Finished reading: The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm with the Proslogion by Anselm of Aosta 📚

This is very cool to see: St. Bonaventure receives $147,000 grant for Seneca Nation educational initiative. Proud of my university and my colleague in theology, Oleg Bychkov, for working to strengthen ties with our Seneca Nation neighbors.

Finished reading: Being Christian by Rowan Williams 📚 I read this for the first time just a couple months ago, but I just finished working through it again with my Catholic Theology class

Sancte Thoma Aquinatis, ora pro nobis.

Somewhere in Vermont at dusk.

B.D. McClay on the “phenomenology of guns”:

I didn’t buy a tool to defend myself because I knew it would make me afraid—not that it would admit fear, but that it would transform the world around me into a world of potential threats. And while in fact I’ve had my share of low-level ugly encounters walking around my neighborhood—from nasty comments to someone blocking my way across the street with his car—I never wished that I had a can of wasp spray sitting in my pocket. If I had to say what I wished, it would be for the people who made it their business to intimidate me to see me as a person, too.

But if I had come to meet them armed, I would not have seen them as people either. They would have been unreal targets of potential violence—mine. And all I really know is that price is too high to pay.

Finished reading: Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint by André Vauchez 📚

Saving this for later: The boygenius book club: 48 books the indie rockers think you should read.

Now seeing: Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron, 2022) 📽️ I never saw the first one (I know, I know), but from what I gather it’s basically Pocahontas on another planet so I think I got it

I just learned that Bishop Matthew Clark, bishop of the diocese of Rochester (my home diocese) between 1979 & 2012, has passed away. I met him on a couple of occasions; he always struck me as a kind-hearted man & a good pastor. Pictured here are my older brother Chas (right) & younger brother Marty (middle) & me (left) with Bishop Clark, at Marty’s confirmation in May 2003. Requiescat in pace.

I’m usually annoyed at powerlines getting in the way of photographs, but I kind of like the effect of these. 🎞️

I’ve long wanted to write of mercy and justice in Les Misérables: what distinguishes Valjean and Javert, ultimately, is their different responses to an unmerited gift of mercy. Here’s Caitrin Keiper for Plough on the seemingly impossibility of grace in Les Mis:

The main impossibility in the ideal of Les Misérables is not that suffering will disappear, but that it can be redeemed; that brokenness does not erase the hope in any person; that dormant souls come back to life; that the cycle of retribution breaks for grace. And for symbolic confirmation of this impossible reality, there is an intimation of the stars on earth – that is, candles.

Currently reading: Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion by Garry Wills 📚

Baker, the heart of the band, emotionally bulldozes you with her fierce vocals; Bridgers, the soul, eloquently brings lovesick, melancholic melodies; and Dacus, the brain, writes songs with a dramatic heft worthy of the Russian novels she tears through.

“How boygenius Became the World’s Most Exciting Supergroup.” rollingstone.com

Now playing: the record (boygenius, 2023) 🎵

Finished reading: Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction by Brian Dillon 📚

John Donne, “Deaths Duell”:

Wee have a winding sheete in our Mothers wombe, which growes with us from our conception, and wee come into the world, wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seeke a grave; And as prisoners discharg’d of actions may lye for fees; so when the wombe hath discharg’d us, yet we are bound to it by cordes of flesh, by such a string, as that we cannot goe thence, nor stay there.

Quoted in Brian Dillon’s Essayism.

Wow, a great day for new music announcements: in addition to boygenius announcing their record, The National has announced a new album and released a new song. They performed this song (along with a few other new tracks) when I saw them live in July.

Boygenius announce new album The Record.

Karl Rahner, Encounters with Silence:

Is our grief taken from us, simply because You wept too? Is our surrender to finiteness no longer a terrible act of despair, simply because You also capitulated? Does our road, which doesn’t want to end, have a happy ending despite itself, just because You are traveling it with us?

The old card catalog for the Franciscan Institute collection in Friedsam Memorial Library (St. Bonaventure University)

Currently reading: Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction by Brian Dillon 📚

Finished reading: ‘In the Beginning …’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall by Joseph Ratzinger 📚

Franciscans in the United States today remember Angela of Foligno, medieval mystic and “mistress of theologians.”

Currently reading: ‘In the Beginning …’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall by Joseph Ratzinger 📚