Posts by Sarah Reardon

As the summer approaches with its travel plans and leisure activities, so, too, does the temptation to squander time, even innocently.

AI education requires a mechanistic view of man. It outsources human tasks of teaching, guiding, conversing, and correcting to a non-human entity, thus treating the student as a machine for knowledge accumulation rather than a creature needing formation and direction. 

A steady diet of twaddle, in an individual’s life or in that of a culture, does shape consumption and therefore souls. It is not the existence of twaddle but rather its ubiquity that sets our culture on a path towards porn and other dark ventures.  

What does the popularity of erotic books or movies reveal about who we are becoming as a society? 

The Church and the conservative world more broadly should recognize sinful speech and sinful behaviors for what they are and be on guard against them. In short, we should seek to revive a truly conservative temperament.

The small but lovingly made gift is a symbol of love.

If communal reading sees even a revival in small pockets of our local communities, I imagine that eventually our larger culture will be blessed, if only for the opportunity  to sit together with neighbors or friends.

The practice of dressing decorously reveals, both to ourselves and to others, that we believe in an ordered universe where norms of respect and modesty keep the sacred separate from the casual.

To acknowledge and rejoice in the truth – the truth that winter is coming, and still the harvest is good – is a harder task than either idealism or pessimism, but it is the task to which we are all called.    

Perhaps a better admonition than “Be true to yourself” and “Do not be true to yourself” is this: Know the Truth and be truthful to yourself and others as a result.

Grateful prayer is much less natural in the ordinary business and enjoyments of life, whether writing or working or walking or attending the opera. It is even more unnatural in the challenges of life, when we are tempted to wish for another life.

Let us not despise that which is simple or mundane, and let us not chase after that which is lavish and unsustainable. Let us strive, instead, to cook and bake and make small but great things.

My grandmother, an American by birth who spent 20 years as an overseas missionary, told me many times when I was a child that I was wealthy because I live in America. I never quite understood what she meant, nor appreciated it appropriately.

Public enjoyment of music and other arts, even performed by amateurs, enriches both the individual and the community as it points beyond themselves toward something higher.

For children to love reading again, they must be shown and learn how to love life – real, embodied life, as God has given it, with all its difficult delights. 

For children to love reading again, they must be shown and learn how to love life – real, embodied life, as God has given it, with all its difficult delights.