Degrees in Idealism

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

Why We Love Period Dramas

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My husband and I try not to watch much TV but, if a show has accents or war heroism or fancy ballrooms we pretty much can’t resist. We recently started on a seemingly random Turkish show at the recommendation of other bloggers and I’m shocked how hooked we are even with the unreliable subtitles. But […]

Baby Mine

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We recently found out that the baby in my belly is a boy— boy number three! This news is met with all sorts of reactions, everything from congratulations to laughter to pity. And it often prompts the question… but do you/did you want to have a girl? Here’s my honest answer: I was excited about […]

You May Be A Parent, But You’re Also Still A Person

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Almost four years ago my first baby was born, and while I was overwhelmed by the love, beauty, and tenderness of it all, intro to parenthood totally turned my world upside down. I knew to expect sleepless nights, anxiety, exhaustion, etc. What I didn’t expect was the loneliness. At the time, I was the only […]

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 […]

First Trimester Salad

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I’m just trying to survive. That’s always been my mantra during the first trimester of pregnancy which has always been fairly rough for me. This one has been particularly rough as I try to adequately feed, nurture, referee, and entertain two rambunctious toddler boys. I pretty much always feel like curling up in bed and sleeping […]

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