As Autumn comes, I am happy, Christmas is coming, but I am also reminded of absent friends: endings are all around. Houston is a city pointed deep into the twenty-first century, but I am a man of the twentieth century. As the years go by, my time is more past than future and that is a bit sad, but also a foundation. If you have lost someone, an Uncle Charlie, an Aunt Jean, a Father Michael . . .the fallen are... Read more
A Near Thing I miss beauty, truth, and goodness, because my mind and spirit are willing, but the rest of me is weak. Maybe the same is true of you, but all I know is that distractions can get in the way of learning. This weekend I slogged through the noise of life to learn, but it was not easy. What was happening on Facebook? Was my Twitter feed blowing up with breaking news? Hope (the Fairest Flower in Christendom) looks... Read more
They are so dangerous Plato invented a word for them: Tyrant-Makers.* What do tyrant makers do? These democratic, state sponsored teachers come to educate the very best students. Their frugal parents want their student to make coin as a result. If the student is smart enough, he realizes that freedom is not the same as liberty. Since he is not being educated in virtue, he chooses freedom over liberty. Virtue conquers self, absolute freedom indulges self.** The very cleverest of students will... Read more
The best teacher is not a machine, someone that can be replaced like a part when missing. A very great teacher, Socrates, was killed by the city and yet, somehow, his students had to go forward. If you were a very great teacher, like Socrates, then you might have a very great student, Plato, who could pass your legacy forward, best he could. Plato’s best was very great indeed. What of rest of us? All of us have mentors, pastors, teachers... Read more
Let’s see justice and become just. This is so uncontroversial, we might be bored. We should stop, think about this, and do something. Why? There is a good bit of injustice around and we are all (almost surely) contributing to that state. We could begin in the Bible with the Christian ethic of love and demands for selfless leadership. God have mercy on us. Yet we might be deaf to this voice, having read it and explained it away too often. Instead,... Read more
The Beauty of Ratiocination Ratiocination, precise thinking, is rare, too rare. As a result of a mother who gloried in precision and then the revelation of logic (language given a mathematical precision), ratiocination was always a good in our house. This can be taken too far as there are moments when a request to clarify just what one means by “doing the dishes” may be, just might be, an attempt to dodge the chore and not precision. A kid can confuse “ratiocination” (good in its... Read more
Love is better than fear, revenge is not justice, and sometimes you should get away from vile people, before vile people get rid of you. So I learned from John’s Gospel and Hamlet, two works read in one weekend. Hamlet is funny in a Halloween-can-be-jolly sort of way, profound, sad, and wise. John wrote a Gospel that keeps showing that perfect love casts out all fear, even on the cross or in the tomb. Shakespeare’s Hamlet had the Gospel of mercy, grace, and... Read more
I am told some Christians apologized to plants. Good for them, theoretically, as this is just so, though I wonder if they were merely clownish instead of echoing Tolkien. We should apologize to the trees, but not because some vague, White Western post-modern leftish guilt induces intellectually bankrupt words. I am sorry for any time I have made a wasteland rather than a garden. God loves gardens so much, He expelled evil from the beauty. Thank God our college and... Read more
At nine or ten my pastor father (Father Father) talked to me about God and doubt. “I believe,” this honest man said, “but sometimes I doubt. Never be afraid of doubt.” I remember church services in West Virginia forty years ago when men born when William McKinley was an up and comer and there were no world wars woud testify of moments of doubt and how God had “pulled” them through. The Jesus People of my early childhood often came... Read more
Deep learning is when you hear, believe, and change. There are three things I learned from a great teacher. These things, truths, were so deeply learned, I did not realize the source until this year. . . And so count this as a thank you and a recommendation of how to live. Dr. Fount Shults is a great teacher. Meaning at eighteen, I could not fall asleep, came to class even after a late night, and thirty odd years later keep learning... Read more
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