“As Grandmother’s biographer, I’d have to guess she was never really happy after, say, her thirty-seventh year, the last year when she lived an idyll in Boise Canyon.” “But she lived a long time after that,” Ellen said. “She lived to be ninety-one.” “But she wasn’t happy.” “She wasn’t unhappy, either. Do you have to […]
Angle of Repose: Wallace Stegner, Thomas Aquinas, and the Dimensions of Happiness Read More »
A great deal is made of “critical thinking” in the general background noise of our culture, especially when people talk about education and what kids aren’t getting. I got thinking about that while I was listening closely to a John Denver song on my way in to work this morning. Being a John Denver song
Stupid Songs and How to Love Them Rightly: A Reflection on Critical Thinking Read More »
The great secret, as C.S. Lewis asserted years ago, is that God is a hedonist at heart. God tells us to say no to many things, but only that we may say yes to higher and better things! God instructs us to say no to avarice and prodigality in order that we may say yes
The mind rooted in faith operates differently from the mind rooted in doubt.* Doubt, interestingly, comes from the Latin “dubitas,” which can as easily be translated “fear.” In Elizabethan times, that correlary was not obscure, as you can see when you read, for example, Hamlet. A few years ago, Joss Whedon wrote a TV series
