Tag: community

Independent Interdependence: A Mark of Successful Communities

Clay County, MO. At first blush, independent interdependence may seem an oxymoron. Yet people exercise a kind of balance between their need for autonomy and...

The Local Barber

I recently visited a barber in my Virginian hometown whom I had not patronized in more than a year (I’d taken to getting my...

What Makes Art Beautiful?

The failure to distinguish between art and beauty has caused much confusion. Art and beauty have two different but overlapping trajectories–one towards union and the other towards transcendent reality.

Blessed Are the Working Poor

I am in love with my neighborhood because I am in love with the people, how resilient and complicated they are, and how they teach me how wrong I have been about the world. They have proven to me what Jesus said in his most famous sermon, the one on the mount: “blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.”

A Case for Shame

In Canto XXX of the Inferno, Dante becomes fascinated with an argument between Sinon the Greek and Master Adamo, both of them condemned for...

Rock the Block

It is a cloudless July day in Connecticut—the kind of day that keeps people rooted in this place despite its long winters and high...

Institutional Renewal

It is hard to see a silver lining in the abuse scandal of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the scarring crisis has given Pope Francis...

Dirt Thick with Known Dead

While wandering in a used bookstore this summer, I picked up Donald Hall’s String Too Short to be Saved. I enjoyed Hall’s stories about...

Letter from the Electronic Jail

From a jail cell in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. charged us to acknowledge our “inescapable network of mutuality.”  Fifty-five years later, our networks...

Branding Disaster

Earlier this year, after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, I reflected on the conversations that may or may not ensue from the changing of a...