Have you ever wondered why a snake entwined on a staff is a symbol of medicine? Or why doctors take an oath to practice medicine?
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A radical approach to combatting throwaway culture
“If there is one word to describe modern culture,” writes Haley Stewart, “it might be unsatisfied. No matter how much we have, it’s never enough.” The Grace of Enough by Haley Stewart Ave Maria Press, 192p $16.95 In her new book, The Grace of Enough: Pursuing Less and Living More in a Throwaway Culture, Stewart […]
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Review: Refugees and the rhetoric of love
Through their stories, we too are allowed to cry and hope with these blessed ones.
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Review: Los Angeles in letters
Los Angeles is a city that grabs you by the arm—nearly by the throat—and insists you hear another explanation of what it means.
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Review: Mary Oliver’s poetic gifts
“Listen,” writes Mary Oliver, urging the reader to put aside questions and doubts as she describes terns wheeling over ocean waves, “maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world/ in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,/ but it must be close.” With Devotions, Oliver, who died on January 17 at age 83, […]
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Review: A holy and sinful church
Flanagan invites scandal-plagued Catholics to face the reality of our sin with renewed hope with helpful rules.
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Review: Meghan O’Gieblyn on Christian evangelical culture
When the essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn was a student at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, a Friday night out meant sidewalk evangelism. She and her friends would draw the plan of salvation on a portable chalkboard, hand out tracts and invite passersby to get saved. O’Gieblyn got few takers. Eventually, she left the school and […]
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Review: Oscar Wilde’s quest for identity
His lectures mixed paradox and wit, eccentricity and nonsense while spreading the war cry of beauty amid the agonizing ugliness of 19th-century American dress and décor.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Kamala Harris in her own words
In her new memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, Senator Kamala D. Harris, Democrat of California, positions herself as an underdog, a savvy “top cop” and, most of all, Shyamala Gopalan’s daughter.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
‘Becoming the writer-monk’: Mary Gordon on Thomas Merton
The fascinating premise of Mary Gordon’s lovely little book On Thomas Merton is that, except for his extensive correspondence with Evelyn Waugh and Czeslaw Milosz, Thomas Merton was without literary peers who could perceptively judge, critique and improve his writing.