Month: April 2006
The Conferences of John Cassian
The Conferences of John Cassian (365-435) were intended to record conversations with desert hermits, but they read like theological essays presented by and to a...
Camus’ The Stranger
Albert Camus’ The Stranger is one of the more representative existentialist novels of the twentieth century. It is a bare story of an empty life, a self i...
Secular monastics
In his 2000 book, The Twilight of American Civilization, Norman Berman excoriates the shallow popular culture of contemporary U.S. society, sounding a clarion f...
Transcendence II
A too-popularized mysticism can parody suffering and dismiss its very ontological reality. This is the fine paradox risked by Eastern thought. Occasionally, it ...