So how is Catholic school treating your family? That’s the question Joel and I have received a lot since enrolling our oldest child in Catholic school and not homeschooling this year. Given it’s National Catholic Schools Week, the time seemed right to offer a response to that FAQ.
Pope Emeritus Benedict once said, “We live in a society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be ‘filled’ with initiatives, activity, sound; often there is not even time to listen and dialogue … Let us not be afraid to be silent outside and inside ourselves, so that we are able not … [Read more…]
The Church fathers, St. Benedict in particular, wrote about the need for Otium Sanctum or Holy Leisure. It refers to an ability to rest and take time to enjoy beauty, to be at peace through the activities of the day, to pace ourselves. Or, as Pope Francis might say, simply wasting time with one another. Do you waste time with your children? What does that look like in your home? Do we, collectively, even know how to waste time with one another?
In between bouts of folding laundry, cleaning house, and preparing lunch one recent day, I spotted a family sitting on my next-door neighbor’s front lawn. After a second look, I realized the man was the construction worker who had been pouring concrete in the neighborhood all morning. He was taking a lunch break and his … [Read more…]