Carol Zaleski
Illuminations: Pauline Baynes's fancies of another world
Pauline Baynes died on August 1 at the age of 85—one more light gone out from the golden age of children’s book illustration, an age that gave us Arthur Rackham’s fairies, Edmund Dulac’s Cinderella...
Eminent Victorians: Debaters with imagination
The new atheist movement has reached its high-water mark, and there are signs that it is starting to recede. Wishful thinking, you say?...
The thing with feathers: A quotidian kind of hopefulness
1 Peter says we should always be ready to give a reason for hope. Always?
What to say about hell: A symposium
Hell is talked about cautiously, if at all, in mainline churches....
Naming God: The divine name has become a household God
One of our family hobbies is to tackle new languages at the dinner table or on trips or in odd moments before bed....
Trust exercise: Unexpected wallops
The blizzard hit more suddenly than predicted, dumping several inches on us by noon and stopping traffic dead in all the streets leading from our town to the outlying country....
Political time-out: A year of elected silence
"Politics pulverizes,” observed the elegant, white-haired editor as she looked at me across her mahogany desk....
Puddle hopping: A labyrinth alternative
Some friends of mine are avid labyrinth walkers and have recommended the practice to me. But though I’ve long admired the floor of Chartres Cathedral—and once had the pleasure of seeing my children race around it at top speed before they climbed the tower and searched the high vaults for bats—I’ve never been on a formal retreat involving labyrinths. Perhaps that’s because I’m more familiar with informal collapses than with formal retreats. Fortunately an economic alternative has suggested itself: puddle hopping.
Case for the defense: Arguing for God's existence
The current spate of atheist, antitheist and antireligious books has made me ask myself whether I ought to be working, strictly pro bono, for the defense....
Christian yoga: A Lent of loopholes
Once again it was a Lent of loopholes, of minor sacrifices deferred by family travels and travails and of minor irritations unredeemed, so that as Palm Sunday drew near it caught me in need of a ne...
A way of seeing: Reflections on a work of art
A few weeks ago, oppressed by some worrying news, I stopped into our college art museum....
All souls
She died on Sunday, after a month of dateless days that began on Halloween and ended just short of Thanksgiving. We went from the hospice admitting office to a Halloween party in the family room, where volunteers offered us fruit punch, orange cupcakes and orange and black balloons. Three toddlers in identical ladybug suits were dancing on the faux-parquet ballroom floor to the electrically amplified folk songs of a long-haired balladeer.
Reasoning together: What makes for genuine dialogue?
Now that the dust has settled from l’affaire Regensburg, it’s a good time to think about what makes for genuine interfaith dialogue....
A school in Tibet: Altruism remains a mysterious force
On an ordinary day some ten years ago, when I was in the midst of a long-forgotten project, a call came from preschool: “You need to pick up Andy....
The lowly virtue: Humility is a gift
Humility's job is not to crown the virtues but to serve them and infuse them with the spirit of the beatitudes ("Blessed are the meek.") Genuine humility orders the soul, bestowing clarity, calmness and competence.
Lowbrow wisdom: The priestess of positive thinking
Ella Wheeler Wilcox—does the name ring a bell?...
The siege of Narnia: What reviewers are saying
My class on the Inklings (C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their circle) met on Tuesdays and Thursdays last semester, just in time for elevenses....
Christmas wrappings: A time for holy foolishness
Andy, our ten-year-old, loves to hear stories about his baby years....