Widows and widowers know the wrenching grief the death of a spouse brings, and the great gaping wound it leaves in one’s life. Anna, the prophetess, experienced this at much too young an age. She could not have been much older than twenty-one or twenty-two when she lost her husband, and may have been a […]
… openings to a deeper identity Read More »
“ … the point that obsessed Sophocles’ Antigone: that to not bury her brother, to not treat the war criminal like a human being, would ultimately have been to forfeit her own humanity.” Daniel Mendelsohn in The New Yorker “Unburied: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the lessons of Greed tragedy”
a modern day Polyneices … Read More »
… on our attempts to fix everything with drugs … “Ours is an age in which the airwaves and media are one large drug emporium that claims to fix everything from sleep to sex. I fear that being human is itself fast becoming a condition. It’s as if we are trying to contain grief, and
overmedicalization … Read More »
… Wieseltier on ‘big data’ … “The mathematization of subjectivity will founder upon the resplendent fact that we are ambiguous beings. We frequently have mixed feelings, and are divided against ourselves. We use different words to communicate similar thoughts, but those words are not synonyms. Though we dream of exactitude and transparency, our meanings are
Mahler puts things into perspective … Read More »
Mr. Ives’ Christmas … a life-changing story of love, grief and the healing power of forgiveness … “A magnificently sad and enchanting novel, a celebration, ultimately, of giving and grace”(Booklist) … the story of a father’s journey after the Christmas-time murder of his son.
mr. ives’ christmas .. Read More »
… a grade school teacher’s suicide reveals our (therapeutic) culture’s reduction of grief to a disease that needs to be cured … rather than a mysterious journey on which we accompany each other. Wikipedia IMDb Rotten Tomatoes streams on Netflix
… Ian Marcus Corbin discusses Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs … “ … Górecki offers graceful, meandering exploration that, if one is patient, offers the humbler salve of continuity. This sort of grief, Mr. Górecki seems to sense, must be lived through, not rushed past. What consolation does come comes by way of passing time,
sorrow shared is sorrow made bearable … Read More »
Sonnet 23 … John Milton Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave, Rescu’d from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the old
methought I saw my late espoused Saint … Read More »
Sometimes there are more radical, violent wounds. Death seems close. When we are hurt, we tend to close in on ourselves. It is winter. The ground becomes hard. And sometimes winter lasts a long time. Jean Vanier, Seeing Beyond DepressionSeeing Beyond Depression, p. 43
winter is a season … Read More »
