As I wrote this post it happened to be during Holy Week. After a difficult few days when Denis' mother suffered a nosebleed that…
SUMMER and what you thought would be completely doable suddenly becomes Boot Camp for the unwary. Does this happen to you? You look at…
It is an interesting exercise to ask friends what changes going on in our world seem to them to be most significant. The answers…
Philosopher Charles Taylor has spent a lifetime of careful study unpacking the meaning and development of secularism. One of the things he demonstrates…
Child of God (1973) is Cormac McCarthy’s most disturbing book, and the film is hard to watch. The story is of Lester Ballard (played…
“What the detective story is about,” author P. D. James says, “is not murder but the restoration of order.” Something has gone astray in…
I argued in the first installment of this series that one reason we are drawn to detective stories is that we were made to…
The appeal of detective stories includes our need for order when crime has introduced disorder (always a dangerous state), and our yearning for justice…
The fourth reason detective mysteries are appealing as stories is related to the foundational truth that human existence is meaningless apart from community. We…
One of the most important books to be published in these opening years of the 21stcentury in philosopher Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.…
In terms of genre these three films are very different: Lincolnis a historical drama, Waste Land is a documentary, and Traitor is a spy…
We need to talk Like Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 Oscar winning film, Zero Dark Thirty is a compelling war film, appropriately gritty and…
We need to talk I am not a pacifist. I thought I was one for a few years, but my oldest daughter who was…
