I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Presented as a paper at the annual conference of the C.S. Lewis and the Inklings Society: Extending Lewis’ thoughts about the development of epic form (in Preface to Paradise Lost) into his own Space Trilogy – the form of epic in the shadow of the Cross.
A public lecture for Signs of Life bookstore in Lawrence, KS: An introduction to the life and works of Dorothy Sayers.
For the Midwest Regional C.S. Lewis Association Conference: Life Lessons from Lewis’ Preface to Paradise Lost.
Given as pre- and post-reading workshops for several different book study groups: the original Cupid & Psyche myth, recurring themes , difficulties, the Incarnation as the end of myth, the context of the book within C. S. Lewis’ own life and spiritual growth.
I have discussed different aspects of this work with parent educators, spiritual seekers, the Catholic Creatives Salon, and as a book study overview. It is a rich source of insight into the life of the artist, of the human person, and into literature’s capacity to be a vessel for truth.
Poetic Reading is not just reading poetry! Poetic Reading cultivates the wholeness of the reader, because it engages her whole being. It is, first of all, ordered to leisure, to freedom, to the context rather than the content of reading. Poetry, intellect, delight, sensory experience – I help readers develop an integrated approach to all different kinds of reading material.
An overview of the book, and its implications for those who would love God with whole minds.
Presented to the Catholic Creatives Salon: An overview of the work, with key excerpts for reflection and discussion.
I love it when book groups adopt my own book for discussion! I thoroughly enjoy presenting it in various formats, tailoring it to the needs and ages and interests of each group. Some study group participants are following as I give my own answers to all the SAR Study Guide Questions at soulsatleisure.com. That site should be helpful to group leaders preparing for chapter-by-chapter discussions of Souls at Rest.
Right now, I’m doing driver training with my next-to-last home-schooled child. The last one is of age, and itching for her turn. In Kansas, we must spend 50 hours on the road with new drivers before releasing them into the wild. I think this is a great idea, as many parents would spend much less […]
This was one of the first formal talks I ever gave as a Catholic. No wonder it’s all about the Church, where I had just discovered so much richness and beauty and perfection. I loved having her before me as an image of motherhood. Unlike dear Mother Mary, Mother Church has had some seriously wayward […]
They Loved It!
Women raising children stand in a very powerful place as the mediator of reality. We are great at being womb-and-placentas for our babies. We do fairly well at providing a home life that expands their contact with the wider world. We must also be, like a healthy cell wall, a semi-permeable boundary controlling incoming intellectual, […]
I enjoyed creating this talk to fit into a women’s retreat about Christ’s offer of “living water”. They gave me a free hand to choose my topic and approach, and I chose the promise, in Psalm 1, that we “shall be like trees, planted by streams of living water.” Their focus was on the woman […]
Link to the whole talk on YouTube, here.
With her circle of Romantic, ‘free’ spirited friends, Mary Shelley perceived the dark side of the ascendancy of scientific, materialist rationalism over nature, poetry and feelings. She was less aware of the dangers to humanity of her own set’s elevation of emotional passion and nature worship into the vacuum left by the Enlightenment’s dismissal of […]
For Groundhog Day, I imagine Catholic bloggers everywhere are weighing in about the movie by that name. It’s so Catholic! How can we resist? I love this movie,
In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church” Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.
I love Colin Beavan…not just his book, No Impact Man, but the author himself… …for being deeply human and vulnerable and honest…for sharing his life and thought with me through writing well and truly of his experiment in personal environmentalism. He and I would find little to agree about and much to disagree about if […]
Women raising children stand in a very powerful place as the mediator of reality. We are great at being womb-and-placentas for our babies. We do fairly well at providing a home life that expands their contact with the wider world. We must also be, like a healthy cell wall, a semi-permeable boundary controlling incoming intellectual, […]
Now that my kids are, essentially, “grown up,” I can look back over my fond dreams – and laugh. From every corner of the world of home education, I pulled images of how ‘our school’ might be – most of them in conflict with each other, and none a perfect picture of how ‘our school’ […]
This ‘Triangle Talk’ is a way of speaking about the interiority and freedom of the human person. It’s something of a beginner’s guide to the interior life. It gives us a very easy-to-use ‘language’ for communication about very serious spiritual realities, and helps us have some distance from intensely personal issues. It began as a […]
