When it comes to news consumption, I mostly have two kinds of friends. The first backs away from any conversation about current events. “Oh, I don’t pay much attention to the news,” they say with a dismissive wave of the hand. “It’s too political for me.” I know what they mean. Many of us are … Continue reading Books Before Newsbites: Curating the News with C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Day
"All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in 1877, "And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell." Nevertheless, the poet marvels at the natural world's resilience in the face of industrial degradation: And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things... I recalled … Continue reading Nature’s Best Hope: Your Yard and Mine
In these divisive days it’s hard to imagine anything that could get Democrats and Republicans to go for a walk together. But apparently, once a month on Capitol Hill, it happens. I learned this wondrous fact by listening to Bring Birds Back, and if you’d like to know more, I hope you’ll listen to Season … Continue reading Can Birds Rehumanize Red & Blue Politics?
"Outwardly I think I am employed to what is of no or little use," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in his journal just months before his death. "I was continuing this train of thought this evening when I began to enter on that course of loathing and hopelessness which I have so often felt before..." I … Continue reading Loathing and Hopelessness, Juice and Joy: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Secret Sorrow
It's been described as "heady, extraordinary." It's where I first heard about Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter and P.D. James' The Children of Men. I discovered Alan Jacobs had written a biography of C.S. Lewis by listening, added it to my wishlist and gratefully received The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis for Christmas that year. It's also … Continue reading The Mars Hill Audio Journal: Where All Things Considered Meets God
“All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil,” observed poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins a century ago. In the same era William Butler Yeats would write that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of a passionate intensity.” Confessing my tendency to place gadgets over grace and politics over prayer, … Continue reading Welcome to SparrowFare
