Deep Down Things
Nicodemus, Doug Weaver
Pentecost 2012 issue.
Children of God
Lessons from Julian of Norwich and Mister Rogers
A Paper Trail to the Stars
A mother devoted to poetry and victorian era novels re-reads science fiction through the eyes of her sons, discovering unknown realms of beauty.
Friday Links, April 22, 2022
+ “Creative writing and evangelizing” course—Word on Fire
+ Caryll Houselander review
+ Catholic Women Writers Series by CUA
+ “The Architect” video about the architect of St. Michael’s Norbertine Abbey
+ Article about the architect in the above video.
+ Poetry reading by two poets who are also a doctor and a lawyer.
Reading Crime and Punishment with Dorothy Day
Stanley Visnewski, a long-time Catholic Worker, said, “the only way [one] would ever understand the Catholic Worker was by reading Dostoevsky.”
Winners of the 2021 Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction
No Other Eyes
Christian Gnosis in Paul Claudel’s The Spirit and the Water
Baptism
As the prayer moved from one scriptural water image to the next, I thought: I’m the one who told Isaac about the abyss before Creation; I’m the one who told him about the Parting of the Red Sea; and in a few weeks, as we move toward Holy Week, I’ll be the one who tells him about the water flowing from the side of Christ on the cross.
Friday Links, April 8, 2022
+ Two Retreats for Artists:
++ One retreat in book form by the future Pope Karol Wojtyla, and
++ One retreat for Lent via ZOOM via the Benedict XVI Institute, contemplating Michelangelo’s Three Pietas.
+ Donatello Sculpture Exhibit Asks: Is Donatello Actually the Best Sculptor Ever and Father of the Renaissance?
+ Can a Writer Create a Fictional Saint? (Podcast: Thomas Mirus Asks Joshua Hren).
+ Twenty-first Century Pointilist Art by a Catholic Illustrator.
Convalescence
Listen to a string quartet play a gorgeous piece of original music by Adam Rook
Towards a True and Better Vision
Wounded Idealism in Don Quixote & The Divine Comedy
Friday Links, April 1, 2022
+ Sacramental Poetry, livestreamed or in person in Maryland, April 29.
+ Is Catholic Art coming back? National Catholic Register poses a question many are asking.
+ Getty Museum show presents ancient Jewish and Catholic manuscripts—”in dialogue.”
+ Catholic Literary Arts Sacred Poetry Contest 2022—Ekphrastic writing (in response to sacred art). Deadline 11:59 PM April 30.
+ Upcoming Catholic Literary Arts course on how Dante will make you a better writer.
A House of Living Stones
We discover sometimes that beauty is too large and expansive for our intractable, fear-made walls. Our stones cannot contain it without breaking into a million pieces. What are we to do then, we creatures made for a beauty so large?
Friday Links, March 25, 2025 Feast of the Annuciation
+ Joseph Pierce on the mystery of suffering inspired by a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
+ On the persistence of “Expansive Poetry’—with the history of the movement.
+ Interview with Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and playwright, about his plays.
Envy - The Only Sin With No Pleasure
Why Are We So Addicted to It?
Friday Links, March 18, 2021
+ What power does a poem have, and what work can it do?
+ Speaking of power, Elizabeth Lev shows how the power of art in Ukraine is cultural memory.
+ “The Future of the Catholic Literary Imagination” 2022 Catholic Imagination Conference. Are you going?
+ St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry is offering the chance to audit one summer course for free—including one on the nature of aesthetic experience, the relationship between truth, goodness, and beauty, and the role of beauty in liturgy.
How To Become a Work of Art
Elizabeth Lev’s new book traces the development of St. Joseph in sacred art. Through sacred art we come to know St. Joseph and the aspects of the faith he represents, but we don't read him like a book. He's a gesture towards the transcendent.
So are you, really.
Gently Pleading for Chaos
While not an overtly religious writer, Osler does allude to the Garden of Eden, and she is aware of limitations to human creativity and imagination. Along with divine omnipotence and omniscience, she seems to say, goes a kind of audacity. “If in your wildest, most creative, moments,” she challenges us, “you had invented a rose, would you have had the recklessness to add scent?”
Friday Links, March 11, 2022
+ Looking for a community of writers and artists? Check out Catholic Literary Arts.
+ The witness of Richard Wilbur to Christian virtue.
+ Who is taking up the mantle of Maritain, Hildebrand, and Gilson? Thomas Mirus asks James Matthew Wilson in a Catholic Culture podcast.
+ The joke’s on Satan: Jacob Riyeff writes about how the devil tricked his own self during Christ’s atoning Passion.
Announcing the Kierkegaard Poetry Competition
We’re now accepting poetry submissions for a new anthology inspired by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, featuring Dana Gioia and Mary Grace Mangano as contest judges.
Beyond Hallmark Movies - Obeying the Fifth Commandment
In Hallmark movie versions of aging, the elderly become wise and calm, dispensing pearls of wisdom to their grandchildren who visit frequently. The adult grandchildren roll their eyes while smiling indulgently; then, later, they wonder aloud to friends and family members about how grandma can stay so cheerful, strong, and wise in the face of decrepitude. But this Hallmark movie version, a quaint depiction our cultural expectations, was not my experience