Move over Evian, here comes Holy Water!

The whole “holy water” thing has puzzled me since my youth when I attended Mass with my family. Never understood what made the moldy water in the fancy cistern “holy” and to this day as a follower of Christ I still haven’t found that clinching Biblical text that says certain water is “holy” because [...]

Patriotism, Ingredient Three

On to Lewis’ third ingredient of Patriotism:
The third thing is not a sentiment but a belief: a firm, even prosaic belief that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others.
Some people limit patriotism as a whole to this one ‘ingredient’. I would venture to [...]

A succinct description of Austin, Texas

Having lived in Austin for 5 years (4 of them in school) I’m quite familiar with the unofficial motto of the city, “Keep Austin Weird”. For better or for worse, I probably did not contribute to this. In retrospect I probably did because perhaps “weird” in that city is not caring about keeping [...]

Patriotism, Ingredient Two

We continue with CS Lewis’ exposition of “Patriotism”:
The second ingredient is a particular attitude to our country’s past. I mean to that past as it lives in popular imagination; the great deeds of our ancestors.
This is a sensitive issue in these United States mainly because some are ashamed of “the great deeds of our [...]

Mohler Nails It

Read Dr. Mohler’s latest offering, “Turn Out the Lights as You Leave? Germany’s Church Crisis”, by clicking here. The column has to do with declining church membership in Europe, though he focuses on Germany, the birthplace of the Reformation.
At the end of the piece he wrote something very insightful:
The importance of the church is [...]

Patriotism, Ingredient One

According to Lewis, patriotism (as defined in the previous post) “contains many ingredients, of which many different blends are possible.”
First ingredient is the love of home, of the place we grew up. In this section, the Don quotes one of his favorite writers, GK Chesterton,
a man’s reasons for not wanting his country to be [...]

Patriotism, an Introduction

Patriotism - Love for or Devotion to one’s country
(Source: Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary)
Wanted to start a series on “Patriotism” for no particular reason. Well, the word has been employed by people on opposite sides of ‘patriotic issues’ such as the “War on Terror”.
Some say it’s bad to be patriotic because it leads to [...]

Will Simon go the way of Imus?

After boy band hopeful, Chris Richardson offered support to the victims of the killings at Virginia Tech, the camera suddenly shifted to Simon Cowell, who appeared to be rolling his eyes at Richardson’s heartfelt words.
I noticed it and told my wife, who did not see it.  It became obvious that Cowell rolled his eyes because [...]

VTech Shooter Description Brings Back Memories

This from a New York Times story:
He was always really, really quiet and kind of weird, keeping to himself all the time,” he said. “Just of anti-social, didn’t talk to anybody. I tried to make conversation with him in August or so and he would just give one word answers and not try and carry [...]

Gretzky on Idol?!?

Phil Stacey just sang and as he went to give some love to the audience, guess who was there front row center?
The Great One,Wayne Gretzky, yeah that Wayne Gretzky. Didn’t know the greatest hockey player in the history of civilization was into Idol.
By the way, does the NHL still exist?