In a reflection on reading for The Free Press, Spencer Klavan observed that “the art of really taking in literature is one of the great liberal arts—it’s an act of pure freedom,…
I want to address different issues raised by readers. White-Only Town in Arkansas Someone referred me to this documentary about a “White Only” town in rural Arkansas, spearheaded by Eric Orwoll and…
I want to pick up on something I said tangentially in a recent Substack article but didn’t develop. In discussing the numerous burdens placed on mothers that are unique to the contemporary…
From my Substack article, “Putting the Wildness Back Into Classical Education“: We need to get into great literature the same way we get into the mountains, through immersing ourselves in the entire…
“After Dinner Conversation” recently shared this on Substack. I don’t know where the quote originally came from, but it captures something of the melancholy associated with the intellectual life. The vocation of…
Though couched in the rhetoric of liberation, late modern capitalism has enslaved us in the most primal and comprehensive way imaginable: through deconstructing the sense of self. And the most potent method…
In Christ’s parable about the sheep and goats (Mt. 25:31-46), the punchline may strike us as odd. The division between the saved and the damned hinges on who showed hospitality. I had…
I’m listening to two audiobooks right now that make for an interesting, though unplanned, juxtaposition when read side by side. The first is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travelogue A Time of Gifts, and…
I ended my last post, “The Wind in the Willows and the Importance of Home,” by suggesting that many of us are living in two worlds: the life of media where we…
The 1908 book The Wind in the Willows is a lovely story about four friends: a rat, a mole, a badger, and a toad. Although people only familiar with the Disney retelling…
Below is an expanded version of a presentation I gave for a panel on the role of beauty in worship. You can watch the full panel, which included presentations by Fr. Patrick…
In a substack article, “The Hidden Danger in Becoming Orthodox That Is Rarely Talked About,” Kenneth B. shares his experience as an Orthodox catechist. As he instructs people in their journey to…
