Leonardo had the misfortune of being born as the illegitimate son of Piero of Vinci in 1452. He was never recognized as a legitimate son of Piero though there relationship was not entirely still-born or unfruitful. His father did help him get commissions once his artistic talents and other skills became apparent. Leonardo never married, never sired any children, but as a 20, 30 and 40 something man and later, he did have a fondness for pretty boys, not merely... Read more

Walter Isaacson is a very skilled writer of historical biography. We have dealt already with his bio of Ben Franklin on this blog, and now we turn to his most recent effort— a comprehensive biography of Leonardo, born in the little town of Vinci in Italy. Like the Franklin bio this shows all the signs of copious research and skillful writing in its almost 600 pages. Published in 2017 it has been on various bestseller lists, and rightly so. Among... Read more

The Divine Identity Who can divine, the divine identity Of three in one, and one in three? Rather than revel in the secrets of its beauty I must settle for the beauty of its secrets… Though not without regrets. Does the word God refer to a person Or instead to a thrice shared identity? While I may ponder until weak and weary I’ll not plumb the depths of that sort of Trinity. It’s not like one clover containing three leaves... Read more

Like many of you, I’ve been reeling from the news about Bill Hybels and Willow Creek, and been following my friend Scot McKnight’s commentary on this right along. Here is a recent news report about the mess…. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/us/willow-creek-bill-hybels-investigation.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news In this post, I simply want to deal with one of the contributing causes to this debacle, something that is endemic to independent churches that are not answerable to outside accountability structures and persons (a bishop, an accountability group, etc). I say... Read more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHGOMXQyDQ Read more

THE HABITS OF THE MIND Infinite curiosity The mind never rests….. Searching and probing, The better, the best. Imagination’s fantasies Transforming the real Infusing emotion Into things that do not feel…. The tears of a tree The smile of a sun Worry lines on a rock Drooping flowers, undone. But motion is not emotion Nor brightness a smile A wind is not a spirit A stream has no guile An active observer Transforms every scene Reads his own thoughts Into... Read more

 Read more

WAR’S WISDOM They say there is no wisdom They say it isn’t so, They stir up rainy weather But then it starts to snow. Poor prognosticators Pungent pundits too They trust their own predictions But don’t know what to do. The politics of fear, And self protection reign As if killing all our foes Was possible and sane. We alienate our allies We say we’ll go alone We ignore prevailing wisdom And enter a war zone. And no one’s even... Read more

Politics, as Ben Franklin said and practiced it, is the art of compromise. It is a working toward the best that can be done given a variety of views on any given complex subject. It’s not about posturing, or pandering to special interests, or pretending to be a defender of the truth. It’s about doing the most good that can be done under the circumstances. Franklin not only knew this, he was a successful politician on behalf of his fledgling... Read more

Ben Franklin maximized the potential of maxims. He added lots of adages. He was proverbially good at proverbs. He coined the aforementioned aphorisms. And Poor Richard’s Almanack was full of them. Now the thing one needs to know about proverbs or adages or maxims or aphorisms is that under the right circumstances they are often true, true enough to be reasonable generalizations. But they are certainly not always true. It is not always true that ‘if you train up a... Read more