We need to respect time and its Author. Indeed, one of God’s first acts in Creation was establishing the parameters of time. When Congress votes to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, we put ourselves at the center of things. The issue is time. Daylight Saving Time. Congress is again attempting to make it permanent. If [...]
Long before I knew what literary criticism was, I was a boy, living and growing up in southwestern Minnesota, a remote part of the world... Since then, I've come to that age where I've retired from what I've done with the decades of my life. Over those “professional” years, I shied away from being called [...]
True union with God comes not by escaping time but by coursing through it with Christ, its creator and consummator. If God is the author of time, and if by His divine decree we find ourselves immersed in time, fated to swim amid the ebb and flow of temporality, is it even thinkable that God [...]
In this materialistic age, time has become a commodity that can be bought and sold. This is evidenced by the place that the monetization of time holds in common parlance: “spend your time well,” “I have some free time,” “time is money,” etc. It is tragic to see time itself be corroded by the greed [...]
Human beings are not simply producers; they are also lovers of beauty and contemplators of truth. They are wasters of time. The liberally educated person has a rich inner life that allows him to waste time well. As an undergraduate, I went for walks in rural Michigan. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Romantic walks, friendly [...]
The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty’s remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future. It is hope. I went for a long walk in Oxford the other night. The city, of course, is always enchanting, but in early summer and at night, it is so the most. When summer [...]
Could a fifty-year-old, small book on grammar, speech, and rhetoric by a nearly-forgotten thinker have the power to revolutionize and re-awaken our decadent intellectual life? Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973) might not recognize, in 2018, the America to which he came in 1933, seeking refuge from a Germany that had just elected Hitler. [...]
“Modernity” comes from Latin "modo," meaning “just-now.” Thus modernity is any generation’s own time; it is the mode of the recent, the contemporary—with a hint of time-pride: the latest is the newest, and the newest is the best. Mr. Ropoulos and I were talking in the St. John’s College Coffee Shop, and the subject of [...]
Opposition to greatness comes from the kind of irrational irritation that made the Athenians ostracize Aristides because they were tired of hearing him called "the Just," or from egalitarian resentment, or from fear of the demands things of quality make on us. I want to steal four minutes of my talking time to speak of [...]
The ordinary times of our lives are not simply ordinary. The Christian tradition has always shown that every time is touched by Christ. As Christians, we offer our time back to Christ as spiritual worship. The ordinariness of Ordinary Time is setting in—not just liturgically, but even culturally. The wreaths are gone, the crèches are [...]
When the U.S. Senate recently voted to make daylight saving time permanent, I could not help but feel that something had been adulterated. Instead of respecting time and its Author, we dare to put ourselves at the center of things. The subject should not cause much debate since it appears to be a technical issue. [...]
The desire to know the future is so human, but if we consistently knew the future with calculable certainty, this would lead to damaging behavior, darkness, and dehumanization. What, then, are we to do with this human desire to see what is to come? Wanting to know the future is a natural human desire. We [...]
“Times Square and Other Stories” by William Baer, a man and writer who is truly alive in the presence of the past, is storytelling at its best, both compelling and contemplative. Those who take up this volume will be changed for the better by the reading of it. Times Square and Other Stories, by William [...]
The pervasive “world” is a man-made complex of ambitions and obligations, a dense social and cultural and financial web that captures us and estranges our experience from the primal realities of earth and sky. We need to remind ourselves of the blessedness that can come even in the midst of the busiest days, that subtle [...]