Latest Posts
The Hunt for Wisdom
“Pursue wisdom like a hunter, and lie in wait on her paths.” Ben Sira (Sirach 14:22) There is something primordial about hunting. In part, because we all need to find certain things—things that call for hunting of some kind. Hunting done well is always about life....
Tolkienian Wisdom for Christmastide and the New Year
“The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each good day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song.” J.R. Tolkien, The Lord of...
Christmas Details Matter
"[T]he whole of man, soul and body, is nourished sanely by a multiplicity of observed traditional things." Hilaire Belloc, 'A Remaining Christmas' Real festivity, like a human person, has a soul and body. A person's thriving is most of all in the well-disposed soul,...
3 Keys to Intense Rest this Christmas
“All toil together and all rest together.” Virgil, Georgics Toiling together and resting together are two things we crave. These are the two main kinds of activity nature provides to join us with those we love. In these we enact our relationships and experience the...
Crafting the Human by Slaughtering a Pig
"let this day begin again the change of hogs into people, not the other way around, for today we celebrate again our lives’ wedding with the world, for by our hunger, by this provisioning, we renew the bond." Wendell Berry, 'For the Hog Killing' It’s about being...
Thinking about My Death
The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me. Socrates, in Plato’s Apology Yesterday I was walking back to the house alone after...
Thanksgiving: A Time for Story-Telling
“Come, rather,” then she said, “dear guest, and tell us From the beginning the Greek stratagems…” The room fell silent, and all eyes were on him, As Father Aeneas from his high couch began… Virgil, The Aeneid Each of us has stories: the stories that are chapters of...
Does Your Home Have a Physical Center?
“No social group...can survive without constant informal contact among its members.” “The hearth, the place where food was made and eaten, was the heart of family life.” A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, et alia With persistent centrifugal factors...
Need: The Hidden Key to Wealth
“Well, you see, my property is enough to supply me with all my needs... Socrates, in Xenophon’s Estate Manager The wise help us to see better. By looking through their eyes, we learn to see things more as they are. One great fruit is that we can be more grateful....
Friendship: To Guard the Young from Straying
“Friendship helps the young, too, to keep from error.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle is intent on showing how friendship is necessary in every stage and condition in life. With characteristic insight, he points to the precise need it fulfills in each....
Love First Learned from a Lady
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes... Shakespeare, Love’s Labours Lost It has been said that woman specializes in loving. There is a profound truth in this. It is not that men do not know how to love or are not called to love. But women, especially in their...
Making Good Play Happen Today
“Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places— That was how, in ancient ages, Children grew to kings and sages.” Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child’s Garden of Verses What sounds like a sweet childhood ditty in fact points to one of the most significant, and...