11 Jun

A young girl, Mùi, who is gentle and peaceful, becomes a servant for a rich family. The often absent husband leaves taking with him all the household's money. He becomes ill and returns only to die shortly after. The years pass and the family falls on hard times. Two sons have left and the wife now realizes she considered Mùi one of her own. However Mùi changes homes. She becomes a servant for a pianist who was a friend of the family. That man is engaged to be married but is alienated from his fiancee. He starts a relationship with Mui and this causes the engagement to be broken off. The pianist educates Mùi and they get married....

10 Jun

From time to time, over the next few months, as part of the "Our Culture" section, igNation will post poetry written by Jesuits. Poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins and St. Robert Southwell will appear as well as poems by contemporary Jesuits. Saint Robert Southwell, was an English Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order. He was also a poet and clandestine missionary in post-Reformation England. After being arrested and tortured, Southwell was tried and convicted of high treason for his links to the Holy See. On 21 February 1595, Southwell was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. In 1970, he was canonised by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales....

06 Jun

British historian Keith Wrightson describes the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne during the devastating plague of 1636 as "a society under immense stress" at a time of larger political and religious tensions. He has created a memorable and moving book after stumbling onto a document in a local archive, a will containing the dying wishes of someone with the plague. It was time to put things in order very quickly, but this individual couldn't write and so his family sought the help of the door-to-door document writers of that era: a scrivener. In 1636, one of many plagues hit the bustling city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England's north-east....

05 Jun

After being encouraged by a respected friend, I undertook, what is for me, 'the monumental task' of reading The Brothers Karamazov. Since I am a slow reader, I usually have an aversion to lengthy books. I tend to read them so slowly that I, eventually, become impatient to finish the book, until I give up reading the book altogether. What convinced me, then, to read The Brothers? Perhaps, I thought that it would be as good, if not better than, Crime and Punishment, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Perhaps, I thought I might find wisdom and knowledge in the reading of it. Well, I am only half way through the book, and wisdom has already visited me....

04 Jun

The First Grader directed by Justin Chadwick is based on the true story of Kimani Maruge, a Kenyan man who enrolled in elementary education at the age of 84 after the Kenyan government announced universal and free elementary education in 2003....

03 Jun

From time to time, over the next few months, as part of the "Our Culture" section,, igNation will post poetry written by Jesuits. Poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins and St. Robert Southwell will appear as well as poems by contemporary Jesuits. An English Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was not widely known as a poet until after he died; his collected poems were first published in 1918 at the instigation of his friend Robert Bridges, who was at the time the Poet Laureate of England. Hopkins was both an observant lover of natural beauty and a deeply faithful man who suffered from depression, themes that reoccur in many of his poems. As a poet, he was also an experimenter, relying on alliteration, innovative meter, and created words, as well as on traditional forms such as the sonnet....

28 May

Based on Yuan era (1271-1368) play, The Orphan of Zhao, Sacrifice is story of epic revenge. A power hungry general wipes out his rival along with his entire family, save for one newborn. The infant is protected by the doctor who delivered him and raises him as his own, hoping to mold him into an instrument of revenge....

26 May

Terrence Malick's recent beautiful and downright frustrating film "To the Wonder" offers us deeper insight that goes beyond the typical notion that regulates the Spirit to either the cognitive or emotive dimension. Though Malick does not explicitly deal with the Spirit, its anonymous presence exudes in the film. Yet, a word of caution, this is a film that I do not recommend for people seeking easy answers, because the film is painfully slow and does not give concrete resolutions. It seduces you with gorgeous sceneries, an amazing score, and the question of love....

23 May

Twenty years ago, a Jesuit psychiatrist, W.W. Meissner, produced an enlightening psychobiography of our founder (The Psychology of a Saint: Ignatius of Loyola - Yale University Press, 1992). Now in Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, (Edited by Sally Weintrobe, Rutledge, London, 2013) twenty-three psychiatrists, psychologists, historians and others have brought their expertise to bear on the growing ecological crisis in a way that helps break the current climate deadlock by producing a kind of psycho-ecology or eco-psychology....

21 May

In Canada, a writer visits the Indian storyteller Pi Patel and asks him to tell his life story. Pi tells the story of his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and the origin of his nickname. One day, his father, a zoo owner, explains that the municipality is no longer supporting the zoo and he has hence decided to move to Canada, where the animals the family owns would also be sold. They board on a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and out of the blue, there is a storm, followed by a shipwrecking. Pi survives in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a male Bengal tiger nicknamed Richard Parker. This is just one version of Pi's experiences. There is another. And this raises the question of the nature of memory and of the facts of memory. Are they literal or symbolic? But more importantly: what is the value and affect we attach to the "incidents" of memory....

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