Fencing Bear at Prayer

It’s been three weeks, counting the practice session that my students and I did before term started. Two full weeks of classes, discussion sections, and office hours, more hours than I have ever been on camera in that short of time. Not as many as some, I am well-aware. But more than I had been used to.  It’s exhausting. It’s exhilarating. It’s ... well ... different from what I had expected. Perhaps the strangest aspect of the transition to Zoom is the sensation that I get not from teaching, when I am diligently looking at the camera  for the sake of my students, but when I am a student (fiddle class) or participant (faculty meeting) looking at myself looking at everyone else. Obviously, I can’t show you a screen shot of those meetings because that would mean showing you people whom I am not supposed to be able to take pictures of—except I can, because there we all are on screen together , visually identical in our little Zoom boxes. It is humbling, but also odd...

Two new podcasts to while away the spring evenings! 1. “ The Good Society, Its Friends, and Its Enemies ,” with Carbon Mike on future radio at Foundationism Online , April 2, 2020. 2. “ The Medieval Worldview ,” with Michael Sisco and Nicholas Leonard at Hearth & Fire, April 13, 2020. For a complete list of my podcast, video, and radio appearances, see Bear on Air .

You’ve got your university-licensed Zoom account. You have pestered campus IT to help you link your Zoom account with your Canvas courses, and you have figured out how to schedule recurring sessions of your classes, discussion sections, and office hours with stable Zoom IDs. ( Pro tip:  It will help your students find the rooms again if you include the IDs in your syllabus and/or post them on Canvas.) Somehow you managed to get everyone in the same room for your first class meeting, and you are reviewing the automatically-recorded session with a mixed frisson of horror and delight. Is that what I look like when I’m talking?! Why do the students all look so sleepy? How am I ever going to survive this term?! Never fear, Fencing Bear is here with a few tips and tricks for making the next few months fun! First, and most important rule of thumb: Do a little, then iterate. My current obsession is figuring out how to have music playing at the beginning of class, which invol...

Yesterday, everyone in the city of Chicago was warned not to go outside our homes except for necessities, on pain of arrest. Today, I watched Palm Sunday Mass live-streamed from the church of St. John Cantius downtown. Tomorrow, I will be teaching my first class of the Spring 2020 quarter online. I still can’t decide how I feel about all of this. Some worry that we are losing our freedom, not to mention our economy. Others insist that it is necessary to quarantine ourselves lest we—or our loved ones—lose our lives. Still others reassure us that, while things may or may not be as dire as they seem, there is a plan at work, we just need to stay home, let it play out , and all will be well. If only there were a guide . The message from the city was terrifying. It arrived on our phones with a siren’s blare, and it both threatened and shamed us if we dared ignore. The Mass was exquisite, a glimpse of the worship offered Our Lord in heaven, with heavenly voices sing...

John Moran, author of The Resurrection Mantra , joined me last night to talk about how saying the Resurrection Mantra (“Jesus, with you I will die and rise again”) can help build hope and resilience in the face of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Watch on my YouTube channel ! John and I talked in depth about the Resurrection Mantra  last October , before the world changed. For a complete list of my videos, podcasts, and radio interviews, see Bear On Air .

Grief is real. We are living through a massive transformation. Before the French Revolution, “revolution” meant a turning of the Wheel of Fortune. The Wheel has turned. The world has changed; we do not know yet what it will become. It is time to pray, grieve, and hope. Image: Wheel of Fortune from the Benediktbeuern manuscript (Munich, Bayerische Staastbibliothek, Clm 4660, fol. 1. For the story of this manuscript, see Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World  (London: Allen Lane, 2016), chapter 8.

Back in October 2019, I imagined that I would be spending this week in March writing a paper on Mary as “Queen of Angels” which I was planning to present at the 95th Annual Meeting of Medieval Academy of America as part of a panel on “Heaven.” My theme was to be the way in which Mary’s role as Queen of Angels defined medieval Christians’ understanding of heaven, its court, and its relationship to God, as per the abstract I submitted when I was invited to participate in the panel by one of my junior colleagues in the field. The conference was to be held at the University of California, Berkeley, in conjunction with annual meetings of certain other medieval associations, to one of which our panel had been submitted and accepted in the usual course of conference planning last spring. I was, of course, delighted to be invited to participate in the panel, given the pariah status I had been accorded over the past few years , but I was even more excited by the theme: Heaven . I was going to b...

For Milo Come, ever-darkening, shadow-laden night!  Descend! Descend upon this sleeping earth. Her rocky back grown cold, she cries, “Alight! Bring me my brother from our nurse’s bed, For he is grown and ready now to fly! Fly high, my well-beloved son—Take flight From out the sabled, hallowed inky sky, Afire and limned in crimson flames, hot red!” Hark! his foot drums, beating ever faster, Trembling with each pulsing of my veins. Channels deep that course like ancient rivers As ancient and as new as he and I. Approaching swift, the dim’s mist fast unfurls As bowing, kneeling, kissing taloned feet, It rushes soft along his mirrored scales. Hear! Hear! His voice is calling, “Time to fly!” Mine eyes op’ wide in concert with the moon; The soil resounds the thunder of his voice Atop the mountains crying out earth’s doom: “Op’ wide, O Earth, and let thy brother in!” The darkness of the heavens is his might. The seven-flamed Spirit is...