From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 194

They returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple blessing God.
Leaving behind the old sacred system but only under the impulse of a religious prompting.

There’s no way out.
you were born to waste your life,
You were born to this middle class life
As others before you were born to walk in procession
To the temple
Singing

Louis Simpson

NOTE: This is the final excerpt from the Poetry of Truth series. Beginning in January we will start a new series of excerpts from a presentation Gil Bailie made in 1993 entitled "Crucial Choice" focusing on stories by Isak Dinesen, "Babette's Feast", and Flannery O'Connor, "The Displaced Person".

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 184

“Vampire novelist Ann Rice launched her new book by dressing up in a bridal gown and lying in coffin in a New Orleans cemetery…”

Our fascination with death is symptomatic of our abandonment of the Biblical revelation.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 183

“Rapture and terror bound by blood…” a review of a movie based on Ann Rice’s novel. Our culture is increasingly ‘in the business of death…’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 182

Secularization…breakdown of conventional cultural morality. The empty tomb and the cult of death. Ann Rice’s book: Interview with the Vampire . In some sense every culture is a cult of death

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 181

If the Cross represents the decisive beginning of the descralization of our world, will the result be simply secularization?