I am with my love in La Colombina, a room with forty narrow windows and a stained glass spine to the ceiling and calligraphic iron scribbles for roof support. The sea stands still beyond hillsides of innumerable houses, folded and tucked shapes of plaster and painted tin. A seagull waits at the open window beside…
Between despair and hope, two continents, a vast sea lies, blank whiteness on the chart. No waves, no cartographer’s fanciful decorations—a simple nothing, nondescript, immense. Here I tread water. The taste and smell of salt, irreducible facts, offer no explanations to map the trackless journeys of the heart:how I came here, whether I’m at fault….
Few Christian authors in the second half of the last century had such broad influence inside and out of the Church as J. B. Phillips. Phillips, a Church of England parish priest, became the most famous Anglican clergyman of his day, on both sides of the Atlantic. A contemporary of C. S. Lewis (who encouraged…
An Homily Wherein is Declared that Common Prayer and Sacraments Ought to be Ministered in a Tongue that is Understanded of the Hearers Among the manifold exercises of God’s people, dear Christians there is none more necessary for all estates and at all times than is Public Prayer and the due use of Sacraments. For…
As the summer comes to a close, it’s time for Daniel Rattelle and me to turn our attention to the serious matter of poetry. Last year, we had a grand old time editing our first volume for Little Gidding Press, The Slumbering Host. I pitched the idea to Dan the first time we met,…
Dale A. Grote, The Acts of the Apostles: A Latin Reader. Concord, NC: CiRCE Institute, 2020. Xvii + 261 pp. Paperback $20.99. Learning grammar and vocabulary is a necessary first step in learning a new language. However, encountering a text in that language is often a whole other experience. Reading and speaking a language are…
Film Review of Emma (2020) If it is true that, as Alison Milbank puts it, film adaptations of the novels of Jane Austen are marked by “careful visual authenticity in details of clothing and furniture with equally anachronistic dialogue,”[1] then Autumn de Wilde’s new version of Emma fits in with the crowd. But it is…
In filtered sunlight footstools even shine.They show in autumn tones their tenebrae,A brown that sparkles—isn’t that so fine!Along with chipper calls, cicadas pray. The peaceful sun’s retirement from this day,This night, leaves nothing lost; days do not die.Instead, night gathers in and up our playIn packets portaged forward, tight and dry. The day’s clear glare…
A friend of mine has the misfortune of owning a number of stone cottages. I say “misfortune” because the cottages are in Scotland, and their rents are fixed at the level of 1914. The cottages were built long before 1914–some of them are eighteenth-century work, with their pantiled roofs and thick rubble walls and irregular…
An Homily or Sermon Concerning Prayer THERE is nothing in all man’s life, well beloved in our Saviour Christ, so needful to be spoken of, and daily to be called upon, as hearty, zealous, and devout prayer; the necessity whereof is so great, that without it nothing may be well obtained at God’s hand. For,…