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Despite a number of protests, my wife and I opted to do the Elf on the Shelf this year for our two-and-a-half-year-old. No, the protests weren’t from our child. I meant he protests in various blogs online, blogs that make very good points.
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Is this Battle of the 5 Armies or World of Warcraft?
I‘m trying to count the armies. How do they add up to 5? No bother. When a team of elves arrives with a salad bar on wheels, it’s a trap. As always, I’ll tell you when the spoilers come. Continue reading
“Somebody up there likes me.” You’ve had a good day. Something happened in your favor. You felt lucky, maybe even blessed gracefully beyond what you deserve. You feel the compulsion to tilt your head to the sky, or even just point, and declare half-heartedly that some divinity in the sky just might be looking down at you with pleasure, and this explains your circumstances. Is that not profane?
If you are a deist, agnostic, or otherwise seeking or non-seeking individual, muttering such a thing is understandable: You’re venturing to make a comment about your possible relationship to whatever divine being created or otherwise is in some control of the universe. To you, it’s just a little joke. But if you are a Christian, you should know better: Continue reading
The title of this post was controversial.
It’s been a week, including a Thanksgiving celebration, since the outrage of the Ferguson verdict. I refused to write until now. And because much has been said, I’ve decided to focus on the compounded ironies in retrospect:
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I will now present to you the month of NO-Shave November should set the calendar for the entire year:
[The following poem is a Dylanesque homage, and is most certainly a nod to “Desolation Row”. But it is also intended to stand on its own.]
Refuse Avenue
I hear they’re making it into a movie
From the book based off of the trial
The pearl stilettos auctioned off
The blood run down the aisle
Enter the captive jury
On the brink of a crucial vote
To whom our hearts belong this week
And who must jump the boat
The picketers collide in the cross-hairs
The gutters are starting to brew
As the boys and I spend a penny
Down on Refuse Avenue
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In 2011 I wrote a short, braided personal essay titled “Vultures.” The essay has now been published by Connotation Press.
You can find the essay here.
I’d like to thank Robert Clark Young, the CNF editor, for his kind words about my essay and thoughts about the art of creative non-fiction.
Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.”
-Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West”
Is Christianity a Western religion? 
That may not strike us as a significant question, may not register as something necessary to establish as true or false. But there are two reasons why it is important to dispel the illusion that Christianity is a “Western” religion.
Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.”
-Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West”
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