Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The two-week hiatus in posting blogs and comments was caused by my trip to the Southwest. While there I found a Navajo guide who took me into Canyon de Chelly.
First of all, never tell a Navajo guide you are up to a challenging hike. The only time I have ever come close to puking [...]

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Arturo Vasquez over at the ever-fascinating Reditus spends a great deal of time, perhaps a little too much, in the curious corners of Catholicism, or perhaps semi-Catholicism: the bandit saints, popularly-canonized dogs, curanderos, Hermeticism, etc. I love it. He posited one explanation for his identity: 

3. Arturo Vasquez is a witch: We are surprised that people [...]

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I am happy to report that Father Fessio acted on my advice and has republished Daypring, a novel by Harry Sylvester about the encounter of a secular Easterner with the Penitentes of New Mexico. 
In December 2007 I commented on the original edition. 
Every time I visit the Southwest something extraordinary happens – I try not to [...]

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In case you missed what I was getting at in the Hopi post, over at the ever-fascinating Reditus: A Chronicle of Aesthetic Christianity, our blogger Arturo notes:
I’m so Catholic …I pray to saints even the Pope doesn’t recognize. When we went to the cemetery as children, we used to visit the graves of [...]

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A Kachina

Maidie and I went on a Kachina tour of Arizona, under the aegis of Crow Canyon and under the leadership of the archeologist Chuck Adams (above), who has worked on the Hopi mesas for thirty years. We started off in Phoenix at the Heard Museum, and then went up to Flagstaff, to the Museum [...]

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When we Anglos see the dances of the Pueblos, we do not understand the songs. For the dancers, the song is primary. The dance is not a raw expression of emotion or instinct, but a rational action, one fully formed by intelligence and reason. The words of the song are therefore primary; the [...]

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Like many of those who have fallen under the spell of the Southwest, I have become fascinated by kachinas. In June (deo volente) we are going on a Kachina tour of the Hopi villages sponsored by the Crow Canyon Archeological center. It may depending, on the auspices, include a kachina dance.

The kachinas are [...]

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Phil Jenkins in First Things had an article on the forgotten Catholic novelist Harry Sylvester. I found Sylvester’s novel Dayspring. It is remarkable, and I am trying to see if it can be republished.

Sylvester wrote two political novels, Dearly Beloved and Moon Gaffney.  As Jenkins wrote,
Both these novels reflect Sylvester’s immersion in the political causes [...]

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Violence among Christians or among supposedly civilized states makes some wonder what the Prince of Peace is up to. How can the mass slaughters of the twentieth century, or of more Christian eras such as the Thirty Years War be reconciled with the peace that Christ brings? 
Information overload is part of the problem. Since 1945, [...]

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