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Psalm 19, 18 in the Vulgate
The calm dawn gave no promise of anything uncommon…The sunrise we did not see at all, for we were beneath the shadow of the fjord cliffs; but in the midst of our studies, while the Indians were getting ready to sail, we were startled by the sudden appearance of a red light burning with a strange, unearthly splendor on…
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Avoiding Acedia in Intellectual Work
I have a small library of notes on things I want to write about, yet feel daunted every time I try. Sometimes I’m tempted to simply say “read ____,” and leave it at that. Resisting that urge today, I’m going to try to write a little about one of the most important of my companion…
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Something I Wish I Had Made Explicit in My Dissertation
I’m never particularly satisfied with anything I’ve written. The end result never tallies with the original vision in my mind. When I go back and read again, I find so many lapses, so much unexplained and implicit. What was entirely clear to me as I wrote is now muddled and slow on the page. Does…
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A Narrative Summary of Alphonsus Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will
The devout Father John Tauler relates this personal experience: For years he had prayed God to send him someone who would teach him the real spiritual life. One day, at prayer, he heard a voice saying: “Go to such and such a church and you will have the answer to your prayers.” He went and at the door of the…
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Good Advice
No one is obligated to take part in the spiritual crisis of a society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid this folly and live his life in order. Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 17
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Thoughts (Borrowed) While Overlooking a Mountain Valley in Peru
The Infinite Always dear to me was this lonely hill, And this hedgerow, which from many sides Bars the gaze from the utmost horizon. But sitting and looking out, endless Spaces beyond that hedge, and superhuman Silences, and profoundest quietude, I in my mind forge for myself: where the heart Is all but terrified. And as I hear the wind rustle…
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A Window into the Mindset Underlying the Current Era
Reading E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat, a book which thoroughly underwhelmed me,1 I stumbled on a passage that struck me as illustrative of the mindset that has shaped a great deal of culture and policy in the years since the Second World War. White is writing shortly after Pearl Harbor: The passionate love of Americans for…
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Windows
When I’m sitting in the back of class, feeling useless as a TA, I stare out the window to remind myself the world exists. It’s an oddly solitary experience in a room filled with chatter, solitary and strange. As we’re inevitably many floors up, all you can see are rooftops. The only movement is steam,…
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Fruits of Enlightenment
Alternatively, A Response to Steven Pinker. There has never been as society that was more civilized in the humanist sense than the French society of the Enlightenment, nor one more completely convinced of the powers of reason and science to solve all the problems of life and to create a completely rational culture, based on…
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Satisfying Your Deepest Desire
The desire to take a class with me, of course! During the Spring and Summer quarter, I’ll be teaching at the Graham School, in the Spring on Nature in the Middle Ages and in the Summer on Medieval Travel. Here are the course descriptions, first, nature: All the creatures of the world are like a book,…
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Dan Yingst 