Where We Start From: Hope from the Narthex of the Apocalypse

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Jackson the Cat "The Gothic tale, characterized by its setting and atmosphere--the former tending toward ill-storied mansions located in remote, rustic areas, the latter toward gloom and impending disaster--flourished for many years: from the age of Horace Walpole and Anne Radcliffe into the early twentieth century, when it died with Edith Wharton. The genre also typically featured an unlikely, melancholy hero who confronts a half-remembered legend concerning a dark presence who once terrorized the region in life and is still rumored to haunt the land in death, or an innocent who was tortured to death sometime in the distant past and who is said to still walk the land after nightfall." -James Person  From its awkward beginnings in the late 18th century with Horace Walpole's pseudo-medieval novel,  The Castle of Otranto ,  the literary style known as "Gothic"  has grown to become very popular. While there are pure Gothic stories, often elem

“Beware the autumn people…For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life…For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir in their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eyes? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles- breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.” – Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

"We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want."

Thank you to my cousin, David, for these marvelous books from England.

“To think creatively, to struggle with an opaque text or confounding idea, to seek connections between periods of history or disciplines of thought, and to search for the precise word or the right rhythm for a single sentence—these are human actions every bit as worthy as the wielding of a hammer, the manipulation of a surgical scalpel, or the making of a courtroom argument.”  ―  Roger Lundin ,  Beginning with the Word (Cultural Exegesis): Modern Literature and the Question of Belief