2016

Priest and Calligrapher

The loveliest thing I have read in this dreary season appeared in an unlikely place: The New York Times‘ Art & Design section on March 4th. It was the obituary of a Roman Catholic priest and former Trappist monk, who was also the calligrapher/muse behind Apple’s typography. He was 83 when he died on February 26th. Margalit Fox’s essay on the Rev. Robert Palladino is subscription only. So let me reprint the core of it for you:
“Priest and calligrapher” his business card read, in his unimpeachable Renaissance italic, and he long plied both trades at once.
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Not Just Another Tuesday

On the eve of Super Tuesday, the Council on Islamic-American relations (CAIR) urged American Muslims to get to the polls. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an organization that belongs on everyone’s reading list, is paying attention:
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad: The Muslims Can Be the Swing Vote in Major States in the 2016 Presidential Elections; ‘Our Number Is Growing As American Muslims; We Can… Register 1 Million Voters’
Awad warned that “life for American Muslims will be difficult” if “those attacking Muslims today will be in the White House,” and said that the number of Muslims was growing in the seven predicted swing states of the 2016 presidential elections – Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Continue Reading
Mary, On the Eve of Cana

The Christian mystery is incarnational. We profess belief in Jesus, God and man. But profession can teeter, at times, on the edge of a gap between faith and emotional grasp. If we are honest, True God comes more readily to us than True Man. It would be so much easier to have it one way or the other. Monophysitism remains a lingering temptation, an unacknowledged default position. We are robust in attending to the glory of the Incarnation; less so, our attention to its limitations. Continue Reading
A House Divided

What does it say about us that more states celebrate Black Friday (the shopping day after Thanksgiving) than Lincoln’s birthday? Or that in eighteen states, Black Friday is a paid holiday for government employees, often in lieu of Columbus Day?   You know yourself what it says. That spares me any need to struggle to keep an upbeat, optimistic tone when I admit that I miss the February 12th acknowledgment of Lincoln’s birthday. Our shiny new Presidents Day is a hollow thing that commemorates nothing. Continue Reading