Yahweh's Other Shoe

Only eternal life is worthy of the name, writes Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., in an elegy for a brother monk, and in his poetry one feels the working out of this life that begins with Adam and proceeds beyond our own span of time on earth. These poems breathe human air, but are always conscious of the larger picture of life in Christ.

I wrestle with God 'flesh to flesh, sweat to mystery, ' and I limp away. This is how Father McDonnell describes his poetic project, and in these poems the reader a...