Way of Life and Death
Hamnet (2025)
A new addition to the canon; adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague, Hamnet is a heartbreaking, inspiring study of love, spirituality and the redemptive power of art.
In memoriam: Costa Botes (1958-2025)
Petals fell, poetry was spoken and honey tasted today in commemoration of the life and death of Wellington, New Zealand filmmaker and documentarist Costa Botes. Costa was a decade older than I am, born in Turkey but raised from a young age in Wellington, as I was. We attended the same high school, ten years … Read moreIn memoriam: Costa Botes (1958-2025)
Memoria 2025 (Part 2)
My daily riverside pilgrimages are becoming colder and much more colorful. Good apple doughnut weather … Flowers left by an unknown third party among the riverbank stones. The Duende skull is now placed on the right side of the vanitas shrine, facing left – “looking into the past” from the Memoria perspective – and is … Read moreMemoria 2025 (Part 2)
Accept death, embrace life.
Light a candle. Watch the flame for a while. Feel its heat, then blow it out. Watch the smoke drift away. Look at the blackened wick. That is birth, life, death, and non-existence. If you re-light the candle, that’s a new life; the original flame exists only in memory. Now remember the smoke and consider … Read moreAccept death, embrace life.
Memoria 2025 (Part 1)
An unusually hot and dry Fall has delayed some of the usual seasonal cues, but now it is undeniable; Memoria has arrived once again. We actually began our observances very early by taking part in the annual Sacred Harvest event at Sky Meadow in Vermont. … and we’ve just returned from an anniversary vacation that … Read moreMemoria 2025 (Part 1)
“Tuesday” (2024)
Recommended viewing. There hasn’t been a new addition to the canon for quite a while; this movie qualifies.
“Metamodernism and Poetic Faiths”
In connection with the launch of Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art, here’s my recent conversation with Metamodern Meaning luminary Brendan Graham Dempsey. We discuss the Poetic Faith ethos from a variety of perspectives, the structure and aims of the anthology, my own practice of the Mysterium as an example … Read more“Metamodernism and Poetic Faiths”
“Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Ritual as Works of Living Art” Vol. 1 now available
The first volume of the Poetic Faiths interview anthology is now available! Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art is an anthology of illustrated interviews with an emergent counterculture of artists and activists who take secular humanism as a given, then ask, “Now what?” and find their answers in artistic creation. Poetic … Read more“Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Ritual as Works of Living Art” Vol. 1 now available
Tom Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025)
Petals fell, poetry was spoken and honey tasted to commemorate the life and death of American author Tom Robbins: The search for meaning is not a whole lot different than the yearning for certainty, which is to say, an unsuitable pursuit for any who might aspire to nimbleness of mind, amplitude of soul, or freedom … Read moreTom Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025)