“Let There Be Light”
While I was always familiar with this verse, I only recently considered why God chose to begin with light. Not sound, not water, not food, not love. Light.
Does Time Exist?
Does time exist? One question from my recent reading endeavor The Sound and the Fury stayed with me as I went through my day.
Messages from the Father in Nature
One time in prayer, Jesus and I bonded over how much we love understanding spiritual truths through what we witness in nature.
The Mission to Recover Our Moral Agency
Our collective moral agency has been lost due to the majority of society denying the possibility for creating formal opportunities to discuss moral questions in social contexts.
On Predestination
I do believe in destiny or fate. Not in the sense that what I had for lunch today was determined by God before I was born, but in the sense that our birth has largely determined our education, socioeconomic status, and even longevity.
Is the Economist’s Account of Rationality a Good One?
Economists model us as utility maximizing and rational, assuming a certain structure of preferences, but are we really rational when we happen to act like the models assume?
Childlike Determination
He had been continuously hurt through his various attempts, yet the one thing that remained unscathed was his determination.
Remembering Those Forgetting
It is all too easy to write off the elderly as “senile” or “childish” when in reality, there is truly a lifetime of experiences in each one of them, asking to be heard.
Encountering the Other
In his most famous book, I and Thou, the late 19th century Austrian philosopher Martin Buber considers what it means to treat someone as fully human and what true encounters with the other look like.
Permanence in an Ever-Changing World
Not only are we failing to build in a way that is sustainable, but we are also not building in a way that will stay with us. We create just to last the decade, rather than to last a lifetime.
First Home, Forever Home
I would have never imagined myself saying I miss Florida’s suburban, monotonous neighborhoods, yet they were the most comforting view from the plane.
3,000-Year-Old Poetry Today
In reading Augustine’s Confessions for Lectio Humana, perhaps the most prominent aspect I’ve encountered so far is the author’s desire for worship.
Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto
Peter Thiel once said in an interview something to the effect that the only three coherent visions of the future that animate people in the modern world are Islamism, Chinese totalitarianism, and western-style environmentalism.
Vive la Révolution?: A Mini-Reflection on the French Revolution
Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité – literally translated as liberty, equality, and fraternity – was the motto and rallying cry for the French people during the French Revolution.
Wrapped Up in Minutes
On November 30th, I joined millions of fellow listeners in reviewing the results of my Spotify Wrapped.
Sacred Spaces
In Wendell Berry’s poem “How to Be a Poet,” he writes, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
Franny and Zooey Book Review: The Paradox of Reason
I recently finished Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. This provocative novella occurs in Salinger's universe of the brilliant and precocious Glass children.
Rousseau and Democracy
During this past election week, I had the timely task of critically evaluating Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s argument against democracy from Of the Social Contract.
God’s Country: The Role of Christianity in Country Music
In Psalm 98:4 we are called to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” to praise our heavenly father for the blessings he has given us.
This entirely student-run blog is intended to be a lively space of engagement for our student fellows where they can freely experiment with ideas together. They should not be assumed to be equivalent with students’ own settled convictions, let alone with the views of the Collegium Institute itself.