Still in the current
On raising a son in a violent world when you still love violent stories. A theological examination of what gets passed on when the tradition you’re handing on is one you’re still inside.
Habituated Thought
Essays on Christian theology, virtue ethics, and masculine formation. Long-form writing on what it means to be formed by the story of Jesus — through worship, scripture, and the life of the church.
Latest posts
The hidden king
Christian theology and masculine formation meet the quest narrative: why the story that saved me as a boy may be the same story I still haven't escaped.
Armor is not strength
A Christian theology essay on restraint as virtue—exploring Aristotle, Aquinas, kenosis, and Lonesome Dove through the lens of a father watching his son learn what he hasn't.
Knowing what to overlook
A ☕️☕️☕️ essay in seven parts. I. It was an ordinary Tuesday evening in October, the kind that arrives in the middle of a season before you've finished adjusting to it. One daughter at soccer practice. The other three kids running around on the open field nearby with a loose energy that falls somewhere between play and negotiation. I was on the sideline, present enough to count heads, far enough…
The other comes first
We've been forming men to recognize the stranger. What we need are men who can encounter the other. On Ahmed, Du Bois, Girard, Levinas, Moonlight—and what to hand a ten-year-old son.
Everyone knows that sound
On gun culture, the Western myth, and Christian nonviolence — what a father hands on to his son, even when he's trying to hand on something different.
An elegy is not formation
What does Christian virtue ethics have to offer fathers raising sons? An essay on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, James Baldwin, and masculine formation.