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In Search of the Unknown by Robert William Chambers, 1904.
Vintage book design: old books.
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andantegrazioso-deactivated2018
In the mood for champagne | earthmagnified
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Samuel Cirnansck Fall/Winter 2014-15
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Saint Expeditus
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My Book of the Church’s Year by Enid M. Chadwick.
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I appreciated part of Carter Heyward’s Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God — mostly the introduction’s discussion of heroism versus mutuality, and some of her more trenchant passages about the oppression of gay people — but the theological aspects about the rest of the text that I found unconvincing (namely, the extraordinary emphasis on relationality and eros seemingly at all costs) actually tie into this horror show, in which she literally wrote a book about how her therapist ought to have slept with her and said therapist committed violence against her by telling her to stop her stalking behavior.
if your theology justifies that, do I really need to say much more?
Whoa, I had no idea this had ever happened, even though I was already suspicious of Heyward’s theology for similar reasons you describe here, as I am of any theology that describes erotic desire as “a blithe spirit: mutual, sensuous, never grasping nor jealous, expanding in circles of justice-seeking friendship like the lattice traced by rain on a lake.” (Also: hilarious line.) Seems like the kind of thing someone should maybe mention in discussions of Heyward at Union...
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Dr. Hannibal Lecter Modern Renaissance Portrait (2015)
Edit: Inspired by: "In Dolarhyde’s mind, Lecter’s likeness should be the dark portrait of a Renaissance prince." –Red Dragon, page 120 (Thomas Harris)
Glorious.
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Then in 1900 everybody got down off his stilts; henceforth nobody drank absinthe with his black coffee; nobody went mad; nobody committed suicide; nobody joined the Catholic Church; or if they did I have forgotten.
W.B. Yeats, Oxford Book of Modern Verse (via decadentcatholic)
I'm thinking about my Sexual Ethics in NYC class, my Heschel class with Cornel West last semester, and all the great Selma posts from Union folks on Facebook. I have to confess that as much I respect and admire Heschel and think his writing is beautiful, I actually found a lot I disagreed with in some of his work. Especially The Sabbath. I can't speak much to its relevance in contemporary American Judaism, though I know there are a few critiques of it out there. But I also think that book and similar ideas to what he describes in that book have been enormously influential in liberal American Christianity in general.
What I couldn't really get on board with was the subordination of a theology of space to a theology of time. For Heschel, the things of the world, its materiality and its geography are only holy in time. Heschel says that "it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things." But thinking about Selma, and the fact that the area--materially and geographically--remains deeply impoverished and marginalized even as state officials and VIPs celebrate the "holy day" of the 50th anniversary behind police barricades, I wonder if subordinating space to time has actually damaged our theologies. Is a place like Selma only holy because of events in time, and therefore only celebrated at certain times? Is it considered empty otherwise? What if we had a theology of space, instead, which re-centered the material and spatial along with anniversaries and events? Ultimately, I think a lot of our issues are about space and not time, but I think the religious left continually marginalizes the concepts of space and materiality.
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My dad’s family is Irish American, of the variety that believes that this means going to Ireland once in your life, maybe taking step dancing lessons, going to Catholic Church if you go to church/ being angry at the Catholic Church, drinking a lot, and reading lots of indulgent books about Irish...
This is great. I feel very similarly about being Italian (but not white, in part obviously because of being mixed race and only sometimes identified by people as white).
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12and3-deactivated20200513
It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss— This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;
It is not true that we must accept...
Eternal life is at the same time both a gift and an obligation. We are like children. When we were small we got money from mother to buy something for her on her birthday. Then we came along with a little present which we had bought with our mother's money, and which in the meantime had become battered and dented. Of course it was a present that mother couldn't do anything with. But she was really pleased with our dreadful offering. It is just the same with us grown-up people who call themselves Christians. In rather exalted language Paul says: 'The love of God is stored up in our hearts through the spirit which is given us' (Rom.5.5). Finally we return this gift in and through Christ: De tuis donis et datis says the old eucharistic canon. But as soon as this gift comes into human hands it gets battered and dented. What we have to do is honestly, however lamely, to take our fellow man on our shoulders or go with him, if necessary through the flood of the Red Sea, and get him safely to the other side. And on the other side we shall then fall into God's hands: eternal life!
Edward Schillebeeckx, "I Believe in Eternal Life," God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed
I'll make every word a name for You!
I'll call you: forest! Night! Ach! Yes!
And collect all my moments,
weave a bit of eternity, a gift for You.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Most Precious Word"
All the good stuff is real but isn’t, myself included... I never saw Coney Island when it had all its big attractions, but there was something desperate about the boardwalk, and I related. There was no end in sight to it, and there were people in bars you didn’t know were there.
Lana Del Rey on Coney Island
Growing up in the Bronx, I had two career paths in mind that did not appear impossible or mutually exclusive: catcher for the New York Yankees and archbishop of New York.
Carmen Nanko-Fernández, Theologizing en Espanglish
In place of the royal cloak, here is the garment of eternal light. The togas of the saints have absorbed this purple … Here the Savior-craftsman has adorned the crowns of the martyrs with spiritual jewels. Let us set the sails of our souls towards these gems.
St. Victricius of Rouen on holy relics, De laude sanctorum
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Now, while before your relics
Our prayers and incense rise,
Look down, ye Saints of heaven!
And help us from the skies.
What though in dismal ruin
Your bones so long have lain?
Yet still sublimest virtues
E’en in their dust remain.
Still in these holy temples
The Spirit makes His home,
Reserving them for glory
In other days to come.
Whence from beneath the altar
They yet exert their might,
Subduing death and sickness,
And putting Hell to flight.
O Christ, our Judge immortal,
Through all the worlds, to Thee
All glory with the Father
And Holy Spirit be.
Hymn for the Veneration of Holy Relics (via theraccolta)