When Maclin invited me to write for this weblog a few years back the idea was to sort of, more or less, continue Caelum et Terra in a new form. So we invited anyone who had written for the magazine to submit writings. I think only one CT writer did so, and only once. I don’t fault any of them for this; after all several of our writers went on to successful writing careers. Regina Doman writes young adult fiction and children’s books, Ben Wiker has gone on to become a pretty well known thinker and critic, Eric Brende wrote a well-received book somewhat loosely based on the experiences he chronicled in the journal about living and working with low-tech Anabaptists in Kentucky. And Tom Storck has continued his vocation as a prolific essayist.
So it was pretty much just Maclin and me. In the last year or two, though, Maclin has become pretty busy with his own blog, Light on Dark Water, which is that rare thing in computerland, a place where thoughtful and respectful conversation rules.
So that leaves just me. I have a more than full time job and six children, and I write/paint icons. So I don’t write very much. If that is fine with you, if you enjoy reading my occasional musings and rants, that is fine.
However, if you would like to see something a bit more lively I have a suggestion: why don’t we open the blog to any of our readers who would like to post?
It should go without saying that this implies that the folks we are welcoming would share some affinity with the always-hard-to-define outlook of Caelum et Terra. If you think Sean Hannity is a profound thinker your posts would probably not be welcome. If you think the Church is primarily a source of oppression, you probably want to find another venue.
But if you are familiar with the nether regions where the decentralist left and the traditionalist right find common ground, where the radical Catholic and the thoughtful Green share a beer, then this is a good fit for you.
Of course, as with the magazine, I reserve the right to determine the content, but rest assured I will not reject something just because I don’t agree with it. I enjoy spirited debates, as long as they don’t descend to insults. But there are parameters.
So, what do you think?
—Daniel Nichols
A rather new reader here. Does it qualify me if I live where Fr. Schmemann meets Mr. Berry, where Christopher Lasch meets Alexander Solzhenitsyn, where Slavoj Zizek meets JOHN Zizioulas and ends up as Davar Dzalto, in the world (this one!) where the Patriarchal Paschal epistle places globalism in direct opposition to the risen Christ?
That is to say, I’m Orthodox. I have some familiarity with CT, but more with later phenomena and intersections: The New Pantagruel, the journal Road to Emmaus (which you must read, if you haven’t), and others of their ilk. In any case, I’d be interested in writing, as much as my schedule allows (the blissful pain of Ph.D. work!)
I read here regularly, always with profit (if not always agreeing with the argument et cetera), and am happy to continue to do so without more.
‘Sean Hannity as profound thinker, the Church primarily as oppressor’: those are some pretty broad parameters, indeed, ha.
I’m for it (and btw, Daniel, thanks for the compliment to my blog). I write little here mainly because, although as DN notes the CetT charter, so to speak, was always a little hard to define, I don’t feel that most of what I’m interested in writing about these days really fits. What does fit? Well, a lot of broadly socio-political stuff, I guess. Liturgy. Theology. Everything in Adam Parsons’s comment above seems applicable although I don’t recognize all the names.
I’d like to hear from more folks, and I sure as heck would like to share a beer with y’all.
I’ve visited The New Pantagruel and cannot figure out what it is about.
Adam- Though I don’t recognize the last three names you cite, the rest of it sounds great. I have subscribed to RTE for several years now; pretty indispensible and I read it cover to cover. For those of you who don’t know it, Road to Emmaus is an Orthodox quarterly and very fine.
I have worshipped in Byzantine Catholic churches for the last six years, so Orthodox spirituality, liturgy, and culture are very familiar to me. I also attend vespers at the local Greek church when I am not working on Saturdays…So yeah, feel free to contribute.
Contributors should send posts and links to articles they’d like to share to Maclin’s email address, which I don’t know off the top of my head.
Daniel – I am a big fan of Caelum et Terra and Light on Dark Water. You and Maclin and Tom are voices of sanity in a crazy world. I’m sure there are others out there that could contribute to the good work you guys are already doing.
Adam – Zizek and Zizioulas! Very interesting. Would love to hear what you have to say.
Maclin, Daniel,
Slavoj Zizek is a Lacanian/Marxist critic, notoriously eclectic, and famous for, among other things, claiming that Marxism and Christianity are the only viable alternatives to capitalism.
JOHN Zizioulas is a titular Orthodox Metropolitan, particularly noted for his work in theological anthropology, and particularly for his claim in the book of the same name that “Being is Communion.”
