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Communion with the People
So they scorn: “The Left has been predicting for decades the recession that never came.” Alas, now the recession has finally come, where is the Left? The Right will steal and fight (indeed, are already...
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Kyrie of the recycling centre
At the risk of obsessively praying about waste and recycling, I have this prayer to offer, which I trust to be sensibly Trinitarian.(John Calvin was wrong. The Purgatory does exist. I have seen it with...
View ArticleReligious figures address the European Parliament
I mentioned in these pages that the “green” Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, addressed the European Parliament earlier this year. This was as part of a series...
View Article508 #68: WPI and PILOT
508 is a show about Worcester.This week, I talk to Brendan Melican. Topics include inaccurate predictions, the Telegram & Gazette’s website troubles, and WPI making non-tax payments to the city.If...
View ArticleWisdom against waste
貨惡其棄於地也，不必藏於己；力惡其不出於身也，不必為己。 – ‘Lǐ Yùn’ in The Classic of Rites, attributed to Confucius. Translation by James Legge: ‘(When the Grand course was pursued, they accumulated) articles (of value),...
View ArticleJust another manic Monday
At one o’clock Monday morning, I counted the votes to select a parliamentary candidate for the Green Party in the Oxford East constituency, to replace Peter Tatchell who had to stand down due to health...
View ArticleA late Lent bibliography
I’m just now getting into the spiritual and intellectual work I associate with Lent. Barring some quick epiphanies, this work will stretch into the Easter season.Here are some of the things I’m...
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Thinking a few steps ahead
(To appear in Issue 2 of the Oxford Left Review.)‘One of the most encouraging developments in the emergent intellectual space [...] has been a new willingness to advocate the Necessary rather than the...
View ArticleThe Grand Harmony
By chance, a copy of Lee Teng-hui’s The Road to Democracy: Taiwan’s Pursuit of Identity (1999; ISBN 4569606512) came into my possession. In the book, a great deal is made of the former president’s...
View ArticleInterregnum, relaunch
Today this blog outlives one whole papacy.The OSCE has relaunched its magazine as Security Community. Get your free copy here.
View ArticleBob Adams: A Theory of Virtue
There is no liberty that is more important to liberalism than the freedom to form, embrace, criticize, reject, and revise theories of every sort, especially political theories. For this reason it is...
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Sata vuotta sitten – one hundred years ago
My rough translation of a first-hand account of the Finnish Civil War, from a 1960 book. The citation and a link to the original text is at the end. On the way to armed struggle Dr J. A. Pärnänen had...
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Scott Schaeffer-Duffy’s Catholic Worker murder mystery: Murder on Mott Street
Longtime Worcester Catholic Worker Scott Schaeffer-Duffy has written a historical-fiction mystery in which “teen detective” Tamar Batterham (aka Dorothy Day’s daughter) teams up with Catholic Worker...
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Lenten Gameplan, 2019
Fasting: At last, Facebook has become a miserable enough experience that it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice to give it up. So the likely candidates this year are the old classics: giving up (some) sugar,...
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Jubilate Agno
“For I bless the PRINCE of PEACE and pray that all the guns may be nailâ€d up, save such are for the rejoicing days.” –Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno Wow! Here’s a reading of Christopher Smart’s...
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Theorists of Nonviolence: Ballou, Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Sharp
Adin Ballou is a truly revolutionary figure, deserving of serious public and scholarly attention. I want to focus on his achievement as a theorist of nonviolence: how his life and writings contributed...
View ArticleBook: Justice Seekers, Peace Makers
Another Michael True work posted online this week: PDFs from his book Justice Seekers, Peace Makers. Don’t be surprised if some of these chapters show up as future posts on Pie and Coffee. Martin...
View ArticleNonviolence, racism, and the state
You may recall my frustrated critique of the essay “Nonviolence as Racism.” One of many things I disliked about this essay is that it didn’t back up many of its assertions, and seemed more off-the-cuff...
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Two comments on two quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The first quote is from NNT’s book The Black Swan: These were the days when it was extremely common for traders to break phones when they lost money. Some resorted to destroying chairs, tables, or...
View ArticleDifferent kinds of non-resistance
From the first chapter of Christian Non-Resistance by Adin Ballou (1846). What is Christian Non-Resistance? It is that original peculiar kind of non-resistance, which was enjoined and exemplified by...
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