it?” she asked. He answered, “It is all that is made.”
The Nightmare (1781) by John Henry Fuseli
Abducting the truth
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.”
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.