One of the things I’ve been exloring recently is the ramifications of the Puritan rejection of the ecclesiastical calendar. Eager to avoid anything resembling Roman Catholicism, the Puritans rejected all holy days…
From my Touchstone feature, ‘The Cross of Least Resistance‘: If we look into the faces of people whose lives revolve around the pursuit of sinful lusts, we often see how severe is…
Since I’ve been posting a lot recently about gratitude, mention of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is way overdue. Bonhoeffer was one of the best examples of gratitude throughout the 20th century. Like Viktor Frankl, Bonhoeffer showed that…
From ‘Do What Comes Naturally…But Work at it‘: Lab research shows that human beings have a limited amount of will-power in any given situation. That is why, if you try to run…
Having benefited so much from Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, I was eager to read his latest book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us.…
I first published this post in 2014, but am rerunning it now for the sake of many new readers who may not have seen this. Introduction Having been involved in raising five…
My earlier blog post, ‘Struggling Towards Holiness‘, has been published in the March/April issue of Touchstone. Touchstone has made this article available for those who don’t subscribe to the magazine at the…
In 2013, I did work on attentiveness for the Colson Center. I have gradually been republishing my work here, which you can access at the following links: Hollowing out the Habits of…
There’s an American maxim which says you shouldn’t discuss religion or politics in polite society. It’s hard not to have some sympathy with this advice, especially during the election cycle. After all,…
The sun was just going down as Maryām made her way through the narrow streets, trying to keep to back-alleys so no one noticed her. She had made this journey dozens of…
In my workshop ‘Gratitude During Times of Suffering‘ I talked about the emWave technology I’ve been using to measure heart-rate variability. In this lecture, the cardiologist Dr. Trent Orfanos explains about the…
I’d like to invite you to do a little thought experiment with me. Shut your eyes and imagine that every single person on earth is thinking about you right now. Moreover, imagine…
