Posts tagged "John Galsworthy"
PZ’s Podcast: Lobo’s Dating Tips for Christian Guys and Journey with Boo, Me and You
Grace in Practice / Music / Relationships

PZ’s Podcast: Lobo’s Dating Tips for Christian Guys and Journey with Boo, Me and You

by Mockingbird on Feb 18, 2013 • No Comments

Episode 138: Lobo’s Dating Tips for Christian Guys

This is a small exercise in Camp, a sort of “Visit to a Small Planet”. The text is the singles of Lobo. They are so “nuanced”, in terms of romantic relationships, that it’s hard to believe they were ever hits. But they were!

You could also say that this is a further note on “Notes from the Underground (River)”, the lecture series recently released by Mockingbird.

I had to leave out one of Lobo’s best songs, by the way, because it is just too heartbreaking. But you will hear “Don’t Expect Me To Be Your…

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PZ’s Podcast: Love in the First Degree
Grace in Practice / Literature / Poetry / Religion

PZ’s Podcast: Love in the First Degree

by Mockingbird on Jan 21, 2013 • No Comments

EPISODE 132

We’ve got to move forward, just got to. “Come on, feet, don’t fail me now.” Even in isolation we’ve got to move forward, tho’ it’s better to move forward with colleagues and friends, and “thinking together” people, like the great Kreisau Circle of 1944 and ’45. Sometimes you can’t help being alone as you forge ahead.

I got a little help here from Christopher Isherwood: some thoughts on love and religion from the last period of his life. Then Galsworthy chimed in, in a short poem entitled “Reminder”; and St. John, too.

Finally, and maybe most important, at least in the…

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PZ’s Podcast: Now What?, Amberley Wildbrooks, Hotel Taft, Dissociated Chef d’Oeuvre, First Infinite Frost, and Victor Hugo
Film / Grace in Practice / Literature / Philosophy / Religion / Suffering

PZ’s Podcast: Now What?, Amberley Wildbrooks, Hotel Taft, Dissociated Chef d’Oeuvre, First Infinite Frost, and Victor Hugo

by Mockingbird on Dec 16, 2012 • No Comments

Episode 125: Now What?

You’ve got to see the Blu Ray of “The Egyptian” (1954). Not just because it displays a certain kind of ‘high water mark’ for the Hollywood studio system and its visual and musical artistry. But also because it enshrines a kind of deep insight that a person simply cannot shake after you’ve seen it.

Taking a leaf out of the J. Geils Band (“Looking for a Love”), ‘Sinuhe the Egyptian’ spends his entire life looking for something. Looking for a love? Looking for himself? Looking for an explanation? Looking for peace? He gets them all, in fact. He…

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PZ’s Podcast: Hold That Ghost, Worst That Could Happen (Zwingli), Saint’s Progress, and Done
Church / Grace in Practice / Literature / Music / Philosophy / Theology

PZ’s Podcast: Hold That Ghost, Worst That Could Happen (Zwingli), Saint’s Progress, and Done

by Mockingbird on Dec 3, 2012 • No Comments

Episode 121: Hold That Ghost

Love cannot exist in a context of fear. It can only exist in a context of freedom. Similarly, freedom issues in love — not in using. This cast is a rumination on freedom in relation to love. It’s intangible, freedom; and not substantial. Just try to Hold That Ghost! It will elude you, careen around you, and absolutely resist bottling.

In Podcast 121 Maxim Gorky will “Come to my Aid” (Simply Red), and you’ll like what he adds. Throw in something by The Young Rascals, and it’s heaven. Where Freedom enables Love, there is heaven. Mars is…

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The One Constant Element (According to John Galsworthy)
Literature

The One Constant Element (According to John Galsworthy)

by David Zahl on Oct 2, 2012 • No Comments

About a month ago, we posted a reflection on a stunning illustration of saving grace that occurs in John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga. Those who attended this past weekend’s conference in Charlottesville know that Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932 “for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga.” The author sadly fell ill prior to the ceremony and was unable to accept in person. But the speech he wrote for the occasion lives on. Here’s one particularly poignant excerpt:

“We do not know what is coming to the civilization in which…

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Falling Paintings, Infallible Instincts, and Atoning Sacrifices in The Forsyte Saga
Grace in Practice / Literature / Theology / TV

Falling Paintings, Infallible Instincts, and Atoning Sacrifices in The Forsyte Saga

by Mockingbird on Aug 29, 2012 • No Comments

As we’re finding out, sometimes late in the game, fiction can shed light on the Gospel in fresh ways, sometimes ways so fresh they almost seem more persuasive than straight theology.

An example of this is the denouement of John Galsworthy’s famous series of novels that is entitled The Forsyte Saga, the last section of which was completed in 1928.

Galsworthy, who had grown up and been schooled in the Church of England, had rejected orthodox Christianity, partly because of the Church’s policy concerning divorce and remarriage. But he was interested in religion, and even mellowed in his treatment of it in…

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