On the back of a rotten dream and a few following unsettled nights, I dragged just about every scriptural reference book I own out, blew off the dust, and began scratching out the following. It’s heavy but it’s worth the toil. I think. The Catholic doctrine of Purgatory has always been a scandal to the … Continue reading The Fires That Cleanse: On Purgatory, Scripture, and the Uneasy Middle
Tag: God
Strangers on a Train
The premise is diabolical in its elegance: two strangers meet, exchange idle talk, and one proposes a pact so grotesque it seems almost a joke. “You do my murder, I’ll do yours.” A child’s logic, but a murderer’s ingenuity. This was Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel in 1950, and like the serpent in Genesis, she slithered … Continue reading Strangers on a Train
Wilde’s Salomé: A Decadent Dance with Death
It’s almost too neat that Salomé should have been written in French. The language of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and decadence itself lent Wilde the perfect tongue for blasphemy dressed in silks. The Victorians expected their theatre to teach morality, to improve the soul, to extol duty. Wilde offered them instead a necrophilic waltz in candlelight, where … Continue reading Wilde’s Salomé: A Decadent Dance with Death
St. George, the Dragon, and the Colours We Raise
There he stands - or rather, rides - our St. George, spear braced, horse rearing, dragon writhing beneath (featured image below). It’s an image both timeless and terribly timely. Though centuries have passed since this tale was first illuminated in parchment or carved into stone, its symbolic force remains more urgent now than ever. For … Continue reading St. George, the Dragon, and the Colours We Raise
Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
Art imitates life, or so I’m told, but in The Good Samaritan by Vincent van Gogh, life doesn’t just inspire the art - it bleeds into it. You can feel the strain in every brushstroke. This isn’t a tranquil tale of neighbourly virtue. This is what compassion looks like after the cameras stop rolling. After … Continue reading Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
Wording 