Veritas et Virtus

A thesaurus will tell you that the opposite of attention is inattention—that is, the failure to pay attention. But that’s a little misleading. Unless we’re asleep or unconscious, we’re never really inattentive. We’re just distracted. In other words, you cannot...

Have you ever spent any time with someone who is always looking at himself—in a mirror, in a store window, in anything he can find that will reflect his image back to him so he can check himself out one...

When we decide what we will pay attention to, we don’t just make a choice about what to focus on—we actually make a choice about who we will become. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, makes very clear the...

Alright, everyone, now pay attention.  This week, we are going to turn our attention to, well…paying attention. Albert Einstein is credited with observing that, “[a]ny man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the...

Winning isn’t everything, and cheaters who think so only hurt themselves.  But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t compete to win.  In Pauls’ letter to the Corinthians, he’s quite clear: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners...

Have you been watching the Winter Olympics?  Anything in particular stand out to you?  Are you amazed, like I am, by the sheer speed of the luge or bobsled shooting down that tube of ice?  The precision and teamwork of...

In Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, the character Neoptolemus declares: “I would rather fail through acting well than win by evil means.”   If you’ve been paying attention to the Winter Olympics, then you may have heard about the cheating scandal in curling:...

Did you have trouble waking up this morning?  Wish you could sleep a bit longer? Well, did you know that the marmot, which is just a giant ground squirrel, hibernates through the cold season underground…for up to 8 months at...

The day is ending, The night is descending; The marsh is frozen, The river dead. That’s the beginning of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, called Afternoon in February.  He ends his poem comparing the bleak, midwinter day to a funeral:...

Last night, the Groundhog Day film I told you about was on TV, so I watched for a bit.  As Phil struggled to figure out what to do with his ever-repeating day, something occurred to me: Even though his response...