This recent firestorm over the pending (and now accomplished) execution of Tookie Williams started a discussion going, and someone asked what the Orthodox think of capital punishment. My recollection was unclear, and so I consulted

Interesting post by S. M. Hutchens on Touchstone’s Mere Comments (here) asserting that the evangelical movement as a whole needs to pull up its socks …
Evangelicalism’s original basis of corporate identity was coherent only as long as it was fundamentalism–a conservative Protestant alliance based on a common confession of the “fundamentals of the faith,” against […]

On the way out to church this morning, we saw a bald eagle. Is that not just the best?

Greg and I regale each other with wildlife sightings from time to time. “Saw a pheasant on the road to the orchard.” “Saw a bunch of wild turkeys behind the grocery store.” “Saw a fox.” “Saw a […]

Outside things are beginning to go drip, drip, drip, which is a good thing, but it means that I don’t have much time. I need to get my fill of all this winter wonderland stuff so I can write Greg’s and my Christmas newsletter.
Not that the Currier & Ives view is mandatory, but y’know, I […]

Minus four degrees out right now. Yep, first winter smackdown of ‘05. Goody goody.
I found myself singing some of the silly winter-themed not-Christmas-carol music — Winter Wonderland, Let it Snow, Marshmallow World. They all cover the same territory — cold as heck outside, but we build a fire and then who cares if we ever […]

Am I the only one who has been curious about what life would be like in one of those Protestant megachurches? The biggest Orthodox church I’ve ever seen probably had a couple hundred people in it. I can’t imagine what church life would be like in a building that had to pack in twice that […]

A while back the Conciliar Press blog had this post about Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame) laying out his case for categorically rejecting the notion of God. As Penn says (and here is the complete transcript of his one-minute “apologeia” on NPR), “I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing […]

Greg sent me a long post some time back from this blog, and I am just getting around to reading it now. Buried several screens into it (did I say it’s a long post?), is a soldier’s metaphor that seems to me to have some pure wisdom in it.

This apparently comes from an introduction to […]

Argh! It’s this time of year again, when I spend most of my computer time squinting and hiding in any shadow I can find. My home office is located in a room of the house that juts out in a semi-octagon full of windows — really beautiful, really a bad choice for a place to […]