Collected here are articles and reviews that have appeared in print, as well as a presentation of my books. There are a few interviews and some sound material, notably my reading of the Gospels in Greek, a project that remains work in progress.
If there is one thing that strikes us to the point of nausea when we consider famous, once highly esteemed spiritual teachers and founders who, within living memory, have come tumbling down from their pedestals, is it not precisely the lurid nature of their betrayals?
Continue reading The monk seems to embody the very type of a pacified human being, whose inward order is outwardly reflected in a grave demeanour and measured movement. What image might such a person use in order to provide a simile apt to render the secret of his consecrated life?
Continue reading The Lord who calls us is free to choose whatever means he deems effective to open our hearts, bodies, and minds to this great gift. An infirmity or injury, a serious diagnosis, that may at first make us feel as if we were struck down by destiny can turn out to be, in fact, a provision made by a kind yet nonetheless cross-shaped providence.
Continue reading Xenophobia is fear of people who are not locals. Xeniteia is at heart a neutral term indicating the state of living abroad, be it as a trafficked worker or as a wealthy retiree in a comfortable flat on the Costa del Sol.
Continue reading The enclosure of philosophy within a narrow framework of technical terms and assumptions was a notable feature of intellectual life in the twentieth century. As a result many women and men take it for granted, now, that philosophy has nothing to say to them - ‘philosophical’ has come to spell ‘useless’.
Continue reading Having stood firm through spectacular temptations that had racked him in spirit, body, and mind, Antony was exposed to one last trial utterly concrete and mundane, that of filling his pockets with wonga.
Continue reading ‘Your heart’, says the Lord, ‘is where your treasure is.’ It can be mortifying to discover that our treasure, and so our heart, is no longer where we thought it was.
Continue reading It happens often enough that people who generally do not cling to material things or comforts, people who do not much mind, are furiously tied to their books.
Continue reading It is not the Apostles, it turns out, who are sozzled; it is the world, wearily drunk on its self-sufficiency, pragmatic pleasure-seeking, thrills, and aimless meandering.
Continue reading Once again, Jamie and I gather to address questions raised by people who follow the series, questions that impress us by their insight and sincerity.
Continue reading Most of us conduct our daily lives within predictable parameters where familiar boundaries steer our behaviour and choices. But what happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, unbounded places - is our virtue then reliable and firm?
Continue reading God’s concern is not to keep us comfortably undisturbed. His concern is that we should know the truth, which alone sets us free.
Continue reading At once dispassionately lucid and shrewd, the Fathers teach us to discern. That is why they could give counsels both sublime and practical.
Continue reading Lust confers not vision but blindness. It locks me in myself, making me live in the world as if I were its sole significant subject, subsisting on arousal.
Continue reading Great self-control is needed to accept with tact an offering that repels me, and to do it so whole-heartedly that the giver is thrilled.
Continue reading There are bad, angry words we should keep from speaking, fighting against them with all our might. There are other words, however, that call out to be spoken - if we keep them shut up in our heart they will poison us.
Continue reading ‘I have always liked the phrase “nursing a grudge”’, says the Reverend John Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, ‘because many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest to their hearts.’ To let resentments go is costly.
Continue reading There is a stage at which speech is still potential - a thought has been articulated, the words lie ready on our tongue, but as yet they exist only in our mind. At that moment we exercise sovereign freedom to choose whether to speak or whether to keep silent.
Continue reading If the fear of God is not anxiety but 'an existential consciousness of reverence', how do you explain this to someone who has only ever understood fear in terms of punishment or dread?
Continue reading Things do not always get sorted out; illness is not always healed; sometimes fractured relationships cannot be mended. To trust God is not to assume that I will be alright - it is to know that, whatever happens, sense may emerge from senselessness, redemptive purity from destructive contamination.
Continue reading If I set out to correct, or worse, to condemn, another on the basis of bitterness, anger, or revulsion, my words, however tinged with glacial piety, will bring no blessing; no, they are likely to do harm, perhaps even to induce despair, causing little ones to sin while readying my own stiff neck, the support of my conceited head, for the millstone.
Continue reading We may have known times when an action or a word of ours has ruined something precious; when that which, a moment ago, was integral and dear lies at our feet in pieces, mud-splattered - at such times the voice of God resounds in our inner ear, ‘Adam, where are you?’ And we have no answer.
Continue reading Despair tends to issue from ambivalence, situations in which we feel overwhelmed by confused pain, unable to enact a response. What we can articulate, we can learn to deal with.
Continue reading We discover what is in our heart when, notwithstanding the manicured elegance we like to project, someone steps on that toenail, whether by accident or design. Such discovery is pretty unpleasant, but useful.
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