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...
A Simple Exercise to Practice Contemplation

A Simple Exercise to Practice Contemplation

Contemplation: it’s a word that both thrills and intimidates. We fear that we don’t really know what it is, and that even if we did we’d find it very difficult to do. This sense is heightened by hearing that contemplation is the heart of happiness in the next life....
Aristotle on the Divine in Us

Aristotle on the Divine in Us

The great Greek maxim “Know thyself” surely has two distinct but related aspects. Both are very challenging and call for intentional, regular reflection. The first is to know what it is to be human; the second is to know myself as an individual. For the first the key...
Aquinas on Going Up for the Feast

Aquinas on Going Up for the Feast

Certain special days are more at the center of life. Some are particular to the person (e.g., wedding, death of parent, graduation); others have universal significance. For Christians, the Paschal days are most special; they are simply the center. How we live them is...
New Eyes in Spring

New Eyes in Spring

A man yelled in the middle of my public lecture, “I see your point!” I was a bit flustered. Then I noticed the man was blind. His outburst highlights a paradox at the center of human life: there is seeing, and there is seeing. What does it take to see in the sense...

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