I have a piece up at the Personalist Project about parenting theories…and practice. The parent who co-sleeps to ensure a securely attached child despite the child’s restlessness and parental fatigue and the father who steels himself to discipline his rebellious son with a length of rubber tubing to instill submission to authority are both driven by the same motivation: fear.  …We are afraid our children will disappoint us. We are afraid they will make bad choices, suffer unnecessary pain, reject... Read more

NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me         5 Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there;... Read more

This piece in Slate argues that, for all of our societal glorification of creativity and creative minds, we are actually hostile to creativity, in school and the workplace, and that this is squashing our creative minds. The one bright spot is that rejection might actually be freeing for some square pegs, because it confirms their ‘otherness’ and allows them to stop trying to fit in a round hole. Is our problem hostility to creativity? I think our problem is that... Read more

I’ve tried to avoid reading too much coverage of Pope Francis’ exhortation until I finish reading the text itself. I am aware, however, that the portions that touch on economics and inequality have stirred up some reflexive furor in US conservative circles, and I’m enjoying this take on it: “But there has been no rupture—neither the one wished for by the left nor feared by the right. Pope Francis has been entirely consistent with those previous two Popes who are... Read more

This is also well worth reading. An excerpt that struck me: He behaved as if his need was the only real thing in the world  — as if he were alone.  He may not have been in prison, but he was a lost soul.  In being convicted, he has a chance to repent — to regain his life, to become part of the community, albeit with anguish and regret.Where Kwiatkowski has landed, we all must arrive at some point:  at... Read more

So, Matt Walsh (who occasionally drives me a little bonkers when he gets on his oh-so-young high horse, wrote something very much worth reading here. I can only whole-heartedly agree. Expecting your kids (or spouse, or anyone else) to make you happy is USING them. It’s treating them as means to an end instead of people who are valuable and worthy in and of themselves, and it is, on a fundamental level, pretty screwed up. During the worst period in... Read more

Today, a bunch of my friends from college are posting and tweeting under the hashtag #IStandWithThomasPeters in a show of support for fellow college alumnus and popular SoCon blogger Thomas Peters. Several months ago, Thom was involved in a swimming accident that left him in critical condition. He had a stay in the hospital and in rehab, and is now home with his wife–who, incidentally, he married a scant three months before the accident. Since the first year of rehabilitation... Read more

http://catholiclane.com/miracles-faith-and-abandonment/ http://www.newmanreader.org/works/meditations/meditations9.html   “Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future... Read more

The ideal doesn’t exist. The personal equilibrium and the harmony people dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and them only as flashes of grace and peace. Peace is the fruit of love and service to others. I’d like to tell the people in communities, “Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters.... Read more