Latest Posts
Honoring Fatherhood, and Imperfect Fathers
In an age that questions, doubts, and undermines first things, there is at least one silver lining. It demands that we look more intently and perhaps even discover some of these ‘first things’ for the first time. Fatherhood stands out among these. It might have seemed...
Friendship in Marriage: What Really Makes a Home
A key explanation of why happiness is so elusive is in the answer to this question: Why are some homes more a ‘home’ than others? This is no surprise, since the wise tell us that home is where our heart is at rest. Indeed, where else would our heart be at rest? Life...
Learning How and Why to be Still Every Day
One of the most arresting lines in the Psalms is in 46:10, “Be still and see that I am God.” The verbs in Latin are memorable: vacate et videte. As these are plural imperatives it seems to be a command that applies to everyone. And it begins with a demanding...
Changing How Our Children Do Dating
How our young people date is problematic; and I’m not talking about the mainstream habits of a ‘hookup culture.’ I mean young people from families with traditional values, where preparing for marriage and waiting for marriage are implicit, accepted goods. It is not...
Who is Setting the Tone at Home? 3 Suggestions
How I think about marriage and homelife is much affected by life with my wife. I must remind myself not to universalize too quickly or without nuance. Yet I think what I’ve seen with my eyes, and felt in my heart, does point to something that goes beyond the...
Joseph and Discovering a Deeper Work
It is notable and even arresting how often our best efforts meet with failure—or at least what seems failure. This gives an opportunity to take a more careful look at how we conceive the point or goal of our daily labors. In his Parochial and Plain Sermons John Henry...
Made for Contemplation: 3 Practical Applications for Everyday
Perhaps the most overlooked truth about human life is that we are made for contemplation. All of us. It’s not that our activist and practical age directly rejects this. Almost worse, our customs, practices and expectations take for granted that anything called...
Husbands and Wives Need Husbandry and Housewifery
“This destroyed household that now stands between the sexes is a wound that is suffered inescapably by both men and women.” My eyes were opened when I read these words of Wendell Berry. My wife’s suffering in a home arrangement that has shown itself more and more to...
Reconsider Your Lawn Today
I was shocked to learn that my cousins in a suburban community were fined by their homeowners association (HOA) for having clover in their lawn. Doing a little research I discovered this is not unusual; in fact many HOA’s have rules that forbid a wide array of...
Making Easter the Cornerstone of Our Year
It is near impossible to overstate the significance of Easter. It stands out as primary and unique for at least three reasons. 1. While the focused celebration of Easter is for a set time—first an intense week (eastern Christianity has the lovely name of ‘Bright...
Holy Week Doesn’t Just Change Life; It is Life
Holy Week and Easter can be a bit overwhelming. We sense this is an opportunity we should not miss, but just what to do can be elusive. An insight into human nature from Plato and Aristotle can encourage and give us practical direction. Plato once asked, “Do you think...
Why We Need a New Kind of Homesteading
‘Homesteading,’ whatever exactly it is, runs deep in the American psyche and history. Vast stretches of our nation were settled through it. A great number of our forebears—and here I do not mean only settlers or pioneers but people living for generations in one...
