We’re listening to songs about my favorite time of day, morning, this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs. Accordingly, it’s a pretty mellow episode. Send recommendations my way at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Crouched between reflective handrails and stained cloth seats holding the memories of seasons past, I encountered daily more humanity, more culture, and more reverent wisdom than perhaps ever before. | Continue reading
Maya Sulkin talks to some influencers and wannabe influencers about the nature of work. | Continue reading
Apprenticeship, not exploitation—and why place still matters. | Continue reading
When will we confront the reality that terrible things can be etched into our memories in milliseconds? | Continue reading
Belonging cannot be immediately grasped, but it must be chosen little by little. | Continue reading
I pray Charlie’s old neighbors will keep the flags flying, the campus debates respectful, and their doors open to all visitors. | Continue reading
The author, activist, and grandfather who once warned of The End of Nature has a brighter disposition these days. Resources Bill’s bio and buy the book (and the other book) Solar SunDay and nitro Sunday, Sunday, Sunday Van Morrison’s Brand New Day Wendell Kimbrough helps us find … | Continue reading
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about solidarity, one-half of the foundation of Catholic social teaching. Send me your song recommendations at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
They accepted that the law of human judgment was Mercy—after all, that was the law of divine judgment. | Continue reading
Maureen Swinger goes to an Oliver Anthony concert and describes his efforts to repair broken places and subvert the structures of the celebrity machine. | Continue reading
One must think seriously about where to draw lines in the sand | Continue reading
Shouldn’t we begin putting restrictions on how often and for what purposes minors’ images appear online? | Continue reading
In focusing on the global economy, universities often lose sight of the needs of local economies. | Continue reading
Within the context of expressing his desire to help end the war between Ukraine and Russia, the President highlights another desire: he wants to go to heaven. | Continue reading
We’re talking about fire in all its forms this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I managed to get all the way through the episode without referencing Beavis and Butthead. Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Kirk started as a kind of ultra-MAGA influencer. Over time, however, he was becoming a serious man—one with a popular following, especially among the young. | Continue reading
Antonio Spadaro responds to plans to build a bridge across the Strait of Messina. | Continue reading
I wanted living color, an axe to break the frozen sea. | Continue reading
Not too long ago, the internet was a place you visited. The family desktop sat in its designated closet or back office. In schools, there were rooms filled with computers blinking in tandem, waiting for your class to arrive and hop online. You had to purposefully arrive at the in … | Continue reading
I have been hoping for a reckoning about covid for years now, and this book is a major step in that direction. | Continue reading
It’s party time at A Symposium of Popular Songs, though we’re going to oscillate wildly between the kind of party you go home from in an ambulance and the kind of party where you sit in the corner and pet a cat. Send me your song recommendations at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
With "Civil War" and now "Warfare," the writer-director has made two consecutive movies about the “what” of armed conflicts rather than the “why” | Continue reading
Tara Couture writes about the mysterious relation between simple joys and hard work. | Continue reading
I found that Wink has not simply played haphazardly with an abundance of tropes but collected them together, arranged them in a pile—so he could then throw them aside and press deeper into the thicket of questions of manliness. | Continue reading
It is such a joy to finally figure out something my son has been trying to say. Just so, it is a joy when a particular passage of Scripture finally breaks open. | Continue reading
Chatbots aren’t new. Joseph Weizenbaum created one in 1966. And what happened next led him to become a vocal critic of his own creation. What did he see that we need to see now? | Continue reading
Still it waves. Still it sings. | Continue reading
We’re talking about freedom this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I demonstrate my freedom by going all the way from “guy with guitar” folk to overcranked contemporary R&B. On the way I’ll try to convince you that the concept of freedom is so nebulous as to be easily use … | Continue reading
In 2024, I held my first Margarita Mile. I’ve done more since then. It’s simple. I invite a group of friends. Using sidewalk chalk, I mark a start line and some arrows on the sidewalk in front of my house. | Continue reading
The details of the dissolution of the Honors College at Tulsa continue to be quite discouraging. | Continue reading
When the wood deepened, the clean wearing of the earth itself wore away into indistinguishable concord. | Continue reading
In the ultimate form of mimesis, the well-seasoned mower who comes to know every inch of the property he maintains, also comes, in the end, to know the contours and corners of his own mind, given sufficient time. | Continue reading
Dobson knew his influence was on one side of the political divide and kept his focus and advocacy there. Political loyalties came first. | Continue reading
How we use our free time might be the difference between a professionally successful but ultimately mediocre life and the life of a saint. | Continue reading
Inspired by some recent criminal activity in the Christian rock world, this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about fame—mostly its negative aspects. | Continue reading
We've made it all the way from the overstepping of Orpheus, the land, and poetry into something our own lives can do (spill over as though water from a fountain--or, perhaps, light from inside the petals of a flower)-- | Continue reading
Charles Eisenstein lays out some initial policy proposals that could help farmers stay solvent while transitioning to more regenerative agricultural practices. | Continue reading
On Politics, Spirituality, Walt Whitman, and the Healing of the United States | Continue reading
The right kind of literature has the power to make the immediate visible to us once again. | Continue reading
Insofar as "The Bee" now occupies something near the center of American Christian discourse, what’s crowded out, I think, is an articulated (not just implied-by-negation) path toward holiness . . . | Continue reading
One of the most curious things about raising two boys seventeen years apart is the divide I feel in their digital generations. | Continue reading
Scott was a scholar of reciprocity, collaboration, and a kind of stubborn agrarianism that is the opposite of romantic and a requisite of real, existing democracy. Let him rest in peace. | Continue reading
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about restlessness—or, as the scholar Frederick R. Karl calls it, spatiality. I managed to do this whole episode without talking about Bruce Springsteen, whose songs about wanting to get out of New Jersey could e … | Continue reading
Christine Rosen pens a biting response to Katherine Boyle’s rosy picture of techno-families. | Continue reading
A weary, hungry child is walking through the forest, the emerald-green hues of the dense foliage gleaming shyly in the rays of a young summer day. From far above, the sun’s brightness struggles to reach past the lush greenery of the crowding trees. How did she get here? Where did … | Continue reading
Encouraged, not only by the burgeoning online-use of Oldenburg’s term "third place," but by a young person’s desire to engage with it, I decided to reach out to Madison. | Continue reading
Building community doesn’t map well into the high value we place on choice at the individual level. | Continue reading