… it is utterly useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism. The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy. Chesterton’s book Saint Francis of Assisi was published in 1923,…
Something Else; Someone Else
Sometimes it is difficult to write because there is something else that needs to be written, something more urgent, more pressing, more alive, and more real. A desire for being expressed, a desire for being written, is a quality of some experiences. Perhaps by giving expression to something that isn’t charged with that desire, we…
A Year with Svend Brinkmann’s Book ‘Qualitative Inquiry in Everyday Life’
The project of recording a series of videos based on Svend Brinkmann’s book, Qualitative Inquiry in Everyday Life: Working with Everyday Life Materials, continues. I just posted Part 9. Two more parts remain to be recorded and then the series will come to its conclusion. After updating the Patreon Videos page, I realized I had…
Review of ‘The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths’ by Anna K. Schaffner
Self-help is a tricky subject. Depending on the audience, it can provoke intense sympathy and intense skepticism. A dismissive attitude toward the current self-help culture can point to the lack of substance and depth in the popular material, the deceitful and self-serving “gurus,” the hyper-optimism of followers, the fixation with “positive thinking,” the unrealistic promises,…
Being with Others
Connecting to your past, to your history, to your language, to your family, should not be done only for its own sake, or–even worse–for the sake of acquiring the comfort for being with the in-group. Connecting to your history shapes your presence, sharpens it, makes it truthful. That is the justification for pursuing the connections,…