Pillows
My wife recently purchased two new pillows. While looking at the selection, she noticed that the plastic covers on the pillows had all been slit so the “Do Not Remove” federal tag was protruding. When she queryed a store employee … Read More
Eucharist and Word
Reflecting on my thoughts about the centrality of the Eucharist, it occurred to me that they were incomplete. Both Eucharist and Word are necessary. Word informs the Eucharist; without Word, Eucharist becomes an empty, meaningless form. Word also informs all … Read More
A Generous Community
Listening to a podcast from the Conversatio Fide site, in a presentation by Rose Madrid-Swetman on a generous community, I was touched by the (com)passion of the speaker in a way that broke down an old reserve. I have always … Read More
Orthodoxy / Orthopraxy
It would be easy to align with the orthodox movement of the Episcopal church, and in fact have done so in the past. I no longer can uncritically endorse it, for the simple reason that I no longer see it as I once did.
“Jailhouse” Religion
The typical middle class response to these people is generally to quit being lazy and get on with it, but that response simply does not work; it only sets up tensions that divide. How then should we respond?
Micro Lending
New Year’s Eve I watched a video on the micro lending explosion that is having a dramatic effect on global poverty. As I reflected on the film in some discussion following, one notable point of the video is that the … Read More
Retracing through Italy
So begins what must necessarily be an occasional, perhaps even haphazard, attempt to record my thoughts on my time in Italy. It will probably finally be much less about Italy than about me, with Italy in some basic sense being … Read More
Normative Values and Determinism
The question of determinism as normally considered in the analytic tradition of philosophy does not consider values; the focus of the determinist discussion as I have found it so far tends to be purely on physical process and the logical analysis of alternative possibilities. After a focused study of this in the last semester, I have begun to wonder if the usual view of determinism is complete.
A Flock of Chicks
My daughter is now 24, a graduate of SMU, and the operations manager of a high end retail boutique. She is presently working on her MBA. In short, she has an excellent beginning for a comfortable career. Gifting is therefore … Read More
Primary Vision
What we must be about instead is teaching people to rearrange the priority of their lives so that they understand the need to give for the rest of their lives. Casseroles paid for out of on-hand cash will not do that.