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January 2023

January 03, 2023

Blessing The Crap Out Of Each Other

There are eight to ten movies that Jeanne and I watch religiously during the Christmas...

December 2022

December 18, 2022

A Stepfather with a Questionable Pedigree

In my religious tradition, we didn’t do saints. But we did do Christmas pageants—big time....

December 15, 2022

How to Get Along with People Who Aren’t Like You

As I begin to prepare for my next book project, a memoir on the teaching...

December 10, 2022

Things are Getting Real: A Conversation Between Jesus and John the Baptist

In a second season episode of “The Chosen,” a multi-year cinematic treatment of the life...

December 07, 2022

Why Should We Be Hopeful?

Herodotus is considered to be the first true historian in the contemporary sense of the...

November 2022

November 17, 2022

What I Have Learned From Our Blackberry Bush

It is mid-November; the leaves on the large oak tree in the yard diagonally behind...

October 2022

October 27, 2022

Of Halloween, Baptists, and Socialism

Halloween is coming–one of my least favorite holidays of the year. I know that offends...

September 2022

September 18, 2022

How Many of Your Gods are Dead?

One of my greatest joys as a philosophy professor is that I get to be...

September 15, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Kathleen Norris’ “The Cloister Walk”

I asked my Facebook friends at the beginning of the summer to list three or...

August 2022

August 18, 2022

Die Before You Die

For many, the raising of Lazarus is Jesus' signature miracle, even though it is only...

August 16, 2022

When Your Imaginary Friend Is Real

From as early as I can remember, I had an invisible butler. My mother enjoyed...

August 02, 2022

A Trip to the Zoo Reminds Me of My Mother

Jeanne and I hosted our grand-nephews last week--I forgot what it is like to have...

June 2022

June 28, 2022

Four-Legged Trust

Jeanne’s and my 9-month-old corgi, Bovina, has been the center of our lives since we...

June 19, 2022

What To Do When It Isn’t Working

What do you do when it just isn’t working? In the life of a teacher,...

June 11, 2022

The Spiritual Life of Crows

My childhood was filled with unusual characters, all products of my father’s fertile imagination. A...

May 2022

May 26, 2022

Swallowing the Mystery

In her wonderful memoir Take This Bread, Sara Miles tells us of a conversation she had...

May 19, 2022

Making Darkness and Silence your Friends

Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again. “The Sound of Silence”...

April 2022

April 28, 2022

Organizing Books is My Charism

Last weekend, Jeanne and I took a quick trip to Greenville, South Carolina to attend...

April 26, 2022

The Wisdom of Socrates’ Younger Brother–Mediocrates

A Facebook friend who knows that I am a philosophy professor sent me a thought-provoking...

April 24, 2022

A Human Being Having a Divine Experience

Two decades ago, as my mother-in-law was steadily descending into the hell of Alzheimer’s, an...

April 20, 2022

Curb Your Enthusiasm

There is a saying attributed to Saint Francis that I have heard frequently in more...

April 12, 2022

Jewish Holy Man Kills Innocent Fig Tree In a Fit of Temper

A bit over a decade ago, I spent spent the early months of the year...

April 09, 2022

I’ll Be Jesus: A Palm Sunday Reflection

What is bothering me incessantly is the question of what Christianity really is, or indeed...

April 06, 2022

Perfection or Slight Improvment?

I have no idea why or how Miss Katrina Munn, a graduate of Julliard School...

April 04, 2022

What Playing Wordle has Taught Me About Myself

It seems that just about everyone I know is playing “Wordle” every day. I asked...

March 2022

March 23, 2022

Have Yourself an Introspective Day

In our three years in Milwaukee, our first years together as a married couple trying...

March 12, 2022

Is a Ukrainian Life Worth Higher Gas Prices?

A regular reader of my blog asked the other day whether I might want to...

March 11, 2022

The Sacrament of Sports Fanaticism

This is the first week of the best four weeks of the year: March Madness....

March 07, 2022

A Stranger (Protestant) in a Strange Land (Catholic)

Last Wednesday the student in front of me in line at the little on campus...

March 06, 2022

It’s My 66th Birthday, and I’m Still Here. Deal with it.

Early last week a friend emailed me the following comment in response to my latest...

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