Phil Klay
@philklay
Author of Redeployment, Missionaries, and Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War. Teaches at Fairfield University MFA.
I don’t understand why people lie about this. This tracks sanctioning attempts of scholars from both right and left, a slight majority of which were initiated from the left. www.fire.org/research-lea...
“The priest stopped what he was doing, cast himself down, made himself transparent, broke himself open. That is, prayed.” —Louise Erdrich, Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
‘Ever since I was in college, I've felt distant from that word "God" which the foreign priests used.’ 'Sorry. If you don't like that word, we can change it to another name. We can call him Tomato, or even Onion if you prefer.’ 'All right, then, just what is this Onion to you?’
Taking to the street corners, he read aloud from his book of protests, so many years in the writing, but found that good reasons and eloquence had little force and that the better part of witness was to stand before his God and grieve. —Richard Greene
‘As Plato wrote, the deepest and most important things are learned only after much time and effort, by engaging in discussion with others, “striking upon” ideas and experiences together like flint until the spark of understanding is kindled within us.’ www.vatican.va/content/leo-...
I'm hoping for reassurance of the shape of things, a glimpse of my old allegiances, but find at best an outline here such as my finger might draw in dust. —Richard Greene, The Blaschka Invertebrates @commonwealmagazine.org www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-blaschk...
Tom Sleigh, in Rosie on his mother reading Thoreau, seeing the quiet exaltation she took in words: “And from that moment, I wanted to understand what had the power to move her from the category of mother into the more enigmatic category of weirdo.”
Pretty excited about this. Forty-nine Vasily Grossman articles from WWII, from @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him; Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him; Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him. —Jeffers
Nice to see Elliot Ackerman acquitting himself well. www.thefp.com/p/my-takeawa...
“Fighing for justice—suffering and dying so that a bestial barbarism may not rule over the earth—they know…that they may count upon the help of God. They do not say: our cause is divine, our cause is the cause of God, we are the soldiers of God.” Maritain, 1939
When the Pope suggests we should worship the Prince of Peace, rather than Mars and Mammon.
“It was not the face of a god reclaiming his suspended immortality, but the face of a man who until a moment ago had been thoroughly and horribly dead, and still had the smell of death in his clothes and the terror of death in his mind.” —Stegner, Crossing to Safety
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. www.davidgorman.com/4quartets/2-...
Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance Unleashes the Hounds Overconfidence, Rashness and Desire —15th century Netherlandish tapestry
Just went to my high school (Regis High School) to debate whether the war in Iran was a just war under Catholic teaching. My old high school debating coach, Eric DiMichele, moderated, and the kids had fantastic questions.
I love where he’s complaining that them sending political undesirables to work the steelworks had ruined the working class character of the place, bringing in eggheads. Which is somehow funnier knowing it’s formerly a Wittgenstein’s. Inevitable the place would get fouled up that way
“The acetylene lamp casts its light on the old woman, and Rembrandt comes back from the dead.”
“Often a novel is nothing but a long pursuit of several difficult-to-capture definitions.“ —Kundera
“This light suffuses great novels; there will never be a time when it fades because, human existence being perpetually forgotten by people, the discoveries of novelists, even when they become dated, will never cease to amaze us.” —Kundera, 89 Words
On Hegseth and the lack of moral purpose in war. @gregjaffe.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/u...
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment, as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through …But we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military.” www.archchicago.org/en/statement...