Join the Cathedral’s poetry consultant Evan Craig Reardon for “To Justify the Ways of God to Men: A Meditative Reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.” This shared time of deep reading and reflection will meet twice monthly October through December at 7:30 PM on Zoom.

Meeting dates: 10/7, 10/21, 11/4, 11/18, 12/2, 12/16. Cost: sliding scale: $90 — $150. Please pay what you can afford. Write to us at poetry@cathedralofallsaints.org to request a scholarship if you need one.

Course Description:

John Milton stands as one of the most important poets in the English language. His greatest work is Paradise Lost and in it he attempts to explain the story of creation and of the Fall. His work stands in a line with the great epics of the ancient world, such as Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, and presents a uniquely Christian take on the genre. More importantly, Milton was a deep theological thinker and took active part in the theological debates of the day; Paradise Lost stands as an enduring attempt to convey the splendor of God and God’s creation to the world. The text grapples with questions about human agency, creation, and God’s sovereignty that continue to perplex and occupy us to this day.

This course will be a close, contemplative reading of Paradise Lost, where we will consider the poem as a living text in dialogue with theology, philosophy, and spirituality. We will find spiritual resonances everywhere in this text as we all bring our own unique perspectives to this great work of literature. No previous experience with poetry is necessary.

Please CLICK HERE to purchase the Modern Library edition so that we are all on the same page.

Evan Craig Reardon is a poet and librarian. Evan is the archivist and poetry consultant for the Cathedral of All Saints. He is completing a Master’s in Library and Information Science at SUNY Albany where he researches archives and records management, and is completing a Master’s in English literature where he researches poetry and poetics, also at SUNY Albany. He is the librarian and archivist for the Flow Chart Foundation, and an associate librarian for the North Chatham Public Library.