• Notre-Dame, the New West, and Wanting to See from the Inside

    Perhaps Paris (and with it much of the West) does now seem to be a kind of twilight world – a museum to a way of life that has all but vanished, inhabited by a people who cannot seem to entirely forget. But perhaps it is in that very refusal to forget, in the inability to turn away from beauty, in the instinct of the Parisians (believers or not) who gathered on the streets to sing Ave Maria, that we should look for hope.

  • Poetry and the Mystery of Time

    Poetry allows us to meditate on our everyday experiences in ways that unearth profound mysteries we so frequently overlook. But to be more awake, more conscious, requires not only breaking from routine but also cultivating a different sense of time.

  • The Black Hole

    The release Wednesday of the first-ever image of a black hole dominated the world’s collective imagination. An amorphous ring of fire glowed curiously across Facebook feeds and newspaper headlines, inviting a barrage of timid questions from lay people – which, given our total understanding of black holes, is all of us.

  • “I am not an iconographer”

    Why did my teacher, who regularly takes commissions for iconography and teaches iconography workshops, who spent five years in an Orthodox monastery training as an iconographer, draw back from saying the words, “I am an iconographer”?