The Analemma Waltz

The Analemma Waltz is a collection of essays-twelve in number, corresponding to the months of the year-about matters of universal concern to the human community, including the study of history, the virtue of tolerance, the conflict between science and religion, and the morality of war. The distinctive characteristic of the book is its format, where the author moves by slow degrees from the particulars of his own life to a consideration of these age-old concerns. Each chapter essay begins with extracts from the author's journal of the changing positions of sunlight in his house, what he refers to as the solar "slow motion dance," a phenomenon made possible by the analemma-the narrow figure-eight pattern the sun describes in the sky in the course of a year in the Earth's orbital journey. Although the essay topics in The Analemma Waltz are varied, as suggested by the times and seasons of the year, there are certain thematics that appear and re-appear throughout the book, namely the author's convictions that existential particularity is the occasion of both joy and sadness; that the world's people, though the beneficiaries of seemingly endless breakthroughs in technology, are, and will remain, metaphysically vulnerable; and that appreciation prompting gratitude is the highest vocation of the human person.