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St Blogs Parish

Book Review: 21 Ways to Worship, by Vinny Flynn

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - September 27, 2012

I thought I would start reviewing the books I picked up recently at the Catholic Marketing Network's trade show . I'm starting with Vinny Flynn's 21 Ways to Worship: a Guide to Eucharistic Adoration (published jointly by MercySong and Ignatius Press), because I began to use it almost as soon as I got it. After the New Media conference ended on Friday, I headed over to my parish church (which fortuitously is just a couple of miles from the conference site) to spend some time in Adoration, and I took Flynn's book with me. Now, at our church (and maybe at yours, too), on days when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for Adoration, a collection of Holy Hour books is made available in the narthex so that people can have some devotional material to use during their time before the Blessed Sacrament. I don't know how many people avail themselves of this resource, but probably most of those who adore regularly have gotten tired of just reading the same devotions over and

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Zooming in on Ovid's acount of the Great Flood

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - May 06, 2015

Second installment on the Great Flood in Ovid's Metamorphoses Ovid artfully wove telling details into his poem. It is up to us to notice them, if we would understand the poem. (If you haven't read the first installment, find it here. ) Reading, like so much of life, is all about seeing what is to be seen — not only what is visible in a cursory glance, but also patterns that lie beneath the surface to give meaning to the words, not to mention all sorts of little hints and clues “hidden in plain sight,” which provide an extra level of enjoyment and meaning to the attentive reader. So now that we've looked at Ovid's general poetic purpose in writing Metamorphoses , it’s time to take a close look at the episode in which he describes a great flood that destroyed all living things in the ancient world, to see if we can discern the details that can tell us the meaning of this episode within the poem as a whole. I frequently walk along the shore of the lake shor

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Hidden in Plain Sight: Biblical (il)literacy and the modern reader

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - September 21, 2010

I've kind of had parables on the brain the last few days. Of course, the Gospel readings that the Church's lectionary provides at this green time of the year are full of parables, and Mark Shea's recent feature article on InsideCatholic.com, “The Parable of the Dishonest Steward,” is a good exploration of why Christ so often taught in parables and, also, why he had to explain them, even though on the face of it they are quite simple moral tales. As Shea points out, what's obvious to a Christian may not be obvious to others, who have not “eyes to see nor ears to hear”; these only faith can provide. U.S. postage stamp honoring Katherine Anne Porter However, one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about parables lately really has nothing to do with the liturgical lectionary or even the Gospels per se . In the literature class I’m currently teaching (an introductory course that teaches the basics of literary interpretation), we’ve been studying short stories and

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Don't Shoot the Elephant or You'll Kill Education

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - May 30, 2015

The Asian parable of the blind men and the elephant is as potent as Plato's myth of the cave. I don’t usually touch on hot button issues on this blog, preferring instead to focus on perennial wisdom that can benefit us all. To my mind, too much bloggery deals with narrow, sectarian rants (of the right and the left), radiating heat but very little light. I prefer to try to preserve a space in which we can put cant aside and try to contemplate truth, as it can be seen refracted and reflected in literature, history, philosophy, art, and the other liberal arts. You see, I have this funny idea that if we all look toward the light, from whatever direction our perspective may take, we can all be illuminated and, in that way, united, even if we disagree about the things we see. Perhaps we will even recognize the limitations of our own personal perceptions, like the proverbial blind men who each grasped a different part of the elephant. Individually they had their own (equally limite

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My Fifteen Minutes of Fame? I've been nominated for the Liebster Award

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - February 25, 2013

Connie Rossini of Contemplative Homeschool blog has kindly given me the Liebster Award. It’s given to up-and-coming bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers. You modern linguists will already know that "liebster" means "favorite" in German. So, in bestowing this award on me, Connie is proclaiming that my blog is one of her favorites (thank you, Connie!) and suggesting that it might become your favorite, too, if you'll just give it a try. So welcome to any new readers -- please poke around, you'll find a little bit of a lot of things, and quite a lot about the moral imagination, which seems to be one of my favorite subjects and, also, the subject that attracts the greatest number of readers. Here are the “rules” for The Liebster Award: List 11 things about yourself. Answer the questions that the nominator has posed for you. Nominate 11 up-and-coming bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers. Create 11 questions to ask the nominees. Go t

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Epic poetry and the moral imagination

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - November 25, 2012

This fall I’ve been teaching a course on Medieval Epic Poetry, a continuation of the Ancient Epic course I taught last spring, in which we read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid , poems that are all deeply grounded in a pagan worldview but which nonetheless examine human nature, and particularly human excellence, in such an authentic way that they continue to speak profoundly to readers in our own day. Still, the pagan world that produced those works valued things that sometimes run counter to Christian values, so their heroes may seem strange and not entirely admirable to a modern Christian. Nonetheless, all the poems we read in the Medieval Epic course are written by Christian poets who have, to one extent or another, appropriated the epic tradition and made it their own. What does it mean to be a hero? Achilles was famous for his godlike rage. This shows, on the one hand, the powerful appeal of the epic form and, on the other hand, the way Christians have

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By Jove, I think I've got it! Or "Sokath, his eyes open"

Posted by Lisa Nicholas, Ph. D. - February 22, 2015

In case the title of this post is too cryptic for you, let me explain: the “it” I think I've got is the way forward for this blog. For the past couple of years, I’m been concentrating on writing a novel, my first — in fact, I’m still working on it. In the process, my various blogs, of which this one is the chief, have fallen fallow, a situation that has been as necessary as it has been regrettable (for me, at least). But I’ve finally got the novel in good enough shape that I can dare to let the intellectual side of my brain steal a little time from the creative side. And that means I’m ready to resume this blog. So that explains half of my cryptic title, but what about the other half: “Sokath, his eyes open”? Some obscure literary allusion that can be grasped by only the most erudite? In fact, no. That is, not unless you consider the script of a television science fiction series to be “literature” (I must admit, I do not.) In fact, I’m quoting a Tamarian in the second episode of

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