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by Dean Abbott
Perhaps the first step many of us need to take toward a quieter life is to search for the next quieter moment. Birds in our yard mean quieter moments are always at hand. All that is required is to step outdoors, take a few breaths, and see if the wren is about. A single moment of contemplation doesn’t resolve any of life’s knotty complexities, but it helps sustain the weary soul in its work. Some days demand many such moments. I think I will have one now. If I could, I would spend the day in contemplation of wild things. The incurable scolds of our culture, the productivity gurus, the makers of standardized tests, every boss who ever insisted we stay late, would, no doubt, shake their angry fists at this irresponsible act. But, Thoreau, I’m sure, would approve; and his, of course, is the company I prefer to keep...
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by Emily Kleinhenz
Images and association express truth—truth that may be difficult to explain by other means—in ways that everyone can understand because it does not always require intellectual aptitude. In poetry, definitions do not require the “stretching” of words that philosophy utilizes to comprehend and explain God. We are grateful to be able to say God is both a Person and a Form, perfect in goodness, power, and knowledge, and to be satisfied in figuring out how the puzzle pieces fit together philosophically. But as Christians, we may say He is our Good Shepherd, our Rock and our Salvation, our Lawgiver and King, the Light of the World, and rejoice that we have these names—as opposed to definitions—that help us to understand Him, and in turn help us to describe Him, as well as to conjure the proper attitude toward Him of love and humility... [MORE]
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by Mark Malvasi
If a rebirth, a second renaissance, is still possible, if the contamination of mind and soul, of which the befouling of nature is but one symptom, may still be reversed, we will have to look as much to the future as to the past for inspiration. The humanists of the fifteen and sixteenth centuries sought to revitalize the splendor of antiquity. However essential a connection to the past may be to ensuring individual wellbeing and social vitality, despair arises when people have nothing to look forward to, when they can entertain no affirmative vision of things to come. They may yet “have to learn the truth along some via dolorosa,” but they also need to find hope. If it is a hope chastened by experience and thus more realistic, so much the better; it will be hope still. For life ends when hope evaporates. Without meaning and purpose, there can be only death...
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by Nicholas Zinos
Theoria (contemplation) requires silence, wonder, humility, listening, and solitude. Prayer, meditation, contemplation, stillness, and unplugging ourselves from a rampant technological existence are essential prerequisites to returning to a life of Theoria. This does not mean that we sever ourselves from all our technological accouterments. But it does mean a reorientation—a conversion if you will—of the fundamental direction of our lives. This is a return to childhood, in a sense. Children live in a beautiful simplicity: in the present moment. They relate to the world and others in a way that is personal, intimate, and natural. Techne (technology) is ultimately a cheap substitute when it is used as our primary bridge between ourselves and the world around us. Theoria places man back at the center of the universe as the measure and end of all things: man in his dignity, his excellence, and his irreplaceable nature. In a sense, he is the Techne of God...
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by Bradley Birzer
To be sure, Andrew Jackson was no saint, but it is equally true that he was no tenebrous wraith. As is usual with human beings, he possessed the free will to choose either good or evil, and sometimes, as with all of us, he chose poorly. Still, it is well worth getting our history right and judging our ancestors with honesty and accuracy. We can commit wholesale and wanton patricide, but we do so at great risk—not just to our ancestors, but to our children as well. The classical virtue of prudence demands that we judge all things, discerning good from evil. Like all human beings, Jackson certainly had his faults, sometimes spectacular, brutal, and violent ones. We must be critical of our ancestors, to be sure, but we should be so with careful honesty. Here are the charges...
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The Imaginative Conservative applies th
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