Category: Life

And Wait . . . There’s More

When I started writing She Teaches Me Still about Phyllis Le Peau, my remarkable wife of forty-seven years, I wondered if I’d have enough for a whole book. But as I gained momentum, conducted interviews, and found her appointment calendars, her prayer journals, her ministry newsletters and more, I realized the real issue was instead what to leave out.

That’s why I have launched a companion website for the book which includes:

  • Letters and other documents mentioned in the book
  • Photos from her family
  • Phyllis’s favorites–recipes, books, movies, songs, and games (oh, how she loved games)
  • Links to the books and articles she wrote

Also there are two ways you can connect:

1. Sign the Guestbook. Please visit the website and leave a comment on the Guestbook found toward the bottom of the home page.

2. Sign up for the She Teaches Me Still Blog. Also, at the bottom of the home page, please sign up for the blog/newsletter where I’ll be offering more stories and reflections about that crazy, funny, inspiring person so many loved. I’d be glad for you to join me there too.

The offer for a gift copy of She Teaches Me Still (print book or ebook) still stands. Just write me at[email protected].

I’d be glad to send it your way.

A Gift for All

My wife of forty-seven years, Phyllis, was one of the most remarkable, memorable people you may have ever met. Of course, I’m biased, but many others said the same thing.

Take Rick Richardson of Wheaton College, for example. He said, “Phyllis was one of the most spectacular and magnificent human beings I have ever known. What a lover of God and people! What a loving woman who always believed in you and could challenge your socks off at any time!”

Many who read the stories I posted about Phyllis on Facebook over the last few years asked if I would put those in a book. While no book could contain her expansive and magnetic personality, I had to try. The result is She Teaches Me Still which has just been released in print, ebook, and audio book editions, along with a companion website (where you can read chapter 1).

As the title implies, Phyllis had a profound influence on me, more than anyone else ever has. And she still does. She was a person of energy, love, and fun. She was so secure and grounded, she could easily laugh loudly at her own mistakes and foibles. Hundreds experienced her uncanny ability to make them feel like the only person in the room.

Phyllis’s life was a gift.

One motivation for writing was to leave something of substance for our fifteen grandchildren—when they turn fifty! If you’ve reached that “level of maturity,” you probably experienced what I did: a new desire to know more about my parents and grandparents. What was life like for them? What challenges did they face? By the time I was asking those questions, however, all of mine were all gone and most of what I wanted to know had disappeared in the mist.

I also wanted to give a gift to her friends and the rest of the family. They loved her infectious joy and the stories about her startling encounter with a motorcycle gang, a medical crisis at 30,000 feet, her lifelong ambition to adopt children, her outsized optimism in the face of a flooded basement, and the spectacular practical jokes she pulled off in nursing school.

Many also appreciated her practical wisdom in action in stories about her family, parenting, hospitality, compassion, love for Jesus, her readiness to admit mistakes and miscues.

And yes, though I’ve tried to be honest about her limitations and weaknesses (she’d want it no other way), clearly I wrote this as a love letter to the most alive person I ever met.

Because Phyllis’s life was a gift to so many, I am offering the book as my gift to you. All you have to do is send your address to [email protected] and I’ll be happy to pop it in the mail.

I would be delighted to send you a copy.

Boys and Men Are in Trouble

It’s easy to slap shallow Left or Right political explanations and solutions on the struggles men are facing today. If we really want to help men and women, we have to leave the politics behind. In Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves explains why.

  • In education: Boys underperform in school and women now earn 60% of bachelor’s degrees, a near reversal from fifty years ago.
  • In mental health: Men are three to four times more likely to die by suicide than women.
  • In the workplace: “Male jobs have been hit by a one-2 punch, of automation and free trade. Machines pose a greater threat to working men than to women for two reasons. First, the occupation’s most susceptible to automation are just more likely to employ men…. By contrast, women make up most of the workforce in relatively automation-safe occupations, such as healthcare, personal services, and education.” (21)
  • In the family: “In 2020, one in five children (21%) were living with a mother only, almost twice as many as in 1968 (11%).” (41)

While Reeves affirms the progress women have made in many areas, he contends we can and should do two things at once—help women and help men.

In fact with more and more women carrying the burden of being both primary breadwinners and primary childcare providers, often the best thing we can do for women is to help the men in their lives get decent jobs and affirm their role in the family.

One problem is that both Left and Right have gone to extremes and politicized the issue, while neither does much about it. “Far away from the front lines of the culture war, the real-world problems of boys and men go largely unaddressed” (129).

