• Thoughts

    Origins and Ends

    The golf lovers around here spent much of the weekend, when they weren’t out on one of the courses that just opened for the season, watching The Masters. Since they no longer have to put up with CBS Sports and…

  • Thoughts

    Peace Travels Light

    Alice Miller has made me a minimalist. All that’s left? Me and the truth. The agendas; the philosophies; the advice and instruction; the judgments, opinions, and ratings; the rules and the “this is the way it’s done”s; the excuses and…

  • Thoughts

    Word Problems

    A Declarative Sentence Life Sounds Like This Don’t ask questions. Don’t tell people things. Don’t get fat. Don’t get too skinny. Don’t embarrass us. Don’t get bad grades. Don’t think you’re so smart. Don’t misbehave. Don’t blame it on your…

  • Thoughts

    Continue the Conversation

    Everything is interconnected, which is why I cannot try to isolate the books I read. I need to keep a dozen or so in process. I need to stop worrying about not finishing one or another: no more self-imposed rules,…

  • Thoughts

    White, Grey, Black

    “I asked him what prayers. He said they prayed to Yezu Klisto and someone called Simon. Is that the same as Simon Peter?” “No, not quite the same. The fathers could tell you about Simon. He died in gaol nearly…

  • Thoughts

    Daring Despite the Danger

    “The known, our current story, protects us from the unknown, from chaos—which is to say, provides our experience with determinate and predictable structure. … When we are in the domain of the known, so to speak, there is no reason…

  • Thoughts

    Maybe I Missed God

    My kids and I always have theological discussions. I’ve been talking to them about God, faith, Catholicism, in one way or another, since each of them was born, and while I love babies and toddlers, I am happy to have…

  • Thoughts

    The Awful Futility of Explaining

    In Marcel Billot’s foreword to Sacred Art by M.A. Couturier, he explains that L’Art Sacré was a review run for a time by two Dominican priests, Father Couturier and Father Pie-Raymond Régamey. They managed, apparently, to work together and produce…

  • Thoughts

    The Tales We Tell

    It turns out that I have a tendency to make the most of a bad situation, and I write it that way because this was not readily apparent to me for the longest time. If I had been asked, while…