Wit & Whim

My darling Emma is like a sedulous little truffle pig for current events, especially those musky tidbits that stir one to indignation. One of today's offerings was due to the anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 coptic christians in Libya. They were kidnapped and beheaded on video by the Islamic State (IS) for their refusal to renounce their faith. They died with a bold confession on their lips. Scripture is clear about what awaits them; a martyrs crown and the wedding feast of the lamb. Heck, even Pope Frank said as much. But "not so fast," say the forces of internet trad catholicism. "Don't think they are getting in that easy." You see, these coptic christians are not in communion with the church of Rome, and don't we all know from the canons that a martyr can only be one who is in communion with Rome? These were schismatic heretics; one can hardly know if they make it in. The split was at Chalcedon. Both Rome and the copts rejected nestorianism (real he...

Sorry about the hiatus. I'm sure you were scared that I had gone to the corner store for milk and cigarettes and would not return for years, as I have done in the past. Fortunately for you, I did not go to the corner store, but to Philadelphia, and so I have returned in a timely manner. Philadelphia was great, but coming home was better. Earlier today I was out walking with my little ladies. We walked to the park to inspect the partially frozen and rising river. We visited the playground where the girls played that they were giant spiders on the climbing ropes, captains of a ship at sea in a storm, and giggled maniacally as I sent them down the little zipline thing, which actually looks pretty fun. We walked through the gardens, where the girls speculated about what kind of flowers would be there, when spring would come, and quizzed me about what my favorite flowers were. (They are peonies, followed by dahlias, and then Snapdragons, although I also have a fondness for gerbera daisi...

We hear all the time about the childhood that children no longer get to have. "Back in my day," the opinion piece will begin (even if exactly those words were not used), "we we run out the front door at dawn and wouldn't come back in until it was dinner time." We hear this, because we can all kind of recognize that we are in the era of the ascendancy of the tablet, and of the tablet kid. Kids, like adults, have been captured by screens, and one just does not see possibly dangerous mobs of children roving the neighborhood as happened in ye olden days. The golden childhood of the nineties is passed. So the lament so often goes. I think (yes, another 'pinion) that this has a lot less to do with screens and laziness than it does with chemistry. Yes, that's right, son, chemistry. You see, children are fissile material. A single child by itself is generally an inert lump, putting off little energy, save to whine about boredom. Parents, being only mortal, hear ...

I rarely watch televised sport, but I am about to host my family super bowl party in the same way I do each year. In this season of life, a season with small children where my weekends are as precious as they will ever be, I cannot make time for it on a regular basis. There are too many competing priorities, and it just does not rise to the top. But as you might guess from the fact I'm hosting a super bowl party, I would not say that it is without value. I am not part of the crowd who looks down on 'sportsball'. I absolutely know what so many see in it, and believe that there is real good one gets out of sport as a spectator. Especially out of complex sport, like baseball or football. Sport is more than just physical contest. It is a battle of wits, and it is a satisfying mental exercise to put yourself in the shoes of the coach, the QB, the pitcher and try to diagnose what you think is the right plan of attack. This  level of enjoyment requires a deeper knowledge of the sp...

See, this is exactly what I am talking about. The first three days of the fast were a relative breeze. Yes, getting up an hour earlier and finally reinstituting my workout took a little stretching, but my relationship with food has been such that dropping brekkie is not big deal, nor avoiding snacking. TV, social media, and video games are all dispensible pleasures. But today is hard, because today was actually my first bad day where I was also keeping disciplines. I had a bad day at work. Not the kind of bad day that has life altering consequences, but just a steady day of little defeats that added up to a day that some parts of me wished I had not logged on for. I've had plenty of days like this in the past--I imagine we've all had a few. But what I am patently unused to is processing this kind of day without any distractions, and with the gentle pressure of having new disciplines and deferred comforts. What I can't escape is the constant intrusive need to analyze the pro...

You know that one meme we've all seen. No, not that one, the other one. Oh I see, there are rather a lot of them, aren't there? Well, in this case I mean the one where women were asking their menfolk how many times a day they thought about the Roman Empire, and then their jaws dropped as numbers that seemed too high to be probable returned. Surely, the girls said, this can't be real. No one thinks about something weird and random that frequently. Do they. Of course we do. And now suddenly a great many men got to have a lightbulb event for how different you lot are. I mean of course they knew you were different before, they spend a lot of time thinking about that, too, but not thinking about Rome? This raises new questions and new possibilities. I have seen all kinds of opinions of this; about how this is because Rome still holds such a deep seated place in our cultural imagination, about how Gladiator is a great movie and we should watch it right now, etc. Valid points, I...

 I have an old Walther League ring that is basically a permanent fixture om my right hand. My great grandfather was very into walther league, or so the family stories go. This is not his ring. I wish I had it, and hope that some other son of the extended family wears it from time to time. The ring is beautiful, but that is not the main reason that I bought it. I bought it partly because I had become troubled by the problem of loneliness, and I had looked back to see if there was anything we could draw from our grandparents to help with our present evils. The real driving reason to buy it was that it was going for less than the melt value, and it seemed to me the boomer smelters have given enough of the artifacts of our traditions to the fire. The epidemic of loneliness and the boomers/greatest generation melting down traditions to make new forms have the same root, in my mind. Both find their root in a loss of necessity. I've long held the conjecture that the loss of our traditions...

If you take the balance of all the literate days of my life up to this point, I've read the bible on less than half of them. My KPIs on prayer are probably strong if you include bed and mealtimes, but take a sharp hit if those go in a separate category. Now, stakeholders will be heartened to see that these numbers are significantly stronger over the last 2-3 years, demonstrating that new policies and practices have lead to sustainable growth in key areas. Now, there were two pieces that lead to this improvement. Firstly, the pricking of my own conscience as my children have come to an age where they obviously need daily devotions and instruction. And the second the loving harangues of my father in law, who is constantly extolling us to read our bibles and engage with the holy scripture. Christian conscience, sparked by faith however imperfect, and the voice of one crying in the wilderness "make straight the way of the lord!" A dynamite combo. I would like to imagine that ...

 I always find that the best time to engage with the latest intense internet drama is after everyone else is bored with it and no longer talking about it. Blogging, you see, is like making french toast. You may think that it will be better with the subject coming piping hot out of the oven of twitter wrath. I'm sure you can almost smell it. But no, french toast and opinion pieces have this in common; they are far better once the substance we are working with is good and stale. We get to work with a firm medium, bringing it back to life; firm, full, and delicious. If you try the same with fresh hot takes, you wind up with sad, spongy, opinion pieces with no chew. I have one in mind, of course. I'm not just musing on generalities, so let me get you up to speed. There was a certain man, who was giving a lecture at Bugenhagen. His lecture was on our discomfort with hierarchy. It was a full and ranging lecture, but in the course of the lecture there was a 5 minute segment that dealt...