In Defense of the Ridiculous I have changed what I write about. Not because I ran out of sermons, meditations, and folktales, but because the world sounds too much like a pulpiteer—long, loud, and entirely devoid of mirth. I turned to absurdity the way a drowning man turns to air: instinctively, and with no guarantee of survival. The stories I tell…

Despite all this good stuff, I have been feeling a little flat recently. It comes to us all. Much unrealised. Everything in the rear view mirror. I’m too asleep, bad-tempered, just irritable at the world. James Hillman told me it’s important to just ‘decompose’ every now and then. Don’t make everything alright. Let Saturn and his dry, difficult, Be…

What if the point of life isn’t about fixing, polishing, or endlessly improving ourselves. What if it isn’t self-help? What if the purpose of living is soul-work. The kind that remembers myth, story, and transformative conversation is not meant to enlighten or instruct, but to awaken: to open onto the deeper life where grief and wonder, death and n…

The Underworld is the place where you broke bread with Baba Yaga, made peace with limit, were fed small scraps of meat by crows when you needed it the most. It’s the deep dip in a myth, the katabasis, the descent, the mischievous, startling bewilderment of irrational energies. Logic has little traction at such a moment. Successful returnees of the …

Let’s begin with a question: Where are you? That’s the question we all ask, isn’t it? Whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not. Where are we? In 1968, a TV show called The Prisoner aired in the United States on CBS. The protagonist, known only as Number Six, wakes up one morning to find himself trapped in a place called The Vil…

Civil Disobedience We’re taught that obedience is virtue. But what happens when the laws no longer guard the land, the people, or the soul. What happens when they only serve profit, machines, and the men who write the rules to feed themselves? They’ve built a world where you need permission to milk your own cow. Where the law protects what poisons …

In this episode, I read about fishermen, ecology, and the question: where do we belong, and where do we choose to live?

In this episode, a poem about the first words and the story of Cormac mac Airt.

St Kevin and the Blackbird (1996) And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird. The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside His cell, but the cell is narrow, so One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands And lays in it and settles down to nest. Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked Ne…

There’s a hunger in the world now, not just for bread, but for meaning. A hunger not of the belly, but of the bones. A thirst nothing sweet can quench. No flag can feed it. No slogan can soothe it. And if you’ve felt it, that ache behind the ribs, that long pull in the chest, you are not alone. The world we’ve inherited is wired, clever, and slick …

A starving child is a judgment on the world. Agus sin í an fhírinne ghlan—And that is the plain truth. And that judgment begins with us. As a man, I am sickened. The older I get, the more I understand what strength is for. And it is not for conquest. It is not for domination. It is for standing in the breach. For using your body and your words to p…

In this episode, I discuss sitting with sadness, conforming our lives to the big “T” truth, the importance of using story to cover our everyday experiences with higher meaning and purpose, and why it’s worthwhile to comtemplate the size of our souls.

The truth is, modern man — "scientific man,” as he likes to call himself — has disarmed himself. He traded his old strength, his old faith, his old stories, for a spreadsheet and a dopamine hit. He threw out the saints and the warriors and enthroned the technocrats. In doing so, he cast off not just God, but his own courage, his own soul. He fashio…

A Thiarna, i mo thuirse, ná tréig mé. (O Lord, in my weariness, do not forsake me.) Tuirse is not only the sag of limbs at the end of a long day. It is deeper than that. It is the hush that gathers behind the eyes when hope has gone too far ahead and no longer waits for you. It is the weight in the chest, like a stone settling, when the sea gives n…

In the modern West, the hearth has gone cold. The fires that once knit family and village together have been replaced with a different flame—the flickering blue light of the screen. John Michell warned of this in his strange, luminous writings. He saw how the displacement of the hearth led to the displacement of meaning. No longer do we gather arou…

But the truth is quieter than that. It moves without slogans. It walks without a flag. It looks like this: a deaf and blind man named Tim, finding his way onto a flight in Boston, one hand stretched out into the dark. And a stranger gives up his seat, and flight attendants allow their faces to be touched so he can know they are there, so he can fee…

...when we say, “I am depressed,” we start to believe the sorrow is the whole of us. That it's etched into the skin, like a birthmark. That it's our name now. But when we say, “The sorrow is on me,” we leave room. Room for the truth that this thing might lift. That it might pass. That we are more than what presses us down. There’s a similar pattern…

What happened to you is not your identity. The wound you carry, the abuse you suffered, doesn’t get to have the final word. It’s part of your story, yes. It has shaped you, but it cannot define you, because Someone greater has stepped into your pain and claimed you as His own. Jesus knows exactly how it feels to be betrayed, violated, and wounded—H…

We live in an age of collapse. Spiritually, mentally, emotionally, even physically, we are coming undone. The signs are everywhere. The old symbols no longer hold meaning. The words spoken in sacred places ring hollow. Our stories, once full of weight, have been traded for distractions that pass like dust in the air. We were given something rich, s…

Somewhere along the way, we lost the old way of seeing, the deep sense that a pattern lies beneath all things. Scientific materialists insist we’re nothing more than arrangements of dirt, that our griefs and joys are sparks in a gray swirl of neurons. The Gnostics preach the world is a wicked trap, that matter is a cage for the spirit. But both str…

The Weight of Gold, the Lightness of Grace Poverty of spirit—what a strange, thin phrase it’s become, brittle in the mouths of modern men who’ve never walked barefoot on cold earth, never felt the raw ache of want, not just in the belly but in the soul. To be poor in spirit isn’t a matter of meek nods and saintly sighs. It’s not weakness, not a bow…

