The piety of learning is to fully and sympathetically comprehend the power of an idea or argument before engaging in critical analysis of said idea or argument. To really understand a point or position before critiquing its merits or flaws is the mark of a humble and learned man. This is the point of Socratic […]
Don’t Read My Blog Every Day!
…if you don’t want to. As a matter of fact, you may have only signed up for my Saturday Substack Newsletter, Rumbling Toward Heaven, and are now wondering why you’re getting something from me in your inbox on a Monday. Well, this is a courtesy email to let you know that I will be publishing […]
Raspberries and Writing
Writing, or content creation, is a lot like picking raspberries. If one picks the bushes clean of its best fruit every evening, like magic, when he returns the following evening he’ll find the bushes loaded with ripe fruit again. It will be as if the bushes had never been picked. With proper water and sunshine, […]
The Matter with History
Henry Ford once asserted that “history is bunk!” It seems he meant that we in the modern age need to forget the past and lean into progress. The unbridled irrationalists of our postmodern society might agree. But George Santayana wrote something to the opposite effect: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat […]
C. S. Lewis’s Confession to T. S. Eliot
In the open stanza of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the narrator says, Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap […]
Two Books About Books
There have been two book discoveries that remain marked in my memory as being most serendipitous. The first—and I cannot recall how or from whom I discovered it—is the Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour. Ironically, it played a part in shaping my view of education. I say ironically because Louis Dearborn LaMoore […]
On Education: A Review
I recently reviewed On Education, for Ad Fontes, A Journal of Protestant Letters. On Education documents Abraham Kuyper’s involvement with the Netherlands’ seventy-year political battle over parents’ rights to choose schools representative of their religious convictions. On Education is more than just a helpful resource; it is a uniquely prescient guide for everyone concerned with […]
Oratio – First Sunday After Trinity
O God, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers: and because through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant vs the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy Commandments, we may please thee, both in will and […]
Redeeming the Social Sciences: Why Custom Must Still Be Considered
In recent years, the trajectory and application of the social sciences from “explicitly prescriptive to overtly descriptive” has been tremendously concerning to thoughtful scholars interested in the science’s application to human flourishing. And in the movement for the renewal of Classical Christian Education, it has been suggested the social sciences be abandoned altogether for the […]
Why New England Needs Classical Education
On Wednesday, July 6th at 7:00 PM EDT, I will be joining Sarah Abbott, Tim Knotts, and Heatherly Sylvia, the founders of the Classical Learning Consortium for New England, for a live Zoom Panel Discussion. This will be the third in a series of live panel discussions where the hosts discuss a variety of topics […]