Many on both sides, for example, are science deniers. “Many conservatives deny the environmental science of climate change. But many progressives deny the neuroscience of sex differences…. For many progressives, it is now axiomatic that sex differences in any outcomes or behaviors are wholly the result of socialization. . . . But this is simply false. Men do not have a higher sex drive just because society valorizes male sexuality, even if it does. They have more testosterone. Likewise aggression… To be fair, there are some reasonable concerns about how this science will be used…. Natural differences between men and women have often been used to justify sexism. This is mostly an outdated fear. In recent years, most of the scientists identifying natural differences have, if anything, tend to do stress the superiority of women.” (111)

The solution is not, says Reeves, to turn back the clock. That ship has sailed, that train left the station, that rocket blasted off. Our economy has been restructured so dramatically in the last half century that, with few exceptions, families cannot thrive on a single income.

Reeves proposes a variety of concrete, workable changes. Here are just a few of his ideas:

  • In education: Since boys take longer than girls to develop mentally and socially, gradually shift so that boys start kindergarten a year after girls. Many parents already do this so their children will be more athletically developed (and so have a bigger chance of success) in high school and college.
  • In the workplace: With traditionally male jobs continuing to fade away, and with jobs on the rise in health, education and administrative, let’s give more emphasis to recruiting and hiring men. And all of us need to stop thinking male nurses are failed doctors or somehow effeminate.
  • In the family: We need to affirm that dads still matter especially in their roles as protectors and teachers. Research shows that fathers really come into their own when kids hit adolescence–helping them evaluate risks, navigate what it means to stand on their own feet, and give them confidence as they make their way in the world. Reforming the child support system and paid leave policies can also be key.

It’s time to quit fighting battles that no longer exist, to quit exploiting issues to score political points, and start working together to help everyone.

We Never Know Who We’re Talking To

A skinny twenty-two-year-old was freezing in Chicago one November day in 1986. It was 10o. A recent college graduate, he was depressed and had lost fifty pounds. A few years earlier his father and brother had died in a crash. He kept going to Mass for a while, but he had become an atheist. He was angry and certain God didn’t exist.

He had spent much of his time in college smoking weed and reading books. Eventually he stopped smoking pot because it got in the way of his reading. In college it had been kind of cool to be an atheist. He liked nurturing the image of an intellectual. Despite his depression and smoking habit, he got good grades.

Now he had a job in Chicago. As he walked in the frigid weather, someone from the Gideons handed him a free copy of the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs. It was small, about the size of a pack of cards. It had a green cover with a pebble finish. It was so cold that the book was frozen. He had to slap it on his knee to get the pages to open.

In the back he saw a listing of what to read when you have certain feelings or problems. “Anxiety” caught his eye. The listing directed him to Matthew 5–7, and he began reading the Sermon on the Mount. It struck him profoundly, speaking to him directly. He was amazed by how easy it was to take in and how true it seemed.

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt 6:25-29)

Shortly after that he lost the book. The following week he was on a bus going to a job when he noticed that the girl next to him was reading a similar edition. “I had one of those but I lost it,” he told her.

“Oh, here,” she said, “take mine.” He has had that copy with him for the last forty years. He carries it with him in his bag wherever he goes. He doesn’t know who that girl was, but Stephen Colbert still has her edition with her underlines and her notes on the gospels.

Colbert is one of the most well-known entertainers in the country. Unusual for someone in that industry, he has been quite public about his Catholic faith and how it affects his life, his ideas, and how he interacts with people–a faith he renewed after two people took time to connect with him.

When we encounter a waitress with a blank look on her face, when we see someone in line at the store who is disorganized, when we sit next to a skinny kid on a bus—we have no idea who we may be talking to. We may think we know who these people are, but we would be wrong.

Unless we talk to them. Ask some friendly questions. Act with generosity. Treat them like human beings. And not put them in a box.

It could change their life. And ours.

—

Note: Stephen Colbert tells this story on a July 7, 2025, podcast, The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J., which you can listen to here on Apple Podcasts or watch here on YouTube. I recommend listening to the whole interview.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Cancel the Past or Learn from It?

Should we learn from the past or cancel the past? We have more options than those two. But in general, it is better to learn from the past than ignore it. 

Take for example two people on opposite sides of the Civil War. As has been pointed out, even though Lincoln emancipated the slaves and prosecuted the Civil War which ended slavery in the country, he was probably not pure in his views about the races. He thought they should be politically equal but was much more uncertain about whether they should be socially equal to whites. 

Does that mean Lincoln was a reprobate we should completely denounce? No. It means he was a flawed hero.

Then take Stonewall Jackson. He was a stalwart defender of the South and slavery while he was also a very devoted Christian. In contrast to Lincoln whose Christian credentials were ambivalent at best, Jackson read and believed his Bible devoutly. 

Does that mean we should uniformly valorize Jackson? No. He was a man who embodied deep contradictions.

What can we learn from this? We can learn that people are complex. We are each a mixture of motives, of good ideas and good practices and many that are less than ideal. By learning the stories of imperfect heroes and of villains with virtues, we learn about ourselves.

