What we could not see as beautiful
When I told my reading group we’d be looking at one of Brian Staveley’s dark fantasy novels alongside Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology, they balked.
Postliberalism and the romantic lie
Since becoming vice president, J. D. Vance has been a scandalous presence in these pages. It makes sense: While President Trump seems fairly uninterested in religion even at his most performative, Vance actually speaks the language of the faithful. He is outspoken about his spirituality and about the streams that nourish it. From his association with Catholic integralism to his anti-immigrant scapegoating, Vance has come to embody everything that is wrong with the religious right.
Dionysios, The Crucified, And “Christofascism” — Earth and Altar
To plead one’s case as a victim of injustice: Trump and Vance want Americans to see this as contemptible behavior. As a new and caustically “Christian” rhetoric puts it, they want us to see “empathy” with such victims as a sin. But I believe the goal goes deeper: they and their allies want to consolidate their power in the public eye by stigmatizing “victimhood” as a whole.
Bargaining
I remember when my world divided into male and female, when the girls screamed "Shaun has cooties!" across the playground and flushed with what I thought was anger. I remember being in a closet with the enemy, chapped-lipped and terrified but trying to pucker up for victory. It doesn't change as you get older, you just get taller and the stakes get higher. You may even start bargaining: If we're both forty and haven't settled yet, come find me. We'll figure something out. Get hitched. People do...
The Lurid Profanity of Blasphemous
The “serenity” of the crucifix dates back to the middle ages and remains common in our own churches despite the oddity of the image. Christ hangs from the wood, looking clean and unblemished. Only pin-pricks mar his hands, feet and head. In cast-bronze statues, uniform metal further blends away the wounds. Empty crucifixes signify Christ’s resurrection and conquering of death—but they also remove our need to face his dirt and sweat and screams on a Sunday morning.
Even when I was too young to s...
Even when I was too young to s...
Agamben and Francis After the Quarantine
I am blessed with incomparable friends. Many of them are hard-won, and I can still recall a time when all we did was troll each other. One of my dearest friendships began in Philosophy 101, during a re-enactment of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The most insufferable member of the class demonstrated his “solution” to Plato's problem by wheeling me out of the classroom in an office chair and “out into the sun”—which meant down a flight of stairs. The resulting bang-up in my head lead to several re...
"When"
2nd Place Winning Story of TL;DR Press's 1K Word Herd Competition 2023, published in the collection, "Curios"
It isn’t rest until it isn’t for anything
Feelings of “rest” and “restlessness” seem to shake out differently for creatives than they do for others. Rest for the artist often looks a lot like work. Once an idea grips us, we hurl ourselves into sustained activity—like a runner who hits her stride and finds that stopping actually requires much more effort than continuing. We’re often most calm in the eye of the storm, dreading the void that’s waiting for us when the maelstrom passes.This ambivalence comes to us from all sides, not only fr...
"When God Goes Mad"
Chapter contributed to Theology & H. P. Lovecraft (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), co-written with Nicholas Bennett.
Credo
I believe the poet’s hair has always been a plume of smoke caught stiff in winter air. Their voice has always spoken overwater, carried through the fog to reach mein the morning. I believe that they havealways worn their collar button loose, andalways tapped their finger to their head whenopened to a spark of humbling wonder. I believe a day will come when my hairtoo will have always been white, my leg beenlame, my eyes weighed down by beauty, by theselight-box cryptograms...
Hacksaw Ridge and the Strange Sovereignty of God
I was thrilled when Ben Smitthimedhin closed his recent article on Underoath and Emery with a meditation on Shusaku Endō. “I think Endō is on to something about the God who seems, at times, to abandon us,” he writes. “Rather than letting us be, our Lord is a God who haunts us into submission, a God who won’t leave us alone, a God whose words will never be erased.” Smitthimedhin’s point is ultimately about letting God be God, whatever our expectations of what that ought or ought not to look like,...
A Holy Constraint: Christianity, Crisis, and Theological Aesthetics
Chapter contributed to Pandemic Reflections: Saint Francis and the Lepers Catch Up with COVID (Ethics Press, 2023)
Orthodoxy
My bounds were drawn in pleasant places
where my father called me out.
Running while he worked I was free to imagine
my way across infinite worlds, out of breath
at those lines inscribed for me:
the cut of the creek, the bank of
the river, the fallen fence shown to me
as to Job: I was the tide, the sea
to whom Father said, “This far
you may co...
where my father called me out.
Running while he worked I was free to imagine
my way across infinite worlds, out of breath
at those lines inscribed for me:
the cut of the creek, the bank of
the river, the fallen fence shown to me
as to Job: I was the tide, the sea
to whom Father said, “This far
you may co...
My Brother, My Keeper
These memories include the violence of her alcoholic father, newly stalking her dreams like a ghost only she can see. “My fear was that my memory was all messed up and nobody in our family saw what I saw, didn’t remember certain things that I remembered. ”What she describes to me is a kind of existential disaster—like a sailor looking up at the sky and finding all the stars flung apart, the constellations unfamiliar and impossible to navigate. But in that blank, black sky, her older brother Tom e...
Omakase
Once a year, my wife and I venture out from our semisuburban roost in northern Chicago and make our way to the southeast corner of Humboldt Park. Our destination is Kai Zan, a higher-end sushi restaurant run out of a humble red-brick building. A single banner assures us we’ve come to the right place and aren’t about to strut into the office of the used-car dealer next door. Making sure to turn right once inside—turning left would take us into the tattoo parlor—we’re received into a low-lit dinin...
The Struggle of Beauty
During the agrarian reforms of the 1950s, the landowners of Guatemala sought to depose then-president Jacobo Árbenz and re-secure their interests. Despite Árbenz’s transparently capitalist ambitions, the dissenters took advantage of growing Cold War paranoia and sought the aid of the United States. The upper class appealed to the interests of the United Fruit Company, who in turn appealed—in 1948—to “the father of public relations,” Edward Bernays. Bernays believed in the power of high-profile “...
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and the Spiritual Lessons of Dark Lords
The Lord of the Rings is hard to adapt. Yes, we have Peter Jackson’s masterful films, but Tolkien’s world is difficult to modify for other media while retaining its spirit. In part, that’s because the bad guys are really, really cool.
As a teenager, I understood I was supposed to admire Aragorn, Elrond, and humble Frodo—but I covered my amateur sketchpads in Balrogs. My friends and I used to play a miniatures game based on the wars of Middle Earth, something between Dungeons & Dragons and chess...
As a teenager, I understood I was supposed to admire Aragorn, Elrond, and humble Frodo—but I covered my amateur sketchpads in Balrogs. My friends and I used to play a miniatures game based on the wars of Middle Earth, something between Dungeons & Dragons and chess...