Let's Explore What Others Ignore
Charles de Foulcauld, Writings Selected with an Introduction by Robert Ellsberg. Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916) was born into a French aristocratic family. As a student he was affable, agnostic, lazy, pudgy, and gluttonous. He surprised everyone with his success as…
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a unique literary figure in the 20th century — perhaps so over a much longer span of time. A young man of letters living in New York City with a promising future as a poet and…
One cannot read Christopher Dawson’s The Crisis of Western Education without feeling a tremendous sense of loss – the loss of purpose, the loss of a full life, the loss of the future. I’ll quote Dawson at length here, because…
The Lord as Their Portion, The Story of Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World, by Elizabeth Rapley. Elizabeth Rapley takes on the monumental task of presenting a comprehensive overview of Catholic religious orders from their roots in Christian…
With God in America, The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit, Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., Compiled and edited by John M. DeJak and Marc Lindeijer, S.J. When Fr. Walter Ciszek came back to the United States after 23 years captivity…
In 1939, an American Jesuit priest, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, slipped into the Soviet Union in hopes of ministering to Catholics who had been deprived of their priests by the communist government. In short order he was arrested, mercilessly interrogated…
With God in Russia, by Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, with Daniel L. Flaherty, SJ. In 1939, an American Jesuit priest named Walter J. Ciszek (born in 1904) slipped into the Soviet Union using a false identity, in the hope of…
I cannot stop thinking about the painting below, What Is Truth, by Nikolai Ge. The fact I use this image as my phone’s lock screen undoubtedly contributes to my obsession, but it goes much deeper than that. Take a look:…
Holy Moments, A Handbook for the Rest of Your Life, by Matthew Kelly. It’s a little book with a big idea. And it looks like you can buy six copies for FREE. The idea is to fill your life with…
Wishing you a Very, Very, Merry Christmas! “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?” – G.K. Chesterton ”…
Tolstoy’s last major work was A Calendar of Wisdom, Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul. He wrote many of the sayings, and included or adapted those of many others. Often cited names include Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Confucius, Emerson, Goethe, Kant,…
Leo Tolstoy’s non-fiction book The Kingdom of God Is Within You is a forceful argument for non-violent resistance — and against organized religion, governments, and the entirety of pagan civilization under which we have lived for thousands of years. Throw Christianity and…
Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? Translated by Richard Paver and Larissa Volokhonsky What Is Art? Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) spent 15 years mulling over the question before finally publishing his profound essay of that title in 1897. Today’s readers may find many of…
G.K. Chesterton and Leo Tolstoy have exerted enormous influence on thinking with regard to theology, philosophy, politics, economics, social organization, the arts, and science. Both men considered themselves Christians, and both saw themselves as champions of the common man. And…
Who says social media is all bad? Watching this marvelous 23-minute video, which I discovered on the Localism Chesterton Society Group on Facebook, will make you smarter, more confident, and better able to make sense of the information, misinformation, disinformation,…
In Contagious Faith, Philip K. Lawler says what I’ve been trying to say in these pages for over a year, with the glaring difference being that Lawler says it much better. He describes the colossal (and ongoing) failure of the…
A reader of this blog recommended The Chosen several months ago. What a show. The Chosen is a multi-season dramatic series about the life of Jesus Christ. It combines a faithful rendering of the Bible with creative but totally plausible…
Sometimes God puts what you need right in your hands, even before you know you need it. I was killing time in a Goodwill bookstore and somewhat randomly picked up a 1999 edition of The Fathers of the Church, happily…
2020 has been a year of profound uncertainty, and uncertainty is something we humans just don’t like. The year has been full of challenges, obstacles, mental stress, economic misery and spiritual anguish. Do you have days when you feel like…
G.K. Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume XXXII G.K. Chesterton wrote a weekly column for The Illustrated London News from the mid-1900s to the mid-1930s. Ignatius Press has assembled his essays into several volumes, as part of its massive Collected Works compilation. Despite…