Coping with Busyness: Leisure

Coping with Busyness: Leisure

In Aristotle and Aquinas’s mind everything comes down to leisure—that is, if we understand the term as they do. So I never tire of trying to understand it, and of revisiting key statements about it. One of my favorite lines gives a great angle into one of the foremost...
Joy Comes with Morning

Joy Comes with Morning

There is something about morning. I was struck that in Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the gospel he associates morning with “the glory of the resurrection” and quotes Psalm 30:5, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Yet I ask myself: does...
Household and Beyond: the Common Good

Household and Beyond: the Common Good

There are so many centrifugal forces today that pull us away from what should be the center in daily life. I often dwell on the need to be intentional and re-focus on what we do inside the home. Yet this focus is not only compatible with but demands an appropriate...
Free of Passion, Full of Love?

Free of Passion, Full of Love?

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is rightly well known for its remarkable insights. I am often inspired by its maxims, such as “to be free of passion but yet full of love,” even while I think this and other maxims miss a key truth. Painting with a broad stroke about...
The Gift of Good Goodbyes

The Gift of Good Goodbyes

May is graduation time. So for many of us, it is a time for goodbyes. It is also a good time to reflect on the importance and even the gift of goodbyes, for all of us. We understandably dread goodbyes, especially with those we love most. Moments of parting can be...

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