What happens in great choral performances? How do we write (or think) about music that moves us? I came across this sparkling account written by someone who should know, a conductor who has trained generations of American choral conductors. We put in muscle and blood and brains and breath—and out comes holy Spirit. A miracle happens—the Flesh is made Word, and dwells among us. That’s earthy, religious, even Christian. It’s the great Robert Shaw writing in 1972 about the miracles […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR

How many in Los Angeles will care about the legacy of Martin Heidegger? Fans of the American film writer and director Terrence Malick might care, but they’re unlikely to live in LA. Malick translated Heidegger as a Harvard philosophy graduate student, and traces can be found in his films. LA fans of The Los Angles Review of Books (yes, it exists) will also care.  It recently ran an intriguing piece on a new Heidegger book. So not all good criticism […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR

William James is known as the father of American Psychology and a Philosopher of Religious Experience par excellence. He also could exhibit a wide range of mood and sensibility. I just came across this – something new to me – in an account of James’ well-known struggles, especially in his youth, over meaning or purpose in his life: One of his early sketchpads contains what most scholars think is a self-portrait in red crayon—a young man, seated, hunched over, with […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR

I’ve just received a collection of essays on nature that includes exchanges among academics allied with ecology, literature, and theology. What caught my eye was an essay titled, “Dream Writing.” It reminds me of Thoreau’s phrase, “dreaming awake.” That’s what it was to look skyward from his skiff in the center of Walden Pond. The author, Susan Pyke, writes from the University of Melbourne on literature and ecology. She wonders if reading poetry and novels can enter the body to animate […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR