Friday Links
March 3, 2023
Our Lady Undoer of Knots, retablo by Lynn Garlick
The CUA Chamber Choir performs Roman Hurko's "Hospodi, Vozzvah"
James Matthew Wilson in Law & Liberty: Capraesque Politics
Cynthia Lewis in The Hudson Review: Big Love
Timothy Nerozzi in The Lamp: Why You Should Consider a Vegetarian Lent
Beauty, Matter, and the Sacred Aidan Hart and the Scala Foundation
The CUA Chamber Choir performs Roman Hurko's "Hospodi, Vozzvah" at the Baltimore Cathedral, 2019. Conducted by Dr. Timothy McDonnell
First in our links, some music for Lent.
James Matthew Wilson in Law & Liberty: Capraesque Politics
“We live in an age and society of the “mirror before the mirror,” to borrow a phrase from filmmaker Adam Simon. Everyday life and political life have been complicated and duplicated in dizzying ways by the maturation and multiplication of the mass and social media.” So begins James Matthew Wilson’s response to Simon’s essay, "Our Melodramatic Democracy." We all know that our politics are warped, our common life together is disintegrating, and we cannot go on living in what has essentially become a house of mirrors. So what do we do about it? Wilson explores Simon’s claims and suggests that we adopt “a Capraesque politics of comedy.” I second this “move from a tragic vision of competing interests to a genuine community united in its love of the highest good held in common.”
Cynthia Lewis in The Hudson Reviewl: Big Love
Please take some time to read this wonderful essay by Cynthia Lewis on Shakespeare and the way he “fashions select characters who do the unthinkable by offering everything, their lives included, for the sake of another.” In pondering the big love of Shakespeare’s characters in light of what is essentially the modern world’s elevation of selfishness, she asks: “What’s to become of such big love?” Is it even possible in this age? Lewis says that “love —unconditional and emptied of ego as it repeatedly emerges in these plays—can find a place among us…”
I’ve been staying with my sister, observing how she pours herself out for her family through all the minutes of the day, so often pushing her own needs aside to attend to theirs. There are those who do the “unthinkable by offering everything, their lives included, for the sake of another,” —police officers, soldiers, a father who jumps into a septic tank to save his son. This is big love. So, too, is the kind of love that flows continuously in a stream that never dries out, is not thwarted by obstacles (including a teenager’s ingratitude, the mockery of others, insurmountable piles of laundry), to nourish everything around it. This is big love and it is the highest good.
Such a good essay, thanks Katy Carl, B.D. McCay, & Clare Coffey for the h/t.
Timothy Nerozzi in The Lamp: Why You Should Consider a Vegetarian Lent
From love to Lent, food, fasting, and Timothy Nerozzi’s suggestion that we “consider a vegetarian Lent.” I’d love to hear what others think about this idea. I’m not sure how I feel abut the vegetarian thing (I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth about it since Bill Gates and the rest of our overlords started pushing “plant-based” diets). I am, on the other hand, very much in agreement with Nerozzi’s closing argument:
It seems that the faithful have three options—continue pretending that our pizza Fridays are an act of self-denial; drop the pretense altogether and admit we are not interested in making further sacrifices (who am I to judge?); or to consider the possibility of holding ourselves to a higher standard.
(h/t to K.C., again, for this one)
Beauty, Matter, and the Sacred: Aidan Hart and the Scala Foundation
As always, Margarita Mooney Clayton and Scala have outdone themselves in this wonderful conversation with Aidan Hart. Art is central to human flourishing. To push it aside or deem it secondary to other (supposedly) more important aspects of life is to diminish us as individuals and communities. Please do watch the video. Hart will be at Scala's upcoming conference on Art, The Sacred and the Common Good.
