A few years ago I spent a semester reading the works of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Frost. Of all that I enjoyed that semester, I was most deeply touched by Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday.” It must be that his neurosis and mine are very similar. What I particularly like about “Ash Wednesday” is Eliot’s […]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a 20th century martyr and theologian who was executed for his involvement with undercover members of the Abwher (German Military Intelligence) and their plans to assassinate Hitler. This involvement expressed a shift in Bonhoeffer’ convictions, as initially he was a pacifist. Though there has been much debate regarding the nature of Bonhoeffer’ […]

G. K. Chesterton was physically and literarily a man of big stature. At six feet four inches and almost three hundred pounds, and with writings that ran the range from literary and social criticism, to history and politics, to philosophy and theology, he was in many ways a powerful force to be reckoned with in […]

C.S. Lewis, in speaking of George MacDonald, once said, “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master”. In light of Lewis’s confession, it could be said that MacDonald was the master of a master, as Lewis was himself a master to many. At risk of belaboring an idea, I must […]

Today’s selection comes from a trappist Monk named Thomas Merton who is probably most noted for his autobiography The Seven Story Mountain, which recounts his endeavors as a young man to find fulfillment and meaning through academic and literary pursuits and his subsequent conversion to Roman Catholicism. Through his literary talents, strong mystical leanings, and […]