The Second

On my shelf are many leadership books, which I loved for their emphasis on serving others.  But always I stumbled over the nagging question which came in various forms, "What is your calling?  What is your Vision?"  These questions have the ironic effect of turning a desire to serve others into a desire to aggrandize myself, an endeavor entirely predicated on the thing that drives me .  This is not the fault of the questions, which must be asked, but of the manifold deceptions that turn all things into grist for pride.  So any proper answer to these necessary questions would not center on me and would account for my natural proclivities.  For years no satisfying answer came. Lately, however, one of Fr. Hopko's maxims suggested itself as the answer. Be an ordinary person. The leadership imperative as I have understood it, finding one’s core motivation, bears no relevance to this maxim.  And I've begun to catch a glimpse of what I might lo...

If you have studied other languages, or studied in detail the grammar of your own, then you’ll have discovered the irregularities associated with the commonest words.   The most basic word of all, “is”, conjugates and declines in ways counter to the general patterns of lesser verbs.   I’m no linguist, but I’ve long believed that happened because of the high frequency of usage.   Practices shared constantly among so many can (often must) adapt quickly to the idiosyncrasies of each participant under innumerable changing circumstances.   Words and practices subjected to that much stress will differ from those that are not, like hoodoos standing above mere sand. This pattern where regularity of use causes irregular form also shows up in the calendar—yes, that collection of days and months.   My noticing of this came on a random Friday the 13 th years ago, when curiosity prompted me to question some basics about the calendar that normally go unnoticed.  ...

The last time I heard the word "husbandry" was about 20 years ago when asking my fellow sandwich maker at the university restaurant what he was studying.  He said, "Animal Husbandry."  My wonder at the coupling of "husband" with "animal" has not ceased, primarily by having planted an extremely important verb into my mind: "to husband" That idea alone blossomed into a rich image only slightly grasped in the following etymology given by the free on-line dictionary:     from Old Norse húsbóndi ‘master of a house,’     from hús ‘house’ + bóndi ‘occupier and tiller of the soil.’     The original sense of the verb was ‘till, cultivate.’ Granted, the verb “to husband” is never used.  Nevertheless this original concept of cultivating seems to be the key missing idea from today’s noun.  I can only speculate how this verb also happens to associate with marriage, but it would seem to be an ancient idea.  And this seemin...