This too shall pass. And if that is so, then perhaps we should do as the authorities request while planning for the better days to come. Americans in September are not going to stop eating, drinking, making merry. Christmas will arrive. Heavenly days, my grandparents celebrated the Holidays in the Great Depression and there is no reason to think anything like that is coming. The next time someone tells you we live in the worst of times, ask them to... Read more
“Find yourself . . .” she had no time for it. Nana had no time for people who flunked the challenge of life and went off to find themselves. You were you and did not need to wreck everyone else’s life or fail your duty in order to “find yourself”. The self you found likely would be some product purchased from profiteers of delusion. Nana knew a good bit about life, death, and duty. The plague year was only one bit... Read more
Our Nana beat the plague year, the influenza that killed so many in her school. She understood that life this side of the Heavenly City, a place she saw in a vision, was a time where bad things will happen, but that the arc of her story must be toward Jesus. Jesus. She was not afraid and when she described the plague year, the Depression, and personal problems that would have broken most of us she simply looked to God,... Read more
Nana lived through the plague year that swept West Virginia after Word War I. She never said all of what she saw to me in one sitting, but I pieced it together over time. She went to so many funerals of children her age. Nana had many, all too many, stories that came down to influenza. Read a little history, and I read a bit, and it all came together: Nana lived in a plague year. Nana was born to sorrow.... Read more
To go online in a college dedicated to Oxford style tutorials and discussions is a hard call. We cannot really do what we do online as people are not just minds, words, or even voices. We have class together in a room in chairs, sometimes not so comfortable. Someone, usually me, spills Diet Coke. The cuckoo clock on the wall always sounds at just the right moment to deflate some point I am making. When we see Rodriguez* agree with a point, this... Read more
Fear dismays and disarms. Love keeps calm, carries on, even if carrying on is a heroic change. A modern culture is most dismayed and disarmed when it faces an ancient evil that it thinks has been disabled and dismissed by our powers. We laugh at the silly devices and palpable falsehoods that great cultures embraced when facing the Plague. We would never do that, because we have Science (TM) and are reasonable nones. We would never demonize another people to explain our... Read more
What we love defines our best possibilities and what we fear our worst. Love, desire, can be fuel to reason, but fear breaks down our ability to think. Fear is passion with no possibility of noble action, only of ever more evil possibilities. Love, like any virtue, can be twisted and so misused. Our charity may be false or weakened by fear or a desire for power. “Fear,” as I am using the word, is a terror that is pure aversion. You cannot love what you fear... Read more
By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my deeds a great sinner, and by my calling a homeless wanderer of humblest origin, roaming from place to place. My possessions consist of a knapsack with dry crusts of bread on my back and in my bosom the Holy Bible. This is all! If you face a medical crisis, ask a medical doctor. If you wish to know epistemology, ask a philosopher. If you wish to know how to... Read more
Just now when we are once again being asked to choose between secularism, killer of millions in the last century, and fundamentalism, killer of millions in the last century, it is Shakespeare’s time. This is the time for broad, confident classical Christianity. A great writer can never be simply reduced to a narrow agenda, especially a writer who represents an ancient and honored tradition. So it is with Shakespeare who stands with Justin Martyr, Saint Basil, Saint Augustine, Saint John Chrysostom, Dostoevsky... Read more
Great authors such as Shakespeare should be read and heard in their own voice, yet there exists a temptation to impose what we wish they were saying on them rather than what they are saying. This is hard not to do. Too often classical Christianity education makes this mistake. . .mining every writer for whatever dogma they already affirm. An equal error is to hunt older writers for falsehoods that we can use as sticks to beat modern dogmas of empiricism... Read more
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