The Imaginative Conservative

The slow, silent and mostly invisible hand of God working in our lives sometimes punches through the veil to let us know, “I AM always with you.”

William Gilmore Simms When it comes to stories that make your hair stand on end everyone’s mind understandably goes to master of macabre Edgar Allan Poe.

This is the mystery which, in the end, Saint Matthew relates in the pages of his Gospel: Jesus is not a teacher of ethics, or a strange oriental prophet, but the promised Messiah, unrecognisable except to those who had broken together that fragment of the…

At the same time that writers were bringing depth of character to the gothic setting in the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe revitalized the genre in mid-century America.

The problems of what passes for higher education today are many and deep and entrenched.

It is a trick of the Devil to think that “spiritual combat” means only using the part of us that is spiritual.

Giving Anne Carson the Nobel Prize in Literature is a tragedy.

For Russell Kirk, the “ghost tale” may better communicate certain truths when compared to science fiction.

The key to understanding Thomas More’s generous dedication to the real but limited good he could do on earth is, as Frank Mitjans makes clear, that More’s constant contemplation of God was the source of his boundless care for the souls surrounding him.

There is something calming and focusing about praying at night.

When the love of God strikes a human heart, it strikes it as a simple ray of light strikes a prism.

Odysseus’ works were not the cause of his going home—the gods were.

Iain McGilchrist’s “The Matter With Things” is a comprehensive diagnosis of the modern condition.

The ghost story was the perfect vehicle for Russell Kirk to extend his own sense of awe-filled wonder to a wider audience.

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

To assess accurately the state of Western Civilization, one needs to understand how the Western tradition, standing at the peak of its influence and popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, ended up in such a state of siege a century later.

Like another John the Baptist, the preacher makes straight the way of the Lord.

Fear is the gift that leads to ‘docibilitas’ and docility: ‘docibilitas,’ the teachable frame of mind that opens us to the lessons He is constantly teaching us; and docility through which we say our fiat upon hearing His voice.

Peter Gammons has given us a series of glimpses into the recent baseball past and a crutch to help us survive what might be a baseball-less future–at least for a while.

In order to run (or swim) our race and win, we need to keep our focus on our unsinkable savior, Jesus Christ.

At a time when our nation was still young and finding its feet culturally, Frederic Church took on the role of explorer and interpreter of the visual splendors of the New World—and of the rest of the world.

The seven pillars of Western Civilization are the edifying edifices which tower over the landscape of the centuries as a fortress of faith and a beacon of reason.

Christopher Dawson’s work is a kaleidoscopic treatment of a dizzying amount of Western history.

Russell Amos Augustine Kirk is one of America’s foremost and most important thinkers, especially in the desiccated and mutilated 20th century, an era of horrific inhumanities and incessant blood-letting.

If we learn how to wait while doing all we can to invite the Holy Spirit to take possession of us, then before too long all our hopes, all our deepest desires and yearnings will be realized.

God’s ineffable simplicity is a spring of contemplation.

I cannot, by myself, eclipse the darkness of disconnection, growing illiteracy, and lives filled with an infinite scroll.

Despite our scientific prowess, to have a right view of creation, we still need to know that we are only a part of that creation.

In Cather’s “The Professor’s House,” Augusta’s devoutly Catholic presence is the presence of the real, the perennial presence of the reality which permeates the past, present and future, making sense of all time from the perspective of eternity.

Theresa’s infused wisdom easily surpassed the acquired theological wisdom of most of Christendom’s greatest minds.

Our greatest tragedy is sin unrepented, but after that comes the tragedy of unteachability, which stunts and limits us, withers God’s work, undoes our best resolutions, even those of half an hour ago, renders us partially fruitless, and makes us spiritual…

Making the spiritual ascent into God is rather like trying to run up a downward escalator.

There was a missing element in the Secretary of State’s speech.

Although Hilaire Belloc and J.R.R.

As St.

The challenge of greatness is not the challenge of human achievement, nor the conquest of glory on the way to success and accumulation.

The bitterness that many Orthodox Christians feel towards the Catholic Church is rooted in a historical perception of past grievances which Catholic Christians don’t share and don’t understand.

Today, the Church commemorates the memorial of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.

J.S.

Pope Pius, who had done more than anyone to make the Christian victory at Lepanto possible, is said to have burst into tears when news of it reached him.

Here are the first five of ten books that radically re-oriented my views of the world, books I go back to time and again.

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I have to admit that I did not immediately warm to Karen Ullo’s novel.

If God really is our happiness, then the greatest kind of hope is not an expectation of earthly felicity, but rather a bold trust in God’s love for us in spite of every challenge and suffering.

St.

Two books about St.

Upon revisiting Chesterton’s “The Napoleon of Notting Hill” and reacquainting myself with his Napoleon, I realized that I, like the protagonist, was lacking the necessary laughter and love of friends that I had enjoyed when I first read the novel.

Barnacles do not often occupy the thoughts of landlubbers.

Thérèse recognized and gave thanks for God’s mercies, but can we say that she repaid the Lord for his mercies?

Sometimes the Gospel calls us not so much to encounter the Lord but to take a look at ourselves, and before we know it, the Scriptures hold up a mirror before our stained and deformed faces, and then Lord help us if we refuse in our hearts to perceive what