My mother’s unrelenting message to me was: Keep your head, keep your feet planted on the ground, muster courage in the face of the ambiguous and the unknown, do what is in front of you, and by all means possible take care of your responsibilities. I’ve had more vaccinations for more virulent diseases than most [...]
In our contemporary world of ubiquitous mirage, the skills of discernment are not only important, they are of vital benefit. "Likely stories" are a bedrock of classical education, and classical educators should endeavor to have students read them not because they believe students must be virtuous in order to go to battle against societal disintegration [...]
The letters of the alphabet, strung together in cogent meaning, might be best thought of, not as means to an end, but as an end in and of themselves—a living, incarnated creativity that encourages relationship. And I like to consider speech, in all its forms, as love letters. My youngest child, just nearing his seventh [...]
At St. John’s I learned how to struggle with fate—before I was even capable of truly grasping what fate might possibly be—as I viewed what it meant to be human through the eyes of war-like Achilleus and as I wandered with crafty Odysseus, searching for my own city… On s’est trompé lorsqu’on a cru que [...]
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. —The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot I moved frequently in the later years of my childhood—not just from town to town, state to state, or country to country, but from [...]
On s’est trompé lorsqu’on a cru que l’esprit et le jugement étaient deux choses différentes: le jugement n’est que la grandeur de la lumière de l’esprit; cette lumière pénètre le fond des choses, elle y remarque tout ce qui’il faut remarquer, et aperçoit celles qui semblent imperceptibles… We are deceived if we think that mind [...]
Mathematics: Is God Silent? by James Nickel Mathematics: Is God Silent? answers the question posed in its title with a resounding “No! God is by no means silent!” As we are told in Romans 1:20, God is manifestly visible in His creation: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine [...]
Understandably, these days there is a great deal of political analysis swirling around. This morning, I read Pat Buchanan’s article, “Obama’s America – And Ours.” I was struck by this statement: From Jamestown in 1607 to Yorktown in 1781, there was no federal government. There was no United States. Yet generations of colonists had built forts, cleared [...]