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CEDE: Odyssey Project

So Ate died this week. At least, her boss thought she did when she slept through all eleven of her alarms. Although it wasn’t funny for her, it was funny for me—funny as in strange. Over the past few years, it had become a habit of mine when entering any social gathering, “Would any of these people come to my funeral?” A morbid thought, yes. Apparently, a necessary one. Merely in the second module of my Catholic Entrepreneurship and Design Experience course CEDE), I was assigned to write my own eulogy. Like her father, mother, and older sister, Sr Isabel Marie was extremely passionate about life. While homeschooling from birth through high school, she participated in many extracurricular activities such as theater groups, speech and debate clubs, and dance classes, and was an active member of her parish, St Michael’s Catholic Church, volunteering in several choirs and participating in parish events. Soon after, I was assigned the accompanying module project, “Designing Your Life”. The...

The Hiding Place: The Glass Half-Full (With Eyes Closed)

Readers of Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place are often puzzled on the meaning of the significant title: “hiding place”. What could it mean? There was the secret room with which she hid Jews, there was the crack in the wall which housed her neighbors the ants, there were innumerable “hiding places” in which ten Boom took refuge. What readers are missing here is the meaning of refuge, for a hiding place is more than physical security. Likewise, it is more than reading the Gospels as escapism or a talisman against evil, spiritual forces. In her autobiography The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom discusses the true hiding place as abandonment upon God’s will, her journey towards acceptance of her vocation, and the difficulties on her pilgrimage. Ten Boom starts her chronological autobiography with an out-of-time description of her happy life in Haarlem. “Childhood scenes rushed back at me out of the night, strangely close and urgent. Today I know that such memories are the key not to the ...

Clive Staples

 January 8, 2021 Clive Staples Lewis Christian Hopefully Heaven Clive Staples Lewis! There is one thing that I will not tolerate, and that is name-calling. I have put up with many things in the duration of our correspondence—including your outrageous declarations of love—but here I draw the line. I am not some perverted desire for your darling “Miss C”, nor am I a thrill that comes from a glimpse of the mountains or a snatch of Wagner. Honestly, Jack. If I didn’t know you better, I would say you didn’t know me at all. I do know you have faced certain difficulties during your pilgrimage from Romanticism to Christianity, but I expect common courtesy from a man I’ve practically raised. Don’t dispute my claim! I still remember when you first noticed me—it was in your new house and you were trying to remember that small garden you and your brother made. You were small then, and you were so disappointed when you realized I was only visiting. But I remember you were consoled with my gifts...

Remembrance and Rejuvenation: The Gettysburg Address


There were too many bodies. There were stacked coffins waiting to be filled on the day that President Lincoln delivered his presidential remarks to dedicate the Soldier’s National Cemetery at Gettysburg (Wills). The Battle of Gettysburg, spanning July 1-3, 1863, is considered the turning point in the American Civil War because it placed the Confederacy on the defensive. It had the greatest number of casualties from both sides at 46,000-51,000 men (GettysburgPA.gov). After two years of civil war and no satisfactory victory visible in the near future, the Union citizens and soldiers were beginning to drag their feet—even their most recent victory was bittersweet with high casualties and no resounding victory for the Union. The Union army was demoralized and disheartened, and they didn’t know if what they were fighting for was even worth it. On the global stage, the great American Experiment was crumbling, not even one century old. The Union decided to lick their wounds, establishing the ...

The Model Millionaire: A Character Analysis

In a satirical context, a caricature is widely considered to hold a negative connotation.  Caricatures, after all, are imitations in which certain traits are amplified for comedic and ironic purposes—sometimes with malicious intent.  In Oscar Wilde’s short story The Model Millionaire, the character of Hughie Erskine is held up to be a caricature of an middle-upper-class gentleman in love.  In The Model Millionaire, Wilde describes him as “wonderfully good-looking…as popular with men as he was with women…and [having] every accomplishment except that of making money”.  He goes on to call him “a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession”.  Wilde intends Hughie to be a sympathetic creature, with a good heart but not a brilliant head, whose love is hampered by his lack of funds.  This prototyping can lead to readers classifying Hughie with more flat, non-developmental characters—but Wilde shows where Hughie’s virtues lead to sati...

Pondering Sports from the Sidelines

Sometime I think that sports are the just the parent’s way of getting this obnoxious child out of the house for an hour every day. As for my family, sports was a foreign, alien thing that we watched somewhat trepidatiously from afar. My career in sports was—and still is—not impressive. I’ve danced since I was three, on-and-off because we travelled a lot. My sister and I started swim as soon as my mother could trust us not to scream and flail once our toes touched the water. Since then, a few bruises and scrapes, several running and other dance programs later, I still have not touched a football, my experience with golf is the miniature sort, and my basketball-playing friends think I’m hilarious. It’s a problem parents throughout the United States have faced. Almost every parent has asked themselves: should we force our children into sports?  The children will learn from the experience. Without sports, children may not develop the habits needed to thrive later in life. Psychiat...