Bruce Charlton’s latest struck a deep chord in me.

This may seem the least ‘romantic‘ of times – and certainly it is the intention of those with power and wealth to make it so. They intend to make life a purely ‘material’ thing; with all that may be considered mystical, spiritual or magical excluded from significant discourse as being unreal, ridiculous and dangerous.

But this very fact makes these times potentially of the greatest possible romantic significance.

-thus Bruce Charlton.  Read the whole thing.

Though my life is to all outward appearances a fairly conventional one of a married father raising his children and keeping his lawn mowed, on the inside I live a life of panache and derring do.  I am this way on the inside not despite the outside, but because of it.  Standing as father to my kids has been the great adventure of my life.

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Do you wonder why there are just so many different types and shadows of Christ? Why are there so many things that symbolize him?

Lots of reasons, but one reason is that God loves beauty.
The world is a poem of richly layered symbolism.

I heard a broadcast between EDJCB and Owen Cyclops, trippy cartoonist extraordinaire. Owen is sorta like a young version of Bruce Charlton on drugs. His book is great, you can get it on Amazon.

But the book’s too raw for kids. He talks honestly about being addicted to porn and having soul-deadening fornication and there are non-titillating drawings that go with it. It was a bit much for me, Ned Flanders extraordinaire that I am.

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Anyhow in the podcast they talk a bit about wireheading. (more…)

Someone close to me reminded me about this post.  Is putting on God’s armor just about defense?

God Wears God’s Armor

Dashed Fink-Nottle has had the immortal crust to open a dashed school for dashed rhetoric for politicians. If the babblings of the blighter in his cups can be trusted, some of the most prominents sorts of chappies attend, like that fellow Brandon or the old boy from Harvard, Ketterfish or Fettleman or some such name. It astounds the mind. There is blasted Fink-Nottle, touting to all and sundry his supposed success at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and teaching these respectable political johnnies to appear on the hustings blitzed, or soused if you prefer, out of their ever living minds.

Interviewer: where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Sisyphus: near the peak of my career

The prophet’s address on rest hit on an old conundrum: how are we supposed to enter into eternal rest when the destiny of the faithful is to do greater and greater works, and enter into God’s endless works.

Hear his talk if you want his explanation. In short, he suggests that divine rest is available to us now and consists of peace, divine aid, and overcoming the world and its weariness.

Consider Friday’s post and this one as fillips on that explanation. (more…)

President Nelson gave an aphorism Sunday morning that I would have remembered even if I didn’t write it down (I did write it down).

He said,

trying to find happiness where it cannot be found is exhausting!

I believe his aphorism meaningfully expands Nephi’s

wickedness never was happiness. (more…)

Rod Dreher says

The phone rang. It was my journalist friend, slightly freaking out. “Come over,” she said. I took off.

At her apartment, she led me into her home office, and pointed to something hanging on a wall. It was a small American flag, almost paper-thin, and very old. Judging from the number of stars on its field, I would say from the Revolutionary War era. It was mounted and framed under glass.

And it was torn from top to bottom, right down the middle.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

She explained that someone had given her that antique flag many years earlier. She had it framed, and it had hung on the wall of every home office she had had since then, wherever she lived. Every day she was home, for years, she had looked at it.

On this day, however, when she returned from Ground Zero, she noticed that it had been torn right down the middle.

Nobody else had been home, and if they had been, they would have had to have torn the paper on the back of the frame to get to the flag. It was untouched.

Both of us were, and are, Christian. The significance of this sign was not lost on us.

Three of the four Gospels record this event upon Jesus’s death on the Cross. This is from Matthew 27:50-51:

50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

The curtain of the Temple separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple. Traditionally, Christianity interprets this sign as indicating God’s judgment on the religion of His people, the Jews.

The Tearing of the Veil

I believe that America had a Special Providence.

Grand spiritual insights–inane chatter–maudlin gawkery–below.

A terrier had been a long time without any rats in his warehouse. When an infestation occurred after a long interval of peace he was wearied and disgusted with all the hunting and killing. It was hard to blame the rats overmuch for trying to eat and, as the terrier knew, the warehouse was stuffed with stores. Some of it just sat there until it spoiled. So why all this emnity?

The terrier chewed the problem over until he arrived at a fair compromise. He would leave a tithe of the warehouse for the rats. That would be more food than they got to in the normal way, at far less risk of being killed. In return, the rats would leave off attacking the rest of the warehouse and he, the terrier, could have peace.

He went to the warehouse and announced in his loudest voice, “oh rat king, I want to respect your need for food while respecting my need to guard the warehouse. I will leave this corner of the warehouse unguarded. Any of your rats that come here I will leave alone. In return, rat king, you will leave the rest of the warehouse alone.” The terrier then retired outside, confident he had solved the problem.

Discern what is likely to happen next. In doing so, you may wish to ask yourself three questions.

Will the rat king keep the agreement?

Is the rat king aware there is an agreement?

Do the rats have a king?

In the late empire, strange and decadent luxuries flourish. At great expense women scar their bodies and scholars compose humorless jests.

C.S. Lewis famously as a kid tried to come up with a vivid realization of God each time he prayed. A pretty silly thing to do. Mr. Lewis was a bit of a theater kid in his youth.

Some time ago I added repentance to my list of things for nightly prayer. Like a silly fellow, my idea of repentance was trying to come up with vivid realization of remorse.

Yesterday I realized that my time would be better spent doing an after-action review. (more…)

Two men meet. The one is older–not old, but older–and has gravity and authority. The other is younger, though not quite young. They are not meeting in the setting of the older man’s authority. It is one of those things where people are thrown together and sometimes ask deeper questions of each other than they normally would. Perhaps they both ended up in the same park for lunch, or are traveling on the same train.

Something has been niggling the older man about the younger man. In an attempt to get at it, the older one says, “do you think that you are extraordinary?” (more…)

It may surprise you to hear that I think of myself as reticent.

But I do.