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....
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...
That I Might Be Seen

That I Might Be Seen

The hard conversation with a loved one comes to an impasse. A welter of feelings resolves into one overriding pain: I don’t feel seen. In the end the greatest suffering is to be, or feel, alone. And to feel unseen is the very heart of loneliness. Josef Pieper...
Recovering Leisure at Thanksgiving: Planning Spontaneity

Recovering Leisure at Thanksgiving: Planning Spontaneity

It is one of the great crises of our day, the more serious for its being largely unnoticed. The lack of truly ‘free time’ in our life is masked by our referring to chunks of our time as ‘free.’ But for several generations, wise observers have pointed to a radical new...
Making Easter the Cornerstone of Our Year

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...

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