Returning to Yourself and to God in Walt Whitman

By Samuel Bennett According to David L. Weddle, religion rests on two pillars: miracle stories and practices of sacrifice.[1] The miracle story announces good news: the mundane plane upon which we typically live and have our being is not the whole story; and the divine side of reality occasionally crosses over to ours. Energized by the…

A Prayer to Ryan Gosling: A Review of Song to Song

“With Song to Song, Terrence Malick avoids the traps of sentimentalism on the one hand, and moralism on the other while telling a deeply human story — one filled with deception, confusion, beauty, longing, goodness, and truth — and therefore a deeply religious one. Its poetic style makes it challenging to audiences, and leaves it open to the ridicule…