On Thursday, three days before Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIV delivered a message that went straight to the point. “Leadership is not measured by authority, but by the willingness to kneel.” That’s humility. Not the kind we admire in passing. The kind that asks something of us. Today, when leadership is measured by loudness and control, Leo offered a different...

The day after her fall in the women’s downhill at the Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, Lindsey Vonn posted a message on Instagram. Not just a medical update,  but a reflection: “I dreamt, I tried, I jumped.” No polish. Just truth. “Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying....

I had just learned of the passing of a good friend and colleague, Colman McCarthy when the memories began to return. Before I ever met him, he had already lived a life that quietly defied the usual measures of success. For nearly three decades, from 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post, covering politics, religion, health, sports,...

“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”— Yvon Chouinard “Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem”—Eric Hoffer “Retreat, Hell! We’re just advancing in another direction.”–General O.P. Smith, UN Forces Leader, Korean War. “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right”–Albert Einstein. “Of...

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1838 Voltaire once said, “Common sense is not so common.” Nearly three centuries later, that...

Wisconsin’s night sky opened to a rare sight, one usually reserved for places far colder and farther north—the Northern Lights. The colors pulled against each other, as if the sky itself were wrestling with something unsettled. Striking, but what held me wasn’t the sky; it was everything beneath it: a farmhouse, some outbuildings, a scatter of lights. Chaos above; calm...

I’ve read and re-read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address many times. Today, its words and meaning echo more loudly than ever. “Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” Lincoln refused to paint one side as righteous and the other as...

“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” – Henry David Thoreau I first read Walden back in high school. At the start, the pace felt slow, but once I settled into the rhythm, I was pulled in. Henry David Thoreau wasn’t simply a nature lover; he was...

“The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.” Those words, spoken by Erika Kirk at her husband Charlie’s memorial service, cut through grief and politics with startling clarity. They were not about party or power. They were about...

Washington is far too often remembered for its scandals than its triumphs—a reality that would have stunned and saddened our first president. Yet history’s true measure lies with those who chose conscience over expedience, and duty over ambition.  Their choices came at a cost, but they show us what integrity in public life looks like—and how it can still guide...