I swear, Paramore does not put out a bad album. I really loved their self-titled album and I thought After Laughter, though not so much to my taste, was good too. But This Is Why is at least as good as anything they’ve ever put out.

From the title page of a used copy of Herbert McCabe’s God Still Matters

Currently reading (on audiobook via Libby): Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis 📚

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 📚