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December 2017

December 29, 2017

Jolly By Choice (Fifth Day of Christmas)

Happy fifth day of Christmas! You Should Know It's Still Christmas. We are not yet...

December 28, 2017

The Present Did not Break: My Great-Grandfather’s Bible (Fourth Day of Christmas)

As a kid, I had broken my landspeeder by now or at least made it...

December 27, 2017

The Glorious Christmas, not Filostrato Tree (Third Day of Christmas)

We bought a glorious tree of the sort I once called a Filostrato Tree. The...

December 26, 2017

Boxing Day: Keep Giving Gifts! (Second Day of Christmas)

Now that the stores are not pestering us, we can get down to serious gift...

December 25, 2017

The Christ Mass of Hope: Christmas Day 1

It is the first day of Christmastide! This is the day where we get to...

December 24, 2017

Christmas Eve: Eve’s Day to Dance

Tonight one strong woman made sure another strong woman would spend eternity in Paradise. In...

December 20, 2017

A Saint for Our Time with an Advent Message

Advent is the prelude to new life in the nativity of Jesus. To live that...

December 19, 2017

Get a Bear: Building a Home

It turns out that you can build a house a bit like build-a-bear: one piece...

December 17, 2017

The Shattered Ornament: You Cannot Destroy Christmas

Christmas is indestructible even if we are not.

December 16, 2017

The Star! To See the Stars . . . (Questions from Crown 10!)

My academic life has specialized in general education: helping find the tools to learn anything. There...

December 15, 2017

The Persistent Beauty Of Christmas

Ugly is easy.

December 14, 2017

We Know, We Learn (Crown College Question 9)

When I was a child, I would roll the dice and then count the dots....

December 13, 2017

Unexpected Gifts

There are Christmas miracles and then there are good parents. I have seen both and...

December 12, 2017

Advent and Christmas are the Mercy We Need

During Advent, I try to turn from seeing problems in other people to examining my...

December 08, 2017

Snow in Houston: the Gift of the Delightful Surprise

College could wait, so could every other class at The Saint Constantine School. Snow came...

December 07, 2017

Remember . . . Remember . . . Not Just the 7th of December

They still remember Pearl Harbor at the ceremonies in our government and my guess is...

December 05, 2017

Brother Slave: Redeemed on a Holy Night

Growing up I dreaded O Holy Night, as the song tended to bring out the faux-opera...

November 2017

November 30, 2017

Wasted Land: Life in the Median

I have always wondered about America's road medians. There must be thousands of acres...

November 29, 2017

Learning to Play: God help us.

If you have not seen a five year child unable to play, you are blessed....

November 28, 2017

My Presidential Tree Ornaments

Our family Christmas tree will never be featured in a magazine. An eccentric mix of...

November 27, 2017

Elvis, Santa, and God’s Children

We need not lie to children, but we should let them pretend.

November 25, 2017

What is Justice? Doing Justice to a Fine Comic Book Movie

You are going to a film with characters named “Wonder Woman,” “Superman, “Batman,” and other...

November 24, 2017

Sad, but Better: Four Things that Help

Some people don’t see well, others of us have biologically based “sad.” Our “feels” are...

November 23, 2017

Under the Mercy- the Piercing Joy of Embracing All of Reality

To embrace all of reality, metaphysical and physical, is to find beauty, but as any sage...

November 22, 2017

Perverse Matter? What Plato and (Some) of the Fathers Mean

When I tell someone I am a Platonist, they often assume I hate the material...

November 21, 2017

Thankful For Mercy with Truth: the Eternal Relevance of Philosophy (Crown Question 8)

Greek philosophy is worth our time, but it is not all sufficient. We should follow...

November 20, 2017

What if I had not married your mother? (Crown Question 9!)

The day came when our children realized that their mother and I might not have...

November 19, 2017

How to Birth Curiosity and Joyful Learning (Crown Questions 7!)

I long to have a mind awake, a good heart, and do justice with mercy....

November 18, 2017

All Passion is From God: Sort Of (Questions from Crown 6!)

All passion is from God, but what we make of it can range from the...

November 17, 2017

Siding with Someone Else . . . (Questions from Crown 5!)

He needed certainty or he was lost and this made him miserable and everyone around...