The question is What to do with silence? What do we complain about more these days than the tyranny of constant stimulation? Our attempts to tune out the outside world — the occasional radio-less drive to work, the concerted decision to leave the phone at home for a few hours — are often ineffectual. It has come to this: True solitude is such a rarity in our modern lives that we have to buy it — or, in this case,... Read more

From CNN: In a few minutes, 20 children and six educators were dead. Eighteen of the pupils — between the ages of 5 and 10 — died where they fell, investigators say. Two more were pronounced dead at an area hospital. Inside the classroom, Vollmer’s job — as it has been nearly every day for 18 years — was to keep the children calm, focused on the task at hand. “You could hear what sounded like pops, gunshots,” she told... Read more

Here is our Christmas contest for 2012. I bought myself a gift, wrapped it up, and here’s the picture. I usually by myself a gift, a “To Scot from Scot” kind of gift, and I highly recommend this practice — the chances go way up about getting what you want! You guess what I’ve got in there and I will send you a box of Theologian Trading Cards! This contest will end tomorrow (Sunday, the 16th, at 9pm) or when... Read more

The senseless violence of a young man has destroyed the lives of 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, if not more, the violence reverberates to family, friends, community and nation. We are saddened by this unspeakable form of violence. Our prayers: Lord have mercy. Read more

If you buy someone a fountain pen for Christmas, your favorite someone will rise up and call me blessed. Not that long ago I heard that Biro, a manufacturer of cheap pens, has now accounted for 100 billion Bic pens. These little pieces of silliness are disposable and are now clogging up pipes, glutting our dump yards, and defying the world’s nature decomposition. So, let me urge you to stop buying Bics, buy a fountain pen, and be a person who... Read more

From HuffPo: To borrow a line from Kermit the frog, it’s not easy being green — or, eating green. America is the fattest country in the world, and only ranks second to Greece in the proportion of children who are overweight, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. While obesity rates have slowed or stabled in other countries, larger increases were recorded in the United States, alongside Canada and Ireland. In America, 17 percent — or 12.5 million — of children... Read more