theology
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Midweek Rhythm: “Nearer, My God, to Thee”
Throughout college, I rehearsed at my church on Wednesdays. After a full morning of classes, I would hide away in the sanctuary to practice. Often, these practice sessions became restful, transformative, and worshipful experiences. As I settle into a completely new season of my life, it is comforting to return to this midweek rhythm. It Continue reading
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Pride and Purgation
As I expressed in an earlier post, I have come to love Dante’s Commedia more and more through rereading. In a manner almost scriptural, he manages to address every aspect of human life and, as a poet-theologian, particularly the artistic life. My favourite of canticle is Purgatorio, which is perhaps a humorous choice for a Continue reading
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Loving By Not Loving: On Intentional interest
The other day, I asked my dad to print my dissertation at his office. That evening, I found it neatly stacked on the counter and took it upstairs to edit without giving it a second thought. “I started reading your dissertation but you must have moved it,” my dad later told me. “It was really Continue reading
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Not Far From the Tree: A Secular Icon
Stickers cover the back of my laptop, forming a small collage of my personality and of the various influences in my life. In the centre glows an apple with a single missing bite. The choice of the Apple logo seems straightforward; it’s simple, appealing (pun intended), and recognisable. Further, apples represent enlightenment and erudition—consider, for Continue reading
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Befriending Dante: A Reflection on Readership
Although I have always been bookish in about every sense of the word, I went through a “rebellious” phase in high school when my AP Literature class was required to read Dante’s Inferno. I was adamantly against it and now, as I reread it for the fourth or fifth time, I can explain away this opposition as Continue reading
AP Lit, AP Literature, bookish, books, characters, Christian literature, cultural literacy, dante, divine comedy, Fiction, history, inferno, inspiration, literacy, literary, literary friends, literature, narrative, paradise, purgatory, reader, readership, Reading, relationships, theology, theology and the arts -
Lack to Love: a sonnet
Inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves: My moon-sick eyes I turn from Sun above; Too brilliant, let me see yet silhouettes And trace them on my heart lest I forget These shades that show the shape of Light, my love. Permit that I might feel those phantom limbs Of One I neither see nor now Continue reading
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Rejoicing in Repetition
My current favorite song—“Shape of Love” by Passenger—keeps popping up in my Spotify playlists and I never skip it. Its opening chords make me smile no matter how many times it has played today already. Similarly, as I said in a previous post, I eat the same breakfast every day and have not yet grown Continue reading
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Question and Answer: Anticipating Christ in the Book of Job
In rereading the Book of Job, I once more find it both wonderful and troubling. Job is, at its core, a terrifying book: a man is selected for the worst trials imaginable (loss of family, livelihood, and health) not because he is wicked but, indeed, because he is faithful. The Book of Job is, in Continue reading
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Consumption
I fear we are dying of consumption… It’s 2019 and it seems that everyone seems has some sort of food sensitivity. (Someone recently suggested that I cut gluten, which nearly made me cry as I reached for another slice of bread.) Our nutritional awareness is becoming more and more acute and, on the whole, I’d Continue reading
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Modulations
A modulation is a “change from one key to another in a piece of music.” Seems simple enough. Often they are, and, being a rather lazy songwriter, I’m a huge fan of a common-tone modulation, where a single note is sufficient to transpose one key into another, often in a single beat. Right now, though, Continue reading
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Bedtime Stories
As I grow older, it is often more difficult to fall asleep. I know I’m not alone in this. Age brings with it more anxieties and activities than the sheep we might otherwise be counting and, honestly, the only cure I’ve found (aside from melatonin) is to return to reading bedtime stories. As I recently Continue reading
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An Advent Poem
Empty, the sanctuary waits beneath a tree, beneath a cross— the branches a burden and trough to bear body and newborn king. White wails of a storm without are vespers whispered warm within, And yet echo infant, age-old cry — of beginning and of end. In the lonely silence, all is dead, yet all holds living Continue reading
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Ryanne Molinari 