I wrote at First Things on Kristen Lavransdatter as a primer for living a life of Christian service and witness in a pandemic. It was intended, among other things, as a rejoinder to the idea that sheltering in place was cowardice. Someday when our children ask us “What did you do during the coronavirus pandemic?,” it won’t… Read More
Tag: First Things
Fear and the Benedict Option
Any sort of retreat will also attract people who are tempted to hate the part of the world they are withdrawing from. Any group gathering in a BenOp spirit should expect to attract people at varying levels of weariness, anger, fear, and despair. Even a legitimate righteous anger can curdle into contempt or despair. To… Read More
Summer in the Forest: “The Weak Lead Us To Reality”
Summer in the Forest, Randall Wright’s documentary on Jean Vanier and his L’Arche communities for the disabled, contains a number of indelible moments. In one, an elderly man sits, docilely, for a haircut. As a younger worker clips his hair, he holds out his knobbled hand and receives the milkweed-silk trimmings in his palm. The… Read More
Death and Dappled Hope: Meditations on Biden’s Memoir
Sustained by his family’s love and his love for them, Biden can carry the weight of tragedy and offer it as a gift to others. At the beginning of the book, he describes visiting the family of Wenjian Liu, a police officer murdered on duty, and offering the widow his personal phone number. He tells… Read More
Consent isn’t the Opposite of Louis C.K.
Consent, as the primary criterion for sexual ethics, thinks too small. The careful, consent-seeking lover seeks to use his own strength correctly and responsibly. If a lover of this type finds that his strength is a little too daunting, a little too hard to wield cautiously, the solution is to find ways to limit his… Read More
How Vulgarity Normalizes Predators
"In the office, vulgarity similarly functions as near-harassment, even when a raunchy joke is genuinely appreciated by its hearers. Every moment of crudity normalizes sex-as-assault, if only at the level of making someone else uncomfortable. C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, distinguishes between raunchiness as a sin against chastity (when it is “in order to excite… Read More
Losing My Child at Easter
My husband and I lost our first child at 6 weeks at Easter in 2017. I wrote this essay to thank the women who cared for me in extraordinary ways while we grieved. "One week after we lost our baby, the Gospel reading was the story of the apostle Thomas poking his finger into the… Read More
The Limits Of Planned Parenthood’s Storytelling
"Refusing to show abortion as one of the services Planned Parenthood provides seems oddly prim for a video ostensibly celebrating the clinics’ work. Perhaps Whedon couldn’t figure out how to shoot the procedure in an upbeat way. Or maybe, when he tried, he noticed that this choice compelled him to make further storytelling choices, which… Read More
Bill Nye Unweaves The Rainbow And Undersells Science
"Importantly, Ms. Frizzle doesn’t teach her students about facts alone. Their adventures are meant to unfold the scientific method, not just its fruits. Although The Frizz herself is fearless, and teaches her students to be bold in asking questions, their exploits are also a lesson in humility. Ms. Frizzle’s rallying cry is “Take chances, make… Read More
Yale’s Accidental Tribute To John C. Calhoun
"When I was an undergraduate, John C. Calhoun went largely unmentioned and unthought of in residential college life. If the college had instead been named (as a puckish friend suggested) for William Barron Calhoun (Yale class of 1814, a lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, ardent opponent of slavery), nothing about the day-to-day life of the… Read More