Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
I’m still reading Henri Nouwen’s account of his time at the monastery and he keeps sharing a bunch of insights that somehow seem super relevant to my life. Nearing the latter half of his stay at the monastery, he is trying to figure out what his life should look like after he leaves. How much time
“Togetherness is easy. It’s relaxing. It flows. It’s what happens when we all stop trying to control each other’s actions and simply let each other be.” – Michaeleen Doucleff, Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Humans. I recently read the fun book, Hunt, Gather,
The image of human excellence I would like to offer as a counterweight to freedom thus understood is that of a powerful, independent mind working at full song. Such independence is won through disciplined attention, in the kind of action that joins us to the world. And—this is important—it is precisely those constraining circumstances that
Since I became a dad, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how we can apply ancient wisdom to parenting. When I did my initial experiments, I was in my mid-20s and was not concerned at all with taking care of a tiny human. Recently I’ve been revisiting some of these wisdom traditions to see
Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who built a reputation as spiritual leader, teacher, and writer during his lifetime. During his time as a professor at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s, he spent seven months at a Trappist Monastery, The Abbey of the Genesee, in upstate New York living as a monk. He
I attended my cousin’s wedding this weekend in Annapolis and the officiant made the point that while marriage is a noun, in practice it is a verb. “Marriaging” is a more accurate way to discuss the commitment my cousin and his wife were making. It is a lifelong action. This may seem obvious in the
No one can be moral—that is, no one can harmonize contained conflicts—without coming to a working arrangement between the angel in himself and the devil in himself, between his rose above and his manure below. The two forces or tendencies are mutually interdependent, and the game is a working game just so long as the
A chef’s cancer diagnosis If you were diagnosed with stage IV squamous cell carcinoma-tongue cancer and the doctor told you your only chance of survival required undergoing a brutal surgery that would remove most of your neck, some of your jaw, and your tongue, would you consider it good luck or bad luck? What if,
The outer affects the inner. Behavior shapes your psyche as much as the other way around. – AJ Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically When I was doing my Ancient Wisdom Project experiments, it was important that I didn’t just read about ancient wisdom, but that I actually physically performed something. That meant meditating, taking ice
Matthew Crawford writes in his book, Shopcraft as Soulcraft, that the corporate manager is highly dependent on managing perceptions to be successful. It’s a relationship game As a result, managers have to spend a good part of the day “managing what other people think of them.” With a sense of being on probation that never