Students are invited to submit an essay for our 2025 essay contest.
My miracles are many, too many to count or explain. Maybe yours are too.
Teaching Like a Prize Fighter
To throw pedagogical punches is not to berate students; it’s to engage them in the ring. Most of them just need a nudge, a little jab that’s meant to be blocked.
The Family Barber
A person cannot multitask while performing it; instead, all else disappears, and only the person for whom one is caring in this physical way remains the focus for several minutes
Excelsior
My mom knew that she could not transfer the entire corpus of Western thought to us because she didn’t have it. But she did have love
Heroic Romanticism
It's entirely possible that many will give up human relationships, turning instead to the safety and predictability of technology, like an AI companion
Keeping A Culture: A Review of Thoroughness and Charm
Classroom culture may develop accidentally, but the truth is that a neutral classroom does not exist. Although her apologia is intended for classical Christian educators, Gerth speaks to all teachers
1.5 Speed to Nowhere
Over the decades, I suppose I learned a lot from podcasts; plenty of facts and all the “sides” to stories. Very little of those things seem to matter to me now
Of a Woodstove
I’ve heated with wood for a winter, and I am pleased to do so, but it’s backbreaking labor to warm this way for a lifetime
On Being Indifferent
The politics of Jesus are “brutally modest.” “Jesus’ life seems to have been mostly one of local, familial labor and relations, carried out in the compass of a small town or village . . .
Three Trees Once Grew
Although my vision, and my neck, and my sense of balance, and certainly my sense of hope, were all impaired, I could still prune. And as I pruned, I reflected on the three trees that once grew near my childhood home ...
The Ghost Cricket Orchestra
If we are willing to listen, we might be able to learn what we are listening for. Not just a deeper connection to our humanity, or a meditative appreciation of existence, as lovely and important as those things may be.
Crime and Redemption
Those who had previously greeted me with smiles and handshakes find ways to hint through word and deed that I am no longer one of them ...
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From the Archives
Laudato Si’ and the Feverish Summer
For many, this summer was long, hot, and awful — at least politically; no one particularly recalls the weather. Why so rotten? Laudato si',...
Puritans and The Pope: The Conflicted Christian History of American Ecological Ethics
The responses from American Christians to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ have fallen into two predictable categories: Economic conservatives push back against Francis’ critique...
The Cardinal and the Capitalist
A cleric with the ear of Pope Francis recently sent Catholic defenders of free markets into a tizzy. At a press conference, Cardinal Oscar...