The U.P. possesses some quality that, in a particular and privileged way among America’s territories, points on a natural level to the supernatural. So, this is your invitation: book a trip to Marquette or Escanaba or Sault Ste Marie, rent a car, and drive – into the wilderness, into town, whatever – until inspiration strikes.

John-Paul Heil on the literature of the Upper Peninsula

Disenchantment talk… has the benefit of raising an alternative way of viewing reality to what has become deeply ingrained and habitual in us all.

Travis DeCook responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

If we read Virgil’s works closely, we can see how he anticipates a Christian view of creation in his approach to the pastoral…. His vision of pastoral poetry is more Christian than classical.

Mary Grace Mangano on Virgil’s Christian approach to creation

Implicit in this wisdom saying is a sense of the incalculable—that one person is the whole world. This incalculable value transcends the rationalist’s quality of life calculations.

Anthony Shoplik on suffering and meaning in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men

There are two questions: ‘Should I have kids, knowing they will contribute to the climate crisis?’ and ‘Should I have kids, given the climate crisis they will face?’

Anthony Shoplik on having kids in the age of climate change

To my surprise, I found Pope Francis a medievalist, St. Francis an eco-theologian, and a papal encyclical a work of literary ecocriticism.

Kathryn Mogk Wagner on medieval studies and ecocriticism

To be connected to a place, to a genealogy, to a community, to a person, requires unconditional love, God’s love; only in this can modernity find what it is truly looking for.

John-Paul Heil reads Hannah Coulter and finds a genealogy of place and, ultimately, love

A new modernity will be marked by a different account of the good life with a different set of shared loves. Kate Soper shows that underneath our tawdry love of stuff there are deeper, more interesting loves.

Terence Sweeney reviews Post-Growth Living and finds in it a counter-modern modernity