Probably every one of us has looked up from the clutter of our days and realized, with a quiet ache, that we are spending the currency of our souls on the wrong things. We yearn for the expansive spaces—traveling to distant horizons, hiking the rugged cathedrals of the mountains, or losing ourselves in the quiet,…
Common Ground
A wonderful friend of mine used to react to the infamous news stories of the Pentagon spending a thousand dollars on a single toilet seat with a characteristic blend of pragmatism and wit: “Hubbell, I either want it stopped, or I want in on it.” He was a man of vast contradictions—the kind that define…
The Symphony of Play
Men as well as children have need of play—that is to say, of periods of activity having no purpose beyond present enjoyment. But if play is to serve its purpose, it must be possible to find pleasure and interest in matters not connected with work. — Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Man the Player). Reading Huizinga’s…
Part II — Memory, Trauma, and Divine Purpose
We are vast warehouses of experience, yet we are only permitted to walk through a few small rooms of our own archive. This thought has consumed me lately. It drove me to do something unusual: I started researching whether others have grappled with the limits of human memory. As it turns out, we have been…
Memory, Trauma, and Divine Purpose — Part I
My physical therapist recently told me that our tissue retains a memory of every trauma it has ever suffered. If that is true, then my own body is a crowded archive of pains and memories. Yet, there is something deeply wondrous about this: we might consciously forget the falls, the blows, and the physical shocks…