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Overcoming Hypersensitivity
In her autobiography, Therese of Lisieux describes what she considers as one of the key moments of conversion in her life: She was the youngest in her family and her
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Brilliant, Grumpy Old Men
Two of the better books I’ve read lately come from secular authors, James Hillman and Kurt Vonnegut. What these writers have in common, beyond common sense and great insight, is
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Besotted by Celebrity
We are besotted by celebrity. For most of us, the rich and famous take on a god-like status and our own lives seem small, empty, and hardly worth living in
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Praying When We Don’t Feel Like It
Most of us find it difficult to pray. We want to pray, make resolutions to pray, but never quite get around to actually praying. Why? It’s not so much that
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The World As a Phone Booth
For Christmas last year, I was given a cell-phone (a “mobile phone”, in European terms). I’d always resisted buying one for a couple of reasons. First off, I’m already too
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Moral Intelligence
There are different ways of being intelligent, of being awake. Not everyone is bright in the same way. Some people are gifted mathematically and philosophically. That’s the intelligence of an
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The Therapy of a Public Life
Thirty years ago, Philip Rieff wrote a book entitled, The Triumph of the Therapeutic. In essence, he argued that today, in the Western world, so many people need psychological therapy
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The Ninety-Nine and the One
Throughout the years that I’ve been writing, I’ve received lots of criticism. Sometimes it’s bitter and mean-spirited and I tend, then, not to respond to it, believing that things are
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The Language of Silence
“Nothing resembles the language of God so much as does silence.” Meister Eckhard wrote those words. What do they mean? Among other things, they speak of a deep mystery. What
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The Miracle of Existence
While doing my doctoral thesis, I had the privilege of having as a mentor the distinguished Belgian philosopher-theologian, Jan Walgrave. One day, while discussing a point in philosophy, he asked