Tag Archives: Resurrection

Brown’s Populism Comes from Tolstoy

By Robin Bates | Published: February 8, 2019

Friday While I don’t yet know whom I will be supporting for the 2020 Democratic nominee for president—I very much like the women who have declared so far—I have a soft spot for Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. Brown, whose working class sympathies helped him comfortably win reelection in a red state, just made his case stronger […]

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A Vast Unfolding Design Lit by a Risen Sun

By Robin Bates | Published: April 8, 2018

Denise Levertov’s magnificent poem about Doubting Thomas graphically describes the doubts, making the final revelation all the more powerful.

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How Tolstoy Would Judge Jeff Sessions

By Robin Bates | Published: September 22, 2017

Leo Tolstoy, who calls out public officials who abuse the public trust, would have choice words for the American attorney general.

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What Tennis Meant to Tolstoy

By Robin Bates | Published: September 5, 2017

Leo Tolstoy picked up tennis late in life, even though at one point seeing it as symbolic of bourgeois decadence. A look at the novel “Resurrection” explains why he changed.

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Only after Pain Comes Life

By Robin Bates | Published: May 14, 2017

For Mother’s Day, here’s a Madeleine L’Engle poem about Jesus’s mother experiencing the crucifixion and then the resurrection. In it we see both the joys and the heartbreak that come with an unconditional mother’s love.

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The Third Who Walks Always Beside You

By Robin Bates | Published: May 7, 2017

Rowan Williams has a powerful poem about the Road to Emmaus in which he tries to capture the tangible-yet-intangible quality of Jesus in our lives. He may be dialoguing with T. S. Eliot’s own use of the episode in “The Waste Land.”

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Touching the Wounded God

By Robin Bates | Published: April 12, 2015

Malcolm Guite’s “Sonnet for St. Thomas the Apostle” celebrates the urge to touch God.

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From the Dark, Cold Grime a Flower Comes

By Robin Bates | Published: March 22, 2015

Mary Ann Bernard shows spring coming only with difficulty–but being all the more meaningful because of that.

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Advent and Horror at the Void

By Robin Bates | Published: November 30, 2014

Donald Hall’s “Advent” captures the darkness of the season, linking death with birth.

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