Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-7 The Inferno




...the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret, Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened. And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
TS Eliot, Dry Salvages

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Reprise of a Girard Christmas Card


Four years ago René Girard was interviewed by Peter Robinson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, for their Uncommon Knowledge weblog. We have every Christmas since then excerpted a short piece from the end of that interview where Mr. Robinson asks René to reflect on the Christmas narratives from the gospels.

René Girard was born on December 25, 1923. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 08, 2014

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-6 The Inferno



As long as we can conjure up little facile reasons for hanging on to the small 'h' hope we would never come into the larger dimension HOPE.

"There is no end but addition, the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours:
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation."
          TS Eliot - The Dry Salvages

Thursday, December 04, 2014

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-5 The Inferno


TS Eliot's Dry Salvages (one of the Four Quartets) is a running commentary on Canto 20 of the Inferno. Demolishing hope (with a small h) so that the theological virtue of Hope could come into its proper place.

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-4 The Inferno



The 'eleventh hour' is the temporal dimension that is appropriate to religious life, not the present, the past or the future. It is the 'eleventh hour' that is worthy of our religious longing and hope.