Leah Libresco's Blog, page 19

Using Goodhart’s Law to Find Happiness

My parish kicked off its Adult Sunday School (taught by Dominican friars) this past week with a class on happiness. We started off going through a discussion of all the things happiness is not (wealth, power, fame, honor, etc) and I liked some of the reasoning given about how you could recognize these as not [Read More...]

Speaking on the Benedict Option in Boston & Two Questions

I’m in Boston tomorrow night (Jan 12) for a Theology on Tap on the topic of Accidental Stylites: The Benedict Option and the American Church I’m going to talk about the Benedict Option movement (ways for modern Christians to root their faith in community and friends so that they can wind up living it more [Read More...]

Books on deck for me in 2016

According to my Goodreads account, I read 260 books this past year (that comprised a total of 81.203 pages).  And sixteen of those were books I specifically set out to read in last year’s Books on Deck post. Overall, I think it worked out great to make a list of books I meant to get around to, [Read More...]

My version of the ball drop starts 1600 feet in the air

Over at FiveThirtyEight, I did a little high school physics math to see how high you’d have to start to really drop the New Year’s Eve ball.  And what would happen when it hit the ground. The ball drop in Times Square happens too slowly for my taste. Just before midnight, the LED-studded ball will inch [Read More...]

Lewis, Chesterton, and Card on Our Tolerance for Mystery

I had the pleasure of speaking at Doxacon (a scifi/fantasy convention for theology nerds) in November, and the audio of my talk (“Chesterton, Lewis, and Card on Worldbuilding and Our Tolerance of Mystery”) is now available for streaming!  Here’s the prècis: When a reader picks up a fantasy or science fiction novel, he or she [Read More...]

Praising the Little Way of Pratchett’s Heroes

As the year comes to an end, I’ve written an appreciation of Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, who passed away this year, for Aleteia.  He wrote fiercely moral characters, several of whom were icons of ethics for me. But the kind of sin that Granny talks about isn’t an indulgence in something harmless, [Read More...]

“The Opposite of Kicking People In the Shins” and more from my Crossroads talk

I had a great time visiting the Crossroads Cultural Center last night to talk about my conversion and the witness my friends offered me.  And now they’ve got the video of the talk up! Part 1: Part 2:   And they’ve got the Q&A up too! Part 1: Part 2:

I’m in NYC to talk about explaining your faith

This Wednesday, I’ll be at the Crossroads Cultural Center in New York City to talk about my own conversion and ways to answer questions/have engaging conversations about the Catholic faith.  The event is free and open to the public, and here are all the details:   When: Dec 16, 7pm Where: Crossroads Auditorium (125 Maiden [Read More...]

My Favorite Books of 2015

I’ve put together a list of my favorite books I read for the first time this year (here’s last year’s list).  I’ve shared five of my favorites as part of First Things‘s favorite books of the year, and I’ve got the remaining seven favorites listed in chronological order of my reading below. (And, of course, [Read More...]

Demands for Diverse Faculty and Trigger Warnings At Colleges

I’ve done two recent pieces for FiveThirtyEight looking at activist movements on college campus. Here Are The Demands From Students Protesting Racism At 51 Colleges A list of formal demands made at 51 U.S. campuses has been collected on a website called The Demands. FiveThirtyEight sorted through the list, categorizing each request and looking for patterns [Read More...]