This week Kris and I were sitting with some others at a nice Italian restaurant in Wheaton when the server showed Mike Bird an assortment of teas. I could see them better than Mike so I mentioned a couple and finished with this: “Mike, how about some Earl Grey?” Mike: “Are you kidding? Earl Grey [...]
Friday is for Friends: David Opderbeck
Jul 31, 2009 @ 6:08 By 9 Comments
Read this and ponder — one to keep in mind. Garret’s arms twist at sharp angles. His eyes, vacant and unfocused, stare fixedly away into a void, veiled windows to a soul suddenly plunged into primordial darkness. His brain fires primeval charges summoned from deep within the tohu wa bohu, his body tensing and releasing [...]
The Future of Sunday School
Jul 31, 2009 @ 0:15 By 23 Comments
From The Wall Street Journal … The decline in Sunday schools appears to be gradual but steady. A study by the Barna Group indicated that in 2004 churches were 6% less likely to provide Sunday school for children ages 2 to 5 as in 1997. For middle-school kids, the decline was to 86% providing Sunday [...]
What’s the craziest thing….
Jul 30, 2009 @ 15:15 By 14 Comments
Your dog has eaten? We came home from somewhere one time and our dachsund had gotten into a deep dish pizza, had eaten some of it, but then she began to hide what was left — two pieces — under the blankets on our bed!
Some Things We Like about Italy
Jul 30, 2009 @ 14:00 By 8 Comments
We thought we’d post some pictures of things (places, events, etc) of what we like about Italy … so here goes… [click on them to enlargen] First, historic cities like Siena – … and historic churches like this Romanesque church in Monteriggioni…
A Fine Tuned Universe? 8 (RJS)
Jul 30, 2009 @ 6:06 By 39 Comments
Chapter 14 of Alister McGrath’s book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology deals with the question of teleology and directionality in evolution. The neo-Darwinian paradigm, (that popularized by Richard Dawkins for example), is that evolution is an undirected, highly contingent, random process. Evolution simply operates to preserve the replication of [...]
As We Forgive
Jul 30, 2009 @ 0:10 By 4 Comments
A CNN.com article reports about gaccaca proceedings in Rwanda, and a book I read recently provides ample stories and illustrations of the same. After a tough history of tension with occasional bursts of violence and bloodshed, in April 1994 Rwanda broke open and for 100 days radical Hutus slaughtered Tutsis and even moderate Hutus. Somewhere [...]
Italian Building Walls
Jul 29, 2009 @ 14:01 By 6 Comments
I like the walls of building in Italian villages and cities. The walls tells stories of age and repair and design. So, when Kris and I are sipping a latte at an outdoor cafe, my eyes often wander to the exteriors of buildings I can see. Here are three, one from Monteriggioni, Assisi, and Volpaia:
The Pope’s Most Recent Encyclical 2
Jul 29, 2009 @ 6:03 By 11 Comments
Once again, Mary Veeneman, professor in theology at North Park University, steps up to guide us into understanding Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent statement. This is the second of a two-part post. Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate is the latest document in the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching, as we have been discussing. One [...]
The Pope’s Most Recent Encyclical 2
Jul 29, 2009 @ 6:03 By 11 Comments
Once again, Mary Veeneman, professor in theology at North Park University, steps up to guide us into understanding Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent statement. This is the second of a two-part post. Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate is the latest document in the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching, as we have been discussing. One [...]
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