Matchsticks Contemplating Eternity

These essays invite the reader to join the author’s quest for meaning and wonder in the natural world. After the journey out of evangelical fundamentalism recorded in Unified Field Theology, the journey continues. Through years with more darkness than anticipated, the light shines through. And darkness turns out to be the best place for discerning faint and distant lights. The natural forces studied in the search for the unified theory reveal that the creative sustaining power of the universe is real and observable through science. Humility and wonder are found responding to the size of the cosmos. The strangeness of the quanta invites us to mystery and things beyond rational comprehension accompanied by the assurance that our most basic level is as eternal as the universe. Significance appears in caring for each other, a trait which is now found in both the animal and plant world as well. Returning to traditional sources of faith, the Bible remains an amazing library of voices revealing one people’s evolution of understanding of the ultimate. Like practices of other cultures, it invites us to be still and know. Life is indeed good. We are here, together, choosing how we respond to a very real God.

These essays invite the reader to join the author's quest for meaning and wonder in the natural world. After the journey out of evangelical fundamentalism recorded in Unified Field Theology, the journey continues. Through years with more darkness than anticipated, the light shines through. And darkness turns out to be the best place for discerning faint and distant lights. The natural forces studied in the search for the unified theory reveal that the creative sustaining power of the universe is real and observable through science. Humility and wonder are found responding to the size of the cosmos. The strangeness of the quanta invites us to mystery and things beyond rational comprehension accompanied by the assurance that our most basic level is as eternal as the universe. Significance appears in caring for each other, a trait which is now found in both the animal and plant world as well. Returning to traditional sources of faith, the Bible remains an amazing library of voices revealing one people's evolution of understanding of the ultimate. Like practices of other cultures, it invites us to be still and know. Life is indeed good. We are here, together, choosing how we respond to a very real God.

"The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."

Discusses the elements of a sign, and looks at pictograms, alphabets, calligraphy, monograms, text type, numerical signs, symbols, and trademarks.

Pilgrim on the Way of Love is a journey in feelings and words undertaken by the author over a twenty-two-year period. In retrospect, the journey depicted an odyssey in love and revelation. The journey, through its wondrous course, has seen the author as a student of literature, a student of law, a professional lawyer, a family man, and a seeker of the magnetic and dynamic unknown. Having found enrichment, the author is moved to share the challenge and beauty of the unique navigational path that has been his road to the very core of existence.

“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.

Many of us have questions about the Bible: Can we believe the Bible? What was Jesus’ mission? What is sin? Does hell exist? Is anyone beyond God’s forgiveness? In A Jesuit Off-Brodway, James Martin, SJ, answers these questions about the Bible, and other big questions about life, as he serves as a theological advisor to the cast of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Grab a front-row seat to Fr. Martin's six months with the LAByrinth Theater Company and see first-hand what it's like to share the faith with a largely secular group of people . . . and discover, along with Martin, that the sacred and the secular aren't always that far apart.