No matter how pure and right, we think our ideas and motives are, they probably aren’t. We should approach ourselves and life with humility.

It means that we may be wrong. Any who have ever changed their minds about anything are admitting they were once wrong—and so could also be wrong now. History, even our own history, teaches us that we should nurture the attitude that we have something to learn from everyone.

Image by Mark Thomas from Pixabay.

My Funeral Plans

Nope. Not dying. At least not yet.

My adult children asked me recently if I had thoughts about what I’d like for my memorial service. Thankfully, I don’t think they are anxious to see me move on to my reward. Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a surprising question, especially since I have no significant health issues. Of course any of us can go at any time. And I am of an age where, statistically, it’s more likely to be sooner than later.

My initial reaction was, “Hey, a memorial service is for you. Not me. I won’t be around. Do whatever is good for you, whatever helps you.”

Then I thought more. When someone close dies, whether suddenly or after an extended illness, the shock and grief can make it hard to make decisions. The brain just doesn’t work as well. Having a bit of an outline of what to do ahead of time, especially when there are plenty of other details pressing in, can make it easier for those left behind. And a plan can help minimize disagreements.

In addition, I’ve come to realize that there is comfort in doing what our loved one wanted, of honoring his or her wishes. Some people want nothing after they die. No funeral. No party. Nothing. Sometimes they are just private people or aren’t uncomfortable with public attention, even positive attention. They’d rather family and friends move on with life with as little interruption as possible. That’s how they want to show their love and care for those left behind.

Others are comfortable giving loved ones a chance to show and share grief, to remember and tell stories of love and laughter. They are aware that deliberately taking time to process our emotions can be important and healthy in moving on.

In either case, knowing one is honoring the person we lost is healing in itself. As a result, I’ve decided to outline a few ideas, giving those I leave behind freedom to modify things as makes sense at the time. (After all, a lot can change in twenty-five years, right!?)

Here are some initial thoughts:

  • Music. I have always loved music. Classical or traditional is good with me. But anything you want will be fine.
  • Hope. Grief and loss, appropriately, are going to be there at such times, likely whether we want them or not. Make room for hope.
  • Love. Make sure everyone knows how much I loved my wife, my kids, and my grandkids. It is a lot. More than I can possibly say.
  • Remembrance. My two older children spoke at their mother’s memorial service. Maybe the two younger ones can have their turn speaking at mine.
  • Don’t fight. That may seem like odd advice, but it is what my parents told me and my siblings before they died, and it was incredibly wise. Grief is strong at such times. Emotions run high. It’s easy to get upset and say things in anger. It’s better to go along with what you think is wrong than to risk breaking relationships.

What else should I be thinking about? I’d love to hear your ideas.

—

Image: Andrew Le Peau

“I’d Never Do That!”

Mary Doria Russell had a problem.

She was teaching anthropology and came to stories of the massive mistakes explorers from the West sometimes made when they first encountered different people groups around the world. Often death, pillaging, and slavery resulted.

Inevitably, students would say something to the effect of, “Oh, I would never make a mistake like that. How could they have done something so stupid?” 

But Russell knew that even though it seemed simple, it wasn’t. How could she adequately explain that first contact is just much more difficult than we can imagine? That’s what motivated her to write her profound, wonderful, absorbing novel The Sparrow.

She imagines a group of intelligent, well-meaning, goodhearted, skilled people who make an effort to meet a species from another world. One reason I especially like the novel is that this is just a great group of people. If I were to go on a multiyear journey, these are absolutely the kind of people I would love to travel with. 

Despite this team having far more gifts, abilities, and experiences than her students or most of us, things go wrong—terribly wrong. Even the most benign actions like trying to improve nutrition for those they meet had disastrous effects they had difficulty anticipating.

Should we never try to help people in other cultures? Should we never try to fix things that seem wrong? That’s not my point.

Rather, when we do, we should approach such efforts with a maximum dose of humility. We need to give the benefit of the doubt to people who act in ways we find wrong or unenlightened. We need to learn as much as we can before we act.

Why? Because we just don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t adequately appreciate the finite, limitations of human knowledge or of our own perspective. Nor do we appreciate enough how our fallen, sinful nature can unconsciously skew our opinions about what is wrong with the world and how to fix it.

What can we do when we encounter people we think are strange or just wrong?

  • Remember how fun it is to learn new, surprising things.
  • Don’t automatically dismiss information or ideas that are contrary to our viewpoints.
  • Remind ourselves that we are finite and that our motives or emotions may be skewing our outlook in ways we aren’t aware of.
  • Ask those we are trying to help what they think would be the best ways we could be of assistance.
  • Remember that all of us—the people we are trying to help as well as those we disagree with—are people with God-given value and dignity.

