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Category Archives: Notes for a World’s End
A Land of Lonely Hunters
A common theme from the last few weeks of news articles and essays and reading points to the issue of loneliness as a real fruit of our modern era. I suppose we’ve known this since the release of Bowling … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Faith, Notes for a World's End
Tagged Henri Nouwen, James K A Smith
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Nouwen and the First Question
For a number of years I have been convinced that one of the best things that I can do as a teacher is to ask good questions. Question-asking has been particularly fruitful with upperclassmen, as it allows for a more … Continue reading
Triangulating for Spiritual Direction
Before beginning the main discussion in Spiritual Direction, Henri Nouwen points to three different points of connection, spiritual disciplines, that are necessary for a healthy approach to a wisdom that can help us “to slow down and order our time, … Continue reading
Nouwen and a Long Obedience with No Direction
In yesterday’s post I asked a question that twisted the popular 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 passage a bit: what if the changes effected in contemporary culture have led us to feeling more renewed in body but more diminished, even damaged, in … Continue reading
A Different Wasting Away
Long before I knew him as the author of Old School, one of my favorite novels, Tobias Wolff was the author of one of my favorite quotes: we are made to persist– that’s how we find out who we are. … Continue reading
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Education and the Industrial Solvent
Much like liberalism, industrialism has acted as a kind of universal solvent that has assisted in what some would call the dissolution of whatever the most recent world might have been (though we now exist in the wake of its … Continue reading
Provision
One of the reasons I am drawn to a consideration of moving “from one world to the next” is because I spend a good deal of time talking with students who are making their own transition from one world to … Continue reading
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Celibacy and the Reversed Revolution
More often than not, Ross Douthat’s New York Times columns serve as Rorschach tests for contemporary political and social issues. Today’s column, “The Redistribution of Sex,” has proved especially thought-provoking and line-drawing. And rightly so. You can read it here. … Continue reading
Limitless, Prodigal, and Dispersed
One does not have to read far into an essay written by Wendell Berry to sense deep loss, a kind of sadness that both tugs and pulls. As he acknowledges in his introduction to his most recent collection of writings, … Continue reading
Notes for a World’s End
At the begin of Paul Auster’s apocalyptic In the Country of Last Things, the narrator makes a significant observation: That is perhaps the greatest problem of all. Life as we know it has ended, and yet no one is able to … Continue reading
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Space Enough, and Time 