Archive

In a recent in-flight interview, Pope Leo mentioned that Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God was one of the great influences on his spiritual life. Lawrence...

I was a full-time parish priest at a time when we still visited people in their homes. In one congregation, I made a commitment to visit every member my...

I have long thought that the Great Litany of the Book of Common Prayer represents most fully the originating character of Anglicanism. And “full” the litany is. It is...

St. Augustine remains the Church’s greatest preacher. A single sermon of his can roam in many directions. That is a marvelous virtue, because it reflects reality: God’s glory is...

While I was in college, the local priest got me to come along with him on his nursing home rounds and play old hymns on the broken piano in...

We are familiar with the “disenchantment” thesis about modern culture. When Max Weber suggested it in the early twentieth century, it seemed to fit many aspects of Western life...

C S. Lewis has never been my favorite Christian writer. I admit this sheepishly, given his stature. The virtues of his most influential work, Mere Christianity, are real. But...

I have often seethed at the pigheadedness of bureaucrats. Their roles in the ecclesial and academic worlds are particularly galling. Knowing little (or choosing to ignore what they know)...

Things don’t turn out as we expect. People don’t either. Take friendship as an example, or perhaps just a parable. Among Guy de Maupassant’s hundreds of stories—biting and penetrating...

I had thought of calling this piece “Against Memory.” Hyperbolic, perhaps, but I had my reasons. I’ve started regularly waking up in the middle of the night, often for hours...

Colorado, where I live, is a great place to go stargazing. Up in the mountains, the heavens are particularly vibrant and clear. I go out at night when I...

There’s a car mechanic I have known for years. Ed knew my father and worked on his cars; he knows me and my cars; he knows my wife; he...

I have long known who Mischa Elman was: one of the great violinists of the last century (1891–1967). But only last month did I finally manage to listen to him....

The American modernist poet E. E. Cummings ended up as a somewhat lonely, politically conservative Unitarian. It happens. He wrote some glittering verses glorying in the natural world and...

I do not understand war. Even in the present time, for all my deeply felt moral and religious commitments touching on today’s conflicts, the reality of war itself seems to...