What To Do?
Begin with the featured Wednesday Quotes.
Responding to Economic Pressures
Our economy especially rewards work that is removed from real needs and real life. You can make your profession more meaningful and find other enriching good work.
Reconnecting through Better Work
Often our work is shallow or even soul-numbing, and we feel disconnected from our bodies, the earth, and our community. Good work can reconnect you and build surprising new ties.
Rediscovering Your Inner Craftsman
We can’t find time or occasion to develop deeper, richer skills, and we feel incompetent in basic areas of life. The inner craftsman in you can come alive through a variety of soul-enhancing works.
Featured Posts:
Choosing Toil this Summer
“The Father himself Willed that the path of tillage be not smooth, And first ordained that skill should cultivate The land, by care sharpening the wits of mortals...” Virgil, The Georgics Summer has begun. As a kind of new beginning, every season offers a natural...
The Economics of Splitting Wood by Hand
*This is a reposting of the first piece I ever posted online, almost exactly eight years ago, at Front Porch Republic. It has remained one of the most popular I’ve posted. Also, here is short video sharing my joy in splitting wood. Hilaire Belloc once wrote that he...
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...
Recent Posts:
Manual Workers, Wisdom, and Cosmic Order
“How can he become wise who handles the plough? ...each becomes wise through his work.” Sirach Ben Sira and Aristotle are of one mind regarding the scribe’s pursuit of wisdom. “The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; and he who has little...
Choosing Toil this Summer
“The Father himself Willed that the path of tillage be not smooth, And first ordained that skill should cultivate The land, by care sharpening the wits of mortals...” Virgil, The Georgics Summer has begun. As a kind of new beginning, every season offers a natural...
A Great Reason to Maintain Our Home with Care
“Now to cultivate something is to devote one’s attention to it. And we can cultivate something in two ways: either to make what is cultivated better, as we cultivate a field... or to make ourselves better by the cultivating, and in this way we cultivate wisdom.”...
Craftsmanship Vs. Money-Making
“...you thought that the shepherd as a shepherd tends the sheep not with a view to their own good, but like a mere diner or banqueter with a view to the pleasures of the table; or, again, as a trader for sale in the market, and not as a shepherd.” Plato, Republic Both...
The Economics of Splitting Wood by Hand
*This is a reposting of the first piece I ever posted online, almost exactly eight years ago, at Front Porch Republic. It has remained one of the most popular I’ve posted. Also, here is short video sharing my joy in splitting wood. Hilaire Belloc once wrote that he...
A Plan for Winter: Receive the Gift of Slowdown
“We’ve gotten stuck in the summer mode, in chronic summer... In fall and winter we should move into a new mode, a contractive and restorative mode... like coming home at the end of the day... with a sense of settling, of slowing down, of peace, of belonging, of...
When Medicine Becomes a Business
“And it belongs to...the medical art to produce health, not to make money. Nevertheless, some men turn every art into a means of money-making, as if this is the end.” Aristotle, Politics The state of medical practice in our country and in the world has been brought...
Useless Houses
“Well then, Critobulus,” said Socrates, “what if I demonstrate that, in the first place, some people spend a lot of money on building useless houses, whereas others spend far less and build perfectly adequate houses?” Xenophon, The Estate Manager I wonder what...
Planting as an Act of Hope
“But on a well-banked plot Odysseus found his father in solitude Spading the earth around a young fruit tree.” Homer, Odyssey It is one of the most powerful images of Greek literature. An old man is tilling the soil around a young tree. Most likely he will never see...
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...
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...
In Praise of Hand Work
“The hand is a tool of tools.” Aristotle, On the Soul Recently I was watching a blacksmith work. I was mesmerized. There is something so satisfying and so fitting—indeed, so human—about the ability to do that kind of work. What most struck me is how glad he must be to...