A World Ablaze: Reflections on Our Summer Theme In her famous epistolary novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s protagonist John Ames writes in his Pentecost sermon that ‘The Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation, and it turns to radiance—for a…
Hayyim Nachman Bialik’s ‘Be-‘ir haharegah‘ (‘In the City of Slaughter’) remains one of the most powerful literary responses to the Kishinev Pogrom. Bialik, a celebrated Jewish poet, penned it after visiting the Russian city where a mob of two thousand…
When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives…
In traditional Christian iconography, Pentecost is associated with the image of tongues of flames, fire, or even doves, which signify the Holy Spirit in Christian scriptures and interpretations. It is quite rare to find a visual portrayal that depicts this…
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives…
‘I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable’ could almost belong to a liturgy of Pentecost or Confirmation, yet it does not. It is Ilúvatar commanding the Ainur to sing in ‘Ainulindalë’, the creation story that opens Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.…
The Princess books, some of George MacDonald’s most memorable tales, tell the stories of two children who each encounter a wise old woman, known as the great-great grandmother (hereafter, “the grandmother”) of the princess Irene. There has been much speculation…
Inspiration is the feeling of beginning at the threshold where Silence and Light meet. Silence, the unmeasurable, desire to be, desire to express, the source of new need, meets Light, the measurable, the giver of all presence, by will, by…