Sin Eaters in a Sacramental Cosmos

It is precisely because we have a natural desire for the supernatural, as Henri de Lubac put it, that this arc of human hunger is prone to warping, tempted to find its rest in god-like substitutes like power, or parodies of religion like the military, or even the belonging one finds in a narco-gang, as if it were a sorry shadow of the civitas Dei.

All the writing that I’ve done has involved an element of wanting to sustain that ghost career, or find a position somewhere between ‘journalism’ and ‘scholarship.’ I don’t feel that there’s a total difference between these kinds of writing. They’re not different species. There is so much that lies in between.

As Ross puts it, “Wagner was the original canceled artist;” his enduring reception tells us something about the way art resists and transcends bouts of political purification and vilification. Much to learn here in our own moment.

Like Fowler at the end of The Quiet American, she is looking for someone to whom she can confess her guilt, own her complicity. But when she admits her deed to her father, Juan Pablo, she gets adulation in return. Klay’s prose is stirring and precise:

While he spoke, she stared silently out at the same city and mountains he did, but saw a different

what intrigued me in Ross’s conversation with the Chronicle are his thoughts about a sort of writing between scholarship and journalism, a writing vocation that builds bridges from the university to wider audiences.

You pray for something quick. Murderous. And in the long, drawn-out seconds of, well, is it joy? Awe? Something more? In those long, long seconds there are these quick rapid instants, between the blink of an eye, when your instincts, honed predator instincts, they give way to a different kind of alertness. to the alertness of prey. To the knowledge

The history of sin eaters is hazy, but we have evidence of the funereal practice from the 18th century in Wales and its border region. Grieving families would place bread on the chest of the deceased, the corpse an altar of sorts. Believing the bread absorbed the sins of the deceased, the family would hire a professional sin eater to consume the br

There’s a hopefulness and poignancy to the lyrics here that, to be honest, doesn’t feel like Jeff Tweedy, as if something has been born anew in him. I don’t know, but a line like this is the truth: It’s hard to see reality / when you’ve got no love at all.

In my own personal spiritual geography, it is one of a handful of high holy places, not only because of its geographical sense of sanctuary, but also because Steven Purcell and his team know how to make room for a spiritual encounter without having to “manage” it. The rhythms of the place reflect deep intentionality but also a deeper trust that eff