Issue 11 of The Lamp features a review-essay about David Foster Wallace that is written by a man who is obviously conversant, not only with Wallace’s postmodernist prose, but also with the Wallace scholarship surrounding him. The writer of the absorbing essay? Edmund Waldstein, a Cistercian monk.

 A monk?

 Yeah, yeah, I know: “Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton.” Monks write, often very well.

But still. A man so conversant in something so postmodernistly cultural . . . a monk?

It’s a snapshot into something important.

Very important.

It’s a snapshot of a thing I call “The Bridge Option.”  

Modernity was The Great Rejection, which was western civilization’s rejection of the Tao.

The Great Rejection, being a rejection of the fundamental truth of our existence, wasn’t sustainable, so rejections of The Great Rejection started cropping up with increasing frequency as modernity rolled on.

Counter-rejections were evident at the beginning of modernity in Blaise Pascal (a healthy counter-rejection) and the irrational Rosicrucian movement (not so healthy). As modernity steamrolled everything before it with increasing contempt and disregard for anything not steeped in its unholy trinity of Rationalism, Empiricism, and Progressivism, the counter-rejections have picked up steam as well.

 Show notes here