James Whitcomb Riley

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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Random

One Question, Two Answers

How to be really great Your life will be immeasurably great — incalculably awesome — if you put others in place of … you.  We will be great if we put others before us.  That is, if we put them first. One week at church, a pastor culled some points from a book on Christian

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Ark Of The Christian Life

Not God is the phrase they use in AA for realizing we are, well … not God. And no, I’m not an alcoholic. No really — I’m not. Not God is also the answer to the question, WTF? What is wrong with people, this place, my parents, and our upbringing, education, choices and decisions, and probably

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Christ on a Postage Stamp

Got to thinking on postage stamps today bec hadda mail a book to a friend and when you go in you hafta say to the guy, no matter what your actual business is that day, and of course you’re already saying it if you went in for this purpose — ‘What first class stamps d’ya have?’ It’s

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Hey Babe, Wanna Increase My Downline?

This wouldn’t be the first time someone “posted” a “blog” on their “website” while having nothing to say. Well, not nothing exactly, but certainly not being sure exactly what he wants to say. But then that’s part of what a blog is, or was. Or maybe that’s just the bad kind; definitely it’s the old

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