Perichoretic Singinng

“When people got together to play musical instruments, they also stood in a circle so they could hear each other and blend in—an act of communal, participatory music-making, not a performance before a passive, non-music-making audience. This is still the practice today when people come together to play bluegrass music” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, …

Hightailing It From the Truth

“Students of conflict devise many theories about the nature and origin of human discord without ever taking mimetic rivalry into account. If no human being is the culprit, then it must be an idea or perhaps some chemical substance — something fundamentally alien to what the friendship and the friends intrinsically are. They look for …

Half an Inch of Ice on the Pond of Hubris

In his chapter “Appropriating Postmodernism,” Westphal says some good things. The devil, as we shall see, is in his applications, but in isolation he says some really good things where I believe we can all agree. “Postmodernism tends to slide in the opposite direction, from ‘We have no absolute insight’ to ‘There is no absolute …

The Envy of the Hollow

“Like mimetic desire, envy subordinates a desired something to the someone who enjoys a privileged relationship with it. Envy covers the superior being that neither the someone nor something alone, but the conjunction of the two, seem to possess. Envy involuntarily testifies to a lack of being that puts the envious to shame, especially since …

True Rejection of Hellenism

“Johnny Cash . . . lists in the liner notes to his album Unchained what he likes in music: I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and …

Death By Sabbath

“But the first principle is given clearly by Isaiah: Call the Sabbath a delight (Is. 58:13). And even this verse is abused whenever truncated, narrow, and parsimonious Sabbath observance is substituted for the real thing. The cranky Sabbatarian, who ‘cooks kids in their Sabbath milk,’ does not limit this destructive behavior to one day in …