Latest Posts
Working by Hand: Reconnecting with Our Humanity
“In all manual work we find the primal phenomenon of culture that is human but close to nature.” “The sphere in which we live is becoming more and more artificial, less and less human,” Romano Guardini, Letters from Lake Como We have lost something today, but we can...
Cherishing Your Spouse in Your Children
“Goodbye Aeneas. Cherish our love in the son it gave us.” Virgil, The Aeneid This stunningly powerful goodbye between spouses says so much. A son, it says, was ‘given’ to a couple by the love they bore one another. Love between spouses is already itself a gift. That...
Is Love Irrational?
“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. The more the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them friends.” Shakespeare (Bottom, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) Lovers can be notoriously irrational. But is true love...
Easter Bells, Easter Joy
The bells of this campanile (bell tower) heralded Easter joy to a rural mountain community in Tuscany, as they have for hundreds of years. This Easter may we discover a joy that is more than a passing experience; a joy that endures not just as a backdrop but as the...
Men in Quarantine: 3 Ideas for Rediscovering Marriage
“What we share now is this home of ours.” “So, my dear, we must recognize what God has assigned to each of us, and try our hardest to carry through our respective responsibilities.” Xenophon, The Estate Manager Marriage is often an exercise in recognizing the gift in...
Corona Quarantine: A New Chance to be a Father
“Let me live here ever; So rare a wonder’d father and a wise Makes this place Paradise.” Shakespeare, The Tempest *Video below: 4 Tips for Men at Home* Our current situation is unprecedented in the last century, perhaps more, in several ways. It is an utterly unique...
Overcoming Fear
“Courage: in all circumstances the ability to judge rightly about the nature and extent of dangers.” “For instance, when Homer makes Odysseus strike himself on the chest, and ‘call his heart to order,’ saying: ‘Prudence my heart, you have put up with fouler than...
Corona Crisis: A Life Opportunity
“It was considered unpatriotic to hoard food.” It really struck me when my mother shared this memory from when she was a child during World War II. The war was an occasion for real soul-searching. Who am I, anyway? How is my life intertwined with that of others? How...
Make Your Home Like a Renaissance City
The Pythagoreans…call music the harmonization of opposites, the unification of disparate things, and the conciliation of warring elements…. They say that the effects and applications of [musical] knowledge reveal themselves in four human spheres: in the soul, in the...
Concentrate like a Roman
Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last...
Choosing to be Present: The Power of Good-Will
“The beloved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as the beloved is in the lover’s affections… [even] in the absence of the beloved, because of the lover’s longing towards…the good he wills to the beloved with a love of friendship.” “… in the love of friendship, the...
Make a Fire Today
Fire is a capital article. To have no fire, or a bad fire to sit by, is a most dismal thing. In such a state man and wife must be something out of the common way to be in good humor with each other… William Cobbett, Cottage Economy There is something about a fire. We...