Front Porch Republic

The laughter of a faithless culture is bitter, derisive. It no longer springs from a merry heart but from dry bones. A culture of faith is a culture that can truly laugh.

My miracles are many, too many to count or explain. Maybe yours are too.

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.

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

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

It's entirely possible that many will give up human relationships, turning instead to the safety and predictability of technology, like an AI companion

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

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

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

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 . . .

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…

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.