First, credit to Paul Kingsnorth and Mary Harrington for the topic. They are a wellspring of thought-provoking inspiration. Now… The great post-Enlightenment revolution that promised to unshackle the mind from superstition and lead us into an age of reason has, in its end, given us a world gripped by its own decadence. We've spent centuries in a br…

Steel, Cloth & Waging the Hidden War I saw a read a missive on Substack recently by Matthew Herman Hudson that critiqued the claim that Christianity needs “less passive monks and more active knights.” To think the monk’s labor is passive, a withdrawal from the struggle that defines this world, is to see with dim sight and hear with a stopped ear. S…

Apocalypse speaks not only of fire and destruction; it pulls back the veil, it bares what has always been lying underneath. Beneath the floodwaters, beneath the inferno’s roar, lies a revelation. They are stories of uncovering—not chaos—but the unlit truths buried under the veneers of our comfort, truths we kept at arm’s length for as long as the y…

In these times, when the world is hungrier than ever for quick fixes, we must ask ourselves: what if the trouble isn’t something to be solved at all, but something to be faced with a turn back to the heart of what’s real? — D.

It gets sacred in the places where you have been torn open, where you’ve bled and felt abandoned. This is the quiet power of Christmas: not that it erases the ache, but that it enters into it with a tenderness fierce enough to hold what’s broken. You are held, not despite the pain, but because of it. The grace that comes is not the smooth salve, bu…

What's up with the talk about re-enchantment lately? Why are people interested in “re-enchanting the world”? What’s at stake in the question and what is expected by those who pursue it? What good are old stories and are we prepared to risk our lives to find meaning and purpose?

Perhaps God does not want us to be modern because modernity too often blinds us to the eternal. In our rush to build, invent, and achieve, we forget to behold, to wonder, to worship. We lose the ability to see the sacred in the ordinary: the bread on the table, the sun rising over a field, the child laughing in a garden. These are not obstacles to …

What was once called “woke” has splintered into an anarchic patchwork of terms that don’t make sense unless you’ve swallowed the Kool-Aid and been dumped into a pit of postmodern nonsense. “Critical social justice,” “identity politics,” “gender studies,” “fourth-wave feminism”—the list grows like a mutant vine, changing shape faster than a bad acid…

History is dead. Or, so I was told. For a long time, I believed it. Not because I wanted to, but I could see the world around me. It was plain as day that I did not live in the world of my heroes. Myth and legend had ended, history had marched to its lackluster end, and we were all fated to live out our days in a lethargic, decaying, neo-liberal he…

Today on the show, ruminations on Irish poets, winters-bane, and mythic tales that lead to heavenly truth.

When, because of their fear, they do away secretly with such men, who is left for them to use save the unjust, the incontinent, and the slavish? The unjust are trusted because they are afraid, just as the tyrants are, that someday the cities, becoming free, will become their masters. The incontinent are trusted because they are at liberty for the p…

Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, A…

"Humanity had thought itself sufficient, and even now we think we can escape our destiny by our own efforts. Escape!--that is our only thought. To escape from the insanity, the hell of modern life is all we wish. But we cannot escape!!! We must go through this hell, and accept it, knowing it is the love of God that causes our suffering. What terrib…

So what will we do? Will we remain on the shore, dipping our toes in the water now and then, or will we plunge in, fully, recklessly, trusting that this river will carry us where we need to go? That is what true love is—it is a surrender, a letting go of our need to control, to manage, to predict. It is a wild rumpus, a leap into the unknown, a cry…

You may remember the Green Knight arriving at Camelot after fifteen days straight of feasting. King Arthur has asked for a story so that the tribe could remember itself but none of the assembled have the gumption to respond. A deeper story was required. Perfectly on time, the Green Knight bursts through the door. In the act of being beheaded but th…

I go on a walkabout through life and death, saying what needs to be said, taking our human condition seriously, and being thoughtful about the big picture.

The basic question in this vortex is whether man can be liberated from fear. This is far more important than arming or supplying him with medicines—for power and health are prerogatives of the unafraid. In contrast, the fear besets even those armed to the teeth— indeed, them above all. The same may be said for those on whom abundance has been raine…

"To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his…

Propaganda is made, first of all, because of a will to action, for the purpose of effectively arming policy and giving irresistible power to its decisions.* Whoever handles this instrument can be concerned solely with effectiveness This is the supreme law. which must never be forgotten when the phenomenon of propaganda is analyzed. Ineffective prop…

No pressure, no diamond. You don’t become a good captain by never meeting a storm. And so, at the end of your life – many years from now God willing – there is but one tree, vines threaded gloriously and ramshackley together – holy in its way – offering you a place to sit down and rest awhile, its branches sagging under the weight of timeless fruit…

No matter how much we love the city, or our home, or the land, they will never love us back. They do not give birth to hope. They destroy us in the pursuit of it. And so, to survive you must learn to recognize those who don’t hope, who aren’t really alive, and be wary of their doomed decisions. They are to be avoided at all costs because their fear…

The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression. The achievement-subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the…

Like is the digital Amen. When we click Like, we are bowing down to the order to domination. The smartphone is not just an effective surveillance apparatus; it is also a mobile confessional. - Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics

“That kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere- not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

We are mud people with a holy breath sweeping through us. That is a comfort, Jesus says. Not tree people so much, or zebra people, or pomegranate people, but mud people. There is a primality in it. It is an image we can get behind. It is not nice. It is not a florid Renaissance sketch, but something we can imagine seeing daubed on a cave wall befor…

“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.” Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence