Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found..

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While cons….

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it..

In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are ….

Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it..

A short-lived fascination with another person may be exciting-I think we've all seen people aglow, in a state of being "in love with love"-but such a….

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers..

But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the….

The demon of acedia -- also called the noonday demon -- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. . . . He makes it seem that the sun b….

Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas..

When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I….

We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view….

I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change..

Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours..

In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular..

Peace - that was the other name for home..

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them..

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?.

Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are..

Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things..

Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world..