"And then after sitting for a while, a marvelous thing happened. I got up, and walked into my painting. I walked over the bridge that I had drawn, and up the stairs that disappeared into the background of my composition."
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The Moon and Me
As I searched my memory further, I smiled when I realized that this was just the kind of magic, just the kind of alchemy, which the moon has been working in my life for as long as I can remember.
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COVID-19 Edition
A Special Edition of Essays on Life in the Time of Pandemic
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The Importance of Being Inadequate
“I don’t know, I guess opera’s just not my thing,” I concluded, slouching against the wall of the music building hallway. After travelling across the state to Western Michigan University for a vocal competition, I’d sung some operatic repertoire for a panel of judges. Later in the day I received feedback from the judges, confirming, in part, what my teacher had been telling me for weeks.
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Featured Artist: Vincent Wil Hawley
We don’t know when our current situation will end, but we know what is occurring in close proximity to us now.
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Tradition and Authority in Luigi Giussani’s Educational Method
It’s more authentic to stand before a young person and humbly say, “I’ve found something I’m eager to share with you, and I want to provoke you to go on your own journey for the truth,” than to implicitly or explicitly deny that teachers, mentors, and other role models are speaking from tradition with authority. This kind of authority—the kind that loves the mystery of each human so much that it wants to guide each soul in the use of the great gift of freedom—is not a burdensome imposition. Rather, it’s a helping hand on the arduous journey of knowing one’s own purpose and place in the world.
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The Whole Wide World is Watchin’
Dare we not live out our true vocations as Christians just like Jesus did? Dare we not point to God’s victory over death by crying “Glory?” Were we not born for this very moment in the year 2020 A.D.? Were we not born for COVID-19?
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Singing the Death of the Warrior
As mankind elevates the world’s beauty through his senses, so his soul is elevated. He is transformed from a mere consumer of the world, to its attentive lover.
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In Search of the Other America
I ended by asking her the question I asked everyone I photographed: How do you want to be described? She replied without a pause, “As who I am. A prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God.”
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On Rock Hunting and Not Looking for Anything In Particular
If we are going to truly be at leisure, we cannot set out to look for anything in particular and we cannot set out with a desire to acquire, accumulate, or possess.
