Between the Trees

For those of you who haven’t seen it, check out Mike Huckabee’s phone call from God at the last Republican National Convention. Wonderful to know which party has the divine mandate - and that God has apparently abandoned the “still small voice” but in favor of Alltel. I’m not very strongly opinionated yet as far [...]

I’m not even a Mike Huckabee fan, but this ad is clever.

Yesterday, Pakistani opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in what appears to be another attack by al-Qaeda.
Pakistan now is, according to one Pakistani professor in London, “on the cusp of civil war.” The country was already unstable due to the dictatorship of Gen. Pervez Musharraf (civilian reaction initially blamed the assassination [...]

From an essay by Donald Williams in Leland Ryken’s anthology, The Christian Imagination.
“The purpose of education is the acquisition not of knowledge only but of virtue as well. So then: The moral philosopher tells you the precept of virtue, what ought to be, but he does it so abstractly that he is ‘hard of utterance [...]

This has been a productive Christmas in the way of books; I’ve gotten more than enough to last me until the summer. Not that they will stop me from accumulating more, but such is the bane of Barnes and Noble memberships and used book stores.
However, I’m really excited by another of my Christmas gifts: home [...]

I have on repeated occasions heard the argument leveled that the theological position of penal substitution, the teaching that Jesus Christ bore our sins for us on the cross that we might be freed from their guilt and punishment, was not taught by the Church Fathers. Many people will claim that it was an invention [...]

The New York Sun has a great story about a soldier serving in Iraq who adopted an Iraqi child.

“Kumalo said, ‘In all my days, I have known no one as you are.’ And Msimangu said sharply, ‘I am a weak and sinful man, but God put his hands on me. That is all.’” (Page 248)
“The tragedy is not that things are broken, the tragedy is that they are not mended again.” (Page 56)

“A great and mighty wonder.
A full and holy cure:
The Virgin bears the Infant
With virgin honor purel
Repeat the hymn again:
“To God on high be glory
And peace on earth to men!”The Word becomes incarnate
And yet remains on high,
And cherubim sing anthems
To shepherds from the sky.
Repeat the hymn again:
“To God on high be glory
And peace on earth to [...]

An inside joke for those of you able to read the writing on the building behind the first camel. It made me laugh pretty hard.