March 28, 2024

HOly WeekSome people can sleep anywhere. One of those people was a student in one of my seminars a few semesters ago. Bob (his name has been changed to protect the innocent) was a bright but apparently less-than-motivated student whose verbal work, such as participation in seminar, vastly exceeded his written or objective work, such as reading quizzes and the midterm exam. He’s one of those students who always had something to say that is relevant and insightful, carefully crafted... Read more

March 26, 2024

April is going to be Marilynne Robinson month for me. In the team taught interdisciplinary program I teach in, I will be giving a lecture on two of her essays followed a few days later by a seminar on her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead. A week later I have the privilege of being one of four colleagues involved in a continuing series on campus called “Women in Philosophy.” In past semesters I have presented on Simone Weil and Iris... Read more

March 24, 2024

The Palm Sunday celebration in a liturgical Christian church can be both confusing and jarring. Everyone with a religious molecule in their bodies knows that Palm Sunday is about Jesus riding triumphantly into Jerusalem on a donkey (or colt), but this gets only about fifteen minutes of airtime in the Palm Sunday liturgy. The priest reads the Palm Sunday gospel, the ushers distribute palms while everyone sings “All Glory, Laud and Honor” or something similar, the Old Testament reading, Psalm,... Read more

March 21, 2024

In my various courses this semester we have spent a good deal of time developing and discussing a specific moral perspective that provides guidance for how to live a life of meaning and purpose in a world that provides neither directly or easily. In my honors colloquium on Montaigne’s essays, we have explored the influence that the ancient Stoics had on Montaigne as he lived in 16th century France during the violent Wars of Religion. In my team-taught interdisciplinary course... Read more

March 19, 2024

In her award-winning trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, the consigliere and fixer for Henry VIII, Hilary Mantel explores the dynamic of how the son of a violent and abusive father, over many years as a soldier, a merchant, and ultimately a self-made lawyer makes his presence known at court through his sharp insights and practical wisdom. Those of noble and aristocratic birth do not appreciate the rising influence of this low-born peasant. Early in the first novel in the... Read more

March 17, 2024

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, not my favorite holiday (as you’ll see below). Portions of what follows is included in an early chapter of my work-in-progress book Nice Work If You Can Get It: Stories and Lessons from a Lifetime in the Classroom. The section of the chapter is called “Lighten Up!” Enjoy! A few years ago, I had a brief locker room conversation with a campus security guard who frequently tortures himself at the gym around the same time that... Read more

March 14, 2024

Truth isn’t sympathetic to our need for certainty or stability. Jared Enns, “The Bible for Normal People” There is a self-described atheist who regularly comments on this blog, usually to express  his strong disagreement with suggestions that a conception of God might be something more than a myth or fairy tale. His most recent comment was in response to an essay I posted around Christmas titled “Why the Details of Jesus’ Birth Don’t Matter.” He observed that So, at least... Read more

March 12, 2024

Yesterday I had a very encouraging conversation with an editor from a publishing company who has expressed strong interest in one of my two sabbatical book projects: For Everything There is a Season: An Outsider’s Journey through the Liturgical Year. Keep your fingers crossed–if everything works out in the best way possible, this might actually be in print this year. For today’s post, here is a shortened version of the proposed introduction to that book (the whole introduction is about twice... Read more

March 10, 2024

Today’s gospel gets us back to the basics. Sports fans old enough to remember the 70s and 80s will recall that a regular occurrence at baseball or football games either in person or on television was, when the camera panned the stands, to see a person—often wearing a colorful fright wig—holding up a large homemade poster board sign with a cryptic reference that made sense only for initiates: John 3:16. I often imagined the confusion that many might have felt... Read more

March 7, 2024

In the opening lines of Genesis we are told that “In the beginning . . . the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” Then God says, “Let there be light!” and creation gets rolling. It’s not at all difficult to conclude that, from the very start, God prefers light to darkness; a multitude of passages from scripture to come bear this out. This seminal account of the interplay between light and... Read more


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