We humans are destined to live in troubled times. As novelist and screenwriter William Goldman puts it in The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

Goldman echoes the words of Jesus, who made this clear to His followers, “In this world, you will have tribulation.” Trouble is the norm, not the exception, and troubled hearts always tend toward paralysis and polarization.

In troubled states, one wants desperately either to despair and quit, or to do something. But what?

Take a moment to imagine a time when someone was truly interested in you.

What would it be like for you to give this same kind of attention to your spouse, to your children, and to others?

This Christmas, consider giving the greatest gift of all: your sacred presence.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we find three major players, each with a different orientation toward life:

• The younger brother who seeks to ESCAPE and INDULGE
• The older brother who seeks to PERFORM and CONTROL
• The father who seeks TO KNOW and TO LOVE

A true education must promote knowing and loving, not performing or indulging.

To believe in Divine Providence is to accept that we do not always know what is best, and the world does not conform to our will but to God's.

Slogans like "Be your way" and "Just do it," slogans that encourage us to follow any and all desires, may be good for sales, but they're horrible for souls.

As the spider is made for building silk webs, so we are made for building relations with persons and things. Our brains are designed for and dependent upon the creation of meaningful relations with persons and things.

Humans are not mere matter or a body directed by some external soul. They are a body-soul unity. In this dense discussion of these primary approaches to understanding humanity, we propose that a proper understanding of human nature will necessarily inform right relationship and education.