Matthew J. Milliner

ACT NOW! You can get my #MaterialMysticism essay at @commentmag FOR FREE 1x per month if you sign up IN THE NEXT 30 SECONDS by submitting your email at the link below so ACT NOW (actually, it's always free, but ACT NOW ANYWAY). comment.org/columns/materi…

Me and my friends getting left behind by AI

The book—The Life of Martin Thornton and Selected Writings— which I prepared for the Breck Conference next month, arrived today from the printer!

The wilderness can’t save you (said by a guy about to go into the wilderness again with fourteen intrepid students). millinerd.substack.com/p/the-wilderne…

All I have to say about Seraphim Rose is I’m so very glad he gave up on Alan Watts: hedgehogreview.com/issues/in-need…

“Varley paints Christ’s descent deeper into creation in order to transform it, while Harris’s painting, which recalls the lingam of a Hindu temple, marks the first step of an escape.” comment.org/toronto-the-ho…

Problem solved: comment.org/the-architectu…

@belzpoems Whatever it was, it just got spanked!

@millinerd What was the deadness?

Wow to the deadness. mbird.com/conferences/ny…

So it turns out that writing is thinking. It's the same process. "Writing compels us to think — not in the chaotic, non-linear way our minds typically wander, but in a structured, intentional manner." Outsourcing writing to LLMs is THE SAME THING as outsourcing thinking.

Uno mas!

If you don’t have time for a longer chapel talk…

I am deeply honored to have won the 2025 J.F. Powers Prize for Fiction, for my short story "Minus World." I look forward to you all being able to read it in the pages of @DappledThings1 later this year. Congrats to Olakunle and Mohammad as well, and to all the writers here.

A word from Martin Luther's Commentary on Galatians: "faith without works is nothing and empty… faith without work… is a mere daydream and illusion of the heart; it is false and does not justify." substack.com/home/post/p-19…

Just some of what's on offer in @commentmag 's Toronto the Holy comment.org/toronto-the-ho…

with some background quotes here substack.com/home/post/p-19…

The Eight Deadly (Digital) Thoughts and a (remarkably Lutheran) Ladder youtube.com/watch?v=gfC5un…

Never gets old. "Religion is spirituality with rigor." youtube.com/watch?v=99wk5r…

“In these paintings, perhaps the best landscapes in North America, each season is transfigured and the ancient Wisdom through which this land was fashioned is disclosed.” @millinerd on the Group of Seven and the Christian vision behind Canadian painting. bit.ly/4dclZ2s

It’s an absolute treat to see Michael AG Azad Haykin’s new book coming out with @DavenantInst. The idea of looking at how color is treated in hymnody is brilliant, and Haykin’s reputation speaks for itself. Link below:

"Who-ness is also what the beauty imitated by AI is too far removed from; but it bursts from the walls of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the streetscape of Toronto with near volcanic force." Intro to the latest Material Mysticism at @commentmag substack.com/home/post/p-18…