This Halloween I began to think of Miss Davis our neighbor and miss her mightily. Where have you gone, Miss Davis? You have gone to God, but if I could, I would be a boy again and knock on your door and say: “Trick or treat.” You would give me a red candy apple, almost the only unwrapped candy we could eat, because you were Miss Davis and my mom knew your gentle soul. As a most unfortunate reflection on... Read more
Just this Weekend: Fandom is Fun Just this weekend my adult children (including a son-in-law), some of their friends, and my brother gathered to watch the World Series. My brother has the misfortune of being a Nat’s fan and so, in this otherwise Houston room, came in for a good bit of chaff. Dear Old Dan gave as good as he got by pointing out that he was loyal to our roots, hundreds of years of Reynolds’ life in old... Read more
Are professional sports good for a community or for us? I think so, maybe. A critic, but a good faith one, suggests that I am quite wrong. Steve Baughman, lawyer and gadfly (in the good way!), argued that professional sports fandom is quite bad, for the Republic and for us. His argument was interesting, but I thought it failed philosophically and practically. Now I am excited to present a response to my defense of the good done by professional sports fandom. Following... Read more
Pundits are paid to opine, so opine they must. I am not a pundit, but a culturally observant person who is often asked: “How is ‘it’ going?” When this is not about the revolution in higher education, then the “it” is a reference to the 2020 Presidential election. I no longer write about what I wish would happen, given my other work, but I do try to keep up with what is likely to happen. After all, the next administration will rule... Read more
A vampire sucks the blood of the living, but only to stay undead: the perfect image of the ideologue, the man with unreal ideas. Dracula is in part a myth based on the very real conflict between the world as it is and the artificial world that ignores half of reality. The horrors begin when our carefully cultivated, college credentialed worldview clashes with truth. Think for a moment. We, all of us, begin conscious: we are. We experience, interpret and understand the world... Read more
Halloween, All Hallows’, is coming and, being Christian, we are preparing to pray and party. Why? All Hallows’ Eve is a celebration, deeply Christian, a holiday of creative mothers, when adults party, and devils are defeated, when we are unafraid, awash in love. This is a day in the West of the World where we face common fears and cross ourselves and have a laugh. I have visited many holy places where the dead, skulls, bones, and the incorrupt, are there to see. The... Read more
God give me better questions so I can love You better. The way forward is always to ask questions, take tentative answers, never lose contact with the “not knowing” that is part of loving the Beloved Unknown. The tentative nature of any of our answers is part of faithful living, orthodoxy as a window to deeper questions about what still is unknown even with our deeply held, if still provisional, answers. Socrates lived a life seeking the Divine by questioning... Read more
Sometimes a work is so beautiful that you forget what is being said by the author for the sheer sound, the feeling of the words sliding through the mind, and collecting together building something magnificent: a monument of sound, words made music or mayhap music frozen in prose. John Milton does this to words. There are lines, whole sections, in Paradise Lost that are cathedrals in words. They are not cathedrals of a church I would wish to attend, the theology is... Read more
Being a Packer Fan Has Been Very, Very Good for Me. Maybe. Pro-sports fandom has been, for me, a school where my intellect learned to guide my passions. Packer fandom has been a school for my soul, a way of making lifelong friends, and good merriment. Maybe. Maybe not. Being a fan may be fine, but being a fanatic is not, ever. Nothing so ruins a good thing than a zealot: Jesus turns zealots into students. Ask Simon, once zealot,... Read more
One purpose of this space is to provide a place for “guest voices. . .” How does a person become a guest voice? I think they have interesting ideas, which is not a great selection mechanism, but the one I use! Steve Baughman is a sometimes online interlocutor who keeps theists honest (or attempts to do so!) and has interesting ideas. Often those ideas are the opposite of my own thoughts, but that is the wonder of the dialectic! Attack theism,... Read more
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