I am joyful just now, because this is a great moment for God’s people. Too many around us are abandoning beauty as a value. Instead, we are rushing after what we like and it is killing us. This is the bad news, but the good news is that if the world, the flesh, and the devil insist we paddle about our tastes, the people of God can start building beauty. What if we built beautiful churches again? We can. I once had the... Read more
Christianity is not a religion of retreat and the Faith is thriving, growing around the globe. How can we grow wisely? Wisdom begins by fearing the Lord and not fearing the world, the flesh, and the devil. The servants of God do not lose even in martyrdom. If they kill us, they send us to glory and there we can cry out to God for our brothers and sisters on Earth more powerfully than we ever could here. To go... Read more
A story is powerful enough to make something false appear attractive. Just now I am listening to the soundtrack from Les Miserables and whatever the musical is teaching, I am buying. Why? The story, the music, and the performances are captivating my imagination, conquering my mind, and filling me with passion. That is the power of story, but also the danger. Falsehoods or even wicked ideas can seem appealing set to the right score. No happiness, especially for life seems possible, after... Read more
Meet a fan of a show like Buffy, Firefly, or Star Trek and a great many people are willing to sneer: “It’s just a television show.” Regular folk look at people who go to TV Land Conventions (ahem) and wonder about their priorities. Yet Plato thinks about education in Republic Book VII and challenges us: most people look at images made by puppet masters and are amused. We are manipulated and do not care, because what manipulates us is so trivial. We see... Read more
If gnomes exist, they would and should be mad. We have taken a fierce race and turned them into garden ornaments. Fortunately for us, there is little evidence they exist. We are free, therefor to turn them into cute kitsch for our amusement. I am told that many people in Iceland believe in gnomes, but then many people in Iceland are atheists, so one can question their general commitment to reality and rationality. Yet correlation is not causation so I... Read more
Somewhere in America, there is someone who will vote for President based on tonight’s debate. That person is welcome to read what I write here . . . but for the rest of the United States population: we watch, because we have two older candidates for President and this job might matter, but probably will not. The punter of the Packers may be MVP of the Super Bowl, is even eligible, but probably not. This is the punter’s debate. If someone... Read more
The Great Depression could be greatly depressing or so my grandparents told me. One grandfather would still choke up a bit when he talked about finally finding a job (parking cars) for “wages.” When government relief (as it was called) came to West Virginia, my Nana knew a person who just went to bed and let the drapes rot in the windows. Yet all four grandparents kept doing things and on the whole looked back on those years fondly. They were young, so... Read more
I lived between two Halloweens: the time when Christian kids dressed up and had fun and the time when Halloween celebrations could destroy a church. It was nice to have parents who understood reality: demonic powers exist and are not to be feared or trifled with and kids dressing in costumes saying “trick or treat” are not invoking demons. I have seen remarkable things in my time and so I do not doubt the existence of supernatural beings that are... Read more
When Joshua was faced by the Captain of the Lord’s Army, the new leader asked the Captain: “Are you on our side or our enemies?” The answer is one for this time: And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” Many evils have been justified by the claim that we face a “binary choice.” We must be on the side of Israel or on the side of Jericho: pick... Read more
My mom put up with a great deal, including a son who thought he could build a house in the yard. “All you have to do,” I would say and she would smile and listen. This seems to be common as recently a student developed a variation. This young person said that he was unworried about a particular problem, because “all Mom will have to do is. . . ” The rest doesn’t matter that much, because I understand the... Read more
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