About LifeCraft

LifeCraft began as a blog by philosophy professor John Cuddeback called Bacon From Acorns. .

Bacon From Acorns got its name from a great truth illustrated in raising pigs. There is a wisdom and generosity in the natural order of things: an order that we can discover and follow, to the benefit and joy of all.

Over time, Bacon from Acorns grew and expanded to become LifeCraft. More than a blog, LifeCraft is a community project about discovering and applying natural wisdom in today’s challenging context with special attention to issues relating to household, friendship, work, and stewardship.

Besides weekly reflections and summer retreat opportunities, LifeCraft offers free courses and online meet-ups for LifeCraft Members.

LifeCraft’s Four Key Areas of Exploration:

Human life always begins in the home. So the first and foremost of LifeCraft’s four areas is The Household and what it means to develop a philosophy of household.

True Friendship is the second area because life is about relationship. To improve our friendships is to strengthen the very foundation of life.

Good Work is the third area. Karl Marx was wrong about many things. But he saw something we all should see: that in our work we express and in some sense forge our very humanity.

Finally, there is Natural Steward. We either fulfill our role as stewards of the natural world, or we don’t. Here we can discover the power and beauty of taking our proper place in the natural order. 

About John Cuddeback

 

I am a husband and father, a philosophy professor, a student of great thinkers, and a man on a search.

I relish common sense and sanity, a down-home wisdom that others too regularly cast off.

I am a husband and father, a philosophy professor, a student of great thinkers, and a man on a search.

I relish common sense and sanity, a down-home wisdom that others too regularly cast off.

In my quarter century as a philosophy professor I’ve been exposed to much wisdom. I try to understand it, and I want to share what I have found.

Being married twenty-five years and raising six children has also brought a few hard-to-see things to light. 

I have known the struggles of being a husband, father, friend, employee, and citizen in very confusing times.

The travails of the household—as experienced by husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, children, and others—especially consume my attention and are close to my heart. The way forward is not easy, but we can search for it and travel it, together.

My search is for refreshing and revitalizing waters from a good place. Peaceful yet challenging, silent but powerful, old as the hills and exactly what we need today.

I want to reconnect with what we already know, or at least that we can know. It’s both deep within us, and it’s out there. We need to find it, and I know we can.

My goal is a more fully human life, in its many facets, lived together in community and in life-giving relationships. I hope we can work toward this together.

I am sometimes available to travel to give a lecture—don’t hesitate to enquire. In addition to my book True Friendship, I’m working on a book on life in the household.

But much of what I write and think is or will be available right here at LifeCraft, through Wednesday reflections and LifeCraft courses.

Thank you again for joining me.

Courses taught at Christendom College

Introduction to Philosophy, Logic, Philosophy of Human Nature, Ethics, Metaphysics, History of Medieval Philosophy, History of Modern Philosophy, Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Society and the Common Good, Contemplation and the Philosophical Life, Modern Moral Theories, Readings on Law in Aquinas, Philosophy of Family and Household, Philosophy of God, Recent Philosophy.

 

 Teaching Experience

Professor of Philosophy, 2009–present.
Associate Professor of Philosophy, 2002–2009.
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, 1997–2002.

 

 My Book on Friendship

True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness
(Ignatius Press, 2021).

Published Articles

Reclaiming the Household,” First Things (print edition), November 2018.

“Killing the Animals We Eat,” (chapter) in Localism in the Mass Age. Cascade Books, 2018.

“Technology as a Threat to Ordinary Human Life in Households Today,” Quaestiones Disputatae, Issue 8, No. 1 (Fall 2017): 87-91.

“Reflections of a Green Thomist on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 735-744.

“Ordered Inclinations,” in Philosophical Virtues and Psychological Strengths. Ed. Romanus Cessario, O.P. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2013.

“Renewing Husbandry: Wendell Berry, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas on ‘Economics’,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 121-34.

“Law, Pinckaers, and the Definition of Ethics,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2009): 301-26.

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