Musings of a Christian Humanist

     Studying and leading conversations on the Great Books for more than twenty years still produces that sense of awe and wonder, especially when I discover a new tool to aide in the exploration of wisdom.  Unfortunately, this excitement is often curtailed when I engage many of those within the academy. Once, an educationist from our Education Department, with arms folded humphed at me the term "perennialist" which he meant pejoratively, but which I heard as praise. More than once, I have seen the term "quaint" applied to what we do in our Great Books based programs. Of course, the secularists and dehumanized masses deem these writings down right dangerous. It is the notion of being quaint that I seek to ponder for a bit.      The term quaint, like perennialist, traditional, and related terms are often uttered with contempt today, but these terms have meaning that call for reconsideration. While quaint can be used in a dismissive manner, quaint ca...

   I was talking with a friend a few days ago, and he asked me what I thought about a particular news story. He was surprised when I responded that I knew a good bit less than him, and he seemed even more surprised as I was describing with what he considered a high level of apathy. Despite my best efforts to persuade him that the most recent "news" event or political scandal about unlawful government actions toward its citizens, current wave of political  or social propaganda, government sideshow, national media silliness, or Presidential diversion was far less engaging and meaningless than the extremely engaging and meaningful Oresteia by Aeschylus. So, I urge you as I urged my friend, make a conscious decision to be a liberated citizen and step away from the noise and the confining distortions of this particular moment, and be free to think about important issues in an equally important manner. I guaranteed him that reading the Great Books will give him a ...