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"The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with all who are born of the Spirit." John 3:8
Seeking Truth, Goodness, Beauty.
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Why a Society Needs Art
Effects of Good Government on the City Life, Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1290–1348), Wikimedia Commons When we learn about a great writer, musician or other artist, one of the most interesting facts about their life is where they were born and raised. A good town or city will produce good artists; Florence, Venice, Salzburg, and Prague are just some examples of cities that raised great writers, artists and composers to appreciate beauty with their beautiful built environments. Surro
David Kilby
4 days ago2 min read
How to Find Your Ikigai
Imagined with Chat GPT Have you ever wondered what you're doing with your life? Have you ever tried to pursue the grand ideas in your head, only to have them smash into the brick wall of reality? If so, you might need to begin a noble quest, one that each of us should go on at some point in our lives: the quest for your ikigai. Ikigai is Japanese for "life purpose". It's a combination all of your interests, passions, skills, and experiences with what the world needs and what
David Kilby
Oct 235 min read
The Danger in Forbidding Creative AI Work
Imagined with ChatGPT I love CatholicCulture.org. It was among the first Catholic commentary sites I started following, about 20 years ago. But when I saw the pledge on their site "to avoid the use of AI to simulate or replace activities and productions of thought and creativity," I had to sigh. Every generation, a debate like this about a new technology comes around. In the stone age, they probably even had a similar argument about the wheel. When I was a teenager, the debat
David Kilby
Oct 227 min read
Searching for Truth in a Fragmented Age
Imagined with ChatGPT Despite all of the media available to us today, searching for the truth within the mess of all of it can be difficult. That's why Rambling Spirit tries to distill all of the information out there into one big picture. Rambling Spirit is more than just books, a blog and a magazine. It is a tool for navigating the search for truth, goodness, and beauty in a fragmented world. That's the thematic continuity running through everything here. The truth is not a
David Kilby
Oct 53 min read
I Am Not a Christian
The Denial of Saint Peter by Gerard van Honthorst (c. 1620) In my search for truth, I have come to the rude awakening that I have been lying to myself for a vey long time. For my entire adult life, I've claimed to be a Christian. For most of that time, I said I was Catholic; and I do believe Catholics are Christians. That's not the point. There was a short period of time in my teens when I didn't seen the difference, so I called myself Christian and Catholic, while going to c
David Kilby
Oct 33 min read
Why the Christian Vision Matters
The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows), 1879. Frederic Edwin Church I've been living alone on the top of a tall mountain for years ... figuratively speaking. I climbed up here to get a better view of the big picture, but now real life and the real world seem out of reach. I've always wanted to see more of my environment; to get a better vantage point, so to speak. Ever since I was a kid, I made sure I got the window seat on planes. When I can see more, the vision
David Kilby
Sep 293 min read
Can Conservatives Embrace New Technologies?
Imagined with ChatGPT Can we stop pitting the past against the future with our polarizing ideologies? As a conservative, I feel compelled to romanticize the past and be wary of the future. It's a tiresome position to take, because there is so much good in our past and so much potential good in our future. Why not use the present to figure out how to wisely embrace both? The future of humanity should exhibit a practical blend of new technology and the natural, holistic solutio
David Kilby
Sep 285 min read
Unspoken Theories about Aliens and God
ru.gw2ru.com Over the past four months, the U.S. government has been releasing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) files. The releases were all over the news in May, but talk of them has dwindled off like stars at dawn, it seems. The popular rhetoric surrounding conversations about aliens seems go something like this: 'There may or may not be extraterrestrial life, and the global elite may or may not already know about it. If they do, they've probably known for years, but
David Kilby
Sep 263 min read
Building a Blog that Promotes Community
Imagined with ChatGPT Maybe once upon a time people paid for written content alone, but the internet is now saturated with content of all kinds. Given the choice, many people choose content that is easier to consume ... like podcasts and videos. For many people, the written word is the least valued of all content mediums. Nevertheless, if media are the tools and platforms we use to store, share, and communicate information, ideas, and entertainment, then the written word will
David Kilby
Sep 244 min read
What Happened to Community and the American Dream?
Churchill, MD image from Nextdoor Like progress, The American Dream is an elusive term. For many people, it means starting their own business. For others, it means owning their own house. For still others, it means both of those things. But, from personal experience, I've learned that starting your own business requires jumping through more hoops than a dog show. And the dream of buying own houses has put millions of us in debt. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans are
David Kilby
Sep 188 min read
The Problem with 'Progress'
Where are we headed? For all of the talk of progress in politics and the sciences, there seems to be a great lack of vision for the future of humanity. Despite the fact that progress is such a hot topic, the word lacks tangibility. There is no general consensus on how to implement progress. We can’t progress toward nothing. If we want to see progress, we need to clearly define our goal and vision. if we haven’t established what the destination is, we can’t claim we’re getting
David Kilby
Aug 206 min read
How a Virtual World Can Fuel Real-World Projects
There are two big visionary projects I've been working on (mostly in my head). At first, they seem diametrically opposed, but the more I write about them the more I notice how much they have in common. Once again, I find myself repeating Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor's words: I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. A New Kind of Virtual World The first too-big-for-realists idea I have is to connect all the fantasy worlds in literature, cinema, a
David Kilby
Jul 148 min read
The Value of Recreation, Make-Believe and Pretending
What if the figments of our imagination and our worlds of make-believe could actually exist? What if, when we are pretending, we are also pre-tending the garden of our faith that may one day become a reality? What if our imagination, when formed properly, is the crafting table of God's plan for us? Pretending Is Pre-Tending In the summer, I do my best to get outside more and connect with nature. One way I do this is by tending my garden. Tending my garden recently made me thi
David Kilby
Jul 95 min read
How a Rosebush Gave Me a Vision of Humanity's Journey
It was one of the hottest afternoons of the summer. Those who live in New Jersey know, we've had some unusually relentless heat recently, the kind of heat that causes you to make up imaginary words when you try to speak. The flowers and plants in my yard suffered from it too. Wilting leaves and brown branches all around my porch made me sad whenever I approached my doorstep. No amount of watering seemed to help. Yet beside my front door, almost unnoticed, two rosebuds were qu
David Kilby
Jul 75 min read
The Ideas behind Rambling Spirit Magazine
Rambling Spirit exists to cultivate the cultural infrastructure of a new renaissance by exploring how truth, goodness, beauty, imagination, technology, and community can work together to help civilization flourish.
David Kilby
Jun 304 min read
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