Columns
Shut Up and Listen
The pub we were sitting in one evening was quiet enough to hear other people talking, and I heard my young friend at the other end of the long table […]
Perspective
ADHD Helps Me See God’s Love
The young couple a few rows in front of me at Mass one Sunday had a hurried, urgent conversation. The husband then tried to get by his wife in the pew but […]
Perspective
The Balance of Finding True Moderation in the Spiritual Life
T he fellow I was talking to at the bar said he occasionally watched pornography the way you’d say you sometimes liked to watch hockey or old movies. It was […]
Perspective
If You’re Looking for God, Look to the Poor
A medical doctor and a gifted poet – he would eventually become England’s poet laureate – Robert Bridges had given his college friend Gerard Manley Hopkins the impression that he […]
Perspective
No, the Resurrection is Not a Wonderful Symbol of Hope
Last Epiphany, my wife and I had our annual debate about whether to take down the Christmas tree. She has a weird dislike of finding pine needles on the floor. […]
Perspective
Cleaning Up for a Special Guest
Kids’ toys were scattered around on the floor. Dog hair had blown into corners (we had shedders). Books were stacked in almost every room in the house, and baskets of […]
Perspective
How Boredom Helps Us to Know God (and Ourselves)
St. Augustine famously said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee,” but what exactly is the “restlessness” from which we’re being rescued? I think Augustine was […]
Perspective
You Don’t Really Know Who You Are
One of the most important rules for living in the world is: You are probably not who you think you are, and many others know you better than you know […]
Perspective
If You’re Bored, It’s Really Your Own Fault
Chesterton would have agreed with me. If you’re bored, it’s your own fault. “There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject,” he wrote in his early book, […]
Perspective
So Much of Evangelization Depends on How We Sow
A writer and I were going back and forth about how the best devotional article won’t get as many readers as a political article by the same writer. Publish a […]
Perspective
The Sinful Energy of Envy – How You Incite It
A friend of Dorothy Day’s told her that her children had called Peter Maurin “ragged and unkempt.” They were sure “that he never bathed, and he seemed to sleep in […]