Friday Links
April 12, 2024
Master of Rubielos de Mora: The Coronation of the Virgin with the Trinity
Pray the Regina Caeli during Eastertide
Cyril O’Regan: Imagining Heaven: Silence and Evasion
Twitter/X talks Mary Oliver
Eve Tushnet on Mariette in Ecstasy
The Church Loses When Our Arts Communities Die
Pray the Regina Caeli during Eastertide
Read this to find out why.
Cyril O’Regan: Imagining Heaven: Silence and Evasion
It is noticeable that in Christian believers in general, and Catholics in particular, that when it comes to “last things” there is a shocking reserve, a reserve that cannot be reduced simply to anxieties about disputed questions concerning the intermediate state, the transitional state of Purgatory, or even the embarrassment of a doctrine of hell and its supposed challenge to the justice and mercy of God. If heaven, as the signified of the eschatological state of the blessed, is not always vigorously questioned—though it sometimes is—there is, nonetheless, a studied vagueness concerning “the better place,” alleviated only by stipulations that we imagine heaven as different in all fundamental respects from this life. Or, alternatively, demanding that its figuration not be so evacuative of the pleasures of this life and our political and social responsibilities. We arrive back at the paralytic beginning: we don’t know what we say, and when we say anything at all, we don’t know what we mean. As Christians we are all bumblers. Philosophers and theologians are just bumblers with the fig leaves of disparate and even contradictory protocols.
Twitter/X talks Mary Oliver
There was, apparently, a little Twitter/X argument over Mary Oliver. I didn’t catch all of it, but two essays stood out to me: a recent one from Henry Oliver over at his Common Reader Substack and another from a 2016 First Things essay by Ben Myers. Both are well worth reading.
Eve Tushnet on Mariette in Ecstasy
Mariette tells a simple story, about an outbreak of strange events centering on a young postulant at a New England convent in the early 1900s—about, I think, how even God’s flashiest displays leave Him in some way hidden. (In its attention to the questions raised by what seem to be big bold answers from the Lord, Mariette would be a good companion to Carlos Eire’s controversial and brilliant history, They Flew.)
The Church Loses When Our Arts Communities Die
From Conor Sweetman in Ecstatic
But you don’t have to be a writer or artist yourself to benefit from flourishing Christian literary and artistic communities. “The best way to think about literary publications is as part of a larger ecosystem of ideas,” said Paul J. Pastor, senior acquisitions editor at Zondervan, in an interview.
“Any ecologist will tell you that the resilience and vibrancy of an ecosystem depends on the ‘little’ guys just as much as—and sometimes more than—the ‘big’ guys,” explained Pastor. “Just like in a forest, where the ‘keystone species’ holding an ecosystem is often a type of creature overlooked or invisible to most people, so there is a specific and important contribution of the small literary publication that may well be essential and irreplaceable—and only fully seen by the wider collapses that follow when it goes away.”
Paul and I have discussed this idea of the ecosystem. Some questions that arise: How does “a world” flourish? And how can I help that world to flourish? The “big” often overwhelms the “small,” swallowing it piecemeal or whole, which is as bad for the literary world as it is for an ecosystem. Dana Gioia is a steadfast supporter of the small—“we are building the city of God,” he says when I thank him. We are all called to help build this city, brick by brick, garden by garden, book by book. If we want this ecosystem to flourish then we must, must, dedicate ourselves to supporting the overlooked and seeing the invisible, those small, “essential, and irreplaceable” ventures that help create a healthy world for human beings. Dappled Things is one of those “essential and irreplaceable” small, good things. Please consider donating today to help nourish our part of the ecosystem.
