Templar Edification

The emergence of biologically modern humans, as best we can determine from DNA studies and the fossil record, occurred some 300,000 years ago. Cultural artifacts, tools and art, developed perhaps 60,000 years ago. Yet for the majority of our time on this planet, Homo sapiens differed little from other complex primates, small in numbers, modestly shaping our local environment. All that changed roughly 30,000 years ago, when our species formed an alliance, a symbiosis, with another well-adapted predator, the grey wolf. Thus was birthed the dog, and the miracle of domestication. Before we herded sheep, before we rode horses, before the agricultural revolution, human beings loved and raised and lived with dogs. I used to like to think that domestication of the dog was the one unalloyed good that humanity had managed to accomplish. Yet more recent studies indicate that we didn’t tame them; they chose to interact with us. Certain wolves soon discovered that following bands of hunter-gatherer...

When I warn my children of consequences for their bad behavior, I have to be both discerning and sparing; for whatever I threaten, I must then be willing to follow through. One arrow in my quiver that worked particularly well when they were younger was my promise to play one of my black-and-white subtitled samurai films, which I adore and which bore my children to tears. They took this threat seriously, because they knew that I would be happy to carry it out. American and Japanese pop culture have been entwined in a love affair ever since the end of World War II. Few directors on either side of the Pacific have been so influential as Akira Kurosawa. His movies have been remade, often shot for shot, into such familiar titles as The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars, A Bug’s Life, and, yes, even Star Wars. For his part, Kurosawa loved Shakespeare, filming his own medieval Japanese interpretations of Macbeth and King Lear. Most fascinating to me was how he adapted the religious aspe...

Last night our daughters informed me that they had finally grown too old for me to read to them at bedtime. Granted, the younger was in a grumpy mood, having generally gotten too little sleep over the holiday break. But as they are in fifth and seventh grade respectively, I can’t say that they’re entirely off-base. I knew this day would come. Our son was in seventh grade when he likewise asked me to stop reading to him, and I still view that as something of a bittersweet milestone. Together we had read about medieval Japan and World War I and chocolate factories and New England whaling and the Native American invention of lacrosse. I miss those bedside adventures. For as long as I can remember, books have been holy to me. Credit this to my parents, both lifelong educators, and especially to my mother, who read to me from day one—and who taught me to read on my own when, at three years of age, I grew frustrated with my inability to do so. Frugal as they were when I was growing up, my pa...

For 300 years Christianity survived as an illegal religion, sporadically persecuted by the might of the Roman Empire. This meant that a life spent witnessing to the Good News of Jesus Christ often culminated in a brutal and very public death. It’s not that all Christians were killed, of course; but it happened regularly enough, and especially to the most prominent in the community, to affect the entire life of the Church. Indeed, our word for witness, “martyr,” has become synonymous with someone who dies for their faith. And we had to make sense of it, didn’t we? For 300 years the followers of Christ were crucified, beheaded, lit on fire, and thrown to wild beasts. What then did all this violence and suffering mean to the people of God? Where could we find Christ in this? Eucharistic celebrations went underground, literally, as Sunday worship took place in catacombs beneath major cities, atop the bones of the martyrs. To this day, many Christian altars look rather suspiciously like...