"Bearings"
A Weekly Column by
President Glenn Arbery

“Bearings” is a regular email featuring short essays by Dr. Glenn C. Arbery, our president. If you are interested in receiving it each week, please consider sharing your email address with us. (Past essays are available below.)

Column Archives

2021
Resolutions and Irresolutions (1.6.22)
Why We Pray (12.22.21)
Finals and New Beginnings (12.16.21)
Seeing Wonders (12.9.21)
Why We Teach (12.3.21)
On Being Beholden (11.23.21)
Against Forgetfulness (11.5.21)
God's Truth (10.28.21)
On Being Known (10.13.21)
Holding the Center (9.30.21)
The Night of Faith (9.17.21)
The Lost Boys (9.10.21)
Fear and Joy (8.27.21)
Stand Up Straight (8.19.21)
Summer Reading (8.12.21)
Chuck's Last Deal (8.5.21)
“We shall not cease from exploration...” (7.28.21)
Gifts and Graces (7.15.21)
The Tar of Fraud (7.8.21)
Dante and the Face of Geryon (7.1.21)
Heart and Mind (6.11.21)
But Is It Safe? (5.20.21)
Remembering the Ascension (5.13.21)
Cursive and the Brave New World (5.6.21)
The Abyss of Grievance (4.29.21)
Fields of Culture (4.15.21)
Easter for Misfits (4.9.21)
Edmund Burke and the Progressive Mind (3.18.21)
One Year Later (3.11.21)
Where Babies Come From (2.26.21)
A Deeper Lent (2.19.21)
The Beauty of Persuasion (2.12.21)
Why Literature Matters (2.5.21)
Shakespeare and “Hateful Rhetoric” (1.29.21)
Living at this Hour (1.21.21)
Furies (1.14.21)
2020
Jew and Greek (12.17.20)
Advent in Uncertain Times (12.11.20)
Sitting Bull and the Wrath of Achilles (12.4.20)
Approaching Thanks (11.20.20)
Pilate's Landslide (10.23.20)
The Problem of Eumaios (10.15.20)
Geography of Being (10.9.20)
Late and Soon (10.1.20)
Core Exercises (9.18.20)
Remembering the Normal (8.27.20)
Science and the Beauty of Being (8.14.20)
Summer Reading (7.16.20)
A Song for the Fourth (7.2.20)
Blaming Adam (6.26.20)
Two Cartoons (6.12.20)
Purity and Danger (6.4.20)
The Poet and the Universe of Thought (5.13.20)
Masks and Uncertainties (5.6.20)
Homage to Shakespeare (4.23.20)
Reading Alone (4.15.20)
Julia's Feast Day (4.8.20)
Finding the Center (4.2.20)
Working from Home (3.25.20)
The New March Madness (3.17.20)
The Deep Power of Joy (3.6.20)
A Fast from the Modern Project (2.27.20)
Little Women, J-Lo, and Eve (2.11.20)
A Question of Politics (1.30.20)
The Measure of Christ (1.23.20)
Epiphany and Hope (1.6.20)
2019
The Coming of the Lord (12.17.19)
The Grace of Owing (11.26.19)
Memory and Its Discontents (11.19.19)
Veterans Day (11.11.19)
Energies of Hope (11.6.19)
Heroes of the Fourth Turning (10.25.19)
Conscience of the Age (10.16.19)
An American Music (10.8.19)
Brexit and Evensong (10.1.19)
Europe without Europe (9.23.19)
Wyoming Catholic and the European Future (9.17.19)
Education with Range (9.5.19)
Legalizing the Resurrection (8.30.19)
Not Counting Steps (8.23.19)
Good Beginnings (8.2.19)
Land of Hope (7.3.19)
Education as Estuary (6.28.19)
Summer Reading (6.7.19)
Big Brother's Birthday (5.31.19)
Leaping Like Calves (5.17.19)
Armed with Steel (5.8.19)
A Letter to the Seniors (4.26.19)
Mentors and Rites of Passage (4.12.19)
Horseman and Poet (4.4.19)
A Lenten Realism (3.29.19)
I Call You Friends (3.15.19)
Up from Entitlement (3.7.19)
Odysseus and Abraham Lincoln (2.21.19)
Reading Dostoyevsky (2.14.19)
Liberty and Sacrifice (1.31.19)
2018
Pull Down Thy Vanity (12.19.18)
The Problem with Ralph (12.7.18)
Thesis Week (11.29.18)
In Thanks (11.22.18)
Accredited! (11.15.18)
Civility and Noblesse Oblige (11.2.18)
Starlight, Wild Berries, and the Robes of God (10.26.18)
Macron and Mothers (10.19.18)
Reason and its Usurpers (10.11.18)
The Cave and the Consumer (9.28.18)
Bragging Rights (9.21.18)
The Last Infirmity (9.14.18)
Honor and Fame (9.6.18)
Baptizing Ambition (8.30.18)
Walking into Wisdom (8.23.18)
A Double Challege (8.17.18)
Knowledge For Its Own Sake (8.10.18)
Thanks to Pope Paul VI (7.26.18)
The Whole Context (7.16.18)
Ruby Turpin's Pig Parlor (6.29.18)
Good Diversity (6.22.18)
The Paradox of Courage (6.15.18)
Ideology and the Humanities (6.1.18)
Ordinary Time (5.24.18)
Commencement 2018 (5.10.18)
The Birth of Theater (4.26.18)
Epicurean by Default (4.19.18)
The Paradox of Courage (4.13.18)
Forms and Parishioners (4.5.18)
Unbought Grace (3.23.18)
Remaking the Culture (3.15.18)
Generations of Leaves (3.1.18)
O Oratory! (2.22.18)
Father Simeon's Vows (2.15.18)
Shaping the Culture (2.1.18)
What Freedom Means (1.25.18)
Earning the Tradition (1.18.18)
2017
Toward Bethlehem (12.21.17)
Finals (12.13.17)
Advent and Melancholy (12.6.17)
Being Roman (11.29.17)
Early Thanks (11.17.17)
Innovations of Modernity (11.9.17)
The Elegy Season (11.2.17)
The Tyranny of the Present Moment (10.25.17)
Smartest Students in America? (10.13.17)
Sacred Weakness (10.6.17)
Back to the Wild (9.29.17)
Hopkins' "Pied Beauty" Through the Eyes of a Student (9.22.17)
Looking for Camillus (9.15.17)
The Power of Names (9.8.17)
Out of Eclipse (8.31.17)
Sacred Daylight (8.17.17)
The Primal Plot (8.11.17)
Catholic Realism II (8.5.17)
Catholic Realism (7.28.17)
Making and Revealing (7.6.17)