Why is it that a spirit of wanderlust or adventure exists within each person? What is it about exploration and nature that fills the senses and creates a hunger to go and see the world? I have never thought seriously about the “lust” component of the word “wanderlust,” but that section of the word pops…
Category: Life
A Salve for Memory
There is something tremendously stabilizing about a library. Really, I’ve never noticed it before, and it is incredibly strange, so much so that I feel as though it must mean something to me, must point me somewhere else, to some goal or career or future. Today I made the mistake(?) of wandering through classroom buildings…
Individual Rights and the Common Good in American Education
The following is the transcript of a speech that I wrote and presented for Hillsdale College’s Edward Everett Oratory Contest this February. The contest’s topic for all competitors was “Individual Rights and the Common Good in American Education.” Speeches were to be ten minutes long and delivered entirely from memory. With this speech, I made…
A Fool’s Progress
With Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter arriving in the next several months, my thoughts have been straying to the action of God and religion in my life, as well as to my life in general. A convergence of literature in my various classes—all focusing on or mentioning confessions, testimonies, biographies, or journeys toward God—supports this…
Healing Nature
“Call me Ishmael.” That highly recognizable three-word imperative begins Herman Melville’s iconic American epic, Moby Dick. While even a casual listener might remember the opening line, the first few sentences taken as a whole more completely express the ideas of the book, turning readers toward the ocean and making assertions about human nature: “Call me…
On Trees and Birds
This past Thursday morning, my little town of Hillsdale was hit by a severe thunderstorm that caused a lot of damage in the town, including on my college’s campus. I spent part of Thursday morning driving around, just looking at the trees down and observing the effects of the power outage. This post springs from…
At the End of the Rope
Sometimes, the commonplace objects of life provide useful analogies or descriptors for more complex, abstract concepts. Consider the following examples: Using physical coins, pebbles, blocks, etc. to teach children addition and subtraction. Comparing electrons and their movements to that of the planets in the solar system. Calling a person “like a cat” and bringing to…
Rabbit Trails
“There’s no such thing as rabbit trails,” one of my English professors recently said at a department end-of-semester party. Such a phrase, at the time used casually and likely without any connection to metaphysics or more complicated imaginings, nevertheless hit me at the moment hard enough that I jotted down a record of it on…
Thou Mayest
Last summer, I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and found it to be a intriguing book. Since then, the words timshel and “thou mayest” have been ringing in my head from time to time. Timshel is a Hebrew word that has”thou mayest” as a translation of it. If you have read East of Eden,…
In the Garden
An old but lovely hymn goes, “I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses And the voice I hear falling on my ear The Son of God discloses And He walks with me And He talks with me And He tells me I am his own And the joy…