Try to help others? By all means, and always with great humility.

When We Have No Answers

I have wondered and brooded over the evil in the world for decades. Why does God allow people to do such terrible things to others? Why doesn’t he just stop it all?

In ways, there are no satisfying intellectual answers. And even if there were, I think we, like Job, would still want to tell God a thing or two.

Perhaps that’s why I found Olga Dietlin’s brief reflection on suffering so worthwhile. In her blog this friend treats life’s most difficult challenges not just academically but humanly. She is honest yet hopeful.

Suffering is complex. When we try to give easy answers, we trivialize it and we trivialize others. Olga does none of that. As she says, “Perhaps all suffering is a cosmic heartache—a fracture in the beauty of Creation that cuts straight through the heart of God Himself.”

When all our speculations are done, the question that remains is who we will be in the midst of suffering. That’s why I commend her blog to you. It will only take a few minutes to read. Click on the link here. It will be worth your while.

All Those Dark Futures

The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Ready Player One, The Road—these are just a few of the dozens of dystopian movies and novels that have exploded on the scene in the last twenty years.

Books depicting a future that has crumbled into economic, ecological, social, or dictatorial disaster are not entirely new. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells in the nineteenth century offered several versions. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1936) and George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), however, set the standard for the genre in the last hundred years.

The question I’ve wondered about, however, is why? Why the massive increase in number and popularity? Why all this pessimism? Sarah Irving-Stonebreaker offers one possible explanation.

The Judeo-Christian world view that history is going somewhere, that it has a purpose, has fallen out of favor. Even an atheistic worldview like Marxism which believes that history is headed somewhere—to a workers’ paradise—has also been discredited.

Such positive outlooks have been replaced by a sense that the universe is random and has no purpose. History, therefore, doesn’t matter. “History is not part of any greater story and therefore has little to teach us,” she writes. In fact, our history is merely a source of shame and oppression.* The past cannot and should not tell us who we are, how to act, or where to go.

We are left completely on our own.

While that might seem hopeful to some, it has had the opposite effect. Without a sense of connection to the past and that history is leading us somewhere, all we have left is despair about the future, which is exactly the story that dystopias tell.

Such stories can and do act as cautionary tales. Possibly the first of this genre, Jonathan Swift’s imaginative Gulliver’s Travels (1726) presented a social and political critique of his day. Even the New Testament’s Book of Revelation offers a very dark picture of the future. But it’s purpose is very different than most contemporary apocalyptic visions which may only provide a glimmer of individual hope in the midst of social despair.

Though Revelation may seem confusing, its “main theme is as clear as day: despite present trouble, God is in control, and he will have the final victory. God wins in the end, even though his people at the present live in a toxic culture and are marginalized and even persecuted…. the author’s purpose is to engender hope in the hearts of his Christian readers so that they will have the resolve to withstand the turbulent present.”**

Yes, dystopias can serve a redeeming purpose. But more is needed—the knowledge that we are not alone in our past, in our present, or in our future.

—

*Sarah Irving-Stonebreaker, Priests of History (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2024), 34 and 25-28.

**Tremper Longman III, Revelation Through Old Testament Eyes (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2022), 14.

A Beautiful, Heartbreaking Book

In A Matter of Death and Life, Irv and Marilyn Yolam offer a beautiful, heartbreaking book. In alternating chapters this husband and wife of 65 years write about Marilyn’s final months of fighting cancer. In the last half Irv alone tells his story.

Because this is very much a memoir, they give little advice on how to cope with death and sorrow. They simply relate their own experiences and reflections. For that reason, I find this much easier to read than many books on the topic. I can enter into their story, remembering my own, and grieve with them. 

Irv, being a career therapist, brings a unique double perspective as both one who suffers and one who walks alongside others. Not surprisingly, he honestly tells how hard it is sometimes to follow his own counsel. His reflections on sex, memory and its loss, and facing our own death during grief are also worthwhile.

During the course of all this, he reads some of the books he has published and finds his own past case studies illuminating. I was especially struck by “Irene” who refused to accept counsel from someone like him who had not (at that time) suffered loss. Though the two continue to meet, they hit something of a stalemate. In retrospect Irv now believes his own grieving would make him a better therapist with her even if his counsel wouldn’t change.

Though I give the book a warm recommendation, I did find two things a bit concerning. First, a couple times Irv says most of his clients moved to a healthier place after a year, maybe two. Second, he comments that those who had a good marriage are often able to move forward more quickly than those who have not. I just hope that readers who don’t fit these patterns will realize they are his generalizations. Not everyone experiences grief in these ways. And there may be nothing wrong with those who don’t.

This warm, honest, insightful book movingly intertwines two stories of facing our own death and grieving the death of a loved one.