I suppose I’ll see how this goes when I step up to the plate this morning.
I always preach the lectionary–it keeps me honest, meaning that I sometimes have to deal with texts that aren’t necessarily my speed.? I can’t pick what comes up on the week I’m pulpit-filling, and sometimes I end up preaching texts [...]
Let the Pagans Have the Holiday
Writing for Christianity Today in December 1993, Rodney Clapp noted the beginnings of a cottage industry, the Christmas protest, that would balloon into a full-blown cable news extravaganza a mere decade and a half later:
It is time to recognize that a new tradition has been added to Christmas. As surely [...]
Yes, I am among the insane people up before 5 AM the morning after Thanksgiving.? No, I’m not at the moment buying anything.? I’ve got four more papers to grade, and I should have had them done by now, but I’ve been sleeping in (sometimes as late as 7:30 AM) on this break rather than [...]
Perhaps I’m turning over a new leaf with regards to the digital camera–here are the pictures from yesterday’s museum trip!
November 2008 Museum
No time to write this morning.? We’re headed off to the Interactive Neighborhood for Kids, Micah’s children’s museum here in Georgia.? Since it’s so rare for all three of us to have a day off on the same day, I talked Mary out of spending the day working and into coming with the boys today.? [...]
SC Priest: No communion for Obama Supporters
I have to admit that I’m more conflicted about this story than some of my liberal friends would likely want me to be.? But I do think that the Eucharist is serious enough that the Church should be cautious rather than reckless in administering it.? After all, I’m very [...]
Just for the sake of some of us in the pews, could we agree that if St. Francis or Martin Luther wrote the hymn, arrangers are not allowed to do cute syncopations with it?? I really can’t stand tricky praise-bandish versions of “A Mighty Fortress is our God” and “All Creatures of our God and [...]
Marv called yesterday and asked if I could take the sermon for the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the first Sunday in Advent.? I always enjoy such opportunities, so I said yes, and here is the text that I think I’m going to preach.
Isaiah 64:1-9
64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so [...]
I met with the last of my portfolio-revision groups on Thursday afternoon, and now that I’ve actually slept and had a chance to reflect on this fall’s classes, I’m pleased with my efforts.? I hope I never get so stupid as to claim credit for another human being’s curiosity, but I also hope I never [...]
I know that college composition teachers are supposed to bewail the state of “kids these days” and their inability to put together an essay, but this year’s freshman comp group has been, for the most part and in all cases sometimes, quite competent.? I’m confident that they’ve not become so because of my brilliant instruction [...]
I was thinking about negation as a philosophical move this morning, and I started to think about negation-of-negation as it might relate to reading Hebrew prophetic texts.? Algebraically, of course, a negation of a negation is the same as a positive statement, but as Hegel points out in Phenomenology of Spirit, if the negation itself [...]
Yes.
Yes, I should.
I will say that I’ve got a doozy cooking, but I’m not happy with it yet, so rather than post it without another revision, I’ll resort to a gimmick post.
I’m ashamed, but not nearly enough.
So here I am, at the newly christened Zell Miller Center (makes me wish I could challenge someone to a duel), waiting for the last round of revision meetings to start.? I woke up at 3 AM and got the remainder of the morning’s documents read and marked up by 6:15, so I’m confident that, [...]
It appears I jumped too early on the “Changing my Name to Fannie Mae” thing.? If I’d just waited about a week, I could have just posted about auto makers again.
Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.? And people wonder why people get as suspicious of Big Business as they do of Big Government–we can see [...]
No, not the electoral college and all that.? The congregation of Athens Christian has elected me deacon.? I start serving the next time the elders and deacons assemble.
That’s all for today.? Papers to grade and all.
I inadvertently put some summer beach pictures in the album as well, but remembering warmer days can’t hurt, right? The new pics span from early October to just a few days ago. I should put up pictures more often, I know.
Fall and Early Winter 2008
From 52 to 48 with Love
Someone mentioned this at work the other day, and I checked it out.? I don’t know that still photos, no matter how clever, can compete with twelve hours (in some areas) of AM radio every day, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless.? I like the fact that both “fifty-twos” and [...]
Learning for Everyone
Not a profound essay, but an interesting bit of American popular history.? I knew that the Great Books movement started in the early twentieth century at Columbia and Chicago, but I never knew about its appeal outside of universities:
The Great Books craze began in the early 1940s in Chicago, expanding from Hutchins’s university [...]
I know I’m weird for all sorts of reasons, and the most recent is that, after retreating into my paper-grading and preparing for my guest lecture at Emmanuel College the full week before the presidential election, I picked up a piece of polemical federal electoral non-fiction (a political book, if you’re not an Aristotelian) the [...]
Oh, no.? Having run out of actual text to teach my freshmen, I’ve got no class texts about which to write.? Fortunately, I’ve been doing a bit of pleasure reading (a definite sin against productivity, but eventually I had to choose sanity) and DVD watching.? Oddly enough, people give me stranger looks around here when [...]
The Christian Humanist Podcast