Stressed? You Might Need to Get Outside More
The natural habitat of man is not inside. Adam was created and placed in a garden that was created for him to work and rule, a garden that was already good but would in some wonderful way be made even better with man's creativity. Creation seems to need us. Long after the Fall of man St. Paul says that creation – the entire cosmos – is st...
Don’t Let Liars Tell the Story in Your Home
A decade or so before I was born, my parents met a new guy in town. He could not move around well or take care of himself, but he was a gifted storyteller. My family was so enamored with him they actually invited him to live with us so we could take care of him. From the start, he was accepted as a member of the family. Everyone in town talked abo...
Men Need to Be Home More
I am away from home on average about 14+ hours a day. Time spent away from my family adds up depending upon whether or not I’ve got any Spanish lessons scheduled after my regular work hours in my corporate gig. This all adds up quick to a lot of time apart from my family. We live in an age today where many of us commute to work, and that i...
Bring It Home: Moving Away from False Economic Measurements
John Ikerd, Emeritus agricultural economist at the University of Missouri, observes that “to most economists, if the economy is growing, if it is getting bigger, then the economy is getting better, regardless of the consequences for social equity and environmental integrity.”[1] In other words what so often determines the defining feature of fi...
Don’t Be Confused About Your Real Home
In a wonderfully satirical passage from the beginning pages of Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy wrote of “the Roman Catholic remnant, a tiny scattered flock with no place to go” (Percy, p. 5). The novel’s main character, Dr. Thomas More, says this “remnant” is one of three pieces into which the Catholic Church in his small town of Paradi...
A Place on Earth: The Desire for Land and Its Limits
Land has a central place in the Bible. We spring from it and are placed within it deliberately by God: Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed (G...