More on: Dante

Because nearing what one wants, / Our intellect is so overcome / That our memory is left behind.

The following remarks were given at Villa Agape in Florence, Italy, on the opening evening of Image’s Florence Seminar, September 14, 2008.   IMAGE is a journal devoted exclusively to contemporary literature and art—to the present moment—but here we are in the cradle of the Renaissance. We have not come out of mere antiquarian curiosity,…

The Need EVERY COUPLE OF MONTHS,  you go to the doctor looking for a new word—a name that is different from the one you have now: hypo, hyper, metastasized, malignant, benign. The hope is always for an upgrade, though it’s hard to say which names are better than others in this game. Take benign, for…

What is this world but the absence of God, his withdrawal, his distance (which we call space), his waiting (which we call time), his footprint (which we call beauty)? God could only create the world by withdrawing from it (otherwise there would be nothing but God), or by remaining in the form of absence, hiddenness,…

The following is adapted from a presentation given at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley in January 2015 during a convocation on the topic “Blessed Are You Poor: What Does It Mean to Be a Poor Church for the Poor?”   I SHOULD HAVE TOLD Father Michael Sweeney that if he really…