Religion
My pace of writing for these essays is much slower than my usual. In part, the reason is that my 2022 has simply been busier than I expected, and I haven’t been able to manage my Dust in the Light allotment of time every week. In bigger part, however, the reason is that, as clear as…
We’re not supposed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. However, yesterday was the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which means the rule of abstaining from meat was suspended for the day. Whether Biden knew of the suspension, we cannot know. Even if he didn’t, this would have been a small transgression (especially compared with…
As I’ve been finishing off some chores while catching up with podcasts during the blizzard, a thought that’s been forming for a while struck home very clearly. In general, we’ve got two approaches to understanding our existence: top-down and bottom-up. Top down is more concerned with meaning and teleological understandings of purpose. From this approach,…
Late January and February can be tough, emotionally, in New England. Even when it’s sunny out, things look kind of dead, and biting cold can be painful rather than invigorating, which is to say, not very inviting. Christian believers will often comfort those who feel down by assuring them that they are loved. As wonderful…
With the firm disclaimer that such material is not for everybody, I’ve been intending to write philosophical or religious essays regularly on Dust in the Light. Time has a way of slipping past, however. At an accelerating pace in the months since the last-published post on the site, concepts have started to click into place…
At different times in my life, I’ve found my ability to focus on brainwork hindered by various things. Sometimes, it’s been videogames. Sometimes, binge-watching television shows. Sometimes, social media. Even simplistic games like solitaire, mahjong, 2048, or sudoku. Recently, my chief distraction has been contemplating the construction of reality, especially around the point at which…
The strangest thing that’s ever happened to me as a Eucharistic minister, distributing communion at Catholic Mass, was the time shortly after I’d started doing it that an elderly man threw coins in the ciborium* with his right hand as I placed the Eucharist in his left. I didn’t know how to react or what…
The method is to train teachers with theories and techniques that are reasonable on their face, but that are joined with ideological preferences that are communicated in hidden assumptions.
In the middle of the Sixteenth Century, St. Francis Xavier wrote to his friend, St. Ignatius of Loyola, of his experience ministering to Christians in India: We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. No Portuguese live here, the country is so utterly barren and…
Well, this is another indication of why the United States should exit the United Nations: The United Nations approved a resolution targeting Israel and denying Judaism’s link to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Wednesday in a 129-11 vote. The resolution referred to the Temple Mount exclusively by its Muslim name, al-Haram al-Sharif. The text…
