There are phrases that ring through history like bells tolling in fog: ‘Et tu, Brute?’, ‘I have a dream,’ ‘Father, forgive them.’ Yesterday another such phrase was spoken - not in marble halls nor on the steps of Washington, but from a widow’s lips at her husband’s memorial service. Erika Kirk stood before the world, … Continue reading ‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace
Tag: existentialism
How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon
Tolstoy was always the moralist disguised as a storyteller. He couldn’t so much as describe a hayfield without planting in it a parable, and How Much Land Does a Man Need? is among his most ruthless little lessons. At its heart, it’s an absurdly simple tale: a peasant named Pahom believes that with just a … Continue reading How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon
Dreams That Wander Too Far: From Plato to The Further
Cinema, despite its thunderous claims to originality, is in truth a great necromancer. It raises the dead more often than it invents the living, and its spirits wear borrowed costumes even when paraded as new. When James Wan and Leigh Whannell conjured Insidious, they weren’t scribbling out some pristine mythology in a Hollywood boardroom but … Continue reading Dreams That Wander Too Far: From Plato to The Further
The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
“Great Pan is not dead, but sleeping; and the reed shall sound again at the hour of need.” - Adapted from Plutarch It’s a curious feature of English children’s literature that its most enchanting works are often its most subversive. Carroll slipped logic puzzles and ontological riddles into Alice; Tolkien smuggled Catholic theology into hobbit … Continue reading The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
The Ship of Theseus: A Nation Adrift on Rotten Planks
Plutarch’s riddle is older than our language but no less urgent for its age. If every plank of Theseus’ ship were replaced, was it still the same vessel? The Athenians insisted that it was - because their pride needed it to be so. Hobbes, less sentimental, pressed the matter: what if the discarded planks were … Continue reading The Ship of Theseus: A Nation Adrift on Rotten Planks
Wording 