The Divine Comedy is likely the most famous work of literature that Western culture has produced. Nearly everyone has come across it in some form: books, films, video games, offhand references, and of course the poem itself. But how many have had the chance to sit down and read it through? Still more, how many have had the chance to read it at a slow and thoughtful pace, while discussing with a small group of other alert voyagers? Join us this spring for the second and third parts of Dante's masterpiece: less frequently read than the Inferno, they are nonetheless deeper in psychological and theological insight and more impressive in sheer poetic boldness. And it's fine to join in at this point, whether or not you have read the Inferno first: people have often done so in the past.
Weekly from mid-January. Two sections available: Saturday afternoons and (likely) Monday evenings.
These two “mysteries” dwell at the heart of Christianity and, at least according to many writers, set it apart from other world religions. They were also among the great topics of discussion - and often fiery debate, complete with accusations of heresy for those on the other side of various fences - for centuries after the religion's beginning. And yet today the ideas that emerged from those early discussions, despite being fascinating, subtle, and potentially transformative for those who enter into them, are often simply ignored. This fall we'll go out to meet many of these ideas in their original context, always emphasizing their practical meaning for concrete human lives.
Every other week starting mid-January. Likely Wednesday evenings - click below for details!
TheTreasures.org hosts online reading groups designed to provide access to texts that are endlessly engaging, thought-provoking, possibly life-transforming — and typically texts that few people would work their way through on their own.
When one no longer has to work on one’s own, what once seemed a daunting task changes into a joyful experience, a highlight of the week: discovering that a “classic” like Dante’s Divine Comedy or Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is not a far-off block of impenetrable literary marble, but a living, changing artwork that has vital things to say to us, and perhaps to do to us, in our twenty-first-century lives.