Cynthia L. Haven

“They come from a tradition that thinks big and bold.” Remembering immortel Michel Serres and the "grand récit" @stanford cynthialhaven.substack.com/p/they-come-fr…

Every man and woman I pass on the street feels trapped by the boundaries of their skin but, in fact, they are delicate receiving instruments whose spirituality and corporeality vibrate in one specific manner because they have been set at one specific pitch. #CzeslawMilosz

@chaven on Milosz — TLS 2/28/25

You're welcome!

@chaven thank you for this important & beautifully written book about #Milosz It has helped me appreciate the mutually enriching relationship between the #Poet & #California

From @joeljmiller – Girard is having a moment, thanks in part to the work of @chaven. I had the joy of talking with her about Girard, exile poets Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky, C.S. Lewis’s wife Joy Davidman, and more. Here’s our conversation": 👉 millersbookreview.com/p/cynthia-l-ha…

A Quarrel With the World: Czeslaw Miłosz’s World War II-era Poems hedgehogreview.com/issues/place-a…

“We never manage to gain access to the [Christian spiritual] dimension through the meager power of reason alone, but we can see that it's rational, and that its effects are too.” — René Girard

This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen

If Democrats have their way, Muslims are allowed to burn 19 Yazidi girls, but I’m not allowed to talk about it, because it is considered "Islamophobia". Is that fair?

In 1995, a nurse broke hospital rules to place a newborn into her twin sister’s incubator. The baby was not expected to survive. Kyrie and Brielle Jackson were born 12 weeks early at a hospital in the United States. Each weighed roughly two pounds. They were placed in separate incubators, standard practice to prevent infection. Kyrie gained strength. Brielle did not. Three weeks after birth, Brielle went into critical condition. Her oxygen dropped. Her heart rate spiked. Her skin turned bluish-grey. Nurse Gayle Kasparian tried everything. She held her. She had her father hold her. She wrapped her in a blanket. Nothing worked. Kasparian remembered hearing about a practice used in parts of Europe but never tried in American hospitals. She placed Brielle into Kyrie’s incubator. Their father described what happened next: “She snuggled up to Kyrie and she was just fine. It was immediate. It was absolutely immediate.” Within minutes, Brielle’s oxygen levels were the best they had been since she was born. As she slept, Kyrie stretched her left arm across her sister’s body and held her. Photographer Chris Christo captured the moment. The image spread around the world and became known as “The Rescuing Hug.” Hospitals across multiple countries began placing premature twins together, a practice that had been resisted for decades. Both girls went home healthy. They are now 30.

Her Crime: peaceful protest against her government. Her Punishment: Rape and Execution (Hanging). This is the evil that pro-Islamic regime and pro-Hamas activists in the U.S. support. They are cheerleaders for atrocities and crimes against humanity. Never forget.

The Islamist Regime in Tehran is still executing young people even today. They will not stop until they are overthrown and replaced. Now is the time to close Iranian embassies across Europe!

I'm excited for this conversation with @DavidBrooks224 at the @92ndStreetY in NYC on June 15, the evening before the launch of my upcoming book, "The One and the Ninety-Nine"—I hope to see many of you there! Reserve your ticket: 92ny.org/event/luke-bur… "Join bestselling author Luke Burgis with New York Times columnist David Brooks for a conversation about the line between selfhood and crowd, reclaiming a common identity — and his new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. In The One and the Ninety-Nine, Luke Burgis asks a deceptively simple question: how do we become whole in a culture that pulls us toward conformity on one side and isolation on the other? Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and his research on mimetic desire, Burgis examines how our identities are shaped — often invisibly — by the groups we inhabit. The result, he argues, is a crisis of selfhood that leaves us vulnerable to hollow forms of belonging and volatile mass movements. But there’s another path: learning to stand firmly as an individual while remaining meaningfully connected to a social whole. In a conversation with David Brooks, a keen observer of our moral and social landscape, hear Burgis in a searching discussion of the lines between individual identity and community. Together, they explore what it takes to live with integrity in an age of social contagion — and why doing so may be one of the most urgent tasks of our time."

I wrote about hating Dostoevsky for @thetimes thetimes.com/culture/books/…

An older but still stinging observation from Jordan Peterson: “People read the history of Nazi Germany and always think they’re Schindler — the one who would have saved Anne Frank. They never imagine themselves as the perpetrator. Look at what happened during the pandemic in Canada: 30% of my neighbors were thrilled to inform on the people around them. They would have worn those masks for the rest of their lives if it let them feel morally superior.” It’s a stark reminder that the line between “good person” and “collaborator” is thinner than we like to admit — especially when virtue-signaling or social pressure is involved. Have you ever caught yourself (or seen others) enjoying the moral high ground a little too much during a crisis? Or do you think most people truly would have stood against the crowd if the stakes were higher? Your thoughts 👇

Don’t let anyone forget or turn a blind eye to this: Christians are being massacred by Muslims, yet no one at the UN, in the media, or among human rights groups seems to care. Please listen to her and share!

These two photographs are separated by only 66 years.

At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, walked through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her. The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.” Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life. During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable. Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned. “It doesn’t look like my doll at all,“ said the girl. Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: "my travels have changed me.” the little girl hugged the new doll and brought her happy home. A year later Kafka died. Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written: “Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

“To be Christian is to believe that the proclamation you're talking about has only one source and that he is at once God and man.” — René Girard

This is unearthing the hidden info that there are many people who have cooperated in the murder of Noelia. We need more healing institutions than halls of death. Noelia is my intention at Mass tomorrow.