The expression “classical education” has been worked over pretty well in the last ten or twenty years. It’s hard to blame people for thinking it’s just a buzzword. Compounding the problem is the blizzard of seemingly different definitions of the term. When you want to define something, the best way to do this is often […]
Years ago my curly-headed, blue-eyed little boy toddled downstairs one morning in footed pajamas. He watched Daddy fill his briefcase and leave for work. Climbing atop the sofa to wave through the window, he turned to me and said with authority, “Daddy go to work.” He slipped back down the sofa and went about his […]
What does reason have to do with faith? What does the intellectual have to do with the spiritual? What does philosophy have to do with Christianity? These are questions that Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the Church, summed up when he asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question seems to […]
Over the last several years, I have planted a number of trees in my yard. I notice that when I plant a tree, it takes a year or two in order for its root system to become established. Only when this happens does it start growing in earnest. A plant has to grow down before it can grow up. […]
Letter from the editor When I was in junior high school, my father began adding on to our house. For the foundation he dug a lot of trenches in the ground, built wood forms to pour the cement in, and hired a cement truck to fill them up. I remember thinking that it seemed like a lot of […]
In Pearl S. Buck’s short story, “A Field of Rice,” Wang Sun, a Chinese villager in the early 1950s, is in a situation in which he is told to do something he knows won’t work. Mao Tse Tung has taken over China, and he has sent functionaries out to every village to tell the farmers (who […]
When Robinson Crusoe finds himself marooned on a desert island, he is left with few of the necessities of life. What he needs is on the wreck, and he returns to it several times to salvage the provisions. He builds a raft and brings back food, tools, clothes, and fresh water. It is from the ship that he gets cheese, rice, and […]