The beauty of excellence provides us not only a vision of greatness but also a vision for greatness: greatness in a particular skill, greatness of the human spirit, greatness of human achievement, and greatness in our own lives.
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Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and Flannery O’Connor
Quentin Tarentino’s film “Pulp Fiction” and Flannery O’Connor’s stories smell of nihilism. But at the end of the film, and at the end of O’Connor’s stories, the light of Providence glimmers tantalizingly. So there was a meaning after all! But it was not the meaning I was expecting.
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The Ancient Japanese Art of Shibori
Even if you don’t know it by name, you have probably seen shibori-inspired creations before. The blue and white 'watercolor-esque' patterns have started to appear on everything from throw pillows to summer dresses. Shibori is trendy now, but it is an ancient art.
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On Leaves, Leisure, Attention, and Other Matters
Several weeks of wonder from around the world wide web.
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On the Importance of Forgetting
Most attention in our culture is given to the importance of remembering. But it turns out that forgetting can be just as important. The inability to forget can be as destructive as the inability to remember.
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“Thoughts that Wound from Behind:” Literary Allusions as Pedagogical Opportunities
Dante places the ancient hero Ulysses into the eighth circle of hell. A fraudulent counselor of war, deception, and exploration beyond the bounds of God’s law, Ulysses suffers eternal encasement in flame. But Tennyson’s poem, great in its own right, calls Dante’s judgment into question. The tension between these two poems – one epic, one lyrical – gets at the very question of the meaning of life.
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Another Sort of Learning (Book Recommendation)
If I am concerned about teaching or lecturing or grading, it is because I am most concerned about the highest things to which we are called, called by being attracted to them in our souls, which are somehow open to what is beyond us.
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[Dis]placed Poet: Thomas Merton’s Pilgrimage
The humble act of limitation in the Incarnation means that not only can God speak to us through various times and places, but rather that time and place are now qualities native to the eternal and omnipresent God. To be a person means to be a person in a place.
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“Call it”
It’s nineteen fifty-eight. It’s been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it’s here. And I’m here. And I’ve got my hand over it. And it’s either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.
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On Binge Reading, Dinosaurs, Chromebooks, and Other Matters
Wonder from around the world wide web.
