Writing toward your own particular, your own weird, is a way of standing free. —
practice. n. the regular exercise of a skill in order to develop or maintain proficiency.
particular. a. having an individual, as contrasted with a universal, quality.
weird. n. [arch]. fortune, destiny, or wisdom.
Hi, I’m Lyle. I’m a father of 2 (5, if you count the chinchillas) and will remind you of it constantly. I live within 3 miles of the best strip mall ramen, the best gas station tacos, and the best tattoo parlor/coffee bar in the Midwest.
Twice a month, I try to practice my own particular weird. Should you choose to follow along…
Praise for the “Weird”
“Fun… Insightful… A welcome companion.” — Gena St. David, author of The Brain & The Spirit
“Wise, extremely readable and very vivid… This is essay writing at its very best.” — Thomas J. Bevan, founder of the Soaring Twenties Social Club
“Beautiful. How dare you.” — Anne M. Carpenter, author of Theo-Poetics and Nothing Gained is Eternal
Other Stuff I’ve Written
Poetry and Fiction
"“Road Rage,” published in Speculative City (Short Fiction. CW: Violence, Language)
Whenever I think I’m losing it, I imagine my daughter’s head exploding. That tends to calm me down.
“Bargaining,” published in Short Édition (Short Fiction)
I'm out here in the woods because I'm trying to make good on an old bargain. It's cold. The wind bites through the loose-knit scarf my late wife made for me years ago. I wear it anyway because I still love her and because such things are endearing to other riven people.
“Credo,” published in Fathom (Poetry)
I believe a day will come when my hair
too will have always been white…
“Orthodoxy,” published in The Cresset (Poetry)
But how much room there was for this
explorer of mysteries to be forgiven.
Select Essays
“Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and the Spiritual Lessons of Dark Lords,” published in Christ & Pop Culture
Tolkien understood that identifying evil as strictly outside, as something Other to battle, guarantees that one’s own potential for evil remains unidentified and so continues to grow.
“The Lurid Profanity of Blasphemous,” published in Christ & Pop Culture
El Milagro devilishly appears as “a house divided against itself,” evidencing a theological claim buried in the art of Blasphemous: that God—understood as the sovereign cause of both suffering and salvation—is evil.
“Agamben and Francis After the Quarantine,” published in Church Life Journal
Humanity’s ends and its duty towards those ends inevitably devour its singular being, its dignity, and its life into nothing but these ends, as “the life of creatures culminates in obedience” in the eschaton where “the impossibility of increasing the inner glory of God translates into an unlimited expansion of the activity of the external glorification by men.” Only an ontology of pure means can escape this “hell” of perpetual duty.
“It Isn’t Rest Until it Isn’t For Anything,” published in Fathom
As a society, we are becoming more paranoid about work-life balance, and yet we’re finding fewer and fewer life activities that don’t already count as work. Consequently, it’s becoming harder to find forms of activity that don’t impinge on the rest that we are obligated to take.
“Omakase,” published in The Other Journal
Omakase is a statement of intent, literally meaning, “I will leave it up to you.” If you commit to omakase, you commit to leaving the entire evening up to your chef, trusting in their knowledge and experience of good things.
Scholarship and More
“When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split Between Transcendence and Goodness”, with Nick Bennet in Theology and H. P. Lovecraft (2022)
“Getting and Keeping Rhythm: A Review of Lexi Eikelboom’s Rhythm: A Theological Category in Two Parts” in Genealogies of Modernity (2021)
“Review of This Need to Dance / This Need to Kneel: Denise Levertov and the Poetics of Faith” in Reading Religion (2019)
“Divine but Not Sacred: A Girardian Answer to Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory” in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Volume 26, pp. 237-249 (2019)
“Horror ‘After Theory’” in The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature, pp 499–509 (2018)
“Building Devotion: History, Use, and Meaning in ‘John Buck's Book’” in Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation Vol. 10 No. 2 (2018)
“Reading Shusaku Endo’s Silence with an Eschatological Imagination” in Renascence 69 (2):113-128 (2017)
