Degrees in Idealism

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

  • Culture
  • Marriage
  • Family
  • Wellness
  • Beauty
  • Soul

Christmas Does Not Belong to Me

12.18.2018 by Elizabeth Hanna Pham // Leave a Comment

I just want to make sure we have OUR Christmas. I’ve said it to my friends and my friends have said it to me. Somewhere between college graduation and thirtieth birthdays Christmas becomes super, super busy. And we feel like it’s all about other people. All about extended relatives. All about work parties or neighborhood parties […]

Categories // Culture, Family, Soul Tags // #christmas, #family, #parenting

How We Advent (And Advent Music)

12.01.2018 by Elizabeth Hanna Pham // Leave a Comment

When I was about ten my dad first introduced us to the old custom of Adventing before Christmas and Christmasing until Epiphany. At first, it was quite difficult for me to accept. My dad and I had many debates about how early was too early to turn on the real Christmas songs and all the […]

Categories // Culture, Family, Soul Tags // #advent, #christmas, #family, #koselig, #liturgicalliving

A Baby, The Catholic Church, and Hope

10.15.2018 by Elizabeth Hanna Pham // 1 Comment

It was the Eve of the Feast of the Assumption when I got an unexpected positive pregnancy test. I’ve been pregnant every year since 2012 and my youngest child is only ten months old. While I felt joy and excitement that I would get to know and love another tiny human, I had all sorts […]

Categories // Culture, Family, Soul Tags // #catholicism, #hope, #motherhood, #pregnancy, #theassumption

Fingers and Toes

09.18.2018 by Elizabeth Hanna Pham // 1 Comment

Counting their fingers and toes… I had heard the phrase before but I didn’t really get it. Why would you count their fingers and toes? You already know how many there are. It wasn’t until my third baby that I finally tried it. One, two, three, four, five… The other little chubby hand was cramped […]

Categories // Family, Soul

When We Play All Day: Part Two

08.06.2018 by Elizabeth Hanna Pham // Leave a Comment

I’ve always thought it would be nice to really celebrate Sunday like a “sabbath”— not just with Church or a break from school or work, but like a true holiday. After the birth of our first child, I realized that this was not simply an intriguing idea; it was something we actually needed.  A sabbath […]

Categories // Family, Marriage, Soul Tags // #beingpresent, #catholicism, #children, #christianity, #koselig, #parenting, #rest, #sabbath, #sunday

Backyard Snakes and the Problem of Evil

08.02.2018 by Elizabeth Hanna Pham // 4 Comments

Yesterday my older children were playing outside our house and my baby was sitting happily on the grass in the perfect sunshine. We went inside for a few hours and came back out to get in the car. Our kids were loaded up, but before my husband and I got in we noticed a black […]

Categories // Family, Soul Tags // #christianity, #circleoflife, #parenting, #problemofevil, #snakes

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About Me

I'm Elizabeth. I'm a wife, a mother to three little boys, a writer, and a lover and seeker of the beautiful, the true, and the good. I am a believer in idealism-- that even amidst the chaos and the confusion, the exhaustion and the sadness of life there is always joy to be found, hope to be clung to, and a better path to be taken. I write my thoughts on this blog. A link to my fiction book is at the bottom of the page.

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

sons of God

A short novella in which Lucifer talks about his dad.

View Book

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