I’m the sort of nerd who likes to articulate my principles. I love being able to recite these words in times of prayer and lean on them in times of stress. My articulations of my principles are largely borrowed from Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness trainings, but I have gone ahead and made some modifications of my own.
After graduating from SCU, I spent time with JVC, L’Arche, and the Maryknoll China Teachers Program. I’ve thought of these experiences as my “formation years,” as something akin to the notoriously long Jesuit formation process, which typically lasts at least ten years.
“They Say” is a poem Meg O’Neill wrote while working in Ritsona refugee camp in central Greece.
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim was a tenth-century German canoness, dramatist, and poet. (A canoness is basically like a nun, but with less strict vows.) Hrotsvitha is remarkable: she has been called the first Western playwright since antiquity as well as the first known woman playwright. In her six plays, Hrotsvitha takes comic tropes used by Roman playwrights and reworks them into plays that not only glorify God but also deeply honor faith, celibacy, and women.
Quinoa Greens is one of my favorite recipes. It’s tasty. It’s healthy. It’s simple to cook, and it’s easy to modify.
I was excited to see Cal Newport’s recent blog post titled “Digital Minimalism and God (Or, is Social Media Undermining Religion?)” In the post, Newport remarks that he was somewhat surprised by how well received his new book Digital Minimalism has been within religious circles.
I recently read Sarah E. Stevens’ essay “Care Time” in Disability Studies Quarterly, in which she reflects on how her experiences as a care partner affect her relationship to time. Stevens’ essay got me thinking about the two years I spent as a live-in assistant at L’Arche Heartland. Stevens’ description of care time strongly resonated with my experiences as a L’Arche assistant, but I also noticed some interesting points of divergence between care time and “L’Arche time.”
It turns out that grayscaling your screen doesn’t just make your phone boring and less interesting to look at. It also makes your phone’s user interface more confusing and harder to parse with a single glance. Which, thereby, makes me less inclined to spend time on my phone and more inclined to throw my phone across the room and go read or go outside.
The Ruined Report is a new blog about social justice, simple living, community, and spirituality, to which all former Jesuit Volunteers (FJVs) are welcome to contribute. For a while now, I’ve wished a blog like this existed.
