Articles

Bjartur and Berry: Contrasting Visions of Community and Affection

Seen through his most redemptive lens, Bjartur stands as a cautionary tale for those who would pursue independence as an end in itself.

Working for the Life Beyond Words

In his brief and not altogether satisfying rejoinder to the question, “why write?” Berry says, “To serve that triumph I have done all the rest,” and he ends the poem there. “That triumph” is the triumph of the way of love, the life of silence.

The Hidden Sorrow of Mother’s Day

Our mothers and our children will always be part of our lives, in life and death. Surprisingly, grief does not dominate our existence, it informs it.

On the Need to Reactivate Our Right Hemispheres

In our daily lives, we need activities that aren’t driven by our left hemispheres. We need leisure (as understood by Josef Pieper). We need to waste time. We need to do nothing . . . a thing that rankles the left hemisphere’s productive disposition.

The Liberal Arts: Take it or Leave it

Let’s point to the wiser and the well off and ask people if they want what those people have–often they do. Many times, those people have a love for the liberal arts.

Modern Architecture: Designed to Demoralize?

Arched doorways, private courtyards, personal craftsmanship, a sense of place, and almost everything else we love about buildings has been taken away by the modernist ethos intent on depriving the public of a choice, as architects are left unchecked to focus more on how their buildings look in magazines than on how the people using them feel.

Ghost Stories with Nancy French

Longtime ghostwriter Nancy French tells her own tale in Ghosted: An American Life.  French was raised in rural Tennessee and would later provide the words...

My Father’s CV

Reading for the shape of a life can be medicinal, especially when we allow that life to diagnose and heal ourselves. And maybe then that understanding can encourage doctors of all kinds–but especially scholars of the humanities–to think differently about their life.

A Passage to — and a Message from — India

What We Can Learn from a Society Where Community Still Matters

Work and Leisure: A Pieper Primer

I am convinced that the busyness of our age detracts from our ability to see the worthy work we do, to see ourselves as whole persons. Filling our days does not necessarily lead to fulfillment.