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!
Improving Your Research Papers
As a member of the permanent community of a Catholic college campus center, I designed an intensive workshop for college students based on my experience helping with student papers and dissertations. I address the weaknesses I’ve observed, and give a structural model for the design of thesis papers. This workshop is most effective if I can get hold of one paper from each participant ahead of time, or if even one will offer a paper in progress up for public scrutiny.
I’ve also adapted this model for use with high school students as “Constructing a Research Paper”.
Most Catholics could use some help learning to write better non-fiction, but most have no time for instruction after the college years. I have often felt that Satan is thrilled with the problems I see in student writing – surely, he would prefer us impotent in the use of words. During the formative years of their lives, so many bright people are told their writing is great and passed on up and out. In fact, much of it is awful, reflects weak thinking, and saddens me terribly.
If we would communicate Christ, we might start with improving our writing. I would love to help you do that!
You Are a Triangle
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 way of demonstrating how to balance the pressures of life without violating the self, or others, and has expanded to become a road map to interior freedom.
I was asked to speak for the first Apostles of the Interior Life National Collaborators meeting – about beginning the ‘interior life’. I prayed about how one speaks to such a group (all people who are following the Sisters’ charism and, clearly, have already begun to explore the interior life). I felt I received the talk whole, like a poem sometimes comes to me all of a piece.
I thoroughly enjoyed helping those adults see through more childlike eyes. What has surprised me so much is the way this ‘language’ has continued to grow for me in conversations with other women, and with my kids.
One person who sees me for spiritual mentoring even taught it to her husband! It helped them so much that I now suggest it as a real, grown-up communications tool for married couples, parents-and-children, and others. The whole text of the original talk is available as a pdf on my Resources page, and you can look there for other applications of this ‘algebra of personhood’. One thing funny about my family is that my kids have now heard ‘Triangle-Circle’ so often it is a shorthand between us for some surprisingly huge concepts.
I’d love to hear how others are responding to this.
Women on the Way to Healing
I prepared this talk for the Heart of a Woman group, in Kansas City, shortly after the suicide of a Catholic mother of ten. It was a shock to me, but not entirely unexpected, as I had known her during the years she struggled with depression and disintegration, despite her devotion to the Church, Christ, and the Blessed Mother.
I blogged about it, and that post was shared more widely than anything I’ve ever written. Women in the area needed to talk – I needed to talk – about how this could happen, what might have helped, and how friends sometimes make things worse for women in this situation.
The entire text is available as a pdf pamphlet on my Resources page, but I would say the plain text doesn’t quite do justice to the talk in person! When I’m this passionate about something, I’m talking with my hands, with my whole body, with the chalk, and with the help of everyone who talks back!
What I find most amazing, most hopeful in this sad situation is the message to women that their very weakness and pain can be what God uses to help heal them and others. As with all my talks, I get so much out of the intense preparation. By the time I arrived that night, I dearly loved every woman in that room, as I had prayed so for them. I felt the profound love of the Holy Spirit and of the Mother of God just enveloping and gifting me. This was a beautiful experience for me, despite the awful instigation for it.
Here’s a book recommendation for those trying to connect to not-necessarily-Christian women about such things as gender differences, women’s friendships, feminine genius, motherhood, and spirituality.
Why Argue?
Five common reasons why people do not argue became reasons FOR good argument in this talk. I originally gave it for a high school Rhetoric class, and since have spoken also to adults about this.
1. Courtesy, Discomfort with Disagreement
2. Lack of Common Ground with the Other Person
3. No Opportunity,or Lack of Time
4. Weakness in Articulating One’s Own Position
5. Fear of Losing, Lack of Confidence
Can you see five good reasons TO argue here?
Exploring C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces
Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the classical myth, Cupid and Psyche, in which Venus, jealous of Psyche’s beauty, instructs her son Cupid to make her fall in love with a hideous monster. Instead, Cupid falls in love with her himself and becomes her unseen husband, visiting her only at night. Psyche disobeys his orders not to look at him loses him, and must undertake a series of difficult tasks set by Venus to win him back.
C. S. Lewis chose to rewrite this myth not as a Christian story, but in light of the fact of the Resurrection, after which no real new mythology could be generated. His rendering of the pre-Christian pagan story as a proto-evangelion, or preparation for the Gospel, is a masterpiece. And it’s chock full of interesting themes to explore.
I have offered pre- and post-reading discussions for readers of this book, because it can be a hard one to dig into on your own. I’ve also spoken on its implications for our understanding of human personhood, sin, growth, and redemption (in a talk called The Veiled Self).
Every time I read this book, I get something new out of it!
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