A day for regretting eating a second helping of stuffing, for raking leaves with the rakes the red-clad elf left under the tree, for puzzling out your daughter’s new boardgame, for testing new firearms with your brothers, and for listening to the Spirit on how you can do good.

Also titled, Yes, God is a Child-Sacrificing Misogynist and Racial Bigot

It is very easy to imagine God as all the things we like and consider proper. But as Lewis pointed out so starkly, He is not a tame lion. And so it is, that God asks us do things that destroy our preconceptions and leaves us no alternative except to start from scratch in getting to know him, and to discard all the assumptions we didn’t even realize we had. I expect that the Golden Calf was made with the best of intents but the ways that God reveals himself are not ways clean, simple, easy, or kind. We really must learn from Him, who He is, or we can not learn. No, none of us.

Read the article linked. I can not properly do it justice.

Inventor of the “AK-47 — Avtomat Kalashnikov”.

Although he worked for our Cold War enemy, and his classic rifle is generally used by folks we consider to be bad guys, his rifle design was well-suited for its purposes. Tens of millions of both the fully-automatic and semi-automatic versions of his famous rifle are still in use.

As far as firearms designers/inventors go, I would place John Moses Browning (a Mormon) at the top, for his classics which include, but are not limited to, the Colt 1911 and the Browning Hi-Power handguns, the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle (B.A.R.), and the Browning Auto-5 shotgun. I would rank Samuel Colt second, and Mr. Kalashnikov third.

My rankings are based on my limited knowledge of modern firearm history. Others whose knowledge extends further into the past may include other inventors in the top spots of fiream history.

So cute your head will explode.

There is only one Christmas. Each year it comes a little more into view. (more…)

Christmas is fundamentally a family holiday. We should celebrate the Christ child, but we don’t need to be lugubrious about it. We don’t need to suppress family fun because the family is in the image of the Holy Family and pleasing to God. Your family relation is part of the deep spiritual core of Christmas, as two overlooked passages of Christmas scripture show. (more…)

Last night I had a dream. I lay it out in sequence below but the dream was all at once. (more…)

Democrats excoriated him (wrongly, I think) over the issue. This was presented as one of Bush’s major so-called failings. So, how about this? (more…)

David Foster suggests that students in the 1970s may not have been getting the best advice from their high school guidance counselors.

Man keeps his children alive in snowy wilderness.   (more…)

Everyone is special.

Origami

turn to him[her] the other also.

(The linked page has the censored video, which is shocking enough. I don’t recommend viewing the uncensored video.)

I can’t say that I’d be able to exercise the restraint that those men do.

It was reported that the police did nothing.

makes up for failure in the home.

[Garth] Brooks bowed out of his exceedingly successful career for a simple reason: He wanted to spend more time with his family, vowing that he would not return fulltime to music at least until all three of his daughters graduated high school.

It’s a decision he’s clearly not regretted –back in 2000, Brooks explained in an interview that he realized, while attending one of his kids’ soccer games, that “I had more fun than all 10 years of touring.”

forbid not to take thy coat also.