Renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange prides himself on his steady hands and his brilliant mind. A brutal car accident ruins those hands and leaves his mind in a scrambled state of desperation, leading him outside his comfort zone of Western medicine to seek help in Kamar-Taj, a mysterious monastery in Kathmandu. He believes his gambit […]
Friday, 27 May, 2022 by Anthony G. Cirilla
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Jordan Peterson The unjust stumble over you and are justly chastised. Augustine All I wanted to do was buy my sister the cereal she wanted. My desire was to give her what she desired. So I let her pick out the cereal, and […]
Friday, 03 September, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Jordan Peterson For I did not know that the soul needs to be enlightened from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth. Augustine When Aeneas first lands in Carthage after […]
Wednesday, 02 June, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
When 12 Rules for Life hit bookstores in 2018, Jordan Peterson had already captured the imaginations of millions of YouTube viewers, a following that had grown out of his presentation of the psychological philosophy he had developed in his 1999 Maps of Meaning and made accessible in audiovisual form in his recorded classroom lectures. As […]
Wednesday, 14 April, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
“Make friends with people who want the best for you.” Jordan Peterson “You, Lord God, lover of souls, show a compassion far purer and freer of mixed motives than ours.” Augustine I had trouble making friends when I was young. Like many kids, I had learned through some tough (for a second grader) experiences a […]
Wednesday, 07 April, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
“Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.” Peterson “If only someone could have imposed restraint on my disorder.” Augustine In Book II of the Aeneid, Aeneas reports an account of the Trojans debating whether to bring the wooden horse left by the Greeks to Poseidon into Troy or not. An intense note of […]
Wednesday, 03 March, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
Stand up straight, with your shoulders back. Jordan Peterson But the consolations of your [God’s] mercies upheld me. Augustine I have never liked it when a parent, while scolding a child, demands that eye contact be made during the tongue-lashing. I recall with incredible vividness a time when, as a teenager, my father was reprimanding […]
Monday, 01 February, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
Let me begin by clarifying that my title is not intended to suggest that I believe my own meditations on these two books are epic. Rather, I wish to suggest that there is, in terms of literary genre, an epic quality to the work of both writers that makes setting them side by side in […]
Wednesday, 27 January, 2021 by Anthony G. Cirilla
We left off having discussed the mythopoeic elements of fantasy and recovery in the first part of this discussion, with escape and consolation as the two further effects which Tolkien regards as necessary for a narrative to be deemed a fairy-tale. As we cover these aspects, our goal is to consider how The Nightmare Before […]
Monday, 07 December, 2020 by Anthony G. Cirilla
In Shazam!, a wizard who holds captive the demons of the Seven Deadly Sins fails to contain them and recruits in desperation Billy Batson, a wayward miscreant who becomes a hero nearly on par with Superman. Shazam’s name is in fact an acronym, the S standing for the wisdom of Solomon. This incorporation of theological […]
Monday, 30 November, 2020 by Anthony G. Cirilla
As holiday films go, The Nightmare Before Christmas has an iconic status owed in part to its ability to serve double duty as a movie about both Halloween and Christmas. Its eerie but charismatic protagonist, Jack Skellington, serves as a walking memento mori to adults—his self-lauding remarks about his effortless ability to scare grown men […]
Friday, 30 October, 2020 by Anthony G. Cirilla
When the hero’s identity has been established and he has overcome reluctance to accept his responsibilities, he enters into the dangerous temptations of pride. In the opening voice over of Spider-Man 3 we hear, “It’s me. Peter Parker. Your friendly neighborhood… you know. I’ve come a long way from being the boy who was bit […]
Monday, 21 September, 2020 by Anthony G. Cirilla