I like Burley Coulter. I like him, at least in part, because he "caused a lot of trouble for himself and other people," as Wendell Berry puts it.

At the risk of seeming disrespectful or irreverent, I'd like to propose that the parable in today's Gospel is, well, funny.

Allowing ourselves to feel suffering is the only way to heal from suffering.

As a teen in the 1980s, I was at a moral crossroads.

"These people will also discover the seemingly insignificant conventions their predecessors have destroyed…

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted". (Mt 5:4)  In his commentary on this Beatitude in Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes that there are two kinds of mourning: 

One of the great tragedies of the 1960s was an erosion of American morality.

"I wish it need not have happened in my time."
"So do I and so do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide
is what to do with the time that is given to us."
J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings"

"Moral good is a practical stimulus: it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice…" Plutarch

Though many parents reject Santa Claus as a fib, Santa Claus is true because he is a symbol of truth.