Humanities Center

Such is this steep ascent, / That it is ever difficult at first, / But more a man proceeds, less evil grows. / When pleasant it shall seem to thee, so much / that upward going shall be easy to thee / as in a vessel to go down the tide, / then of this …

Psychologist Steven Pinker ignited a firestorm in 1997 by infamously claiming that music is auditory cheesecake—nothing but a pleasant by-product of the processes of evolutionary selection and not essential for human survival or reproduction.[1] Unlike language, which he believes to be biologically adaptive, Pinker argues that music is merely a technology that humans have invented …

I don’t read fantasy anymore. I used to spend hours on end sitting in my bed with my nose buried in fantasy books. I loved the magical world penned into existence by J.K. Rowling, mythical creatures from Brandon Mull, mystic adventures of Obert Skye’s books, and the epic stories from J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. …

My bedroom floor is a boulevard of broken resolutions every December 31st. Its detritus is varied, but connected: the calendar I bought especially for my GetFit exercise plan—it featured cats and monkeys doing yoga in outrageously ugly sweatsuits, which so inspired me (if they can bend and stretch, certainly I can try to touch my …

We’d just concluded a podcast discussion with Robyn Wrigley-Carr, an Australian theologian. Abby Thatcher, our Humanities Center intern who produces most of the episodes, noted how thoughtful Robyn’s answers had been. I agreed: “I love talking with people of spiritual insight. They’re so much more interesting than people who just know stuff.” I began that …

The poet Pauli Murrey once stated, “True community is based upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity [that] affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together.” [1] This quote eloquently describes the importance of embracing diversity in community. By defining community as a connection, Murrey’s powerful statement reminds …

The summers of my childhood are, to my memory, a collection of long road trips. I spent hours on end stuck in the backseat of a car across from my sister while our dad kept driving like the Energizer bunny, taking us from the middle of a cornfield in Illinois to our yearly family reunion …

As cooler temperatures descend on the northern latitudes and higher elevations of the northern hemisphere, for many people, thoughts of the holiday season come to mind and with those thoughts, the plan to go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or both. Going home for the holidays is a time-honored tradition that most people thoroughly enjoy. …