As C.S. Lewis noted in The Abolition of Man, the souls of our youth are not jungles that need pruning but deserts that need irrigation. We could start by getting them to hear music. | Continue reading
Our participation streak brought forward more diversity of opinion and expression in the classroom while forming the students into a team with a shared objective. | Continue reading
To counter dogmatic worldviews, we should read prudently and widely across time periods and cultures and not avoid difficult content because of fear. | Continue reading
A Non-Believer Ponders Life, Death, and Staring into the Abyss | Continue reading
Can the rest of us afford such inaction? Yes—and that’s the point. For the travesty of modernity is its constant demand—from left or right—for action, control, and efficiency. But the first step into an agrarian attitude is to step back from such demands. | Continue reading
Your presence is needed. Hush. Stay. Show your love by letting them grieve. | Continue reading
But I reckon that eÞanðun can mix with Beowulf and Paradise Lost and not feel out of place. | Continue reading
The Chicago Manual of Style is not to blame for any of these trends. The editors’ decision does not shape as much as reflect our culture. | Continue reading
I found it to be profound and moving, the work of an author who is not lost in flights of fancy but who is deeply receptive to the world and its God. | Continue reading
Behind this type of play, though, is a genuine longing for beauty—a desire not only to appreciate the beautiful things one has seen or read or heard, but also to attempt to replicate them somehow. | Continue reading
Yet at times, if only for a moment, I feel the shadow over my days is transformed into pure spirit. Such thoughts give me a surprising sense of quiet joy. | Continue reading
This rural mountain church continues to be good because it continues to do what is necessary. | Continue reading
—it took 40 years for me to begin to realize these words Jim silently put into my hands on that last day of class were a prayer. | Continue reading
Knowing your family’s past fugitives and pretty boys is the kind of localism anyone can aspire toward and practice. | Continue reading
With a clear sky above us, no one restricting our movements, we learned—sometimes flailingly, like chickens with our heads cut off—how to marvel. | Continue reading
I suppose when it comes to discussions of the English language, I prefer sterner stuff. | Continue reading
If you understand that a child’s growth comes from a spark within, just as does the growth of a flower, a crystal, or a mighty oak, you might take a more trusting view of a child’s growth. | Continue reading
There ought not be unnecessary opposition between Indigenous and Christian perspectives. The creative work of caring for our ecology is hard enough; let us not also misunderstand one another. | Continue reading
I’ll be logging off the internet for a few weeks and thus pausing these Water Dippers. I aim to resume them in early August. “What Pope Francis and Ivan Illich Prioritize in Common: Anti-clericialism, the Global South and the Cry of the Poor.” Elias Crim surveys the growing inter … | Continue reading
AI promises free cheese, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Although we often boast about AI’s ability to create, we should instead focus the conversation on the kind of society AI produces. | Continue reading
Perhaps Pippin is right, but none of the friends call Fredegar Fatty anymore, and those chaps know something about heroics. | Continue reading
Here, on a little patch of field in a North Texas suburb, I found life being played out in simple but significant ways. | Continue reading
Wallie is gone; no visible scar remains. Mourning provides no lesson, no answers, no closure. The poet is not decrying grief for its lack of utility. | Continue reading
“Ideas and Historical Consequences.” Mars Hill Audio released the full version of an old interview with John Lucaks. FPR readers can up for a free FPR affiliate membership at Mars Hill Audio. “Dreamers and Plagiarists.” Jacob Howland draws on Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and Fyodo … | Continue reading
In this way, “idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; quite the contrary, it is a truly divine way of life so long as one is not bored.” | Continue reading
Her heart is for those little ones, that they might come to know The One who became a child for our salvation and for the glory of God. | Continue reading
And this progression from the raw, unabated natural Florida to the ever-more artificial Florida, has grave consequences for both the geographical locale and the people who inhabit it. | Continue reading
God is perverted in our minds from a giver into an imminent enemy. He becomes the all-knowing one who alone reads our hearts’ desires and who alone, in His power, can prevent their satisfaction. | Continue reading
This driving principle of love and human flourishing, rooted in the Christian understanding of humanity being made in the image of God, has spurred the great social and political reform movements in American history like abolitionism and civil rights. | Continue reading
“Computers Can’t Do Math.” David Schaengold has a clear and provocative essay on the differences between computer “thinking” and human thinking: “we can be sure there are world states beyond the comprehension of any AI. And I suspect those world states will not necessarily be one … | Continue reading
Men often reflect on their relationship with their fathers during these coincidences of milestones; a similar thing often happens when a son reaches the age his father was when the son was born. | Continue reading
The healthy sorrow of our most melancholy president | Continue reading
As is clear to see, Business Insider's portrayal of 3D printing as a panacea for America's housing crisis falls short upon closer examination. | Continue reading
Only in Israel, I think in retrospect, would twelve-year-olds be this intimately familiar with the history of the Holocaust, the violence and suffering of oppression in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the horrifying events of the uprising and the final destruction of the ghetto. | Continue reading
Do we love the soil and the creatures put in our stead, or do we prefer the images our devices project at us? While the choice is not always so cut and dry, Mannon’s book can help us begin to retool our imaginations and ennoble common labor again. | Continue reading
“The Cultural Roots of Our Demographic Ennui.” Patrick Brown argues that affluence—what regular FPR contributor John de Graaf labeled “affluenza”—lies behind many of our cultural ills: “A world of creature comforts is not one that demands sacrifice. And with greater wealth comes … | Continue reading
Eloquent and nuanced, never pompous, The Rector’s Daughter sets before us the inexhaustible mystery of persons and the ways they manage to live together. | Continue reading
Rather than empowering us to live in humble confidence in relationship with others and our maker, AI offers us a choice similar to that which confronted Esau. | Continue reading
Rosen contends that we have lost touch with a classical understanding of happiness, in part because of a shift of cultural emphasis from “being good to feeling good.” Fortunately, social and behavioral psycho | Continue reading
We’re not crazy — and we’re not alone | Continue reading
“DIY.” Bud Smith details the joys of fixing anything that’s broken with the help of the Internet: “YouTube has all the right answers and all the wrong answers. All you have to do is scroll down and look for the worst one. The one with the worst sound and video quality has the bes … | Continue reading
How has your intellectual practice prepared you not just for success but also for failure? | Continue reading
Kennard himself, though worrying about his legacy during his last illness, seemed remarkably free of bitterness. Concerning a prison guard who had abused him, he thought that the abuse had harmed the guard more than himself. | Continue reading
“They see us as deeply lonely people,” Barry told Fred, “and one of the reasons we’re lonely is that we’ve cut ourselves off from the nonhuman world and have called this ‘progress.’” Maturity in Christ is not escape but presence. | Continue reading
And so the shotgun sits in our home like a quiet benediction. It dreams—as I do—of long walks in the valleys of my youth and whispers of future pastures that are untrod and unspoiled. | Continue reading
“The Big AI Risk Not Enough People Are Seeing.” Tyler Austin Harper draws on Ivan Illich to distinguish between technologies that empower us and those that erode our human nature: “we need to adopt a more sophisticated approach to artificial intelligence, one that allows us to di … | Continue reading
That’s the great cultural task now: to relearn this old language, to keep it from dying out, to nurture it and refine and expand it, to develop new idioms and accents. Holston’s book is part of that project. | Continue reading
Rational ideas create hell on earth. Just ask a kulak. Or just ask the lettuce plants in my garden. | Continue reading