An article for Thanksgiving Day on gratitude, and on making the holiday meaningful in spite of the work it requires and its annual repetition.
Read MoreSome Good Art is Ugly
A short essay countering the opinion that only beautiful things count as art by comparing art to literature, and by offering a list of good reasons for which an artist might create.
Read MoreAscension Day - Christ Among Us, Christ Above Us
A sermon on how the Ascension teaches us that God values, saves, and glorifies our bodies, and that he fills the world with his glory and meaning.
Preached on June 2, 2011 at Redeemer Church in La Mirada, CA.
Read MoreFragments I
That, yes, that
Sloppy thinking is not, no, not as good as good thinking, so far as thinking goes, but it’s often the same as saying, “I love you more than I love this thought,” and that, yes, that is good.
“Should be mine”
There is no necessary connection between these ideas: “That is good, true, and beautiful,” and “That should be mine.”
There is no necessary connection between these ideas: “That is good, true, and beautiful and could be mine,” and “That should be mine.”
There is no necessary connection between these ideas: “This is bad, false, and ugly,” and “This should not be mine.”
There is no necessary connection between these ideas: “This is bad, false, and ugly and could be not-mine,” and “This should not be mine.”
Familiarity
Contempt? Familiarity may just as easily breed contentment, thank you.
Self-Control
Inhibition may look like self-control, but it differs from the virtue to the same degree that bondage differs from independence.
Transcendentals
Maybe Goodness has to do with things in themselves, Truth has to do with things and their images, and Beauty has to do with the relationships between things.
Eating an Apple
I snatch a store-bought
Snack apple from the bowl,
Small, red, and tasteless
Like the ones on the tree I’d
Balance on a sloped sapling rail
Stuck in cement stairs on
Our old hill to pluck from,
But without the dusty taste I loved,
Though, yes, so deeply hued.
A bite: brown veins cut
Through the meat.
Mud-soft craters to the stem.
For some reason, all my third grade classmates
Are watching, suddenly, at red lunch recess tables.
They scream and laugh, and the tallest kid in class,
An orange-haired girl who swoons for Spice Girls,
Standing on my picnic bench, grabs
My apple with an “Ew!” and throws it in a bush.
Our classmates cheer, congratulate her
On my near escape from imperfection, mush, and shame,
And eat their Cheetos, grinning broad.
Here, in great-grandma Marion’s
Pea-green creaky chair,
Looking at my yard, I grin,
And keep biting.