John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book
Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as
True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in
Nova et Vetera,
The Thomist, and
The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is
baconfromacorns.com.
I had a lot of Church time with my father; hunting, fishing and foraging time with my father; and chore time – mowing, gardening, pulling wells and digging field lines. Papa was a earthy Christian, too earthy in some cases for these fora. There are a lot of stories related to Papa’s attempt to make a man of me, a man with a modicum of virtue. I give him a lot of credit for the good that is in me. As a son, a husband and as a father he did his duty in love. Two nights ago, I had a dream. I unexpectedly encountered him as I went for a cup of coffee at a local establishment. In the dream I said to him, “I did not expect to find you here!” He retorted, “I’m always around when needed.” The dream ended with those words. So now I have dream time with my father.
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