I had an email a few weeks ago that I’d won a writing contest I entered through the Atlanta Writing Club, the Terry Kay prize for fiction. I stayed mum about it for a bit, just in case it was all a big misunderstanding, but I got a tangible recognition for it, so it must […]
Read more...Category: Christianity and Culture
Good Friday
I was thinking about how Easter is all about our identification with Christ. It’s why we feel this reflected glory on Easter morning. But our identification is to be with Christ not just in His resurrection, but in His crucifixion, as well. And so while Easter is a celebration of our resurrection with Him, today […]
Read more...Outrage
I would like to introduce you to Rene Girard, if you’re not already familiar with his work, but first this. Micah Mattix, in his excellent Prufrock daily blog, quotes a W.H. Auden note to a publisher who refused Ezra Pound’s poetry because he (Pound) was a fascist. Auden wrote: “[B]egin by banning his poems not […]
Read more...Mimetic Desire
Interesting (to me) quote from an 1853 book by John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, […]
Read more...Margin Thinking
A couple of nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and sent myself an email, and then went back to sleep. The next morning I found an email from myself which only said, in the subject line: “we are margin thinkers.” I had this whole constellation of understanding the night before. […]
Read more...Pollution and Purification
You may not know of Mark Steyn, a political and cultural commentator. He’s got a blog that I commend to you, here. I get his weekly summaries, usually on Sunday. In last Sunday’s, he wrote about Tucker Carlson, a commentator on Fox and author of Ship of Fools/How A Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the […]
Read more...Martyr
A few days ago I saw in one of my news feeds an odd story about an American who approached North Sentinel Island by himself and was killed by the natives. Almost nothing is known about the natives, but “the Sentinelese keep to themselves and are known to act hostile to outsiders,” read the report, […]
Read more...Absence
Christian Wiman, from his book My Bright Abyss: “On the radio I hear a famous novelist praising his father for enduring a long, difficult dying without ever ‘seeking relief in religion.’ It is clear from the son’s description that the father was in absolute despair, and that as those cold waters closed over him he […]
Read more...Prayer and Dissonance
Consider with me the implications of our intuitions about prayer, and what our actual practice of prayer (or absence thereof) says about what we think of God. I suggest two ways of thinking about prayer, and resulting views of God. I admit in advance that this is a simplification, but I submit that it’s not […]
Read more...Ways of Being
Suicide and Hope Is it possible that a person who commits suicide was actually a Christian? I think so. The event of taking one’s own life is usually fast and always irrevocable. Yes it’s something they do to themselves, but does that single volitional act always negate the beliefs of a lifetime that went before? It’s […]
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