Degrees in Idealism

exploring how we would live if we truly believed life was meaningful

My Favorite Children’s Picture Books

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“Read to your kids,” parents are told over and over again. Choosing books in favor of T.V. or other sorts of entertainment is surely a no-brainer. But does it matter what you read to them? With all the reading campaigning that goes on, it would seem like any combination of words and pictures bound together […]

Homeschooling Preschool

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Our oldest child is only 4.5 so we certainly don’t have a lot of homeschooling experience. But since I’m about to have a “homeschooled preschool” graduate, I thought I would share our general plan for these early years: When in doubt, do less (in terms of academics.) Every year since my oldest was a baby I’ve had […]

My Advent CD

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Properly celebrating Advent can be tough in a society that typically starts Christmasing around Thanksgiving and promptly ceases merriment on December 26th. One thing that has always been particularly bothersome to me is the general lack of Advent music. I’ve got an Advent playlist I add to every year, but this year I wanted to do […]

My new book is out!

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My oldest son knows a lot about Jesus. He knows a lot about the Church and the sacraments and about grace and about God’s love. He doesn’t know very much about sin. For mostly good reasons, I believe, I’ve been putting off that topic for quite awhile. But I’ve been getting more and more questions […]

Watch the New Beauty and the Beast– If Only For the Ending

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I went into Beauty and the Beast with somewhat low expectations. The cartoon version was always one of my favorite movies, and I hadn’t heard the best reviews of the remake. One of the reviews I found most striking argued that there was something forced, strange, and off-putting about the story being live-action in the first […]

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About The Name

“There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I found this quote well described my own experience– consistently reworking my idealism, being surprised by it, sometimes even losing it only to discover it all the more fully. I know we will never find all the answers, but how thrilling it is to find ourselves getting a little closer to the source and summit of things, a little closer, as we work our way through the “degrees.”

sons of God