Since I posted about the waiter in Overland Park, Kansas who received a nasty note in lieu of a tip, several similar cases have popped up. It now appears that one of them might be a hoax. Now me, I don’t know who’s lying in this case. I do know that the message conveyed by the note is an un-Christian message, and that’s what I chose to write about in the earlier case. Such things apparently do happen, and they... Read more
The title of Caroline Stevermer’s A College of Magics makes it sound like yet another Harry Potter-inspired tale of gifted children, magical hijinks, and saving the world from He Whose Name In This Book We Do Not Yet Know, but in fact it is nothing of the kind. The tale is set in an alternate Europe, toward the end of the 19th century. There are railroads, and automobiles are not unheard of, but there are no airplanes and the First... Read more
So I just saw an ad for a rosary application for the iPhone, with the slogan that you can make waiting time prayer time. Dude! I’ve got ten fingers. What more do you need? Read more
I don’t know whether Tom McDonald’s latest post was inspired by my post on Listening to God or not, but it’s well worth your time. My post focused narrowly on my personal experience in prayer, and on the human dimension. (You can’t say everything at once, darn it!) But as Tom points out, every instance of human prayer is a response to a conversation initiated by God, however it seems at the time. Read more
In all my years of Christian living I’ve often heard the saying, “God will never give you more than you can handle.” Recently I’ve seen a couple of posts that reject this saying with great force. On the other hand, there are those that insist that it’s simply true. The problem here is that we’re dealing with a saying, an aphorism, a maxim: a pithy statement of wisdom. The key word here is “pithy”: an aphorism is meant to convey... Read more
So you’ve begun to pursue the interior life. You’re learning to respond to the Lord’s nudges. Maybe you’ve even asked Him to help you hunger and thirst for righteousness. So what happens next? It’s like this. There’s this person you’ve been bumping into. Maybe you meet them at the grocery store, or in the hallway at work, or at the gas station. And you find that when you bump into them, you have one of those neat conversations that just... Read more
So you’ve heard people talk about Flannery O’Connor and how deeply Catholic she is, and maybe you’ve glanced at her stories and been repelled. As Tod Worner suggests, try out her collected letters. Read more
This was originally posted in June of 2003. The other night we were having dinner, and James, our going-on-four-year-old, had been given a corn muffin and a dollop of corned beef hash. A small dollop, as he was unlikely to be willing to eat much of it, and while we wanted him to taste it, we didn’t want to waste it either. So James gobbled up the corn muffin, and asked for another. We told him he needed to have... Read more
And it’s oh boys, can’t you code it? Huh! Program it right! Nothing every happens in this life of mine, I’m hauling up the data on the Xerox line. Considering that I’m a software engineer, and spend most of my days coding and trying to program it right, I was floored to realize that Stan Rogers wrote this energetic rant in the 1970’s. Rogers is best known for sea shanties and the like, but I guess he must have had... Read more
I’ve often been told that prayer is talking with God, not talking to God, and so you can’t just talk: you have to listen, too. This is usually followed by the suggestion that I spend time just sitting and listening. I’ve tried that, but it never seems to work out that well for me, I think because it’s never been all that clear to me what I’m supposed to be listening for. God’s voice, sure. If I’m listening to God... Read more
Cry 'Woof'
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