Dave's cows got out again.
The gate was shut. Just not latched. There's a difference — a difference Dave now knows in vivid detail, courtesy of the Broken Arrow Police Department and at least one very stressed heifer on the turnpike. Nobody died. The cows are back. The neighborhood is bonded. And apparently this is just a tradition they keep at Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farm.
This week Adam and Dave sat down with a glass of Dancing Panda — a straight Kentucky bourbon, eight years, 100 proof, with an unexpected apple-cinnamon finish — and got into someone most Catholics have heard of but few have actually read: St. Bonaventure.
Before you dive in: Adam's daughter Mary is in the hospital. Her lungs keep deflating. The situation is hour by hour. Please pray for her.
St. Bonaventure is, in a word, underrated. He was the Franciscan answer to Aquinas — less systematic, more contemplative, every bit as deep. Best friends with Thomas Aquinas. Minister General of the Franciscan Order. Seraphic Doctor. Second founder of the Franciscans. The man who, when Aquinas read his contribution to the Mass reform aloud, said "That's perfect. There's no need for mine" — and meant it.
The book on the table is Holiness of Life, published by Coriaceous Press. Written to a Poor Clare nun. Short — you can finish it in an afternoon. Dense — you'll carry it for a long time after.
Bonaventure lays out a ladder. Self-knowledge first. Then humility. Then poverty. Then silence. Then prayer, the remembrance of Christ's passion, perfect love of God, and final perseverance. Adam and Dave cover the first four.
Self-knowledge is not a journaling exercise. It's a brutal, honest accounting of where you actually are — seeing your dignity as an image of God and your misery as a sinner, both at the same time, clearly. Bonaventure names three root causes of sin: negligence, passion, and malice. He also gives you a mirror: are your interior promptings pulling toward pleasure, curiosity, or vanity? Most of us don't have to think long.
Humility follows — because you can't see yourself honestly and still puff up. Bonaventure says humility is the guardian and foundation of all virtues. To excel in virtue without humility is to carry dust before the wind. If pride is the root of every sin, humility is the root of every virtue. And Adam drops the Aquinas line that's worth writing on a wall: A man is truly wealthy when he lacks nothing that he truly needs for salvation.
Poverty, in Bonaventure's framing, isn't about being broke. It's about holy detachment. The unburdening of the soul so you can actually run toward Christ. We're not trying to anchor ourselves in this world. The more you sink your teeth into worldly things, the less you can sink your soul into heavenly ones.
And then silence. Not just quiet in the house — interior silence. Bonaventure says poverty and silence are twins. Those appetites you feed don't just cost you. They're loud. They lie. They drown out everything you need to hear about who you actually are.
Bonaventure wrote: "Silence has another advantage. It shows that man belongs to a better world. If a man lives in Germany and yet does not speak German, we naturally conclude that he is not German. So too, we rightly conclude that a man who does not give himself up to worldly conversation is not of the world, although he lives therein."
That'll stay with you.
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Referenced in this episode:
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