At the summit of Purgatory: Eden, the Earthly Paradise, the state of original innocence preserved as the field of rest before ascending to the gates of the heavenly Paradise. We’ve already had a climactic trial by fire, where can the story even go from here? A Second Climax? To perhaps the weirdest imaginable place, at least…

Keen for the Fire “Unless you’re bitten by the fire,” the angel at the top of the mountain shouts joyfully, but Dante, understandably, balks at being called to pass through a wall of flame. Dramatically, he says “I was like a corpse put in the grave, / the words I heard so touched my heart…

Let me try to get from Friends to Dante in a more or less plausible manner. You might know that Ross always had a thing for Rachel, but Rachel never took Ross seriously. This was the dynamic for several seasons until they finally got together. In the “emotional,” climactic moment when she at last returns his…

We looked at green as the color of hope as well as ephemeral fame. Of course, it is also the color of envy, which in Dante’s fruitful imagination becomes purified through a metaphor of seeing. A Way to Look at Envy The prideful bore a burden that brought them low, and it seemed a difficult but…

In what do we place our hope? We Christians know to answer, reflexively, “In Christ!” But in some sense that is not to take the question literally. The Light Between Truth and Reason If I’m honest, when I say, “I put my hope in Christ,” I’m in part treating the question as aspirational or normative,…