The Embodied Life of the Mind: An Anniversary
It’s been one year exactly since I crashed my bike and badly broke my right wrist. From nearly the moment of impact, I’ve had remarkably good care, from the good…
Read moreWhy Study Emily Dickinson at a Time Like This? (audio lecture)
Last week, I was honored to give a lecture sponsored by the Friends of Goddard Library at Clark University in Worcester, MA. The friends and the library staff were gracious,…
Read morePoetic Faith 2016: lectio divina
As my previous posts on the embodied life of the mind suggest, it’s been a bit tough getting work done lately. With my dominant hand out of commission for several…
Read morePoetic Faith, 2016 edition: Introduction
Last summer, I devised an imaginary seminar titled “Poetic Faith” to guide myself through a mass of readings on topics related broadly to my research. I’ve found myself drawing on…
Read more“You Will Live in Silence”: A Descent into Lent
This morning in Philadelphia, a light snow is falling over Mardi Gras. The rushers are still rushing, the panhandlers are still panhandling, the laughers are still laughing, and the honkers…
Read moreWord from Porter Street, #3 (new series): Brett Foster, pt. 2
This installment of The Word from Porter Street is the second and last part of my reading of the late Brett Foster’s poetry. Here’s the list of poems: “City Church…
Read moreWord from Porter Street #2 (new series): Brett Foster, pt. 1
This latest installment is the first part of a multi-installment tribute to the late Brett Foster, poet and Renaissance literature professor at Wheaton College, Illinois. I met Brett at a…
Read morePoetic Faith: Embodied Reading
The blog has been a bit quiet lately. The reading has been a bit less intense as well. This is because reading is not merely a mental activity. It is…
Read morePost-secularism 1: Radical Orthodoxy
On to James K. A. Smith’s Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (2004), the first of two posts exploring competing discourses of post-secularism. Smith is a philosopher at Calvin College…
Read morePoetic Faith: We Have Never Been Secular
Nearing the end of Week 1 of my “seminar,” I still have a fair amount of reading to do, but I’ve also been happily immersed enough to come up with…
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