I recently read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s four-book Incerto collection. In the first book, Fooled by Randomness, Taleb posits that we know much less about the world than we think. Published just months before 9/11, he infamously floated the scenario of terrorists flying planes into the Twin Towers. In the second book, The Black Swan, Taleb … Continue reading Viewing the COVID-19 Pandemic through the Lens of Fragility
Can you feel the memory of this place? Or does the weight of time erase Blood from the root, leaving only fear? Do you know what happened here? In 1893 they hung me from a hickory tree; Still hungry, they tore its branches free And cut my clothes for souvenirs Like something great had happened … Continue reading The Ballad of Thomas Smith
With another school year drawing to a close, getting back to a healthy diet was high on my priority list. I knew I had been slipping lately, making one too many trips through the drive-through as we raced from swim practice to soccer or T-ball. I told myself that if I just made it to … Continue reading Eating Nature’s Diet
What is it about The Americans that kept me glued to a screen for two straight days? And now that it's over, why can’t I stop thinking about Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, fictional characters both in real life and on the show? The story is certainly compelling: two KGB spies in 1980’s America struggling to … Continue reading Identity and Morality in The Americans
Less is the new more. Marie Kondo is just the latest incarnation of a bigger trend toward living more with less. Yet minimalism is not without its critics. Some have accused it of being a luxury of the upper middle class, a subtle form of virtue-signaling akin to veganism. Others guard their beloved possessions from minimalist … Continue reading Declutter Your Soul with Christian Minimalism
Imagine two tourists standing in front of Chartres Cathedral in France. The first simply gapes in awe as everything clicks slowly into place: God, the Universe, his own life -- microcosm and macrocosm. Transported by its resplendent beauty, his experience transcends human reason. The second tourist mills about anxiously before pausing to take a selfie. … Continue reading Beauty as a Gateway to Faith in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
Ammonites and trilobites embedded in this rocky frame tell the story of a journey from obscurity to fame. As we step this mortal pathway, knowing not which way to go, birds still spiral up to heaven, with the valley spread below. Once a million creatures swimming, then upon an ocean floor, trilobites and ammonites advance … Continue reading Trilobites
Our whole business in this Life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. - St. Augustine SOCRATES: Imagine this: People live under the earth in a cavelike dwelling. Stretching a long way up toward the daylight is its entrance, toward which the entire cave is gathered. The … Continue reading Jesus, Socrates, and the Problem of Human Blindness
In Virginia, spring can feel like a fickle friend, whose arrival is always being delayed for reasons you suspect are not as urgent or inexorable as her letters make them seem. You forgive the aggravation, thinking ahead, surely, to the good times close at hand; in your mind, she approaches — finally! in a whirl … Continue reading An Eager Hostess, Awaiting Spring
The poet emerges at sunrise: alone, as always, and without plan; when else can he perceive the way the lark’s sudden departure sends a crown of halos rippling toward the bank? His words cast common objects in an unfamiliar light, finding sacredness in the profane and humor even in darkness. “Yes,” we say, “it is just … Continue reading The Poet at Sunrise
The Front Porch Philosopher 