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Seeing the Midwest New: A Review of The Everlasting People
It is perhaps that personal search for contentment that makes this book a notable contribution to the literature on the American racial problem: Milliner’s “penitent Midwest regionalism” is first of…
A Good Party: A Review of Breaking Ground
A Good Party, Tara Isabella Burton suggests, is “a place where bonds of friendship, fostered in a spirit of both charity and joy, serve as the building blocks for communal…
Substitution and Exchange
If such substitution and exchange were genuinely possible, would we agree with Lewis that no gift was more gladly given? Would we too readily assume we could bear another’s burden…
Livin’ la Vida Litúrgica
A final benefit of the liturgical lifestyle is its uniting force. Liturgical and sanctoral calendars vary among Christian confessions, echoing more divisive pieties and doctrines. But when the things Christians…
Life Under Sycamores
Frank Mulder is preaching the same Gospel. Pictures of Frank Mulder make him look like he could be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, on a bicycle, planting sycamores instead of apple…
The Road Taken
Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.
On Talking About the Weather
Nashville, TN. “If you cannot think of anything appropriate to say, you will please restrict your remarks to the weather.” So says Mrs. Dashwood to her daughter Margaret in the…
From Technological Nostalgia to Technological Faithfulness
I bought myself an iPad in August 2016, and to say that it changed my life would be only a slight overstatement. For several years I had been experiencing increasingly…
Anyone Living Anywhere: The Challenge of My Vertical Neighborhood
Milton Friesen reviews My Vertical Neighbourhood, Linda’s McGibbon’s xperience as a newcomer to a high-rise condo in Toronto. She actively explores what it means to be a neighbour in the…
A Wayfinding Approach to Freedom from Sebastian Junger
Elizabeth Stice reviews Sebastian Junger's new book, Freedom. The new book is a product of a roughly 400-mile hike Junger took with other men processing their war experiences. Junger's approach…
Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith: Learning Masculinity in a Time of Despair
Robert Sapunarich shares what he learned during pre-dawn workouts with F3: true masculinity is about countering instincts of anxiety, despair, and resentment with courage, hope, and grace.
Civilization, Escape, or Community: Revisiting Into the Wild with Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry pleads with us to see that true joy and fulfillment— the very motivations at the heart of Huck Finn and Christopher McCandless—are to be found not in escape…
Organized Leisure and the Construction of American Community
Was the experience of “community” in an Ohio town during Ervin’s lifetime fundamentally more compelling and authentic than has been possible after the post-war economic boom? Or should Ervin’s passion…
Should We Begin To Reconnect?
Add the past year on to this already disturbing trend, and such destructive realities have only been further exacerbated. The need for human sociality is not a deficiency, nor is…
Finding Joy in Intentional Community
Intentional community stands as a powerful rebuke to the modern pursuit of the good life: it is not by restlessly seeking to improve our circumstances, but by committing ourselves to…
Where Are Conservatives?
When enough people recognize their emasculated state and demand change through the political process, then authority and resources will be given back to the local community so that people can…
Why Do Soldiers Miss War?
Tempe, AZ. “Why do soldiers miss war?” This is the provocative question at the heart of Scott Beauchamp’s essay collection Did You Kill Anyone?: Reunderstanding My Military Experience as a…
Personality Tests, Community, & Our Nagging Loneliness
Ironically, by searching for the self, we also lose ourselves. The more intently we look within, the more elusive our sense of self becomes.
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 their need for what others…
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 haircuts during lunch breaks at 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…
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 sowing discord. Virgil, his guide through…
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 taxes. From houses up and down the…
