It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
– Charles Dickens, a Tale of Two Cities
This is written for failed students of history, those who avoided the subject or those who forgot what they once learned cramming for a test. Continue reading
If I want to accomplish something, I sometimes get bulldoggish about it. “Single-minded” describes this trait in a positive light; “stubborn” and “myopic” describe it too. When I flew to Detroit for 12 days this summer for a gathering of Legionary writers, for example, I had no idea the city was practically in Canada; my sights were focused on writing. I wanted to get things done, put words on paper, and lots of ‘em. Read, write, submit, publish—that was the agenda. I could feel that little germ inside me whispering the familiar lie, “You are only as valuable as your work.” But my regal reception in Michigan put that pathogen in its place. 
A few years ago I stumbled upon a book called A Year With the Saints, and instead of reading it cover to cover, I pick it up every once in a while and read one of the twelve chapters, each one corresponding to a different virtue. It’s always the virtue I’m especially lacking at the moment: I read the chapter on Simplicity when I was feeling especially frazzled, the chapter on Humility when I was acting particularly haughty, and the chapter on Diligence when it seemed that everything I did, I put in half the effort – or less – than I should. It was this chapter on diligence, peppered with quotes from the presumably diligent St. Francis de Sales, that stuck with me, and comes back to me, ironically, as summer begins. 
I was working on a short story for my creative writing course when I ran into a problem. The story is about knights and castles, and I wanted the King, Cherathon the Flame, to be an allegorical Christ-figure. But an author can only portray a convincing character if he understands him through and through. What is his temperament? How does he think? What are his motives? This all came down to one key question for me: what is the personality of Jesus Christ?
Up until last weekend, it had been a long time since our family had taken a trip together. In 2012, we had collected enough points to fly our entire family of seven to Europe for two weeks, where we stayed with old friends and toured Belgium and the North of France, made new friends and ate snails and waffles and bread. But in the six years that followed, we stayed pretty close to home, me and my husband, Jamie, jetting off on our own here and there, but always leaving the kids at home. 
