These essays explore how persons are formed through attention, perception, and desire as participation in reality and in the divine life.
Featured Essays
- “The Annunciation, Grief, and Participation” – a homily
A theological reflection on Mary, loss, and participation in the life of Christ.
→ Read - ”The Original Vision: Edward Robinson and the Spiritual Life of Children”
A retrieval of Edward Robinson’s curiously neglected study of spiritual experience and its implications for education.
→ Read - “Everyday Trinity: Theology, Prayer, and the Christian Life”
An exploration of Trinitarian theology as lived practice within Anglican life.
→ Read
Theology & Formation
My theological writing explores how persons are formed through participation in the life of God, the practices of the Church, and habits of perception shaped by worship, Scripture, and discipleship. Drawing especially on Bonaventure, sacramental theology, theological aesthetics, and the history of Scriptural commentary, this work examines formation as a participatory and embodied account of formation.
“Everyday Trinity: Theology, Prayer, and the Christian Life” (2021)
“The Structure of Theology: Creation and Re-creation in the Breviloquium and Hugh of St. Victor’s De sacramentis” (2018)
Originally presented at the international conference on Bonaventure at St. Bonaventure University and later published in Saint Bonaventure: Friar, Teacher, Minister, Bishop, this essay examines Bonaventure’s account of creation, knowledge, and spiritual ascent as a unified vision of formation.
“History & The Hexaëmeron” (2017)
Explores what kind of perception is required to see creation as creation.
“Contemplating Genesis 1 as a Political Act” (2015)
Early Christian interpreters of Genesis 1—especially Philo, Origen, Basil, and Ambrose—understood creation as a site of moral, ascetical, and communal formation. From my book with Matt Tapie, Reading Scripture as a Political Act (Fortress Press).
Childhood, Spirituality, & Imagination
This work explores childhood as a mode of perception, receptivity, and spiritual attentiveness rather than merely an early developmental stage. Drawing on Edward Robinson, children’s spirituality, literature, and theological anthropology, these essays examine how wonder, imagination, and participation shape human becoming and religious life.
“Childhood & the Dangers of the Storied Self” (2021)
Contemporary emphases on narrative identity obscure the fragility and contingency of the self. Children often inhabit a mode of attention not yet consolidated into a fixed “story,” and that this openness allows for forms of perception and encounter that adults risk losing.
“Our Children Might Return to Church, but Our Grandchildren Most Likely Won’t” (2018)
The apparent return of children to the Church may conceal a deeper erosion that becomes visible in their children. The question is not whether individuals return, but whether the conditions necessary for faith—embodied, communal, and liturgical—are being handed on at all.
Education, Literacy, & Attention
My work in education examines how attention, literacy, pedagogy, and institutional life shape human agency and participation. Drawing on philosophy of education, classroom practice, and literacy intervention, I explore the conditions under which students learn to become thoughtful readers, responsible participants in community, and capable public thinkers.
Technology, AI, & Human Formation
My recent work on artificial intelligence and technological culture explores how emerging technologies shape attention, judgment, agency, and communal life. Rather than approaching AI primarily as a technical problem, this work asks what forms of participation, wisdom, and human formation contemporary technologies encourage or erode.
Substack
New essays and ongoing work are published here.
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