The Unbearable Badness of Ayn Rand
My good friend Marcelo has decided to read Ayn Rand’s fiction, to “see what all the hype is about.” He has started with Fountainhead, the story of Howard Roark, the architect who heroically refuses to...
View ArticleOn the Marine Corps Birthday: Why Not Turn the Other Cheek?
Most years when the Marine Corps birthday comes around, followed immediately by Veterans Day, I reflect on my service. This year I’m not thinking about my time in the Corps, but musing on why I joined...
View ArticleScience and the Death of Philosophy
My boy is a bit of a science geek. He subscribes to Discover and Popular Science. They are both styled after the fashion of other pop magazines in an attempt to appeal to non-scientists (“Cold Fusion:...
View ArticleCome Before Winter Part One
Every year when I was young, as the vibrant colors of West Virginia’s fall foliage dulled to gray-brown, my dad would preach his sermon “Come Before Winter.” He did it for a number of years, and it...
View ArticleCome Before Winter Part Two
Continued from yesterday. Paul faced the winter of death, and Timothy faces the winter of lost opportunity. If he doesn’t come before winter, the ships will go to dock to wait out the harsh months. He...
View ArticleRemembering the Sabbath
I was recently in an e-mail exchange with someone regarding my refusal to force my children to go to church. I do not go to church myself. I will probably go back someday, but for now I do not. I stay...
View ArticleA Father-Daughter Story
I sit in the sunroom and look at the strewn possessions of my youngest, my daughter who will be thirteen in three short months. The boys don’t leave clutter like she does—their socks lay limp around...
View ArticleThe Preacher’s Kid Returns
My sister my brother and I are right now, from three separate states, trying to put together a reception for our parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. In addition to the normal stress these things...
View ArticleThe New Improved Golden Rule
Our neighbor Jack is a retired widower. He goes to a mainline Baptist church. It’s a massive structure on the edge of what some here call the ghetto. Years ago this big church saw the majority of its...
View ArticleWild-Eyed Youth Pastor
I recently found an unexpected e-mail in my in-box. It was from Joe, my youth pastor from over twenty-five years ago. I haven’t spoken to him in as many years. He was reaching out to apologize for any...
View ArticleTuck In Your Artifice, It’s Showing
When someone shared Michael Chabon’s New York Review of Books blog post about the movies of Wes Anderson a couple months ago, I was initially drawn into his thinking about the nature of the world and...
View ArticleWatchmen and Dr. Manhattan’s Miracles
I came late to the DC Comic’s collected Watchmen, the groundbreaking graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I backed into it really, watched the movie first with my sons. Though I tell them it’s...
View ArticlePracticing Forgiveness
A few months ago an old friend of mine emailed and asked me to forgive him for any harm he had done me in the past. It seemed odd to me. I told him he hadn’t done me any harm but if it would give him...
View ArticleSisyphus with a Lawnmower
I hate mowing the lawn. I hate lawnmowers. Our unkempt yard stands out among our neighbors’ lush green lawns. Their leaves and sticks are promptly removed after storms, their yards are neatly mown, and...
View ArticleBelief and Belonging
Last week I went and watched my son graduate from Virginia Boys State. After the ceremony, I waited through waves of boys in identical white shirts and blue shorts for him to emerge, and when he did,...
View ArticleBlack Boy, 2013
One of my boys is reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy for his English class this coming semester. One of my sons has already read the book, and in a couple of years my daughter will read it. They will...
View ArticleWe Have Eternity in Our Hearts
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) I watched a video on The...
View ArticleArt Is Long, Life Is Short
My wife and I were in Chicago over the summer, and as part of our tourist rounds, we of course visited the Art Institute, which is far too large to take in in a single day. As happens every time I go...
View ArticleNothing Can Stay, Gold or Not
My wife Liz and I met in a bar. For Liz it was in defiance of her father’s admonition, “Whatever you do, don’t meet a Melungeon in a bar.” While technically she did meet a Melungeon in a bar, it wasn’t...
View ArticleSet the Captive Free
I read my friend Dyana’s Art House America essay about her brother “definitely going to prison, and probably for a long time,” and the air went out of my chest. The fear and anger and helplessness were...
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