First Things

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing by james k. a. smith yale university, 256 pages, $28 Philosopher James K. A. Smith suffered through a period of profound depression. He found solace and insight in the writings of some of the great Christian mystics. And what he learned, he tells us, is that there is a wisdom and peace that transcends what can be provided by philosophical analysis, arguments, and systems. That premise has the makings of an interesting book.

Total civilizational collapse is unusual. In the West, continuity exists between the Roman past and our contemporary states, despite the invasions of “barbarian” groups. The Franks, that ancient people who settled Roman Gaul, were shaped by Roman culture into the people we now know as the French. But what about instances in which there is no continuity—in which a civilization vanishes, and all that is left is a layer of ash?

Several weeks after the 2016 election, Marjorie Dannenfelser received a voicemail from President-Elect Donald J. Trump. Her organization, the Susan B. Anthony List, had knocked on over a million doors on his behalf in exchange for a lengthy list of pro-life policy commitments, and he was calling to express his gratitude. “I want to just thank you, thank all of the people that were with you, and we’ll never forget,” Trump said.

To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World by ian marcus corbin yale university press, 200 pages, $32.50 Ian Marcus Corbin’s new book, To Arrive Where We Started, offers a deep reflection on traditional wisdom, drawing on complexity theory and thinkers as divergent as Rilke, Plato, Jonathan Lear, and bell hooks to illuminate our need for friendship, community, and immersion in the natural world.

When I traveled to Norway for the first time, I was already a devoted reader of Sigrid Undset and in awe of her courage and character. A Nobel laureate novelist and convert to Catholicism, Undset endured profound suffering in her life: the death of her disabled daughter; the breakdown of her marriage; the loss of her newly engaged son in the early days of the Nazi invasion; the forced separation from her home and loved ones during the war years.

Famesick: A Memoir by lena dunham random house, 416 pages, $32 If offered the choice, how many of us would take riches, fame, and recognition, even if the price is a half-life? We know from fairy tales that many of us would, though the gifts come with inverse curses. Famesick, Lena Dunham’s memoir, ties the two together in the title: The gift of fame comes with the curse of sickness.

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on technology and the human person, Magnifica Humanitas, offers a measured assessment of the ongoing digital revolution, giving special attention to artificial intelligence, its current cutting edge. The encyclical’s ambitions are modest, as they should be. We are only beginning to grasp the promise and peril of machines that can perform in ways so human-like that we’re driven to wonder about the future of our humanity.

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And so it has happened. The Society of St. Pius X has gone ahead with its illicit ordination of four new bishops, and the Vatican has responded with the expected announcement that the act is schismatic, incurring the penalty of an automatic excommunication. But this time the excommunication is more far-reaching than the one in 1988, which was limited to the bishops involved. The current excommunications include anyone who is in some way formally a part of the SSPX, including priests and laity.

This symposium will appear in the August/September issue of First Things. The United States of America dates her birth in accord with a foundational document, the Declaration of Independence. And Americans often champion a noble creed of liberty and equality. We are indeed a nation of ideals. Yet, in 1963, as he spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. was not satisfied to challenge our minds and consciences with the plain sense of that creed and those ideals.