Easter in Ordinary

Wrestling with inequality shapes much of current political discourse, it seems, at home and abroad. If you pay attention, you have heard a great deal about growing pay and wealth disparities, the Gini coefficient , and other sundry items, in a growing number of articles and books. The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Professor Keith Payne of UNC-Chapel Hill is an important contribution to this growing bundle of literature. Angus Deaton's The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality  established a powerful set of insights around income and life-expectancy, that health and wealth are two measures of quality of life, from the perspective of the economic sciences. Payne adds immense depth from his personal research and that of others in the field of psychology and neuroscience. Both Deaton (a Nobel Prize-winner) and Payne are fine scholars, and these two books are both eminently readable. Both have important scholarly ci...

Written prior to his death on November 11, 2013, Dark Light of Love was the 23rd book by Fr. John S. Dunne, C.S.C. Personally, Fr. Dunne was a teacher, a mentor, a spiritual guide, and a friend. (See also my post: Journey of the Heart's Desire: The Heart Comes Home .) When I returned from Chile, amid great personal distress, to begin a time of healing and a search for my next steps, this book was one of a handful that accompanied me. Reading the work brought Fr. Dunne's voice back to me, and I appreciated him accompanying me, through this work, amid a difficult period. John, to be less formal, wrote his books a paragraph a day. Each morning, he would write one paragraph and the first sentence of the next paragraph. His prayer and heartfelt reflection would lead him the next morning to write the subsequent paragraph and first sentence. I lived with him two summers as he wrote. Like clockwork, he would take a sabbatical to write every fourth year, even if he did not need it ...