The rolling emptiness of a Sunday afternoon, The deafening silence of a vacant room, The brutal roar of a mind gone mad, After years of loneliness leave a soul unclad. Reaching a loved one in search of a friend, An unforeseen blow reveals this is the end. A vacuous pang sucking life from my eyes, But after all else this should have been no surprise. Disjointed and pondering, unsteady and shamed, Bloodcurdling abuse tearing a

“I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.” –C.S. Lewis, The Magicians Nephew My children have reached the ages of 7 and 4, which means at least two things: I am very tired, and they are beginning to be able to understand an extended story. Mostly due to the latter, though the former plays a part, I’ve been reading

Where are you I want to speak directly to you. I want to hold you fully in my awareness while I speak to you. You’ve been with me my whole life But I was always afraid of you. You were never bad You are only as harmful as we make you. It’s strange, when we treat you as an enemy, you become an enemy. But when I make you my friend, you cease to be

Nearly ten years ago, we launched Conciliar Post in a very different world than the one we inhabit now. There was no Covid. Vine was the trendy short-form video platform. Taylor Swift had not yet ventured into pop music. Joe Biden was serving as Vice President. Donald Trump wasn’t even a politician. Obergefell was a year away. Bill Gates topped the world billionaires list. Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. X was

At the beginning of The Good Place, Eleanor Shellstrop finds herself in the afterlife. She’s welcomed by the mysterious Michael, who explains her demise and proceeds to show her around the Good Place while answering her many questions about what’s happening and who was right about the whole heaven and hell thing. And while the show goes on for four excellent seasons, it never really leaves this moment behind, the moment of wonder about what

I recently came across Margaret Solomon-Bird’s rendition of the Annunciation and found myself reflecting on what must have been a truly remarkable scene. I mean, imagine it: after centuries of waiting for God to intervene in the world through His long-promised Messiah, suddenly and without warning an angelic messenger shows up with the message that the Messiah is coming. But it doesn’t take place in Jerusalem or in the centers of royalty or power where

One of the most haunting moments in Amazon’s new show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power comes in its fourth episode, when the mysterious Adar, whose origins and identity remain unclear, comes to tend a seriously injured orc. The orc and warlord lock eyes for a long moment before Adar, in an act of mercy, puts the wounded orc out of its suffering. The sequence is arresting because, in that moment, the

Against my better judgment, but because it’s irresistible fun, I have written on theonomy again. This time, in a symposium for London Lyceum. My contribution is a refutation of the common theonomist claim to the New England Puritans. It is long but I still, if you can believe it, was not able to include everything I wanted to. One point that would have been out of scope for that argument is that, in a sense,