Fr. Dwight Longenecker | thechainedmuse

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Coronation

Those quaint medieval paintings I’ve seen of Mary’s crowning don’t do much for me. You know the stuffy, courtly ones I mean— God and...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Nativity

Forget your Christmas cards and little crèche the cutesy donkey, sheep and shepherd boys. Put away the twinkle lights and all that trash;...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Listening to "Little Gidding"

It would seem with the opening of “Little Gidding” that Eliot has relapsed once again into his habit of opaque language, obscure...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Listening to "Dry Salvages"

T.S. Eliot protested at the critics’ tendency to interpret literary works through the lens of the writer’s biography, but hypocritically,...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Listening to "East Coaker"

In the introduction to this five part series I proposed that there were three elements of Eliot’s poetry that were necessary to best...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Listening to "Burnt Norton"

I’m using the word “listening” in this series on Eliot’s Four Quartets to suggest not only that the poetry should be read aloud or...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

The Pilgrimage (St. Margaret's, Binsey, Oxford)

You have to pass through the distressing part of this mostly golden town to get there. You continue—pressing past Jericho and on through...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Annunciation

Here in a bright alchemy, history collides and combines with eternal things. The mundane is infused with mystery, and the dust and mud...