11 Mar For the Map Year: Frank Sheed and “The Map of Life”
The traveller through a strange country usually gets vivid impressions of individual things, but only a confused impression of the country in its totality. He remembers this mountain and that...
08 Mar Benedictine “option”
Let us revise the “Benedict option,” named by Rod Dreher, and proposed by him and many others. They invite us, in effect, to head for the hills, or to the...
06 Mar Ye cloude of unknowyng
Among books of spiritual direction, that are short, and in English, my favourite is probably The Cloud of Unknowing — written in Chaucer’s day by some anonymous cleric, perhaps a...
03 Mar Dark gentleman of the Sonnets
My head is full of Shakespeare Sonnets at the moment, from trying to teach this author to startlingly intelligent and perceptive young seminarians. The poet’s allusions to the ruined monasteries...