Top Ten Posts of 2015

-
As 2015 draws to a close, I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to share books and articles from others that have prompted reflections and thoughts, as well as sharing experiences from the my own journey here. While my weekly collection of "Four Articles and a Poem" draws a certain readership, I have excluded them from this list. Hence, many posts in this list are commentaries and reviews of books. I am especially grateful for the ways that readers have interacted with what I have posted here. Conversation is at the heart of he time that I put into this blog.

So, I share a series of my ten favorite posts from the year, posts that help engage us in what I believe to be significant conversations.

  1. 50 Ideas for Making Laudato Si' part of Parish Life. My top post of the year is my most viewed and a post that has been subsequently published elsewhere. Pope Francis' Laudato Si' was such a landmark work, I enjoyed writing these  ideas on how to live the encyclical in the local parish.
  2. Zuckerberg's "Year of Books." My reading this year has been highly influenced by Mark Zuckerberg's list. His decision to share his reading this year introduced me to new writers and a deeper immersion into cultures and science with which I was less familiar. It really has been a joy to accompany Zuckerberg in his reading.
  3. The End of Power: So What Do We Do? The best book of Zuckerberg's list may well have been his first, Moisés Naím's The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What it Used to Be.
  4. Mons. Jack Egan and Chicago. Jack Egan was an amazing priest and a model to many, including me. I spent some time reading a biography this year, a real joy!
  5. Blessed, indeed, are the Organized. Jeffrey Stout gave me a new book to recommend to those interested in organizing. It is a great book, and I am glad to share the good news.
  6. No More "Scissor Charts." Robert Putnam, Harvard's esteemed sociologist, published an engaging account of his hometown, Port Clinton, OH and other cities across the U.S. Sadly, his research indicates that many of our kids are failing, and he provides some suggestions on how we might take better care of Our Kids.
  7. From a Father to his Son: Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me." The National Book of the Year, this book will be on many people's year-end list.
  8. The New Jim Crow: A First Look. Michelle Alexander's book was an important read. This post was the first of four to reflect upon it.
  9. Rational Ritual and Social Change. Another Zuckerberg pick, Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge by Michael Suk-Young Chwe, popularizes serious academic work in game theory.
  10. The Light of the Heart's Desire: The Dark Light of Love. Fr. John S. Dunne, C.S.C. was a mentor and friend. This posthumous work was a great gift, an opportunity to re-encounter an old friend.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Más sabe el diablo. . .

-
Image
It's a phrase of Mexican origin, I'm told:  " Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo ." It translates to "The devil knows more because he is old than because he is the devil." Often, proverbs in our native tongue do not surprise us as they are so common. We may not think twice about an expression like "The apple does not fall far from the tree," but its use in another language requires an explanation of what the phrase implies. Because a phrase is well-known to us, it may not captures us quite the way that one from a second language might. Sometimes expressions are so particular that they only can be understood in a particular context. [Another wonderful Mexican phrase, " No me cae el veinte ," refers to a 20 peso coin getting stuck in a pay phone. The adage is a means of expressing that the speaker does not understand a concept that the other has shared-- just as the coin is stuck in the payphone and one cannot yet proceed with ...
Read more

The Marvels of Murdoch Mysteries: Characters, History, Science, and Faith

-
Image
I do not watch much television. I have a few favorites like The Daily Show. I watch news. I am not heavily invested in television series. Nonetheless, I love Murdoch Mysteries . I got into it when I spent some time in Canada last year. Subsequently, Mom DVRs it each week on the local PBS station, and we have watched other seasons borrowed from the public library. Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian television drama series aired on both City and CBC Television, titled The Artful Detective on the Ovation cable TV network, featuring Yannick Bisson as Detective William Murdoch, a police detective working in Toronto, Ontario, around the turn of the twentieth century. Murdoch Mysteries was initially adapted for television from Maureen Jennings ’s popular Detective Murdoch series of novels as three made-for-TV films broadcast in Canada in 2004 and 2005. The series first premiered in Canada in January 2008. Detective Murdoch is conspicuously Catholic. As he arrives at the scene of each hom...
Read more

Time for "Just Mercy"

-
Image
Alongside Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and john a. powell's Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society , another extraordinary book on race and the criminal justice system is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. A public-interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor and the incarcerated, especially the condemned, Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative , an Alabama-based group that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. In an historic win for EJI, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Graham v. Florida , 2010 , that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are uncon...
Read more