Category Archives: Literature

That Which Is True Is Ours

That Which Is True Is Ours

I have always loved to read. I have always loved the sense of entering a completely new world, yet finding points of contact with my own. I have always felt the relentless pull of whatever might be on the next page of a book. I have often lived through my imagination. And I have always […]

The Accidental Community

The Accidental Community

We didn’t intend for it to happen; it just did. It actually began on our honeymoon, when we popped into quiet, out-of-the-way bookstores in Paris between visits to more traditional tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower and Versailles. It continued during the couple of years we lived in Europe, where we scoured used bookstores in […]

The River Daughter’s House

The River Daughter's House Image

On November 3, 2020, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, while most of the nation nervously watched the election returns, in Concord, NC, I and a group of my closest friends were eagerly putting the final touches on a wooden countertop meant to cover up the paint-splattered remnants of a decades-old checkout counter. Roughly […]

Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education

Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre observes that in all classical and heroic societies, “the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories.” In a real sense the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey were the moral tutors of the Greeks. Likewise Aeneas was the model of heroic piety on which young Romans […]

Reading The Bible As Literature

Should the Bible be read literally or literarily? This question must not only be asked but answered if the Bible is to be read in conformity with the twin demands of faith and reason. As is often the case, it will serve us well to begin by defining our terms. What’s the difference between reading […]

The Blessed Boon Of Sleep

I had five children in seven years. Hungry babies, teething toddlers, and preschoolers with vivid dreams left me intensely sleep-deprived for about a decade. All parents know this season. It is a time of sacrifice and love that we expect and accept. But even so, the pain of exhaustion is real. My mom likes to […]

Civility and Civilization

Civility and Civilization

As classical educators, we recognize that we seek for our students (and ourselves) not simply knowledge, but wisdom. Our goal is to master not simply our content, but our character. Refinement in both thought and deed is the ultimate reward of education. Of course, we can never fully know what the head or heart of […]

The Story We’re In

The Story We're In

Walker Percy once speculated about a world in which the problem of death had been resolved, the eventual result of which was that everyone killed himself out of misery. For most people the quantity of life seems secondary to its quality. Mere survival may be adequate for beasts, but it is not so for rational […]

Reading for Wisdom

Reading for Wisdom

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. — Proverbs 4:7 Ancient cultures had a special wisdom literature, such as Proverbs or Ecclesiastes in the Bible, a literature which gives direct, sage counsel. To a great extent, however, all of ancient and medieval literature counts as wisdom literature. […]

The Prince and the Pauper Book Review

The Prince and the Pauper is a long-ago case of mistaken identity set in Britain’s glorious crown London, in what we in nowadays-America would call the suburbs. A poor boy (Tom Canty) and a rich boy (Prince Edward Tudor) exchange garments and lives for what they think will be a few vain, fleeting hours that […]

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