Davor Dzalto (I apologize for the misspelling) is a Serbian artist and academic art theorist, particularly influenced by Zizioulas. He only has one piece in English that I’m aware of, but it’s a tantalizing one.
Daniel,
It’s great to meet someone else who reads RTE! I’ve found it to be a breath of fresh air; it’s one thing to construct a “traditional lifestyle” out of thin air, and quite another to encounter those who have lived one continuously.
Jack,
You might find Dzalto interesting; his one English article can be found here:
Hmm, I thought there was a contact address somewhere here. No wonder there hasn’t been any mail to it for quite some time. Guess I was thinking of the old blog at typepad. I made it separate from my personal account so someone else could access it if need be. Anyway, it’s caelumandterra at yahoo (.com of course). I will try to remember to check it every day.
I was going to suggest that someone join The Distributist Review. Its traffic is fair, but I am now the only writer, and a review should have a variety of opinions. Zizek and Zizoulas are fine with me; I’m a bit postmodernist myself. Of course, the only true post-modernists are the pre-modernists, as Zizek is discovering.
Um. . . . ever since I spent a whole day in the middle of winter 2003, huddled by a space heater with every published copy of CET in a big box given to me by Regina D. and waiting for the furnace man to come, I have been waiting for some herald of its return. Perhaps CET was a few years to early. . . . perhaps this could be the beginnings of something new. . . .
It is returning, or at least a journal inspired by it. The Distributist Review will debut in a dead-tree edition this fall.
John- That sounds great! How can I get a copy?
Starting a print mag these days is a pretty bold move. I hope it succeeds.
After observing the progress of its original form, and efforts to revive it until now, I think C&T was one of those endeavors that would be hard to repeat. If, as Mr Horton suggests, “the CetT charter… was always a little hard to define,” then it’s going to be hard to find writers who fit the profile. And since this forum has gone on this long without a change in the roster, it is likely to remain this way. The rising costs of printing, and the unstable world of Catholic periodicals would make it impossible to start another print version.
In a sense, then, C&T has already been resurrected here, in a form suited to the times.
I agree re. difficulty of publishing something individual concrete tangible and real – and Lord knows I plead guilty to using the web for well-nigh everything these days, from dissertation research to emailing friends to advertising local organic vegetables. However, paradoxically, this whole resource is founded on a high-tech corporate global structure which seems counter to what C&T represented to me back in the fervent days of my dewy-eyed Chestertonian youth – the local, the hands-on, the communal rather than global, the thing you read on a ratty comfy old couch with a cup of hot coffee and Vivaldi playing in the background, the thing that doesn’t depend on a vast interlocking system controlled by a remote elite.
To what extent are we justified in using the tools of the system to counteract the system? I sometimes wonder this when I send out my market newsletters…I ask how my high-tech advertising of low-tech produce would work if the Internet somehow failed, suddenly? We have here a community in diaspora – but the ties that bind us are tenuous indeed.
I think here of Heidegger’s “Problem of Technology” and that we should at least recognize that what technology is “unconcealing” here is a need for communal discussion – and that this need arises largely from a sense of isolation (I recently moved from a community swarming with left-wingers to a community swarming with right-wingers). If we can’t have C&T back in our hands, at least we can have it back on the web, methinks – our paradoxical relationship with technology is that it is keeping alive our sense of the real, even in the midst of its destruction of the real.
All very true. I wrestled with that even when the print mag was going on–it was produced on a computer. These days I don’t give the matter a lot of thought. The technology isn’t going to go away unless we have a really thoroughgoing collapse of the whole techno-industrial-financial system, and in that case we won’t have to worry about it. Only a very small number of people are ever going to have the motivation and determination to separate themselves very far from the system. To those I say Godspeed.
Perhaps Ms Bratten Weiss would like to flesh these thoughts out into a little essay for the blog? You can be the first of our new writers!
This is good—yes!
Hey Daniel,
Just got here – was subscriber when you were a magazine. Good to see you online!
So. . .is it now open to new contributors, as per this post? Since 2008 has been the centenary of GKC’s Orthodoxy, I think a good case can be made for his Blatchford Controversies/Heretics/Orthodoxy being pertinent to the ongoing discussion between faith and reason that was sparked by Benedict XVI and the Regensburg Lecture.
Whaddya think?
– Christopher
Sure; let’s do it. Send it to Maclin; I don’t know his email address by heart, but assume he will notice and post it.
@ Adam: Prof. Dzalto is a genius. I had an honor to listen to one of his presentations. Absolutely a brilliant thinker.