Human love in the purest forms we can know it, wife and husband, parent and child, has the aura and the immutability of the sacred. Marilynne Robinson On Sunday mornings when we wake up early enough, Jeanne and I listen to Krista Tippett’s “On Being” on our local NPR station, which in its infinite wisdom has decided that this is a great time to air the best radio program there is. Appropriately for Valentine’s week, her conversant last Sunday was... Read more
I recently led a discussion group focused, among other things, on the inadequacy of traditional religious structures to address real spiritual hunger. A one of our weekly meetings, we were talking about Job’s reaction to what God has to say about the unfairness of Job’s suffering after many chapters of silence from the Divine end of things. I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you. Job, described by God to Satan in chapter one as... Read more
Conversion is an odd phenomenon. I’ve often observed that those who convert, who ”tum around” radically in some aspect of their lives, tend to embrace their newly adopted beliefs and behaviors with a sense of urgency and commitment that can border on fanaticism. Thus those who quit smoking become front line enforcers in the “No Smoking” brigade, those who cut caffeine (or sugar, or anything significant) out of their diet will regale those of us who have not quit with... Read more
Somewhere I heard or read that one of the top television programs in Finland (or Sweden or Norway) is a few hours of watching a fire burn in a fireplace. I don’t know whether or not this is true—I would hope that my Scandinavian cousins might go for a real fire in a fireplace rather than one on a screen. But Google “fireplace youtube video” and you will find several dozen to choose from. During the two-hour final exam in... Read more
A bit over a year ago, in the midst of the Presidential campaign that no one will ever forget, I found myself part of a Facebook discussion thread that I should have avoided participating in. On that thread, a person developed an extended analogy in which she likened the presence of undocumented immigrants in our country to an infestation of raccoons in one’s basement. To solve the problem one should hire the most effective exterminator one can find–the exterminator’s moral fiber,... Read more
We ought not to hide from ourselves that Nazi Germany is a mirror for all of us. What looks to us so hideous is our own features, but magnified. Simone Weil in 1937 One of my favorite weekly activities is to gather every Friday afternoon at MacPhail’s, our on-campus watering hole, with any number of faculty colleagues to down a beer or two (or three) as we mark the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend.... Read more
There’s nothing like unexpectedly dropping an f-bomb on a bunch of students. But it’s even better when one of them does it. I teach at a Catholic college, so one would think that the students would be used to talking about the f-word—we Baptists certainly were when I was growing up. But dropping an f-bomb in class, even when the context is entirely appropriate and the word is germane, is like farting in church. Everyone clams up, an uncomfortable atmosphere... Read more
Jeanne and I are great lovers of movies. As I have described in this blog on several occasions, my all-time favorite movie is “Dead Poet’s Society;” Jeanne’s is “Chariots of Fire.” But a different movie that appears on both of our “top ten” lists—a movie that I am thinking of frequently these days as politicians seek to attract the attention and support of the good citizens of the heartland—is “Field of Dreams.” The story is familiar to most everyone—pure magic with Kevin... Read more
Eight years ago, I poked my head out of my little apartment on a Minnesota lake in what felt like the middle of nowhere, and was greeted by a crystal-clear sky and minus-10 degree temperature. I had arrived the previous night for a four-month sabbatical stay at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical Research on the campus of St. John’s University, where I was intending to write a book and be a “resident scholar,” whatever that meant. I had arrived late... Read more
Is there any true transcendence, or is this idea always a consoling dream projected by human need onto an empty sky? Iris Murdoch I just finished reading Fredrick Backman’s A Man Called Ove, a novel I stumbled across in my college’s bookstore while looking for something else. I haven’t decided yet whether I give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, but one brief passage has stuck with me. As a sixteen-year old whose beloved father has just died (his... Read more
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