Medicine for the Soul






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Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense

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Here be dragons. And doves. Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always out of fashion because, of course, it is not a longing for the world, and the world knows it. We know what the world wants. The world—by which we mean Satan, the Lord of the World—wants above all our obedience, a jewel so precious that he will do anything to get it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, pretend to social standing, pretend to insider knowledge to get us to consent to his influence.  “God lied to you. You will not die.” And suddenly we are anxious about having other people dislike us, about losing prestige in our social circles, about other people being more popular or influential or successful, about other people having secret knowledge, about our own influence and fame. “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And with that temptation, our first parents fell. The irony is cosmic. There they were in the Garden, privy to conversation with God face-to-face, ...
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Draco Layer Three: The Moral or Tropological Sense

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Learn to discern. We all know what sin is, right? Right?!  Once upon a time in the desert , the hermit Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399) set out to make a list of the most deadly ones, albeit he called them “deadly thoughts,” not “sins.” You probably know the list, even if you don’t think you do: gluttony, impurity (a.k.a. lust), avarice (a.k.a. greed), sadness (a.k.a. feeling sorry for oneself), anger or wrath, acedia  or sloth, vainglory, and pride (two different things).  Not quite the list you were expecting? That is because some centuries later—we’re talking ancient times here, when centuries passed like decades do now (or vice versa)—Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) revised the list, somewhat accidentally, in his commentary on Job.  Gregory had been expounding Job according to its multiple layers—yes, that’s right! Job, like Shrek, has layers! —and he happened somewhere in book XXXI to mention the “seven principle vices” to which Pride,  the “Queen of S...
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How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

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Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in ...
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The Trolls of Academe

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Meanwhile, at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America last weekend... I am so disappointed. I never saw these “alt-right trolls,” although clearly others were able to see them. I even went to the panel on diversity and inclusivity that Professor Stoyanoff mentions in his tweet expecting to see some—it was, after all, exactly the kind of event guaranteed to attract trolls! I have read through the tweets from that afternoon, and I can’t see what he is talking about there either. Perhaps if there had been time for some Q&A at the end, the trolls would have exposed themselves, rather than sitting quietly with the rest of the audience as they apparently did. (I wouldn’t know, I couldn’t see them, but then I was sitting up front so as to be able to pay proper attention to the panel. Perhaps they were behind me.) The panel itself was extremely instructive. The panelists talked about how much they loved studying the Middle Ages and how encouraging it was to find o...
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Blog in the Family

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning will remember that one of the inspirations for my starting a blog in the first place was the excellent series of reflections that my brother had posted on his original blog about being an American living in Belgium.  Well, after a hiatus, he has now started publishing again.  Indeed, he has started a whole net of blogs , in which he plans to reflect upon not only his experiences living in Belgium, but also his teaching and further travels , as well as giving advice to his daughter and homage to his favorite video stars .  Given that he is not only a Buddhist, but also my younger brother (ahem!), it is more or less guaranteed that there is going to be a fair amount of (ahem! ahem!) sibling rivalry at stake in my response to his blogging. What can I say?  It is in the nature of family members to disagree, particularly when they have so much in common.  As, thanks to several of his recent posts, I reali...
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