Latest Posts
What We Can Learn from Falling Leaves
Though I love autumn and the fall of leaves, at the same time something in me rebels. Even as I think, “I don’t want to miss their turning,” part of me just wants it to be over. Somehow, like life itself, autumn in its beauty and drama can be just too much. But maybe...
Mothers and Swiss Army Knives: Seeing the Difference
Few of us reach for our Swiss army knife when we simply want to cut something. Aristotle asserts that nature is not like the Delphic smiths, makers of the original Swiss army knife, “a single knife for all kinds of use,” a knife with which, clearly, he was not...
Feeling Invisible: the Challenge and a Remedy
One of the most memorable and significant stories from ancient philosophy is that of the ring of Gyges: the original ring of power. In it we have occasion through reflecting on the experience of invisibility to think about the importance of being seen by others in our...
Discover Your Place as Man or Woman
The word ‘place’ can both mislead and make us uncomfortable. I still think we should consider the ‘place’ of man and woman because it makes us reckon with something that demands attention. How to be a man or woman will always be a central feature of becoming who we...
What Makes Someone Want to Be Virtuous?
There is nothing like parenting, or teaching, or any real formation of the young to help us to see and focus on what really matters. If we have come to the insight that living well—or living virtuously—is at the center of the human vocation, then the enormity of a...
Our Life is So Worth Being Kind
Why are some people kind? This question is especially though of course not exclusively pertinent in forming the young. I think we take kindness for granted, forgetting both its central importance and the need to cultivate it, in self and others. “We are for the most...
A Husband’s Place: Forging Peace in the Home
A husband and father struggles to discover his place in the home. What exactly is his mission and how does he go about achieving it? A proper notion of peace, and of home, can offer clarification. Augustine’s definition of peace is my all-time favorite definition....
Restoring Craftsmanship to Restore Humanity
Cultivating the earth is an exercise in being human. And this exercise is more important today than ever before as we suffer an increasing loss of a sense of the human difference. Here I mean all of us, not just confused intellectuals or mislead youth. Human life is a...
Maturity: Focus in a Distracted World
As research continues to expose the catastrophic consequences of unreflective social media use—especially but not only for the young, we realize it is emblematic of a deeper problem affecting all of us. Most troubling is that this problem is so normal and so fostered...
Grandparenting: the Pinnacle of Marriage
There is much more than meets the eye in grandparenting. In grandparenting is perhaps the single greatest instance of the active human life coming to fruition. If this seems an exaggeration, it at least bears closer examination. We should not be misled by a popular...
The Eternal Root of Homelife
How we live in a home stems from how God lives in eternity and how he wants to live with us. What might seem beyond imagining is really the root of family life and its incomparable importance. In a stunning reflection, Thomas Aquinas uses two verses of Proverbs,...
The Hard Reality of Disagreement in Marriage
Open disagreement between spouses, or even just not seeing eye to eye, can be very painful. It is also quite common. Central to the art of marriage is to be able to accept this while also addressing it. Experience shows that it is to be expected. To some extent then,...
