Saturday, August 10, 2013

›
In his classic book Leisure: The Basis of Culture , philosopher Josef Pieper notes that “leisure in Greek is skole , and in Latin scola ,...
Monday, July 1, 2013

.

›
On subjects of which we know nothing, we both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble. — Emily Dicki...
Monday, June 24, 2013

But Then It Was Too Late

›
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of p...
Sunday, June 9, 2013

On Doing the Right Thing

›
“When faced with the prospect that we might have to give up some sin we have come to cherish dearly, we often say something like ‘I would ra...
Friday, June 7, 2013

On Doing the Right Thing

›
Once, I remember, I ran across the case of a boy who had been sentenced to prison, a poor, scared little brat, who had intended something no...
Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Kofa Mt., Arizona

›
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembran...
Monday, April 15, 2013

One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop

›
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lo...
Saturday, April 13, 2013

Primer on Mormon Prayer, by Adam Miller

›
A religious life is a life of prayer. Don’t skimp on this or, no matter how white your sepulcher, your insides will always just be full of d...
1 comment:

met t' know ya

›
Consider, for example, the Jewish aristocrat and historian Josephus… who was sent, in AD 66, as a young army commander, to sort out some r...
Monday, April 1, 2013

hey, like, whatever

›
Life narratives provide a bridge between developing adolescent self and an adult political identity. Here, for example, is how Keith Rich...
Sunday, March 31, 2013

›
  I Jesus is condemned to death The very air that Pilate breathes, the voice With which he speaks in judgment, all his powers O...

"Halfway to poetry"

›
So wrote C.S. Lewis when describing “sentences that stick to the mind” from the prose of William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536). What were thes...

›
Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was well with him? He judged the cause of the poor and needy;...

›
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made...
Saturday, March 30, 2013

›
What kind of explanation of the development of these organisms, even one that includes evolutionary theory, could account for the appearan...

›
Consider a story from the life of D.L. Moody. As a fatherless boy raised in rural poverty, he was once sent several miles from home to wor...

Happiness

›
There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squande...
Monday, March 4, 2013

›

›
The loveliest argument I know against unbelief was made by a woman whose name I have forgotten, quoted by the theologian John Baillie in O...

For Pietr

›

To Linnell on her Birthday

›
The Blue Robe      By Wendell Berry How joyful to be together, alone as when we first were joined in our little house by the river lon...
Saturday, March 2, 2013

›
Friday, February 22, 2013

›
[If we are] enlightened by the Spirit of truth, we will then be able to pray for the increased ability to endure truth and not to be made ...
Friday, February 8, 2013

›
 "I'll take impersonal market forces over personal government force any day." --Sheldon Richman
Tuesday, February 5, 2013

›
"Suffering Servant" by Marcella Paliekara
Monday, January 21, 2013

›
Several years ago in a large city in the far West, rumors spread that a certain Catholic woman was having visions of Jesus. The reporters ...
Tuesday, December 18, 2012

thought experiment

›
Would you select a small group of people who like ordering other people around, give them all the weapons, take all the weapons from everybo...
Tuesday, November 20, 2012

›
Recently the constitutionalist writer William Norman Grigg mentioned his opposition to the “narcotics price support program" sometimes ...
Wednesday, November 7, 2012

›
Even in the more obvious of fraudulent past elections there was at least an attempt by the establishment to present a pageant of conflicting...
Friday, November 2, 2012

›
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of ...

›
Ninety-five years ago tomorrow, on November 2, 1917, British imperialism in Palestine began when Lord Balfour, the then British foreign secr...

›
“The meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical, but ethical. It is not...
Monday, October 15, 2012

›
Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand ar...
Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Thomas Szasz RIP

›
Some good quotes from the good doctor: *People dream of making the virtuous powerful, so they can depend on them. Since they cannot do that...
Thursday, May 24, 2012

can't have no scissorhands around here

›
The high-school Mitt Romney who, it is alleged, helped to forcibly restrain and cut the hair of a classmate must be distinguished from the m...
Monday, May 14, 2012

›
Friday, May 4, 2012

›
For some years I have been haunted by a story of [writer William Dean]Howells and that most civilized of all our presidents, James A. Garfi...

›
Economist Joan Robinson (1903–1983) wrote, “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of readymade answers to economic quest...

sins of the mothers

›
Anecdote about Tennessee Williams, courtesy of Gore Vidal Of a dinner with Williams and his magnificently termagant mother: Tennessee c...
Monday, April 30, 2012

You cannot know a politician's heart

›
[Let us not forget] that deceit is the basis of all politics. I remember before the Gulf War, I was talking to a Baptist seminarian who coul...

›

›
One of the most famous social science experiments is Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority studies at Yale. Subjects were asked to ad...
Monday, February 20, 2012

academy award time!--two nominees

›
Tuesday, February 7, 2012

›
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I wa...
Friday, February 3, 2012

›
To field a ground ball must be considered a generous act and an act of comprehension. One moves not against the ball but with it. Bad fielde...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

›
I am trying to restrain my contempt for people claiming to be religious who are perfectly prepared to turn the country over to another warmo...
Friday, January 13, 2012

›
We recently saw the impressive movie, Of Gods and Men, about a small group of monks in Algeria during the civil war. The movies closes with ...
Friday, December 30, 2011

›
Would you sacrifice your firstborn son to establish a democracy in country that had a dictatorship? How about giving up your son to effect a...
Friday, December 23, 2011

›
I have explored other religious and philosophical paths, in part to discover what God is doing outside Mormonism and to give me context for ...

›
It is said that we cannot choose three things: our parents, our birth, and, because they are thrust upon us in tender years, our attitudes t...
Saturday, December 17, 2011

summation

›
In March 2003, the United States of America launched an entirely unprovoked act of military aggression against a nation which had not attack...
Friday, November 11, 2011

newest WMD

›
Plastic Bottle Prompts Airport Evacuation CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- An evacuation of the lobby at the Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids is o...
Sunday, November 6, 2011

›
The British medical journal, The Lancet, estimates the total death toll from the Iraq war at nearly 700,000. When the war began, Pentagon ex...
Tuesday, November 1, 2011

›
Monday, October 31, 2011

Joe Bageant's(RIP) letter to John Ashcroft

›
"John, goddammit, we are going to have to thrash this thing out! Thanks to you, my librarian wife, who is pretty much the stereotypical...
Friday, October 28, 2011

Refuge

›
Terry Tempest Williams can also remind us powerfully of our special connections to God as his chosen people. She tells of when her mother fi...
Thursday, October 27, 2011

›
From the journal of Joseph Millett, who tells of his name being read out as a missionary in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1852, of making his ...
Thursday, October 20, 2011

the world has no use for a drone...

›
Drone technology is advancing faster than the public or the legal system has time to catch up to their now ubiquitous use in America’s many ...
Thursday, October 13, 2011

resolution

›
The first of the rescued reached Salt Lake on November 9th, a day of tears and thanksgiving. For many days afterwards the others were stragg...
Tuesday, September 27, 2011

›
An article at AlterNet asks: "Mental Illness Rates Are Up. Could Climate Change Be to Blame?," by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd. For ...
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Some Lessons of 9/11

›
1. Killing one or many innocents, regardless of one's grievances, is monstrous. This elementary principle would seem to apply to George ...

keeping my yuan in the U.S.

›
The evil dragon used to be Japan. Now it's China. India will get its turn soon enough. Americans are supposedly out of work because of C...
Wednesday, September 7, 2011

›
Sigrid Undset as a young girl
Tuesday, September 6, 2011

›
Artist Alexa Meade paints real people to look like paintings.