community 222

Having experienced pregnancy and childbirth with both a traditionally trained OB/GYN and with midwives, the philosophical differences are abundantly clear.

The memory of pain has the power to protect our joy. The land, the place, the names, the people; these are what connect us to today and to every past…

People often want to ignore the complexity of that process, downplay how often interests conflict, and avoid confrontation. In this essay, I suggest we throw ourselves into the mess and…

The reason I lament the loss of home visits is because in the doctor’s journey to see the patient as a person (which is essential to the therapeutic relationship) the…

The happiest boomers I know love nothing more than talking with their old friends about their new grandchildren. So, my holiday recipe for fighting loneliness is lots of face-to-face talking–with…

So leave if you must, but perhaps not today. Stop and consider all the ways you can stay.

Manchester, NH. The prospect of moving from our little cottage in New Hampshire causes me great pain. Why? Because I am a creature of place and my surroundings, the people,…

It is meant to reference, to supplement, but also to circumvent. Manchester doesn’t do smog or spinning jennies anymore. It’s a friendly city. Come on in.

It is a trouble that visits us all: our fate is to die and be forgotten. Tying ourselves to one another and to life can diminish that trouble’s force, but…

Today, many in our society seem to want change for its own sake. I hope a different spirit continues among those neighbors and the street remains a neighborhood as it…

Undergirding Leacock's work was not a desire to restore a previous version of Canada, but to preserve the gifts God had given: the best traditions of the past, the communities…

The mark by which we recognize a rightly ordered way of thinking about politics, it seems to me, is that such a way of thinking should recall us to the…

Since having kids, I have come to resent the loss of our pettier freedoms and less complex ways of life the most. I certainly do not want my children to…

The spirit of community that arises from festivals such as Halloween is a common good. I suggest that it is also a great time to practice the virtues of shared…

I came away from Steubenville, as I came away later from Grove City, with the startling idea that things are possible. Small things; local things; putting two things together, not…

Not only is this a literary accomplishment, it’s an example that both Rowling and her critics – and, by extension, all of us who wish to live in compassionate community…

Berry, with an insistence that defies despair, is still carrying out his calling. He notes the discouraging odds his kind has faced not just now but in the past. Imperial…

These are not compassionate times—not in the public square, and not in all too much of our increasingly chaotic private life, though I think many people are trying. Mr. Berry…

No one can be whole alone; no one can be free alone. Rather, Berry holds that “[t]o be whole and free is…to be at home in a place and in…

We are the blind, each calling out that which we are so sure we see. No longer aware that the sight we now marvel at is little more than one…

A number of Werntz’s suggested practices—e.g., regular use of corporate and pre-written prayers, and identifying with a classic confession of faith rather than a mission statement—are already common in many,…

It is a hard task to learn to plant roots in a place from which you know you will be uprooted. It is also the task that we, mirroring Israel…

If students grew up moving from city to city, or if they hail from a soulless suburb, or if they are inevitably complicit in economic and social systems they deplore,…

Ordinary practices may not seem to warrant the kind of energy and attention we devote to global and international affairs, especially given the present calamity. But they most certainly do.…