Everyday, several times a day, emails claiming that someone wishes to give me money end up in the junk folder of my email box. They vary, some are quite clever, my favorites are from British barristers, and they have one thing in common: I wish all of them were true. None of them are true, but how I wish the UN peacekeepers had picked my non-profit as their favorite charity for Syrian gold. They do not gain plausibility merely by... Read more

The timeshare salesman made a good bit of sense. We were also on vacation and very happy. We loved the location. Maybe. Sadly, we only had that very presentation to decide at the reduced, big sale rates. These discounts couldn’t, wouldn’t ever be repeated again and if we decided NOW we could also have a free vacation package! What is happening? What should we do?  Wait and see. If you are not required to decide, then take time. Just now politics, religion,... Read more

Freshly baked bread smell fills our house. Hope is baking the bread for the liturgy tomorrow at the School and College.  Each piece has a special stamp and the fact that we cannot just eat this sweet smelling bread is difficult: behold liturgy comes quickly, but not quickly enough. I made the case that our son and his friend Andrew could eat the bread with Biblical precedent, but Hope shushed me and shewed them out of the kitchen and away from... Read more

The house sat in the parking lot, somehow still standing, in the domain of the new, palatial, magnificent Kroger. This store gave us, the kids of the neighborhood, free hotdogs, free ice cream, free everything or so it seemed. Yet the house loomed there enduring, haunted we were told. How could it endure against gleaming chrome of the Kroger? We wondered, because wondering is what kids do. We were afraid, because the house was dark where Krogers was bright. Why... Read more

Politicians, like preachers, can make pompous speeches. Academics, God forgive me, have been known to do so as well, but politicians are particularly vulnerable since they must appeal to the people or at least the percentage of the people allowed to vote. Academics need only appeal to tenure committees and those are fellow travelers with the Spirit of our Age. That is our very selective electoral college. Since politicians are eager for votes, clicks incarnate, they go big or end... Read more

“Memories are always partly untrue,” writes Daniel Nayeri. “A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee.” Nayeri nonetheless offers his readers the gift of his most precious childhood memories, recounting them as if he were his 12-year-old self writing for his teacher, Mrs. Miller. Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story), his newest work, is a memoir aimed at a middle-school aged audience, but adults will find this is a book to come back to again and again. Nayeri... Read more

What should we do? Love God and love our neighbors. That is today’s agenda, because it is always the agenda for a Christian. If God is good, if God is love, then returning that love should be easy, but this is also the same God who is perfectly just. We are not so much perfectly just. Too often we find loving God easy, because the God we love is real, but we try to ignore aspects of the Divine Nature that are... Read more

Some tyrants are great and terrible, say Stalin, but other evil folk  may just be the running dog Pulitzer Prize winner who empowered him.  Most of us do not have the talent to even reach this level of tyranny. We lack the talent for spinning our mind control to millions. There are smaller tyrants who are simply narcissi having a moment of power and when the grift is revealed, they disappear. Frank Baum, of Oz fame, created a race of balloon... Read more