Category: Article

Friday, March 9, 1990, was a pivotal day in my life, because it’s the day I picked up the phone and called the young woman who would, eight months later, somehow agree to marry me. I was twenty-six years old, living in Los Angeles, and awaiting the sacrament of confirmation in the Catholic Church (which I received the following weekend). The call itself was a bit of a “Hail Mary” because Sarah lived in Boston, which was then a long way from Los Angeles culturally as well as geographically. Also,…

I never want to see this movie again. Granted, this might sound a bit harsh coming from a Classics undergrad who spent most of his Classics Club movie nights rewatching the first installation of this movie franchise—yet I remain steadfast: I never want to see this movie again. I have no issue with some of the creative liberties and historical inaccuracies adopted by Ridley Scott that people too often bemoan in movies like this (such as a newspaper being read in a café or sharks in the Colosseum). All those…

In 1989, I was a recently married lieutenant in the Army, stationed in Germany, and found myself—to this day I can’t remember how—in possession of a book entitled A Retreat for Lay People. It was a series of talks by a priest named Ronald Knox that followed the general outline of a retreat. Till then, just about any spiritual reading I had done was reminiscent of the times, with lots of exclamation points and titles like In Search of Me. This man was different. His tone was conversational yet respectful….

As a basis for mentoring, there may be no better starting point than knowledge of the virtues. Any school or organization endeavoring to begin or strengthen a mentoring program should consider this. If, from early on, we develop in our students a vocabulary of the virtues, a concrete understanding of these all-important ways of living, then our ability to mentor them is enhanced tremendously. Through discussion of the virtues we can address the roots of student weaknesses in constructive ways. Instead of starting from a place where we point out…

The world is not just a set of separately existing localized objects, externally related only by space and time…Something deeper, and more mysterious, knits together the fabric of the world.  —Tim Maudlin, professor of philosophy and physics at NYU. The poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) teaches us how to look into a moment and see the world. William Blake, who saw eternity in a flower, would get Thomas’ poetry, though his own work is so vastly different it may as well have been written on another planet. The vision’s the…

Forcing the worst ideas of history on the next generation . . . for their own good  From 1961 to 1989, a wall famously encircled what was then known as West Berlin. West Germans called it the “Wall of Shame” (Mauer der Schande), a phrase coined by then-Mayor Willy Brandt. In the U.S., we called it simply “the Berlin Wall,” and though the term is neutral we all knew the wall was there to keep the residents of East Germany from escaping to the West—in other words, to keep them…

One of the great Christmas traditions is Frank Capra’s masterful film It’s a Wonderful Life. James Stewart, that most American of actors, plays the lead of George Bailey, an Everyman, a small-town ordinary guy struggling against the deceit, selfishness, and cynicism of a power-broker named Potter. Yet, for all its Americana, I find It’s a Wonderful Life a profound reflection on the teachings of my favorite saint, Francis de Sales, a seventeenth-century French bishop.  De Sales lived from 1567 to 1622 and was the titular bishop of Geneva, Switzerland, but…

Wicked will now take a one-year intermission. Enjoy the snacks at the concession stand.  By far the most important thing to know about the film release of Wicked is this: it’s only Act One of the musical. This caught me by surprise, because the film is called Wicked (rather than, say, Wicked, Act One or Something Bad Is Happening in Oz or even How the Flying Monkeys Got Their Wings). And I had noticed that the run time was 2:40, which seemed about right for a Broadway musical adaptation. When…

When you take pen in hand and write a word, you do something approaching the divine. You are giving physical form to a thought. It is, in its way, an Incarnation. To do this with beauty and grace is to honor this Incarnation. This is penmanship.  Along with speaking, it is the most common form of Incarnation. We do it every day whether we’re signing a credit card receipt, writing a grocery list, or putting down our deepest thoughts in a journal. Like all Incarnations, it reflects who we are….