Fr. Gregory Pine

But when you gather around a fire, you can feel life returning.

And I think that's what conversation is meant to do.

It's meant to welcome people into a human exchange, a human encounter.

But in order to do that, like we need to build each other up because if we're always criticizing each other, whether to each other's faces or behind each other's backs, then there's a suspicion which keeps us at a distance and we're never going to be open up.

We're never going to be able to open up.

So I think that, yeah, the basic idea is the promise of communion is real, but that we need to discipline our faculty of speech in pursuit thereof.

I think that the development of one's character proceeds by stages.

And I think a lot of people find themselves in between states, as it were.

It's not like a stepwise function.

So whatever, I'm thinking of slope intercept form right now, y equals mx plus b, because that comes up sometimes.

Yep, okay.

So leave pre-algebra at the door next time.

Okay, so the promise is that it becomes easier, prompter, yet more joyful to act out of those kind of good dispositions.

So I think like a lot of what we're doing as we seek to respond

to the various goods in our life generously is we're addressing various obstacles or hindrances.

Like a lot of times when we recognize like, I'd like to be more attached to this good, it will mean a kind of detachment from other things.

Like if I'm going to be wholeheartedly for this, I'm going to have to leave other things behind.

So you think about like an athlete, for instance.

Let's say that, you know, a talented basketball player, the point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers is named Tyrese Maxey.

Let's say at the age of 12, he came to appreciate that he was better than a lot of his classmates.