just a brief meditation on the dogma of the trinity today in light of the upcoming birthday of swami abhishiktananda/dom henri le saux in august.
another longer essay in the ongoing saga of generative software/decomputing and higher ed coming soon!
Essay
an essay on a human aspect of the “ai” deluge
my latest notes and explores briefly a human aspect of the “ai” moment: the current erosion of trust some instructors are experiencing.
as is my wont, i’m trying to get beyond the talking points, in this case, the false dichotomy about “embracing or fearing” machine learning applications.
pax inter spinas
new essay on academic integrity in _jesuit higher education: a journal_
as some of you may know from things i’ve said, i’m the current academic integrity director at marquette university. it’s been a very active year in the office with the release of ‘generative a.i.’ chatbots to the general public. among other things.
but this new essay, thankfully, is a broader reflection on the nature of integrity in higher education generally, based in my first year’s observations and lessons learned. it explores integrity in three “keys”: medieval monastic (because it’s me), aristotelian/thomistic (which was a new endeavor for me), and existential (to round things out).
even if you’re not in higher ed at all, there are still reflections on integrity as a virtue (in the greek sense of “excellence”) in life generally here that could be of interest.
pax inter spinas
ps. included here are some images of wild geranium from this spring that didn’t get on here.
new short essay (with audio option) on earth as mother, earth day, our extractive capitalist mode, conversion to the earth, etc.
hey all. if you’ve gotten updates from me long enough, you’ll know that, in the midst of lots of hikes and plants and scholarly musings on medieval monasticism, sometimes things get theological/spiritual here.
if you’re game for that, i’ve got a new “eco-theological” essay out on focolare media’s website today. you can read it there or listen to me read it as there’s an audio option.
i’ve been looking for a place to use st. gregory the great’s observation that “the earth has given birth to us all; we are right to call her our mother,” and this is it!
“we have a contemplation problem” essay on focolare’s website
a somewhat more direct take on things than i usually muster, this essay was a long-time coming and is indicative of a new direction i’m taking.
ruminations on the cognitive nature of contemplation and its situation within our social, somatic, economic, and mechanized lives.
thanks to focolare media for sharing this.
lenten essay (about jokes) in _spirit & life_
for all those who keep the season of holy fasting we call “lent” in english (or those who are interested in world religions for whatever reason), i’ve got a new essay out in the benedictine magazine spirit & life.
it’s based on an interaction i had with some other guys here in milwaukee last year as well as some studying of the nature of christian atonement i did years and years ago now (when i first read william langland’s tremendous poem, piers plowman—read piers if you haven’t!).
all i’ll say here is that the essay involves the devil as a monstrous fish and the holy cross as a tricky hook. enjoy!
My first anti-racist essay, in _Dappled Things_
As anyone who is familiar with me, my writing, and my teaching knows, I am a big fan of the arcane, the obscure. And that’s in keeping with my personality and the way I live my life. And so I do not often weigh in on politics and social movements, as I prefer to be private, keep my peace, and cultivate charity and openness where I actually am.
But in recent months with all that’s been going on, I did feel a need to contribute something to the surge in attention to the racial inequalities and injustices in American society. But I did it in a bit of a round-about way, as I tend to do. In response particularly to Fr. Bryan Massingale’s interview with Commonweal that I heard several weeks ago, I wrote up an essay that Dappled Things just published on their blog, “deep down things.”
It’s certainly an “in-house” argument pitched primarily at fellow Catholics, but I hope that it would be of interest to any person of good will. While its argument is about the nature of the Church, it is exactly in its surprising structural and cultural diversity that my point could mean something of import to both Catholics and anyone else “looking in” on this internal reckoning going on right now.
Anyhow, for what it’s worth.
New Brief Essay on Media and Art at _Dappled Things_
One of my favorite activities during the school year is taking my Honors Program students to a performance at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
When we went this February, I feverishly started writing notes in the program’s margins. The resulting short essay on electronic media, art, consumerism, etc. was just published by the folks at Dappled Things–many thanks to them, Marquette Honors, the MSO, and especially my students!
Jacob Riyeff 