Toni Morrison expands St. Paul’s vision of love to include erotic love.
Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” is the perfect play for Valentine’s Day.
First Corinthians 13 may be St. Paul’s greatest poem.
Posted in Bible | Also tagged Bible, St. Paul |
Literature is better than any self help book for relationship guidance.
In “The Call,” George Herbert opens himself to God’s love with a confidence not found in many of his poems.
Scott Bates tells us that when we give ourselves over to the universe of which we are a part, then we escape the entrapment of self.
A wedding poem seems appropriate for June. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lovely “Marriage Morning” draws me, maybe because it captures some of the anxieties of the wedding day and not just the joys.
From time to time I bring you updates about my friend Alan Paskow, currently failing because of cancer. Julia and I visit the Paskows every Sunday night. Julia administers a Reiki massage to Jackie while Alan and I converse. In our recent visits, Alan is always in bed when I talk to him. Our conversation [...]
Spiritual Sunday In last Monday’s post a fascinating discussion was started when I applied a passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov to the debate over whether society should step in and help out homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages. Zosima, a very spiritual character and an elder in the Russian Orthodox Church, warns his listeners that [...]
In debates about whether or not to help out troubled homeowners, Fyodor Dostoevsky would probably be in favor. I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov and am struck by how applicable it seems to the debate over foreclosures. The mortgage crisis, of course, pushed the world economy into recession, and foreclosures on homes are still [...]
“You are off to blog rather than snuggle with your wife?” asked my wife incredulously as I slipped out of bed trying not to wake her. Which of course brought to mind a poem that I could blog about: To Lucasta, Going to the War By Richard Lovelace Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, [...]
Spiritual Sunday Thanks to all of you who wrote this past week following the twin blows of my uncle’s death and news of the severity of Alan’s latest cancer diagnosis. The discussion in response to Thursday’s post about which goes deeper, self or love, brought to the periphery of my mind a catechism in which [...]
Amanda Root as Anne Elliott Film Friday One must show a great deal of sensitivity in how one films a Jane Austen heroine accepting a marriage proposal. That’s because the author never shows us the acceptances directly. Although I am generally not a great fan of filmed versions of Jane Austen novels, I have to [...]
Since I am vacationing in Maine and spent time yesterday with my favorite cousin, who is a huge Edward Arlington Robinson fan, I devote a post to the state’s greatest poet. Whenever I visit Dan Bates in Gardiner, we have to visit Robinson’s grave and look at his house. My favorite Robinson poem is “Eros [...]
Francois Boucher, mid 18th-century As June is the month for weddings (Julia and I were married June 8), I will be looking at a wedding poem and a wedding play this week: Edmund Spenser’s gorgeous Epithalamion and Shakespeare’s magical Midsummer Night’s Dream. Writing about his own upcoming wedding, Spenser is so exuberant that he could [...]
Soledad Villamil (Irene), Ricardo Darin (Esposito) Film Friday Warning: The following essay contains spoilers. Today I sing the praises of The Secret in Their Eyes, the Juan Jose Campanella film from Argentina that won the 2009 Foreign Film Oscar. It is more than a gripping film about investigating a murder, although it is also that. [...]
You will not be surprised to hear that poetry played a big role in my wedding 37 years ago, on June 8, 1973. The outdoor wedding occurred shortly after Carleton’s Commencement ceremony (our good friends John Colman and Anne Smith got married shortly before). Three days earlier, after an intense week finishing up my final essays, [...]
Giotto, The Last Supper I can think of no better poet to move us into Holy Week than George Herbert, a 17th century Anglican rector who wrestled mightily with a sense of his unworthiness. In his poetry, Herbert is determined to be as honest about his doubts as possible. He is not [...]
I promised this post on Robert Frost’s “Birches” in the event that we have an ice storm. I don’t know yet whether we will have one, but we had frozen rain for much of the night, and as I write this (Wednesday morning) we are being attacked by a blizzard. So if I don’t arrange [...]
Brandon/Rickman, Marianne/Winslett First of all, a happy birthday to Jane Austen (thanks to my mother for pointing this out). Jane would have been 234 today. My students have been bothered by the Marianne-Brandon marriage that concludes Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and I’m inclined to agree with them. Kat Vander Wende reasonably pointed [...]
When my wife and I leave the house in the morning, I will sometimes call out to her, “One kiss, my bonnie sweetheart” and we will embrace before going our separate ways. I suspect you recognize the line, which is from one of the English language’s most beloved poems, Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman.” I write [...]
Since I’ve been writing a lot about the longing for lost innocence in the past few weeks, I’ll share a couple of personal stories about the subject. Included are a traumatic creative writing experience that drove me away forever from writing serious poetry again and a very strange moment in my courtship of the woman [...]
