Latest Posts
Facing Discouragement: A Greek Insight
Discouragement, or at least its temptation, regularly accompanies intentional living. Even if we do not formulate it explicitly we find ourselves feeling “why do the good things I want have to be so difficult?” It is a consolation to know this is not unique to our...
Toxic Fatherhood?
There are important analogies between a father in a family and a ruler in a nation. This is perhaps especially clear in the consequences of their failure. Aquinas writes that “royal dignity is rendered hateful to many people on account of the wickedness of tyrants.”...
Master of His Time
“He had no ‘time of his own’ (except in his bed-cell), and yet he was becoming master of his time; he began to know just what he could do with it.” J.R.R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle Many of the greatest traps of our day appear in the guise of simple math. One of them...
A Husband’s Self-Examination and Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet
Seeing our own weakness exemplified in someone else, including and perhaps especially in artistic representation, can be a great opportunity for us—if we recognize ourselves, and also see the weakness for what it is. Recently as we were reading Pride and Prejudice out...
To Be Realistic about Friendships
Once after giving a lecture on friendship I was told I was undermining the hearers ability to have relationships with diverse people. Clarity on this issue is crucial. What had I asserted in my lecture? Aristotle’s principle: deep friendship requires unity of...
Good in Disasters and Mishaps?
“Everything that happens in corporal creatures redounds to the usefulness of man.” Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job How should I think about a sprained ankle, a tree fallen in the road, a case of indigestion or insomnia, a disease in fruit trees, a drought, or even a...
Ending ‘Summer’ Intentionally
‘Summer’ is a season given bounds as much by schooling, work, and vacation as by the earth’s relation to the sun. Though we have another month until the autumnal equinox, most of us experience summer as ‘done’ by around mid-August. I think it reasonable that we accept...
Two Ways to Listen to the Ultimate Audio Book
“[T]here is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above and below, note, read. God whom you want to discover, did not make the letters with ink; he put in front of your eyes the very things that he made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?”...
A Lesson from Germanic Lands: The Key to Culture
Visiting a place with deep cultural roots can teach us something even if such culture seems unattainably remote. Romano Guardini in his Letters from Lake Como attempts in the 1920’s to capture the essence of the older culture progressively upended by the industrial...
Remembering the Dead, One Year Later
How we remember the dead is significant in how we live. Good ‘remembering’ in general is part of how we live in the present. This is very human, for to be in time is to be on the boundary of the eternal, where past, present and future are as one. The Byzantine...
Good Playing: For Their Sake and Ours
Robert Louis Stevenson's wonderful verses often capture more than meets the eye. When I was down beside the sea A wooden spade they gave to me. To dig the sandy shore. A Child’s Garden of Verses They – whoever ‘they’ were – clearly did this child a good turn. They...
One Possible Reason God ‘Lets’ It Happen
We all need to face it at some time, perhaps even many times. “Why did God let this happen?” Even if we don’t say the words, the question wells up within us. In the last couple of years there seems an unusually high number of such situations in my corner of the world...