1. We’ve discussed the plight of teenage boys, but now there’s this research, from clinical psychologist Mary Pipher, about the increasing prevalence of loneliness in adolescent girls across America. Pipher talks about the 36% of school-age girls who report being anxious every day, who lack self-sufficiency and spend six to nine hours of each day […]
“The man who is truly humble and very close to God does not mind talking about himself. And so I’m going to talk about myself.” – Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J.[1] The speaker of the above words survived twenty-three years in the Soviet Gulag. He was tortured, sentenced to fifteen years of heavy labor, and all […]
This one comes to us from Jay Mullinix. Call it a bibliophile’s guilty pleasure. I have long harbored an affinity for the mass-market paperback originals which appeared in the years following World War II. Published by such houses as Dell, Lion, Ace, Popular Library, and — most famously — Gold Medal, these novels were small […]
This one comes to us from Will Ryan. I have an hour-long one-way commute. I can drive that path without much thought anymore, so I get a little bored. I now have an Audible subscription, and that helps. I subscribe to any number of podcasts. Sometimes I even listen to a baseball game. Recently, though, […]
On a blog like this one, we think about belief a lot. Belief as a comfort, as a maker of meaning, as a fragile gift, as an absence. By which we mainly mean belief in the Gospel. Let’s shift focus for a moment to consider this orientation of the mind (and heart) from a slightly […]
“Before you print a poem, you should reflect on whether this verse could be of use to at least one person in the struggle with himself and with the world.” – Czeslaw Milosz Being honest is often a hard thing for me to do. I don’t actually mind it when someone prefaces their opinion with, […]
There is an episode in season 3 of Sex and the City called “Are We Sluts?” and, as you can imagine, the premise involves Carrie sitting at her laptop contemplating whether she and her friends are too promiscuous. Away from the computer, Carrie wonders why her new love interest, Aidan, hasn’t yet initiated sex; Miranda […]
Sayonara self-help, hello self-care. From The New York Times Kate Carraway traces the evolution of the more rules-based improvement movement into the newer, more feelings-based one. Whereas self-help “sought to categorize and instruct,” self-care now aims to “to soothe and calm.” Overall, the shift is positive: When you’re agitated, angry, or anxious, instead of imposing expectations, […]
The most recent edition of Image features a lovely interview with Leslie Jamison. We can’t stop writing about her, especially after her extraordinary talk at our conference this year in New York. In the interview, she discusses a number of other concerns—the fear that our feelings are clichés, that privilege and difference inhibit resonance with […]
This reflection, drawn from a recent sermon, was written by Amanda McMillen. [Abraham] set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents… They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for […]
I wish that I could care less about the ICE raids in my home state of Mississippi. I wish that I could write people off as breaking the law or irresponsible parents. I also wish I could feed my self-righteous anger by being on the right side of justice. But that just feels like a […]
It’s summer and the liturgical calendar rolls through Ordinary Time. True enough, the phrase “The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time” doesn’t exactly titillate the senses. But this “ordinary” does not imply commonplace or routine events. It refers to a sequence of ordinal numbers—first, second, third and so on. For followers of Christ, this “ordinary” denotes […]
