There are two ways to go through life: Mindfully or mindlessly. In the first instance, we pay attention. We see things and notice them in order to appreciate them. We hear things in order to understand them. We seek to know things not superficially but in their wholeness. We live in the present moment and […]

Men love coffee. Ever since the pope first blessed coffee for Catholic consumption, it has been part of the daily ritual of millions of men around the globe. It awakens, revivifies, and stimulates the intellect. It warms the body and fills the heart with gladness. It is a little bit like the elixir of life. Finding […]

Recently, while traveling for business, I was tired after a long day and so began scrolling through the channels on the hotel television. Because there was next to nothing worth watching on the hundreds of channels available, I finally settled on a mildly interesting house hunting show. If you haven’t seen this kind of show, […]

A friend recently remarked that it’s those that gather and control data that own the future.  I understand what he meant (I think), but, if we dig a bit, I suspect we would doubt that the data-controllers of the day, however intelligent they are, have what we would call wisdom. Education today is ordered toward […]

The literature on millennials is extensive. And I have not read it. But as a college professor, I have lived and worked with them day in and day out for many years. More and more I realize that I face the same challenges they do. I offer no precise diagnosis of the problems millennials face. […]

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, was the beginning of Holy Week. Worshippers of the ancient Coptic Orthodox Church in Tanta, Egypt were gathered together, palm branches in hand, to remember the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem and the beginning of his Passion. Without warning, an explosion violently rocked the front row of the church, spraying the attending priest with […]

  One of the most pernicious lies of the modern world is that life is supposed to be easy and comfortable. There is even a sense in which moderns believe they are entitled to this comfort and ease—that it is some sort of fundamental human right. Many of us have absorbed this subtle thinking, even though we […]

I am the father of three children four and under. It is always startling to me, though it shouldn’t be at this stage, how quickly things can spin out of control. A perfectly clean house that took a great deal of effort to tidy up can nearly instantly be destroyed by our children with hardly […]