An annual ‘best of’ my reading year post has become a tradition here since 2017. Where 2023 was an absolute banner year for my reading life — by the second week of January, I’d already read two books I knew were not just going to be best-of-the-year picks, but new all-time favourites — 2024 was … Continue reading Top 15 Reads of 2024
A former priest of mine once said that all ancient Christian heresies boiled down to an inability to assert that, in Jesus, God pooped. What he meant by this is that as much as Christians have celebrated the Incarnation, the belief that God became fully human and through that experienced the full range of human … Continue reading Wisdom IN Literature: Dayspring on Embodiment (and more!)
The last century has seen an incredible shift in the world, away from a society in which most people lived and died where they were born to one in which few people do so. This has led to a world where we have many more options and opportunities, but also one in which fewer and … Continue reading Wisdom IN Literature: Hannah Coulter and Record of a Spaceborn Few on Belonging
There are few more fundamental questions for the human spirit than "What makes a life meaningful?" In big and small ways, it’s a question most pieces of art, whether literary, musical, theatrical, or visual, address. Today I’d like to talk about two novels that tackle the question head on: Robertson Davies’ 1970 masterpiece Fifth Business, … Continue reading Wisdom IN Literature: Martyr! and Fifth Business on a Meaningful Life
As I mentioned last week, a surprising number of the books I’ve read in the past year or so that deal with spiritual themes do so while also exploring themes of gender and sexuality. In that post, I explored that trend through the idea of the arena, at how these issues that are so controversial … Continue reading Wisdom IN Literature: All the World Beside on Flexibility and Faith
Matthew Root 