Recent
Ensamples
Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via
Lipstick
Pig is revelation. Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen. It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see. + Key is it’s here. Problem is we don’t see it. Action
Not For Teacher
There’s an unfortunate instructor-y thing where the guy on stage [I’ve found it’s usually a male doing this] asks a question he already knows the answer to, one of the people in the audience … err, classroom … is the target, the answer given is wrong, and the stagehand just goes and gives the answer
Diminishing Me
You’d think a guy’d remember if it was the first time he’d seen a body but I didn’t not at first. [Hadda chance to graduate from college into one of our acceptable wars but didn’t, into the war that is, and no shot at a medical profession: left HS Chem as it had only 28
Random
Why Not Two Cupcakes?
Something we know well and another I know little. Remember … re-member … before we begin Dallas Willard on knowing — namely … named-ly … not intellectual apprehension but interactive relationship. Each and both come from the same aim: good and right and lovely when well and harmful on all counts when not, as is
Functionally Illiterate Christian
Every few years I realize how wrong I’ve been. People who know me are faster on that, and even temporary acquaintances pick up the signals pretty quick, and I do the same for them. All this has happened before, and it will all happen again, the line goes. But this time it happened in …
The American Poet
In evangellyfish circles there used to be a joke thus — Let us now turn to Malachi, the Italian prophet. The joke works if you say chi the way we’re supposed to say Qi if it’s the Chinese thing. And it works, though my Italian wife will die on the bruschetta with a hard “k”
An Epic For Our Time
Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” is like cram, the bread the dwarves eat for weeks as they explore The Lonely Mountain — and for much longer as men and elves lay them siege. It sustains but does not nourish, providing energy but no taste. But let Tolkien tell it: “I don’t know the recipe, but it