2016-04-13T07:30:08-04:00

Last updated on: April 13, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

Last Sunday was “Doubting Thomas Sunday.” As I wrote some while ago, despite the bad rap he has received for two thousand years, Thomas is one of my spiritual heroes. Here’s why. The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty Anne Lamott             Michel de Montaigne’s world was filled with religious fervor and piety. It was also filled with hatred and violence. Sixteenth-century France was not a pretty place—in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, Christians were killing each other... Read more

2016-04-11T07:30:55-04:00

Last updated on: April 11, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

Last June as my sabbatical officially began, I decided to keep a running list of books read over the next year. Usually academics head into a sabbatical semester or year with a lengthy list of “must read” texts, tomes directly relevant to their research and the articles or books that are the required product of such semesters. Not me. My primary sabbatical project had over 300,000 words of my own writing from my three-and-a-half-year-old blog to work with. All of... Read more

2016-04-09T07:30:46-04:00

Last updated on: April 9, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

I hate being a disappointment to my son, but I know that I am. Caleb is a tattoo artist; as I reported on Thursday, Jeanne and I have been witnesses of Caleb’s transformation from a tattooing rookie working on a friend in our dining room several years ago to an international rock star tattoo artist who owns two tattoo shops, a tattoo school, and takes several trips annually with our daughter-in-law Alisha to conventions and guest artistships in Germany, Italy,... Read more

2016-04-07T07:30:29-04:00

Last updated on: April 7, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

Jeanne and I are headed to Florida this evening to spend a week with family and friends. We’ll be staying with Caleb and Alisha, our tattooing legend son and daughter-in-law. I’ve learned a lot over the past several years about tattooing as an art form, a process that reveals a lot about Caleb’s and my relationship. At a writers conference several summers ago, I was seated on the sofa in the common area and licking my wounds after getting worked... Read more

2017-06-24T15:39:22-04:00

Last updated on: June 24, 2017 at 3:39 pm   By

Last Saturday I said something less than complimentary on social media site about a fellow sports fanatic, a person who made the mistake of talking trash about my Providence College Friars hockey team the morning after they were eliminated from the NCAA hockey tournament in double overtime. After finding out (presumably by looking me up on Facebook) that I am a philosophy professor, he expressed great surprise and mock outrage that a professor would stoop to talking trash about sports. It reminded... Read more

2016-04-04T07:30:54-04:00

Last updated on: April 4, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Looking in the mirror for the first time every morning is always a sobering shock, but the other day it was a bit more disturbing than usual. “Wow, you old white guy,” I thought to myself.” “The success of Donald Trump’s run for president thus far is due to people like you.” A couple of days later, this came up in a locker room... Read more

2016-04-01T07:30:00-04:00

Last updated on: April 1, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY–A PERFECT TIME FOR SOME IRREVERENCE! One of my unexpected reading delights in the past few years has been discovering the writings of Anne Lamott. In her struggles with faith, she is equally intense in both her relentless pursuit of the transcendent and her irreverence. In Bird by Bird, she writes that “the mind frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colorectal theology, offering... Read more

2016-03-27T07:00:33-04:00

Last updated on: March 27, 2016 at 7:00 am   By

A couple of years ago, just in time for the Christmas holiday season, a new book by Sarah Palin was published. Entitled Good Tidings and Great Joy, with the subtitle A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas, the book was promoted, among other things, as “a fun, festive, thought-provoking book, which will encourage all to see what is possible when we unite in defense of our faith and ignore the politically correct Scrooges who would rather take Christ out of Christmas.”... Read more

2016-03-25T07:30:27-04:00

Last updated on: March 25, 2016 at 7:30 am   By

During the Providence Friars’ recent exciting basketball season, Jeanne and I frequently watched a replay of the team’s most recent win the next day online. Every game has its ebbs and flows, including moments when in real time it appears that we are headed for defeat. The virtues of watching a replay the next day when the positive outcome is already known include no stress and the opportunity to savor the best plays in a way that is impossible in real... Read more

2016-03-20T07:01:41-04:00

Last updated on: March 20, 2016 at 7:01 am   By

Rodney Delasanta was one of best teachers and colleagues I ever had the privilege of knowing. Rodney was a true Renaissance man—a Chaucer scholar, family man, sports fan (especially the Red Sox), award-winning accordion player (really), and classical music aficionado. The accordion business made him a regular recipient of the latest accordion joke from me. “What is the definition of a gentleman? A man who knows how to play the accordion—and doesn’t.” Once Rodney responded with an even better one:... Read more

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