Awaiting hope
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 1 Comment »Somewhere between a speed too slow to get killed and too fast to get away, a grasshopper found himself clinging to my windshield wiper. He wrapped his thin wire legs around black metal and held on with that baleful, narrow-headed ...
The found faith
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 5 Comments »Faith is this knowing in the center of you that will not leave. It has been to you a light that guides, light that illumines the worst of yourself, weight that steadies, weight that holds you where you do not ...
The found church
Monday, July 12th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 3 Comments »Church is light streaming in, mingled voices, the expectation -- sometimes against all experience -- that this time God will meet you here, or at the very least, that you will leave your miserable ways long enough to meet Him. It ...
Every day a memorial day
Monday, May 31st, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 4 Comments »Yesterday the Eastern Orthodox celebrated the saints, and today many Americans celebrate fallen soldiers, and in the midst of remembrances of saints and soldiers I find myself thinking on a little girl who fought a great battle, and endured worse ...
Wishing homeward
Sunday, May 16th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 4 Comments »I counted, and I've been in my office a total of fifteen minutes since sometime in April. I've been home maybe five days. DC, New Orleans, Atlanta, Detroit, DC, DC, DC. I suppose they'd all be nice to visit, if ...
The missing third
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Theology | No Comments »Inevitably, in secularized society, after some particularly heinous butchery there is the news article that might be titled: "Searching for Answers." In this article the reporter speculates on what might have gone wrong in those two-thirds of the murderer -- ...
On the facilitation of murder
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Theology | 6 Comments »Reading Bruce Falconer's article in last month's Atlantic, about Swiss suicide facilitator Ludwig Manelli, I was struck by a husband's repeated employment of animal metaphors to justify his wife's poisoning. "You wouldn't leave your dog on the kitchen floor when it can't ...
Don’t be surprised…
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Policy and Politics | No Comments »"My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn't apply." Perhaps most surprising is not that this man was arrested in England for preaching a 2000-year ...
Blood and mystery
Monday, April 26th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Theology | 7 Comments »One of G.K. Chesterton's arguments in Everlasting Man is that the ancient pagans never really revered their petty gods and spirits and magical tree stumps nearly as much as the modern humanist, overflowing with tolerance and reverence for any belief ...
Exclusion of Christ
Monday, March 15th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Policy and Politics | 2 Comments »From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by way of Lance Nixon's piece on Down Syndrome and human worth in last month's Touchstone Magazine: "The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of ...
Still more evidence that I am a bad Christian
Friday, March 12th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 1 Comment »"Those who love the Lord may be recognized by the fact that because of their hope in Him they bear every affliction that comes, not simply courageously but also wholeheartedly..." (St. Macarius the Great)
Daily dying
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 3 Comments »John Hinderacker at Powerline (I got there from Instapundit) has this observation about the latest slaughter of Christians in Nigeria: "So where is the outrage? I don't know what denomination those Nigerian Christians were, but Lutherans are the most numerous Christian ...
A blind choice
Sunday, February 7th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Policy and Politics | 3 Comments »Let me see if I've got this straight. Pro-abortion activists oppose a commercial featuring a woman talking about how thankful she is that she didn't have an abortion. They also oppose laws requiring women to see their babies via ultrasound before executing ...
Haitian Orphans
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Policy and Politics | No Comments »I'm happy to say that my friends whose adoptive child in Haiti was imperilled have finally claimed him. In other news, I'm not sure how I feel about children being illegally taken from the country. Words like "trafficking" and "kidnapping" ...
To rest
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life | 2 Comments »Alder Hey Children's Hospital does a small but important and dignified thing in burying the organs its employees stole from dead babies. It is small because babies are small, and the parts of them even smaller, and because crimes against ...
On the narrow path
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life, The Sermons | 31 Comments »He sees her as we circle the parking lot a second time, an aimless, wandering circle, a time-killing circle while we wait for their mother to finish a bit of shopping. I have already seen the woman -- a girl, ...
The circling kind of storm
Monday, July 20th, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life | 17 Comments »The thunder seemed to circle around us in the early morning gray, booming and rattling the pictures on our walls. Isaac and Baby Isaiah came to our room. Isaiah has a big-boy bed now, but his favorite bed remains whatever ...
Weary
Thursday, June 25th, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life | 9 Comments »Sometimes the words don't seem like they'll get close to the truth of anything, and so I just stop writing. That's not completely true; I'll write fiction perhaps, because those people in the stories inside my head haven't yet worked ...
Could have been anyone
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life, The Art of Parenting | 13 Comments »The Columbine killers, a new book says, weren't twisted little psychopaths who intended to kill dozens. They were one twisted little psychopath and his pathetic sidekick, and they hoped to kill hundreds. But otherwise they were regular kids. USA Today reports this ...
Past the words
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life | 17 Comments »This weekend I lived at beautiful St. Fidelis Church, situated unexpectedly on the Kansas plains. Oddly enough, I never went inside the church proper, but I'm told there's a large mural behind the altar, of Fidelis being butchered by Calvinists. It ...
Is sorrow a sin?
Monday, February 23rd, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life | 3 Comments »Sorry to send you elsewhere twice in a row, but some of you might appreciate my discussion at WORLD of the impulse some have to "fix" others, rather than simply commiserate: "For many of us, the last mistake we want to make ...
Movies don’t kill people. . .
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life | No Comments »I posted over at WORLD yesterday about recent horrific murders at a Belgian nursery. Now there are reports that the young killer made himself up in a fashion eerily similar to Heath Ledger's Joker, and was obsessed with horror movies. Cultured ...
His mother kept him
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 Posted in Faith and Life | 2 Comments »I'll bet abortion advocates construe this as some kind of insult, rather than the powerful observation that it is. Because if you can feign outrage at something your opponent says, you don't have to address his underlying point.
Hopefulness
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 Posted in Faith and Life | 2 Comments »Andy Crouch offers a thoughtful essay on the eventual fruits we might, if we are lucky enough not to find an easy way out, glean from the current economic crisis. Here's an excerpt: "The stark contrast between what I experience among ...
When They Call
Thursday, June 5th, 2008 Posted in Faith and Life | 3 Comments »I was afraid of losing our first child, even when she was healthy and near, even before we lost her. I suppose it's natural to fear for them the way we do. It's why we grit our teeth and force ...
The City Where Nobody Smiles
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 Posted in Faith and Life | 6 Comments »I had business in Las Vegas the last couple of days. Las Vegas is probably my least favorite city. The conference I attended was lodged in Harrah's, which meant that no matter where I wanted to go, I had to ...
Sound Familiar?
Friday, March 14th, 2008 Posted in Faith and Life | 4 Comments »From Walker Percy's 1957 article, "The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry": "We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer, a sexual partner, an 'other-directed' executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of ...
Small Places
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 Posted in Faith and Life | 5 Comments »One of last week's nights I woke to what I thought was a child crying outside our house. This is one of my fears, that my child will wander out the door in the middle of the night and walk ...
Dormez-Vous?
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 Posted in Faith and Life | 5 Comments »If you've ever had people put their hands on your head and shoulders and pray over you, then you know what it is like, sometimes, to read the words some of you write to me. Caleb has been reading a great ...
The Nightmares
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 Posted in Faith and Life | 13 Comments »Sunday night brought a nightmare, one I used to have as a child. In this nightmare you are awake, it seems, and you can see the bedroom as it will be when you finally do scream or gasp yourself from ...
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