Institutions can give the money, but they don’t dispense the compassion. That’s up to us. We need, as individuals and as a society, to take a long hard look this question. We should begin now, because the question is being forced upon us with an urgency that will only become apparent later, after the excitement of disease is over.
Author: Lee van Laer
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor of Parabola. For more information, please visit www.doremishock.com.
Understanding mercy as a force from on High
Every word I pick here | Is the wrong one, one | I’ve used too often, | Touched by thought | Until it’s worn and tired.
The word [struggle] is of unknown origin; and although it is presumed to have come from Scandinavian and Germanic roots (there are no clear parallels or roots in Latin) the connections are uncertain […]
For the last five or so years, as readers may know, I’ve been the poetry Editor at Parabola magazine, while also fulfilling various other duties as a Senior Editor. […]
Announcing the publication of Senior Editor, Lee van Laer’s new book on symbolism in the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch. […]
On the night of Thanksgiving 2015, our family got into a conversation about the nature of Grace and Mercy. Having written about these subjects recently, it occurred to me that it might be worth collecting the essays into a small booklet.
Like the rest of the Parabola readership, I’ve been watching the developments on the borders of Europe — the influx of desperate refugees, the corpses of children — in a mixture of astonishment and horror. We live in what we believe to be an intelligent society. A society that is properly educated, one that has…
I think we tend to create inward forms of our own — adopted, that is, from things we encounter outwardly — and then stalk each other with them. This process is writ large on the social and political landscape; but it begins inside us. We love nothing better than to outsource the blame for this…
Human beings are peculiar creatures. We can think; and it sets us apart from other creatures, who can think some (consider the honeybee) but not much. Thinking, over the last 10,000 or so years (a rough estimate,) mankind has occupied himself, in the disciplines of science and philosophy, with the question of what, exactly, we…