A very long time ago when I was a grad student, the chair of our department was a man I much admired, not so much for his scholarly achievements as for himself. English Departments, at least back in those days, were full of crazy people. I was told by more than one faculty member that the [...]
When I taught senior college-prep English in small-town Georgia public schools, I arranged the syllabus by literary movements. When we reached the romantic movement, and Wordsworth, I had the students bring a permission slip from home (necessary for leaving the campus) and took them on a short walk across the football field to a stretch along [...]
A long time ago, a fellow teacher at a rural Georgia high school gave me a little booklet entitled “Pocket Prayers for Teachers.” I thumbed through the pages of platitudes of encouragement and exhortations to perseverance. One of the prayers caught my eye and has stayed with me to this day: A teacher sees the brutal [...]
Something occurred recently that provided me a better understanding of the difference between converts and so-called “cradle” Catholics. It was during a meeting of older parishioners, those groups commonly called by names like “Senior Catholics” or “Golden Agers” or “Young At Heart,” etc., groups where you might expect to hear laments of lost traditions. A woman [...]
I’ve just finished what is commonly called a “Netflix binge,” which means I watched an entire series of shows. The Story of God had a two-season tenure with some nine episodes in all. I was surprised to enjoy it. I had expected something like the kind of show I saw several years ago during the height [...]
People, we hear, are living longer. That’s not true. While it is true that more people live to old age, “old age” itself has not changed its number definition. Eighty was old fifty years ago and it’s still old. (Ask anyone who’s eighty.) The psalm is still on target today when it says our lifespan is [...]
Atheists are fond of suggesting that we create God in our own image. In fact, the mean old white-bearded god of judgment learned in some people’s childhood is the reason they give for dismissing belief in God. (Actually, of course, any reason will do if you decide not to believe.) But it does seem that as [...]
A man I admire, a deacon, recently told me that he sees Christ in every person he encounters. He seemed surprised when I answered that I did not. I said that I saw Christ in someone’s character or condition—like their loving nature, or their innocence (not to be confused with naiveté)—or perhaps in their “story,” the [...]
My name is Babel I am multi-lingual. Because languages are realities, I perceive many realities. You learn a new language; you learn a new reality. And thus we know that reality is plural and not singular. We refer not to “reality” but to thisor that reality. And because that is so, we can know—with comforting I-am-aware certainty—that there is [...]
This old dictum can be deceptively simple, rather like “Home is where the heart is.” When I first considered becoming Catholic in 1984, I went to the local church, only a block or two from my apartment in New Orleans, and talked to a very young priest, whom I’ll call Father Francis. He was fresh out [...]
